“Brother Barnaby is stronger than you think, my friend,” Father Jacob had said. “And he has a mission to fulfill in this life. I do not know what that mission is, nor does he. But Saint Castigan knows and the saint and I both believe Barnaby will find his purpose traveling with us, not sheltered behind the walls of some reclusive monastery.”
And so, here was Brother Barnaby, driving the wyverns and trying to make sense of the senseless.
“This young man led his followers to their deaths. He drove them to commit terrible acts and then urged them to sacrifice themselves, while he himself escaped. What horrible force drives him, Sir Ander? Why did he do it?”
“That is not an easy question to answer,” said Sir Ander. “I’m not sure I want to try to understand. Father Jacob believes the Warlock obeys a master, or rather a mistress, an older woman who schooled him.”
“The one known as the Sorceress.”
“Yes. We know very little about her or this so-called Warlock except that he preys on young people. He lures sons and daughters of peasants and of nobles to his cult. Any youth who is lonely, unhappy, and desperate falls easy victim to the Warlock’s charms and blandishments. Once he has them in his clutches, he uses opiates and the lusts of the body (I beg your pardon for speaking of such things, Brother) to keep them.”
“I find myself at odds…” Brother Barnaby gazed into the darkness, fumbling for the right words. “If you and Father Jacob had found this young man, Sir Ander, you would have killed him, wouldn’t you?”
“As God is my witness, yes,” said Sir Ander in grim tones. “I would have put a bullet in his skull without hesitation.”
“But he is only seventeen. Just a boy!”
“He stopped being a boy when he stabbed his first victim,” said Sir Ander. “This ‘boy’ deliberately placed that viper on the breast of a young girl, knowing she would die.”
“He has turned to evil,” said Brother Barnaby sadly. “But perhaps that was not his fault. Perhaps he is also a victim of this sorceress. He might be counseled, reclaimed…”
“You feel pangs of conscience when I swat a fly, Brother,” said Sir Ander, placing his hand on the monk’s arm. “Take comfort in the fact that we are not likely to confront him again, either him or his dark mistress. We now have more important matters to consider it seems.”
“The summons from the grand bishop about the poor nuns of Saint Agnes,” said Brother Barnaby somberly. “I have prayed for them this night.”
The guardsman on griffin-back had delivered a letter from the grand bishop that told of the massacre at the Abbey of Saint Agnes, ordering Father Jacob to drop whatever he was doing and report to the Bishop’s Palace at once.
Father Jacob had planned to spend the next day searching for clues, hoping to pick up the trail of the young Warlock. A man of single-minded purpose, Father Jacob was not happy to receive the bishop’s summons.
“Some other member of my Order must go,” Father Jacob had said brusquely.
“The bishop asked for you specifically, Father,” the rider had said. “He said you were the best.”
Sir Ander had waited confidently for Father Jacob to say no, he wasn’t leaving his investigation until it was finished. Father Jacob never had difficulty saying “no” to anyone, be it king or commoner or grand bishop.
Father Jacob had startled his friend. “Tell the bishop we will make all haste.”
Father Jacob was, in Sir Ander’s opinion, the wisest, most intelligent man the knight had ever known. Among all the priests of the Order of the Arcanum, Father Jacob was the best. The trouble was-he knew it, which often made him very difficult to live with.
Sir Ander and Brother Barnaby were startled by a sudden shout coming from inside the yacht.
“What a fool I have been! What a bloody, stupid fool! Where is that letter?” Father Jacob yelled.
“What is the matter, Father?” Brother Barnaby called out anxiously, trying to divide his attention between the control panel and the wyverns and the priest. “Do you need me?”
“He’s fine,” Sir Ander said irritably. “After all, he had a good night’s sleep.”
“Where is that letter?” Father Jacob demanded again.
“On the table,” Sir Ander returned, opening the hatch and pointing. “You’re looking straight at it!”
“You moved it,” Father Jacob said, grumbling. He dragged out a chair, sat down, and picked up the letter.
“Must be an odd sort of letter,” said Sir Ander to Brother Barnaby. “He’s casting a magical spell on it.”
As Rodrigo had cast a spell on the ashes of the letter in Alcazar’s fireplace, Father Jacob was casting a similar spell on this letter. But whereas Rodrigo had drawn sigils and lines connecting them and then physically connected the sigils and lines, using the magical energy within his own body to produce the magic, Father Jacob merely passed his hand over the letter. A shimmering light began to shine from the page.
Father Jacob Northrop was a savant: one of those rare persons who, as the saying went, “was born of magic.” As there are some people who can arrive at the answer of a complicated mathematical equation without going through the steps of adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing, Father Jacob could work magic without the need for all the intervening steps leading to the end result.
Father Jacob looked up from the letter.
“What was the name of that abbey where all those nuns were killed?”
“Saint Agnes, Father.”
“That’s what I thought. Come in here for a moment. I need to speak to you.”
Sir Ander left Brother Barnaby and climbed back through the hatch, inside the yacht. Father Jacob was sitting at the table, the letter in his hand. The magic he had cast on it still glowed faintly.
“This letter is from our friend, Master Albert Savoraun. You remember him? He worked with us on the affair of the naval cutter, Defiant. Master Albert has recently been made head of the Maritime Guild chapter in Westfirth.”
“Good for him,” said Ander heartily.
“That is not what is important,” Father Jacob said impatiently. “What is important is that he needed to review the records of the guild and discovered that they were not in the guildhall. Following a great fire that had destroyed parts of the city, the records were moved for safekeeping to a nearby abbey. The Abbey of Saint Agnes.. .”
“I’ll be damned!” said Sir Ander, startled into alertness. “That’s a strange coincidence.”
“You know I do not believe in coincidence,” said Father Jacob. He referred again to the letter. “Master Albert writes: ‘I found the information in the abbey to be of the utmost importance. I cannot stress its value. So important I dare not write it.’ ”
“Not even in a letter that requires a knowledge of magic to read?” Sir Ander asked with a smile.
The letter was seven pages long and, on the surface, contained mostly news of the antics of Master Albert’s ten children. The true contents of the letter had been written with a magical cipher that required a magical counter cipher to read.
“Apparently not,” said Father Jacob. He indicated the date on the top of the letter. “Master Albert wrote this letter a fortnight ago. The letter was addressed to the Arcanum, the Citadel of the Voice where we normally reside. The Provost received it there and forwarded it to me in Capione, which is why it took so long to reach me. And now we hear from the grand bishop that this very abbey has been attacked and the nuns who lived there murdered.”
Father Jacob sat pondering. “How far are we from the Bishop’s Palace in Evreux?”
Sir Ander consulted his pocket watch. “We have been flying for about ten hours now. I would say we were within an hour of arrival.”
“You and Brother Barnaby have been awake all night. You should both try to get some sleep,” said Father Jacob. He stood up, walked to the hatch, and flung it open. “I will drive, Brother Barnaby.”
Brother Barnaby looked at the priest in alarm.
“Uh, no, Father, that’s not necessary. I’m not at all tired.”