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“That’s taken some getting used to,” Malcolm said, in a falsely bright tone that hid what he actually thought about it. “I barely know what to do with all my newfound free time.”
“Apparently, you’ve been reading obscure theology,” Gabe grumbled.
“To be fair, I was doing that before. There was supposed to be a minor lunar eclipse tonight, actually. Just think, if Lore hadn’t gone wild that day on the docks, I’d be preparing instead of trekking down into the bowels of the Church with you three.”
Gabe grumbled.
Bringing up the rear of the party, Alie was still quiet, her delicate features composed in an unreadable mask. Lore kept shooting her covert glances, in case the righteous anger she’d displayed when Lore told her about Bellegarde had somehow collapsed into grief, but the other woman’s face gave no clue to what was going on in her head.
Alie was Bastian’s half sister. Lore didn’t plan to tell anyone—it wasn’t hers to tell—but dread chewed up her middle when she thought about what that kind of information might do. What it might mean.
Alie was an Arceneaux heir, another one of Apollius’s chosen line. Did He know? What would He do about it?
What would Kirythea do, if they found out?
Finally, Gabe stopped his seemingly endless trek down the dark, damp hallway, the light of the torch wavering over the number-marked blocks of stone. Lore squinted to see the number they’d arrived at: 918.
The number didn’t have any special significance to her, but when she looked at Malcolm, his eyes were wide. “Tract Nine Hundred Eighteen,” he murmured. “Only the Fount is eternal.”
Lore frowned. “I’ve never heard that one.”
“You wouldn’t have.” Gabe didn’t take his attention from the stone, as if his eye were a hammer that could break the stone room open. “It was never officially in the Compendium. One of the first priests brought a letter from Apollius back from the Mount with that line in it. The letters were included in the first few drafts of the Compendium, but they were taken out later.”
“Looks like I’m not the only one reading obscure theology,” Malcolm muttered.
“So the prophecies down here are organized by… what? The Tract most relevant to the content?” Lore took a small step closer to the wall. Mortem was thick in the air around them, all but humming through the stone, making her palms itch and her heartbeat slow.
“Not exactly.” Gabe sighed. “They’re organized by the Tract that the prophet was meditating on when they had the vision.”
“Of course Anton was meditating on stricken Tracts that no one can access but Church officials,” Lore grumbled. “Why wouldn’t he be?”
Malcolm gestured to Lore, then to the door. “Neither Gabe nor I can sense enough Mortem to undo the lock. All you, Sainted Queen.”
“I will give you whatever jewel strikes your fancy from the treasury if you promise never to call me that again.” Lore said it like a joke, but they all knew it wasn’t.
“You’d better get used to it,” Gabe said darkly, with no trace of a joke at all.
Shaking out her hands, Lore moved forward again, the Mortem awareness growing until she could nearly hear it, a soft not-sound like the hush of the tide against the shore. Lore wasn’t sure how much of it was the magic in the stone and how much of it was the magic within her.
When she touched the wall, the force of it nearly threw her head back, a curl of cold seeping through her hands and down through her core. Her breath hissed between her teeth, and vaguely, she was aware of Gabe, moving forward as if he could help her. But he left her alone. There was nothing he could do.
The lock on the secret room was basically the same as the lock in the catacombs where the bodies from the villages had been hidden. A knot with a trip mechanism, a puzzle box that would straighten when solved and outline the door. This one used quite a bit more Mortem than the one in the catacombs. The prophecy must really pack a punch if it was more closely guarded than an army of the undead.
A few moments more and Lore untangled the puzzle, the Mortem within her pushing out through her hands to turn over the knot within the wall. The rock around it was brittle, but not terribly so. She found herself very thankful for that, when she thought of the miles of dirt and Church above their heads.
Lore dropped her hands as the lock unraveled, turned up her palms to inspect the gray stars there. Strands of Mortem still clung to her, like they had in the catacombs. For a moment, that set panic into her middle, but then Lore took a breath, centered herself. Pulled a little bit at that shining length of gold that lay alongside her darkness, the sun to its moon.
Spiritum shone around her fingers, a pale-gold glitter that lasted only a heartbeat and then was gone, leaving only the gray starbursts. They looked slightly larger than before, climbing nearly to her first knuckle.
She turned, jerked a thumb at the door, now clearly outlined. “All done.”
Malcolm and Alie moved forward eagerly, pushing open the door with the groan of unused hinges and rubbing stone. Gabe entered more warily, torch still burning in his hand.
With another steeling breath, Lore followed.
For a ritualistically sealed room holding a very volatile prophecy, it wasn’t much to look at. Stone walls, stone floors, though not damp like the corridor outside. Lore supposed rats and other vermin weren’t an issue, what with the Mortem-locked door. One sconce on the wall, illuminated by Gabe’s torch; he touched the flame to its wick and it went up immediately, a tall spike of fire.
The weirdly steady light from the sconce cleared shadows from the corners of the small room, finally lighting up the prophecy itself. A stone lectern stood in the center of the room, holding a single scroll beneath a glass dome. The dome was similar to the ones lining the tables in the library, but without a door in the top—the glass was a tomb, and the paper within was never meant to leave it again. A reliquary, holy and untouchable.
