I stood in a vast and empty space. A cavern. A gulf. A cathedral. Once it had lived and breathed the Holy Writ, animated by the fire of light through stained glass. Now all that remained of its architecture was a span of broken cobblestone and the base of a fractured pulpit.
At my feet, an angel. The visage of an angel. The sculpture of an angel. What was the visage of an angel if not the very idea of divine origin? What then was a broken angel, Her wings torn away, Her threefold visage marked in three emotions? Fury. Sorrow.
“See what I was,” the face of fury said, and it was a curse.
“See what I was,” the face of sorrow mourned, and it was a whisper.
But She looked upon me with another visage still, third and foremost, proud and fearful, and it was a smile even among the ruins. I let Her wild, heedless confidence fill me, breathed it in like a drowning woman’s final gasp.
I was made for this.
Sir Duncan’s vanguard advanced.
Two lines of men with shields and mail, bearing swords, axes, maces, hammers. The larger part of his force. Two lines remained with the Templar himself, crossbows upraised. Blunt and primitive implements of death, the crossbows still turned upon familiar forces. Motive and augur, friction and force. The thoughts turned sidelong and crystalline in my head, hard to grasp, and they burnt my hands.
Church soldiers fired their crossbows. Trigger loosed cable, and the spiral-fletched quarrels spun as they came. There were eighteen.
Grannine stood before me, the better to stare down the line of soldiers. I was not sure whether I saw the shape of a woman or of what She was, and She felt forbidden. A sacred mystery. Her eyes blazed, and Her halo burned in dawnfire splendor.
A crossbowman had none of the lightness or precision of a trained archer; all the power of their weapon was a necessity to propel a missile which weighed nearly twice as much as any arrow. Against enemies wearing mail or even a coat of plate, a quarrel would bull its way through where even a bodkin arrow might be turned, and even a steel shield might not fully arrest their flight. With such weight and power behind the missile, these advancing crossbowmen aimed high to grant their bolts the longest possible arc.
I understood this in fractions of a moment, between one forced heartbeat and the next. I saw Avinna, tall and terrible, playing upon the air as a harpist with Ksogra caged within Her ribs. She did—something, and the fire we had stolen was transposed upward.
I saw through Her a vast universe of song. The air, the shrouded sun, steel and stone, all joined in harmony, in this choir which for an instant I heard in all its splendor. The chords of their music entwined and intermingled as delicately as the staff of some titanic choral composition, far-flung and interleaving like the ribs of a cathedral. I raised my hands as though to grasp these threads, as if I might in so doing capture this instant, the vision I beheld.
Music.
A single keen, dreadful note scaled down from on high, Her voice lungless and defiant. Red light bloomed from my palms, from my fingertips. Fire sang in looping and far-flung threads from each of my fingers and burst into the air like the lashing tongue of a whip.
Each winging bolt inscribed within the length of twenty-four paces a flawless downward arc, pursuing the sweep of Avinna’s melody like a coursing hound. They gathered speed as they went, and so perfect was the trajectory of each bolt that the hum of their passage was harmonious. In six sets of exquisite thirds the hail of missiles sang out of the fog, a cantata that concluded in the inelegant crack of rivet and bone.
Each dart scattered back the way they had come, into the massed and advancing formation of Sir Duncan’s soldiers.
Her design had been composed without mercy. The otherworldly elegance of Her retort failed as it met the messy fumbling of reality—not every bolt struck its mark entering that thicket of advancing soldiers. Eighteen bolts were sent aloft. Twelve found their homes unerringly, piercing ankle, knee, or thigh, and four kept enough force to carry on to the man behind. The remainder missed, or struck poorly and did not bite, lancing through and away into the wilderness. Trails of fire followed each bolt, fading into green and violet afterimages that reappeared only when I blinked.
It cost Us dearly. My vision wavered. My fists were clenched so tightly that the knuckles ached. My arms shook. The taste of copper was thick in my mouth. I became aware in a distant and half-witted fashion that my hands had fallen to my sides, that Eris was holding me by the shoulders, and a moment later, aware that if it were not for her, I would have fallen swift and slack to the ground.
I had sung with the others. In the Abbey of Saint Isaac, we had held a choir, and each of us in our choral role had given voice to divinity each morning and night. It was not simply happiness, not simply fulfilment—to sing in the choir with my Sisters, to feel, to know God sang through me, to give myself over to something greater, it was intoxicating. All-consuming. The ecstasy of Holy fervor was stronger than wine or wormwood both, and it left me witless.
