A Fray of Furies, page 14
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
Far from being upset by this tirade, Neever seemed amused.
“The river moved,” the monk informed him.
He smiled askance.
“The river. Moved?”
The monk nodded agreeably.
“I hadn’t realized. Silly me! I should have guessed, yesterday, when we saw that flock of trees flying south for the– oof!”
Something hard had smacked into his chest.
“Alluvial stone,” Yoriana informed him, as the uneven lump landed on his toe. “Water is one of nature’s great forces. Rivers cut themselves new inroads all the time. It can happen over the course of centuries or in the space of a single thunderstorm. And it can carry more earth in one night than a thousand men could in a year.
“That,” she pointed, “is what’s left after the river has moved on. It covers the bedrock like a blanket. This entire basin is full of it.”
He eyed her speculatively, weighing the rock in his hand.
If he brained her, he’d have no more elixir.
“Something around here is certainly full of it.”
She flushed a sullen red and made as if to rise.
“See for yourself,” interrupted the monk, who’d abandoned their cookpot to delve into his pack.
He accepted the parchment by reflex but couldn’t unroll it one-handed. Glaring, he lobbed the rock over his shoulder. Yoriana caught her breath but had to watch it go.
“Maps?” he inquired, once he had them spread across his knees.
“Going back many centuries,” Neever nodded, “from old to new. I’ve been collecting what I can from the Temple scriptoria in the local villages we’ve passed through. Mapmaking was not always the precision practice it is today. Even so, you can track the river’s migration.”
“I’ll be damned,” he breathed, paging through the sheaf.
“No doubt,” Yoriana muttered, seeming pleased.
He spared her a scowl.
“The Empire is very old,” Neever explained, “but individual villages pop up and peter out over time. None of those maps are more than six centuries old. But if we can infer the river’s course at roundabout the right time, we can guess where our village would have been. And, by extension, where our gorgon is buried.”
“But,” he argued, doing some quick mental arithmetic, “there must be leagues and leagues of bygone river. We can’t unearth all of it.” Something else occurred to him. “Even if your surmise is spot on, we could dig down and miss our prize by a hair and never know it.”
“If we can get to within a quarter league or so, we won’t miss.”
The monk’s certainty impressed him.
“Does your ladle double as a divining rod?” he guessed.
“Something like that.”
More magic. Great.
Growling, he went to shake out his bedroll, gathering up Eris Bolk as he went.
“Well, wake me once you’ve dowsed some dinner.”
The monk chortled contentedly.
* * *
“Sir! We’ve found something we thought you should see!”
He closed A Treatise on Reformative Intervention with a snap – and immediately regretted it. The one-of-a-kind volume was a relic of the Inquisition’s library.
Peeved, his answer was sharper than intended, “Very well!”
The carriage slowed, the driver clambering to open his door. Gathering his robes, he stepped down into the weak sunlight.
“What is it, Brother Nolan?” he addressed his waiting aide.
“Sir, we have found the remains of a camp.”
He raised thin eyebrows, “Is that so unusual, my son? One assumes the main arteries of the inner Empire chokes with such?”
“This camp is passing strange, sir. I think it would benefit from a senior inquisitor’s attention.”
He sighed. At the very least, he’d be free of the stuffy carriage a moment longer. Brother Nolan would regret wasting his time.
Regret, he’d found, was a keener blade than pain, continually sharpened by the victim.
“Show me,” he commanded, drawing on his gloves in case there was cause to touch something.
“This way, sir,” Nolan led, slender sword breaker chiming with every other step.
The Inquisitori were alone in requiring their adherents to go armed. In theory, priestly robes were better protection than a suit of Renali plate. And, when theory failed, there were the masha’na. But the vaunted warrior caste was not nearly as proficient at sniffing out sin and sedition as the inquisitors. And they had a penchant for… getting underfoot.
The signature baton, with the pronged guard, was undeniably a defensive weapon. Yet, it made no bones about bruises or breaks. And if the masha’na (aspiring swordmasters all) thought the sword breaker an inauspicious choice? Well, perhaps they were meant to.
Nolan awaited him, waist deep in a poll of grass, “Our scout sniffed out the body, sir.”
Prior feet had parted aisles through the stalks, combing free a long-dead corpse. Too little remained to sustain much stink.
“A village woman, sir,” Nolan pointed. “Died in her bedroll.”
He waited for more.
“Do you expect me to perform last rites, Brother Nolan?”
“No, sir,” the man flushed. “It’s the grass, sir. It’s only knee-high everywhere else. But here? It’s like it’s made an effort, sir.”
“I am not a farmer, Brother Nolan,” he said pointedly, enjoying the other man’s flinch, “but it is my understanding that all plants thrive in the presence of… fertilizer.”
“True, sir,” the man forged ahead, careful not to look at the corpse. “But then there’s this…” He scuffed around with his boot. “It should’ve taken grass forever to sprout from an old fire pit like this one, sir. Yet, these show the same growth as all the rest–”
“Yes, yes. Going by the state of her, I think we can agree she did not come lately to her final rest. Sad but there it is.”
