Master of restless shado.., p.10
Master of Restless Shadows Book Two, page 10
part #2 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
The royal bishop appeared momentarily taken aback. He’d truly expected Fedeles to be cowed by the prospect of being exposed. Then he narrowed his angry gaze.
“You may be able to protest your innocence to me now, but you will not deceive the Hallowed Kings.” The royal bishop beckoned Fedeles to the altar. “Step forward to their reliquaries. The light of their souls will burn all deception from your cursed heart.”
Fedeles strode up the gilded steps. This close to the Hallowed Kings, their radiance was blinding. The nave of the chapel and all surrounding priests became a haze of blue shadows. The kings themselves towered over him like gauzy veils, or the wind-tossed clouds he’d watched with Ariz. Vaporous, pale forms shifting and turning in the constant grip of some invisible force.
As Fedeles ascended to the royal bishop’s side, several lower-ranking priests stationed themselves on the steps. Fedeles recognized the young pockmarked acolyte he’d seen earlier. The youth held a record book and ink bottle for the elderly priest who’d comforted him. The round old fellow dipped a quill pen and began jotting notes of the proceedings.
“Lay your hands against the reliquaries,” the royal bishop commanded.
Fedeles placed his right hand on Gachello’s tank and pressed his left palm to Leozar’s. To his surprise, Leozar seemed to wake at the contact. Like Gachello, he turned his hollow gaze upon Fedeles and then his diaphanous form sank, as if he were attempting to crouch down beside Fedeles. His turbulent features calmed. He looked so much like Sevanyo that it made Fedeles’s heart ache a little to remember that he’d died at only fifty years of age.
Have you come to set us free yet? Is it finally over?
Leozar’s voice sounded younger and far softer than Gachello’s. Faint strips of pale flesh drifted from his bones as the water rolled around his remains.
“If it were in my power, I would do all I could for each of you,” Fedeles said. “But I have been summoned before you to prove my innocence against gossip and lies.”
A hum passed through Fedeles’s fingers as Leozar and Gachello lifted their hand bones up against the glass to meet his own. Several of the priests standing in the nave made noises of surprise, and someone whispered a blessing. The pockmarked acolyte gaped, then leaned close to his elderly companion and whispered something in his ear. The old priest nodded.
“Shall I record that the Hallowed Kings recognize and welcome Lord Quemanor?” the old priest asked.
“No. The water turns without purpose and lifts the bones.” The royal bishop scowled at Gachello’s reliquary. “It proves nothing.”
Then he drew the heavy gold ring of his office from his right ring finger. A violet stone flashed from the clutches of the gold setting. Fedeles could almost hear the spell within it chime like a bell. If it had been one of the blessings up on Crown Hill, Fedeles would have named it Awaken and imagined it leaping about like an excited child startling grasshoppers and butterflies before it.
As the royal bishop touched the stone to the gilded lids of each of the three reliquaries, a surge of gold light shot down through the murky water. Bones and decayed flesh shook and slowly congealed into jumbled semblances of hunched corpses. Even as they twisted and shuddered, neither Gachello nor Leozar drew their hands back from Fedeles.
Towering overhead, the three spectral figures seemed to coalesce. Indistinct, soft forms became the singular features of individual figures. Gachello’s elongated, twisted body looked all the more ferocious and terrible. Leozar appeared racked with sorrow, and Yusto, with his missing eye and broken nose, gave the impression of a bare-fisted brawler waking after a rough night.
Many of the surrounding priests gasped. The pockmarked acolyte nearly dropped his record book. Fedeles realized that none of them had seen the Hallowed Kings’ souls before now. To the surrounding priests, the Hallowed Kings would have seemed to suddenly manifest above them. Even the royal bishop stared up at the Hallowed Kings with an expression of awe. Fedeles realized that it had likely been decades since even he had last seen their distorted spirits watching over them all.
Then he remembered Gachello’s words: No one sees us. No one hears us.
“My Hallowed ancestors. Grandfather Leozar.” The royal bishop bowed his head. “Great-Grandfather Yusto and Great-Great-Grandfather Gachello. I have called you to judge this man’s words against the secret deeds, the terrible sins, that are hidden in his heart.”
