“Commodius!”
“Dead, and may his warped spirit howl the eons away in the pits of hell.”
“His body, Avila. We can’t just leave it down here.”
“Why not? He was a creature of the lightless dark, a shape-shifter, and he tried to kill us both to protect his precious version of the truth. Let his corpse rot here unburied.”
Albrec held his aching head in his hands. “Where are we?”
“I was following the north wall—the damp one, as you said—trying to find the stairs, but I must have missed them somehow.”
“An easy thing to do. I will find them, don’t worry. How long has it been since . . . ?”
“Maybe half an hour, not long.”
“Great God, Avila, what are we going to do?”
“Do? I—I don’t know, Albrec. I hadn’t been thinking beyond getting out of this dungeon.”
“We’ve killed the Senior Librarian.”
“We’ve slain a werewolf.”
“But he changed back into Commodius the librarian. It’s the last thing I remember. Who will believe us? What signs are there on his body to tell anyone what he was in life?”
“What are you saying, Albrec? That we are in trouble for saving our own lives, for putting an end to that foul beast?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to think. How could it happen, Avila? How could a priest be a thing like that, all these years, all the years I have worked with him? It was he who haunted the library; I see that now. It was his unclean presence which gave it its atmosphere. Oh, lord God, what has been going on here?”
The pair were silent, their eyes fixed on the tiny lamp flame which did not have too many minutes of life left to it. But it did not seem important that they might soon be left here in impenetrable darkness. The place seemed different somehow. They had seen the true face of evil, and nothing else could frighten them.
“They know,” Albrec went on in a rasping whisper. “Did you hear him? They know the truth of things, the real story of the Saint and the Prophet, and they have been suppressing it. The Church has been sitting on the truth for centuries, Avila, keeping it from the world to safeguard its own authority. Where is piety, where humility? They have behaved like princes determined to hold on to their power no matter what the cost.”
Avila fingered his black Inceptine robe thoughtfully.
“You have claw marks down the sides of your face,” he told Albrec, as though he had only just seen them.
“There’s blood on yours, too.”
“We can’t hide our hurts, Albrec. Think, man! What are we to do? Columbar is dead at Commodius’ hand and Commodius is dead at ours. How will it look? We cannot tell them we were trying to discover and preserve the truth of things. They’ll put us out of the way as quickly as Commodius intended to.”
“There are good men yet in the Church—there must be.”
“But we don’t know who they are. Who will listen to us or believe us? Sweet blood of the Blessed Saint, Albrec, we are finished.”
The lamp guttered, flared, and then went out. The dark swooped in on them and they were blind.
Avila’s voice came thick with grief through the lightlessness. “We must flee Charibon.”
“No! Where would we go? How would we travel in the depth of winter, in the snows? We would not last a day.”
“We’ll not last much longer than that here once this gets out. When Commodius is missed they’ll search the library. They’ll find him in the end. And who is the only other person who has the keys to the library? You, Albrec.”
The little monk touched the torn skin of his face and neck, the lump on his forehead where the werewolf had knocked him. Avila was right. They would question him first, for he was Commodius’ closest colleague, and when they saw his wounds the inquisition would begin.
“So what are we to do, Avila?” he asked, near to tears. He knew, but he had to let someone else say it.
“We’ll have a day of grace. We’ll stay out of sight and gather together what we can to help us on our journey.”
“Journey to where? Where in the world are we to go? The Church rules Normannia, her Knights and clerics are in every city and town of the west. Where shall we run to?”
“We are heretics once this gets out,” Avila said. “They will excommunicate us when they find the body in that unholy chapel and note our disappearance. But there are other heretics in the world, Albrec, and there is a heresiarch to lead them. The man some say is Macrobius has been set up as an anti-Pontiff in Torunn. Charibon’s writ has no authority in that kingdom, and anyone hostile to the Himerian Church will be welcome there. The Macrobian kings will listen to us. We would be a powerful weapon in their armoury. And besides, Charibon seems now to me like a sink of corruption. If Commodius was a werewolf, could there not be others like him within the ranks of my order?”
“It does not bear thinking about.”
“It must be thought about, Albrec, if we are to puzzle out a way to save our lives.”
They stood awhile, not speaking, listening to the drip of water and the enfolding silence of the gutrock, the bowels of the mountains. Finally Avila moved. Albrec heard him groan from the pain of his hurts.
“My robe is ripped to threads, and I think I have some ribs broken. It is like a knife thrust into my side every time I draw breath. We must get back to our beds before Matins.”
“You sleep in a dormitory, Avila. Won’t your colleagues notice?”
“There is a bolster under my blankets doing service as a sleeping monk, and I stole out as quiet as a mouse. But I’ll not be so quiet returning. Damnation!”
“You can’t go back. You must come to my cell. We’ll get some things together and hole up somewhere tomorrow—or today, as I suppose it must be—and leave tomorrow night.”
Avila was gasping in short, agonizing pants. “I fear I will not be a swift traveller, my little Antillian comrade. Albrec, must we leave? Is there no way we can brazen it out?”
The decision had been made, but it terrified both of them. It would be so much easier to go on as if nothing had happened, to step back into the ancient routine of the monastery-city. Albrec might have done it, the inertia of fear tying him to the only life he had known. But Avila had painted things too clearly. The Antillian knew that their lives had changed without hope of recovery. They had stepped beyond the Church and were on the outside, looking in.
“Come,” Albrec said, trying not to move his neck. “We’ve a lot to do before dawn. This thing has been thrust on us as Honorius’ visions were thrust upon him, that poor, mad seeker after the truth. God has given us a burden as heavy as his to bear. We cannot shirk it.”
He took Avila’s arm and began leading him along the wall of the catacombs, touching its rough surface every now and then with his shaking palm.
“He died in the mountains, you know, died alone as a discredited hermit whom no one would listen to, a holy madman. I wonder now if it is not the Church which has been mad. Mad with pride, with the lust for power. Who is to say that it has not suppressed every holy truth-seeker who has arisen over the centuries? How many men have found out about Ramusio’s true fate, and have paid for that knowledge with their lives? That is the pity of it. Take a lie and make it into belief, and it rots the rest of the faith like a bad apple in a barrel. No one knows what to believe any more. The Church totters on its foundations, no matter how much of its structure may be sound, and those good men who are in its service are tainted with its lies.”
Avila groaned out a wrecked laugh. “You never change, Albrec. Still philosophizing, even at a time like this.”
“Our fate has become as important as the downfall of nations,” Albrec retorted humourlessly. “We carry our knowledge like a weapon of the Apocalypse, Avila. We are more potent than any army.”