TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Eleven

It was dark under the bridge. Dark enough that he was hidden from view, but too dark for Eells to read the transcripts he had procured from the interworld hub. The list of travelers from Lormian to Celedin was only seven pages, but there were seventy-five names on each page. It was honestly less than he had been expecting, but upon thumbing through the sheets he realized the task was significantly more daunting than he had anticipated. He adjusted his seat on the mud under the bridge, leaning to his left and stretching his arm out so that the dull glow from the streetlights might help illuminate the pages. But as he stuck the documents out, rain pattered on their edges. He pulled the transcript back before the acidic droplets could eat away at the delicate pages. Then he was back in the dark, sitting in the dankness and stench near the river and straining his eyes through the murk.

Although it wasn’t really a river. He glanced up from the pages at the stagnant, immobile body of water in front of him. Swarms of night-bugs and barely-perceptable motes of light floated above the dark, colorless sludge that swept under the bridge and spanned one shore to the other. Here and there the stems of crooked plants broke the surfce like dead fingers reaching out of a grave. Eells knew that no boats traversed this waterway. No fish swam beneath its still surface. It wasn’t used for commerce or water collection, glory to being. It was just there, cutting through this section of the city like an infected wound. Avoided and untalked about—like every sin in this city.

There were no bums down here. No wayward souls seeking isolation. And any drunk that wandered near the river invariably stumbled into the mire and drowned themselves. Even the destitute and damned stayed clear of this place, which is why Rambolt Eells had sought it out. Here he could pore over the transcipt without any fear of interference or discovery. But also here there was no direct light, and years of studying in the abbey had not been kind to his vision. He strained simply to read the printed words—and when he finally deciphered them, he realized he had no idea what he was looking for. He had expected the name of the woman who had caused the Schism to jump out at him like a firework, that the letters would emblazon themselves like witchlight. Instead he saw hundreds of female names, and hundreds more that could have been female or male. The transcripts didn’t detail the sex of the travelers. How was he supposed to know if the Domrian name “Chezga” belonged to a man or a woman? And even then, if he could somehow determine the name, where would he go? There were no addresses, no destinations except for “Lormian-Celedin Aperature.” What was anyone supposed to do with this modicum of information?

He was frustrated. Worse than that, he was angry, and he had no one to direct his anger at. He wanted to tear the pages apart and hurl them into the river, but he knew how stupid that would be. Perhaps he would head back to the interworld hub and find the ticket-seller behind the counter. This was assuredly her fault, if anyone’s. He’d pull those iron bars off of her booth and drag her out screaming, or he’d just wait in the tunnels for her to get off her shift and sneak up behind her and slice open her heels…

“Not very holy thoughts.”

Eells looked up. A rot crow was perched on a decaying pylon that stuck out of the river.  Its feathers sagged off of its wings, and it stared at him with dead eyes.

Eells frowned and buried his nose in the transcript. “You can’t read my mind, Silas.”

“I only exist in your mind, Ram. Of course I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’ve never let an unholy thought pass through my skull.”

“So say you.”

Eells glanced up. The rot crow was preening itself. Eells snatched up a handful of mud and hurled it at the bird. In the darkness, he heard a heavy, wet splat off to Silas’ right.

“Begone, demon.”

“I’m only here because you want me to be.”

“I’ve never wanted you near. Not when you were alive, and certainly not now that you’re dead. Begone from here. I have work to do.”

“Right, right. Your hole-punched list of names that you don’t know. Tell me, how long before you get frustrated and just start killing everyone on that list?”

Eells trembled in irritation. He hadn’t even considered that option. He had one person to find on this list. Just one. And when he found her, he would kill her, ending the threat that she posed to the Real. All he had to do was divine who on this list she was.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“There is no task beyond my abilities. I am the Bereaver, Silas. ”

“That doesn’t mean anything. That’s a nonsense title given to you by superstitious old men who are too desperate and proud to seek actual help.”

“How dare you?” Eells shouted. “How dare you speak such blasphemies to me, foul Aether-thing? I have earned my position. I have suffered for this. You of all people should know this.”

“You’ve suffered? You? I’m dead, Ram.”

“Then you should not be here.”

“I’m not. Remember?”

Eells grimaced. Then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, pushing his eyeballs back into his post-orbital walls to the point that it hurt. Upon reopening them the bird was still there, preening itself.

