The Witch of Torinia Read online

  “Easy, my lads! Have a care! We haven’t seen the likes of these in our travels, have we?” Captain Janus said, easing forwards, sword drawn.

  He looked at the tabards both monks wore. White linen with a sun in splendour embroidered in yellow. A sun with ten rays spreading across their chests. The rude wooden buckler shields they wielded in front of them carried the same symbol. Janus’s veteran eye immediately took notice of the drooping rims held nowhere near high enough to make a tight defence. Their sword arms were held high, too high, blades waving nervously. It was abundantly clear these two had little benefit of training.

  “A fine defence, brothers! Now, just who are you? Monks playing at soldiers?”

  One of the men (they were both young but not striplings) shouted out a reply. “We are of the Order of the Temple of Livorna! And we will die defending this holy place and our brethren!”

  Janus pouted. “Ah. I see only a band of apostates dressed in robes. And it is the order of the Duke that all heretics and profaners of the One Faith be put to death.”

  “That you disregard the truth of the revelations is your own affair,” yelled back the monk in reply, his voice quavering. “But this is the Duchy of Maresto and we give not a fig for what your Ursino says.”

  The captain smiled. “Today, my friends, this place is the Duchy of Torinia.”

  “We defend this temple under the authority of the High Priest himself and the Council of the Nine. You are nothing more than brigands.” He banged the pommel of his sword on the face of his shield. “We will not surrender it to you!”

  Janus hefted his sword. “We are not asking for your surrender.”

  The monk nodded and spoke softly. “Elded’s will be done.”

  JANUS RE-ENTERED THE square, now quiet since the short sharp business had been performed. He took the reins of his horse from his man and mounted up. The sky was even darker now and a fine misting rain had begun to anoint them. The smell of acrid smoke touched his nostrils. Border raids were tedious and brought little chance for distinguishing oneself, but, that said, he was paid the same. So too, he was perceptive enough of a soldier and tactician to understand what the Duke of Torinia was up to with these attacks on the fat and complacent northern reaches of Maresto. The company were but the wasps goading the bear, fully intending a larger response from Duke Alonso in the south. Full and open battle was the goal, nothing less. Carving out a swath of new territory between Maresto and the free city of Livorna would do well for a start. But now, bloody fighting monks from Livorna of all things. Coronel Aretini will love hearing that one, he thought as his horse clopped away across the cobbles and the sated Blue Boar began to reform outside the walls of Persarola.

  Two

  BROTHER ACQUELONIUS GALENUS, captain-general of the nascent fighting order of the Temple of Livorna—still called Acquel by most of his brethren—sat poised at his writing table. The goose quill pen in his hand had not moved for more than two minutes, a large purple blob of squid ink now starting to thicken upon the paper. His thoughts were reeling far afield, nowhere near to the task at hand. The sheaves before him, spread out in disorder detailed supply orders, poll counts, regulations, and all of the other mundane but necessary details of organizing and running a small army.

  Although the winter was now long past, the events of the previous summer played over and over again in his head—the murders at the Temple Majoris and at the Ara monastery; his discovery of the amulet of Saint Elded and the secrets it carried; his flight and pursuit.

  His theft of the amulet, rashly done with little thought, led to the revelation that the great Lawgiver—dead for centuries—had been half mer. He had also rediscovered the lost commandments of the great Saint, part of the so-called Black Texts, suppressed by the Temple priests since late antiquity, deemed the final works of Elded, aged and enfeebled of mind. But it was the deaths that preyed upon his conscience most. The innocent monks caught up in the Magister’s plans to hide the discovery. The High Priest himself, murdered in his own bedchamber, and Timandra, the woman who had aided him in his flight, who had guided him and fallen in love with him (and he with her). Timandra Pandarus of the Company of the Black Rose. Her tanned, green-eyed face filled his vision and Acquel exhaled slowly, his heart filled to bursting with sadness and remorse that he had not been able to save her. Remorse that the evil the Magister had unwittingly released by employing treacherous allies had not been destroyed after Timandra sacrificed herself for him.

