The Temple of Heart and Bone (18 page)

Wondering about his companion
helped Drothspar to clear his mind of his own fears and doubts. He led her
toward the city square, taking detours to avoid areas of dense smoke. He also
bypassed sections of heavy debris and buildings that looked as if they might
continue to crumble. It took time to weave around the maze of smoke and rubble.
Drothspar moved as quickly as he could. Chance held tightly to his robe and
concentrated on calming her coughing and breathing.

After many twists and turns,
Drothspar and Chance emerged in the city square. The haze thinned out in the
open space and Chance finally had the opportunity to catch her breath. She
coughed a few times and released Drothspar’s robe. He, in turn, watched to make
sure she was all right. Once he was certain she could breathe and stand on her
own, Drothspar began to look around the square.

It was a far different scene than
he remembered. Damage from the invasion Chance had told him about had been
compounded by the city’s latest disaster. The monolithic fountain at the center
of the square had toppled, most likely, during the earlier invasion. Most of
the damage had time to weather down.

The haze of smoke lessened in the
square, but it was not gone entirely. It lingered in spots like customers
around a merchant’s goods. Few of the buildings surrounding the square appeared
to be intact, and all of them were damaged to some degree. Shattered windows
littered the streets, partially melted into the cobblestones. Doors hung
charred and useless in their stone frames.

Drothspar was amazed at the woe
that had been imposed on Æostemark. Certainly, the Ferns’ farmstead had
suffered as much as it could. It was a primer, he thought, a first lesson
compared to the destruction he saw around the square. The city hadn’t merely
been destroyed, it had been tormented. Someone had wanted Æostemark to suffer.
Drothspar walked to the toppled fountain. He walked slowly to avoid feeling
gauche. He felt as if the city was baring its pain to him, and to move quickly
would tell it that he wasn’t paying attention. It would have been like running
through a funeral procession.

While Drothspar stepped toward
the fountain, Chance looked around through watering eyes, red and irritated by
the ever-present smoke. She was stunned. Lessons in a history class overlooked
scenes such as this. Professors were quick to highlight dates of battles, names
of leaders, names of heroes, but she had never been taught about the
devastation that war could bring. Surely, this had to have been an act of war.
No accident could have caused all of this. Looking around at the destruction,
her eyes sought proof that it had been intentional. She wouldn’t believe—she
couldn’t believe—that any accident had been so thorough. A short distance from
the fountain, she noticed a dark patch of cobblestones.

The stones were stained with dead
and dried blood. She had seen enough bloody stains in the last week to be
certain of that. There were multiple pools, she thought, looking at the ground
and trying to understand what had happened. Some of the stains appeared to have
been disturbed. She noticed something else near the blood. It was small, tiny,
even. She knelt down to examine it. The blood had dried around it, helping to
hold it in the crevice between the stones. Chance drew her dagger and used it
to pry the object loose.

It was a very small chain. She
noticed that some of the links were open, as if they’d been sheared by
something very sharp. Chain-mail, she thought, remembering the armor she’d seen
on her father’s soldiers. This was a scrap of that kind of armor, she was sure
of it. There must have been a fight here.

She turned to look for Drothspar.
She had to share what she had found. She saw him standing near the remains of
the fountain. His hands rested on a great stone slab, probably one that had
been the centerpiece of the fountain. She walked over to him, her evidence in
hand.

“I found something,” she said to
him as she approached. Drothspar remained still, standing at the stone, his
hand spread over it for support.

“I found something,” Chance
repeated stopping before the large stone.

Drothspar turned his head slowly
to regard the young woman. Chance returned his look steadily. It was the first
time she could remember that he had held her gaze. Normally, he turned away, as
if afraid to have her study him. This time, however, he did not turn. He seemed
to be looking into her, looking through her, looking past her. Chance bore the
weight of his stare, feeling calm and unafraid. She wondered what it was that
he saw and what it was that he was looking for. After several minutes, his
focus shifted to the scrap of mail in her hand. Slowly, he turned to his slate
and wrote something in response.

“I found something, too.”

“What did you find?” she asked.
She was eager to tell him about her discovery, but she was curious about what
he had found.

Drothspar pointed around the side
of the stone. Bloodstains had gathered around a post driven into the ground.
Small droplets of blood led away from the post to end near the side of the
stone. Drothspar pointed again to his other side. There Chance saw similar
stains. In the center, between the posts was another stain, larger than the first
two.

“What happened here?” she asked,
her voice little more than a whisper.

“Sacrifice,” he wrote slowly
across his tablet.

“Sacrifice,” she read. “What do
you mean by ‘sacrifice’?”

“A ritual was performed here,” he
replied. “The victims were tied to those stakes, they were killed. Some part of
their bodies was removed. This stone was used as an altar.” He wrote
sporadically, clearing his slate when he was certain she had read what he had
written.

“How can you be sure?” she asked,
knowing he was right.

“Gathner, my mentor, told me
about certain rituals the Church has been trying to suppress. He never went
into too much detail. He didn’t think I was ready. Some of the other priests
used to enjoy trying to frighten me with stories of what they had seen. They
described barbaric practices, the slaughter and shaming of living beings, both
victims and celebrants. I thought they were ghost stories, simple tales only
meant to frighten me. They never did. I used to annoy the old priests by asking
them to tell me more. Eventually they would give up and leave me alone. I was
never sure I should believe their stories. I was almost certain they were just
made up of whole cloth to frighten me.” He paused and looked at the stakes.
“Now I know they weren’t.”

