Page 198 of Eldritch
“And should it collapse on you while inside?” Gaze trailing up the front of the structure, I estimated it to be about thirty meters in height to the top of its steeple.
“I suppose you’ll have your atonement for what happened in the woods.”
“I don’t wish you dead. Just incredibly remorseful.”
“I’d sooner be crushed by the decayed remains of a church than feel remorse for what I did.” He patted his chest and leg, performing his usual check for weapons, drawing my attention to how many he kept strapped to his body—three daggers across his chest, one at his hip, and, of course, that obnoxious sword at his back.
“And you call me stubborn.”
“I prefer to call it tenaciously protective of what’smine.”
It didn’t matter that I was frustrated by what he’d done, that damned word still cast a flutter in my stomach. He slippedthrough the stone archway where a door might’ve been at one time, just as Father, Corwin, and Aleysia trotted up on their horses.
“This is foolish. Absolutely foolish!” Father said, shifting uncomfortably in his saddle.
“Why are you so afraid of ghosts, Father?” My question wasn’t mocking, but curious.
“During my time with the Lyverian priestess, I saw things. The dead. They rose.”
The back of my neck tingled. Could he have possibly seen what I’d seen? Those horribly mangled versions of the dead?
“The priestess showed you visions of this?”
“They worship death. Specifically, a goddess named Morsana.”
It was strange to hear her name in the mortal lands, more so from the mouth of my father, given he didn’t believe in any god but his own. “And what about her?”
“She guides them. And she’s not a benevolent goddess. At times, she is cruel.”
Tell me about it.
“So, you believe the dead still walk the grounds of this place?” I kept on with my prying.
“I’m certain of it. They are angry and hostile. Many of my fellow Red Men have gone missing on their way to Lyveria.”
“Well, there you have it,” Aleysia chimed in, expectedly. “It was a sacton who killed them, so of course they’re angry at clergymen. Probably wasn’t wise of you to wear that damned red robe, Father. You’ve likely doomed us all.”
Zevander strode out of the church, shoving his sword inside the scabbard at his back. “Seems stable. No sign of ghosts.”
While a smile crept over my face, Father’s didn’t carry a speck of amusement.
“It’s early. They’ll be afoot later, and you’ll be sorry you doubted me.”
“Well, until then, I intend to sit on something more comfortable than this damn saddle,” I said, throwing my leg over to dismount.
Hands to my waist, Zevander lifted me off the horse and grabbed the reins, before guiding Vane into the lower level, where stone pillars stood about the broken and busted pews. Inside, vegetation had grown up from the floor, a small sapling taking root where the altar would’ve been, its leggy branches bare and deadened by the cold.
Somehow fitting for the surrounding abandonment. Solemn and burdened by an eerie stillness.
Corwin settled the other horses near a patch of overgrown grass in the corner of the room, where they lowered their head to graze.
I followed Zevander up a narrow, stone stairwell to an upper level of what must’ve once been the gallery. The roof had caved in, offering a view of the twilit sky overhead, while part of the wall across from us had crumbled, the view beyond it drawing me closer. The woods stretched on for miles toward the faint outline of mountains in the distance.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Zevander said, and I turned to see him staring at me. “Seeing beauty through the eyes of something so ruined and ugly.”
Smiling, I turned back to the view. “If you’re referring to yourself, you hardly qualify as ugly.”
“You flatter me.”
