Chapter Forty-One
They walked through the field of feral grass, hands brushing heads of wheat and brambleberry, the ground underfoot still soft and yielding as good loam. Rae and Mahk led the way, with La close behind. As they closed with the forest beyond the field, Rae saw more buildings lurking in the undergrowth, walls brought low by time or violence, their interiors overrun with trees. The field and the forest intermingled. Knee-high grass wound between the roots of low trees along the border.
“It’s been so long, and so much has changed,” Rae said. “La, do you figure these are the stables? I remember there being an exercise paddock behind the stables.”
“Yeah, but there was a stream between that and the hunting grounds, and I’ve seen no sign of a stream, have you?” La planted her hands on her hips and squinted at the ruins. “Besides, these look shorter than the stables.”
“You were a child,” Rae said. “Everything looks shorter now.”
“Then why are you asking me at all?” La huffed. “All I’m saying is that I remember playing in a stream close to the stables.”
“What does it matter what they were ten years ago?” Mahk asked as he tromped past them. “Today they’re ruins. You’ll find that all ruins are roughly the same. Empty.”
“It matters because I want to find our house, but not until I’ve lost those three,” Rae said quietly, with a toss over his shoulder at Estev and the two justicars. They were just descending the shallow hill from which Mahk had sighted the ruins, and were deep in some heated discussion. “I don’t want Caeris or Predi looking over my shoulder while I’m sifting through the wreckage of my youth. I want a chance to prove Dad was innocent without them interfering.”
“Well, maybe we can lose them in here,” Mahk said, pointing.
A wrought iron arch, bristling with rust and braided through with vines, led into the forest. The remnants of a path could be seen in the arch’s lee. Deeper in, more ruins poked out of the foliage. Dappled sunlight filtered through to a forest floor that was bare of deadfall or undergrowth, as though the dirt had been pressed flat and swept by a giant hand.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Caeris’s voice reached Rae as he stood looking up at the archway. She plowed through the grassy field like a bull, cutting a path much wider than her slight frame would indicate. Estev hobbled along far behind, with Predi shepherding him along. She brushed past him, rounding on the three of them directly under the arch. “You have no idea who or what might be waiting in there! You can’t just go running off every time the grown-ups are talking!”
Mahk drew himself to his full height and faced the petite lawbinder. The fire in Caeris’s eyes flashed, quite literally, and she wrapped her hand around the golden sword at her hip. Mahk cleared his throat.
“Been a long time since I’ve needed a babysitter,” he said.
“I’m not your babysitter. I’m an Iron College–trained justicar, with a divine being bound to my soul, and a sword that can sing the end of the world, and I’m trying to protect you from a fiendbinder who apparently can’t die. He has so far murdered an entire steading, infiltrated a military camp, and crashed a windship in the service of Fulcrum.” She ran her thumb along the winged hilt of the sword, drawing a pure note from the weapon’s spirit. Her smile could have cut steel. “So, no, not a babysitter.”
“Both of you settle down,” Predi said. He had left Estev huffing along in the field. “Our enemies are outside this fellowship. Be at peace.”
Estev finally reached them. He was breathing hard, stopping to rest his hands on his knees before he spoke.
“Does anyone . . . gasp . . . anyone else find it strange that . . .” He worked his jaw for several seconds, finally swallowing whatever bit of their meager breakfast was threatening to reemerge. “Does anyone else find it strange that Hadroy’s estate should be in such good shape? This place is nearly idyllic.”
“The passage through the orderwall was precarious,” Predi said. “I’m not sure what it was like to fly through—”
“Well, we were crashing, so I’m not sure we have a good opinion on that,” Rae said.
“—but at ground level the area immediately beyond the wall seethes with Chaos—erosion imps, and at least one larger demon that Caeris had to dispatch. But you’re right,” Predi said, looking around. “Deeper in, the madness fades.”
“Makes you wonder what’s beyond the other orderwalls, hm?” Estev said. That drew sharp looks from both of the justicars. The lifebinder shrugged. “So, you children grew up here. Where are we, and what are we looking for?”
“Yes, what were your orders?” Rae asked Caeris. “Besides hunting us down, of course. What did the Iron College send you to do?”