“So you’re saying that some
ritual was performed here? On this very spot? People were sacrificed? Why?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “From
what I was told, the sacrificial rituals were common to ancient worshipers of
the Fallen, the True Fallen. It was a sign of allegiance to sacrifice a human
to them. They were the creators of humanity, makers of the bodies we inhabit.
To sacrifice a living human, to ritually separate soul from body, was to call
out to them as masters. The True Fallen see mankind as slaves. If their slaves
can’t be chained, they must be destroyed.”

“Someone tried to call a Fallen
here?” She made a sign to ward off evil.

“A True Fallen,” he corrected.
“It certainly seems so.”

“We should leave,” she suggested
quickly. Her eyes darted around the square. She forgot the scrap of chain-mail
clutched tightly in her hand. She had been curious about the city and the
prospects that it held. Now, however, she was ready to go. Her professors had
told her that there was no possibility of life after death. Drothspar, whatever
he truly was, had proven them wrong. They had also told her that the mythology
of the Maker and the Fallen was just that, mythology. She had learned enough in
her childhood to be certain that she didn’t want to meet any Fallen, True or
any other kind. “Please,” she asked plaintively, “can we go?”

Drothspar was lost in thoughts of
long past lessons and horror stories. He had failed to notice the change in
Chance’s behavior. He heard her plaintive plea and looked at her as if seeing
her for the first time. He saw the fear rising in her eyes. He saw her eyes
nervously darting around the square. He also saw that she refused to panic.
Whatever fear may have gripped her, she held it tightly under control.

“Yes,” he wrote, “but I would
like to see something before we leave.”

“Great,” she said ready to be on
her way. “What do you want to see?”

“The cemetery.”

“Great,” she said, with much less
enthusiasm.

They left the square moving off
to the north-east. The city cemetery had been filled long before the invasion
seven years ago. The siege of Æostemark, however, would have created more
bodies in need of burial. Since the inhabitants couldn’t leave to bury their
dead in the cemeteries outside of the city, Drothspar reasoned, they would look
for places in the old interior graveyard. Walking with purpose, Drothspar led
Chance through the smoke and debris to the north-east corner of the city. The
old cemetery was right up against the walls.

The ground had been disturbed in
many areas. It looked as if someone had dug hastily, in order to accommodate
those who had died in this recent attack. Drothspar threaded his way between
the graves and stones, trying to get a look into one of the openings. Chance
felt uncomfortable walking through the cemetery, but she clung to Drothspar’s
robe and gripped her dagger tightly in her hand.

They reached an opening in the
ground and Drothspar came to a halt. He stopped so abruptly that Chance nearly
knocked him into the grave. She looked at the hole. There were no tools around
it, the opening was irregular. The ground appeared to have been pushed from
below rather than opened from above. She edged closer to the opening and peered
inside. There was nothing but a putrid stench.

Drothspar knelt beside the
opening. He took some of the dirt in his hand and crumbled it. He stood and
circled the grave, looking deeply into it. Rain water had collected in the
bottom, evidence that it had been opened prior to the storm.

He walked to another of the
openings and looked inside. Chance joined him and looked in for herself. The
hole was smaller than the first, barely two feet wide. Deep inside, she could
see something lighter. A simple collection of wood had splintered up in the dirt.
Although water had collected inside of the opening, it was obvious that the
wood had been pushed upward.

“Someone was buried alive,” she
gasped, revulsion echoing in her voice.

“No,” Drothspar replied.

“No,” she asked, “what are you
saying? A corpse dug its way out of its own coffin?”

“I think so.”

“Under normal circumstances—” she
began, “Oh, to hell with it. Did you see what you needed to see? Can we get out
of here, please?”

“Yes,” he wrote abruptly.

They started to work their way
out and then stopped. Drothspar began to look around the cemetery.

“What’s wrong?” Chance asked, a
note of worry in her voice.

Drothspar continued to look
about, absently reaching for his slate. “They’re not all open,” he wrote.

“No,” she agreed, “they’re not.
Maybe we should get going before they change their minds.”

Drothspar looked at Chance and
nodded his head. He put his tablet away and led her out of the cemetery. They
made their way to the opening in the north wall and stopped. A fire, more
stubborn than the others, blazed up in a building near the opening. Heavy smoke
was being drawn out through the wall. Vision wavered. Heat was pouring out
along with the smoke. Drothspar pointed to the east.

“East gate?” she asked.

Drothspar nodded.

“I don’t suppose we have much
choice,” she agreed.

The newly awakened fire was
drawing air from other areas of the city. Ashes kicked up by the wind flew
through the air like dirty snow. Chance tightened the scarf around her nose and
mouth as Drothspar led her through the graying air.

Stones began to crumble down from
the buildings around them. The sound of crashing timber began to fill the
streets. Fires returned to the smoldering buildings. Hot winds and thickening
smoke assailed them as they walked among the rubble. Chance began to cough again,
and Drothspar noticed she had closed her watering eyes.

The smoldering city quickly
flared up once more. It shuddered as if gripped in its own death throes. The
temperature in the city began to rise and soon distortions of heat shifted and
undulated through the streets. Ashes flurried about as the heated wind tugged
at their clothing. Sharp reports detonated around them as moisture from the
rains heated in the stones and shattered them from within. A shadow of smoke
covered the city, filtering the day’s light into a sickly reddish-orange.
Drothspar remembered paintings of the torments of hell shaded with just the
same colors.

Chance began to cough weakly.
Drothspar could sense the heat around them, but he couldn’t gauge its effect on
the living. Chance, he could tell, had been affected. Her grip on his cloak
loosened and her steps were slow and faltering. He tried to lead her as quickly
as he could, but she began to stumble over fallen stones until, finally, she
tripped. Her hand slipped off his robe and she crashed to the ground.