Nolan grimaced, “I don’t know, sir. I’ve seen carcasses dead of drought and disease. They looked very much like this. Only, this goodwoman had a pot on the boil and a pack of hard tack within easy reach–”
“This is your first witch hunt, is it not, Brother Nolan?”
For a moment, the man looked uncertain.
How interesting...
“Yes, sir,” the junior inquisitor confirmed meekly.
“You have much still to learn, Brother Nolan. Let me assure you: in witches’ work, no one succumbs quietly or in their sleep.”
“As you say, sir.”
“Now,” he brightened.
Time for regret…
“We can dally no longer. Yet, our priestly duty demands this goodwoman receive a proper burial. Stay behind and see to it, would you, Brother Nolan? We shall see you for supper, I’m sure…”
* * *
It was not a comfortable way to travel. His monk’s disguise chafed with dull insistence at every step.
“Do you holy-types really take vows of celibacy?” he griped at Neever’s back. “Or do these rough robes just rub your balls off?”
“You’re welcome to one of the mules,” the monk commiserated.
“They walk like they’re hammering nails,” he argued, aghast. “I’d be a mule myself before we’d gone a league.”
“I don’t see the problem,” Yoriana smiled, serene from atop the wagon’s box.
“And you never will, you old maid,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“I said, how much progress have we made?”
“Not far now,” Neever confirmed.
“I could make you an ointment,” the priestess offered at length. He did not like the way she brightened at the idea.
“How about you brew me up a real horse instead?”
“Horses mean privilege and peerage,” Neever quelled. “If we wish to pass as lowly clergy, Master Rider, you must have a humble mount.”
“Master Rider?” Yoriana wondered.
“Up until a moon ago,” he preened, “I was quite famous in the winner’s circle.”
She looked blank.
“At the Summit,” he added, to no avail. “Horse racing?”
“Ah,” she scowled disapproval. “Gambling…”
There was just no impressing the woman. He yanked irritably at his roughspuns.
At least I’m not in a dress this time, he consoled himself.
To be fair, those silks had never chafed. And the horse-drawn carriage had made for a comfortable ride.
He shook his head in disgust. Longing for petticoats and padded seats! He really had grown soft.
“We’re here,” Neever announced. The wagon trundled to a stop.
He saw nothing but scrub and scree, “Where’s here?”
“With Helia’s blessing,” Neever declared, rummaging beneath his robes, “the ancient site of a shepherds’ village. And the last resting place of the flaming gorgon.”
His heart fell. The earth hereabouts looked hard-packed.
“I’ll fetch the ladles, shall I?”
“It may come to that,” Neever surmised, producing a drawstring bag, “but we shall try this first…”
The monk upended the fat purse.
He stepped closer for a look.
“A glow globe?” he eyed the dun sphere.
The monk smiled secretively, “Yoriana, would you bring one of the lanterns over, please?”
The priestess obediently turned to their flatbed of tools.
“The sun is out,” he protested, “and you’re holding a glow globe. What do you need a lantern for?”
The sound of a striker announced Yoriana, her brow as furrowed as his own.
“It is not for me,” the monk demurred cryptically.
The oiled wick caught.
“Leave the casing off,” Neever forestalled, extending the glow globe toward the open flame.
Moments passed. He and Yoriana shared a puzzled look.
“Care to tell us what you’re doing?”
“After the denizen was slain,” the monk complied with great concentration, “a pilgrim presented himself at the Mother Temple. His tale might easily have been dismissed, along with his nameless ‘Slayer’. But, he brought proof…”
“Oh, merciful goddess…” Yoriana visibly paled.
Red was bleeding into the uniform dun of the sphere. From around its downward curve, a bright iris and pupil hove into view.
It was an eye.
“Meno Gorgis,” the breathless priestess identified.
Neever nodded, “Gospel attributes the killing of the gorghoul to Allerius Prime. Thanks to Eris Bolk, we now know it was more likely the work of a different Prime altogether: Juris Arbiter.”
Jiminy wasn’t listening. At his ring’s first flare, he’d grabbed two handfuls of knife-hilt and now stood tense, ready to dodge.
“What is it doing?” he ground between his teeth.
“Waking,” Neever said. “Feeding. Hold fast now, Yoriana.”
“Feeding?” He didn’t like the sound of that. “Feeding on wh–”
The wobbly red gaze found the lantern.
Its flame sputtered, lying flat as though caught in a gale. It keened as the scarlet iris reeled it in.
“Agh!” Yoriana yelped, dropping the red hot lantern.
He dodged. But instead of the expected inferno among their feet, there sounded only the sad tinkle of glass. The lantern’s reservoir had been drained dry in just a few heartbeats.
The eye, energized, peered about from Neever’s grip.
“Salt and silver!” he swore. He might have shaken the monk by the collar if he dared get any closer. “Now what? D’you burp it?”
“Like to like,” Neever murmured, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Tell me where it’s looking.”
“It’s staring right at me,” Yoriana whimpered.
Neever turned obliquely away, “Still?”
The priestess nodded, crossing her arms uncomfortably.
“Excellent: that way it is. Lead me, if you please...”
He padded after them.
