Chapter 89

Cyrillus was halfway into a lecture when a sudden warmth filled him. His hand pistoned out of its own accord and slammed into the polished granite of his desk with a dry crack. A puff of white dust squirted up, and he could only gape, amazed, as thick chunks of the shattered tabletop fell away. The last time he’d displayed such strength was during the Gloriana Crusade, a mace in his fist, his Tome of Detestation swinging from his belt. Marching forward, sure in his purpose, certain of the Goddess at his shoulder.

Lady Cardinal Phoebe cowered under her desk. A looming shadow splashed across the doorway, backlit by a terrible brilliant radiance.

A dreadful voice, a beautiful voice, a black voice of condemnation, a pure voice of salvation thundered from that horrific shadow.

"FIRST THE HOLY BOOKS WILL BE RESTORED, WHICH HAVE PERISHED EVEN FROM THE BEGINNING, AND WERE TAKEN FROM THE FIRST THAT LIVED.

AND HEREIN HAS DECIPHERED PERFECT TRUTH FROM IMPERFECT FALSEHOOD, TRUE RELIGION FROM FALSE AND DAMNABLE ERRORS WITH ALL ARTS; WHICH ARE PROPER TO THE USE OF MAN, THE FIRST AND SANCTIFIED PERFECTION.

WHEN IT HAS BEEN REVEALED; THEN COMES THE END."

Phoebe crammed her fists against her mouth and shrieked over and over again, but her shrieks were whispers against that terrible, wonderful voice.

Everything was exploding deliciously inside Lady Cardinal Gabrielle in great hot surges like waves that washed over her. Miles was simply masterful as a lover; he knew his craft well, and as he surged against her, a thin spike of pain, like a long glass needle stabbed into her guts.

She had time for a brief thought -oh no- before she was swept away on the tide of pleasure that swamped over her and sent her spiralling into unconsciousness. She wasn’t supposed to be fertile at this point in her cycle; that was the whole point of taking advantage of Miles’ skills, but there was no mistaking that skewer of pain as she had it every month, when she was ovulating.

Lady Yuriko jerked in her bedding as she napped the afternoon away. In her dream, little Araya, strange, beautiful Araya was seven years old. The silvery-haired albino girl unsteadily carried a tray with a steaming teapot and two clay cups that clattered as they jostled on the tray. Araya ran towards Yuriko, legs pumping.

"Mama, look! I made tea!" Araya cried excitedly, and at that moment she tripped, pitching forward. She raised the tray in her panic to keep the tea safe; this launched the teapot straight into the air, where it flipped over and dumped the scalding hot contents all across Araya’s back and legs.

Yuriko cradled Araya in her arms as the girl whimpered her pain. Yuriko pulled the young girl close to her, feeling the girl’s body heat through the silk robe she wore.

"I knew I would get burned mother." Araya murmured in a low voice.

"What?" Yuriko asked, confused.

"I saw it this morning. I would finally be able to make tea properly, just like you showed me." Araya whispered. "I knew I would trip. I knew I would get burned."

Yuriko gaped at her. This wasn’t the first time Araya had claimed foreknowledge of things.

"If you knew, then why did you do it?" Yuriko yelled, her throat thick, tears squeezing from her eyes.

Araya hugged her mother tighter. "For this." She murmured.

Celeste was trapped in perpetual midnight. Out across the city she could see lights in every building, on every streetcorner, but the Alstroemeria was pitch black, lightless.

She wandered halls made sinister by thick bands of shadow that concealed everything. No lamps were lit, no candles flickered, all the chandeliers were dark.

Somehow she was in the central nave of the Grand Cathedral on the first floor. Overhead a great spiral staircase, reaching up to the other floors. Somewhere in front of her, the great statue of Celestine, marble wings spread, her fantastic sword Galatine thrust overhead.

Celeste took a tentative step forward, and immediately barked her shin on the edge of the stupid fountain. She bit back a curse and hissed in pain. It was a little easier to see. She circled the edge of the fountain and was suddenly aware that down at the end, down towards the great double doors that rose twenty or thirty feet into the air, someone was waiting. Waiting in the dark. Waiting for her.

She opened her mouth to shout her challenge. She was no sweet milksop. She was from a proud family, with a long line and proper dignity. She was a representative of surely the most important family in the Anglish Empire, which everyone knew was the beacon of civilization in a lightless world. Hers was the genteel fury of civilization. If she was a representative of the strongest family of the Anglish Empire, then it surely fell to her to be that beacon of civility, of humanity.

