“Yes, master.”
Orkh stepped away from the chest. “It is yours, then. Use it wisely.”
Batak took the chest in his arms as though it were made of glass.
“You may go. I find the maintenance of this appearance wearisome. When you ride through the village, tell the escort rissaldar that I will be ready to leave at moonrise tomorrow night. I have some final packing to do.”
Batak bowed awkwardly. As he went out of the door he turned. “Thank you, master.”
“When you see me again—if you do—it will be as a mage, a master of four of the Seven Disciplines. On that day you shall take me by the hand and call me Orkh.”
Batak smiled uncertainly. “I shall look forward to that.”
Then he left.
T HE snow was as crisp as biscuit underfoot and the taloned feet of the beast cracked the surface crust, but the widespread toes stopped it from sinking any deeper. Naked and scaled, its tail whipping back and forth restlessly, it prowled the streets of the sleeping village. The moon glittered from its skin as though it were armoured in many-faceted silver. The glowing eyes blinked as it eased open the shutter of a cottage with inhuman, silent strength. A dark room within, a tiny shape blanket-wrapped in the cradle.
It took the bundle out into the hills, and there it fed, dipping its snout into the steaming, broken body. Sated at last, it raised its head and stared up at the savage, snow-gleaming peaks of the encircling mountains. West, where the sun had set. Where a new life awaited it, perhaps.
It cleaned its snout in the snow. With a bestial form came bestial appetites. But it saved a morsel of the child for Olov.
EIGHT
T HEY were intoning the Glory to God, the terdiel which brought Matins to a close. For centuries, the monks and clerics of Charibon had sung it in the early hours of every new day, and the simple yet infinitely beautiful melody was taken up by half a thousand voices to echo into the beams and rafters of the cathedral.
The benches of the monks lined the walls of the triangular cathedral’s base. Monsignors, presbyters and bishops had their own individual seats at the back with ornately carved armrests and kneeling boards. The Inceptines assembled on the right, the other orders—mostly Antillian, but with a few Mercurians—on the left. As the monks sang an old Inceptine with a candle lantern went up and down the rows, nudging any of the brethren who had nodded off. If they happened to wear the white hoods of novices they would receive a kick and a glare rather than a shake of their shoulder.
Himerius the High Pontiff had joined his fellow clerics for Matins this morning, something he rarely did. He was seated facing his brethren, his Saint’s symbol glittering in the light of a thousand beeswax candles. His hawk’s profile was clearly picked out by the candlelight as he sang.
Elsewhere in Charibon, the thousands of other clerics were also awake and paying homage to their God. At this time in the morning Charibon was a city of voices, it was said, and fishermen in their boats out on the Sea of Tor would hear the ghostly plainchant drifting out from shore, a massed prayer which was rumoured to still the waves and bring the fish to the surface to listen.
Matins ended, and there was a clamour of scraping benches and shuffling feet as the singers rose to their feet row by row. The High Pontiff left the cathedral first in the company of the Inceptine Vicar-General, Betanza. Then the senior churchmen filed out, and then the Inceptines. Last in the orderly throng to leave would be the novices, their stomachs rumbling, their noses red with early morning chill. The crowds would splinter as the clerics made their way to the various refectories of the orders for bread and buttermilk, the unchanging breakfast of Charibon’s inhabitants.
H IMERIUS and Betanza had not far to go to the Pontifical apartments, but they took a turn around the cloisters first, their hands tucked in their habits, their hoods pulled up over their heads. The cloisters were deserted at this time of the morning as everyone trooped into the refectories for breakfast.
It was dark, the winter morning some time away as yet. The moon had set, though, and the predawn stars were bright as pins in a sky of unsullied aquamarine. The breath of the two senior clerics was a white mist about their hoods as they walked the serene, arched circuit of the cloisters. There was snow in the air; it was thick in the mountains but Charibon had as yet received only a tithe of its usual share. The heavy falls would come within days, and the shores of the Sea of Tor would grow beards of ice upon which the novices would skate and skylark in the little free time they had. It was a ritual, a routine as old as the monastery-city itself, and absurdly comforting to both the men who now walked in slow silence about the empty cloisters.
Betanza, the bluff ex-duke from Astarac, threw back his hood and paused to stare out across the starlit gardens within the cloisters. Trees there, ungainly oaks purportedly planted before the empire fell. In the spring the brown grass would explode with snowdrops, then daffodils and primroses as the year turned. They were dormant now, sleeping out the winter under the frozen earth.
“The purges have begun across the continent,” he said quietly. “In Almark and Perigraine and Finnmark. In the duchies and the principalities they are herding them by the thousand.”
“A new beginning,” the High Pontiff said, his nose protruding like a raptor’s beak from his hood. “The faith has been in need of this. A rejuvenation. Sometimes it takes an upheaval, a crisis, to breathe new life into our beliefs. We are never so sure of them as we are when they are threatened.”
Betanza smiled sourly. “We have our crisis. Religious schism on a vast scale, and a war with the unbelievers of the east which threatens the very existence of the Ramusian kingdoms.”
“Torunna is no longer Ramusian,” Himerius corrected him quickly. “Nor is Astarac. They have heretics on their thrones. Hebrion, thank God, is coming under the sway of the true Church once more. The bull will have reached Abrusio by now—unlike its heretical king. Abeleyn is finished. Hebrion is ours.”
“And Fimbria?” Betanza asked.
“What of it?”
“More rumours. It is said that a Fimbrian army is on the march eastwards to the relief of Ormann Dyke.”
Himerius waved a hand. “Talk is a farthing a yard. Have we any more word of the Almarkan king’s condition?”
Haukir, the aged and irascible monarch of Almark, was laid low by a fever. The winter journey homewards from the Conclave of Kings had started it. He was bedridden, without issue, and more foul-tempered than ever.
“The commander of the Almarkan garrisons here received word yesterday. He is dying. By now he may even be dead.”
“We have people on hand?”
“Prelate Marat is at his bedside; the two are said to be natural brothers on the father’s side.”
“Whatever. Marat must be present at the end, and the will with him.”
“You truly believe that Haukir may leave his kingdom to the Church?”
“He has no one else save a clutch of sister-sons who amount to nothing. And he has always been a staunch ally of the Inceptine Order. He would have entered it himself had he not been born Royal; he said as much to Marat before the conclave.”
Betanza was silent, thoughtful. Were the Church to inherit the resources of Almark, one of the most powerful kingdoms in the west, it would be unassailable. The anti-Pontiff, or imposter rather, Macrobius, and those monarchs who had recognized him, would face a Church which had become overnight a great secular state.
“Quite an empire we are building up for ourselves,” Betanza said mildly.
“The empire of Ramusio on earth. We are witnessing the symmetry of history, Betanza. The Fimbrian empire was secular, and was brought down by religious wars which established the True Faith across the continent. Now is the time of the second empire, a religious hegemony which will rear up the Kingdom of God on earth. That is my mission. It is why I became Pontiff.”