Page 12

12

K ANTHE STOOD AT an ironwood door branded with the sigil of Kepenhill. The only additional adornment to the mark was a silver mortar and pestle, representing the alchymists. Across the eighth tier was another locked door with a similar symbol, only its book bore a gold star, representing the hieromonks.

Kanthe had never passed through that other door.

From under his longshirt, he pulled free a heavy iron key that hung from a loop of braided leather. Though he had unlocked this particular door a thousand times during his eight years at Kepenhill, he still felt a twinge of trepidation. He turned the key and swung the door open. Past the threshold, a narrow stair spiraled upward and downward. These steps were only allowed to be used by those who had achieved the Highcryst of alchymy.

Or in Kanthe’s case, a prince who had been assigned a tutor of that order.

With a steadying breath, he ascended the steps. The staircase ran from the first tier at the base of Kepenhill all the way up to the ninth tier. It allowed the alchymists to traverse the levels of the school and not be disturbed by the scrabble who ran up and down the outer steps. Overhead, the spiral ended within the confines of the half circle of towers reserved for alchymical studies on the ninth tier.

A similar stair, reserved for the hieromonks, ran from bottom to top on the other side of Kepenhill, ending in the towers committed to religious studies and devotions. Not that Kanthe had ever traversed that path—or had any interest in ever doing so.

He reached the top of the stairs where an archway—carved with all manner of arcane alchymical symbols—led out into a cavernous main hall. He kept his head down and slunk across the stone floor. Above, a massive iron candelabrum glowed with strange flames that flickered in different hues. The centermost and largest bore a black flame that expelled a stream of white smoke.

He hurried under it, holding his breath.

The very air of the hall smacked of arcane mysteries, thick with the scent of bitter chymistries and hair-tingling energies of a thunderstorm. This sense was likely heightened by his own unease. He knew well the condemnation of anyone who trespassed onto the ninth tier without proper invitation. It was certainly forbidden to students.

Kanthe had special dispensation—not so much because he was a prince of the realm, but due to the esteem of the man who tutored him. No one expected Frell to traipse up and down the school to deal with the Prince in the Cupboard. Instead, it was Kanthe who made this climb—shorter now that he had reached his eighthyear—nearly every other day.

After so many years, the other alchymists had worn past their initial shock at the sight of him. With the exception of a few annoyed glares, he was mostly ignored now—which was not much different than how his fellow students treated him. Some continued to avoid him out of jealousy, spite, or resentment at this privilege. Others had tried to curry favor initially, but after years of failure, they eventually gave up and joined the others in their disdain.

A loud boom made Kanthe jump nearly out of his boots. It came from somewhere above him. He ducked his head, picturing some experiment gone awry. Muffled shouting from the same direction reinforced this assumption. Each alchymist here had his or her own private scholarium in which to conduct studies.

Kanthe rushed to the far side of the main hall and down a curved hall lined by torches and age-blackened oils of the school’s most famous scholars. He reached the doorway into the westernmost tower and climbed yet another set of steps that wound to the very top of this spire. It was where Alchymist Frell secured his own scholarium.

He reached a simple oaken door and rapped his knuckles against it. He had no idea if Frell was still here, especially as the summons was a day old.

“Hold!” a voice shouted back at him.

As Kanthe waited, a nervous shiver shook through him.

Finally, a bolt scraped on the door’s far side, which surprised Kanthe. Frell seldom barred his private rooms. If anything, the man was more than happy to drone on and on about his work or get into heated discussions with other brothers or sisters of his order. He even welcomed input from the hieromonks on his work. It was this cooperative nature that likely granted him a seat on the Council of Eight, the youngest person to have ever achieved such an honor.

The door cracked open enough for Frell to peer out into the hall. The man let out an exasperated sigh and hauled the door the rest of the way open.

“Remind me to tutor you on the definition of urgency again,” Frell scolded. “Now get yourself in here.”

Kanthe stumbled inside and waited while Frell secured the door behind him. He gaped at the state of the scholarium—not to mention the scholar himself.

What is going on?

Normally Frell’s spaces were orderly to the point of fussiness: books neatly aligned on shelves, scrolls ordered in their numbered cubbies, worktables free of even a speck of dust. Kanthe had understood the need for such tidiness. The space was packed from floor to vault. It was part ancient librarie, part scholarly study, and part hall of curiosities. Arcane apparatus—some glass, others bronze—rested on shelves or had been set up on tables, sometimes bubbling with elixirs and strange chymistries. And while windows looked out in every direction, they were usually—like now—shuttered tight to preserve the integrity of the precious texts kept here. Still, the room glowed with a scatter of oil lamps, their flames kept behind glass amidst all the parchment and vellum in the room.