  It had all begun when Acquel had fled from the cavern crypt under the Ara monastery. The Magister had scapegoated him for the murder of his brethren, and when news of the terrible deeds reached the town that clung to the Ara, his mother had succumbed to grief and shame. Now he was truly alone.

  He had thought then that he knew what the Lawgiver expected of him—spread the lost Word that had been rediscovered; defend the One Faith from the ancient worship of twisted gods and those who denied the truth of Elded. He had agreed a modus vivendi with the Magister, Lucius Kodoris: that the Magister should take the mantle of High Priest, adopt the truths of the Black Texts, work to disseminate them to the faithful, and Acquel would not reveal his role in murder and subversion. For himself, Acquel would found a fighting order to protect the Temple and the truth of the new Word. Bringing light to the kingdom would require strength and strong defences. Yet still, it was all founded on deception. Necessary perhaps, but deception nonetheless.

  Acquel touched the small round amulet lying against his chest. It was quiet, far different from months ago when it had flared with heat, warning him of approaching danger. His visions had also ceased—visions of the Lawgiver himself in ancient Valdur. He did not truly yearn for their return but he felt rudderless without them. Why had the spirit of the Saint, who had chosen and guided him, suddenly abandoned him?

  Acquel put the quill down and blotted the paper. He took up the bronze blackwood-handled seal of the Order. The metal was still orange and shiny, practically virgin from the forge. He stared at the seal: the ten arms of the sun, each long ray separated by a shorter wavy one, an upright cross-hilted sword lying upon the face of the sun. He turned it over, thumped the seal down upon the table, and clenched his jaw. It was nothing, nothing but an example of his folly, a folly made manifest. The last fighting order in Valdur had been disbanded decades before after the last great dukes’ war. He had recruited 400 men in six months, a third of those from the old discredited Temple Guard, men he had let sign on as lay brothers because he needed those who actually knew something of fighting. But it was a phantom, untested and untrained. He was making it up as he went along and everyone around him knew it.

  He slid down from the high stool and straightened his surplice, emblazoned with sun and sword—more like a tabard than a monk’s scapular for it delineated him a soldier, not just a holy man. He took in his surroundings: a high-ceilinged chamber, ornately decorated and with a black and white chequered floor. All a world away from his bed in the dormitory a few months ago.

  He left the room, entering a wide corridor in what, centuries before, had been a simple monastery, now grown as grand as any ducal palace. Other blackrobes nodded greetings or gave the blessing as they passed. He was not shunned for the horrors of the last summer, now known by all in monastery and temple, but he was feared. Acquel believed he knew why. He had robbed the brethren of certainty by bringing a new age of revelation upon them.

  Once in the cloisters gardens, the high stone wall and arches rising up around him, he found his feet taking him along the path to the centre where a stand of nutaris trees, branches intertwined, standing vigil over the simple grave of Timandra Pandarus. No other had ever been buried in the gardens but he had demanded it, and Kodoris had granted his wish.

  “Brother Acquel!” It was a young greyrobe, his sandals slapping on the paving stones. He stopped himself a few yards from Acquel and gave a polite bow. “Your pardon for disturbing you, brother. His Holiness has requested your presence.”

&nbs
p; Acquel nodded in return and silently made his way back towards the west portico and towards the great white stone archway that led to the main staircase.

  Two monks of his new order stood before the great studded oak door to the High Priest’s apartment, white tabards with a golden sun in splendour over their black robes, swords at their hips. They bowed deeply as Acquel approached and he raised two fingers of his right hand to his forehead in a gesture of both greeting and blessing. One of the men turned the great iron ring and pushed the door open, admitting him. Acquel stepped into the perpetually cold and austere antechamber, hung with ancient tapestries of the saints.

  A page, a boy of about twelve in black livery, smiled and bowed and then led the way to the High Priest’s private chamber. He struggled briefly to push open the heavy carved blackwood door after having first knocked.

  “Brother Acquelonius, enter. We have much to speak of.”

