Mendis Vakon turned and ran back the way he had come.
His slippers skidded on the incline. Hands caught at the back of the knotted cord that belted his shirt. The hands jerked upward, and Vakon crashed onto his knees. He tipped forward. His head hit slimy stone, and he cried out. Then another stone crashed into his temple. Vakon rolled over and felt for his dagger.
Hederick laughed knowingly. "I already have it, Vakon. I had to learn some such skills in my years on the road, after all."
The priest was surprisingly strong. Vakon felt himself being rolled across a slight rise. Suddenly the air was not merely stale, but fetid. Vakon sprawled on uneven slabs of rock as a lock clicked behind and above him, then he heard Hederick wheeze, as if from beyond a door.
Something stirred in the blackness within the chamber. Rats? "The dungeon!" Vakon protested. "You can't keep me in a dungeon! I am Mayor of Solace!"
A breathy chuckle came from the darkness. "No longer. I lead Solace now-thanks in part to you, Vakon." Another chortle. "Ironic, considering that you refused to embrace the Seeker faith, isn't it?"
Vakon scrambled to his feet and pounded at the steel-clad door. Dimly, he saw a small, barred window and sensed the High Theocrat peering through. Then a torch flared from Hederick's side of the door, and Mendis Vakon found himself eye to eye with the Seeker.
"Seekerism is claptrap," Vakon hissed. "False miracles and phony revelations. Your Seekerism is a farce, Heder shy;ick!"
"I knew you'd feel that way, Mendis Vakon," Hederick replied. "In fact, I have several witnesses who heard you speak in just such a fashion last night in the Inn of the Last Home."
"I was in no tavern last night, the Inn or otherwise!"
"My witnesses say you were. It's blasphemy, you know, to criticize the Seeker gods, Vakon. The Praxis says so. And the Praxis guides my life, as it does that of all truly pious people."
A snarl broke the silence in the chamber behind Mertdis Vakon, and Hederick laughed. Vakon flung himself around as the rumbling-halfway between a growl and thunder-reverberated within the stone walls. Whatever lurked in the shadows was dreadfully near.
"You're a heretic, Vakon," Hederick hissed through the door. "Heretics deserve to die."
"Then bring me to trial," Vakon spat out, terrified. What stalked him? He heard a rustling sound and felt cautiously around the straw that littered the floor, seeking something-anything-he could use as a weapon. "I have friends in Solace, Hederick," he spat out. "If I disappear, people will wonder."
"Friends? No longer, ex-Mayor," the High Theocrat rejoined. "Some of your friends are the very ones who were with you when you made those sacrilegious state shy;ments in the Inn."
"I tell you, I wasn't there!" Vakon insisted. "You can't prove that I was. I demand a trial!"
"As a matter of fact, I am judge and jury in Solace." The growling came closer.
Hederick continued speaking as though he and Vakon were carrying on a normal conversation. "I found you guilty of heresy a few hours ago," he said, "just before I had your dear family carted off to a slave camp." There was a pause, then soft laughter from the High Theocrat. "I can tell that the sentence pleases my god Sauvay and the Motherlord Omalthea. Just listen to the happy rumblings of Sauvay's pet."
"No!" Vakon shouted. Nearby, something roared, and fire belched through the dungeon. Sparks ignited clods of damp hay near the door. Vakon's cloak began to burn, and he thrust it away from him.
Then Mendis saw what awaited him-a lion of sorts, but two or three times the size of that beast. It had enormous eyes and a thick tongue that curved out as though in anticipation toward the terrified mayor. The lion's huge front claws emerged and retracted as it watched its prey.
"A materbill?" Vakon said in disbelief. "But they don't exist!"
"They do now," Hederick whispered through the door. "Sauvay sent me one. A birthday present of sorts. Did you know my birthday was in midsummer, Vakon?"
The flames smoldered and failed in the dampness. Darkness returned, leaving only a fearful afterimage of the materbill burning in Vakon's brain. Then claws clat shy;tered on the stones. Another roar split the silence.
The creature belched more fire as it leaped upon Mendis Vakon. The former mayor of Solace didn't even have time to scream.
Once Hederick was sure his former co-conspirator was dead, the High Theocrat made his way to a nearby stone column. He held his torch higher and examined a row of marks. Drawing the dagger he'd filched from Vakon, Hederick used the rapierlike point to scratch one more line at the top of a row of similar scrapes. Then he counted the lines.
"Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight," Hederick murmured with a self-satisfied air. "What a ferocious appetite the materbill has." He smirked as he remembered the terror on Mendis Vakon's unrepentant face. "How fortunate that there are heretics aplenty in Solace to feed him."
Chapter 5
At first glance, Crealora Senternal didn't look like a woman who had slain an entire family with evil magic at fifty paces. But these days you couldn't tell about someone by merely looking.
In Solace, only High Theocrat Hederick seemed to know for a certainty.
As men and women filed into Erolydon's gleaming val-lenwood-paneled Great Chamber, they stole glances at the tiny woman who stood awaiting sentencing. Her head was bowed, and her hands were clasped so tightly that her fingertips were white.
At least a dozen guards, swords sheathed but unbuck shy;led, stood at the edges of the room. Six novitiates tended incense burners in a ring around the woman accused of being a witch. A veil of flower-scented smoke hung in the air around Crealora. Few people in the room gazed long at her, but all stole cautious glimpses.
"Be careful, Gilles," a pregnant matron whispered to her husband as they edged through the crowd to a vacant spot. She plucked at his sleeve. "Don't meet her gaze, Gilles. They say the witch of Zaygoth can ensorcel a man with but a look!"
Gilles tut-tutted her but kept his voice low nonetheless. "That dried-up old stick? She's nothing but huge eyes and brittle bones, Susta. I've faced far worse monsters than Crealora Senternal, though it's a wonder her poor hus shy;band stood her oddities for so long. I've nothing to fear from such as her. You merely grow fanciful because of your expectant condition. I wanted to leave you home, but you'd have had my head if I suggested it."
"Gilles Domroy!" his wife exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. "If you think I'll miss the biggest spectacle in Solace since the Cataclysm, you're …"
Susta Domroy's shrill voice drew the attention of the prisoner. Crealora lanced the mother-to-be with a pene shy;trating stare. The prisoner's sapphire-blue eyes glittered, and her colorless lips began to move silently. Her hands shook despite the heavy chains at her wrists.
"A spell!" Susta gasped and snatched forward the ker shy;chief she wore over her hair, hiding her face. Her right hand shielded her belly, and she raised her left in the ges shy;ture that peasants believed averted witchcraft. She dragged the now stone-faced Gilles down onto the bench with her. People on each side quickly slid aside to give them more than enough room.
Crealora Senternal smiled grimly at the pair, then returned her gaze to the front of the room and the doors beneath the towering pulpit. "If I had magic for spells, would I be standing here now?" she muttered to herself. "Pah! I'd be winging my way across the forests of Ansa-lon." She looked around the room. "All these 'converts.'
Converted Seekers, indeed! Converted by Hederick's threats and goblins."
Let the Domroys believe that the long-despised witch of Zaygoth had laid a curse on their precious unborn heir. Crealora no longer cared what the people of Solace thought of her. She knew she had no more witchcraft in her than did the hammered iron links that bound her, sup shy;posedly to prevent her from completing the gestures nec shy;essary for spells.