Soulkeeper Read online

  “Sisters have mercy,” Adria whispered. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. Her teeth clenched as she fought down a surge of revulsion. Each of the man’s fingers looked like they had been broken and then allowed to heal at the wrong angle. Who would do this to someone? Even the lowest of humanity deserved a clean death over this atrocity.

  “It never becomes easier,” Thaddeus said, and then to the attending Mindkeepers, “Please, give us a moment.”

  The two bowed and then left. Thaddeus replaced their watch. A long-necked bottle of water rested in the center of the table and the Vikar took it in his left hand. His right gingerly propped the cursed man’s mouth open so he might slowly, carefully trickle in drop after drop. Adria kept out of the cell. It felt like her feet had turned to stone and sunk into the ground.

  “I pray I do not sound cruel,” she said. “But killing him would be a mercy.”

  “Indeed it would,” Thaddeus said. He did not look at her, too focused on ensuring that the steady drops did not increase. Much more and it seemed the wheezing man might drown. His tone, however, conveyed his disappointment in her. “So think, Mindkeeper. Why does he yet live?”

  Adria forced herself to look beyond the figure’s physical mutilation. She saw his leggings and recognized them as made from silk. Extremely expensive, and only importable from textile mills east of Nicus. A wealthy man, then. Was he a major donor to the church, and that was why they kept him alive? No. That didn’t feel right. Her eyes flicked to the table. Various personal effects cluttered its top. One was a book she recognized, a gold-trimmed, numbered edition of Lyra’s Devotions from the initial printing by King Woadthyn the First. Its wealth was startling in the dank, ancient stone. She was aware of only one copy in all of Londheim, but why would the…

  And then it hit her. She didn’t even want to guess. It was too horrible to voice.

  “Thaddeus,” she asked breathlessly. “Whom did Tamerlane curse?”

  It took a long while before the Vikar responded. The delay only added power to his answer.

  “Deakon Sevold,” he said.

  Deakon Sevold. The Keeping Church’s appointed spiritual master for West Orismund. Only the Ecclesiast and Queen Woadthyn had greater authority upon the Cradle.

  “Why did you bring him here?” she asked. “He… he should be attended by the best Mindkeepers. Scholars should be studying his condition. He needs sunlight, and fresh water…”

  Her voice trailed off. Of course Thaddeus knew these things. Her Vikar knelt beside the Deakon and lovingly brushed his malformed head.

  “We brought him down here hoping we could convince Tamerlane to cure him. It didn’t work. Tamerlane insisted he could not undo the damage no matter how intensive the… persuasion we used. After a week we decided down here was the only place we could be absolutely certain to keep the Deakon’s condition a secret.”

  It made sense, of course. In such tumultuous times, knowledge of the Deakon’s condition would only spread panic and fear. The citizens needed to believe that its leadership was in control. She had a feeling that if they could not cure him, they’d eventually announce he’d passed away in his sleep. Even that was better than his current condition.

  “We Vikars have assumed control over his duties,” Thaddeus continued, as if he could read her train of thought. “We’ve managed to use the chaos of the living mountain’s arrival as a cover for our constant refusals against meeting with the Deakon. It’s not a permanent solution, however. That’s why you’re here.”

  Of course that was why. She’d showcased an ability to heal with the Sisters’ power, and who in the church’s opinion was in greater need of it than the Deakon of West Orismund?

  “I do not know if I will be able to help,” she said.

  “Right now, the only thing we know is that helping the Deakon is beyond our capabilities,” Thaddeus said. “Our human capabilities. But you have shown a power that belongs to the Goddesses themselves. What other hope do we have?”

  Fair enough. Even if this poor, cursed man weren’t her Deakon, she’d sweat and toil to help him. That was who she was. More importantly, that was who she was supposed to be if she was to walk the path of wisdom bestowed by the Goddesses.

