The Shadow of Theron, page 15
“The guilty will be shown no quarter. Magistrate Marek,” she called, lifting her gaze to the back of the temple, “this is to be your singular priority.”
Everyone turned to Marek, who stood just inside the two columns holding up the entrance to the temple. At this distance, Sera couldn’t be sure, but she had the unsettling impression that, although his lips were pressed into a thin line, on the inside, he was smiling.
The silence hanging in the air grew taut as all of Lighura waited for him to respond.
The magistrate sucked in a deep breath and said, “It is not the habit of my office to involve itself in Temple affairs. This is a matter best left to you.”
“You will do nothing, then?!”
Lysandro’s voice was explosive. Like a clap of thunder, his reproof heralded a torrent of outraged voices. Marek stood in the eye of the storm, unmoved by the cries of injustice that bore down on him. His stark refusal to do his duty was the last straw, and Sera heard more than one voice demand his removal, declaring him disloyal to Arun and to Lighura. Just as many, if not more, rebuked the magistrate with threats of a different sort.
“The Shadow of Theron will not stand for this!”
“He will not sit idly by while our temple is destroyed!”
Marek bristled at the naked criticism, and lifted his hands in front of himself as if they could stem the flood.
“For all you know, this is the work of the masked impostor that you hold so dear.”
Sera looked to Lysandro. He held his tongue as the village’s temper boiled over. But his eyes were vicious.
“Horseshit!” another man called. “The Shadow of Theron is a champion of the people, and of Arun!”
“He is nothing more than a common criminal, and you are wrong to put your faith in him,” Lothan said.
“So we should trust you?” Signor Montes spoke up. “You’ve never lifted a finger to help anyone unless it suited you!”
“If the three Temples have seen fit to send Examiners for the crimes against themselves, then there is no need for me to interfere,” Lothan retorted.
“This is ridiculous,” Sera’s mother fumed beside her. “What good is a magistrate who throws his hands in the air and says, ‘it’s not my job?’ It most certainly is his job. But not for much longer, by the sound of it.”
Marietta was right. The unrest in the temple was reaching riotous proportions. When Marek turned his back on the village and strode across the square to his office, the villagers followed after him.
Seraphine’s mother took hold of her arm. “Let them pass. Better for us to go home, and not mix ourselves up in this ruckus.”
Sera had to agree to that. Angry or no, she had no intention of banging down Marek’s door. She had already garnered more of his attention than she cared to. As the temple cleared, she saw that Lysandro also lingered. His gaze was lost in the center of the ruined glass.
He approached the high priestess, who was speaking to the blacksmith. Sera followed. The bear of a man was shaking his head as she drew near.
“The last window was made before even my great-great-grandfather’s time. I don’t know where to start, and I couldn’t begin to do the work on my own.”
“Surely there must be someone, somewhere with the skill to restore this,” Beatríz pressed.
“Maybe, but that someone isn’t me.”
“Then find someone who is,” Lysandro cut in. “Metalworkers, glassmakers, artists—the best in their trades.”
The blacksmith wiped his forehead with a grease-smeared cloth. “That’ll take some doing.”
“Lighura deserves to have their temple restored to them. I will bear the cost.”
All mouths dropped open at Lysandro’s pronouncement.
“That’s very kind, and very generous, Don de Castel, but—”
“Spare no expense,” he said to the blacksmith.
The man’s demeanor shifted, and he nodded. “I’ll make this day look like a bad memory if it’s the last job I ever do.”
Lysandro turned again to Beatríz. “High Priestess, where is Sancio?”
“On an errand for me.”
He turned to leave, and noticed Seraphine for the first time. “Sera.”
“I wish I could say good morning,” she greeted him, not really knowing what to say. Now that she had his full attention, she saw that Lysandro looked sick to his stomach.
“The village will be grateful for what you’re doing,” she said by way of comfort.
“They would be more grateful if it had never happened.”
“You can’t help that,” she replied.
Shame and dejection warred across his features. His hands were balled into fists at his side. He was trying hard to contain himself, she could tell, but he was losing the battle.
“Did you break the window?” she asked as they both stepped away from the altar and moved toward the exit.
His gaze slid sideways to the floor.
Sera wondered then if he believed that something he had done under the cover of night had provoked the attack. But if his prime adversary was Marek, did that mean he was the one responsible? It was unbelievable, that he would show his face there after such an assault. And it also made perfect sense. But why? What—
A million questions bubbled to the surface of her mind, but she pushed them all away and focused on Lysandro, who had not yet answered her question.
“Did you break the window? No? Then it’s not your fault.”
He sighed, wretched with grief, but a bit calmer. “I suppose not.”
“What will you do? About Marek.”
He flashed her a grim, self-effacing look. “What can I do?”
“More than you think.”
It had been his voice that had woken the village from its stupor and directed its anger at Marek. Whenever he gave them an opportunity, they followed him. But Sera suspected that wasn’t very often.
“The village needs you,” she said. “They want you to stand with them and be their voice, and not just help them from the shadows.”
