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It was a long walk, winding through wooden corridors and more now-defunct confessional rooms, a small hallway lined in extra Apollius icons whose marble had gone dingy. Then the halls narrowed, their path taking them from the wider expanse of the Church that housed the South Sanctuary into the thinner part of the building that held storage and cloisters. Every few feet, they passed an empty room with nothing but a bed made up in white linens.
They spooked her a little, these empty cloisters. But the walk gave her time to think. A small detail from the mythology text stuck in her mind, and after turning it over in her own thoughts as much as she could, Lore picked up her pace to come level with Malcolm.
“In the book,” Lore started, “the pronoun for the Fount was capitalized. And It spoke. Neither of those things are typical for normal fountains, in my experience.”
Malcolm shot her a smile, the one that said she’d tripped upon some obscure theology question he was simply thrilled to explain. “It isn’t typical, no. There’s not much documentation about the state of religion before the rise of the pantheon, just a few murals painted in Myrosh and some extremely old texts kept in the archival libraries in Caldien, but the leading theory is that the Fount was actually considered a god Itself.”
Lore could barely conceive of a time before the pantheon. Everything she’d ever known centered on Apollius and Nyxara and the elemental gods. “You mean they worshipped a fountain on an island? Everyone did?”
“Not worshipped, per se.” Malcolm waved his hand in the air, as if balancing an invisible scale. “Revered may be the better verb. The Fount wasn’t a person, not at any time, and It wasn’t anthropomorphized. As best scholars can tell, the Fount was considered the source of the earth.”
Her brow furrowed. “The source of what of the earth?”
“Of the earth.” He grinned. “All the powers that made up the entire world, the… the world’s soul, I guess would be the easiest way to put it. The Fount was the soul of everything. It didn’t require worship or tending or prayer. It just existed.”
“Until Apollius found It.”
“Until Apollius found It, and opened It, and spoke to It.” Malcolm shrugged. “And wrecked It, apparently.”
All godhood passes in selfishness and desperation. It didn’t paint a rosy picture of divinity.
“But was He looking for it? Did He just wash up on the shore of the Golden Mount and stumble upon the world’s soul?” Lore barked a laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “That seems far too convenient to be a coincidence.”
“Who knows? Maybe He was looking for It. Maybe He just got lucky.”
Lore fell silent, but the open questions didn’t sit right with her. She couldn’t believe that Apollius—human Apollius, who surely wasn’t that different in personality from the god He became—had simply happened upon something as ancient and powerful as the Fount.
The myth said He’d asked It the question that had long pulled at His heart. And seemingly hadn’t liked the answer. Surely, He’d been seeking the Fount, thinking It could tell Him something.
Lore shook her head. “If the Fount held the world’s soul—for lack of a better term—and Apollius and the others took Its power, then does that mean They’re the soul of the earth, now?” She didn’t like that prospect, though the world hadn’t necessarily made a good case for itself as being something with an immaculate soul.
Malcolm shrugged again. “I don’t think that’s the kind of question one can answer easily. Like I said, the Fount isn’t the earth’s literal soul—as much as such a thing can be called literal—It’s just the concentrated essence, a place of great power.” A scoff. “You know, assuming It actually exists at all. But as for the question of the world’s soul…” He trailed off, frowned. “I feel like that can’t be determined by one person. Or even a group of people, even powerful ones. The world belongs to more than the powerful. Its soul has to be something we all have a say in, right?”
Lore didn’t have an answer.
She and Malcolm had kept their voices pitched low, not because they didn’t want to be overheard, but just because the atmosphere of these deep places in the Church seemed to call for quiet. Alie kept a few feet behind them, listening but not feeling the need to add to the conversation. Gabe was yards ahead, his back straight, his arms swinging by his sides, like someone marching into a battle instead of a storage room.
Her teeth worried at the inside of her cheek as she watched him. Gabe, who just wanted to be right. Gabe, who just wanted to be good.
How did a man like that cope when both of those things became too complicated to grasp, too ephemeral to hold on to? When the paradigm shifted so far it was nearly unrecognizable, the god you served becoming the evil you guarded against?
She loved him, too. Like with Bastian, it was an obvious thing to admit, once she let herself. The love here was more complicated, tangled up in knots from his betrayal the night of the ritual. But Lore was starting to wonder if she was even capable of feeling love simply. Who she was—what she was becoming—didn’t leave much room for simple.
And should she tell him? That was another thing. She was engaged to Bastian, and even if she couldn’t necessarily see a wedding going forward while they were dealing with all this god mess, surely it wasn’t fair to either of them for her to admit that she loved them both. That she could never make a choice that excluded one or the other.
Eventually, the cloister hallway ended at a small door, another staircase behind it. This one was stone, and already underground. The cold was enough to raise goose bumps on Lore’s arms despite the heat outside. Eventually, the sconces on the walls went dark, and Gabe had to stop and cobble together a torch from some supplies lying by the wall. It lit with barely a touch to the flame.
The supplies pile itself looked old when Lore passed it, the cloths mildewed enough that she was surprised they’d caught at all. Clearly, it’d been a while since anyone came down here.
Right as her thighs were beginning to severely protest the seemingly endless stairs—not the best idea right after the long ride from Courdigne to Dellaire—the corridor leveled, stairs becoming a long, cold hallway, lined in small doors. The walls were damp, and though the flame of Gabe’s torch was steady, its light didn’t do much to illuminate the shadows. Instinctually, they all crept closer to one another, huddling around the yellow glow like children afraid of the dark.
“Well,” Malcolm said, looking to Gabe, “you’re the Priest Exalted, surely you know where the prophecies are kept.”
“I have a vague idea,” Gabe grumbled, his one eye scanning the hall as he moved slowly forward. Malcolm, Alie, and Lore clustered around him; Gabe gave them all a withering look, but didn’t comment, his attention focused elsewhere.
There were no doors in the stone walls. Instead, numbers, but not set out in order, just a senseless chaos. Gabe glanced at Lore over his shoulder, face stern. “When we find the right room, you’ll have to open it. Some of these locks can be opened just by using the Mortem in the stone, but some need more, and I assume Anton’s prophecy will have more security than the rest.”
Right. Because Lore had all the Mortem that once leaked from the catacombs.
