The lost reliquary, p.5
The Lost Reliquary, page 5
This is the only other path open to me, the only Order I can choose myself: babysitter of the dead. Never to leave Cineris, save to collect the occasional corpse. Not a chance. I can’t imagine who would willingly put themselves in an even smaller cage. Already, the notion of being turned out into the Devoted Lands unsupervised has me itching with anticipation.
Nolan and I have been set at the front of the line of carts, an honor guard to represent our respective Cloisters. Beyond the carts is a contingent of Cathedral Guard, then a group of clerics—not of the Blood, but from the regular, lower orders, their hierarchy too convoluted to bother sorting out—praying like it’s going out of fashion. The common mourners will be allowed to follow behind them, to show their respect as we escort the dead to their final place of rest.
Somewhere in the Cathedral, a horn sounds—a low, mournful note that spreads like a fog.
That’s the signal.
We urge our horses forward. The pace we set is a slow one, respectful as we pass through the high gate of the Cathedral complex, into the streets of Lumeris. The city of light. Of the Flame. Nowhere else in the Devoted Lands does one find the beauty and artistry that makes up Lumeris. Poets have written entire tomes about the sweeping splendor of its streets, the sunset tones and gilded ornament of its buildings. I hate it. It is a predatory magnificence, a fat tick that feeds off an endless flow of tribute, drinks dry the pilgrims desperate to feel the warmth of divinity on their skin. I want to dig my heels into my horse, gallop out of the city and into the open landscape. But that’s not exactly proper funeral etiquette. So, I keep in line with Nolan, gaze straight ahead, the creak of the wheels behind us a haunting reminder of when I first arrived at the Cathedral.
I was carried on a cart too. Alive, but barely.
There’s not a soul in Lumeris who isn’t on the streets watching us. A lot of hard, melancholy faces. A lot of tears and prayers. And a lot of empty rooms in the guesthouses we pass. My hands tighten on the reins. Somewhere, more bodies are lined up, hundreds of them, beginning to blacken, bloat, and leak. They won’t be carefully washed and shrouded, or receive processions. They won’t have mourners lining the streets for them. I wonder if any of them would be happy that they died in service to the Goddess, even if that service was only keeping a dangerous secret.
Probably. And that likelihood singes my very core.
I used to think about running. About leaving Lumeris and the Cloisters as far behind as I could. I’d remember the world beyond them, as little as I knew of it, and think: They’d never find me. I could disappear in the middle of the night, hunt and steal my way beyond the Devoted Lands, build a new life somewhere the addictive, toxic light of Tempestra-Innara couldn’t touch.
I even tried it, once. A few years after I arrived at the Cloister, our training went thus: Enjoy a several-day ride in a cramped carriage, here’s a knife, now go into the mountain woods for a week and don’t die.
A perfect opportunity.
I felt the pull earlier than I realized. Really, within hours of leaving the land I knew behind, but it was so faint at first that I attributed it to nervousness, and later to the fact that I was trying to live on a diet of scavenged berries and bitter greens. But it grew, and I began to find myself looking backward, toward the way I’d come from. Toward the Cathedral. By the time the feeling reached an urgent sensation I simply couldn’t ignore, I understood: I’d been bound to Tempestra-Innara in more ways than one. The farther away I got from the Goddess’s light, the worse this feeling would grow. And that my blessing was more than a gift—it was a tether.
To this day, I wonder whether that test had less to do with survival than it did with the lesson I learned. Maybe I wasn’t the only Potentiate who quietly balked against the lot that had been cast for me. Or maybe it was simply a demonstration of what we’d all have to contend with eventually, when we left the bosom of Lumeris for the Orders.
I wasn’t foolish enough to ask. But it was about that time that my fantasies of deicide really began to flourish. Impossible, yes, but the last measure of satisfaction left to me. Because I finally understood that my only escape from the Goddess was that last, final escape whose procession I am now leading.
