"Good to… good to breathe once more, my own breath. Even if it is at the end, even if we don't have much time. Even if he's already on his way here."
"You have to help me, then. There's little enough time without-"
The door began to unlatch. I threw myself against it. Whoever was on the other side began hammering at the metal.
"Help me, old man! Don't stand by and watch it end this way!"
"It's already ended, woman. You cannot stand against Nathaniel. I don't care what tricks they taught you in that monastery. Blades are blades. He will cut you down."
"It's no damn wonder they've been able to keep you people-" I grunted as a great deal of force was applied to the door. I staggered back, then threw myself against it again. Planting my sword, I invoked the Stones of Averon and set my shoulder against the steel. Malcolm was still watching me.
"No damn wonder they've been able to keep you on the leash for so long," I said through gritted teeth. "You give up before the fight is started."
"Not so," he said. "The fight has been over for a long time. Amon's Betrayal doomed us. We have been working to preserve the memory of the man, while shunning his darkness ever since. Any death is good for us."
"I would love to discuss theology, honest to Brothers I would." Another hammer into the door, another twisting of power against my shield. "But I think you're telling the wrong story."
"You would have us deny the Scholar, I know. The Cult of Morgan would like to line up all the scions of Amon and cut us down, but we are trying to make good on-"
"That's not what I meant." I nodded to the archive that Cassandra had dropped when she changed into the bodysuit. "That's an archive of Amon. Came into the hands of my Cult just-" I lost my breath and something nearly forced the door. "Just fucking look at it. Cassandra highlighted the important stuff."
He wrinkled his brow and, as if there weren't an army of men on the other side of the door trying to kill us both, knelt curiously by the archive and ran his hands over it.
"Fascinating. A lost archive. And how did you say you came across it?" I didn't answer, and he didn't seem to need me to. "It must have been from the final flight of Amon. When he was driven from the city, he took his closest followers and went north. Hid among the scattered tribes of the Rethari. The armies of the Fallen Brother had to fight their way through legions of those scaled bastards to get to him. Ah, but get to him they did. Much was lost, in those last days. Perhaps this was recovered there. But by whom, I wonder? One of your people?" he asked, and looked at me.
I was busy invoking mantles of strength and fortification, against the onslaught on the other side of that door. They had brought a lot of clever noetics to the fight, and I was having trouble holding out. I wished the guy would get to the reading, and stop blabbing on about the last days of Amon. Didn't have the breath to spare for the necessary obscenities, though. He seemed to get the idea.
"Oh, well. Perhaps those answers will come another day. Listen to me, prattling on about other days, when this is clearly our last. Ah. Some habits are hard to break." He spun up the archive and peered into the shifting icons of the screen. Even under duress as I was, I could tell that he was good with the machine, in a way that Cassandra couldn't approach. She had said that the ones picked for Alexander's special service were the best of the best. I believed it.
He took it all in quickly. The old man's face went slack as he absorbed the archive, wrinkles smoothing out, mouth hanging open. When it was done, he leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.
"The implications are… curious." He rubbed his face and stood, then began to pace around the bodies of his fallen comrades. Hardly aware of his surroundings, or the battle I was fighting at the door. "This must have been purged from the Library's records, and our access to the mind below is severely monitored. But the path taken does not match the knowledge."
"Uh-huh," I grunted.
"Why would he kill his brother, when he's just determined that the noet must be distributed? My gods, what does this mean for the Ruin? If we've been cutting off other conduits and simply venting the extra power, while keeping Alexander at the top of his game… What does this mean?"
"Uh-huh. Hm. Gah-" I was pushed away from the door, and had to draw my sword and fight back a brief tide of whiteshirts before I could get it closed again.
"I wonder if Alexander knew all this? I wonder if that's what led him to build this place? But he couldn't have, if he ordered Amon killed. It does reflect his understanding of noetic force, that there's only so much at a time and it can be distributed across many gods. That's the whole impetus behind the culling. But if Amon's observations are true—
The door boomed open, throwing me across the room. I landed in a heap at the base of the dome. Malcolm watched me go, then looked curiously at the door. Realization dawned across his wrinkled old face.
"Ah. I see. Well, I suppose it was nice while it lasted."
"Quitter," I spat, and came swirling to my feet, blade already swinging through the stations of defense.
What came through the door was not what I expected. Not what I was prepared to face.
A group of coldmen, solid-looking guys with blades on their wrists, frost and fog wicking off their bodies as they walked in. And in their midst, standing taller than the rest, Barnabas Silent, Fratriarch of Morgan.
His skin was utterly pale against the harsh steel of his new garments. The injuries he had suffered while in captivity had faded away, though traces of the scars stood out in puckered white lines across his cheeks. He stood tall, as he always had. Pewter blue greaves and chest plate had been bolted on over his robe, and the lower half of his face was covered with a plate-mail bevor. His eyes were as clear as glass, and they leaked oily tears down his wrinkled face. In his hands he held a wicked hammer of blue steel, just as he had in his youth.
"Don't look at me like that, Eva. This is difficult enough," he said. His voice was a static-laced grating, only hinting at the gentle man who had raised me.
"What have they done, Barnabas?" I whispered.
"Killed me, Eva. Killed me and raised me and made me into something else."
"And have they sent you to do the same to me?"
He shook that great, heavy head of his and smiled.
"They sent me because there is no one else you would listen to. This has all been an awful mistake, Eva. They learned about the archive from their agents, but didn't know what it was. They kidnapped me because they suspected, because they were startled that the Fratriarch of Morgan would associate with an Amonite. It was a horrible, brutal thing to do, but it is done. What Alexander has done is unforgivable. What he has done to our Cult, to our god…" He placed the palm of his hand against his chest. "What he has done to us, Eva, can never be undone. And it can never be repaid. But this has to stop."
I put the point of my sword into the ground in front of me, like a statue at guard in the king's chamber.
"You have to be kidding me, Frat. Unforgivable? Does that even begin to cover two centuries of… of deception? I have no interest in that debt being repaid. You're right there. It can't be repaid, like some kind of bar tab." I drew the sword to my side, tip still on the ground, and leaned against the pommel with all my weight. "But what settlement I can make in Alexander's flesh, I'll take."
"Think about that. Think of the consequences to the Fraterdom, Eva. What will become of the tribes of man, if the last of their gods falls? And think about who would benefit from such chaos." He took a great step toward me. The air around me chilled, and my lungs ached with the sudden cold. "Morgan has been the tool of Alexander for too long. Do not submit yourself to a new master, just to spite your old."