"Whoever you are-" She began, and a sonorous voice overrode her own. It tolled like a bell, it was the voice of righteous judgement. It crushed her back against the fountain.

"If I pray in the church but do not have love, I am nothing." a figure at the doors declared boldly.

"What? How-? What does that even-" She began, but was cut off again.

"If I can understand the world and all the myriad peoples in it, but do not have love, I am nothing." The voice accused.

"Shut up! Who are you!" She yelled.

"If I have a bloodline stretching back three thousand years, but do not have love, I am nothing." The voice mocked.

"Who are you?" Celeste demanded again. "Is this about charity? Because I can-" She began, but was cut off again.

"If I give all I possess to the poor, but do not have love, I am nothing." The voice immediately replied.

"What do you want?!" Celeste shrieked, her voice cracking.

The figure drew a sword, and Celeste cringed back as the blade, pale white in the dim light of the lightless cathedral, pointed at her.

"Surely violence isn’t the answer..." Celeste began, her voice quavering. "We can come to some-"

She cut off as the blade was hoisted to point to the sky. Instantly, a brilliant golden ball of burning light appeared in the air near the ceiling, excruciating to look at it. It was brilliant, it was dazzling, her eyes stung and watered at the sight of it. The person holding the blade had a leather hat with a wide brim that easily cleared the wearer’s shoulders. Where had she seen a hat like that? It looked so damned familiar. That light- She couldn’t look at the light, and that ridiculous hat shrouded the person in darkness, making it impossible to pick out any identifying characteristics.

"I have created you to feel pain, that you might search for joy." The voice declared from the pit of darkness under the hat.

"I have created you to know fear, that you may seek shelter."

"I have created you to hunger, that you might eat."

"You think to scare me with this... magic show?" Celeste suddenly mocked.

"You were made broken, that you may seek to become one." The voice finished.

"You’ve had your fun, I’ll admit you gave me a good scare, but-" Celeste acknowledged, and then suddenly a pair of great, massive white and gold wings spread out from the figure holding the sword aloft. Celeste’s jaw went slack. The figure leapt, the wings flapped, and suddenly, like a comet falling from the skies, the angel brought the searing blade hurtling downward in a horrific thrust, the blade throwing sparks, arrowing straight for her heart.

"Please!" She shrieked.

The Grand Cardinal, a woman who hadn’t thought of herself as Francesca Bianchi in decades, sat at her private desk in her apartments, writing in her journal.

Page after page of innocuous musings, scriptures, partial reports and reminders to look into things further filled the book. However, embedded in the book was a cipher, the first letter of each first word in every sentence recording her true thoughts. In those codified, secret texts, a wealth of information spilled forth.

She had held suspicions of corruption in the Book of the Golden Lady, but never in her musings had she suspected some blasphemous mutant witch was sitting next to her, laying plans, doing Goddess knew what irreparable damages to the Empire.

She had her own suspicions of Katarina, as well. Suspicions that woke her in the still watches of the night, sweaty, pop-eyed and gasping, a feeling of frantic urgency like a teetering cliff threatening to bury her under an inevitable rockslide.

She had a great many suspicions. One did not become the Grand Cardinal over an empire that spanned five continents without being suspicious of everyone. There was no one she could turn to, however, so she recorded everything as meticulously as she could, compiled it into code, and then burned the uncoded and potentially damning pages.

As she sat the quill down, the wall behind her desk grew wavery, insubstantial. The Grand Cardinal tried to lurch to her feet; was this some sort of magical assault? Assassination? The chair restrained her, her bulk wedging between the arms of her chair and the seat itself. Suddenly the wall grew before her eyes, stretching like taffy, growing up and up and out and out. The sides of her apartment vanished in the haze of distance as somehow her room grew to cathedral size, larger, and still larger.

Her desk, too had changed, at first petrifying into a golden marble and then rising and growing and her chair slid back of its own accord as her desk suddenly became the Grand Bench of the High Court, a squared pillar of golden marble wreathed in vine lilies and a massive golden fleur-de-lys.

The chair she sat on suddenly wrapped itself around her as she slid backwards; her carpet had receded into hexagonal emerald tiles covered over and over in golden script, each bigger than her head, each clear as green glass.

