“Yes it does, but as they say, possession finds ways and means to keep itself.” Praxle stepped over to the window and gazed out, surveying the ruins of the cathedral. “The prelate is very defensive about the Orb, make no mistake. I know I frustrated him by pressing about military matters earlier, which is why I took such pains to fawn all over him just now. No, he’d never admit they had the Orb, and he certainly would never turn it over. I’ll have to resort to other means.”
“Won’t that cause trouble when they discover the Orb’s missing?”
“It won’t matter, Jeffers. Because then I’ll be the one who has possession.”
5
The Catacombs
Teron’s training, his rigorous indoctrination, his faith, and his instinct all told him to proceed forward alone, that to do otherwise was to rely on someone else who would prove weaker than he. Nevertheless, his intellect carried the day. He did not know whom he pursued, the threat they posed, or their intent. He had never been within the confines of the cathedral ruins. No one in the monastery went there. As near as he could tell, he was the only one in the Monastery of Pastoral Solitude who was even aware that intruders were here—and he was exhausted from his afternoon workout. He had to inform someone, even if it risked exposing his presence to whomever lurked within the debris of the cathedral.
Regret and self-reproach cursing him even as he did it, he found several fist-sized chunks of masonry and threw one as hard as he could at the main hall. He followed it with another and then a third. The rocks sailed through the air and cracked against the exterior wall, one by one.
One of the brothers of the monastery poked his head out, looking around for the source of the disturbance. Teron raised his arms over his head, crossing the forearms to form an X. Invaders. The brother clenched a fist at his shoulder. Understood. Teron held both palms up, dropped them, then raised one hand turned sideways. Unknown people. Less than ten. The brother signaled that he understood. Teron pointed his arm at the ruins of the cathedral, then swept it down. The brother clenched a fist a third time and disappeared back into the building.
Teron turned back to the ruins. He ran his fingers along the wall leading to the broken window over his head, looking for any traces or imperfections that would indicate the intruder had climbed the wall. He found none. He stooped down to the small window that led into the basement. The window had once been an iron lattice filled with small diamond-shaped panes. The lattice was badly broken and had rusted, but Teron noted that the ironwork along the bottom of the opening had been pushed flat, and some of the cracks in the rusted iron showed a sliver of shiny metal, untouched by the weather.
Teron glanced at the broken glass on the sill and the ground outside the window, then at his bare feet. He knew there was likely more broken glass inside. He prayed he could land gently enough that none of it would pierce his soles. With a shrug of resignation, he slipped through the small window and dropped noiselessly to the stone floor.
He landed in a crouch, hearing the creak of stressed glass beneath his toughened feet. He held his position for several heartbeats, listening intently and staring straight at the darkest shadow he could find. Soon his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the sunken scriptorium level of the cathedral foundation and details become clearer. He saw a rectangle of darker black—an open doorway. He glanced at the floor, the illumination given by the slanting shaft of sunlight revealed that footsteps had broken the layer of dust and ash that had lain here, undisturbed save by the occasional rodent, for so many years.
A small shadow moved at the window as Flotsam peered in and meowed.
“I don’t like it either,” whispered Teron, “I just wish I had your eyes.”
He dropped his breathing into a slow and easy cycle, the air flowing noiselessly in and out of his lungs. He moved forward in attack stance, a ready half-crouch. His feet moved gently, stepping one after the other in a rolling gait designed to provide steady pressure and thus minimize the creaking of the floorboards. His aching muscles protested the further abuse in the wake of his workout, but he ignored their warnings.
He left the room and entered the hallway beyond. The gloom deepened. He focused his eyes on nothing, knowing that his peripheral vision grew more reliable as the darkness deepened. The trail, he noted, had broadened. The dust was disturbed by the passage of multiple tracks.
I thank you, Lady, that you led me here, he prayed. I might not have been able to follow the trail otherwise.
He continued toward the center of the ruined structure and the darkness deepened. Occasional small holes in the decaying wooden flooring of the cathedral above admitted a secondary glow from the shafts of miasmic sunlight that pierced the ruined sanctuary.
As he continued slowly, he realized another reason why the interlopers chose to strike in broad daylight—at night, the light of their lanterns might be seen from afar as they explored, but in the daytime, the sunshine obliterated any such telltale glow.
The trail moved into an apse in an area so dark he could only sense its openness by the changes in the behavior of the air. He heard voices—faint, distorted. For a moment he wondered if he was hearing the agonies of the Crying Fields, almost never heard in the daylight but somehow persistent here, hidden from the sun … but after careful consideration, the timbre of the voices was not one of hate and suffering.
It’s them, he thought. I must be at a stairwell of some sort, and they on a lower level where they think their voices will go unheard.
He lowered himself to the ground. His muscles were somewhat tight from skipping the warm-down stretching after his workout, and they acceded unwillingly. He tapped around the floor with his fingers in a broadening circle and found the top stair of the descending flight. Feeling around to locate the balusters, he rose again and descended the stairs as silent as a viper, fingers lightly tracing the handrail. He felt his heart preparing to quicken, felt the sensation of adrenaline infusing into his tired, uncertain muscles. His stomach growled, sounding to him as loud as a great cats mating call. He tightened his tunic once more.
The catacomb level was carved out of the ground itself and laid with quarried slabs. The stone stairs were built in a gradual spiral wide enough to bear a coffin, pallbearers, and light-bearing acolytes, all at once. The steps were shallow and expertly placed. Teron lost his sense of direction by the time he was halfway down. However, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, he realized that he could see faint shapes in the darkness, and he knew he was getting close to the intruders and their lanterns. In this perfect darkness, even the faintest indirect light was visible.
He heard a few more words whispered among the strangers. Turning his head, he figured out which direction the sound was coming from. The quiet conversation ended, then Teron heard a grating sound as of sand and stone. He glided closer, slowly, one finger trailing along the wall to ensure his path was straight.
He heard quiet shuffling ahead, and the smothering darkness waned ever so slightly as more reflected light spilled into the hallway. His pace quickened.
At that moment, his stomach chose to make the loudest of its protestations.
He froze. So did the others.
He heard someone start to whisper, but the sound was immediately cut off by a sharp, “Tch!”
Teron held his position, although his muscles were very unhappy to freeze in a ready stance. For many long moments he stood there. The light neither rose nor faded, and the only thing Teron heard was the ringing in his ears.
Somewhere in the darkness he heard the sigh of steel gliding out of a well-oiled scabbard—then footsteps, a slow, stealthy gait born of the hunter’s confidence. He tried to use his peripheral vision to watch for motion, but his eyes were having trouble seeing anything in the unchanging darkness, and his mind was starting to imagine it saw the apparitions of the Crying Fields.