Hallowed Ground

  Miertaz was hidden only from himself in the shadows, seen by everything else. No comfort in the dark. No peace behind the walls. But they had decided to take refuge in the decrepit townhouse anyway. Half its roof was caved in. The rest was propped up by a rotten beam wedged into the ground at one end, the other end still seated in its place above the doorway. The room was lit by the blue light of Dasha Dumont, the arcanist, Miertaz had saved. They hadn’t talked about taking refuge in the house. It had just happened. So now, they caught their breath as the rain fell outside.

  Dasha pulled a purse from her belt, began fumbling with the clasp.

  “I don’t take payment,” Miertaz said, dryly. “The Order of Saint Leorian accept only charity.”

  “Lucky me,” Dasha said. She pulled a small stoppered bottle from the purse and poured a single crimson pill onto her palm, then popped it into her mouth. The arcanist’s face soured for a moment.

  “What was that?” Miertaz asked.

  “A balancing agent. A stimulant.” When the arcanist turned back to the priest, her pupils had grown, eyes tremoring rapidly. “I work the Scale of Order, a little bit of the Scale of Light, though not as much as yourself. Using it makes the mind focused at first, keeps it calm, but eventually it will slow down. If you’re not careful, your heart stops, or if you’re powerful enough, you turn to stone.”

  The priest nodded. “You could become a scourge or a folly even, though perhaps rarely with the Scale of Order. How have you fared in this war?”

  “We are required to give Larker five days of service every month, and even that is pushing our ability to recover,” Dasha said.

  “How did you get involved?” Miertaz asked. “By your accent, I take it you’re not from Baidon.”

  “I was a pupil at the University of Jalkabad,” she said. “Unfortunately, scholarship is an expensive pursuit for a commoner. I took on a patron to settle my debts in return for my service and soon enough found myself being loaned out to Larker to fight his war. Not everyone is lucky enough to receive charity from the Church.”

  “Charity,” Miertaz said it bitterly.

  He remembered the cart as it pulled away from Haldwane, remembered Father’s sunken face, his crippled brother clinging to the hem of Mother’s dress, the fields of withered crops that passed it by. Charity. The Order of Leorian only took strong children and he’d been one of the only boys with enough meat on his bones. Then he remembered the bitter nights in the chapel. Shivering children huddled together on Martyrs Hill during the storm. They had chanted the Oaths to keep them warm. Some had never returned. It wasn’t charity that was at the core of the Oaths, but sacrifice and death.

  Dasha shook the bottle in front of Miertaz’s face, bringing him back to the present. “You can have one priest, if you like. It’ll give you vigour.”

  “No need,” Miertaz said.

  She snorted. “And what do the priests of Leorian do to make sure their wielding of the Balance doesn’t wreck their bodies?”

  “Prayer,” Miertaz said guardedly. He would divulge the secrets of the Deep Chapel and its secluded cells to the arcanist.

  “Well then, you should find somewhere to pray,” she said. “Then we’d better get moving.”

  There was a saint carved in stone standing before the cathedral gates. Rain dripped down its face like tears. One arm was held aloft, sword in hand, the other hugged a tome close to the chest. The saint’s face was weathered, but Miertaz recognised the gaunt, bald head from a stained-glass window he’d seen in the seminary. Saint Bernold. The man’s scowl had loomed just over Sister Ilas’s own frown from the window of her study. Recite your Oaths, Miertaz. No mumbling.

  Dasha strode past the statue, turned on her heel. “Are we going in, priest?”

  The arcanist couldn’t feel it. Beyond Saint Bernold and the fallen gates he watched over lurked the heart of the darkness. It pulsed, rippled across the ground, seethed through stone and tower. The Cathedral of Vannarbar was little more than a tombstone, marking where the Light had once resided. All she would feel was the cold, and it was bloody cold.

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  Miertaz nodded. “We’ll go in, but I wouldn’t be so eager if I were you.”

  “Eager?” She said. “If it weren’t a necessity, I wouldn’t take another step. If it weren’t for necessity, I wouldn’t even be on this shitty battlefield.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  They entered the courtyard, each step ringing against the flagstones. The clouds had parted, and the moon was out. It was full, but its light seemed to detest the cathedral, the whole thing cast in black against the white moon above.

  He sensed Dasha tense as they approached. She was biting her lip, and a little light crackled between her fingers before they clenched up. It made Miertaz realise how tight he was gripping his sword, his hand almost aching from the strain.