She couldn’t remember screaming. She couldn’t tell if she was screaming. Her chest hurt, was constricted with terror, her limbs were weak and trembly, her muscles turned to water. Had she messed herself? She couldn’t tell. Her whole body and mind was filled with raw, gripping terror and high panic. She wanted to escape, she couldn’t. She wanted to pass out, she couldn’t. She desperately wished it were a dream, she couldn’t believe that, despite the overwhelming surreality of it all.

A figure appeared at the base of the High Bench, a figure she knew well, but in her terror, could not recognize. Massive white-gold wings sprouted from her back, a sword in her right hand raised towards the heavens, sheathed in a billowing white-gold flame that roiled off the weapon like smoke. In the face of that brilliance, that blinding radiance, the angel was unrecognizable.

"I AM THE HERALD THAT YOU DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE. I AM THAT WHICH WILL TAKE YOUR PLACE WHEN YOU FALL. WHAT YOU DENY, I WILL ACCEPT; WHAT YOU FAIL TO DO, I WILL COMPLETE. HATE ME IF YOU MUST, DO NOT FEAR ME IF YOU ARE THAT ARROGANT, BUT IGNORE MY WARNINGS AT YOUR PERIL. PREPARE."

The voice was horrible, it scraped at her soul like brittle chunks of shattered glass and gritted stone. It felt as if her guts were being ripped from her body, like her bones were shivering into splinters.

A brilliant spotlight suddenly illuminated the judge, cloaking her features in sharp, blinding relief of dazzling light and impenetrable shadow. That the judge was a woman was without question or doubt. No man would dare set foot up there.

"I GAVE YOU EVERY CHANCE TO SUCCEED." The judge declared, and suddenly, Francesca knew who it was. She quailed inside, her hands locked on the railing.

"You did." She agreed, her mouth drying.

"WHAT HAS BEEN DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE. THE FRUIT CANNOT BE RETURNED TO THE TREE. ITS SEED MUST BE PLANTED." The judge declared solemnly.

Francesca’s face screwed up quizzically at that. She wasn’t sure at all what that could mean.

"MY HOUSE HAS BEEN POISONED." the judge stated flatly.

"I know, I mean, I’ve tried, I can- I can fix this!" The Grand Cardinal agreed instantly.

"THE FIRE HAS DIED, IT CANNOT BE REKINDLED. IT MUST BE STRUCK ANEW. THE SWORD IS THE KEY TO THE GATES IT GUARDED. THE WAY IS OPEN NOW."

Francesca gasped for breath. Her head hurt and it swam with imprecations and portents. What was this? An indictment? A threat? A promise? A prophecy? A warning?

"Please!" Francesca called out, her voice cracking. "Give us another chance!" She blurted. "I can- we can make it right!" She blabbered. "I just need time!"

When next the judge spoke, it came with the tone of finality, the knell of doom.

"THE OLD COVENANT IS BROKEN. THE PROMISES CAN NO LONGER BE FULFILLED. WHAT CAN NO LONGER BE GIVEN, MUST BE TAKEN. WHAT ONCE WAS, CAN BE AGAIN. A NEW PARADISE AWAITS FOR THOSE BRAVE ENOUGH TO SEIZE IT."

Francesca shook her head, baffled. "What does that mean? That there are corrupt elements in the church; I know, I’ve been trying to pluck them out, I just-" She shook her head and looked at her hands. "I’m just one woman! Tell me what to do, speak plainly so I can understand!" She cried.

The room was silent for what seemed like an eternity.

"I SENT YOU A VISION TWENTY YEARS AGO." The judge reminded her pointedly.

Francesca nodded. "You did." She agreed. "I have tried to live my life in accordance to that dream." She offered, and the judge thrust an accusatory gesture with the gavel at the fat woman that quivered and shuddered in the Petitioner’s Stand.

"MY HERALD STANDS READY SHOULD YOU FAIL."

"Yes!" Francesca replied instantly. "Please! Command me! I will obey, without fail!"

"I DO NOT BAKE BREAD, NOR DO I COOK WITH HONEY. I BAKE THE BODY AND THE BLOOD AND THE SOUL."

Suddenly she found herself in her bedroom, returned to its normal proportions, sobbing into the carpet.

Olivia leaned her head back and pinched the bridge of her nose. These papers were almost painful to read. No, she corrected herself, rubbing her eyes. The ache in her eyes was real; these reports really were painful to read.