“You’re not going to make any progress sitting under this bridge like a troll.”

“I need no sage advice from you.”

“True. I don’t know anything you don’t. Because I’m just in your head, right? That’s what you told me last time we talked.”

“Do not pretend that my words offended you, Silas.”

The rot crow cawed rhythmically, bobbing up and down. Laughter, perhaps?

“You need someone’s help, Ram. You can’t do this on your own. You have no idea what you’re looking at. The sooner you admit that, the sooner you can find her.”

Eells looked down at the papers in his trembling fingers. Then back to Silas.

“Why do you believe the source of the Schism is a woman?”

The rot crow stood silent, motionless. Then it bobbed again.

“Find your old pal Primio. The bookkeeper. Surely you haven’t burned that bridge yet.”

Primio. The Elder Scribe of the Dineghast Abbey, where Eells had once studied. When he was a boy. When he still relied on mother’s approval, and when Silas still lived. Eells remembered going to Primio’s lectures. He remembered listening through the floorboards one night when Primio had surreptitiously brought a whore into the abbey.

The rot crow spread its wings, and took off to the east. Rambolt Eells did not call after it. Silas showed up when he wanted, and left as soon as he thought appropriate.

If ever he really left at all.

--

Rambolt Eells wiped rain and sweat from his face. He gazed upwards, directly into the moonless night sky. The rain on Celedin was near constant. Only sometimes in the mornings would it cease. And also, notably to him, on occasion just at dusk. When the sun touched down on the horizon, sometimes the storm would break and a thin line of red and yellow could be glimpsed above the rooftops. It was only ever momentary, as if Celedin was showing its people exactly what they weren’t seeing through the clouds, and then the rain started again. Light had fled from this city, and Rambolt Eells saw no reason for it to return.

Before him rose a prominent, intensely sloped hill. Its surface was too steep for building, or so it had been claimed by generations past. But Celedin had long since outgrown its own landmass, and even this bluff had to be claimed for human habitation. Dineghast Abbey had been built upon the top of the hill centuries before Eells had been born. Once it rose higher than any structure for miles, and looked out upon West Celedin from a place of loftiness and grandeur. But soon the surrounding towers had reached as high as the raised abbey, and eventually ambitious architects had started contructing houses along the slopes of the bluff itself. Gabled roofs and pointed towers crept up its sides like moss covering a rotting stump, poking up ever hirer until the abbey was completely surrounded. Its revered position was now crowded by lights, stone, and steel.

Eells again wiped his face and began the arduous climb up to the abbey. The hill itself was too steep to permit even motorized vehicles—only foot traffic could possibly reach the top. Cobblestone switchbacks wound between poorly constructed homes and listing towers. Lights burned inside every window. At this time of night, no one dared wander outdoors. Distant howls and closer chittering kept Eells alert even as his legs cramped and his pulse pounded in his ears. He saw more than a few rats along the narrow road. At one point he stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a dilapidated archway for support. When he looked up, a dog-faced thing was staring at him from an alley across the road. Its body was hunched and manlike, and its bulging yellow eyes wept. Rambolt drew his sword, and the thing vanished.

He stopped again at the top, grasping an iron fencepost and letting his legs recover for a moment. He looked up at the abbey, ancient and magnificent. Its four towered corners protruded from the walls defiantly, appearing to drive back the encroaching houses that crept up the sides of the bluff like water into a sinking boat. Acid rain had eaten away at the gargoyles and statuary adorning the abbey, but clear efforts had been made to restore the place. Memories of this place flooded back to him without calling—lectures and lessons, students and friends. Quiet contemplations in the cloister, and raucous celebrations during the Feast of Sealing. Letters received from Silas during his time in the army. A single letter from mother at the time of father’s death. Sneaking out in the night with brothers to catch a showing of The Seduction of the Jungle Queen at the theater on the neighboring hill, and the hushed conversations about the scene in the Jungle Queen’s canopy-chambers for weeks after. He remembered the lessons on the Aether, on shunning the Pale Light. Most of all, he remembered Rector Egan telling him coldly that his mother had died, and that day taking an oath of asceticism.