Seraphine bit her tongue. She hadn’t meant that as a reference to his actions as the Shadow, but she could see that he had caught the double meaning of her words and was turning them over in his mind. It was to her great relief that suspicion did not blossom across his face.
Lysandro was still formulating a reply when a small scrap of a boy raced up to him and tugged on his coat.
“Don de Castel! Don de Castel!”
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
The boy pulled Lysandro down to his knees and whispered in his ear. Sera watched his expression shift from one of desolation to alarm. The urchin scampered away as Lysandro got to his feet.
“Sera, I’m so sorry—but I have to go.” He headed off at a quick pace, taking a different road than the one down which she had seen the boy disappear.
“Lysandro, wait—”
“Yes?” he said, turning back to her.
He had enough to deal with already, only some of which she understood, but she needed him to know.
“Marek did come to my house, just as you said.”
His face drained of its color.
“My father turned him away.”
He looked like he was barely breathing. Sera worried that she had made a mistake.
After a moment, he said, “I have no right to ask this, but please—don’t leave your house without your parents or me.”
“I—”
“I’ll come by later. I promise. Please be safe.”
He turned and rushed away before she had a chance to say goodbye.
“You too,” she whispered under her breath as her mother rejoined her side. The rapidity with which she’d found her told Sera that her mother had never been that far away.
“Where is he off to in such a hurry? What did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” Sera replied.
Marietta huffed. “Nothing. Nothing sent him running in the opposite direction. I swear Seraphine, sometimes it’s easier talking to the goats.”
“Yes. If only they didn’t smell so terrible.”
Doña Alvaró scowled, but this time she couldn’t hide the laugh lines quivering at the corners of her mouth.
The house was dark when Lysandro arrived. He cracked open the door, but there was nobody there. Or so it seemed. He called out in a hoarse whisper.
“Rafael?”
His voice echoed weakly off the marble floor, but there was no reply. Lysandro’s hand moved instinctively over his shoulder to grip a weapon that wasn’t there.
He stepped into the space and closed the door behind him. It cast the room in total darkness, save for a candle a few feet away that was flickering out. Lysandro fumbled over the small narrow stairs that led into the parlor, and reached for a wooden table against the stairwell going up to the second floor. He replaced the sputtering light with a fresh taper and surveyed the room.
The house looked abandoned. Stretching the candle’s halo of light wide in front of him, Lysandro caught sight of an overturned chair, lying in streaks of blood.
A jolt ran through him at the sight. There was no sign of the boy who had urged him to come, nor his friend. He considered checking the upper floor first, but then he heard a faint moan that sent him running.
“Lysandro…”
He found Rafael crouched against the wall of the room beyond the parlor. The contents of the shelves where he stored all his medicines were in shambles. Glass bottles lay spilled on their side, some shattered altogether. Lysandro knelt down and passed the light over his friend’s face.
“Merciful Goddess…”
Rivers of dried blood stained Rafael’s face. And his eyes—the seams of his eyes were ragged with black lines, like the face of a man who’d been attacked with burning coals.
“Who did this to you?”
“Who else? Get me another drink, will you? I seem to be out.” He lifted an empty decanter in his hand. “Underneath the cupboard, to my right.”
Lysandro set the candleholder down on the floor. He found the fortified wine, and handed it to Rafael, but not before pouring a glass for himself.
“I brought what you asked.” Lysandro withdrew a muslin pouch from his coat, the last of the powder that Rafael had brewed into tea for him.
Rafael nodded. “There should be a bottle of linseed oil above my head, if I haven’t already broken it.”
“I’ve got it.” Lysandro added a small measure of it to the bag until it formed a thick paste. He dipped his fingers inside, then pressed them tentatively to his friend’s eyelids.
Rafael cried out.
Lysandro caught his flailing arms. “Hold onto me,” he insisted as he continued to apply the poultice across Rafael’s eyes until there was nothing left. He grimaced.
“Can you open your eyes? Just a little bit, to get some under your lids.”
Rafael’s grip tightened on his friend’s arm, digging his fingernails into that still-tender spot on Lysandro’s bicep. A shiver ran through him at the unexpected pressure, but he ignored it.
“Okay,” Rafael relented. “Just—just a little.”
The second Lysandro saw his eyelids flutter, he shoved the paste through the gap.
Rafael screamed and writhed.
“It’s done! It’s done already. Here—”
Lysandro knocked over a pile of clean bandages, found what he was looking for, and wrapped a long strip of cloth around the surgeon’s face.
Rafael settled down, and brought his drink to his lips again as Lysandro soaked another bandage in a bowl of water and began to wipe his face clean.
“He knew,” Rafael said. “He knew I’d helped you.”
“How?”
Rafael turned his head to the side, and Lysandro saw him clench and unclench his jaw in the dim light. He looked down at the bandages in his hand.
“Rafael…what’s in this poultice?”
The surgeon let out a heavy sigh. “When Theron first confronted Argoss, he was mortally wounded by the Blood Sword. Theron fled, and took shelter in a nearby cave. There, Faelia appeared to him. She stayed with him as his life drained away, and washed his wounds with her tears.”
