Drex hates me now… no! he thought, dismissing the idyllic image. I'll bring her back to me, whatever it takes. If it takes me a lifetime, I'll bring her back!
"I'm sorry, Sister Mercia,” he repeated, “but I cannot bring your friends back. I thank you for your diligent attentions, with all my heart, but I will not apologise for their deaths, dear Sister. It couldn't be helped."
She snorted, and Grimm shrugged, his wayward feelings now back under his full control.
He looked down at himself. His robes might be tattered and stained, but he took comfort in the blue glow from his Guild ring: Granfer's ring.
Only one thing was missing. Drawing himself to his full height, despite the burning pain in his left hip, Grimm muttered “Redeemer; come to me."
As he felt his faithful, hand-carved staff slap into his waiting hand, the ground groaned and trembled, sending a dense cloud of yellow dust into the air with a sound like thunder. Now, he was complete.
Names help Lord Thorn now! he thought.
"If my presence bothers you, Sister Mercia,” he said, “I'll leave you and make my way up Merrydeath Road as best I can. I'm sure any town around here would welcome the services of a healer as talented and dedicated as you. Thank you, and goodbye. You don't have to tolerate my presence a moment longer."
Ignoring the pain, he began to limp away to the north, turning his back on the devastation he had caused.
"Lord Mage, please wait!"
The nun's voice was so plaintive and desperate that it stopped Grimm in his tracks, sending another shooting pain through his lower body.
"Yes, Sister Mercia?"
"May I come with you… please? I do not want to be alone."
"Are you sure, Sister? I may have to kill again; you appreciate that, don't you?” The mage made his tone rough; almost brutal. “After all, that's what I am: a human weapon. I don't have to like it, but I won't deny it."
She sighed. “You risked your life for me and some of the other nuns. They have all left, leaving me with you. I owe you nothing, and you owe me nothing. But will you take me with you?"
If this girl wants to come with us, how can I deny her? he thought. My heart is with Drex alone… if she hasn't run away already.
"Very well, Sister,” he said, trying not to reveal the growing anguish in his pelvis. “Just don't try to use any Geomancy on me."
"I do not think I have any magic left, Lord Mage,” she said. “Please wait with me. I do not want to be left alone."
With some difficulty, Grimm sat down on a grassy hillock. After a few minutes, Mercia sat opposite him, her eyes wary. The Questor looked at the sky and sighed. A long wait might lie ahead of him, but he had no intention of flirting with this young woman, however great the temptation.
Nonetheless, the stark ruins of the Priory seemed to mock Grimm's earlier proud defence of his calling, denying him the inner peace he sought. Every cold stone block seemed to cry, ‘Murderer!'
Come on, Quelgrum; get me out of here, he thought. I just want to finish this cursed Quest.
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Chapter 30: Resolutions
Grimm sat on the hillock next to Sister Mercia, regarding the shattered ruins of Rendale Priory. He still found it hard to believe that such devastation could have been wrought by one man alone.
Dotted among the grass sward around the tumbled mass of stone, he saw numerous brown mounds; the last resting places of the blameless women who had died during the Priory's sudden collapse. According to Sister Mercia, thirty-eight nuns had lost their lives in the disaster. Grimm could not bring himself to count them, for fear that she might have underestimated the total; thirty-eight innocent lives on his conscience seemed more than enough to bear.
"Are we just going to sit like this until the General and your other companions return from Anjar, Lord Grimm?” Mercia demanded, dragging Grimm's attention back into the world of the living.
"Perhaps it is best,” he said, feeling a catch in his throat. “I know how you must hate me.” He did not trust himself to say more.
"Do you want me to hate you?” she asked.
"You have that right,” he said, not daring to turn around to meet her eyes. “Perhaps I deserve your hatred. I killed your friends and destroyed your home.” In an attempt to cover his swelling emotions, his voice became rough and harsh. “That's what I do… I kill people. I'm good at it, it seems."
"Do you enjoy destruction and death?” she pressed him, and he felt annoyance rising within him, to add to his inner turmoil.
He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but his throat felt as if an orange had become stuck in it, blocking the passage of air. He waved his hands in a helpless, vague gesture.
"Enough!” He forced the single word through the blockage, hearing the tremor within it. “You hate me; I know… I should be… Oh, Mercia!"
At last, the long-dammed tears burst through their barrier, and the mage slumped into a sodden lump of misery, his shoulders shaking with the effort to regain outward composure. He felt the young nun's arm curl around him, drawing him close to her. He did not resist… he could not resist.
"I do not hate you,” she whispered, rubbing him between his shoulder-blades with a comforting hand. “I might, if I thought you did not care about what you did, or if it had been a deliberate act. Now, I know it was all a tragic accident. I recognise what the Reverend Mother and the Score did to hundreds of innocent girls: they brutalised them, turned them into unseeing, unfeeling automata. That had to be stopped.
"You took the decision to end it, at serious risk to your own life, even though you could have walked away from the Priory.
"That took moral courage, Questor Grimm, and you did not flinch from it. There were over two hundred and fifty women in the Priory, living a life that was no life. You freed more than two hundred and ten of them, the vast majority. You owed them nothing after the way you were treated. I did despise you at first, but I despise you no longer. You are a good man, Lord Grimm. I know that now.
"There; do not try to speak. Just release your grief and hurt. Let it all out."
Grimm's face burrowed into Mercia's neck, feeling the stiff calico of her wimple bristling against his feverish brow.
It felt so good, so right to let go of his warring emotions… perhaps too right…
"No,” he said, drawing away from Mercia with a shudder and throwing off her arm. “That's enough."
With his eyes squeezed shut, he drew a series of deep, shivering breaths and pushed the pain deep inside him, screwing it into a tight, inert parcel, as Magemaster Crohn had taught him to do so long ago. The pain, anger and confusion began to fade, just as Crohn had counselled him.
"I am sorry, Sister,” he said, meeting her anxious gaze with no difficulty now. “I didn't mean to push you away like that. I feel much better now."
"Am I now speaking to Grimm, the man, or to the Guild Questor?” Mercia's tone was cool.
"I don't know,” he confessed. “Nonetheless, you are speaking to me, as I now am. I am a human being, but I am a Questor, too. And I… I like you, perhaps too much. I have another; whose name is Drexelica. I'll never feel comfortable to come too close to another girl."
"It is not good to bury your feelings so,” Mercia whispered, but she kept her distance.
"Perhaps so,” he admitted, “but it is a part of who I am."
As Mercia opened her mouth to speak, Grimm heard a distant rumbling, increasing in volume by the moment, and he raised his right hand to stem her words.
"What is it?” she asked, her face blank.
"Unless I am mistaken,” he said, “that is the sound of an approaching wagon."
He stood up, wincing as his injured hip sent a bolt of pain up his spine, and he saw a growing cloud of dust from the direction of Merrydeath Road.