  Adria took the Deakon’s malformed hand. His skin felt like it looked, dry and tough. A long, shuddering whistle marked Sevold taking in a larger than usual breath. Did he retain his senses? Was the man’s sharp mind still functioning within the broken shell of a body? Such a terrifying thought. She had to help him. She had to set him free. The question was, how?

  Her mind bounced through the seventy-nine devotions. This was no disease or birth defect. No prayer explicitly dealt with curses. They dealt with real matters, as she’d always thought until recently. Real, as in hunger, pain, and loneliness. Which were appropriate for a man cursed by Ravencaller magic?

  In the end she decided to use the same prayer she used to heal illness and mend broken bones. This was a corruption of the body. If her faith was strong, the Sisters could work through her, and nothing was insurmountable to their touch.

  “Lyra of the beloved sun, hear my prayer,” she said softly. Her head lowered, so close to his bony chest she could hear the Deakon’s heartbeat. “Your children weep for your touch, and so I come, and so I pray. Sickness fouls the perfection you created. Darkness mars the glory you shone upon us.”

  The calm, steady rhythm of the words at first soothed her chest, but then something struck at her peace of mind. A discordant note. An angry rhythm. As the Sisters’ power swelled within her, so too did a fiery heat focusing at her touch.

  “With bowed head and bended knee I ask for succor.”

  The heat grew. The anger grew with it. She opened her eyes without realizing why. Crackling red and black lightning greeted her. It sparked from random parts of his skin, arcing across the leathery body as if it were densely packed thunderclouds. Her training kept her going through the shock.

  “With heavy heart and weary mind I ask for blessing. This beloved soul requires healing, Lyra, my savior.”

  At Lyra’s name immense agony crippled her hands. She shuddered as if stabbed in the spine. That rage… that rage! She could feel it twisting the flesh into its current form. It burrowed deep into every bone. That discordant note pulsed harder. This rage had but simple, basic urges: twist, break, turn, change.

  Adria’s tongue was already swollen. Thin tears fell behind her mask. To her ears, the prison cell was silent. To her mind, it was a constant, thunderous roar threatening to drown out her pitiful words.

  “Cleanse the sickness. Chase away the pain. Precious Lyra… precious Lyra…”

  The sinister lightning swirled about her hands, stinging her, begging to be let in. To twist and change her as well. Adria wrenched her hands away. The thunder became a whisper. The red-and-black lightning became mere spots over her eyes that gradually faded. Sevold went limp in his pillows. Perhaps he let out a sorrowful cry at her failure. Perhaps she only projected.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This curse, this power… it’s completely foreign to me. I don’t understand it, and because of that, I don’t know how to fight it.”

  Thaddeus slowly nodded.

  “Thank you for trying, Mindkeeper,” he said. There was no hiding the disappointment in his voice. “Perhaps in time you may save our Deakon from his fate.”

  She did not share his optimism. Goddesses above, what lent such power to that rage? How did it dismiss her so easily? Her fingers shook from the remembrance. For one split second she’d felt it starting to take root in her bones. Just one second, but the joints had already begun swelling and her fingers curled outward to the surrounding muscle’s displeasure.

  “I pray that I do,” she said. It was about as noncommittal as she could manage. She stood on weak knees. Vertigo immediately assaulted her. She grabbed at the bars and held still until it passed. The Vikar said nothing as he patiently waited.

  “Was this all you required of me?” she as
ked once her strength returned and she was fully in control of her faculties. Her fingers still ached, but that she could manage. Thaddeus pointed the bottom of his cane toward Sevold’s body. He’d fallen asleep by the looks of it, or at the least, his eyes were now closed when they’d been open before.

  “The era we walk has become one of power and change,” he said. “Our members die at the hands of a man named Janus, for reasons we cannot fathom. Creatures stalk the night, and even our best Soulkeepers struggle to survive. A mountain has crawled to our doorstep, and our scholars wonder if it is the void-dragon itself come to end the time of humanity.”

  He cupped her chin in one hand and lifted her face. The other hand carefully removed the mask so he might look upon her true self.

