Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (29 page)

“The last of his wounds, the one that killed him, was when King Egnacias had him gelded. In some older versions of the tale, the king ordered him used as a woman as well. That is why you will see the cult of Saint Malachus established in places very far from Salventum. He is she, and she is we. Thus the goddess hides us in plain sight, behind the mask of a man of their god.”

“This is a shrine to the goddess?” Severa asked, startled.

“This is a shrine to Saint Malachus. Everyone knows that. Perhaps it is something more for those with the eyes to see. But first, the sisters wish to know why the daughter of Severus Patronus seeks out the goddess. Are you not cleansed? Are you not purified by the Immaculate? By what right do you seek access to the secret mysteries?”

It was a question Severa had been considering herself for the last two nights. “The priests tell me I am cleansed, but I do not feel clean. They tell me I am purified, and yet my heart is full of shame. But I am a woman. I claim the secret mysteries by my womanhood.”

The old woman shook her head. “It is an answer, but not a sufficient one. Do you bleed?”

“Do I bleed? Of course—” Severa cut herself short. The woman was telling her something. Of course merely being a woman wasn’t enough. “I claim the secret mysteries of the goddess by the blood the moons call from me.”

The woman nodded and grunted as she pushed herself back to her feet. She nodded stiffly to the statue, then beckoned to Severa. “I have something to show you.”

Severa felt a little silly, but she imitated the woman’s gesture and bowed before the saint’s impassive, particolored face. She followed the old woman as she shuffled down a narrow brick passage that was lit by a single torch flickering in its sconce. It led to a room that was barely better lit than the passageway, an unadorned chamber with a brick floor and crumbling stucco exposing the bricks beneath it. In the middle of a room was a strange bronze contraption, a metal disk supported by a wooden tripod. On its rim, each of the 22 letters of the alphabet were inscribed.

“Can you read?” the woman asked her. Severa nodded. “You have a question for me.”

“How did you know?” Severa stared at her, astonished.

The woman only shook her head and made a wheezing noise that Severa didn’t immediately recognize as laughter.

“Few come to me without questions. They say you were brought here because you took a lover and were discovered. You want to know if he loves you still?”

“I did not take a lover!” Severa protested, stung by the unfairness of the stigma.

“But you would have, had your family not prevented you, yes?” The woman wheezed and shook her head again. “I have eyes, girl. You may be a maiden yet, but your body betrays you. Those ripe young curves are itching to be taken and conquered, to be mounted and ridden. That is the way of the goddess, and you will fight her in vain. She is stronger than parents, stronger than patricians, stronger even than great men such as Severus Patronus. For the journey to reach its end, every step along the way must be taken in its time. The Maiden must be loved by men before she can become the Mother.”

The old woman withdrew a long thread from her bodice and muttered something Severa couldn’t understand as she ran her thumb and forefinger along its length. “Give me your ring,” she demanded unexpectedly.

Severa reluctantly complied; it took some effort to work the simple gold ring adorned with a single amethyst off her finger.

But the woman didn’t pocket the ring or slip it on, as Severa half-expected. Instead, she slipped the thread through the ring and held it suspended over the etched bronze disk.

“Your lover. What was his name?”

“Clusius. Silicus Clusius.”

The witch, for Severa was now convinced the old woman had to be Idemeta Venfica, began to chant in a tongue that was not Amorran. It sounded similar. She could almost understand a few words, but it sounded crude and rough. She wondered if it might be the original tongue of the Utruccans and reminded herself to ask Father or one of his scribes about it.

Then she gasped. The ring was swinging, somewhat like a pendulum, but in a pattern that was anything but natural. It leaped from one letter to the next. As she watched, it indicated the letters r and t, then u twice, followed by an s.

It didn’t make any sense to her, but the old woman dowsing the letters seemed to understand it. “How?” the old woman hissed. “Tell me how, in the name of the Crone—the goddess requires it!”

