-
Chapter 2
"Bloody hell..." crooned Cerce as they crested the rocky rise and the scope of the monastery came into view through the trees.It was a building devoid of light, even among the dim moonlit forest it was a hulking black shape deeper than shadow. It sat hunched on the hillside like a gargoyle, with creeping towers reaching out into the forest. There were no fires burning, no signs of habitation, only darkness.
"Now that is not a welcoming place," Adam said as he came up to stand beside Cerce. "Proper good spot to get murdered right up, that is."
"You're not wrong. What do you think they're worshiping up in there?"
Adam put his hands on his hips, fingers toying with the hilt of his rapier.
"You're asking me? I don't know, love. Could be one of them monks suddenly figures he's a prophet? That's not uncommon. Or they dug up a book, standard Old God stuff, miserable forgotten type who likes child sacrifices and dreariness?"
"Yeah, if we're lucky. If that's the case all we got in there is a bunch of zealots to knock about," Cerce frowned.
"You worried it's something else?"
"Well the other option in these sort of times is that these fuckers found something horrible in the dark and decided it was a God," Cerce said as she peered through the mist towards the monastery.
"Hm. Doesn't sound promising."
Adam tugged on his belt, testing the smooth draw of his rapier from its clasp. Satisfied, he nodded towards the shape that seemed to crouch upon the hill before them.
"Shall we?" he asked.
"Nothing to be done," Cerce nodded.
Together, they began the climb.
-
The stones of the monastery walls were crumbling. Ivy crawled among the cracks, brittle and dying from the chill in the air.
Cerce placed her hand upon a column as the travelers stepped from the barely-there path and into a flat dirt courtyard.
She retracted her hand with a sudden hiss, and Adam looked over to her.
"Something sharp?" he asked.
Cerce looked at her fingers.
"No...no it's cold. It's like ice."
Adam put a hand to his brow and looked up at the looming monolith of a building before them. Cold, empty, silent. Blackness yawned from every empty stone window.
"I don't see fires. Looks like a tomb. If they aren't keeping warm somehow in there, it's going to be one."
"I don't like this one bit, Adam," Cerce said. She was peering up into the darkness of a window far above. Something was drawing the eye there, but nothing stared back from the empty black stone hole.
Cerce narrowed her eyes.
"Well, sooner in, sooner out, eh?" Adam said. He pulled his cloak tighter about his shoulder and gave a shiver. "And the stone has to cut a bit of the wind out at least."
Cerce looked about the courtyard, her blue eyes peering across the old stone, the dirt, the green ivy eating up through the cold walls.
A spot they crossed bore the marks of something long there only recently moved, plants growing in perfect lines, and Cerce noticed scratch marks upon the stone, as if something of great weight had been dragged off, towards the doors.
"Yeah," Cerce said absently, and followed the scratches to the giant set of wooden doors that stood to the front and center of the monolith building, the only portal not black and staring.
The doors were ten feet tall, with holes where Cerce assumed a handle would once have been. She put her fingers through one and gave a tug. The doors could have been made of solid stone as much as they moved.
Cerce dropped to a squat and put her eye to the hole.
"Woah, woah, don't... don't do that!" Adam waved.
Nothing but a void peered back as Cerce stared through the little hole.
"Nothing back there," she murmured.
"No I mean that's how you get a big hook or rusty spike or something jammed through your eye up into your..." Adam's fingers made jabbing motions towards his face, accented with a hook of the finger and a tug, "Gak!"
Cerce stood up, frowning.
"Well, warn me before I do it next time. If I get gakked you're the one who's got to walk home all by themselves."
"Aren't you glad you brought me along?" he said, giving the bottom of the door an experimental kick. Cerce watched his lips turn down in sudden pain.
"Didn't work? Why not give it another try? Definitely getting somewhere," Cerce chuckled. Adam flapped a corner of cloak at her.
"Oh shut up and help me, here," Adam said, putting his shoulder to the door and half crouching, jamming his foot against a rise in the stone floor and shoving. Cerce fell in beside him, her arms up and pushing, and with a great creak that split the silent air of the courtyard, the right door gave an inch inward, a sliver of black nothing showing between the doors.
