We must not let an excess of one virtue lead us into a deficiency of another.Compassion must always balance Courage, but never outweigh it.
Horu of Elgin, Pedagogue of the Mortal Church,The Anakriarch’s Catechism,YC434
The tree-devil hung by chains.Smoke had ceased to trickle where manacles of raw iron met her flesh, but left a stench like a forest fire after rain.Blood dripped onto the grate below.A steady rhythm, somewhat slower than it usually was, and unaccompanied by the gnashing teeth Torin ought to have elicited by now.
He set down his calipers beside his other instruments and again reached for the silver ring.Gritty blood still clung to its intricate design.Leaves and vines entwining skulls had been etched into the plain silver band.The shadows cast by the single lantern filled the design with deep, foreboding crevices.Enchanted, certainly, for when he had removed the woman’s finger—and the ring with it—the last clinging remnants of her glamour had faded like cobwebs before a torch.Magical, but not like anything he had seen before.
‘There is an interesting paradox,’ he said, running his finger along the etching.‘One I have encountered in rooms like this before.The more resilient I find my subject, the more I see the virtue in her, and the dangerous taint of vice in what I must do.In the end, it becomes a contest of your endurance for pain against mine for spiritual disquiet.’He placed the ring beside his instruments.‘I’ve yet to find a heathen body that can outlast my soul.How long, do you think, will it take one of your kind to bleed out?’
She said nothing.In the dim cell, she seemed almost human, even stripped of her glamour and all but a scrap of cloth around her waist—more to preserve his dignity than hers.If he did not by now know well the rough, vegetal texture of her skin, the inhuman sharpness of her features, the soulless depth of her eyes, he might have believed she were no more than a heathen sorceress.An agent of the druids, perhaps, with some magical geas over the rimewolf that had been her companion.
But no.He had cut into that flesh, and found it so profoundly different.Skin not only rough but woody, like the bark of a sapling.Blood as gritty and viscous as sap.Meat all but desiccated.And the smell… almostpleasant.Not the usual tang of salt, blood and offal.A smell that, coupled with the screams, the give of flesh beneath his tools, and the desperation and pain in a pleading eye, challenged his temperance.
Spiritual disquiet.To be an anakriarch was to forswear all that distracted from the Church’s mission, to dedicate mind and body and every waking hour to the pursuit of truth in the furtherance and defence of that mission.As such, this work, in rooms like this, with these tools, was the nearest he came to other mortal bodies.Intimate work.But he must perceive it as work.Not indulge in the back and forth, the building tension, the ultimate release of spilled secrets.
One could not guard the sanctity of the Church if one did not guard one’s own soul and virtue.
‘Even should I buckle before you do, this can only end one way.You must see that.’Torin reached again for the dagger.Smoke trickled from the droplets of blood clinging to its blade.He held its needle tip just above the orbit of her eye.Her lid flickered, her defiance warring against a latent instinct towards the preservation of such a vulnerable and delicate organ.
‘What is your errand?’he asked.‘A very simple question.I know already that it had something to do with that festival, with the horrors unleashed there last night.There is even a possibility, however slight, that we are on the same side in this.Drawn to destroy the haunting that plagues this kingdom.If that proves true, I may let you live a while longer.If not, when I know all I need I will give you a dignified death.So your choice, then, becomes one of degree—how painful a road to the grave will you walk?’
Still, she said nothing.Admirable fortitude.Not half the templars in the service of the Church had the woman’s endurance and fidelity.
‘Very well.’Torin braced himself.Slowly, he moved the knife.Fae flesh smoked at the touch of raw iron.Blood sizzled.The aqueous humour of her eye bubbled and hissed as he pressed the knife just deep enough to destroy her sight, but not to kill her.He twisted it, digging the edge of the blade into the orbital bone.
‘When you are ready to talk, we can discuss removing that,’ he said, stepping away.
A spasm shook her face, twisted her mouth, filled her throat with an excruciating rattle that was half laugh, half roar.
A reaction, at least.A beginning.
She spoke only after he turned to leave.
‘Come back.’Her voice was light, childish.In no pain at all.
He faced her again, and her smile was wolfish.
‘Take the other eye.My lady has plenty more.’
‘Who is your lady?’Torin demanded.Possibilities flitted through his mind—Queen Medrith, the sorceress Fola—but to speak any of them would tarnish whatever information he drew from the tree-devil.This was the moment of promise, the tension before release, when the dam broke and the truth spilled.‘Tell me, and I will remove the knife and ease your pain.’
Her tongue darted between her teeth, lapping up a trickle of her own viscous blood.
He dealt more pain, with irons and calipers, the drill and the brand.She yielded only acrid smoke and that strange, unsettling blood.
An exquisite shudder seized him as he left her.He had come so close, yet she had proven more resilient than any subject he had ever dealt with.Nausea followed in pleasure’s trembling wake.But he was strong.An anakriarch.Practitioner of all nine virtues.Stalwart.Steady.
The need to heave up his stomach he attributed not to the doing of his duty, but to the lingering curse of the sorceress Fola and her wretched staff.
* * *
Torin returned to his chambers to find Orn awake.Bleary-eyed, still feverish, but awake.
Anwe sat beside him, her own wounds still seeping into her bandages, feeding him spoonfuls from a mug of broth.As Torin entered the room, Orn stirred and tried to raise himself up on his elbows, quivering with pain.Torin realised that he was trying to compress his spine, to return to normal, more human proportions.
‘There’s no need for that,’ Torin said, crossing to the young knight’s side.
Gratitude flickered across Orn’s exhausted face.Torin felt shame that he had been so transparent in his discomfort around the lad’s strange physiognomy.It wasn’t Orn’s fault, he told himself.Certainly a waste to exert himself only to ease Torin’s disquiet.
