Look. Look. Look.
Falstaff plunged the needle down with a speed that defied his meagre form until its spike met skin. Our gasps were lost amongst the chorus of the acolytes, and I blinked, ready to witness the sight of a body slinking to the floor to bleed itself dry.
But that moment never came.
A restless sort of bustling reverberated through the rods, the laurels shuffling their feet, and I along with them. Falstaff raised the laurellian male’s hand, squeezing from his index finger whatmust have been a singular drop of blood. His helm fell to watch it drip to the roots below.
No slit throat, no sliced artery. No dead laurel.
Chapter sixteen
Ashara
The Goodbye
Tis’ in the Blood God’s mighty hands where the due of every living thing must be rendered… -12:10 - The Book of Dendralis
The restlessness swelled into an excitable buzzing. Something sliced through the damp air, zesty and sharp, cutting through the tang of blood and salt. It wasn’t relief, not quite, but it was something—something foolish…something dangerous. I didn’t allow myself the indulgence of it.
The laurel at the foot of the tree rotated his hand, holding it aloft to the light and inspecting the small wound. He must have posed a question to Falstaff, who answered with a firm nod of his helm, and the sound of tentative laughter fluttered into the blood-soaked air. It was a strange thing, something that couldn’t survive in the dark for too long. It soon faded to nothing, replaced by a cautious silence.
It was almost unnoticeable at first, the small puddle of red encircling his feet. I assumed it was the blood, a small mire of it, that had dripped from the leaves of the Blood Tree above. The laurel certainly didn’t notice, intent on his hand, examining it this way and that. But it didn’t stay a puddle for long.
A hand reached for mine, fingers fidgeting until they found the tips of my own. It was not the claw of an acolyte, but something softer and warmer than their clammy, frigid touch. The acorn-haired laurel’s fingers threaded through mine, and a tear slid down my cheek. It was a tender thing, her hand in mine. More tender than my mother’s comb in my hair, or even Demetri’s hand between my thighs. Despite that tenderness, her grip was unyielding as we watched the blood plague take root and rise. It was the first one I’d ever seen, though raised on stories of their ruin. It unfolded in an age of its own, both endless and fleeting, crusting over the laurel’s body like frost coating a flower.
His screaming started when it reached his knees.
Body thrashing, he tried to lurch away from its tendrils but remained melded to the spot. It crystallised his thighs first, then his waist and shoulders.
“Accept this act of divinity, laurel! Let it take you!” Druid Falstaff stepped to the side, the tips of his boots retreating from the plague’s edge. “This has been ordained, and so it shalt be. Look upon ye Lord’s works and despair not, but rejoice!” Lifting his bony arms to the canopy, his helm tilted skyward, glinting yellow in the sun’s singular ray.
The laurel screamed.
Oh, how he screamed.
“It burns! It burns! It bu—” His anguished cries gargled to nothing as the blood plague crawled into his open mouth, pouring down his throat. It bled across his jaw and smothered his nose, a red mass gushing into his eyes and blanketing each strand of hair.
Upon the dais now stood a statue of bloodstone. Twisted in the throes of agony, his body was frozen into a terrible, awful thing, pain etched into every angle. It was there in the jut of his hips, the clench of his jaw, the bend of his crumpled waist. It was pain made immortal, and it was coming for us all.
Our entwined hands shook, but I refused to let go, and neither did she as the realisation hit us both. There would be no salvation; we would not be spared. Demetri’s body would petrify, just like all the rest. Something nuzzled deep into the base of my skull, formless at first, limbless. But then it grew arms, legs, and it raced to the forefront of my mind to sit alongside the vision of Falstaff and the statue of stone.
Where are the bodies?
There should be thousands,millions,of statues like the First. Enough to line every wall of the templum’s vast reach. Every chappellum. Every street. Every mountain, valley, and lake. Yes, bodies rotted, shrivelled to nought but mulch and dirt. But bloodstone…
“A testament to the Blood God’s power,” Capriche had preached. “Blood Stone is eternal, incorruptible to flame or blade. The First is eternal.”
The drag of something clunking up the roots drew my gaze. Lugged by acolytes, their thin arms bulging with veins the colour of figs, were two hammers. Hammers with heads not of iron or rock, but of deep, red stone: bloodstone. They stood on either side of the crystallised laurel, raising their mallets.
With a deafening crack, the hammerheads descended upon his torso, splintering him from navel to neck, sending fissures cascading outward. He crumbled to pebbles, the whole of him reduced to nothing but rubble. Falstaff tipped his helm to the sun, his body quaking as he heaved a lungful of air. His fingers followed the swirling plumes of dust from the bloodstone, the tips of them tracing each loop.
Producing small brooms from the folds of their robes, the acolytes swept the laurel’s remains from the dais, leaving the rest of the dust to drift into the shadows below.
With sickening clarity, it dawned on me this is how my father, Adelaide, mymother, had met their end: demolished and wrecked, as if they’d never even existed at all.
***
With each laurel offered, a part of me sundered—splinters catching like kindling, burning what was left of me from the inside out. I was certain there would be nothing left for the Other to take by the end, not when the Blood God had demanded so much. The ritual’s consumption of us had a rhythm, near-melodical in its ability to keep time, keep beat:stairs, needles, plague. Hammers, brooms, stairs.Falstaff and his acolytes rendered dues with the inhuman speed of a god, and the ruthlessness to match.