  “You carry a gift that may save our people,” he said. “And I pray you and Sena are but the first. The world has become a dark place, and I would give my life for the Keeping Church to be the brightest guiding light. Our previous understandings of heresy and magic are void. I have witnessed your blessing, and I have witnessed Tamerlane’s curse. It does not take a Vikar to understand which walks the righteous path.”

  Thaddeus offered her his arm, and she took it. Together they walked past the Mindkeepers waiting at a respectful distance, followed by Tamerlane’s cell. It might be a trick of the light, or her mind playing tricks, but she swore she saw him smile behind his muzzle.

  “I’ve talked with the other Vikars,” Thaddeus said. “We shall judge you by your actions. If you bring healing and relief to a frightened, dying populace, then you walk in the Sisters’ light and we will do all we can to support you. If your path results in hatred, curses, and death?” He nodded toward Tamerlane’s prison. “Then you shall find yourself in a cell beside his.”

  Adria slid her mask over her face. She needed it to breathe easier. She needed it to hide the overwhelming emotions threatening to break her down to a sobbing mess on the prison floor.

  “Thank you,” she said, meager words to convey the relief in knowing that the Keeping Church would embrace her awakened gift. “I shall only be a light. I shall only a blessing. On this I swear my soul.”

  Thaddeus smiled at her, but that smile did not touch his silver eyes.

  “Much is expected of those to whom much is given,” he said. “Never let me regret this, Adria. If you put the people’s faith in the Goddesses at risk I shall personally turn the key locking you into a forgotten cell. On that, I swear my soul.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Janus slowly brushed his fingers across the dry pool of blood. Not red, like a human’s. No, this was a deep blue color that seemed to glow beneath the light of the moon. There was no corpse, but Janus had witnessed the slaughter firsthand. It’d taken all his self-control not to shred through the riotous crowd.

  “Do not kill wantonly,” Janus muttered, echoing the command given to him by his dragon creator. “If only the humans followed such rules.”

  Janus rose to his full height and gazed upon the building the gargoyles had perched upon before they were ripped from the rooftop and smashed to pieces. It was a small but pristine church, its wealth grotesquely displayed with an overabundance of gold inlaid upon door frames, windowsills, and triangular painted windows. A tall iron fence surrounded the church, no doubt to protect it from thieves during the night.

  He smirked. A church so wealthy it sought to protect itself from those its wealth was meant to serve. So very… human.

  “No more fences,” he said as he placed both hands upon the bars. His magic coursed through the iron, shifting its structure at the most infinitesimal level. Iron turned to water. It splashed upon the cobbles and gathered into puddles, but Janus was not done. He dipped his finger back into the gargoyle blood and swirled it so it mixed with the water. Another simple thought and the blood lifted off the stone entirely.

  “Let us weep when the war is over,” he whispered. “Let the stain of blood mark only our victories and not our defeats.”

  The words of a brilliant avenria, the raven folk whom Ravencallers unknowingly imitated with their extravagant feather costumes and long, ornate beak masks. He had yet to encounter an avenria since returning to Londheim, but he figured it was only a matter of time. They would not sit idly by while the fate of the awakened world was decided.

  Janus kicked the doors of the church open and strode into the candlelit center aisle. Eight people lay about, most sleeping in the pews but for a plump-looking woman in a white suit conversing with a man by the pulpit.

  “You stay,” he said, pointing at the Faithkeeper. “All others, leave.”

  Some panicked and fled immediately, the word Janus on their tongues. Others looked ready to defend their Faithkeeper. Janus rolled his eyes at them. The reason he was forced to attack at night was to minimize extra casualties. He’d hoped the church would be empty, but it wasn’t, and now here was another temptation for him to cast off Viciss’s orders and have fun slaughtering the whole lot of them.

  “On the count of three, I will execute every last person inside this building,” Janus said. To highlight the point, he lifted his right arm. His forearm twisted, the bone itself rotating three full revolutions and elongating into the form of a corkscrew as the skin turned to steel. A man beside him thought this the best time to attack, his bare fists striking Janus across the neck and shoulder. The blows were as effective as wind upon a stone.

