Heaven's Needle (23 page)

“‘Vordash of Knight's Lake,'” Evenna read. She looked up, doubtful. “A mercenary. The occupant of this cell, I believe.”

“
Maelgloth,
” Falcien said. “He was one of the Malformed. Not
ansurak.
”

“What's the difference?” Asharre asked.

The olive-skinned Illuminer pointed to the drawing's jumbled limbs and drooling mouths. “Power and intent.
Maelgloth
are warped by the power of Maol coursing through their flesh, but they do not have the strength of
ansurak.
The transformation is just the last stage in their corruption; there is only enough magic in them to break their minds and turn their bodies into a misery, and they die soon afterward. This creature was not meant to live long. He was
maelgloth.
”

Evenna squinted at the pages next to the grotesque drawing, rummaging through them until she came to some that were more text than pictures. “This Vordash came to the temple in early winter, complaining of inflamed scratches on his hands. Something he'd been working on for his employer … a visiting scholar? I can't quite make this part out. Later he was tormented by bad dreams. The solaros, treating him, worried that the dreams might be … contagious? Not sure about that bit either. He advised Vordash not to return to his company and to remain here for observation. Over time, the man's demeanor changed. He became violent, delusional. The solaros had him confined for his own safety while he sought a cure. The physical changes began while Vordash was confined. It's possible that the other killers in Carden Vale might have become something like this, if they hadn't been executed, but Vordash was the first to live that long.”

Asharre wondered how the solaros had faced that horror.
He'd been an old man, ready for retirement. A country priest lived a quiet life, dealing with farmers' mishaps and colicky babies. He might have seen the occasional broken arm or knifing among merchants' guards, but real magic, real
danger,
was something for tavern stories.

Until it wasn't.

How would he have dealt with it? How
could
he? A solaros in this backwater village, lacking Celestia's Blessing or any real knowledge of magic, would have been helpless before such a threat.

It seemed that he had tried, though. She admired the courage in that, even as she wondered why he had not gathered his people and fled. “What happened then?”

“The solaros built this cell.” Evenna folded the papers and tucked them away. “He believed he could cure it, or treat it. In the end, however, he failed. Vordash died and was sent to the pyre. By then the priest was overwhelmed, so he sought a stronger cure.”

“What?”

“He never says outright. ‘A sword like a sliver of the blue dawn. A blade sharp enough to cut darkness from the soul.' He thought he could find it in Shadefell. That's all he wrote.”

“Aurandane,” Falcien breathed. Awe shone on his face. “Of course.”

“Aurandane?” Asharre asked.

The Illuminer touched his sun medallion reverently. “The Sword of the Dawn. It was one of eight Sun Swords forged for the Godslayer's War, and among the strongest. It was lost when the Sun Knights razed Shadefell.”

“I know that story,” Heradion said. “Sir Galenar, who had the Sword of the Dawn, chased shadows away from his companions. Well,
they
thought he chased shadows.
He
swore there were monsters, and ran off to kill them while the other knights fought the Rosewayns and their servants. After the battle, they found him wandering around the servants' quarters, dazed but unhurt. Aurandane was nowhere to be found. He couldn't remember how he'd lost it—he couldn't remember much of anything, other than a voice singing to him—and the others couldn't find it. He died of fever outside Knight's Lake, a year to the day after his misadventure in Shadefell. Some say he died of embarrassment, really.

“I suppose the sword might still be in Shadefell,” he added doubtfully. “I always assumed some scavenger dug it out and sold it ages ago, though. People are always trying to sell false relics on the streets of Cailan; why couldn't one of them have something real? The story's too well known, and the prize far too valuable, for it to have sat neglected all these years.”

“This Aurandane could have turned
maelgloth
back to men?” Asharre asked.

“Perhaps,” Falcien said, regarding the drawings doubtfully. “More likely it would kill them … but who can say where the Bright Lady's power ends? If it were truly to be found in Shadefell, it would have offered more hope than he had here.”