Thankfully, once we are beyond the city, we pick up the pace. A lightness takes me, still tinged with anxiety, but this is it—the beginning of outside. My divine shackles haven’t been struck away, but the chain holding them has been let out a bit. It is very nearly the sense of freedom.
But not. And I can’t let myself be fooled into thinking it is.
* * *
Cineris.
My first look at it is from a distance, sitting beneath a woolen ceiling of cloud that’s appropriately somber for the occassion. The journey from the Cathedral to the necropolis takes most of the day, hours that pass with nothing but prayers and wails and the growing desire to violently silence both. So, it’s a huge relief when I spot what appears to be a cluster of jagged black teeth punching up out of an unnervingly flat stretch of land.
The high, uneven walls of Cineris are obsidian dark, rough cut, and frankly unwelcoming. There is only one way in, a reinforced steel door that appears as if it would scoff at any battering ram in existence, even on its worst day. This is where the bodies of those blessed by Tempestra-Innara have been brought for centuries. It is a fortress of the dead—and a vault for the power still contained within them. Cineris doesn’t pay even a passing thought to Renderers, even if they were so foolish as to creep this close to the Goddess.
At a certain point, the Cathedral Guard stop the crowd behind us from advancing any closer. Nolan and I continue, along with the Cineri and their carts. Only the divinely blessed—dead or alive—are allowed within the walls of Cineris. Nolan and I have barely stopped when the door opens. Beyond it are more of the necropolis’s keepers, gloved hands folded in front of them. With a solemn gait, we move to either side of the entrance as, one by one, the wagons and their cargo enter. When that is complete, one figure steps forward.
“May the Flame warm you.” A masculine voice sounds from behind the mask. “Before you enter, you must prove your divinity.”
“The outfits aren’t enough?” I knew what to expect, but it comes out anyway, because I am cranky after the ride and tired of chaperoning corpses. I also know this is part of the plan, that the Cineri has been prompted to admit us. Later, two riders wearing our armor will exit and return to the Cathedral. As far as anyone knows, all remaining Cloister Potentiates will be home by tomorrow, safe and accounted for.
The masked figure twists their fingers anxiously, thrown by my response.
Nolan comes to his rescue. “Of course.” He holds up one hand and takes a breath. An instant later the flame appears—larger than any I’ve ever seen from a Potentiate, blazing nearly a foot off his palm.
“Impressive size,” I say, to exactly zero reaction. Only a sense of annoyed impatience as Nolan extinguishes the display and the Cineri turns to me. “Okay, okay. But stand back and shield your eyes.”
I hold out my hand and call. A rush of energy surges through me, every inch of my skin prickling with warmth as the light appears. What there is of it. It’s an unimpressive flicker at best, rippling over the skin of my palm. Calling the flame is one of the few areas where I never have to feign ineptitude, but lucky for me, size doesn’t matter when it comes to proving divinity.
The man moves aside. “Welcome, blood brethren.”
And with that, I enter Cineris in the last way I ever expected to: alive.
Eight
The fade is slow. But as it does for all things of bone and blood, it inevitably arrives. For flesh, though made divine, is still human. And divinity burns so brightly that to transition to a new vessel leaves the first spent. Reduced to ashes, to dust, to a memory of glory. An avatar is divine. But Tempestra, only, is eternal.
—THE WRITINGS OF HIGH CLERIC OF THE BLOOD PALDRA
BEYOND THE GATE OF Cineris is a large half-moon courtyard, avenues leading off it like spokes from a wheel, long, narrow corridors of black stone. Once we are closed in, it feels almost oppressively silent, a sensation like lying inside an open grave. I immediately hate it. I’m not supposed to be here. Not yet.
“We have been prepared for you.” Our host gestures to the avenue farthest to the right as we dismount. “Rooms are waiting with your supplies. You may leave your horses here; others will be furnished when you depart in the morning.”
I start to follow.
“Wait.” Nolan removes his demon helm. “The interments. Are they taking place now?”
The Cineri nods and points. Down one of the corridors, I spot the tail end of the cart train.