Grannine beat my heart again. There was power in Her still, though much-lessened. I blinked, dumbly. On my third blink, I could hear again. On the sixth, I understood what was being said. Over the panic of his men, Sir Duncan raised his voice.
“Halt!”
I sought him among the crowd. I found a dead man—and behind him, Sir Duncan. Grannine had sent four bolts to seek his heart, and all four had found their home before finding their mark. “Form ranks!”
He looked harried. Surprised. But not fearful. Still there was no panic in his voice. I felt Grannine’s mind beneath mine, Our fury rising hot, no longer bearing the illusion of speech. She thought, and I understood. I felt a stab of swiftly-fading fear that I might lose myself to Her, sinking beneath the molten surface of Her seductive divinity, consumed within Her, but none of it showed in my voice.
“Fall back to the water,” I said, and lifted an arm to weakly grasp at Dermot, holding him back. I tried not to think of how I could hear Her voice in mine. “Back! Fall back!”
“You heard her,” Eris snapped. Her voice was as near as Grannine’s. “Move!”
Dermot hissed a curse, and his hand locked around my arm.
We’re in no position for a sortie. Half our forces are already in the water. I stumbled and nearly fell as Dermot and Eris pulled me back. Belated, cheeks burning, I found my footing, lifted my head. Surely enough, Rina and a handful of druids had already made the islet and were hauling others up from the freezing water. Our rearguard was falling back, but Dermot and Aidan had held position, and behind them Astrid and Miles, staggering our forces over the ever-shrinking distance.
Sir Duncan and his men watched us retreat. Over my shoulder, I tried to divine his thoughts from the implacable smile on his face—there was certainly a hint of impatience in the cant of his brow—but he merely stood in place, his white-burning sword in hand.
“Leave the wounded,” he said sharply, and his voice carried over the field. “Fear no witchcraft. Sergeant, lead your men in blessed be.”
“Blessed be the peacekeepers,” one of Sir Duncan’s soldiers began. “Blessed be-”
Our people were in the water now. Anne and Tyler Pace bore their daughter across through the cold, wading past their knees, and Anne handed little Aidan off to Charity Lee on the shore before returning to help another girl across. Arran Scour forded the shallow channel with his grandson clinging to one arm, and Layla Fuller had one child holding to either hand as she braved the crossing. There was little space on the spit of land. Little cover. But it was enough. It was enough to cling to just an hour more of life, or a day.
We’ll flee. We’ll fly until we find the edge of the world. Is this the edge of the world? The firmament did not feel secure beneath us.
It was a small comfort that Sir Duncan and his forty-six were now thirty-two. Wounded men were scattered through the snow in their wake. He left them to bleed, led his men in a stately advance, permitted us to retreat, this time holding their distance. It galled, but we had no choice but to accept this false mercy.
I lifted the Teague firearm. Shot and powder had spilled out when I had plucked it from the snow, but still he stopped in his tracks, far enough away that I had to strain to hear him speak.
“Sergeant Black,” he said coolly. “If the warlock or one of her heathens shoots me, charge them.”
“Aye sir.” The red-clad man’s assent was without hesitation.
Far more than half our number were already on the islet. Most of our fighting force now remained on the shore, unwilling to depart. I shoved Eris ahead of me. I did not remember covering the distance; time was slipping away. That sense of loss only deepened my fear and fury. Scant moments, minutes, hours of life remained, and they were escaping between our fingers. The last time I laid my hand upon Eris, and it might be a breathless rush to escape. How could I communicate all that needed to be said in the brief time that was left to me?
I put my foot in the water.
Dermot had said once that Raven Lake was cold enough to kill. I had thought that to be an amusing but pointless clarification; all water was cold enough to kill in the winter. I no longer disbelieved him.
My foot was numb as it was, cold from the meltwater in my boots. But even numb and roadsore, I felt an instant and immediate sense of freezing, a shock of frigidity that seemed to rouse the limb even as it killed it. A jolt ran through my body, and I twitched my limbs around myself instinctively, nearly losing the twisted paper in my hand.
“Fucking hell,” Eris hissed, as her boots took on water in turn.
