“I won’t insult your intelligence, Tyler, by explaining what you’re to do with this. But I want it done within a month. If not, you will watch me douse every single one of your books in oil and strike a match. I will do it personally, on the front steps of the Arvath, and you will watch.”
Tyler cast around for answers, but there was nothing, only the pile of torn pages on the ground.
“Take it, Tyler.”
He took the vial.
“Come with me,” the Holy Father commanded, opening the door. Tyler grabbed his crutches and lurched forward to follow. Several brothers and fathers had their doors open, and they stared at Tyler as he went by, following the Holy Father down the hallway toward the staircase. Tyler sensed them, but did not see them, his mind utterly blank now. It seemed important not to think of his books, and that meant not thinking of anything at all.
At the end of the corridor, they emerged onto the staircase landing. Tyler tried to keep his eyes on the ground, but at the last moment he couldn’t help looking up. Seth was there, sitting on his stool as he had done every day for the past two weeks, his legs spread wide to display the mangled area between them. The actual wound had been cauterized and stitched up somehow, but what remained was almost worse, a charred and seamed landscape of red flesh. Pink streaks radiated outward along Seth’s inner thighs, signifying the beginnings of infection. Hung around his neck was a placard with one scrawled word:
ABOMINATION
Seth stared blankly down the hallway, his gaze so fixed that Tyler wondered if they were keeping him dulled with some sort of narcotic. But no, what killed pain would also kill the point of the lesson, wouldn’t it? For the first week, Seth’s moans of agony had been audible all the way down the hall, and none of them had slept for days.
Tyler closed his eyes and then, mercifully, they were past Seth and down the stairs. Anders began to speak again, his voice pitched low enough to reach Tyler, but not Brother Jennings, who trailed silently several feet behind. “I am not unaware, Tyler, that this must be an unpleasant errand for you. And every unpleasant errand requires not only punishment for failure, but reward for success.”
Tyler followed mutely, still trying to push Seth’s image from his mind. The Holy Father’s talk of reward did not cheer him in the slightest; in his childhood, Tyler had seen village dogs trained in much the same way for the ring. When an animal was beaten hard enough, it would work just to not be beaten, and consider itself well rewarded. The status quo could shift at any time.
My books.
The numbness broke slightly and Tyler felt agony there, waiting, like freezing water beneath thin ice. He focused on walking, feeling each step as an individual ache. The old Holy Father had always used the lift to transport him between floors, but Anders rarely did so. He seemed to enjoy demonstrating his own fitness, and now he was surely enjoying Tyler’s discomfort as well. The arthritis had woken up, causing Tyler’s hip to throb unhappily. His broken leg snarled with each step, even though Tyler was careful never to let it bump against the ground. He concentrated on each of these discomforts, almost relishing them, easy pains that were entirely physical.
After endless flights of stairs, they passed the ground floor and continued down the steps into the Arvath’s basement. Tyler had never been to the basement, which was only a resting place for Holy Fathers deceased. No one came down here except for two unfortunate brothers who had drawn the duty to keep the crypts free of insects and rats. These two, men unfamiliar to Tyler, sprang to their feet and bowed as the Holy Father entered, Tyler following at his heels like a ghost.
Anders took the torch that one of the young men offered and led Tyler into the tombs. It was bone-cold down here, and Tyler shivered in his thin robes. They passed the entrances to many crypts, decorated arches of stone that stretched high above them on both sides. The corpses of Holy Fathers were always embalmed before being laid to rest, but Tyler still thought that he could smell death in this place. Briefly, he wondered if Anders had brought him down here to kill him, and then he discarded that idea. He was needed.
God, please show me the way out.
The crypts were behind them now. Ahead was only a single large stone door, covered with a layer of dust. As they drew up in front of it, Anders produced a simple iron key.
“Look at me, Tyler.”
Tyler looked up, but found that he couldn’t meet the other man’s eyes. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the bridge of Anders’s nose.
“I am the only person with a key to this door, Tyler. But if you succeed in your task, I will give this key to you.”
He opened the door, though it required several twists of the key to do so. The door squealed miserably as the Holy Father shoved it open; no one had entered this room in a long time. The Holy Father beckoned him inside, but Tyler already knew, somehow, what would be there, and as light from the torch fell over the room, despair wrapped around Tyler’s heart.
The room was full of books. Someone had constructed shelves for them, the sort of rough-hewn furniture that had predominated after the Landing, when even simple tools were difficult to come by. Tyler’s eyes roamed helplessly across the room: shelf after shelf of books, thousands of them, all the way down to the far wall.
He stepped forward, drawn helplessly, reaching out to touch the books on their shelves. Some were leather-bound, some paper. No one had cared for them, or even bothered to organize them; titles and authors had been thrown together haphazardly, stacked horizontally on the shelves. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. The sight hurt Tyler’s heart.
“Tyler.”
He started. For a moment, he’d forgotten that the Holy Father was there.
“If you succeed,” the Holy Father said softly, “not only will you have the key to this room, but you will become the Arvath’s first librarian. You will cease to be the Keep Priest, and I will relieve you of all other duties. No one will ever bother you again. Your only task will be to live down here and take care of these books.”
Tyler turned back to stare at the room, breathing in the smell of old paper. He could spend the rest of his life in here and not read the same book twice.
“The poison is delayed,” the Holy Father continued. “It will take some two or three hours for the Queen to show the first symptoms. This is your window to return to the Arvath.”
“They’ll come after me. The Mace will.”
“Perhaps. But not even the Mace will dare to remove you from the Arvath without my permission. You saw how they had to lure Matthew to the Keep in order to take him. You may never be able to leave the Arvath again, but so long as you make it back, you will be safe from reprisal, and you may live your life out here, with these books.”
Thinking of the Mace’s uncanny ability to appear and disappear from walls at will, Tyler almost smiled. The Mace would find him, no matter where he went, but Tyler didn’t bother to correct the Holy Father. He wondered what the Queen would say if she could see this room.
“What happens after she dies?” he asked, startling himself.
“There will be a bit of squabbling, certainly, but eventually the Tear will become a Mort protectorate.”
Tyler blinked. “The Red Queen is a noted unbeliever. Will that not be worse for the Church?”
“No.” A smile played at the corners of Anders’s mouth. “Everything has already been arranged.”
Poor bedfellows, Tyler thought sickly, recalling the Mace’s words. “My leg is still weak, Your Holiness. I would like to go back upstairs.”
“Of course,” Anders replied, his tone solicitous now. “We will go at once.”
Anders locked the door behind them and they moved slowly back between the tombs. Tyler’s leg had gotten so bad that he was now forced to hobble.