Of Deeds Most Valiant: A Poisoned Saints Novel

My hands are still shaking from my role in this horrific pantomime when the floor beneath us begins to shake and then, to my horror, to move. It turns ponderously, the motion forcing all of us to focus more on keeping our balance than anything else. I sink into a half crouch, trying to look everywhere at once to find the source of the movement. An earthquake? A judgment of the God for the travesty of that mock trial and execution?

Little rippling growls tear from the brindled dog’s mouth, but they’re muted under the sound of grinding and a slight squeal. Something is moving that has not moved in a very long time.

“Imagine the size of the gears!” Sir Sorken exclaims to Sir Coriand over the sound. “I told you those weren’t just decorative.”

“But wouldn’t you need to put the axle straight through? If it were merely balanced on top, the torque at just one end would break the whole structure.” Sir Coriand’s voice is hard to make out in the din.

“Clearly not,” Sir Sorken yells back, wonder on his face as he looks upward. “Though from the sound of it, it could use a solid greasing!”

I follow his gaze to see that even the patterned metal grate on the ceiling where the demon is held is twisting as the room we are in spins. After what feels like an hour later, though it could only have been a few heartbeats, the room begins to grow darker and I swivel again to look behind us, to where the windows that had let in the bright light before are now sliding to face ragged stone and strips of corridor leading to the rooms we explored yesterday. In their place, a cutout bas-relief — that used to be the wall to the right of the windows when going down the stairs — is taking its place. The cutouts are small, too small for a person to go through, though sea birds could certainly try. And the light that shines between them illuminates a carved scene of a man grappling with a five-headed serpent. By some odd coincidence, the wind whistles through the holes in just such a way that it makes a hollow tune of sorts, though an irregular, broken, chimeric one.

I steal a glance at the Majester, who is staring at the broken windows covering yesterday’s corridor. If he failed to gather all the cups from those rooms yesterday, he certainly never shall.

I startle when the Vagabond throws off her fur robe, dislodging a waterskin and a leather-bound book she had stuffed inside its folds. Of course. I knew she hid something there. She startles me by taking off like a shot toward the staircase. She barely seems burdened at all by the armor she wears. She could win a footrace in the deserts of Haroun where I was raised.

Behind me, Hefertus curses and runs after her, the brindled dog hot on his heels. He’ll have a time and a half catching her.

I turn to look at Sir Owalan, standing there with his mouth forming an “O” and his hand still on the key inserted in the lock.

He waits until the room finishes turning and comes to a juddering stop before whispering.

“I just wanted to see what it would do. I was curious.”

“So were we all,” Sir Sorken says approvingly. “Well then, my lad. Open it up. Let’s see what all this fuss is about!”

“Shouldn’t we bury the bodies first?” I ask, dismayed. They’re walking right through this scene of murder like children trampling a prized flower garden.

“Oh, just shuffle them off to the side somewhere,” Sir Sorken says, his ugly face blank when he glances over at the dismembered Seer and the dust and bones of Sir Kodelai.

Perhaps I should have confessed to anger. It wells up in me now, bubbling to the surface.

“Put them on one of those beds, maybe. A good resting place, hmm?” he says, as if to mitigate his disregard.

“Oh, he can’t do that,” Sir Coriand says distractedly as they open the door. It swings out to show another door of lacework, and at the center of it is an ivory carved plaque that shows a sun going over the plane of the earth. It marks the sun at the left edge with three lines, the sun halfway to peak with five lines, the sun at peak with one line, the sun descending to the right with two lines, and the sun dancing along the far end with four lines.

Sir Coriand shakes the lacework. “It’s latched and I don’t really see the mechanism to open it.”

“I think it would open if the room turned again.” Sir Sorken is just as taken as his fellow Engineer, pushing his ruddy cheek hard against the lace as he tries to peer in and up at the mechanism. “Look, just there.”

“Oh yes, of course,” Sir Coriand says happily before turning back to us and saying, “But you can’t put the bodies on the beds. Now that everything has turned, the hall that led to that wing leads somewhere else.”

“Where else?” Sorken sounds distracted.

“To wherever we thought this door led. Until we solve this puzzle, at least. It is obviously instructions to turn the room again. What a lovely marvel of engineering this is. Well worth the trip to see it, all casualties of course excepted. Can you see what lies through the lattice, Sorken?”

Sir Sorken grunts. “Hall’s too long. Could be hell herself for all we know.”

“It’s a puzzle?” the Majester asks, scratching feverishly on his parchment.