  Lucius Kodoris was standing, smiling, hands clasped, draped in his robes of purple velvet, the great medallion and chain of holy office upon his breast. He was old—bushy grey hair and thick eyebrows to match—but he was tall still and vigorous. Acquel was yet wary of him after the events of the year gone by. Even so, they were strangely beholden to each other. Kodoris, realizing his terrible mistake in the undercroft of the Temple Majoris, had returned to the light of Elded and slain the man who would have killed them both. For his part, Acquel gave the alibi that would allow Kodoris to ascend to the purple. He needed Kodoris to pave the way for the dissemination of Elded’s new revelations, something impossible without the support of the High Priest and the Grand Curia of the Nine Principals.

  Kodoris’s smile quickly faded as the High Priest gestured for Acquel to take a seat. The room was as expansive and ornate as his own—even larger—a great casement window at one end flooding the room with light. It was the very chamber where the last High Priest, Brachus, had had his throat slit. Acquel’s eyes drifted to the floor near the great table. The porous marble still held the evidence of that horrid night: copper-red bloodstains upon the white tiles.

  They seated themselves across from each other. Acquel’s hands nervously wrapped about the gilded arms of his chair, sinuously carved and terminating in eagle claws grasping golden balls.

  “I’ll make no bones about it,” said Kodoris, his voice rough. “The One Faith is descending into chaos. We may have moved too quickly with our reforms... with preaching the Black Texts. The people are not ready.”

  Acquel’s face remained impassive. “Many have joyfully accepted the new Word. Even the king and the prelate of Perusia. So too will the others in time.”

  Kodoris nodded. “That may be so. But at this moment there is strife across the kingdom. People are taking sides. You’ve heard what happened at Persarola? They singled out the priests for death. All slain, including the defenders you sent there.”

  More deaths laid at his doorstep. He had sent them before they were ready and they had given their lives. Acquel swallowed. “That was Duke Ursino provoking Maresto. The Torinians were bent upon war before all this started and Ursino is using the Faith as cause. You know that.”

  “And it is clear he means to cut us off up here at Livorna from friends and allies in the south. Ursino himself has rejected the new commandments as heresy. If he sends an army here it will be to kill us all and restore those three Principals that fled to his court for protection.”

  Acquel fought back a wave of helplessness. He shifted his weight in the chair, thinking of what to say next. “And what does the High Steward have to say about all this? Has he sought to recruit more for the militia?”

  Kodoris harrumphed. “Marsilius is younger than me but he may as well be a hundred for all his vigour. He’s looking to you to lead the defence of Livorna. He has a hundred of his own retainers to guard his palazzo plus another two hundred in the town militia. That is the extent of his army.”

  Acquel leaned forward. “And that is why I have asked for the aid of Duke Alonso in Maresto. My men are not yet ready to face an army led by Torinia’s mercenaries. Nor are there enough of them.”

  “The Duke has answered your call,” said Kodoris, his large brown eyes boring into Acquel’s. “I have received word this day that he is sending one of his own mercenary companies to meet with you, in your capacity as captain-general. They arrive on the morrow.”

  “Do you know who is coming? Is it the Black Rose?”

  “It is the Company of the Black Rose—or at least a contingent.”

  “Who leads it?”

  “The letter did not say. But the Lord’s mercy shines on us if they will remain here at Livorna. I do not know how soon Torinia may strike. After they sacked Persarola, the soldiers moved on to other villages nearby. We are only at the start of the campaigning season. They could be at the gates within weeks. But there remains the other threat.”

  “Lucinda della Rovera,” said Acquel, a bitter edge to his voice.

  “Yes. Wicked as she is, she is an incomparable beauty and the Duke of Torinia has taken a strong fancy to her since the death of his duchesa. She may already be guiding him for all we know.”

  “A convenient death that I’ll wager she had a hand in. Did none of your entreaties to him about her duplicity—her murders—move him to cast her out?”