The ring moved from letter to letter, beginning with the letter c and spelling out the word cruentes. Severa stifled a cry. She suddenly knew what she had missed at the beginning of the first word. As tears began to run from her eyes, she watched as the last word was spelled. Sands. The answer to the witch’s question was
bloody sands
and the first word had been
mortuus
. Dead.

Clusius was dead now, slain on the very sands on which he had triumphed so many times. It could have been an accident, it could have simply been that the beautiful young man who had awoken her heart finally encountered a more deadly opponent. But she doubted it. Her father could have arranged Clusius’s murder in a hundred ways. There were a thousand stories about murders in the arena, from poisoned weapons that killed with a scratch to soporific seasonings that slowed a fighter’s reactions just enough to make him vulnerable.

She was suddenly angry. Very angry.

The crone could see the rage in her eyes.

“My lady, I am sorry. Do not be angry with me!”

“I am not angry with you,” Severa said, staring past the woman, staring past the walls, and seeing nothing but the cold expression on her father’s face the night he’d caught her slipping out of the house. “You said the goddess is stronger than men, even men such as my father?”

“She is, my lady. She is indeed.”

Severa took a deep, deep breath. With it, she could almost feel the hate and anger penetrating down to the very depths of her soul, burning the last vestiges of her innocence from her.

“Then you must teach me, Idemeta Venfica. You must teach me of the goddess!”

The old woman sat back and looked deeply into her eyes. Then she looked away, as if she did not like what she saw there. “If the goddess calls you, Severa, it is not for me to deny you. But I can only teach you a little, for you will not be here in Salventum for long. You must find a teacher in Amorr.”

“There are those who worship the goddess in Amorr?” Severa found it hard to believe. It was forbidden to worship the old gods, forbidden on the pain of death for man, woman, or child.

The old woman smiled, exposing gums that were missing more teeth than remained. “There are those who worship the goddess everywhere, daughter of Severus Patronus. The goddess is older than your city, older than your Sanctiff, older even than your religion. If you wish, I will put the mark on you, and in her time, the goddess will come. But you must be certain, girl, because come she will, whether you later wish it or not.”

Severa stared at the old woman, knowing she was standing on the very edge of a precipice, at the brink of a new dawn that could change her life forever. She thought of her father, of her family, of her tall, fierce brothers and her innocent little sister. She could turn and walk away now, and her life would go on as before, the comfortable life of a patrician’s daughter, a patrician’s wife, a patrician’s mother. Then she thought of a beautiful boy and a brilliant smile, and a red token wrapped around his wrist. He was dead now, murdered, and all because she was powerless to resist, helpless, and entirely in the dark about the invisible hand that had struck him down. The invisible hand of her father.

“Let her come, Old Woman,” she hissed angrily. “Give me the mark, and let her come!”

CORVUS

They had made excellent time, all things considered, thought Corvus as he and Saturnius approached the bridge over the river that separated the Republic of Amorr from the vast empire over which it ruled. They had left most of the twenty guards who had accompanied them the day before, freeing them to separate and visit their families, which were settled in Vallyrium. The two who lacked families, and the two whose families lived in the city, were following a few lengths behind where they could talk freely without concern for their officers overhearing. Saturnius had initially balked at abandoning most of their honor guard, but he’d withdrawn his objections when Corvus had pointed out that no brigand would attempt to interfere with six armed men wearing legionary cloaks within a day’s ride of Amorr.

He was more eager than ever to see Romilia but reluctantly concluded that it was Magnus to whom they must go first. Corvus didn’t relish delivering the bones that were presently stowed away on the back of one of their two pack horses. But over the course of their travels he had convinced himself that Magnus would be inclined to receive the news as a proper stoic should. Did he not pride himself on his equanimity? The guards at the bridge tower recognized their rank and saluted as he and Saturnius passed. One of them must have been acquainted with one of the legionaries, as a series of glad cries erupted behind them.

