Chapter XVII

For the Taham family it was any other day. The five of them; mother, father, and three daughters, sat down at the table for their supper, looking up at the statue of God hanging from the ceiling, and saying their prayers of thanks for the bounty before them. There was a traditional Arxian prayer over one's meal, but Taham had been raised with the belief that if your family wrote its own prayers such words would be far more sincere. “Oh Merficul God, we thank you for the food you've provided for us. We thank you for the wheat that grows of the ground and the beasts you put on this earth for us to eat. We pray that you will bless this supper and be with us in spirit as we eat it. So may it be.”

Just as the father began to carve the roast goose, with his daughters looking on with great anticipation for the meal, the door to the house burst open. In ran the city guards, weapons drawn. The girls thought they were under attack and screamed, hiding under the table. Mr. Taham stood in the guards' way and demanded to know why the meaning of this outrage, only to be shoved aside as the soldiers ransacked his cupboards and pantries. They broke dishes in their careless and desperate search. They overturned all the beds, emptied the contents of every dresser and wardrobe onto the floor, and even searched the Taham's themselves. Then, just as suddenly as they'd arrived, they left, leaving the Taham family's house a mess.

This was the scene in many homes throughout the capital city that day as Grigori directed the city guards in a systematic search of every house in Aius. He knew that if the warlocks in the city had any reason to suspect they might be searched they'd surely destroy any physical evidence there was to find, or hide it so cleverly that even in such a search the guards would find nothing. As such he'd divided the guards up into groups of six, and sent them to hit as many houses as they could as fast as they could, before word got out of the searches. Grigori didn't have time to narrow the search down to the homes of a few especially suspicious people, so he simply made sure the search was as wide as possible. He estimated that even moving as fast as they were the guards would only be able to search one tenth of the homes in the city before the searches were common knowledge to all citizens, but it seemed the best plan to find any physical evidence, if there was any to find. Yes, he did have his doubts that any physical evidence was even there to find, because one did not always need blackstar talismans to summon demons and the witches and warlocks of Nihilus kept no written records of their beliefs or rituals.

All day the guards searched from house to house, and within a few hours' time everyone was talking about the searches, and the guards still had a long way to go. Grigori spoke to Gedon, the captain of the guard, “Have your men found anything yet, Captain?”

“No, inquisitor. They've found no evidence of any demon-conjuring in any of the houses they've searched so far, but they have many more houses to search.”

“I doubt they'll find anything at this point. How are the people responding to having their homes searched?”

Gedon shook his head. “Pretty bad. Like...on a scale of one to ten? Pretty bad.”

Grigori stared at Gedon blankly for a moment, not sure if he'd actually heard him right or if Gedon was making some sort of joke. After Gedon stared back with a look as serious as Grigori's (a hard thing to accomplish) Grigori just decided to continue on. “Keep them searching, just in case they do find anything. In the mean time I need access to your files. Immigration papers, census papers from the past three years, arrest warrants, criminal records, tax records, anything that I can examine might give me some hint of where to start. Anyone who moved to this city in the past year needs to be detained for questioning.”

“They're not going to like that...” Gedon said with a nervous look.

“If everyone in this city gets wiped out by the Gidim plague or demons they'll like that a lot less, won't they? Don’t worry about their comfort, worry about their lives, captain! Do as I say!”

“Yes, sir,” Gedon said with a nod, but before Gedon could even leave Grigori's side two guards ran up with frantic looks on their faces.

“Sir! We found something you'll want to see!”

“Have you caught a warlock?” Grigori asked.

“No, but we found something pretty bad.”

Grigori half expected them to say “on a scale of one to ten...pretty bad,” but they were not as foolish as their captain. “Show me,” he demanded.

The guards led Grigori and Gedon through the streets, where Grigori could hear the sounds of the peasants protesting as their homes were torn upside-down in the searches going on. As he passed peasants spat and shouted curses at Grigori, which he easily ignored.