He’d once seen two toddlers trying to feed a flower to a passing bee. This was much the same: Yoriana pointing and Neever stomping after. He kept his knives handy. The business with the bee had ended in panic and tears.
One hundred paces, he counted as they left the wagon. Two…
“Any change?” Neever queried.
Yoriana shook her head vehemently, clutching her stomach.
Three hundred paces... Four hundred...
“It’s staring at my feet,” the priestess informed them tensely.
“We are close,” Neever guessed, raising the eye overhead. The monk panned about like a prospector, goose-stepping until the eye’s gaze bore directly down on him. “Here,” the man announced.
“Great. Now put that sand spawned thing away,” he begged.
“To think we’ve been lent such a precious relic,” Yoriana breathed. “I thought the Eye never left the Primus Sanctori.”
The monk had the good grace to look guilty. Yoriana didn’t see, busily stacking stones to mark the spot.
Cyrus? he mouthed at the monk, over the top of her head.
Neever cleared his throat in embarrassment, “Let’s bring up the wagon and set up camp. No telling how long we’ll be here…”
The soil proved as tough as predicted, the sediment not so much layered as crazed, forcing them to trade pick-axe for spade between blows. Once they breached the jacket, it became easier, the earth coming up in brick-sized clods. If not for their thick gloves, the abrasive pumice would have worn their fingers to nubs in no time.
Around noon, his pick-axe bit down on something sterner.
“Ow!” he yelped as the haft sprung was from his grip.
“Have you found something?” Neever demanded.
“Yeah,” he snapped. “An abiding desire to be elsewhere.”
He left the pick-axe where it lay to clamber up the pit’s slope.
“Yoriana?” Neever called. “Come have a look at this.”
It was her turn to cook. She thrust a half-peeled potato at his chest as she passed.
“What have you found?” she peered into the pit.
“Unsure,” the monk admitted, his shovel’s beak ringing off something hard. “Whatever it is, we’re not digging through it.”
“Let me see,” the priestess skidded down the slope.
He set about peeling the potato, listening to them uhm and aah.
“This is granite,” the priestess sounded surprised.
“Congratulations,” he called. “You found a rock in the ground.”
“It’s not native to these hills,” she lectured sharply. “Not clay or silt or gravel. Someone went to a lot of trouble, bringing this here.”
“And dumped it in the river,” he mused, wandering over.
They shared a glance between them.
“Let’s find the edges,” Yoriana commanded.
Lunch forgotten, they set about revealing the toppled menhir – taller than a man and thick around as a blacksmith.
“Here,” Yoriana said, whisking with her stiff-bristled brush. “I think these might be tool marks.”
“They’re not,” he pronounced, peering over her shoulder.
“When did you become an archeologist?” she scorned.
“I’m not any kind of ologist. But I know claw marks when I see them. Which makes this,” he pointed, “a claw.”
Or rather, a hand. Overlong and doubly thumbed, it was tightly furled, almost indistinguishable from the stone.
Yoriana yelped and overbalanced, fetching up against his knees.
“Looks like you’ve found your gorgon,” he complimented.
The block rested flush on a spur of bedrock. While Yoriana speculated there might have been space between the two originally, the centuries had cemented them together.
With their find dusted and washed, they recalled their lunch, which was on its way to becoming dinner.
“It was alive,” he pondered later, picking at his stew of hard carrots and harder meat. He didn’t seem to have much appetite.
Neever grimaced. Yoriana peered at him, perplexed.
“When they pinned it, beneath the water, it was still alive.”
Her spoon plonked into her bowl from nerveless fingers.
“But the accounts agree,” she argued. “Juris Arbiter, Eris Bolk, Allerius Prime – whoever – killed it.”
“Who is to say what constitutes ‘death’ for a denizen?” Neever mused. “Can they be killed? Do they even truly live? Maybe death is as alien to them as the Dark Places is to us.”
‘Denizen’ was what the Heli called demons and evil spirits. To their way of thinking, these hailed from the ‘dark places’ – where naughty imperials ended up in the hereafter.
Though he found their faith laughable most days, he knew enough of demons not to scoff. The deep deserts were home to many things you would not wish to meet on a moonless night.
“I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight,” Yoriana predicted.
“Good,” he told her. “You can take first watch.”
“First what?” she mouthed, mystified.
They’d set no sentinels on their travels so far. Animals wouldn’t brave their fire and banditry was all but extinct within the empire.
“Good idea,” Neever commended. “We should sleep in shifts, just in case the unexpected occurs.”
“Like what?” the priestess demanded, looking a little wild.
“No idea,” he smirked. “That’s why it’s ‘the unexpected’.”
She shifted uncomfortably, peering over her shoulder at the excavation. He could sneak off under cover of dark, he considered. Make some noise in the pit, maybe rustle some nearby bushes...
Teach her to chuck stones at him.
“I’ll take second watch,” he offered, hiding his smile.
He rolled into his blankets, listening to Neever do the same. Yoriana grumped to herself about the dirty bowl he’d left. He’d said he’d clean it, come morning. He also knew she would never stand staring at it all night. If she wanted it scraped clean on her exacting schedule, he reasoned, she could do it herself.
Finally, he heard her settle near the fire.