All this Lysandro already knew. He had heard the story many times.
“When Theron awoke, his wounds were healed, and he walked out of the cave as strong as he’d ever been.” Rafael gestured toward his eyes with his hand. “This is made from the stones of the wall of that cave.”
The words shocked Lysandro to silence.
“I’d seen the Cave of Sorrows in my travels, when I was still an apprentice. I think my teacher meant it as a lesson about our mortal limitations…how we could never perform miracles, and all that. But I’m a scientist. I’ve only ever believed in what I could feel…and see.”
Rafael swallowed hard. Lysandro filled his glass again with the dark amber liquid. He downed half of it in one gulp.
“Even if I believed the story, I didn’t believe that Theron’s recovery was Faelia’s work. I thought it must be some special composition of the soil, the rocks. That if I could just study it, I could unlock its secrets, and end so many people’s suffering. But the cave is guarded by Faelians. There were some individuals who were willing to overlook that obstacle, for the right price.”
Lysandro didn’t like this story at all. But he was hardly in a position to judge.
“I thought it was for the best. And that, if there truly was such a thing as a goddess, she would want the world to benefit from the gifts she had bestowed upon it. But in order for it to reach me here, it first had to board a ship.”
Lysandro’s gut wrenched at this turn in the story. For he knew what had happened next.
“Marek found out, I have no idea how, and threatened to arrest me for stealing Temple property. When I tried to explain its potential benefit to humanity, he released me, and let me keep the stones. I suppose I should have known then that something was wrong. All that has been stolen from the temples since, I think…I think I might have given him the idea.”
Rafael finished off the liquor in his glass. “Yesterday, he came and blew something into my eyes. Some kind of dust. But it burned. With a black, purplish flame.”
Lysandro remembered that precise shade, furling itself around the hooded skeleton inside Marek’s hidden cave. The memory of its obscured face and its infernal song rippled just beneath the surface of his mind. He gave an involuntary shudder.
“He offered to restore my eyes if I told him.”
Lysandro took the blow hard. “My secret was not worth your eyes. You’re the best friend any man could ever ask for, but—”
“Don’t be daft. I knew better than to take him at his word.”
They sat for a while in awkward silence.
“Do you feel any change?” Lysandro inquired at last.
“I don’t know. I’m afraid to find out. But the pain is gone, at least. Lysandro…”
“I’m here. I’m here, my friend.”
“I know what I said before, about staying out of trouble, but…you have to kill him, or soon all of us will be plunged into darkness. You may not like the title Lighura has thrust upon you, but it’s who you are.”
Lysandro’s expression hardened in the shadows.
“I was at your deathbed, Lysandro. Your deathbed. You are alive only through divine will. That I do believe.”
Lysandro didn’t like what Rafael was implying. He preoccupied himself by moving the candleholder to the side and attempting to clear away some of the debris on the floor.
“Merciful Goddess!”
“What?” Lysandro cried.
“That light! I could see that light!”
Rafael untied the bandage from his head so furiously Lysandro could barely help him. He used the grimy scrap to wipe away the poultice from his eyes and dared to open them. Rafael gasped, then started to cry.
“Praise be to Faelia! My friend, never have you looked so good!”
The pair embraced, and Lysandro helped the surgeon to his feet. Rafael reached out a shaky hand to lift the candle from the floor. Lysandro could see that his blood vessels had burst open, and his irises looked much darker than normal.
“You’re a bit blurry,” Rafael admitted, “but I’ll take it.”
Lysandro didn’t leave his friend’s side until he was fast asleep in his bed. He didn’t know how long Rafael would be able to stay there. Marek would be furious if he discovered that Rafael’s eyes were healing. The only safe place for him was Lysandro’s own house.
He felt a dark pall drape itself around his shoulders like a cloak as he stepped out into the street. He couldn’t meet Sera with death reflected in his eyes. Rather than go to her straight away, he visited his father to help regain his composure. He bumped into an unexpected visitor on his way through the door.
“Sancio!”
“Oh! Sorry Lysandro, I didn’t see you there.”
“What are you doing here?”
Elias came to the door just as Sancio answered.
“Looking for you. Obviously, you weren’t here.”
Odd, Lysandro thought. Sancio hadn’t come knocking at this door since before Lysandro had moved into his own residence.
“I asked after you at the temple. Beatríz said you were running an errand for her.”
“Oh. Yes,” Sancio waved his hand in the air in dismissal. “That’s done already.” He continued down the steps past Lysandro.
“What a minute,” Lysandro called out.
“Yes?”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the temple.”
Lysandro’s brows furrowed. “Didn’t you come to see me?”
Sancio hesitated.
Throughout this exchange, Elias remained motionless by the door.
“I did,” Sancio admitted, “but I’ve stayed longer than I should have. Beatríz will be expecting me. I’ll catch up with you later.” Above Lysandro’s head, Sancio nodded to Elias. He returned the gesture.
Lysandro cocked his head as Sancio again turned to leave. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but Sancio looked somewhat different as he walked away. Taller.
“Hello, son. Come in.”
