Page 35 of The Lost Reliquary
After Belspire, the distance between Nolan and me narrows, and our travels fall into an easy rhythm. Ride during the day. Camp during the night. One of us makes a fire and cooks (Nolan). One of us tends the horses (me). We buy supplies from farms that we pass, though Nolan remarks that he wishes there was time to hunt the copious rabbits we see along the roads. I tell him I don’t like rabbit, but I’m happy to make time to catch a trout. The nagging feeling of being away from the Goddess’s light has grown, and though Nolan must be feeling it too, he doesn’t mention it, so neither do I. On the second morning after Belspire, when he’s finished his morning prayers, he suggests we spar. I agree, realizing I haven’t passed so many days without training in years. Prior Petronilla would be ashamed.
I know he’s good with a sword; I’ve seen him fight. But going up against him, even mockingly… He moves without an ounce of hesitation. Finds every opening and presses it. Even with my two sickles against his one blade, he triumphs the first two mornings we fight. On the third, I turn his sword away with one sickle and finish with theother at his throat, but not until after he leaves a scratch along one forearm. It isn’t deep, but still, he helps me wash and wrap it.
The next several mornings we have to end in a draw, or else risk losing half the day.
It’s stupid, but I’m almost disappointed when we begin to get close to Novena. As little information as we have to go on, it could be where the heretics have hidden the reliquary, which means we need to be ready. And not only for whom we might find. The conflict between the Green God and Tempestra-Enoch was environmentally devasting. Poison fumes emanated from the city for years. The land grew toxic and twisted for miles around. Still almost a day away, we pass into brittle, emaciated forests where only the most tenacious plant life seems to have taken root, and the needle-eyed birds don’t sing. Not exactly welcoming. And it isn’t encouraging that we haven’t seen another soul since turning off the main road onto the one that leads by Novena.
When we crest a hill that overlooks the city, I understand why.
I expected devastation. What we find falls closer to a nightmare. The hole left by the divine conflict is massive, a great round maw punched into the earth, gaping as if trying to swallow what remnants of the city surround it, like it did the temple that once sat at its center. What’s left of the city’s buildings are skeletal, blanketed by a hellish briar. Blackened vines thicker than wine barrels. Thorns the size of my forearm. At first glance, it has the appearance of life, the roots and other growths twisting menacingly before pouring over the edge of the hole. But it’s clear nothing here is alive.
The Endless Storm, the hellscape writhing before me… it’s hard to believe the heretics hang their faith on such adulterated remnants of divinity.
Mortimer shimmies uncomfortably beneath me. I pat his neck. “Looks like a fun place.”
“Don’t stop,” says Nolan. “We’re just travelers passing by, remember?”
Even though we haven’t seen anyone since yesterday, that doesn’t mean there aren’t eyes watching. Especially if Magda’s deduction is correct. We travel several leagues past the former city before tying up the horses and doubling back through the woods. If there is anyonehere, we don’t want them to see us, or to scare them into fleeing. By the time we get back to Novena, the sun has started to set. Sharpened by dusk and shadows, the old battleground is even more ominous, the huge, black pit frankly menacing.
When true night falls, we move. Nolan and I are shadows, silent as we make our way through the ruins. It’s slow going, navigating the labyrinth of vines and thorns. And a little disconcerting. We see nothing living, not even the sort of vermin that manages to persist pretty much anywhere else.
Move, then wait. Move, then wait. We make a pattern of it, circling our way around the massive pit, keeping to sheltered nooks as we search for any signs of human trespass. Nolan is focused, intense. It reminds me of the fight in the Cathedral, his determination then—full commitment, injury or death be damned. Both of us have vowed to return the reliquary to the Goddess, but our reasons couldn’t be more different, and it’s gotten hard to ignore the seed of something—guilt?—that has sprouted within me. Not that it alters my plans in any way, but now success will mean sacrificing the strange, fledgling comradery that has grown between Nolan and me. Part of me regrets that.
But it’s a stupid part.
As long as I’m bound to the Goddess, there is no room in my world for anything so weak and fragile as… whatever it is we’ve cobbled together.
By midnight, I’m growing wearied with our fruitless search. I suspect Nolan feels the same when his occasional shifts in position grow more frequent and noticeable. But the plan was to spend the night searching, so there’s no talk of giving up. Instead, I swallow yawn after yawn and pick through what Magda said to us, looking for another explanation for what she overheard. Maybe she lied. Or, more likely, she was simply mistaken, putting together snippets of information in the wrong way.
Then, something shimmers in my vision. I blink, thinking boredom is playing tricks on me, but it remains: the faintest of glows in a building up ahead. I reach out, brushing my fingers lightly over Nolan’s arm to get his attention, then point. Moving in unison, we abandon our hiding spot, slipping through the shadows as we approach the light. It’slow enough that a pair of normal eyes would have trouble discerning it—nothing more than a diffuse glow around a shaded window, on the second floor of a pitted stone building.
So, we’re not the only living things in Novena after all.
Nolan begins to move, but I grab him.
Footsteps.
They’re faint, so faint that it’s half instinct that alerted me, but as soon as I signal, Nolan indicates he hears them as well. We duck behind a crumbled wall.
Several minutes pass before their source comes into view: three figures, cloaked in black. They appear out of an alley and approach a spot in the lighted building. The wall there is partially obstructed by ruins, but as we watch, they disappear into it.
Nolan draws a rectangle in the air with one finger.There must be a door.
I nod. We wait a bit longer before heading toward the debris. Even up close, nothing about it seems suspect, but after a bit of searching we find what we are looking for: a gap that leads to the remains of a doorway. Nolan slips through, with me on his heels. As soon as we are inside, I draw my sickles. The room is dark and empty, save for the decayed remains of a table in one corner. But there’s a stairway. Nolan takes the lead, sword drawn. The light grows stronger, and I no longer doubt Magda. Something clandestine is most definitely happening here tonight.
At the top of the stairs we find a short hallway filled with doors. Most are gone, rotted away, but there is one at the very end, around which a thin line of light escapes. Nolan and I slink to it. Voices sound from within, and I hear the faint notes of gathered bodies shifting around.
“—came as quickly as we could.” A male’s voice. Young, from the sound of it. “There was no time to make inquiries. And it would have been too dangerous anyway.”
“She’s dead.” A woman’s voice breaks in, sharp and angry. “She must be. They didn’t burn her in front of the city, but she must be dead.”
They’re talking about Magda.
Heretics in Belspire. It’s a lucky thing we didn’t encounter them on the road; they must have left the city around the same time we did.
“Maybe she died during their questioning,” says a third person, gender indeterminate.
“It doesn’t matter,” a deep masculine voice cuts in. “She didn’t know anything useful.”