But no longer.

“What happened here?” Kanthe asked.

Frell ignored him and hurried past with a swish of his black robe, belted at the waist with a crimson sash. The alchymist was twice Kanthe’s age and a head taller in height. His dark ruddy hair had been tied to a tail in the back. Normally his features were shaven and bare, but his cheeks were shadowed with stubble. His eyes—which had always been wrinkled at the corners from his constant squinting at faded ink—were lined deeper and shadowed below. It looked as if the man hadn’t slept in days and had aged a decade because of it.

Frell waved to Kanthe. “Come with me.”

Kanthe followed his mentor toward the room’s center. The place looked as if a gale had blustered through it. Books were stacked everywhere. Scrolls had been knocked and forgotten on the floor. Most of the oil lamps dotted one long table that had been dragged from a wall and positioned alongside the scholarium’s chief apparatus—a device that also appeared to be the eye of this particular storm.

Kanthe joined Frell at the long bronze scope in the room’s center. Its base was bolted atop a wheeled gear, while the far end poked through a sealed gap in the tower roof. The shaft of the huge scope was twice the size of his own thigh and lined by polished crystals and mirrors in some arcane design.

Frell leaned over a sheaf of parchment strewn atop the nearby table. He rubbed his chin, while his other hand hovered over a row of crystal inkwells—each a different color—with quills resting in them. “Let me mark this before I forget my calculations. With the moon no longer at its fullness, I must record what I can.”

He selected a quill from an azure inkwell and shifted one of the parchments closer. He quickly and neatly jotted down a series of numbers next to a detailed depiction of the moon’s face.

Kanthe used the time to furtively glance around. He spotted a spiral ribbon of black oilskin, recognizing a missive carried by a skrycrow. What was written there could not be discerned, but he noted a prominent sigil on one side. It was similar to Kepenhill’s own mark, only the tiny book inscribed on the missive was not bound in chains but tangled in a vine of thorny nettles. He knew that sigil.

The Cloistery.

It was the school where Frell had originally been taught.

Kanthe returned his attention to the alchymist, who had finished his notation and frowned up the length of the bronze scope, as if trying to peer through the roof. Frell’s studies concentrated on the mysteries of the skies, what the hieromonks ascribed to be the lofty sphere of the gods. Kanthe knew that Frell sought to understand what was written in the movement and pattern of stars—though most of his studies had to be reserved to the winter, when the sun sat at its lowest and the barest peek of stars became visible across their section of the Crown.

Kanthe could guess the reason for Frell’s interest in the skies. The man had grown up at the Crown’s westernmost edge, in the shadow of the Ice Fangs, marking the boundary between the Crown and the frozen wastes beyond the mountains. In those territories, the Father Above shone pale, if at all. Frell had once described the spill of stars visible from there, but Kanthe could hardly imagine it.

Here in the starless Crown, Frell had focused his study on what was most readily visible in these skies. Kanthe glanced down to the sheaf of papers, noting the detailed drawing of the moon, freshly inked and swathed in cabalistic notations, lines, measurements, all in different colors. It was quite beautiful in a cold and frightening way.

The other papers sharing the table appeared far older, yellowed by age, the ink faded to near obscurity, but all appeared to delve into the same mystery.

The moon…

Frell finally sighed and gave a shake of his head. “Maybe I’m addled, or moonstruck by the Son and Daughter into delusions.”

“Why do you say that?” Kanthe asked. He had never heard Frell doubt himself, which disturbed him far more than he would expect. In many ways, the alchymist had been his rock throughout his turbulent youth. “What has so suddenly vexed you?”

“It’s not that I’m so suddenly vexed. It’s just that I can no longer deny a hard truth. I can no longer perch in my scholarium, read ancient texts, and continue my idle measurements. Studies can only carry one so far. Eventually speculation becomes inevitability.”

“I don’t understand. What’s inevitable?”

Frell reached over and gripped Kanthe’s arm. “That the world will come to an end, that the gods intend to destroy us.”

K ANTHE STRUGGLED TO understand what followed. Shock continued to deafen him to Frell’s words. Kanthe couldn’t believe the blasphemy being spoken aloud by his mentor.

“… wanted to dismiss it,” Frell tried to explain. “Then two days ago, word from the Cloistery arrived, and I knew all my measurements and calculations could no longer be ignored or pushed aside.”

Kanthe glanced at the black missive, then over to the spread of drawings of the moon. He finally found his voice again. “What measurements? What calculations?”

“Let me show you, so you’ll better understand what I fear will come to pass.”