Corvus smiled at the sight of the hustle and bustle of the city life that was so familiar, and yet seemed so foreign after four months in the wilderness of Gorignia. The smells were nearly as strong as the stench of the battlefield from which they’d come, but far more varied and significantly less vile. And some of them were mouth-wateringly delicious.

“I have dreamed about those for months,” Saturnius said, eyeing a vendor who was selling garlic-fried songbirds on a stick.

“Go on then, buy as many as you like. Get me one, no two, as well.”

“As the consul commands,” Saturnius said with a grin. He didn’t even bother dickering with the vendor, but simply grabbed a handful, tossed the man a silver coin, and popped one in his mouth as he rejoined Corvus. “Mmmmph, now that is really good! Why can’t our cursed cooks manage to feed us decently if these fellows can create such delicacies out of the birds they catch on the street?”

Corvus wrinkled his nose after taking a bite of his bird. It was crunchy, and all he could taste was the potent garlic in which the little bird had apparently been stuffed, rubbed, and fried. “I think you could serve goblin this way and it would taste no different.”

“If goblin tasted like this, I’d eat it.” Saturnius vowed. “It would certainly simplify the logistical situation.”

“My son once told me he read the orcs do just that when they march. They use the goblins as shock troops and provisions alike. Probably just a story, though. They’re also said to grow from rocks. Or maybe that’s trolls, I don’t recall.”

“Not a bad idea, actually. Although I don’t see either the men or the Church smiling on it.” He looked at Corvus appraisingly. “And I can’t imagine you’d be good for anything but soup, being as lean and stringy as you are.”

They had no sooner turned into the quarter in which both Magnus and Corvus himself resided when Corvus spotted a pair of familiar faces among a group of young men dicing on a corner. One was Marcipor, his son’s longtime slave, and the other was a man from Magnus’s stables. Both of them looked up at the sound of the iron-shod hooves on the cobblestones, but their reactions were completely different. Marcipor smiled and rose to his feet, but Magnus’s stable slave’s eyes narrowed and after exchanging a word or two with the young man holding the stakes, he ran off in the direction of Magnus’s domus.

Corvus sighed. It wasn’t as if he intended to surprise Magnus, but something about the slave’s reaction suggested that there might be trouble ahead.

He glanced back. The four guards were only a few lengths behind them. But surely they wouldn’t be needed!

“My lord Corvus, welcome back to Amorr,” Marcipor said, following his words with a deep and theatrical bow. The slave was a tall, golden lion of a man but about as martial as a kitten. He was deeply attached to Corvus’s son, and Corvus found him quite likable in his own right. “Did my master accompany you?”

“I’m afraid not, Marce,” Corvus replied. “But thank you, it is good to see a friendly face. Speaking of which, that slave, Magnus’s man. He ran off to warn Magnus, I presume, and he did not appear pleased.”

It was as if a light switched off. Marcipor’s face abruptly grew serious and his voice dropped. “I fear your welcome will be rather chillier at Magnus’s manse, my lord. There are rumors abounding, some of which I can scarcely credit! It is said that Gaius Valerius is dead, and not by the hand of the enemy either.”

Corvus and Saturnius looked at each other. Had word of the execution gotten back ahead of them somehow? Was it even possible?

“Who says it?” he asked the slave. “Who told you?”

“Sextus,” Marcipor replied. Corvus shook his head. Magnus must already know then, for he recalled that the young slave was as close to Marcus’s cousin as he was to Marcus himself. Damn that Clodipor. He should have sent the man back at once, empty-handed, no matter how strange it would have seemed under the circumstances.

“Trouble?” Saturnius asked.

“There may be.” Corvus reached into one of his saddlebags and withdrew a scroll with a broken Valerian seal. “Marce, run to the Senate, as quickly as you can. Find the primus fascitor and tell him their new Consul Aquilae requires eight fascitors at Magnus’s domus at once. At once! Accept no delays, and tell them to run, don’t walk. The primus should comply once he learns you’re of my household, but give him this letter if he requires additional convincing.”