The royal bishop turned his attention back to Fedeles. His dark eyes seemed to gleam with anticipation.
“Now, Lord Quemanor. Confess the part you played in Faro Numes’s death.” The royal bishop leaned close enough that Fedeles caught the scent of sweat beneath the powerful incense that clung to his robes. “Utter one false word and my ancestors will burn your flesh to ash.”
Fedeles felt as much as saw the haze of blue light that rose up from the Hallowed Kings and enfolded him like a fog. The air tasted of damp, warm rot. Was it possible for a soul to molder and mildew, Fedeles wondered, or were these sensations reflections of how the Hallowed Kings felt, trapped in the mortal realm by their own decaying corpses?
“Can’t you answer, Lord Quemanor?” The royal bishop grinned.
“Your question hardly deserves a response,” Fedeles replied. Then, almost of their own volition, further words drifted from him. “Neither I nor anyone in my household played any role in Faro Numes’s murder. In truth, I respected the minister. We might not have agreed on all matters, but he understood that we shared a common goal. We both wanted to safeguard Cadeleon for our children. We wanted it to be a better place for them than it was for us growing up. On occasion he even informed me of where you had Captain Yago searching for Hylanya Radulf. He knew that harming her would have plunged Cadeleon into a war we would not win. The truth is that I will mourn his death.”
“Lies!” the royal bishop shouted.
Fedeles found the angry denial almost funny. What was the point of dispatching armed guards to bring him to the Shard of Heaven, then waking the Hallowed Kings and having him stand here in the light of their souls if the royal bishop refused to believe the testimony? It was a joke. Except, of course, that real people were being murdered and the Hallowed Kings themselves were losing their ability to protect the kingdom. Only Gachello seemed to even recall that he had a duty to do so.
Fedeles shook his head.
“There is no end of lies being told to you, Nugalo. But not by me. I have been ever honest about my anger toward you and my resentment of the way you treated Javier. I don’t pretend to be your friend and I don’t need to lie to you,” Fedeles replied. “If you mean to find this assassin, then you should look nearer your own circle. Do you truly imagine that Hierro Fueres is a trustworthy ally? The man means to rule over us all—”
“Your opinion of Lord Fueres is not in question.” The royal bishop cut him off, but much of the smug certainty had drained from his expression. “Did you have Faro Numes murdered? Are you responsible for Lord Wonena’s assassination? Confess what you’ve done.”
“As God and the Hallowed Kings are my witnesses, I’ve done nothing to either of them!” Fedeles bellowed it out so that even the clusters of priests at the doors could hear him. The old priest on the stairs lifted his pen and jotted his response in the record book.
“I want you to find and punish the man responsible for their deaths,” Fedeles went on, “because he knows the blame will be placed at my door. He means to destroy me and my family. So if you truly want to find this murderer, you would be wise to look among my enemies, Nugalo. Who among them possesses the cunning and cruelty to murder his own allies in hopes of ruining me and Oasia?”
“You have no proof to support your accusations against Hierro Fures,” the royal bishop replied, though Fedeles had not accused the man yet.
“And you have no proof to justify bringing me here to answer your questions. But here I am, telling you the truth, as you demanded. But you are too pigheaded. Too resentful to hear me! What is wrong with your petty mind that you can’t—” Further angry words caught in Fedeles’s throat as a foreign sense of compassion toward the royal bishop rolled over him.
For just an instant he saw Nugalo not as the condemning, intractable old man before him, but as a terrified child. He wept and stammered pleas as priests dragged him away from his brother and their playmates, stripped him of his royal raiment and locked him in an acolyte’s cell to be educated by his dour uncle. A wave of guilt followed the vision, and Fedeles realized that these images and feelings belonged to Leozar. As both the king and Nugalo’s grandfather, he could have intervened on the little boy’s behalf. Even in death—when he could no longer remember his purpose as a holy guardian—he still regretted that he had not interceded for his grandson.