“I would like to pay my respects,” he says. I want to tell him the show is over, but Nolan sounds genuinely emotional. “If that is allowed.”
“Of course,” says the voice behind the mask. “When you are ready, take the path I indicated. It will lead you to the living quarters.”
Nolan begins walking without asking if I want to join him. As if I couldn’t now, without looking like a jerk. I remove my helm and toss it to the attendant, then rush to catch up. Nolan doesn’t slow. Quiet and rude, apparently.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to make sure Jeziah is really put to rest.” My words sound too loud here. “He always was a bit of a prankster.”
Nothing for the span of several more steps. Then: “I didn’t realize the Dawn Cloister had time for jokes amid their training.”
Sarcasm. Finally, a sign of humanity.
“We had time for both, I guess, if you count the time Jeziah poisoned my tea with an infusion we’d studied that week.” It’s not really funny—I was puking for two days straight—but I chuckle anyway. Nolan doesn’t. Apparently, the Dusk Cloister kept things tight. “I got back at him by ‘accidentally’ breaking both his wrists during a sparring match. After that, we called a truce, more or less. Pranks from then on were less… incapacitating.” Something tightens in my chest. “The Dusk Potentiates who died, were you… friends?” I’m not sure of the right word. Jeziah and I weren’t really friends. But we weren’t enemies either. Allies, maybe. Or familiar constants, who could fill each other’s time with things other than attempted murder.
Again, Nolan doesn’t respond right away. “Their names were Deena and Malachi. We were companions, in training and in study. That’s all.”
Of course not. No friends in the Cloisters. I take that measure of him and stick it away for future reference.
His step slows. “But both were smart, intensely devoted to our blood mother, and good soldiers. Their loss is a loss for all of us.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I fumble the second word, letting the silence return.
The thick walls of the corridor stretch high around us. Before we go far, inscriptions appear, set at regular intervals. I stop to examine one. Nolan is curious enough that he does the same.
Ephrainn, I read. Fulfilled their duty in the thirty-eighth year of the incarnation of Tempestra-Oren.
Crypts. We’re surrounded by them.
“There’s so many,” I breathe. Hundreds in this corridor alone. Is this what the Goddess meant when they said they shared their gifts more freely in the past? I’d imagined hundreds, maybe even thousands had fallen in service to the Goddess… but this? When they said Cineris is a city of the dead, they weren’t exaggerating.
“Yes,” Nolan says simply. “Our honored brethren.”
The corridor spills out into another spoked courtyard, smaller than the one by the gate. Here, the wagons have stopped. Two are already empty, and Nolan and I watch as the Cineri move with practiced efficiency, gingerly bearing a third body over to an open slot in the wall. After the journey with the tediously loud mourners, I expect some kind of prayer, but they work in utter silence, sliding the corpse into their final resting place before replacing the outer stone slab, sealing them up forever.
Nolan takes a deep breath and lets it out. “They didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“They fell in protection of our Goddess. There’s no higher honor.” A lie, each and every death a waste. I say it because it’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to say, though for the first time, Nolan looks at me as if he actually sees me. “But yeah, Jeziah and the others didn’t deserve it either.”
A faint sheen of reverence appears. “As you said, they did their duty. May the flame of their memory burn forever.”
With who? I swallow. We were only known to each other, and that barely. Still, as another body disappears into its niche, I wonder if it’s Jeziah. Whose abrasive laugh I’d never hear again. Who I’d never steal another bottle of wine with or stand lookout for while he slipped horse apples under Morgan’s pillow. What little we had, I wish we still did.
Though then he’d be standing here with Nolan, instead of me.
We watch quietly until the last of the bodies is interred. By then, the sun is getting low in the sky, its light washing the walls of Cineris in a warm, bloody red. When the Cineri finish, they lead the wagons away, leaving Nolan and me alone with the dead.
“They’ll need our armor,” I say. “We should go.”
Nolan shakes his head slightly. “One more thing.”