Grunting, Adam strained against the door again, before Cerce elbowed him aside.
"Just needs a little encouragement, is all."
Taking her halberd, Cerce jammed it between the gap in the doors and gave it a twist. With a great pull, the door was forced open another few inches, enough for Cerce to get a little more leverage, and with a second tug, the door crunched against the stone ground enough to admit them.
Adam took a bow and gestured politely.
"After you."
"Oh, charming," Cerce grumbled as she slid sideways through the opening and into the darkness beyond.
Adam stood for a moment, looking out over the quiet courtyard, before he held his hat to his head and followed.
The moment Adam crossed the threshold, he was so aware of the silence it was startling. Adam's hands rose to his ears almost automatically to brush the lobe of his ear, testing if his hearing was still with him. He blinked, and blinked again, unable to tell whether his eyes were open or closed.
"Cerce," Adam said, an edge of panic to his voice the Nadyr immediately recognized.
"It's okay," she responded. Her voice coming back to him from a few steps up ahead. Her words were flat, no echo bouncing back through the blackness.
"Stand still a moment, you'll be able to see," she said.
Adam looked around himself, seeing nothing. The world was empty for a moment, and the horrible sensation of staring down into nothing made his stomach lurch with vertigo. Through the blackness there came movement, and Adam's hand jerked for the hilt of his rapier as Cerce's hand reached out to grab him.
Her fingers closed around his wrist.
Cerrce pulled him closer, his body coming up against hers. Automatically, Adam put his arms around Cerce's waist, and they stood close to one another.
An inch or so taller than he was, Cerce's mouth was near Adam's ear, and he could hear her shivering exhales.
The cold in there was indescribable, an awful chill that seemed to suck air from the lungs with every breath. The cold crept up through their boots as if they stood barefoot upon the dark stone beneath them, and nothing but the black masonry was visible as the sepulchral interior of the monastery slowly gained shape.
There was a sound that came to the ears, low at first, but slowly rising in the stillness.
"What is that?" Adam whispered. He heard Cerce hold her breath as she listened, the barest glimmer of light reflecting from her eyes through the darkness.
"Wind. It's wind blowing from somewhere. Below us," she let the breath go, air warm on Adam's cheek. "This place goes down into the mountain."
"We need light. Light and heat, or we're gonna die in here Cerce."
He heard Cerce shift, her head glancing this way and that. White hair fell over her shoulders, and Adam could barely see it, grey amidst layers of black.
"Check beside the doors, these old place are meant to have sconces for torches."
"Me check? Can't you see in the dark?" Adam hissed. He heard Cerce give a sigh of disbelief.
"Why would I be able to....you seriously think I can see in the dark?" she shoved at his chest with her elbow.
Adam raised a hand out, peering through the darkness ahead of him, split only by the moonlight coming through the crack in the door.
His hands touched the bare stone behind the door and he recoiled, the temperature so cold he couldn't tell if it was freezing or scorching.
"There's one here but it's empty," came Cerce's voice from the other side of the door. "couple feet in, about my head height."
Adam slid his hands across, reaching up and across, and his wrist banged into something protruding.
"Got it, there's one here," Adam said as he gave a tug on the wooden torch and felt it grind loose. Dust trickled to the floor surprisingly loud. The head of the arm length torch was wrapped in a filthy rag, cold to the touch, brittle.
"No way this thing'll light, it's been here forever," Adam grumbled.
"Adam..." Cerce whispered.
"Ey, you still got that flask from Carnaby? The good Redroov Mountain stuff?" Adam fished on his belt, fumbling in the darkness for his flint, "might help it take."
"Adam there's...something there." Cerce's voice held a chill that made Adam freeze.
He looked up, the torch in one hand and his other reaching for the hilt of his rapier.
Deep in the darkness before them, a light was bobbing.