In a back alley, behind a bakery that the guards had recently searched, in the process destroying half the baker's pastries, there was the corpse of a heavy man. He was lying in a pool of his own blood upon a pile of garbage. Gedon looked like he was going to be sick. Grigori, however, simply walked over and started examining the body. “Stab-wound in the back...right side. The killer pierced his lung, possibly to prevent him from screaming for help. His clothes are expensive and he's still wearing them, along with two gold rings and a silver necklace. The killer wasn't after his wealth. The dryness of the blood suggests this murder happened many hours ago...maybe as long ago as last night. If he was murdered last night that would account for no one having seen anything suspicious in the area...Do any of you know who this man is?”

“He's Japheth, the Chancellor...” Gedon said as he averted his eyes from the body.

“The Chancellor? He's a member of the Council that selects the King of Arx?” Grigori said in disbelief. “What's he doing here?”

“he traveled a lot. Maybe he was trying to work out a business deal here and got lured into the alley and killed.”

One of the guards shook his head. “What could anyone hope to gain by killing the Chancellor? If this was a political assassination it's a poor plan, a new Chancellor will be elected by the common-folk in little time.”

“Unless the person responsible for this intends to run for the position,” Grigori pointed out. “Chancellors' terms are long, I can imagine some particularly greedy men not wanting to wait. Make sure the King knows of this and bury the body. Other than that continue the investigation. The Chancellor's death is of little concern compared to the threat within these city walls.”

“What of his bodyguards?” One of the guards asked.

“What do you mean?” Grigori asked.

“As a member of the Council the Chancellor had bodyguards, why did they not protect him?”

“I would guess that he was doing something unsavory, perhaps even illegal, and didn't want to take them with him. With how many harlots I've seen in this city and with how obviously self-indulgent this rotund man was I wouldn't be surprised if his very reason for being in this alleyway was because he was seeing a harlot.”

Gedon and the other guards were appalled at Grigori's insensitivity to the Chancellor's death, but the King had already instructed them to do as he ordered.

But the messengers didn't find the King in the castle. In fact it would be a full day yet before the news reached the King. Hadar, Sarahi, and Milo were all three at the Grand Cathedral, healing the sick as they poured in. They used their paladin magic to cast out the Gidim from every patient brought before them, fought the plague alongside the city's clergy. For the most part, any patient brought before them they could cure with a simple wave of their hands and a few words, but one out of every twenty patients brought before them would suffer some permanent effects. Some would more than likely die in spite of being cured because of the damage the Gidim had done to their bodies. They worked constantly, only took brief breaks for food and water, and made sure to use their healing magic on one another every now and then, just in case the Gidim had spread to them. Since they were paladins their bodies were blessed and highly resistant to demonic infection or possession, but since they were encountering so many sick patients they didn't want to take any chances.

Seeing that their King was stressed servants brought him a cup of wine to calm his nerves. At first Hadar took the cup without even looking at it and began to drink, but the moment the wine touched his lips he spat it out and threw the cup on the floor. “No! I need to be focused!” Hadar looked at the servants and saw that his reaction had frightened them and his tone softened. “Thank you. I know you were just trying to help, but I can't imbibe alcohol and still heal these people effectively.” Hours passed, and the inflow of patients never slowed. By the time the sun was starting to set it felt to Hadar like he and the others must have cured half the population of the city. Making matters worse, Hadar knew that even those whom he cured and sent back out would not be immune to the Gidim and may very well be back soon. He hoped and prayed that Grigori would find the blaggards responsible for this disaster soon.

