“Thomas,” the stout man grumbled, releasing Ogdon’s cloak.
Sylvertre glared back and forth. “You’re clerics then?”
“Used to be.”
“What my brother means to say,” started Alphonse, “is that once the pagans raids stopped, the people didn’t see a need for our order anymore. Nor did Saint Lucius. So we took new oaths and new homes. That was almost thirty years ago. We’re all that’s left, Thomas and I.”
Ogdon yawned. “Thanks for the history lesson, but I need to get inside.”
“Not a chance,” answered the stout.
“Certainly,” said the other
Thomas turned red, then turned to his companion, but the elder was prepared.
He said, “Why not? Services are done, and alms have been given. Who is present for him to harm?” addressing Ogdon, “You’re with the Cross, you said? Your fellow knights arrived a short while ago. You’ll find them on the tenth floor. Be mindful on your way. There have been alterations made over the years. It is easy to become lost, and there have been…incidents.”
“Abductions, he means. We’ll know by tomorrow morning if you’ve lied to us, boy. That’s reason enough to suspect you’re involved. Don’t think I’ll hesitate.”
“I won’t,” the squire replied, hobbling inside fast as he could.
A velvet-soft hand stopped him on the threshold. “You need not fear but for a guilty conscience.”
The only guilty conscience here is Gildmane’s, he thought once they were inside and the doors safely shut—as if the entrance were a portal to his soul through which the clerics might hear. More foolishness, he knew. They weren’t from the capital; what would they care of a disloyal squire? That gave him pause, the thought of himself as a traitor. His eyes flitted about the room and found nothing of interest, only boxes and barrels, an undecorated slab of a door, and sacks of flour and grain stacked high as the low ceiling. They cramped what otherwise would have been a wide, open space, restricting Ogdon from escaping the feeling of being lost. though his journey had yet begun.
“This is the store,” said Elder Alphonse, “Go on up the stairs. Our guest chambers are on the fifth floor.”
“What’s behind that door?”
Thomas’s brows reared like angry caterpillars, but it was his partner who answered, “That would be the service entry for Father Angelo. It opens directly into the ambulatory, but heed it no mind. There is no way to the upper floors through there.”
“So it leads into the church?”
The elder nodded.
Ogdon squeezed through the narrow path left open for the priest. He hoped to chance upon Jael in the parish alone, though what he said, jerking the iron door ring, was, “I’ve got a few questions for God that are passed due answering.”
His words were only half deceit, not that he believed he’d receive answers, regardless of whether or not he prayed—especially in this place—this strange vault of contradiction. It was a weald slain and slaved, stained dark and polished bright as hoar frosted windows, cobwebs of crossbeams and faded tapestries. He could see only a few at first, those hanging directly above the ambulatory, like the painted dome in the Obedient’s Cathedral. But that was where the similarities came to an end. Rounding the chancel, he saw more clearly the woven images overhead. Histories never uttered by his home bishop Radsev of men in red tabards clutching swords and torches, a castle of ice, a great black dragon—not the kind Jael slew, but like the one described in the scriptures of revelation. It was the only bit of the holy book that Ogdon had ever read—solely for its fantasy. A golden dragon descending inferno; his harbinger, the Anarch Prince; the false prophet; the rule of darkness; the messiah’s coming; and war with the damned. He had felt the same then as when he stared up at this tapestry of the Messaii battling their demon atop its icy Hell. At the bottom along its fringe, it read, Against the Tides of Winter, for God and the King.
Breathless, he ventured into the sanctuary, among its rows of empty benches, and witnessed as the images became familiar scenes. There was the folly at Crusaders’ Canyon—volcanic ash descending on soldiers doomed to be devoured by a monstrous wolf. Forget Not Justice for the Fallen, for the False King and His Beast. Following that, a likeness of the sea—a battle atop an isle between clerics wearing the trinity-eye and a chimeric demon. Soil Clean of the Blood of Heathens. Then the last tapestry, its history still vivid even in Sylvertre’s memory—the Purge of Babylon of its Impii corruption, of their red demon king, seven heroes woven gloriously in shining silver thread. From the Tyrant, Blood. From the Lord, Mercy.
That struck a chord within Ogdon, one of devious pitch and foul inflection. He took a seat at the end of a bench, scanned the hall, forgetting his original intention. In whispers, he thought, It’s all so arbitrary, who’s right and who’s wrong. The truth unveiled that life and death were determined not by God, but by the will of men. Mercy and justice were whatever best suited their gratuitous desires. Even words like Messaii and pagan were but tools to their ends, a way to distinguish vassal from quarry. Like a game of Frapugna—no, his second thought was of those red and blue figures, if it were like that, you could at least tell them apart. God’s designations were never so clear. Ogdon recalled the Hibernis shipmaster and his black-skinned thralls—less Messaii bodied than the western pagans, less than others who were sentenced to die. Blackheart. For the first time, it occurred to the squire that Harold might not have deserved execution. Ogdon wasn’t even sure of his crime, only that it involved Jael and the captain and