Adam saw Cerce shift in the darkness, her tall shape lowering, her legs stepping apart. The line of moonlight through the door glinting on the exposed head of her great halberd. Adam heard a deep exhale pour from the Nadyr's lips.
The wild, aggressive way that Cerce fought had seemed chaotic and mindless to Adam the first few times he'd seen it. Like a dervish, twisting and swinging the great blade, her body writhing in the eye at the center of the storm. Long days at Cerce's side had taught Adam differently.
Adam drew his rapier, silently and swiftly, and took his usual place just behind and to her right. She felt his presence, and took a step forward.
"Who goes there?" Cerce yelled at the slowly wobbling light that approached through the darkness.
The light illuminated as it went, shedding fluttering light on the grand hallway they seemed to be standing in. Cerce narrowed her eyes against the apparent optical illusion, the room so long that the monastery must surely extend far into the mountain upon which it stood.
"A humble servant, no more!" came the reply. A soft voice, steady.
The flame came to a stop, and the figure who held it lowered the torch so as to illuminate himself. Sending a great shadow far behind him down the hall he'd appeared from.
Yellow light spilled around him, lighting the entrance hall and making Adam inadvertently raise a hand to his eyes for a moment. Cerce stood sentinel and unmoving, adrenaline relieving the shivering cold for a brief moment.
At first, the man had the impression of being broad, brawny. Shoulders high and wide, a body thick, but the gauntness of his face and the depth of the sockets his eyes were sunk into made it clear that the man was simply bundled into multiple heavy layers of thick brown robes.
"Just a humble servant, am I, welcoming new travelers to the home of the Blazing Light."
Adam gave a scoff of disbelief.
"You can't be serious." he said, and the monk turned his head to pointedly look at the thief.
"Light is found in the darkest of places, my quick-to-presume friend."
Adam raised an eyebrow, and found his eyes met when they darted to Cerce.
"Prickly, for a monk, aren't we?" she asked.
The man lowered his torch further, peering over the flame at the two friends.
"Many who come here seek to disturb us. We may be a humble order but we have much work to do."
Adam gave a derisive grunt, but the monk continued undisturbed.
"I am Brother Locke, and here we tend the fires, to keep the cold at bay."
"Where's the rest of your people?" asked Cerce, partially lowering her weapon. She was straightening slightly, her guard dropping. Adam was still alert, his blade drawn, his eyes roaming the hall for others.
Apart from the fire burning around Locke, there was only blackness.
"We are below, in the temple. The old monastery is so cold in the winter, we relocate below."
He extended the torch into the area between them, his sunken features seeming to wobble into distorted shapes in the moving light cast by the flame.
"I fear you've a wasted trip if you seek shelter though. We fast in the nights, and have little to spare. Perhaps you can seek your warmth elsewhere, travelers?"
Locke took another step forward, silent on the cold stone, and he jerked to a halt as his light fell upon Cerce and he came to look upon her.
"Oh," he stumbled over his own speech, his face suddenly animated, a smile spreading, "Oh my goodness look at you. You've come so far, haven't you?"
Cerce hesitated, before she placed the end of her halberd to the ground where it rested with a dull thunk.
"We come north up from the Foul Mouth, called up here by..." she began, before she was almost immediately interrupted. Locke had stepped forward, careless of the harsh light that he was shedding upon the two travelers. Just a few steps away from Cerce Locke stopped to examine her.
"Goodness no, you've come some much further than that. So far, to get here, I'm so sorry it took so long."
Cerce darted a look back to Adam, whose eyes glinted back at hers in the dim yellow light. He gave the slightest of shrugs.
"You've been... expecting us?" he asked, and was ignored. The monk only had eyes for Cerce.
"We've been waiting, I... The others will want to meet you immediately, miss. Please, what shall we call you?"
"I'm Cerce. I...came to help." she said. The monk positively beamed. His body vibrated with excitement and he made a grand show of inclining his head before her.
"Cerce, Cerce," Locke repeated, drawing out the syllables long and slow.
Sir-see. He practically hissed.
Just as she became visibly uncomfortable with his sycophantism, the monk straightened and jerked the torch back the way he came.