  “One,” Janus said, whirling upon the man and slamming the sharpened tip of his arm directly into the man’s gut.

  “Two.” His arm slowly rotated with audible snapping of the bones at his elbow. The blade burrowed while pulling the man’s bleeding, convulsing body closer.

  “Three.” They fled, every last one of them. Janus watched them leave with a twisted pit in his stomach. Viciss demanded that he kill carefully, with minimal loss to those not serving the church. Yet when the dragon awoke, he unleashed black water across the west, killing untold thousands in his rage. The dragon demanded what he himself could not deliver. The unfairness of it gnawed at him relentlessly.

  “No no no, not you,” Janus said as if reprimanding a child. He flung the corpse across the room. It slammed into the church doors with a wet smack, pinning them shut so the fleeing Faithkeeper could not escape. The chubby woman spun about and clung her fists to her chest. Panic widened her eyes as she screamed.

  “Let me go,” she said. “We’ve done you no harm, none!”

  “You are part of a great machine known as the Keeping Church,” Janus said as he crossed the room. “You wear its robes, take coin in its name, and wallow in its privileges. The Keeping Church has done me great harm, woman, as have your Three Sisters. You’re a part, even if your hands are clean. You’re a piece, a cog, a bolt, a screw, and when it comes to the church’s sins, you partook.”

  Janus’s hand closed about her neck, and he flung her violently to the ground. She let out a pained cry. His heel dug into her spine. Words escaped between her blubbers.

  “Blessed Sisters, hear my prayer. May Anwyn look down upon me with kindness. May her heart be moved by my suffering.”

  “That’s enough out of you,” Janus said. The last thing he needed was another damn spell from a desperate keeper causing him harm. He yanked the woman by her strawberry-blond hair so she looked his way. His free hand jammed into her mouth. She tried to bite him but he’d anticipated the instinctual reaction and already shifted the outer layer of his skin to steel. Her teeth cracked. He touched her slippery tongue and let his magic flow into her, changing her. The tongue turned to lead.

  “Better,” he said as she moaned indecipherably.

  He dragged her through the pews to her pulpit. The amount of gold carvings across it turned his stomach. There were even a few rubies and sapphires inlaid into portions to give the appearance of flowers. More hypocrisy from those who claimed to “serve.” Why the common folk didn’t string all the keepers from the rooftops by their toes baffled him.

  “You could have avoided this,
” he said as he kicked the pulpit aside. He shoved her back against the wall and pinned her there with a hand upon her throat. “Did you not read the messages I left for your kind upon the walls of the city? Have you not heard of my killings, or did you merely not understand my demands? All of you keepers, you’re to cease your teachings, your lectures, and your misbegotten prayers. Death awaits you otherwise.”

  She was trying to answer him, so he stuck his fingers back into her mouth and returned her tongue to its normal form. The Faithkeeper retched twice before finding her voice.

  “You’ll never stop us from serving,” she said. “We… we’re the Sisters’ chosen. We’ll give our lives if we must.”

  Janus glared at her.

  “Is that so?” he asked. “Or perhaps my message is still not clear enough. I need to be bolder. I need to be louder.”

  He grabbed her wrist with his left hand and pressed it to the wall above her head. He imagined the change, then let his magic flow out through him, rearranging matter to make it happen. The skin of her hand and wrist attached to the wall as if it were part of her own body. He did the same to her other hand, then stepped back to give himself space to work. A low, guttural moan escaped from the deepest part of her.

  “Stay still,” he said. “I’d hate to make a mistake.”

  Janus’s fingers took the shape of knives, and they easily parted the flesh of her abdomen. He punched through the fat and muscle before tearing her open as easily as unfolding a piece of paper. The squirmy intestinal workings of a human body spilled upon the floor, and he kicked a stubborn rope of it off his foot. She screamed, but not for long. He almost kept her alive to prolong her suffering but let her die instead. He’d spoken truthfully, after all, and her struggling might cause him to err.