“Do keep up, Majester General,” Sir Coriand says. “It’s times of day, isn’t it? But the numbers must mean some kind of order, though why it starts at noon and hops all around, I wouldn’t know. Probably worth noting, though. Good thing you brought pen and ink. The real question is, will that fountain still work? If that still splashes water up after the whole monastery has been swiveled, that would be a real wonder, don’t you think, Sorken?”

“I prefer my wonders less opaque,” the other Engineer complains, “but yes, I’d consider it nigh on impossible.”

“Yes, rather,” Sir Coriand says, giggling like a schoolboy.

“Are you saying that the room I opened is down there now? Across from the clock?” Sir Owalan asks, eyes wide, pointing a trembling finger back toward the clock and the entrance that used to lead to the dormitories.

“I thought we were very clear,” Sir Sorken says. Which clarifies nothing for the Penitent. “If you’re confused you should consult the Majester’s map.”

“He means yes.” I am annoyed and it shows in my shortness. “But before you go running off, help me with our fallen.”

I still feel sick over Kodelai’s death. The most respected and well-known member of the Hand of Justice and he died at my challenge. I feel responsible. Just as I feel responsible for letting the Seer’s warning go unheeded. Two deaths, and they’re both ultimately at my feet.

Sir Owalan pauses. And so do the others, looking from me, to the fallen, and back again.

“They look well reposed as they lie,” the High Saint says tentatively. “And there’s really nowhere to put them.”

“Or any way to wash after touching them,” Sir Owalan agrees.

I feel my mouth fall open, but before I can reply, the High Saint says, “Let us pray.”

We’re swept up in the rote prayer for the fallen, spoken in concert over the bodies. It takes long minutes. Minutes where I’m bound in place, wondering if Hefertus and Victoriana are at the top of the steps. If they’ve found we can still leave this vault. If they’ve left without us. I look up, but from this angle, I can see nothing but the demon looking down on me. I dare not break tradition, or spit on these poor fallen souls, but I ache to move, to answer the questions plaguing me.

When, at last, the High Saint speaks the final words and we all intone, “Amen,” the slap of feet on marble has grown loud. We watch as the Vagabond and the Prince return, both out of breath, both sprinting back to us.

“The door,” Hefertus bursts out while they are still quite a way off. “The door is shut.”

The dog reaches us first, his expression so intent that my heart seizes for a moment, sure he is about to attack. Instead, he slows and circles both us and the dead, sniffing around the perimeter. If he disturbs the bodies then I will have no choice. He will join them in death. I hope the Vagabond realizes that and prevents it from needing to occur. I shoot a glance at her, hoping she reads my warning, but she mistakes it for a question.

“The door is still open but it doesn’t matter. It leads now to a solid rock wall.” Victoriana’s eyes are hard with what I take to be fear. “We’re trapped in here.”

Now my heart really seizes and I fight a sudden dizzy spell as I realize what she’s saying. No food with us. No water if the fountain has ceased. No tools to carve our way out, and even if there were tools … how would we do it? The door was never a proper door to begin with. It was always a miracle. We don’t even know how far beneath the earth this place is.

Sir Coriand looks over his shoulder, abandoning his study of the plaque for a moment. “Is the fountain still running?”

“The … my apologies … what?” Hefertus asks, looking at the other man like he is mad.

We are all staring at Sir Coriand together. Does he not understand? We are trapped in this underground grave like bugs under a bucket. There is no way out. We are dead men and women already and we know it.

“Yes,” the Vagabond says carefully. She’s a little white around the lips. “There’s still water pouring through it.”

“Well, that’s alright then,” Sir Coriand says.

“Indeed,” Sir Sorken echoes heartily.

“I don’t see how.” The Majester sounds wary. He’s speaking the way you speak to madmen.

“Oh, well if the engineers who built this place figured out how to keep the water running even after the whole room turned — and trust me, that’s a feat — then they planned for another way out. We’ll find it eventually.”

“Like we found the cup?” the Inquisitor asks snidely, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. His jab fails to find its mark.

“We’ll probably find that, too.”

“And how will we find any of these things,” Sir Owalan scoffs, as if he is not the one who had locked us all into this mausoleum. “We can’t even get out of this place!”

“Well,” Sir Coriand says, looking slightly surprised, as if he’s been asked by a child how he knew a goat was a goat. “I’d advise checking in places we haven’t yet looked. Like that door you opened.”