Asharre took her candle and examined the cell more closely. How many days and nights had the solaros sat at that table, watching his monstrous charge and recording his hopes of a cure?
Could
such a thing be cured?

The cell held nothing to allay her doubts. What she had taken for saw marks in the brass bars were scrapes left by the gnawing of teeth harder and sharper than metal. The gray smudges on the wooden planks were not ash, as she'd thought, but the flaking residue of something that might
have been the slime trails shown in the solaros' sketches. There seemed to be half-formed patterns in the peeling curls. Drawn, or accidental? She couldn't make out their meaning …

Asharre straightened, her teeth gritted. “The priest thought he could cure this?”

Evenna hesitated. “He had hopes.”

“Hopes?” Heradion echoed. “Doesn't sound terribly optimistic to me.”

“Before resorting to the ‘blue-dawn' sword—Aurandane, I suppose—he wrote about trying to treat it with herbs. There is no herb I've seen or studied that could cure something like this. Nor does it seem he was successful, since he eventually gave up and chased Shadefell's legends instead.” The slender woman shrugged. “But I'll admit to being curious about what he tried. We're here, so I suppose we might as well see what the drying room holds.”

“Not the garden?” Asharre asked.

“No,” Evenna said. “You saw what was growing on the mountainside. Whatever the plants in his garden were, they must have become beggar's hand by now. The drying room is more likely to be helpful.”

Asharre glanced through the darkened glass as they walked back to the end of the hall. Clouds swathed the moon, letting only a hazy glow slip through, but it was enough to illumine the shape of the temple garden. Under the withered carpet of last year's herbs, the earth was roiled and hunched, its orderly rows heaved sideways and upward in frozen convulsions. Though nothing moved in the garden, Asharre could sense its suffering as clearly as if the earth had screamed aloud.

“This place
is
desecrated,” she muttered, turning away.

“You sense it now?” Falcien nodded. “Yes. It feels …
stronger … here. The center of the taint is nearby. I think it is the cell where Vordash was held. Places can take on a residue of corruption from their inhabitants.”

Asharre didn't think the corruption came from the cell. Her sense of it came from the garden, flowering over the dead earth like some rank black weed. But the Celestians had studied these things, and she had not, and it hardly mattered anyway. Whatever the source of the chapel's corruption, it didn't change their purpose in this place.

Falcien pulled on the door to the drying room. The door rattled but did not open. “It's stuck,” he muttered, and pulled harder.

There was a sound like a bowstring snapping. The door jolted open and three blurred black shapes hurtled out.
Birds,
Asharre thought, and then:
no.
They were too fat to be birds, too ungainly to be airborne; they were as improbable in flight as bumblebees, but infinitely larger and deadlier in their sting.

They were crossbow bolts. The first one whipped a line of blood across Falcien's cheek and nicked his earlobe before clattering against the wall. The second thudded into his chest; the third hit his left thigh just below the groin. None pierced deeply, but the two that hit him lodged in his flesh.

Evenna started forward, a prayer on her lips and the glow of Celestia's power already flaring around her. Falcien stumbled away, thrusting out his arms as he retreated to the garden door. “Get back,” he gasped. “Get
back!
”

Evenna's eyes widened as if she'd been slapped, but she stopped. “Why?”

They never heard an answer. Falcien's mouth worked in frantic silence for a tortured beat. Another. No sound escaped. Then the quarrels exploded into heat and grit and sulfurous black smoke, engulfing the end of the hall.
Asharre's nostrils filled with the choking stench of brimstone. Blinded, cursing, she groped along the temple wall. Her hand fell on someone's shoulder; she couldn't tell whose. Grabbing it desperately, she dragged the unresisting bulk with her as she staggered away from the smoke. Something wet and warm rolled underfoot; she tried not to think about what it might be.

The smoke ended at the antechamber. Asharre fell to her knees, gasping for air. She felt groggy, as if she'd taken a blow to the head after drinking too much. Her vision was blurred, her throat raw. Rancid oiliness filled her mouth.

