“I love you, Zac Morlader. I love you more than I think you’ll ever know.”
Silus desperately wanted to hear his love returned, but he just held onto his son as the boy sobbed into his shirt, and when Katya came back into the room, he nodded that he was ready.
Silus had never heard Scholten so quiet. Usually the capital city of Vos was awash with the cries of traders, merchantmen and the preachers who harangued the unholy at every streetcorner chapel. Not a minute would pass that was not marked by the ringing of a bell in some Final Faith church or the screams of a heretic being ‘cleansed’ in the central square. Now there were only the sounds of the gulls hovering over the city, occasionally diving among the streets and buildings to retrieve scraps of meat, the provenance of which Silus dreaded to contemplate. Despite all of this, Katya still stood on the quay with a bag of supplies slung over her shoulder and Zac’s hand held tightly in hers.
“If there’s anywhere that will be safe in this city, it will be Aunt Kearney’s,” she said. “Sorry Silus, but this really is goodbye.”
“Then take care. Both of you. And don’t forget me.”
“Silus Morlader? As if!”
When he held her for the last time, Silus was relieved to find warmth in Katya’s embrace. That small hope would make everything to come much easier to bear.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know you do.”
Silus watched as his wife and son walked away and then he watched the place where they had last stood, and only Dunsany clearing his throat broke him out of his reverie.
“Are you ready?” he said.
Silus nodded.
“Then let’s go and find Katherine Makennon.”
As they headed away from the river, they climbed streets that were eerily empty, and Silus hoped that Katya’s faith that her aunt still remained within the city wouldn’t prove to be misplaced. Houses stood open, shops had been abandoned, the produce lining the streets of the market quarter sat spoiling in the sun. Occasionally they came across a corpse, a citizen that had been caught in the stampede to evacuate the capital, but they didn’t see any soldiers. They would already be at the front lines, Silus presumed, struggling to prevent the Pontaine army from overrunning Vos. None of that would matter, in the end, if they didn’t do something about Hel’ss.
He looked up at the two deities in time to see an arc of blinding energy erupting from Hel’ss and lancing deep into Kerberos. Silus suddenly found himself on his knees, as though he had been struck.
“Are you alright?” Dunsany said, hurrying over and helping him to his feet.
“I… I’m fine. Whatever is happening to Kerberos also seems to be affecting me.”
“Your link with the deity must be growing stronger,” Kelos said.
Silus didn’t know if he wanted that, not after everything they had learned about the true nature of Kerberos, but what he wanted didn’t really matter any more — as Kelos had said, he had been chosen.
They reached the top of the market district to find the monstrous edifice of Scholten Cathedral looming over them, and here, finally, were signs of life. Patrolling the walkways connecting the many spires and towers of the vast church were a motley crew of men and women, all haphazardly armed and armoured. Of the soldiers of the Order of the Swords of Dawn and the priests and acolytes of the Final Faith, there was no sign.
Crouched in the shadow of the tattered awning of a grocer’s shop, they waited for a pike-wielding mercenary to round the corner of the west tower before sprinting across the square and towards the main entrance. There, Dunsany put his head against the ornate portal, listening for any signs of movement from within.
“Now that is very disturbing indeed,” he whispered.
“What is?”
“The Eternal Choir has fallen silent.”
From the moment the church had first opened its doors to the faithful, the Eternal Choir had sung praises to the Lord of All, morning, noon and night. The perpetual hymn had never faltered; members of the choir worked in shifts, to rest and eat and to preserve their voices. For the Eternal Choir to be silenced was unthinkable, and though Silus was no friend of the Final Faith, he found the silence chilling.
“The Red Chapter have really done a number on Makennon,” Kelos said. “How on earth did they manage to wrest control of the Cathedral from the Final Faith?”
Silus had been wondering very much the same thing, for neither the facade of the building, nor the stones of the central square abutting it, bore the scars of battle. However this infiltration had been achieved, it had happened quickly and decisively.
His left hand on the handle of the postern door and his right gripping his sword, Silus nodded to his two companions to follow before entering the cathedral.
As soon as they crossed the threshold they found themselves walking through the debris of broken pews and shattered stained glass. The nave had been utterly desecrated: the fine tapestries gracing every pillar were shredded, the intricate mosaics decorating the floor cracked and tarnished, the central altar broken in half and strewn with the remnants of the great glass dome that had once looked down upon it. Silus’s faith had long since been diminished by everything he had witnessed, yet he still felt a sense of horror at the destruction that had been visited upon this place of worship. Standing under the shattered central dome, he looked up to see a host of pigeons roosting on the broken spars; the murals that decorated the wall around the dome’s base had been scrawled over with crude depictions of sex or blasphemies against the Faith.
“Classy bunch, this Red Chapter, aren’t they?” Dunsany said. “And that is never how you spell faggot.”
“Is that supposed to be Makennon herself, do you think?” Kelos said. “It’s hard to tell. In fact, looking it at, it could be a dog.”
Silus shook his head and proceeded towards the choir stalls. Here, there were signs of slaughter. Underfoot, the floor was tacky with drying blood, and on the High Altar sat a human head; the bishop’s hat that crowned it sat askew, its empty eye-sockets were stuffed with votive candles and its tongue was skewered with the symbol of the Final Faith.
The smell of death suddenly rose up like cloying incense, and Silus stepped back, taking deep breaths through his mouth and willing himself not to be sick. As his nausea subsided, he heard a voice raised in song and thought, for a moment, that one of the choristers had survived the cull. He only realised his mistake when he looked up and saw Kerberos framed by the remnants of a broken stained glass window. This was no human voice, but the call of his god. It had been so long since he had heard it that he had forgotten its sound, forgotten its ability to get right to the heart of him and there find every pain, every worry and fear and doubt, and soothe them away with the balm of its voice. Silus was so tired, so done with fighting against what he had become, that every defence crumbled. He closed his eyes and distantly heard the sound of his sword falling to the floor. Something moved behind him, but he paid it no heed. Instead, he gave himself up entirely to the music pouring from the azure sphere hanging low and heavy in the sky.
When his soul left his body, he felt no loss because he knew that he was coming home.
They both saw Silus falter, but it was Kelos who reached him first. He slung an arm around his friend and helped him over to a pew, where he loosened the top button of his shirt and fanned his face with a shredded hymnal.
“Listen, are you sure you’re up to this?” he said. “Perhaps we should just hole up somewhere for a while, forget the whole thing. What do you say?”
Silus turned at the sound of Kelos’s voice, but did not open his eyes.
“This is how they treat my house?” he said.
“I… I don’t understand.”
“This is how they repay me for all that I have given to this world?”
The voice that came from Silus’s mouth was not his own.
“Who are you?”
“You know me well, Kelos. You too, Dunsany. I am your Lord and Master, and you shall kneel before me.”