He doesn’t offer more, and I don’t ask, only follow when he leads back into the corridors. I’m about to ask him if he has a destination in mind when I see it: the Cathedral tower. Not the one we left behind, but a perfect copy, only smaller. And missing its flame. There’s no living divinity here. Beneath this diminutive reminder of Tempestra’s city lies ashes, all that remains of their previous avatars. Like with our fallen blood brethren, when Tempestra makes the transition from one flesh to another, the Cineri come for their remains and ferry them back to their final resting place. But unlike our blood brethren, no power lingers. No divinity remains to be protected by Cineris’s walls. Their interment is purely sentimental.
Nolan doesn’t say anything, only stares at the monument. Then, with a soft, slow movement, he goes to the tower and clears the handful of stray leaves that have gathered at its base.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay? Are you sure? Don’t you want to pick out a niche before we do? That wall over there looks like it has a good view.”
Not even a hint of a smile. “I don’t intend to end up here anytime soon.”
“Neither do I, but after what happened at the Cathedral—” I cut off the spill of words, not wanting to sound weak. Or scared. “Just saying we have our work cut out for us. Dead gods’ blood…” I don’t exactly broach the topic gently. “Don’t suppose that ever came up as a topic of conversation at the Dusk Cloister?”
He shakes his head. “We never studied such things.” A pause. “But you’re right. Seeing what it did to the Goddess… the damage that remained…”
I can tell he’s thinking of those blossoms of blood slowly spreading across the Goddess’s garment. Is that why he wanted to visit the ashes of past avatars?
“Do you think it’s bad enough that…” I trail off, not sure if I’m misreading this.
“I think,” he says, “that we have our task and should focus on it.”
As he begins to leave, I step in front of him. “Oh no, you can’t crack that particular nut halfway.”
He stares, studying me. But whatever he’s thinking, it’s locked away tighter than the corpses surrounding us.
“Yes,” he says finally, the word tight and curt. “I think Innara is dying.”
* * *
Avatars die. It’s what they do. What all humans do. It might take a heck of a lot longer when they are fused with a divinity, but even that doesn’t grant immortality. It’s anticipated. Planned for.
Unless something unexpected happens.
“You saw the blood,” he continues. It’s not a question.
“I noticed.” Maybe I’m not the only one who has been pondering the particulars of what we don’t know. “But they didn’t seem concerned.”
“And yet… Innara has been Tempestra’s avatar for over a century.” His words are cool, entirely analytic. “She was chosen after the battle against the Green God, after Enoch.”
“I sat through the same history lessons you did.”
“Do you actually remember them? If you exclude the avatars involved in the battles between the gods, where they were more likely to be ‘damaged,’ Innara is approaching the end of their average life cycle.”
Oh. “You think Tempestra-Innara is weaker than they usually are. And you think the heretics think that too.”
“Killing a god isn’t easy. If I were planning to try, I’d want to make sure there were as many factors in my favor as possible.”
I arrange a suitably concerned expression on my face and smile on the inside. If Tempestra-Innara was weak before, I have an even better chance now. Except…
The elation fades. The Goddess can take another avatar. But while they might be able to bond with anybody, they won’t. Most burn out quickly, which would leave Tempestra vulnerable again; only a suitable avatar connects with divinity in the right, harmonious way. How, why… not knowledge shared with the likes of us Potentiates. But the search normally takes time. Time, Nolan is clearly thinking, Innara may not have. And that I have to hope she does. Because there’s one thing I do know about the taking of a new avatar: The Goddess will go into seclusion right after, in order to fully cement the fresh bond. I have no idea for how long; when Enoch was traded for Innara, it was a matter of weeks. But Tempestra-Innara emerged into the world as the last of their divine siblings, triumphant, without a single known threat that might stand against them, even in a fragile new body.
If Innara were not the stronger, safer option still to weather a second attack, the Goddess would have immediately swapped avatars. But as soon as they find a better replacement, that will change. Which is bad for me. A new, fully minted avatar could easily surpass whatever power the reliquary blood imparts, closing what window of opportunity I had.