  “Her poison has already seeped into the court. Ursino rejects our accusations and claims it is me—and you—who have usurped the Great Temple and the One Faith. She has told him that it was my own hand that slew Brachus. There is no doubt that the creature is urging him on to make war upon Maresto and Livorna.”

  “Her dark arts are yet at work here. We still cannot kill the roots of that infernal tree she gave life to in the crypt. Fire and quicklime worked for a time but now it has sprouted anew. How can we stop her?”

  “I was praying that you would know that,” Kodoris said quietly. “Has not the amulet sent you further guidance? Has the Saint not come to you again in dreams?”

  Acquel looked down at his knees. “I fear he has not. The amulet sits cold on my breast.”

  Kodoris sighed. “Her game must be to splinter the faithful through war. It is pitting those who adopt the ten commandments against those who embrace the seven. But her true aim is to resurrect the Old Faith and cast us all down. I fear that prayer may not be enough. Worse—” he paused, shaking his head.

  “What is it?”

  “There are reports that the tree of the Old Faith is sprouting across Maresto and Torinia. Everywhere one had been felled centuries ago now shows new shoots rising, black-green and with a sickly-sweet scent.”

  Acquel smoothed his scalp, his hand resting upon the nape of his neck. “Elded preserve us,” he whispered.

  Kodoris looked run down, tired. There was a long silence before he spoke.

  “You know I am a man in penance, from now until the day I die. I cannot undo my actions—the lives I took—and permitted her to take. But you must know that I am with you Brother Acquelonius, in body and spirit and with all my heart. I have embraced the revelations.”

  Acquel stared back at him, his mind swirling, tormented by conflicting emotions. He could never trust Kodoris fully, yet he needed him just the same. He nodded slowly. “Then we share the same goal, your Holiness, and the same mission. And our first task is to safeguard the One Faith and the Temple.”

  Kodoris rose from his seat, knees cracking. “Then, by the grace of God and his saints, that is what we shall do.”

  ACQUEL SLEPT FITFULLY that night. He had been a long time getting used to sleeping in a room alone after four years in the vast dormitory of the novices and greyrobes amid laughter, whispers and farting. The silence of his chamber had initially been unnerving, but now, months later, he had grown accustomed if not exactly comfortable with it. He had awakened in the early hours, a chill upon the room, and his body in a sweat.

  His dream was as horrible as it was vivid. He was in the undercroft again, down the wide winding stair deep beneath the Temple. He
lay on his back on the slab stone floor looking up at the cantilevered brick ceiling above him. There was silence all around but soon a hundred whipping green tendrils, a monstrous beanstalk that erupted from the cracks, enveloped his limbs and torso. Dark, darkly verdant and almost black, leaves waxy and thickly scented, the plant embraced him and tightened. The tendrils had sought out his face, his eyes, nose and mouth. And he had shot to wakefulness, sitting bolt upright in his bed. She had poisoned the foundations of the Temple with her black magic, causing the ancient stump of that pagan tree to sprout anew, and now it was battle unceasing to keep it at bay. He knew as he lay there, eyes wide open, that no further rest would come and it being close to sunrise and morning prayer, he gave up and threw his legs over the side of the bed.

  He broke fast alone, his thoughts consumed by doubts. Had Saint Elded abandoned him? How was he to defeat not just the armies of Torinia but also the rise of the old worship? Those ancient gods his own ancestors had sacrificed to: Andras, Beleth, and Belial. That unholy trinity now had a powerful mortal champion. Lucinda della Rovera could turn men’s minds to her will. Although a lay canoness at a wealthy priory, somehow she had hidden her true beliefs from all. Her abilities as a Seeker, deemed a gift of God and given the blessing of Kodoris, were anything but God-given. In his mind’s eye he could still see her shining pale face, coldly angelic, the night she had set about murder at the Ara.

  About mid-morning, his head in his hands, sheaves of papers spread around him, a knock came upon his door.

  “Your pardon, Brother Acquel. The delegation has arrived from Maresto.” The blackrobe gave him a weak smile and bowed.