Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

He felt the bones in his skin go suddenly heavy and febrile. He fell to his knees, but she did not release the contact. His skin everywhere stung, his lungs seemed full of flies. And in his head…

He saw St. Abulo’s host in their camp, waiting for the morning, some sleeping, some on watch. He seemed to be one of the watchmen, suddenly crushed by this same black torpor, and he watched, uncaring, as nimble shadows slipped into the camp, slitting the throats of the sleeping and waking alike. Some woke and managed to fight, but it wasn’t long before all five hundred were dead. The eyes he watched through dimmed, and he felt himself dragged along as if by a swift river, and screamed…

He came back to the sunlight gasping, watching the distant corpses swinging from their branches. His breeches were wet.

He looked up at the queen, and her smile broadened into a terrible thing.

“Now about your surrender,” she said.

Harriot summoned a dogged reserve of will. “Do you understand what you’ve done?” He gasped. “The full wrath of the Church will fall on you now. There will be holy war.”

“Let z’Irbina come,” she replied. “I have seen enough of their work. Let them come and receive the justice they deserve.”

Harriot steadied his breath and felt his fever fade. “That’s bold talk,” he said. “How is the Hansan fleet?” “Encamped along our coast, as you must know,” Anne replied.

“And you truly believe you can fight Hansa and the holy Church?”

Her gaze intensified, and he flinched. It took all he had in him not to cower.

“What do you think?” she asked softly.

I think you are mad, he silently opined, but he could not say it.

She nodded, as if she had heard him, anyway. “I’ve a mind to let you return to z’Irbina,” she said. “So you can tell them what was done and said here. And let me add this: From this moment, all servants of the Church in z’Irbina shall either renounce their allegiance to that corrupt institution or leave our borders within the nineday. Beyond that time, any churchman, regardless of rank, will be arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the empire. Is this clear enough for you to repeat, Sir Roger?”

“Very clear, Majesty,” he husked.

“Very well. Go. As you’ve pointed out, I’ve other things to attend to now.”

They let him keep his horse and arms. He went to the camp and found the bodies where they had fallen, most still in their blankets. The field was thick with ravens, and the clouds threatened rain. Roger sat there for a few moments as the earth seemed to tilt. He didn’t know if Anne really understood what would happen now; even he couldn’t imagine the full scope of the slaughter that was now inevitable. The five hundred who had died here weren’t even a start.

His footsteps rang on the red marble, drifted up into the great dark hollow of the Caillo Vaillaimo, and came back to him like whispers from death.

I am come, they seemed to say.

Death walked with him, but fear came creeping behind.

Be still, he told himself. Be still. You are Marché Hespero, praifec of Crotheny. You are the son of Ispure of the Curnaxii. You are worthy.

“The holiest of holies,” the man a step behind him and to his left breathed.

Hespero glanced at him and saw that his gaze was wandering around the arching buttresses, the thousands of niches with their gilded saints.

“That?” Hespero waved at the architecture. “Are you talking about the building, Brother Helm?” “The Caillo Vaillaimo,” Helm replied. “Our most perfect temple.”

Hespero felt his brow pinch in a frown. He heard Sir Eldon, on his right, sigh, but the other six men in his entourage remained silent.

“You’ve learned nothing,” he told Helm.

“Your grace?” the brother asked, his voice sounding chastised but puzzled.

“Hush now. Be silent as we approach his eminence.”

“Yes, your grace.”

Hespero waved him off. Brother Helm’s mistake was a common one. The building had been built to impress, and it did, but in the end the structure was only a symbol. The real holy of holies was underneath the red marble and ancient foundations. He could feel it as he never had before with each touch of his foot against the stone: aching, awful power that made his bones feel burnt and his flesh rotten. His mouth tasted of soot and decay.

But Helm couldn’t feel that, could he? Death wasn’t with Helm.

On down the sacristy hall they went, but before they reached the grand nave, their guide led them to a side passage and up a staircase into the prayer halls with their writing lecterns and smell of lead, then around a corner, past the lesser scriftorium. He realized with a chill that they were making their way to the private suites of the Fratrex Prismo, but not by the most direct route.

“There’s no one here,” Brother Helm whispered. He had noticed it, too. “The corridors are all empty.” “Quite,” Sir Eldon agreed.

Their escort didn’t glance back, but he surely had heard. Not that it mattered.

He’d been in this part of the Caillo only once, very long ago, when Niro Pihatur had been the Fratrex Prismo.

He thought he knew where they were going.

They came into a lozenge-shaped room, ostensibly a chapel to Lady Lasa; her winged and wreathed statue stood at the far end, smiling a knowing smile. At the moment, however, the place was filled not with worshippers but with Mamres monks. They were armed, and not with ceremonial weapons. At their head stood a figure in dark indigo robes and a black three-cornered hat that somewhat resembled a crown.

“Brother Mylton,” Hespero said, favoring the man with a short bow.

“I am a tribiceros now,” the cleric corrected.

“Yes, I see the hat,” Hespero said. “But you are still a brother, like all of us.”

Mylton smiled indulgently. His bulging eyes and narrow face had always made Hespero think of some sort of rodent. The hat didn’t really change the impression.

“You will submit to blindfolding, all of you,” Mylton said.

“Of course,” Hespero replied.

As the monks knotted darkness to his face, Hespero felt the floor beneath him thin even further, and his body shivered as if aching to tear itself into pieces.

Someone took him firmly by the arm.

“Step down,” a voice he did not know whispered.

He did, once, twice, thrice. In the end, he counted eighty-four steps, just as he had the last time. Then there was turning this way and that in air that tasted stale, until at last they stopped and the blindfolds were removed.

Perhaps they don’t plan to kill us, a small part of Hespero thought as his eyes adjusted to his new surroundings. Why bother keeping the way secret if we’re never coming out?

But another part of him knew that was stupid. It was ritual. Any intelligent, attentive person—and certainly any initiate of Decmanus, for instance—would be able to find his way back here, blindfolded or not. Only initiates and sacrifices made this journey to the place beneath, to the real Caillo Vaillaimo. He began picking out details in the guttering light of the torches that plenished two score wall sockets. The chamber was carved into the living stone the temple was built upon, its natural sandy hue made orange by the firelight. Rows of semicircular benches climbed before him, but all were empty save for three seats raised up at the back and the throne behind them. Two of the three were occupied by the other two tribiceri, and as Hespero watched, Mylton completed their number.

The Fratrex Prismo sat the throne, of course.

“Where are we?” Brother Helm asked.

“The Obfuscate Senaz of the Hierovasi,” Hespero replied.