Frell shifted the older parchments and reordered them in a row. He tapped the parchment on the farthest left. “This limne was inscribed seven centuries ago, near the time when Kepenhill was first founded. Look how detailed the moon’s features were drawn, truly remarkable considering how crude the viewscopes were back then. It must have been painstaking work, especially gauging the breadth of the moon’s face.”

“What of it?” Kanthe pressed.

Frell shifted three more pages closer. “These are from two hundred, one hundred, and fifty years ago.” He glanced to Kanthe. “The last was mapped by the cartographer Lyrrasta, after she turned from her study of geographica to chart the skies.”

“Wasn’t she the one burned at the stake?” Kanthe asked, scrunching up his face as he dredged up an old history lesson. He could easily be wrong. There was a long litany of many who had suffered such a fate—or worse—for questioning matters best left to the gods.

“She was,” Frell admitted. “She made the mistake of doubting the existence of the Son and Daughter, attributing much of their dance to invisible forces. But that’s not the point here. Her map of the moon’s face and its calculations add to a pattern going back centuries, if not farther.”

“What pattern?”

Frell tapped a number inscribed on each page, corresponding to the width of the moon’s face. Even Kanthe could see the numbers had steadily grown larger over the centuries.

Kanthe squinted at the pages. “I don’t understand. Does this mean the moon has been getting bigger?”

“Or more likely it draws closer to the Urth. Still, I could not be certain from historical accounts alone. There could be vagaries in the method of measurement, or the seasons they were recorded, or even the positions along the Crown where they were mapped. I tried to account for those changes, while searching for additional validation.”

“Like what?”

Frell gave a small shake of his head. “Changes in the tides over the centuries. Or the frequency of a woman’s bleed, which we know is tied to the Daughter. I even researched the behavior of nocturnal creatures, which abide to the waxing and waning of the Son’s face.”

“And did these studies reveal anything?”

“Nothing that I could use to definitively corroborate my growing fears. So, I’ve been doing my own measurements of the moon’s face, every time it reaches its fullness. For over a decade now. Yet, I still could not be sure. The changes were so minuscule over such a short time. I feared it would take my entire life to confirm or rule out my worries.”

“Then what’s got you so lathered up now?”

Frell pulled more pages forward. “Over the past year, the changes have become more prominent. With each turn of the moon. And I certainly cannot discount these results.”

“Because it’s all your own work. Right here at Kepenhill.”

He nodded. “The moon’s face grows with each turn. It cannot be denied. Faster and faster.”

Kanthe craned his neck, trying to peer at the moon through the roof. “But what does that mean? You mentioned the end of the world.”

“I fear, before long—certainly within the next few years—the Daughter above will return to her Mother, crashing to the Urth and ending all life.”

Kanthe pictured the moon striking the world, like a hammer against an anvil.

“The king should be warned,” Frell said. “And soon. To that end, you can be of great assistance. I need to gain an audience with your father and his council. Action is required—though I can’t imagine what that might be.”

Kanthe turned sharply toward his tutor. There were some things princes knew far better than alchymists. “You mustn’t do that,” he squeaked out. “My father—like every hieromonk here—believes the gods to be immutable. To even whisper elsewise would get you condemned.”

He pictured Lyrrasta burning at a stake.

“And even if your warning isn’t judged blasphemous,” Kanthe said, “my father is ruled by portents. He has scores of soothers and bone-readers who whisper in his ear. He hardly takes a morning shite without first consulting them. And you wish to tell the king—a man preparing for war with the Klashe—that the gods will soon punish us. To whisper of doom when he rallies for war—he’ll deem it not just blasphemous but traitorous. If he kills you on the spot, you’ll be lucky.”

Despite his best effort, Frell looked far from dissuaded. The man rubbed a finger along the stubbled crease of his chin. He clearly accepted Kanthe’s words but sought a path around them.

Kanthe huffed his exasperation and tried a different tack before Frell outmaneuvered him. “You know the tale of the Forsworn Knight.”

Frell stiffened, likely baffled by the change in topics, though he did glance at the curled missive from the Cloistery.

Ah, at least he knows where this particular tale ends.

Frell turned back to Kanthe with a frown. “What does that sad story have to do with—”

“So you can understand my father better,” Kanthe explained. “Everyone knows Graylin sy Moor—whose name was stricken from the legion and who would be damned forevermore as the Forsworn Knight. He who broke his oath of fidelity and fealty, by bedding one of my father’s most cherished pleasure serfs, a beauty unlike any other.”

Frell nodded. “And when she grew with child, the knight absconded with her, fleeing into the swamps of Myr.”