“The Iron College didn’t send us,” Caeris said. Predi hissed, but she ignored him. “We’re freelancing. Our main task was Rassek Brant, and once it seemed that he had been temporarily thwarted, we were reassigned. Predi and I are supposed to still be up at the breach.”
“A lawbinder defying her orders?” Estev said with a mix of glee and wonder. “Will wonders never cease? This must be personal for you.”
“He almost killed me. Almost killed my angel. He needs to be punished,” Caeris said. “The Iron College feels otherwise. Bigger problems, they claimed.”
“Revenge, yes. That bitter salve. And for you, Master Predi?”
“I was here the first time. Serving under Yveth Maelys, responsible for bringing Hadroy and his cabal of heretics to justice.” The old stonebinder’s eyes were glossy with memory. He looked around the overgrown gardens, wincing. “I thought it was done. It should have been, that day. I’m here to finish it.”
The name punched a hole through Rae’s heart. Yveth Maelys. That was the name claimed by the wraith. So how was that possible? How could the man still be alive and assigning tasks to these justicars if his wraith was bound to Rae’s soul?
“This Yveth fellow—was he also here, at the Heresy?” Rae asked.
“He was working undercover. Pretending to be one of Rassek’s lackeys. Foiling that diabolist’s schemes is what put him on the path to the High Justicar’s seat. Before then, he had been a bit of a loose cannon.” Predi shrugged thoughtfully. “It’s what made him the ideal candidate for the job. Easy to believe a man like him would have turned to Chaos.”
Easier to believe still, if you know he has a demon in his soul, Rae thought. If someone claiming to be Yveth is in charge of the justicars, that explains why my father wouldn’t trust them.
“What are you thinking about?” Caeris asked sharply.
“Oh, nothing. I think I remember him, that’s all,” Rae said.
This forest was once a garden. White stones, dingy with moss and choked with weeds and ground-cover wildflowers, crunched underfoot, marking once pristine pathways and the border of flowerbeds. A fountain burbled over the cracked marble bowl of some statuary, fed by a natural spring that spread to become a pond. Dragonflies flitted over the jade-green waters. The rusted skeletons of wrought iron gazebos overlooked smooth groves speckled with stray blossoms. A low stone wall marked the border to the main grounds of the manor house. The shattered shell of a greenhouse buzzed with frantic insect life, the interior run riot with bright flowers and the glossy leaves of trees that had no place in this climate. The main house loomed beyond, its black walls hung with ivy and ash.
“Do you think he was trying to bring us here?” Rae asked. “This Rassek fellow?”
“He certainly knew where you were when he attacked the Pearl,” Predi said. They approached the manor cautiously. Memories of the place from childhood contrasted sharply in Rae’s mind. Rose-draped walls, white stone, the hum of bees as they buzzed through the formal gardens. He hadn’t been given full rein of the grounds, but he and La often played with the children of the other servants among the gardens. Had Baron Hadroy had any children? Rae couldn’t remember. Predi continued his musing. “The justicars knew nothing of Rassek Brant before the Heresy. And he’s been nothing but a thorn in our side ever since.”
“Knew nothing of him?” Rae asked. “What is there to know?”
“Where he learned to ’bind. Where he was born. Who corrupted him for Chaos, and how he came to be in Hadroy’s service.” Caeris said. “He was able to draw together a cabal of mages unlike any the Ordered World had seen, before or since. A master of each of the eight planes, including another fiendbinder. According to the High Justicar, Rassek’s binding to Hell was unknown to the baron. To any of them. They thought he was a flamebinder.”
“It is the sort of thing you keep secret,” Predi said. “Even among those who rebel against Fulcrum’s rule.”
“You said Rassek had a full cabal of spiritbinders. Including a fiendbinder?” La asked.
“Yes. A woman named Verrea. She was the daughter of a duke, before she fell under the sway of Chaos.” Predi grimaced. “We don’t know what promises Rassek made them.”
“Or what threat Fulcrum posed, that they chose to work together,” Estev said. When the justicars glared at him, he shrugged. “Empathy is not a strong suit of the Iron College.”
The inside of the house was in no better shape than the rest of the estate. Interior walls and floors had been burned away, leaving nothing but a few orphaned joists and a pair of stone staircases that spiraled up into nothingness, like the antlers of some massive beast. A scree of plaster littered the floor.