His compassion tempered Fedeles’s outrage a little. He suddenly recognized that the royal bishop was a human being, not simply some icon of zealotry brought to life fully formed. The knowledge didn’t make Fedeles like Nugalo, but it did lend him a little understanding of the man’s aggrieved and resentful character.
“I’m neither your friend nor your ally, Nugalo,” Fedeles said. “But we both love Cadeleon. We both want this nation to flourish and prosper. I am not the threat that you have been led to believe me to be.”
“Are you not?” the royal bishop demanded. “Then why did you protect Hylanya Radulf after she began destroying the wards surrounding the Shard of Heaven?”
“Because she wasn’t the one destroying them,” Fedeles replied. “She was attempting to repair them up until your assassins poisoned her. Now we can only hope that she and her brother don’t turn against us and declare war.”
“I rightly condemned the countess for practicing witchcraft!” The royal bishop’s face flushed with anger, but then Fedeles saw a flicker of doubt in Nugalo’s expression. He lowered his voice as he went on. “I never sent an assassin against the countess. I’m not such a fool that I would invite open warfare against Labara. Not before we have purged our nation of the heathens and heretics who would betray us from within.”
“You mean our Haldiim citizens?” Fedeles scowled at him.
“They must be expelled or converted, of course,” the royal bishop replied with a shrug. Then his expression grew more agitated. He drummed his fingers over the violet stone set in his ring. “However, they are not the greatest threat to the piety of our nation. Haldiim and Irabiim make no pretense of understanding or belonging in the company of devout Cadeleonians. The real traitors are families like the Grunitos.” The royal bishop all but spat the name. “A woman leading the household! A Haldiim convert as the heir, another son a bent traitor who champions a foreign power. And a priest—a priest, he calls himself—like Timoteo who challenges me with every sermon he preaches, every blessing he dispenses, and every debate that he engages in. He invites my followers—my acolytes, priests and nuns to question me! He and his entire family are destroying everything my church and this nation stands for! They are a brood of monstrous, unnatural creatures that must be expelled before they can sully the nobility any further.”
Nugalo’s descent into wild-eyed ranting hardly reassured Fedeles. Though it did reveal an insight into the royal bishop’s paranoia that had eluded Fedeles. Previously, he’d imagined that it was Javier and his circle of Hellion friends whom the royal bishop feared. They were defiant and daring. They’d spited his plans in the past. But none of them could challenge Nugalo from within his own clergy. None of them were Timoteo Grunito, who seemed so gentle, so easygoing, but whose sermons could reach multitudes. From common folk to nobles, soldiers to clergy, Timoteo could engage and inspire them all.
“It’s not the fact that I protected Hylanya Radulf that makes you hate me,” Fedeles realized aloud. “It’s the fact that I took in Timoteo and gave him a chapel.”
“You dare to imply that the two are not related?” The royal bishop glowered at him as the faintest glint of Hierro’s magic flickered over his brow. “If you could have your way, you would have Timoteo unseat me and then invite that witch back into our land to destroy us all!”
“I have no such designs. You—”
The loud clang of sword blades ringing against shields interrupted them both. As a group Fedeles, the royal bishop and all of the surrounding priests turned. The golden chapel doors crashed open and Prince Sevanyo rode in on his white stallion. Silver haired and hollowed as he was, he still looked resplendent to Fedeles. He wore a sapphire-studded crown, and his blue-and-gold cloak billowed behind him. A party of pages and attendants wearing liveries adorned with the royal symbol of a white stallion raced in around him, scattering flowers in his wake. They were followed by a group of priests who shouldered the king’s gilded litter between them. Then the remnants of the royal guard surged through the doors. The armed young men pounded their swords against the ceremonial shields they carried.
“What is the meaning of—” Nugalo shouted out, but Sevanyo cut him off.
“Have you no shame?” Sevanyo bellowed, and the fury in his voice drowned out all the sound around them. “An assassin in the grip of some thrall attacked Papa. He’s dying! Dying! And you choose this moment to abduct my dearest relation and interrogate him?”
The anger and color drained from Nugalo’s face.
