The Guns of Empire (48 page)

“Why?”

Alex opened her mouth, and the Eldest shot her a warning glance. Winter said, “Our leader, Janus bet Vhalnich, has been trying to destroy the Priests of the Black. One of their assassins wounded him, with a magical poison that we believe will only be cured by her death. We have followed her this far.”

“You risk your lives with a small chance of success. Vhalnich is so important?”

Winter nodded. “He is . . . a great man who has done a great deal for me. And I have seen the cruelty of the Priests of the Black. I have to save him, if I can.”

“I see.”

The boy Antov reappeared, with a tray of fresh-baked, steaming bread and a bowl of thick red soup. Winter hadn't realized how hungry she was until that moment; she practically grabbed the food out of his hands, scooping up the red stuff with the bread and wolfing it down. It was thick, with beans and tomatoes, and at that moment it was the best food she'd ever tasted.

“The healing,” Abraham said apologetically. “It leaves her needing energy.”

“Sorry,” Winter mumbled, mouth full.

“It's nothing,” the Eldest said, a faint smile bringing out the lines in his face. “You truly intend to go to Elysium?”

Winter nodded as she ripped into the bread. “It's our only chance to save him.”

“You're certain he still lives?”

“No.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “I can only hope.”

“We can do it,” Alex said. “There's a way—”

This time it was the boy sitting beside her who elbowed Alex in the ribs. Winter cleared her throat.

“Alex has been very helpful to us,” she said. “And she only volunteered to bring us here when there was no other way. Please don't be hard on her.”

“Alex has some learning to do on the nature of hospitality and responsibility,” the Eldest said. “But that is not your affair. Tell me this. If Vhalnich is saved, do you believe he can win this war against the Priests of the Black?”

“Yes,” Winter said without hesitation.

“A great many people have sought to bring them down. Even your Farus the Fourth failed.”

“Farus the Fourth didn't know what he was up against,” Winter said. “Janus does. He's been working toward this from the beginning.”

Winter was increasingly certain that was the case. It all made sense, when you looked at it from that angle. The expedition to Khandar had given Janus the Thousand Names and popular standing as a war hero. His return to Vordan and the Velt campaign had built up his support to the point where he was named First Consul. Every step of the larger campaign, the supernatural preparations and the military ones, had been planned for this.

“It has been many years since we dared to dream the Black Priests might be defeated,” the Eldest said. “Many, many years.”

“It's dangerous,” the young man said. “If she fails, she might end up in a torture chamber, and she won't keep our secret for long.”

“I am aware of that, Maxwell,” the Eldest said. “But as Alex is so fond of telling us, there is a time when one must stop considering and take action.”

“Finally,”
Alex burst out. “I—”

“This
may
be that time,” the Eldest cut in. “I wish to hear more of Vhalnich and his fight. Winter, are you willing to tell the story?”

“Some of it is secret,” Winter said.

“Naturally. Here is an offer, then. A secret for a secret. You must have questions for me?”

“Yes,” Winter said. “But—”

“Eldest!” Maxwell said. “What are you going to tell her?”

“Whatever she wants to know,” the Eldest said firmly. “Our greatest secret is our very existence, and she already knows that. Anything else is small by comparison. And I suspect we may discover some areas of mutual understanding.”

“All right,” Winter said. “If that's what you need to let us go.”

“That remains to be seen.” The Eldest got to his feet, surprisingly spry considering his frail appearance. “Let me show you the archive.”

—

Another stair, at the back of the room, led down into the mountain again. There were no windows here, and the Eldest carried a smoky lantern to light
the way. The others remained behind, a furious argument between Alex and Maxwell beginning almost immediately.

“You have questions,” the Eldest said.

“I hardly know where to start,” Winter said. “What
is
this place? Who are you? Why—”

“It is best to begin at the beginning,” the old man said, chuckling a little. “Do you know anything about the founding of the Karisai Church?”