Grigori took all the documents Gedon gave him to his guest-room and began to read through all of them to find anything that might give him some clue as to the true identity of the warlock responsible for the plague. The guards had, by then, searched every home in Aius, torn everything apart, and found nothing, as Grigori feared, so it was up to him to find out what he could. He tore through the documents, took notes on anything even remotely suspicious about any and all of the citizens he read about, all the while as frantic as could be. Every second he wasted he knew someone in the city could die, and as much as he despised the blasphemers of Arx he knew that if Nihilus defeated Arx things would be far worse. It would be far easier to bring those of the Agalmite faith into the “True Way” than those of the Nihilite faith, and the Nihilites would be far less likely to tolerate the existence of the Inquisition. To Grigori, the kingdom of Arx represented a sort of buffer zone between the Inquisition and the worst blasphemers of all, a force the Inquisition knew it could never face in open war, so saving the people of Arx was a means to saving the Inquisition.

Grigori used up ink well after ink well scribbling down his notes, notes written so sloppily he doubted even he'd be able to read them by the time he was done. Page after page he filled with information he found on various suspicious persons living in the city. Some were suspicious because they'd moved to the city very recently, some were suspicious because they'd been involved in violent crimes involving members of the clergy, some were suspicious because they'd not been confirmed as members of the Agalmite Church, others because they'd been confirmed as members of the Agalmite Church immediately after their arrival in the city, and still others were suspicious because their names either sounded too similar to Nihilite names or too stereotypically Arxian. His plan had been to detain for questioning everyone in the city who seemed suspicious, but when, at four-thirty the next morning, he was finally finished skimming through all the documents available and jotting down everything that seemed out of the ordinary he discovered that he'd have to detain roughly one twentieth of the entire city's population. Powerful as the city guard was, he couldn't imagine detaining that many people, there wasn't even enough room in all the dungeons, prisons, jails, holding cells, tool-sheds, and outhouses in the city to hold them all. For one moment, upon discovering this, Grigori let his emotions get the better of him and smashed his seventh ink-well against the wall.

The moment after the ink-well struck the wall Grigori heard a knock at his door. Fatigue and frustration had put him so on edge that he instinctively grabbed his short-sword and drew it from the sheathe before asking, “Who's there?”

“Grigori, it's Hadar.”

Grigori sighed and sheathed his sword again. “Come in, your Majesty.”

Hadar opened the door and walked into the room. His hair was a tangled mess, there were bags under his eyes, and his hands shook. He was obviously just as exhausted as Grigori. “Have you found anything? Anything at all?” The priests had begged Hadar to go home and get some rest after midnight, and Milo and Sarahi insisted he listen to them. Hadar had reluctantly agreed to go home, but found he couldn't sleep and spent most of the time pacing the halls, worrying about his people.

“Have I found anything?” Grigori repeated the question. “Sure, if you want to imprison or execute five percent of the city's population.”

“Tell me you're not serious.”

“I'm not, but neither is it a joke. I'm worried, your Majesty, that that's what it would take to end this plague. I've been able to narrow it down that much, but the city is far too enormous for an in-depth investigation in any sort of reasonable time-frame.”

“Come now; let's think of a solution to this that makes more sense than imprisoning or executing that many people.”

“I have nothing!” Grigori threw the documents across the room. The papers scattered all over the ground.

“Think! What would the Inquisition do in a situation like this?”

Grigori hung his head. “Honestly? We'd probably execute those people.”

“You can't be serious!”

“Those who were innocent would be sent instantly to paradise and those responsible would no longer be able to infect the innocent,” Grigori said. “You concern yourself too much with preserving the bodies of these people with too little regard for their souls.”

“Let's say that mass-execution wasn't an option,” Hadar said. “I know, I know to you lunatics it's always an option, but let's say for some reason it wasn't. Perhaps you simply didn't have the man-power to pull it off. What then would the Inquisition do?”

“We don't work with populations anywhere near this size, typically.”

“I know that, but...think!”

Grigori thought for a moment, scratched his scalp until it was raw, and paced the room. “Well...the Inquisition is privy to certain forms of magic not otherwise available to you...including a certain...honesty charm.”

“Ah! Good! You may be onto something. Tell me about this charm.”