“Papa?” he whispered, then he bounded from Fedeles’s side to pelt down the altar steps. The moment he drew his ring of office away from the reliquaries, the Hallowed Kings receded back into wisps. The dank taste left Fedeles’s mouth, though his skin still felt clammy.
Priests scattered out of the royal bishop’s way as he raced through the church to the king’s litter. “Let me see him! I must see him!”
Behind the guards, Fedeles noticed nobles pouring into the chapel. He recognized Oasia and Timoteo among them. Then, unexpectedly, he noted that Atreau’s eldest brother, Lliro, stood with them as well.
The stocky priests shouldering the king’s litter knelt and Nugalo all but tore the gilded door open. He stared into the dark interior and his entire countenance seemed to collapse. Such raw sorrow showed on his angular face that Fedeles half expected him to burst into tears. But the royal bishop regained control of himself. He drew a ring from his left hand. The jade setting held a grasping, sticky little spell.
Seize, Fedeles would have called it.
Nugalo began to chant to it in a low voice and the surrounding priests joined him, invoking the dying king’s soul to remain with them. Nugalo climbed inside the litter and two physician-priests carrying surgical knives followed him.
Atop his stallion, Sevanyo closed his eyes and clenched his hands in prayer.
Battered King Yusto took in the scene, but without the royal bishop’s ring rousing him, his expression fell slack and even his spirit faded, becoming a stream of pale filaments in a haze of blue light.
Leozar too diminished and lost the edges that had defined his presence, but despite how faded he appeared, the king clung to some awareness. He stared intently at the royal litter.
My son. That is my son. Leozar’s voice drifted over Fedeles, but no one else appeared to hear him. Yes, bring him to me. Let me see him again. My little boy.
No! Gachello growled.
From the way the pockmarked acolyte stiffened, Fedeles realized that he too still sensed the Hallowed Kings’ presences. But the two of them seemed to be the only ones. Or perhaps Oasia betrayed just the slightest flicker of her lashes. She, like the acolyte, appeared to be doing all she could to feign ignorance.
He must not take my place! I am the only one who remembers. Without me to remind them, they will fail their purpose. Gachello threw his spectral arms wide, lashing them across priests, guards and attendants alike. But it did him no good. His protest might as well have been rays of sunlight filtering through the high windows.
Then he spun and sank down over Fedeles. Release his soul to paradise before they can capture it. Fedeles, you must do this!
The pockmarked acolyte stole a quick glance back at them and then immediately returned to staring down at the floor. Fedeles didn’t blame the youth. But for all their sakes, Fedeles knew he couldn’t ignore Gachello.
“How?” Fedeles whispered.
Break the spell, crack the stone.
Fedeles took a moment to consider how he could manage such a thing without being run through by guards and priests as he attempted to wrest one of the royal bishop’s sacred rings from his hand. Even Sevanyo might think him mad if he did such a thing. The pockmarked young acolyte beside him could testify that he too had heard Gachello’s command, but only if the royal bishop allowed him to do so.
So Fedeles had to use his shadow to take action. He knew that, and yet he hesitated. He possessed very little control of the power that snarled and rippled through his shadow. What mastery he had achieved largely came down to suppressing and restraining it. But reaching out and grasping a single stone set in a ring on the royal bishop’s finger would require both subtlety and precision.
If he made a mess of the attempt—Fedeles stopped himself from considering everything that could go wrong. Instead he remembered something Timoteo had spoken of. A man should hold himself as responsible for the outcome of his inaction as for his actions. Fedeles’s own inaction now would render the Hallowed Kings useless and set free the monstrosity they confined.
Fedeles lowered his gaze to his deceptively still shadow. Through it he felt the cold surface of gilded stone at his feet. He willed it to stretch forward, to where the king’s litter stood. Slowly, the gray shade slithered past the feet of gathered priests and around pools of sunlight. Never before had he moved his shadow so far without an outside influence, but now under his own control his shadow reached the nave winding between two statues of decapitated boars. Then a sharp resistance jerked at Fedeles’s chest, as if the attempt to push his shadow farther would wrench his heart from his body.
