The golem holding my ankles began to walk, swinging me side to side with his long strides. I wiggled in his grasp, trying to catch sight of what was happening.
Hefertus collected Adalbrand’s unconscious form and shot me a death glare as he slung the man over his shoulders. Behind him, Cleft carried Brindle by the foot. My dog yipped and growled, sounding desperate and panicked.
Well, isn’t this a treat. Paladin versus paladin and not a one who wants to be near you, demon consort.
He laughed long and haunting in my mind as I blinked back tears of frustration, carried to a fate I did not want and had not chosen.
The golem’s strides sent me heaving back and forth, an angry pendulum. I tried to twist to see what the locked door might reveal, but Suture carried me with my back to the door. Instead, I had a good look at the clock. Our cups were slotted in place in an odd pattern I didn’t have time to analyze. What worried me was that they still glowed slightly with an eye-twisting dark light, as if with a power untouched by the God.
We passed it in a moment and found the open door. Cleft went through before me and in my mind, the demon roared out the translation to the next verse of the poem. Or the prophecy. Or the spell. Whichever it may be.
No power is priceless,
No honor unearned,
From storehouse bring wisely,
Add gift to the churn,
A sacrifice given,
An offering made,
What no longer serves you,
Is the price you must pay.
Oh lovely. More sacrifices. I gripped my sword hilt doubly hard, wondering if I’d be able to fight upside down with my feet anchored. If there were sacrifices required, I had a bad feeling that they’d be happy to be rid of me. I would not go like a lamb to slaughter.
And what about Adalbrand? He was in no position to be dragged into a fight. I hadn’t expected those golems to surprise me — a terrible oversight, to be sure. I should have known better. It was always the quiet ones.
Well, not always. I knew a man once who sang while he burned cities. He wasn’t quiet at all.
And I hadn’t expected Hefertus to turn on me after he’d sworn to stand with me.
Yes, well, you didn’t exactly tell him that he was making an alliance with two knights, one paladin defuncti and one demon vivius.
Cute nickname, rotting corpse. I think I’ll call myself Vivius from now on.
There was a sigh in my brain that sounded as world-weary as I felt.
But there was no time to explore any of this. We rounded the curved hall and came out into the great room, and even from my view — upside down — it was spectacular.
When this room had been carved from the rock, someone had said, “I want a vaulted ceiling and a vaulted floor. Make me islands of bleached white skulls of every creature you can find and the spines of great fish. Then splash some purple light around. You know. For mourning and repentance. And don’t forget the books. There should be lots and lots of books. Shelves. Stacks. You know, every way you can think of to include books is what there should be.”
Just like in the previous room, someone had drilled holes in the ceiling, but half of these had been fit somehow with purple glass and the light shone down half purple and half white.
In our liturgy, purple was the color of mourning. And my heart was mourning with the purple. I was mourning that eleven paladins had entered this place and only one seemed to still have his honor intact, and that one was being borne into this place whether he willed it or not by a silent servant.
I love this place entirely. Do you know what it is?
If it was a library, it was a terrible one. The curving walls of the cylindrical vault were lined with books, books, and more books on shelves innumerable. But how anyone would access them, or how they could possibly read them all or even find what they were looking for, seemed like an impossible task. There were deep grooves between some of the shelves, but they were too far apart for steps, and wove too strange a track for a moving ladder. Some spiraled high into the shelves above, others dipped low below and still others wove through the center, crossing at times. The books were shelved between them, positioned to adjust to the widening and narrowing of the space. Since some were higher than my forearm and others as short and narrow as my pinkie finger, there were no shortage of volumes for every space. Even so, the uneven shelving only added to the general look of chaos.
At least the books had been preserved. By all rights, they ought to have crumbled away to nothing in the centuries since the monastery … demonary? … was lost to the world.
It’s a grimivior.
That was entirely unhelpful.