“You don’t know where Rassek came from, who trained him, or who helped him get there,” La said. “How many of the cabalists escaped?”
“Only the two. Life, and Fire. The rest died at the justicars’ hands,” Predi said, his voice stiff. “And they will be found. Eventually.”
“Why does it matter who trained Rassek?” Rae asked.
“Such power does not rise up out of nothing. He was cultivated, trained . . . even shepherded to Hadroy’s doorstep. Whoever guided him knew the politics of Fulcrum, the inner workings of the justicars, knew us well enough to recruit a few of our number.” Predi clenched his jaw hard enough that Rae swore he could hear the man’s teeth creak. “The fiendbinder I give a dash about. They should never have been let into the College in the first place. Their expulsion was overdue. But the others . . . damn them to a soul.”
“Not encouraging to know that most of the heretics came from inside the Iron College,” Rae said. “But if that’s the case, couldn’t Rassek have been trained by one of them?”
“He came from outside,” Caeris said simply. “From beyond the walls.”
Her pronouncement sent a visible shock through the others, all of them but Estev. The big lifebinder’s lips parted in a smile. Rae shook his head.
“But . . . there’s nothing beyond the orderwall,” Rae said. “Nothing but Chaos.”
Caeris didn’t answer. When her silence grew too long, Estev stepped in.
“Isn’t there?” he asked. “The sun goes somewhere at night, and the moon during the day. The weather patterns that bring us rain travel over the wastelands. There are even some birds that migrate across the orderwalls and return, year after year.”
“Rassek Brant is not a bird, or a rainstorm, and he’s certainly not the sun,” Rae said. “He’s a man. A fiendbinder, yes, but still a mortal man.”
“He’s died an awful lot to be mortal,” Caeris muttered. Predi hissed her into silence, then rounded on the lot of them.
“This is conjecture at best, and heresy at worst,” the lanky stonebinder said. “We should be focused less on where Rassek came from and more on what can be done to stop him. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“The vision I saw was of our old house, but surely that’s been destroyed by now. Maybe we should start somewhere else,” Rae said. Until I have the chance to lose you, and La and I can find home on our own.
“The huntsman’s tower, Caeris said. “Where the Heresy started. And where it ended.”
“Or so we thought,” Predi said as he passed.
A long hallway led away from the main section of the building. Gold frames hung along the walls, empty but for the tattered remnants of burned canvas, still heavy with paint and ash. Predi led the way. When asked how he knew where to go, he merely sniffed. “I’ve been here before.”
The door at the end of the hallway led to an overgrown thicket. There wasn’t even the semblance of a trail to be found, and the hedges that pressed against the door were especially hard, as though scar tissue had grown up around the path. Predi muttered to himself, weaving his hand through the air. A constellation of floating prisms coalesced in the wake of his hand. They clattered against his body, melting into his skin. The stonebinder swelled in size, feet sinking into the ground as he took on mass. He pushed through the bushes like an avalanche, snapping off branches and tearing hedges out by the root with each stride. Rae and the others followed close behind.
A heaviness grew in Rae’s mind. It felt like the pressure in the air before dangerous weather, or in a room before an argument. He winced. Caeris laid a hand on his shoulder.
“You feel it. This place has been pierced through by magic, time and time again, until the planes run together. The world is rotten underfoot. Watch where you step, Raelle. The spirits are watching.”
“And how do I do that?” he asked. “Watch where I step?” The lawbinder didn’t answer. Rae snorted and turned his attention to the path ahead.
Predi stepped out of the scarred forest, quickly deflating as the golem dissipated at his command. He looked worn out. But he stepped to the side, letting the others pass.
They were in a small clearing, barely larger than the building at its center. Tumbledown black stones rose out of the forest floor. The front half of the tower was gone, its stones littering the clearing, covered in moss and gently sinking into the sod after so much time. The interior of the tower was dark.
“The huntsman’s tower,” Caeris said nervously. “Where it all began.”
“And where it shall end,” Estev answered. They looked at him, and he shrugged. “At least, it better, or we’re all going to die here. Come on. Let’s see what the devil has waiting for us, shall we?”