"Please! Come, come. The others will be so eager to look upon you," he stopped half turned, and looked as if he meant to attempt to take Cerce's hand, before he apparently thought better of it and began a brisk walk down the corridor.
Cerce glanced back at the door, at the sliver of moonlight creeping through. The light from Locke's torch was already receding, plunging the doors into darkness and shadows, surging along the ground to swallow them once more.
With a quick look at one another, Adam and Cerce began to follow.
Chapter 3.
Adam fixed his rapier to his belt once more, his pace quick and the heels of his boots clicking on the stone floor to keep pace behind Cerce's long and quiet strides.
Locke scurried forward ahead of them, a glowing orb in the darkness, continually half turning and tossing his gaze back over his shoulder to make sure he was being followed.
"As the cold approaches we move below to stay as warm as we can, down in the old quarters," he explained as he walked, gesturing into the black void beyond each portal or archway they passed.
"Little up at this level now, the old hall is empty, the upper kitchens, and all above," he waved a hand nebulously above his head, "All empty now!"
His voice verged on manic, his eyes wild as he glanced back to look at Cerce.
"How many stay here, Locke?" Cerce asked quietly, and he spun to walk backwards momentarily, his eyes on her.
"Oh just myself and the current order, and the new supplicants, any others left. Too cold for some, the work we do here. They all left, to find somewhere warmer."
"What's a supplicant?" asked Adam. Locke spared him a brief glance but ignored the question.
A yawning gap in the wall caught Cerce's eyes as they passed, enough light flicked into it to see nothing but the blackness it led to.
"How far below does it go?" she asked.
"Oh all the way down," Locke responded without turning, before immediately going on.
"Do you know when others will come?" he asked Cerce enthusiastically.
Cerce looked to Adam, shrugging.
"Others? You mean other monks? Why would I..." Cerce was cut off as Brother Locke turned and raised the light above his head.
"All the others! We're expecting everyone here! We can't wait forever!" he gave a brief and sudden laugh. He looked at Cerce as he continued down the hall, his shuffling backward steps uneven.
"Brother Leece said you'd come soon, but we've waited so long for you. I was beginning to think.. well...we went through all the others, as we waited, how could he expect us to wait forever?!" his voice was losing clarity. Tears wet in his eyes, glittering in the swinging light of the lantern, "The ones who left! Ha, they...they'll see now, won't they?"
"Wait, the supplicants? The children from the town? The children are still here?" Cerce asked.
"Everyone's here," Locke said, "There must always be supplicants."
Adam realized he could no longer see the wall behind her when he looked to Cerce. The sloping stone on his own side had become harder to see too, curving off into the darkness beyond the circle of the lamp that Brother Locke held aloft.
The monk was moving faster now, his feet slapping and scuffling on the ground beneath him, his breathing ragged. He gave a half laugh, then a sudden whoop of joy that disappeared into the dark without echo.
"She's arrived!" he suddenly blurted out, "She's here! She's finally here!"
Cerce strode forward, her halberd gripped in her freezing hands, and made to reach for Locke's robe as it flailed behind him.
Before her claws could snatch at the ragged material, the light was snuffed out.
The darkness was absolute. So sudden and so startling it stopped Cerce in her stride as if she'd walked into a wall. She heard Adam's boots click to a halt, the uncertain shuffling of heels skidding as he turned this way and that.
"I can't see anything, I can't..." he said, panic in his usually measured voice.
Cerce was breathing through gritted teeth, her fangs bore at the corners of her lips. The dark fooled her, and she had the impression of reaching hands, of shapes moving, deeper black against the already complete darkness that gripped her.
She hissed at Adam for silence.
It was as absolute as the darkness, no wind, no echos. Cerce could hear her own heartbeat hammering in her chest like a drum. She began to be aware of a scent, hard to place, familiar. Like ozone, moss, mold.
"Where are you?" she said quietly.
"I'm...here?" Adam said, from just far enough away.
