“So, this really is a place where Sainthood can be found,” Sir Kodelai said with a reverent sigh. No one could fault him for his holy ambition. “It’s been four generations since a Saint was named. Is it possible that we needed a place like this to finally achieve holy perfection before the face of the God?”
“If we find the Cup, perhaps,” the High Saint said in a quelling tone. By the glimmer in his eye, I thought he found it a personal affront that someone else would consider themselves to be worthy of Sainthood when he was standing right there — practically an inch from their noses — being the most austerely holy of them all. “Let us pause and pray.”
I wasn’t interested in listening to more of their chatter and I didn’t want to spend a moment more lingering here than I had to — not even in prayer. There was an itch between my shoulder blades that wouldn’t go away, and the manner in which the paladins all paused to kneel together around the broken triptych made my skin crawl.
The sea breeze drifted in through the panes of the triptych in sharp, cold gusts. The original window had depicted two characters, one pale in whites and blues, the other formed of dusky dark crimsons and flaring golds. Flowers in varying states of bloom were scattered across the bottoms of their individual panes. Someone had taken considerable efforts to depict each in their own window and then the pair of them tangled together in the larger middle windowpane. Just enough of the windows had been lost that both individual windows were missing the creatures’ faces and whatever had been in their hands.
The dark creature seemed to stand in a sea of water and the light creature in a sea of fire. These seas were depicted in the colors of the other. But in the center, there was no sea, just two beings — man, beast, devil, or angel, who could say — tangled together in what could have been an embrace, a mutual death, or a terrifying battle. Whichever it was, one thing was very strange. One of the two characters — and it was impossible to tell which one — was holding a trident, and each of the three tips was streaked in red.
I didn’t want to be near that window, though I could not have said why. That it was placed directly over the rhyme I’d recited for the others only made my stomach flip more. It was possible these monks merely had a theology that involved unfamiliar symbols and that my reaction was mere prejudice.
Unlikely. You’ve never been very prejudiced, my girl, except against the rich.
On the whole, I was inclined to agree with Sir Branson. Something was wrong here. If this place truly created Saints, then perhaps it weeded out unworthy candidates by showing them that window and then tossing anyone who didn’t see how problematic it was.
I would be the first to confess I hadn’t seen the great places of the earth’s kingdoms, despite my wide and varied travels, but among those I had seen, there’d always been a clear theme. Good was depicted as slaying evil. Had this been a knight with his foot on a devil’s neck and that trident stuck in its back, I would have been happy to kneel in prayer before it. It deeply troubled me that the others didn’t see the wrongness of a stalemate.
One of them added a happy verse to the song.
Yes, that was my first clue that the High Saint was not as high as he claimed to be.
The voice in my head snickered.
I adore your judgmental heart, little snackling. Don’t ever change it. It brings you closer and closer to me. Let’s go see what other paladins we can break, shall we?
Do you ever trip on your own certainty, Hxyaltrytchus?
No, but the tail can be problematic.
And now my cheeks were heating at being complimented by a demon for what was surely a sin. Tonight, I’d need to mortify my flesh to make penance. Perhaps I’d spend another night without the tent.
Or you could pass on the tea the Engineers make. That would be a fitting punishment for a judging heart.
The God forfend. That punishment was a bit steep.
For the first time since this began, I thought the laughter in my head might be Sir Branson’s.
I broke off from the others, hoping that in their reverence they wouldn’t notice me shuddering as I slipped away, and headed down the bank of windows at speed toward the towering feet of the statue that looked too much like our Prince Paladin. Brindle loped beside me. Even given his possessed state, it felt better to have him with me.
It is better. You’d miss us if we left. Who would teach you to look past the surface?
I already did that well enough.
Yes, but not like I do. I can show you the infected heart of a man and tell you how he will rot.
What a delight.
And then I can offer recipes for rotted heart.
The light spilling from the stone-encased windows was unnerving — it seemed too bright and the sun still too low for all that had happened so far. But perhaps, if I searched steadily and carefully, I could complete the search in one day and I wouldn’t have to pass through that eerie door again. I hadn’t liked confessing my core sin. Saying it aloud felt too much like cementing it into reality. And what if I had to add another sin to the list tomorrow? What if I was struck dead for greed, as I was fairly certain Hefertus nearly had been?
You have all your things. You could camp in here. Wasn’t that your original intention? The horse will be fine. He’s beside a stream, and I’m sure the Engineers won’t be so heartless as to not check on the animals.
That had been my original plan. I glanced up above me at the gleaming black form barely visible from the marble floor. I wasn’t sure, anymore, that I could sleep in here. In fact, I was hardly certain that I could sleep above, knowing there was a demon trapped just below me.
And yet you sleep every night with one cuddled next to you. Ironic.
Brindle, oblivious to our conversation, trotted ahead, sniffing everything, from the mosaic map on the floor for a world that didn’t exist, to the feet of the statues. I hoped he didn’t feel the need to scent mark them.