“Where she died. Her body gutted, torn to pieces, and coated black with flies. The babe ripped from her womb.” Kanthe closed his eyes, recognizing there were worse fates than being born a Prince in the Cupboard. “Graylin was eventually captured, broken on a wheel, and exiled from the kingdom, forbidden to ever wield a weapon or even raise a fist. But it’s also said he refused to deny his love for the woman, even under torture. He ultimately died in exile—not from his injuries, but from heartache.”

Frell crossed his arms, looking away. “Indeed. It is a hard lesson, both of broken oaths and broken hearts.”

“But that is not the entire story,” he said, drawing back Frell’s attention. “Did you know what my father believed? Why he so pursued knight and serf, sending most of his legion after them?”

Frell answered with silence.

“In truth, my father cared nothing about that serf. The woman is not even named in those tales. In fact, the king was generous in opening his palacio of pleasure serfs to other men, both those in his legion and members of his inner council.”

And to a certain beloved first son.

Kanthe continued, “And my father certainly did not care if the babe in the womb was of his own loins or the knight’s. For centuries, the matrons of the serfs knew how to deal with royal bastards, those that slipped past their thwarting teas.”

Frell swallowed. “Then why did your father pursue the knight and serf with such fervor?”

“Because of the word of a bone-reader, one he holds in great esteem. And not just any soother but one who binds his brows in black and wears a gray robe.”

Frell’s eyes widened. “One of the Shriven.”

“Only this holy man kisses the symbol of the horn’d snaken, and according to my father, communes directly with the dark god ? reyk.”

“So, an Iflelen…” Frell looked aghast, like he wanted to spit.

“Back then, the Shrive hissed in my father’s ear, warning that the child carried by the serf—whether a royal bastard or the knight’s—would end the world. Upon that whisper, my father hunted Graylin, a man he had long considered one of his most loyal knights, whose friendship he had once cherished. All to kill a poor child shadowed by a portent of doom.”

In the narrowing of Frell’s eyes, Kanthe read the understanding there. Still, he pressed harder. “And you want to bend a knee before my father and stoke that old fear. You think he will welcome such counsel in a time of pending war?”

“I don’t intend to bring him portents found in a toss of bones or the entrails of the sacrificed, but in proper alchymies that cannot be denied.”

The pounding in Kanthe’s head had started again. He rubbed at his temples to try to drive it away. “I have no more faith in soothers’ prophecies than you. I think that cursed Shrive just whispered what my father wanted to hear so he could justify ridding the world of a potential bastard. Or maybe the Shrive’s portent was self-serving, telling this tale to drive a stake into the heart of a beloved knight who had the king’s ear, thus eliminating a competitor. But since that time, my father has fallen further and further into the sway of such whispers, especially from that Shrive.”

Kanthe stared hard at Frell. “Your voice will not be heard above those whispers. And even if you are believed, your words will be turned against you. I know this to be true. And what will you gain from it? By your own admission, you offer no solution, no action that can stop the doom you wish to lay at my father’s feet.”

Frell slowly nodded. “You’ve persuaded me.”

Kanthe should have been relieved, but he noted a hardening resolve in the other’s eyes.

“To truly convince the king,” Frell said, “it will take an even greater blasphemy.”

“No, that’s not what—”

Frell patted Kanthe’s arm. “No reason to go to battle with my sword half-drawn.” He shrugged. “I can only be put to death once, right?”

Kanthe groaned. “What do you intend to do?”

“You were correct a moment ago. I can’t only bring a problem to the king, but I must also offer a solution. ” He turned to study the spread of parchments on the table. “To accomplish that, I must delve into the cause of it all. And I suspect I know where to start.”

“Where’s that?”

“There’s a forbidden text, rumored to have been written by Lyrrasta herself. It is said to address the relationship between the moon and the Urth, between the Son and Daughter and their Mother Below. It speaks of those invisible forces that bind all together in a dance. But the tome is said to also attend to the greatest blasphemy of all.”

“Which is what?”

“That long ago, before our histories were written, Lyrrasta believed the Mother Below did not always face the Father Above—that she once turned on her own, spinning all the Urth’s surfaces toward the sun.”

Kanthe scoffed loudly. Such an idea was not only blasphemous, but a ridiculous impossibility. He tried to picture the world twirling round and round, the sun baking one side, then the other. The world going cold, then hot again. He felt his own head spinning at just the thought. How could anyone survive such madness?

“I must secure that text,” Frell insisted. “I know answers can be found there.”

“But where do you hope to find such a book?”

“In the Black Librarie of the Anathema.”

Kanthe felt the ground open up under him. He even stared at his feet, knowing where that cursed librarie was buried. It lay down in the darkest depths of the Shrivenkeep.

Frell stepped toward the door. “I must go there. Before it’s too late.”