I wavered on the water’s edge, and felt my gaze drawn back to Sir Duncan. His men had recovered crossbows from the dead and dying, but absent his order, none of them were loaded. Here was a man willing to give his life to end mine. To die, and to leave others to die, in the snow and the cold far from any civilization that any of us had known. What a bewildering hate! My head reeled to confront it.
I’m not well. I’ve…let too much pass through me.
“This goes no further.” Sir Duncan called. He sounded almost reluctant, slow to comment. Wounded, perhaps? There was no mark on him that I could see. I heard the deliberation beyond each word, carefully chosen, perfectly enunciated. “Your blight ends here.”
Insight came like the shock of a knife. He was not hurt, nor was his reluctance to speak the effect of some soporific.
He was mournful.
“I am sorry,” he said, to me, in a voice that carried over Raven Lake. Brilliant light spilling from his sword turned the snow to fire. “You might have been forgiven. What your sins were, I do not know. You might have been brought again to the fold. But from the moment you became a vessel for that thing, you were lost, and the doors of Elysium are forever shut to you.”
He touched his hand to his heart.
“I am sorry,” he said, again. “But we must think of the others.”
He lifted his eyes to the islet behind Us, and spoke out.
“Fugitives of Caer Lunan,” he said, and he was the last man of the Church to ever address us so kindly. “For this woman, it is too late. For the heathen druids, I care not, for Elysium is not theirs, and they would spurn it if they could. But you, you children of God, you yet could be saved.”
He held out his empty hand.
“Lay down your weapons,” Sir Duncan said. “Lay down your weapons and come to us. Be made pure in the waters of this lake, and we will give you peace. Reject this woman and her teachings, and God’s grace is yours; you will find Elysium, and be made whole in God’s love. The sanctuary beyond fear awaits. Salvation could still be yours.”
My heart had fallen in my chest. The blood swam in my ears in time to the merciless beat of Her pulse.
And I lost all hope at last.
Elysium.
I felt pallid. Half-real, wraithlike, closer to Death than to life. In this otherworldly fugue, I looked back to our islet of the damned and found it full of lost, wan, wandering souls like myself, and I knew I could no longer fight for them.
Here at Death’s jaws, Elysium was no longer a matter of theology. It was a reality to be faced, or an absence to be mourned, but not only for myself. For the people of Caer Lunan.
I fell to my knees in the snow. A rush of sensation overcame me. I was cold, cold to my very bones, freezing. My fingers and toes were numb. I had not noted the absence of the bitter, all-permeating chill of winter…but I noticed its return. My gasp burnt ragged in a scarred throat, and I suddenly felt aches and bruises that seemed bone-deep. Old wounds came back with each new breath.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
So many dead.
Asher. A good man. A kind man. He’d died quickly and before my eyes, and on his lips, an apology.
Sister Bridge. Never had I heard Hope Bridge utter an unkind word, though she’d more than once withheld kind words when such were unmerited. Sedec had tended to her gently when she had hurt her arm, had put forth skill far beyond what was needed. Druidcraft had healed her arm, but it had been a fever that had carried her away. I felt each loss stab through me anew, raw and keen as the winter wind, piling up upon my soul until I felt I might break.
Who am I to deny them that reunion?
And even if there was…nothing. For them as for me. Even then, the difference between a death of terror…and a death of peace.
But it was not only Sir Duncan’s words that took hope from me. That killed hope for me.
It was the motion behind him, in the Forest beyond. Indistinct shapes, silhouettes moving fearless in the mist. Not the shapes of beasts, nor monsters of old. Men.
Fifteen. Twenty. More. More than enough to make the remainder of the hundred Sir Duncan had hunted us with.
What more could I have said? Here we stood at the edge of the world, having fled so close to safety and fallen so far from grace. All I could do was stand in the cold and the wet and look at Eris a little longer, and wish, pray, so fiercely, that things could be different. That the facts of the world were otherwise. What unforgivable tyranny. What bitter and merciless truth.
I reached for her. For Eris, and for Grannine. My hand twined with Theirs.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We tried.”
A voice spoke out in the silence, in the bitterest cold, as I stood there in the water of Raven Lake with my feet going numb. Astrid Fuller, her voice shrill and shaking, as she clasped Layla and her son close. The words she said shocked me even in my despair, in this last moment.
“Sir Templar,” Astrid Fuller said, and cleared her throat to quell a sob. “Fuck your salvation.”
*
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