Suddenly her heart leapt in her chest, and Olivia took a startled breath. She fell out of her chair, and suddenly, bizarrely, she was in bed, making slow, almost languorous love with Katarina. She pulled away, heart hammering in her chest.

"What are you doing here, Katarina?" She asked, and the taller woman kissed her. "Hush." She growled in Olivia’s ear.

"You shouldn’t be here, Katarina." She objected, though it was far from a strenuous objection.

"Hush." Katarina repeated.

"Okay." Olivia relented, knowing it for a dream, and not caring. It was the best kind of dream. She returned Katarina’s embrace happily.

Across the Alstroemeria, young and old, high and low, each received a vision. For some it was a warm memory of loved ones, sisters and mothers, daughters and lovers. For others, it was a nightmarish, terrifying vision where they were endlessly stalked by some nameless, faceless horror.

Katarina opened eyes that were gritty with exhaustion. All of her bones and joints were sore, her muscles felt like they were full of sand. She stared uncomprehending at the carpet next to her face. What was she doing on the floor?

What a strange feeling, to be caged in a prison of flesh and bone, precariously caught in the cusp between life and death, inexorably marching towards the finality of mortality and yet being utterly incapable of stopping.

Katarina jolted. That thought was not her own, and yet it echoed across her mind like the roar of her gun.

She watched, horrified, as her hand went through a series of exploratory movements quite unlike her. Fingers curling and uncurling, a tense fist, a beckoning gesture, the universally known gesture for money, thumb rubbing the tips of the index and middle fingers of her hand.

Katarina could only watch, terror infusing every fiber of her being as her body got to her feet quite without her control. She took a hesitant, shuffling, lurching step, and then another towards her desk.

Possessed. Katarina had heard of it before, but hadn’t actually seen it. Somehow, while she lay on the floor, some malign spirit had-

Her thoughts broke off as she didn’t so much sit in her chair at her desk but fell into it. Suddenly, there was a draining sensation throughout her whole body, as if someone had uncorked her and all of her vital essence were draining out like beer from a keg.

Simurgh appeared next to her, then. Katarina stared up at the angelic spirit, baffled.

"You mortals have it rough." Simurgh mused. "But no matter." She added decisively. She bent to the crate, levered it open, and took out one of the Emerald Tablets and set it on the desk in front of Katarina. She set down a large book next to it, and opened it to the first page, which was blank.

"It falls to you to translate this. That’s your mission." Simurgh stated decisively. "You were supposed to-" She cut herself off, and gestured at the tablet, a sheet of emerald about three feet long and a foot and a half wide. The emerald was pure and clear, the most perfect emerald that Katarina had ever seen, and was covered in gold script in the ancient tongue, the sacred language, the Language of Creation.

"You will translate this." Simurgh repeated.

"I can’t-" Katarina began, and Simurgh nodded. "That’s why I possessed you. I will act as a buffer between you and the tablet." She assured the Witch Hunter. "Now we begin."

As Simurgh vanished, she could feel the angelic spirit filling her. It was a unpleasant, detestable feeling. She put one hand on the emerald tablet, picked up her pen, and bent to her work.

Olivia was beside herself with suffering. Surely there were none so tormented as her. The reports from the Cultus Sancte were mind-numbingly dull. Dull enough, certainly, that she fell asleep and fell out of her chair while dreaming of Katarina.

Olivia didn’t often remember her dreams. If they happened, they fled her mind long before she woke. This dream held an unusual sort of clarity or vitality, enough so that when Olivia had woken up she’d reached for Katarina and been both mystified and baffled that the Witch Hunter was not next to her.

Olivia got up and stretched, feeling the bones in her back pop comfortably. She knew what she would do.

First, she’d have dinner with Katarina, take a bath, and make love with the Witch Hunter, then face this nightmare of a report that took up several crates of pages in the morning.

She stepped out of her apartments and locked the door, and nodded to the guards around the doorway.

She started reaching for Katarina’s doorknob when a large spark leapt from the latch to her hand with a snap, shocking her. She let out a yelp of shock, jerking her hand back and shaking the numbness from it. After a second, she knocked on the door.

With no answer forthcoming, she withdrew her key and unlocked the door, and stepped into Katarina’s sitting room.