We all look at each other, but Sir Owalan is the first to break. He bolts away from the charnel hall we’re in and dashes down the mosaic floor, one lone figure dwarfed to insect-like size under the ponderous white statues now charcoal in the fainter light coming through the carved holes of the bas-relief wall.

“Has it occurred to anyone else that this place was built at far too large a scale?”

The Inquisitor says so little that I turn to look at him, wondering if he means something deeper by that, but he says nothing more, simply looking up at the demon in the ceiling, a thoughtful expression gracing his face. It’s only when I notice that his long white hair is swirling a little that I realize there’s a slight breeze still drifting into the monastery from the holes in the carved bas-relief.

“Too large a scale for what?” Sir Coriand asks, as if he’s looking over blueprints instead of stuck in a trap.

The Majester and the High Saint take one look at one another and then hurry after Sir Owalan. That’s probably for the best. None of us should be alone down here.

Hefertus turns to me, panting. “Things have gone very badly, brother.”

I nod as I shoot a glance at the Vagabond. Her braid is slightly askew and her cheeks flushed from running, mouth screwed up into a worried knot. She nods back at me, once, sharply, acknowledging the situation. She doesn’t seem too rattled from her ordeal earlier — or this one now. Perhaps I am the only one who finds this so unsettling.

“I think we should stick together,” she says. “Whatever killed the Seer is not me, and it’s still out there.”

“You don’t think it was a human?” Hefertus asks her. “One of us?”

“Do you?”

He runs a hand over his tidy beard. “I don’t know. I’m not certain of anything now. I’m glad I wore all my pearls, though. If I’m going to die, I’d like to be buried with them.”

“That’s really all they’re good for in the end,” the lady paladin says with a wry smile.

“You don’t think they bring out my eyes?”

The Prince Paladins lose their common sense first. Who thinks of pearls when they are trapped in a ruin?

“I’d still like to see to the dead,” I say quietly. The other two nod, looking around, but there’s nowhere to put them.

“You’ll need a broom and a shovel if you want to move the Hand,” Hefertus says grimly, and I could swear the dog’s bark of response sounds just like a laugh. “I don’t know what to do for them, Adalbrand. We are too poorly equipped.”

“We could drape my cloak over the Seer,” the Vagabond suggests.

I shake my head. With all of our supplies gone, we must make use of what we have. All of it.

“I think I have the pattern memorized.” Sir Coriand sounds pleased. “Once we figure out how to solve it, we can spin the room again.”

“Perhaps you could wait before you open any more locked doors,” Hefertus says.

“And if you have a lantern in those packs your golems brought, that would not go amiss,” the Inquisitor agrees. His eyes are haunted and I wonder what he sees in this place. Does he see it as I do? A prison and a grave? Or as Sir Owalan, the High Saint, and the Majester do — a challenge given them by the God?

“We did have a lantern, I think,” Sir Sorken says. “And I think we’d all do a little better with a cup of tea. Let’s go find the golems, hmm?”

As we make our way toward the stairs, Sir Coriand shows us the gears hidden in the mosaic pattern of the tile. The one we’re walking over is larger than the bases of some towers. “You are all certain you didn’t notice the gears from the stairs?” he asks, looking at us as if we are all terribly dull.

“I was more focused on the demon in the ceiling,” the Vagabond says.

She’s screwed her face up into a brave look. I wonder if she doubts whether she will survive this. Doubt, after all, is her flaw. Is that the result of the death of her mentor shaking her belief or has she always been on the edge, believing but not believing, driven by doubts like a ship before the wind? I’d like to know.

“What demon?”

“The one hanging over us like a thundercloud waiting to break.” She points at the ceiling and the Engineers exchange a look I can’t quite decipher.

“Tea. Promptly,” Sir Sorken says.

As we hurry past, my eyes drift down the new hallway. It’s like the other — long, with inset shelves, but that’s all I can see at a glance. It hardly matters. I’m sure I’ll end up walking through it eventually.

“I want to thank you, Sir Adalbrand,” Victoriana says out of nowhere. She’s so close her shoulder brushes mine and for a moment that’s all I can feel. I hadn’t noticed her joining me.

I turn to look at her and just like always, her wide brown eyes make my heart stutter for a moment. What a gift it would be to be an innocent man and be free to lose myself in those eyes. To try to win their smile. As it is, I am gentle in how I respond, careful to neither demand what is not mine, nor offer what I do not have.

“No thanks are needed, Lady Paladin.”