It was Heradion she'd grabbed. He didn't appear to be hurt, but he was insensible, muttering incoherently and staring at the room with unfocused eyes.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Asharre scrambled out of the way, pulling Heradion with her. Evenna stumbled out of the hall, coughing, with Falcien draped like a bloody cloak around her shoulders. Gore and greasy soot smeared her clothes; cinders flecked her black hair.

Falcien was breathing. Asharre looked at him and just as quickly looked away. She had seen bodies mutilated in countless ways—many in her own life, more while crossing Spearbridge—but she had never seen a man so grievously broken and still breathing. Half his body had been blasted away. His left leg was gone entirely; a red hole swallowed his hip. The undersides of both arms were gone, leaving wings of flapping flesh over the exposed bones. His torso was ripped open, and in the wound his lungs showed wet and pink, studded with splinters of shattered bone. They moved, hideously, as he fought for breath.

“Let him die,” Asharre rasped. Each word hurt coming out. She felt her throat, astonished. She had taken only one breath in the smoke.

“I can heal him,” Evenna said. “If we can get him out of here—out of this desecration—” The young Illuminer coughed and spit, red flecked with black. “I can heal him.”

It wasn't true, Asharre thought. It couldn't be true. Blood pulsed sluggishly from Falcien's hip. That wound should have gushed blood in a torrent; instead it leaked a slow black sludge. Magic poisoned his flesh. She did not think there was a spell in the world that could cure it.

Asharre closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the floor's cool stone, waiting for the world to stop spinning. The foulness in her mouth was beginning to fade. Beside her, Heradion groaned and got back to his feet.

“We have to go,” Asharre mumbled to the floor. “We have to get out of here.”

Heradion leaned against the door frame like a drunk man, gazing into the darkness. At the sound of her voice, he turned toward the two women and his friend's ruined, breathing body. His face was grim.

“We can't,” he said, and looked back to the night. A shivering howl splintered the stillness. Another took up the cry, closer. A pair of eyes, too large and radiantly white to be human, reflected the moonlight for an instant and was gone.

“We're not alone,” Heradion said, unnecessarily, and reached with a shaking hand for his sword.

“L
ight,” Asharre croaked. “We need light.”

She pushed herself to her knees, then to her feet. Blood rushed to her head. The world swam before her eyes but she swallowed, counted two breaths, and stayed upright.

A third howl sounded. Beyond the flickering pinpoints of their candles, the splintered door opened to blackness. Clouds buried the moon, and the empty buildings around them thickened the shadows to velvet dark.

Evenna balked. “If I pray for light, I won't have enough strength to heal Falcien. He'll die.”

“If you don't pray for light, we'll all die.” Asharre drew her sword and stood in the doorway. Her head ached abominably; the
caractan
felt bulky and unfamiliar in her hands. What had that smoke done to her? “I can't fight blind.”

“I'm not sure I can fight at all,” Heradion said. The cords on his neck stood out, white and taut; between them his pulse fluttered visibly and far too fast. His face looked bloodless. “Feel like I might fall over if I tried.”

Asharre grimaced. The doorway was a good defensive position, but holding it meant fighting shoulder to shoulder. If Heradion stumbled and fell in her way, he'd get them both killed. Safer if he stayed back. “How good are you with that bow?”

“I'm not. Rabbits and squirrels mock me with impunity. Monsters … I don't know what monsters might do.” He placed a palm against the wall, steadying himself. “They
are
monsters, aren't they?”

“I don't know what they are,” Asharre said. “We need
light.
”

There was a short silence, punctuated by the horror of Falcien's breathing. Then Evenna made a choked little sound and began to chant. The words were more sob than speech, but she finished the prayer. The candleflames stopped flickering and rose toward the temple ceiling like curving needles of golden glass. Strands of light spread from each elongated flame, arcing toward one another and joining the candles in a radiant web.

Bits of solid darkness wriggled in that web like inky eels trapped in a fisherman's net. Impossible—but there they were, burning between the strands of enchanted light. Asharre tried to ignore them. There were worse enemies in the night than shadow fish. She shifted her grip on the
caractan
's hilt and waited.