  Miertaz placed his hand against the riveted door, pushed. It creaked open. The hall inside was consumed in blackness, except for the tall windows, which stood like white pillars holding up an unseen ceiling. Miertaz tried to summon some of his light, began chanting the Oaths under his breath. But nothing came. His strength was spent, and even the Oaths barely even warded him against the cold. He’d have nothing but steel to fight whatever came next. But sacrifice was at the core of the Oaths.

  Dasha put a hand on his shoulder, “Let me.” She cast a blue light across the room that settled around them like a thin mist.

  Fraying tapestries of dead saints glared down at them as they walked between the broken pews. Dry pages of scattered hymnals crackled underfoot. Miertaz wondered how the paper had survived the centuries of rot and damp until his finger brushed a candelabra. It scraped off a thin line of frost. The room had been preserved in ice that had apparently defied any change in season.

  “Do you know what we’re looking for, priest?” Dasha’s breath puffed out like smoke as she spoke. Her hands were tucked away beneath her robes. “It’s a bloody big cathedral.” Her light barely illuminated the far wall.

  Miertaz closed his eyes and tried to pinpoint the source of darkness. It was too close, smothering. The heartbeat came from everywhere. The hammering of the power across the cathedral was immense, causing the whole structure to vibrate with a sound only he could hear. He could remember the feeling of power as he’d held the black blade. The ravishing energy, the … The Oaths, Miertaz thought, and began to recite them in his mind.

  “Power like this doesn’t stay hidden long,” he said aloud. “We’ll find it soon enough.”

  They found the first body in an icy puddle that Miertaz realised was blood, not water. It was slumped against the remnants of a pew that looked like it had been torn apart by a bear. Miertaz bent down, inspected the clothing, the pendant around its neck. A deacon, perhaps. There was a small knife of sun scorched glass gripped in its perfectly preserved, dead hands. The first hallowed weapon a graduate of the seminary was given. Hadn’t done it much good. The next, Dasha found, her foot knocking against the frostbit chainmail. A battle priest, lying face down. The back of its helmet was split apart, with the severed metal plating twisted into the crack in its skull.

  Dasha let out a gasp, not for the deacon or the priest, but for the rest of them. Miertaz stared numbly forward as the blue light caught them. Close to two dozen in all. A mixture of warriors armed and armoured, and the clergy, with whatever weapon or holy symbol they had at hand. A bloody massacre. They were scattered across the floor in frost-covered piles where the debris of broken wood and stone were barely distinguishable from severed limbs and torn bodies.

  They continue forward, step by step, tense and ready, over corpses and rubble. The massacre grew denser as they approached the altar. The bodies looked like they’d been hewn down in a charge. There was one body in the centre of it all. An armoured man, a knight of the order. He was slumped against the altar, a spear sticking in his side, coming from the hands of a nearby priest without a head. They had been fighting against one of their own.

  The heart beat thundered now. It hammered in the priest’s ears again and again.

  Miertaz pushed through the frozen crowd and leaned down to inspect the knight. He saw the sword in his hands. The black hilt. The perfectly polished blade. Thud, thud. Thud, thud.

  “Careful, priest,” Dasha breathed.

  It was a fine thing this sword. The years had not tarnished it, nor battle dulled its edge. Its hilt was simple, yet the closer the priest got revealed the intricate carvings of a master craftsman. It would have belonged to the King, had there been a living king in Baidon. The priest chuckled bitterly at that, but the Order of Leorian did not want to be involved in the fight for succession.

  Miertaz picked up the blade, gently sliding it out of the dead knight’s hands. I feel no fear. Thud, thud. I tell no lie. Thud, thud. I harbour no evil thing. Thud, thud.

  He saw a reflection in the mirror polish of the blade. It was his, and yet it should not have been. His head was covered in a midnight helm, and the arm that held the blade was wreathed in an armour of shadows. The eyes that stared back at him were pale as ice.

  “Miertaz!” Dasha put her hand on his shoulder, and he saw her in the reflection of the blade.

  Blood drooled from a gash in her chest, burbled from her mouth and spilt across her pale as snow skin, before disappearing into the red of her tabard. Miertaz dropped the blade. He turned, grabbed her before she fell.

  But there was no blood. No gaping wound. No dead arcanist.

  Dasha twisted away, pushed herself out of Miertaz’s hands.

  “There’s a shadow,” she hissed.

  The form twisted in from the doorway, black as void. It raised an arm, and dark spears shot forth like hounds from hell.