“You saved my life.” Her voice is full of things she does not say. It is thick and heavy like crystalized honey.

“You were innocent.” I try to strain the longing from my voice. I do not know if I succeed. “Anyone would do the same.”

She snorts a laugh and the tension of the moment evaporates in a shared wry smile.

“I think perhaps you failed to notice, Sir Knight, but no one else did the same. In fact, I was quite certain they would have lapped up my blood like dogs when Sir Kodelai was finished with me.”

“I don’t like blood,” Hefertus says from behind us. “Never had a taste for it.”

When I turn to look at him, he lifts a brow at me, his eyes all judgment. My cheeks heat. He’s right, of course. I have no business talking to the Vagabond. I am only making things worse. By the time I school my face to neutrality, she has turned to the Engineers.

“I kept these books,” she is saying, trying to get Sir Coriand’s attention. “We found them in the rooms but I forgot about them when the Seer died.”

“Are those what you were smuggling under that horrific excuse for a cloak?”

“They’re all variations of the same thing, I think, but your Ancient Indul is much better than mine,” she soldiers on. “There are diagrams.”

“Diagrams?”

That has his attention. He snatches the books as we reach the golems.

“Tea, I think, Cleft,” Sir Sorken says as Sir Coriand spreads the books out and begins to study them side by side. They both crouch over the find like crows over a day-old kill.

“They are the same! Look, these people were all creating something. But what? And the way they arrive there is entirely different. Do you think it’s the same thing that they’re making?” Sir Coriand is entranced.

“The sketches are very similar if they aren’t,” Victoriana says. “See this one compared to that one. And what is this word? Is it not ‘Saints’ as we see on the plaque just there?”

She points to the plaque at the bottom of the stairs. Sir Coriand looks at her quizzically. He’s as taken with her as I am, I think. I can admit my weakness there. As old as he is, and as distracted, still he would be a better fit for her than this broken paladin is.

I watch the golems suspiciously as they carefully draw wooden cups from the bags they are holding and then put leaves in them with huge, clunky fingers.

Cleft — less horrible, as he is made of stone — pours the still-steaming water into the cups to brew tea.

Has so little time passed that the water is still hot? Can that really be? I glance where the windows used to be and I feel, suddenly, as though I am being crushed in a vise, as though I am trapped in rock, locked in a cage. I can’t quite catch a breath.

Hefertus is chuckling over something Sir Sorken said. The Inquisitor is examining the lanterns suspiciously, taking tea absentmindedly from the hulking golem. The eyes of both golems burn and burn as if they, too, are imprisoned within stone. And for a moment the world swims. I catch the Vagabond’s eye and the corner of her lip turns up conspiratorially, and my breath catches. And I am well again for a moment.

Lord have mercy. God have mercy.

I exhale the prayer and draw in a long breath, accepting the tiny wooden cup from the massive rock hand that offers it to me. When I look up into that eye, it flickers. What big hands you have, Cleft. You could crush the life out of me with them. And yet here you are, handing me tea.

“Cunning little cups, aren’t they?” Sir Sorken says, looking up at me as if he sensed my thoughts. “I had Cleft carve them for you yesterday when you were down here.”

I am drinking tea made by what is either a trapped soul or a soulless abomination in a cup that he carved. I feel ill.

“Drink your tea, Sorrowful Saint,” Sir Sorken says to me, a note of mockery in his voice. “Stop fretting about a morality you built all by yourself.”

Just that one jab hits me in the wrong spot. It stirs up my anxiety at being sealed in a tomb, my longing for what is not mine to have, my ethical dilemma at working with one who does not share my convictions, and my concern that the God is not listening when I call. I’m about to snap at him but once again we are arrested by the sound of feet slapping down the corridor.

It’s Sir Owalan. His eyes are wide and he’s sprinting, his filmy robes fluttering around him like the wings of a moth. Carefully, I set my tea down.

“You have to come,” Sir Owalan calls when he’s close enough for his voice to travel. “All of you! Now!”

“We’re drinking tea, my boy,” Sir Sorken says in his naturally booming voice.

“It’s important,” Sir Owalan gasps.

“Has someone died?” I’m instantly tense. My hand is on my pommel before I realize it.

Owalan shakes his head, puffing for air.

“Tea is important,” Sir Sorken says firmly. “Shall I have the golems pour you a cup? I think you could use it, hmm?”

“No tea,” Sir Owalan gasps. “We might have found the Cup of Tears. But we need all of you if we are to attain to it.”