“Only what's in the
Wisdoms
,” Winter admitted. “Karis obtained the Grace from the Lord and then founded the Church to teach people the right way to live, so that the Beast wouldn't return.”

“The Beast of Judgment,” the Eldest intoned. “When you think about it, what do you picture?”

Winter frowned. At Mrs. Wilmore's, there had been a painting of Karis banishing the Beast. The monster had been mostly hidden in shadow, but it had looked vaguely like an enormous black wolf, with long fangs and glowing red eyes. But that had always felt allegorical to her, not
really
real. “I can't say that I've thought much about it.”

“Never? It is the most important story in the
Wisdoms
. Surely you learned it practically in the cradle.”

“Of course. I guess . . .” She groped for words. “I never thought of the Beast as a
thing
, like a monster. I figured it was more of a concept. Like a representation of God's wrath.”

“You are not far from the truth, though not for the reason you think.” The Eldest raised his lantern to illuminate an intersection, then turned left. The tunnels here were dusty and unadorned, with no rooms leading off of them. “The reality is that the Beast of Judgment is a demon, not entirely unlike the one you bear.”

“A
demon
? But . . .” Winter trailed off.

“But?”

“The Beast was going to destroy the
world
. Some of the demons I've seen have been terrifying, but none of them even come close to that.”

“It's not clear that the Beast would have destroyed the world itself. But humanity? Oh, yes. It is the most powerful demon ever to appear, and it differs from the others in two key respects. First, it is not restricted to a single host. It
spreads
. This is the essence of its power. If it had been left unchecked, every human being would have eventually been brought into its dominion. God chose His tool of destruction well.”

“How do you know all of this?” Winter said. “I've never heard anyone speak of the Beast that way.”

“I am coming to that.” The Eldest looked over his shoulder and smiled. “The second difference between the Beast and a common demon is that the Beast is intelligent in its own right. Most demons have no more reason than a cat or a wolf, but the Beast is to them as humans are to animals. It
remembers
, down through the centuries. It learns.”

Winter nodded slowly. She'd always thought of Infernivore as a kind of animal, with its own moods and hungers, but no smarter than, say, a dog. A lot like a dog, in fact—eager to attack, but still waiting for its master's command. She tried to imagine sharing her soul with something that could
think
, and shivered.

“The Church has done its best to suppress the truth,” the Eldest went on. “But
we
remember, though they try to destroy us. Karis was a sorcerer, a man who had studied the art of summoning demons. In an age of great minds, he was one of the greatest. When the Beast first arose, sent by God to destroy mankind, he alone saw what would come. He prayed, and God, impressed by his piety and will, granted him the knowledge and strength to confront the monster. Karis sacrificed himself to the Beast, even as his followers eradicated all the other hosts, leaving it confined to his body alone. His acolytes learned the Beast's name, the greatest and most powerful of the demon names. You understand the nature of demons and their names?”

“Not really,” Winter confessed, feeling like she was barely treading water. “Janus has explained a little.”

“A demon can be summoned from the hells by the incantation of its name. Each name refers to only a single creature, and if it is already in this world, reciting the name is useless. But the demons work ceaselessly to reach our world if they are left to their own devices, and now and again they succeed. Sometimes a child is born with a demon, without any summoning.” He cocked his head. “Is that how it was with you? Or did you speak a name?”

“I spoke . . . something.” Feor had called it a
naath
, but Winter guessed it amounted to the same thing. “It hurt so much I thought I would die.”

“You very well might have. The more powerful the demon, the harder it is for a human soul to bear its weight. An unworthy host dies at once. This also means the more powerful the demon, the more difficult it is for it to be born into the world.