With a great swing of her arms, Cerce brought her halberd around and overhead in an arc, the blade striking and scraping across the floor, sending sparks flying and filling the halls with the deafening crash of metal on stone.
In the flash of sparks, the figures were revealed. A circle around the two travelers, just visible on the edges of vision. Their robes brown, looming just a few feet away now.
As darkness descended once more, the smell came back again. Strong this time. Wet and clammy, floral, dank. The smell stuck to the back of the throat, thick and choking.
Cerce found herself taking a deep and hurried breath, and heard Adam doing the same.
"I feel weird..." Adam moaned. Cerce blinked hard, feeling her eyes watering and a tightness in her throat gripping.
"When I move, get ready to run," she whispered. She felt Adam's presence at her back, moving close behind her. She heard him respond, but somehow the words were lost, meaning seeming to flee into the darkness.
She became aware that the grip on her halberd was loose, the shaft resting on the ground. She curled her fingers again around it, trying to remember what she'd just said to Adam. She frowned, it was gone.
Light slowly shone between the figures that massed around the pair. The illuminated brown robes of the monks shifting and swaying in the darkness. A figure was stepping forward, holding a low burning lantern in one hand, and seeming almost to float, so silent were their steps on the cold stone. From beneath the hood, a chuckle came.
The voice, when the figure finally spoke, was soft and calming.
"Brother Locke, thank-you for bringing our guests forth."
The accent was unfamiliar, the cadence lyrical. Cerce fought to listen, the weight behind her eyes increasing as the light was brought closer. The figure gave a deep and appreciative sigh.
"Oh. Oh my. The light shines upon all of us today, brothers and sisters."
The voices of the assembled came back in response.
The light shines. The light shines.
"We've all been waiting... so long, here, for you. I have waited."
Locke leant forward into the light, his hands gripped before him, shaking.
"She wants to be called Cerce, Brother Leece."
"Thank-you Locke. I'm very grateful for everything you do," the figure named Leece extended a hand to touch Locke on the shoulder, and Locke dutifully retreated to the throng of monks.
"It's a beautiful name, Cerce. I had always wondered what they might call you," Leece said. His voice had a soporific quality, and Cerce stared into the darkness under his hood as he moved forward to her once more, now within arms reach.
Cerce tried to speak, but found her speech slurred.
"Who're...who are..." she mumbled.
"I am Brother Leece. First among the Blazing Light. And you, are very, very welcome."
Leece raised the lantern in his hand, illuminating him. Beneath the heavy hood were vibrant, soulful blue eyes, staring from a startling and handsome face. Curls of white hair were visible around his sharp cheekbones, and at the corners of a wide curving smile were sharply pointed teeth. His skin was green.
"Our most dear sister."
Cerce stood frozen as Leece reached for her face. His fingertips brushed her cheek.
Cerce was shoved aside and the world spun as Adam hurled himself into Leece with his entire weight.
She heard the great clang that rattled her ears and after a moment realized she'd dropped her halberd. She reached out for it desperately as movement in the darkness all around broke out.
The lantern was snuffed out and hisses of orders and cries from among the ranks of the monks seemed to come from all directions.
Cerce heard Adam scream for her to run.
Hands surged from the blackness, gripping at her ankles, snatching handfuls of her hair, tugging at her clothes.
A hand gripped at Cerce's ear and pulled, jerking her head aside sharply and making Cerce cry out in pain.
Leece's voice cut through the darkness, raised to a shout.
"DON'T. TOUCH. HER!"
The hands retreated, Cerce pulling herself free of the throng and scrambling across the cold floor. Getting her feet beneath her was proving difficult, and she stumbled drunkenly as she tried to move, the strange smell filling her senses.
Her hands found a wall, and she clung to it, her legs feeling like she was wading through water. The sounds of the scuffle was getting further away. She heard a scream, and the sound of Adam's blade against stone.
The wall seemed to give way, and as she stumbled forward to reach out for it again, found the floor beneath her abruptly drop. She fell, first a few feet, crashing into the vertical stone, then down again.
All light fled as she fell, spiraling, further into the blackness below.
-