"You have a key?" A woman’s voice accosted her, and she looked up, searching for the speaker. She located the other woman, reclining on a divan.

Olivia nodded, not recognizing the other woman, despite an overwhelming sense of familiarity. "Katarina gave it back to me." She explained, racking her mind to try to recall if she’d ever seen her before.

The woman was composed of an unearthly, elegant beauty, with pale skin, glossy black hair, and eyes like dark stormclouds. Her figure was obscured with a long black dress that concealed her feet.

"Who are you?" Olivia asked, and took a step away from the door. The moment she moved, the woman swung her feet to the floor and rose to a standing position in a quick, graceful move.

"Katarina is friendly to you." The woman stated, "And so for her sake I am friendly to you." she began. "But Katarina is busy. Her concentration must not be disrupted, for any reason." The woman warned.

Olivia frowned, trying to place her. "Who are you?" She repeated. "I’m certain I’ve seen you before."

"If you take but one more step, I will have to stop you." The woman warned, and Olivia fancied she could hear the low growl of thunder under the woman’s voice.

Olivia frowned at the woman. "I go where I will, child." She warned, and the other woman shook her head.

"If you take but one more step, I will have to end you." The woman warned again.

"I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t command a Lady Cardinal." Olivia replied, growing angry.

The woman laughed mockingly, and Olivia could hear the thunder under that laugh. "Be careful, Lady Cardinal." the lady warned gently. "I come before the world like the sickle before the harvest. Be friendly unto me, for I am the servant of your goddess, the lady of heaven."

Thunder rumbled again, this time, real, actual thunder. A spike of fear lanced through Olivia’s heart, and she raised a hand to her chest.

"You." Olivia breathed. "You’re ... you’re her." She murmured. "You’re the Im Adad."

The woman smiled, but to Olivia the smile looked a trifle savage, a touch strange, an affectation, a mask, a face that was put on for the benefit for someone else but not worn well or comfortably. Whatever she was in the room with, it wasn’t human. Olivia's legs trembled. So much adrenaline thundered through her she couldn’t move. She wasn’t sure, because everything was hazy and numb, but she thought she might have pissed herself.

"Find your feet, human. I will not carry you."

Olivia scrambled to find her footing, and the angelic spirit nodded.

"Katarina is busy." The angelic spirit repeated. "Her concentration must not be broken. For now, that means no visitors." She explained.

"I can’t see her?" She asked, and the angel shook her head.

"For how long?" She asked, and the angel shook her head again. "For as long as it takes." The angel replied ambiguously.

Olivia nodded, and the angel pointed to the door. Olivia nodded, and hurried out, without looking back.

The celestial settled herself back on the divan.

"So she yells at me, right? Unbelievable. How in the bloody Void am I supposed to know what a ‘Golden Grenache’ is?" One man was grumbling to another. He was dressed in the livery of a servant.

"You’re not." The other man replied sardonically. "You’re just supposed to repeat it to me." he added, "and then I get it for you. Grabbing a bottle at random doesn’t do anything but piss her off." This took place in the wine cellars of the Alstroemeria.

"Incidentally, it also pisses me off, because I’m in charge of inventory. You go taking shit at random again, and I’ll have your hands. You talk to me, or you don’t get a bottle."

A gorgeous woman slipped past the two men, turning both of their heads. Her hair was glossy black, her eyes mysterious in the low light of the cellars, her figure concealed and tantalizingly teased with a slinky black dress that clung to her figure lasciviously.

The two men watched, scarcely breathing, as the woman casually helped herself to seven bottles of De Cazanove Citrus, a rare and invigorating sparkling wine, added them to a leather satchel, and ghosted on out.

The two men watched her sway up the stairs with their eyes until she disappeared from view.

"Hey." the servant muttered, eyes nailed to the doorway where the woman had disappeared.

"Hey, yourself." The castellan of the Wine replied.

"She took six bottles and just walked out." The servant pointed out.

"Seven." The man corrected, and then shook his head. "Shite!" He yelled, and strode over to the rack. "She bloody well took it all!" He yelled, furious.

"You were right there, man. You could have stopped her." The servant argued, and the castellan whirled on the man. "Right and I didn’t see you lifting a finger either!"

The servant gave the man a baffled look. "What’re you looking at me like that for?" he replied. "I’m but a servant!"

Around the same time, a dinner cart loaded with food was reported missing from the kitchens.