“What Karis realized was that the Beast, being intelligent, would learn
from its failure. If it was loosed again, it would never be so foolish as to allow all its hosts to be hunted down. And if it arose in a corner of the world where there was no one to oppose it, then it would grow out of control before it could be stopped. He understood the nature of the task God had set him, and those who came after him.” The Eldest halted, looking at Winter. “For thirteen hundred years, the Church has held the Beast captive. When one host dies, a search is made for another who can bear the weight of it. As long as it is in this world, it can be kept under lock and key. If it is allowed to return to the hells, it could arise anywhere, and if it finds itself beyond the reach of the Church, then humanity is doomed.
This
is the nature of the Grace. Only as long as the Church maintains its vigil is God's instrument of vengeance kept from the world.”

“Wait. This is
still
going on?” Winter said. “You're not serious.” Even after everything she'd seen, things like this—Karis, the Beast, sorcery—felt like they belonged only in ancient history.

“I am. The Beast of Judgment is interred in a cell under Elysium.”

“Brass fucking Balls of the—” Winter stopped. “I mean. Damn.”

“Indeed.”

“So where do
you
come in?”

The Eldest turned and continued walking. “Three hundred years after Karis' sacrifice, there came to the Church the greatest leader since the Savior's death.”

“Saint Elleusis Ligamenti,” Winter said, eager to show she wasn't entirely ignorant. “He founded Elysium and split the Church into the three orders, and launched the holy wars.”

“Correct,” the Eldest said. “He also took it upon himself to codify Church doctrine and eliminate sects whose beliefs had been branded as heresy.”

“People were sacrificing animals and so on, right? Pagan rituals they'd held on to.” There had been a paragraph or so to that effect in one of Winter's history books. It made her think of Khandar and the endless ranks of their animal-headed gods.

“There was some of that,” the Eldest agreed. “But the largest split was a philosophical disagreement over the nature of demon-summoning. In the early days of the Church, priests—following in Karis' footsteps—gathered the names of demons and used them for their own ends. Sorcery was more common then. But as the Church's power grew, one group, headed by Ligamenti, held that
anyone
who hosted a demon was condemned to eternal torment, no matter for what purposes the demon was used. That the goal of the Church should be to
imprison all demons as they'd imprisoned the Beast, and banish sorcery from the world forever.

“We called them the Purifiers. At the time my ancestors called themselves the Pragmatists, and they believed that demons were tools to be used for good or evil. Where they refer to us at all, however, the Church now calls us the Mages, and our belief the Mages' Heresy. It is a useful enough name for our purposes.

“So there was war between the Church and the Mages. Sorcery had never been popular with the common people, no matter the purpose, and Ligamenti raised them against us. Some of us tried to fight back, taking shelter with the tyrants and kings who ruled much of the continent, but they were eventually destroyed as the domain of the Church expanded. Others fled beyond Ligamenti's reach. And my own ancestors chose to hide, here on the Mountain, and hope that Ligamenti and his Purifiers would destroy themselves.”

The Eldest stopped in front of an iron-banded wooden door. He fished under his robe and removed an ancient brass key, which he fitted into a keyhole worked into the banding. The door swung inward on noiseless, well-oiled hinges, and the old man raised his lantern high.

“Here we are,” he said. “Unless I miss my guess, you've seen something like this before?”

Winter stepped around him into the doorway. The room beyond was small and nearly empty, with only a small fire pit at the other end with a couple of pillows beside it. Lining the walls were huge tablets, taller than she was, that reflected the lantern with the dull gleam of burnished steel. Standing out like dark ink on the surface were row after row of strange characters, deeply incised into the metal, spelling out what Winter now knew to be the names of demons.

—

The Eldest kindled the fire pit, and he and Winter sat down between the ancient slabs. In the most detached way she could manage, she told him the story of what had happened in Khandar—Feor, the meeting with Mother and her cult, and the discovery of the Thousand Names—and the conflicts they'd had with the Priests of the Black since her return to Vordan. The old man listened without changing his expression, stirring the fire from time to time with an iron poker and sending sparks whirling toward the ceiling.