“When training our young people to be inquisitors we want as many ways to keep them honest as possible. We often assign them writing projects. We present them with challenging scenarios and tell them to write their proposed solutions. They are told ahead of time that plagiarism will be punished with twenty lashings, and told also to include in their papers a description of how their ideas came to them. What we don't tell them is that the quills they are given to write the assignment with, the only quills available to them, are enchanted with a spell that will cover the palms of their hands in black ink should they write anything untrue. Then, as they present their projects their professors check the palms of their hands for that ink, and those caught plagiarizing are punished. I admit, when I was a child I was caught in this fashion and never plagiarized again.”

“Why is this not commonly used in investigation?”

“It's considered terribly inefficient. We have many other, quicker and better ways of catching liars, but that's with a far smaller population, one in which everyone knows everyone else pretty well, and all will report anything even remotely suspicious to the inquisitors,” Grigori scratched his chin and stared at the wall, just past Hadar. “But here...it might be helpful. I propose this; tomorrow announce that every citizen must come to the Grand Cathedral to sign a document stating their total loyalty to the Agalmite faith...”

“No!” Hadar interrupted.

“Pardon?”

“I am well aware that some of my citizens follow the traditional religions of Sabura, Shadia, Subra and the western city-states, and others still follow no religion at all. For centuries Arx has allowed these people to practice their religions in private, only the Nihilite faith is outlawed here.”

“Really?” Grigori was completely baffled by this idea of allowing such religious practices in the holy city of the entire Agalmite faith, the very city that was built around the Obelisk of the Law. “Fine, then the document will state that they do not practice the Nihilite religion. The quills will be enchanted with the spell I mentioned, and all citizens will be ordered to sign it. One of four things will happen. One; we'll catch the culprit or culprits as the black ink stains their hands. Two; the culprits will find some convenient excuse not to show up and we can simply compare the list of names with the census and figure out who the culprits are that way. Three; the culprits will try to flee the city at this point and will either fail to escape and be caught or escape, and at least their attack on this city will be halted. Four; they will launch a more open attack in the cathedral and reveal themselves, at which time we can apprehend them. To increase our chances of catching them we shouldn't reveal that the quills are enchanted, of course, though the guilty parties will likely be suspicious of such a trap.”

“That's...actually brilliant, Grigori,” Hadar smiled and without warning gave Grigori a tight hug, excited to finally have a solution to their problem. Just as when Alma gave him the same attention, Grigori cringed, blushed deep red, and silently prayed Hadar would let go of him soon. At the same time, though, somewhere in Grigori's mind, he also felt like he really didn't want Hadar to let go. Some small, faint voice was whispering at him to return the hug, enjoy the moment. Grigori tried to dismiss it as the influence of demons, trying to tempt him towards sin, but that just raised another question; what sin were the demons trying to tempt him with? It was obvious what they were trying to tempt him with when Alma hugged him; lust. The desire for the physical relations between a man and a woman, fornication as it was sometimes called. Was this really what they were trying to tempt him with as Hadar's arms were wrapped around him? The feeling was the same, the same heat in the face, churning in his stomach, and uneasiness of his heart. Grigori shuddered to think that he may have guessed right, the demons were trying to tempt him with desire for Hadar, and to his greater horror it was working. Fornication between two men wasn't considered any more sinful in the True Way than fornication between a man and a woman, but a man and a woman could marry and conceive a child and eventually have relations that were not sinful. Two men or two women could not.

“Please let go, sire,” Grigori said, his voice barely more than a weak whisper.

“Oh, sorry, I was just excited. That was the first moment of hope I've had since this crisis began.”

“Well, hope is good, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We still haven't seen for certain if the plan will work.”

The two of them returned to their beds after that and got as much sleep as they could before the sun rose the next morning. Hadar probably would have slept more, if it weren't for Sarahi and Milo waking him up to face the day. For Grigori waking up was much easier. Because sloth was a sin all inquisitors, from a very young age, learned to survive on very little sleep and were sure to be up the moment the sun was. “Plenty of time to sleep when life is done, for now your life has purpose,” Father Gonen always used to say.