The abbey cast this all upon him, whether he wanted it or not. Some secrets were his alone, and some this abbey claimed with him. He looked out upon the never-ending sea of lights and smog that was West Celedin. There were so many people out there. So many potential sinners, so many who might be the woman he sought.

--

The candle flickered as a breeze swept through the room. Elder Scribe Primio puased in his reading for the little flame to recover. The flame seemed to fall in the breeze, flashing and then pulling itself back upright like a toddler that had fallen over. Upright again, the flame plumed bright once more. Primio turned his eyes back down to the open book on his desk—a copy of Jeon Triveste’s Economics of the Frimmian Era. His eyes skimmed the pages and took in anything that his spirit deemed important: the conslusions of graphs and charts, thesis statements and their outcomes, dates that preceded long paragraphs or stood on their own. The calloused fingers of his right hand flipped through the book in a rhythmic, fluid motion that he was only distantly aware of. With his left he scratched notes into thick ledger whose pages were heavy with blue ink.

The candle flickered again. He glanced up with a note of annoyance chiming in the back of his mind. He had been staring down at Triveste’s Economics for so many hours that his neck cried out at the sudden motion with a crack and a jolt of pain. The flame shook, and the righted itself.

He frowned. The occasional errant breeze wasn’t uncommon, but such a thing should be seldom seen in the basement office where he worked. He sat up straighter and looked about. Everything was dark beyond the little glow of his candle. The floor below him was uneven stone, same as the wall that his desk touched. In the dark he knew there were other unoccupied desks. Shelves lined the walls of this chamber, containing volumes of his notes and thoughts that spanned nearly a century. At the far end was a staircase that led up into the abbey, shrouded in darkness like everything else.

The sound of a boot touching the bottom step echoed across the chamber. Then all was silent again. The candle remained unflickering, and he knew that the gusts had come from a door being slowly and silently opened.

“My old eyes will not adjust before you have time to reach me,” he said. “Who is there?”

He heard footfalls across the stone, coming for him. Whoever this was, they had abandoned stealth for purpose now.

“At least speak to me,” Primio said. “I have no weapons. I cannot stop whatever it is you came here to do, so at least let me know your voice.”

“You know my voice well.”

A figure stepped into the globe of candlelight, and Primio’s eyes went wide. The person before him was tall and wearing the blue robes of a monk of the Order. His ceremonial rapier was in his right hand, stained dark and glinting orange. The tall man’s hair was swept back and held fast by rainwater, making obvious the pink wound that disfigured his face. Even more prominently, however, Elder Scribe Primio saw the fire and steel blazing in the man’s blue eyes.

“Brother Rambolt,” he said.

“You will address me proper, Primio,” Rambolt said. He swung the sword and touched his face gently with its tip, cocking his head so that the X that scarred his flesh might be illuminated better. “I have ascended.”

“I’ve heard of the actions of the Council. I did not imagine that they was true.”

“Rumor spreads quick, it seems. But you have heard correctly. I am no longer a monk, no longer your student.”

“You haven’t been my pupil in years.”

“As far as I am concerned, I never was. Everything that I once possessed is ash, everything that I once was has been annihilated. All I am now…” He gestured broadly with the rapier and stepped forward with one foot, as if to bow but refusing to bend. “… Is what you see before you.”

Primio swallowed a lump in his throat. “I have heard the other rumors, as well. They are searching for you, do you know that? Your fellow monks, and the Constabulary. They believe that you have killed men and they seek explanation.”

“I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I have been given immunity and purpose, Primio. Every action of mine is blessed and necessary. My quest concerns the safety of the Real itself. I can’t afford to hinder myself by answering to mere mortals.”

“Mortals,” Primio whispered. “I see. And what have you come here for?”

Rambolt’s eyes narrowed, and the wound on his face wrinkled in a way that must have hurt. But if it did he did not show it.

“You have still failed to pay proper homage to me, Scribe.”

Primio nodded, and bowed his head. “Of course. What have you—”

“Stand.”

Primio shifted in his seat. He stared up at Rambolt Eells. The man was a third his age. He remembered Rambolt as a boy, sitting alone in the dining hall of the abbey and always skulking about by himself. Rambolt had always busied himself with his studies, had always been an exemplary student. But he had never made any friends, despite the attempts of the other boys. Primio had always assumed that it was because of the abuse Rambolt had suffered from his father, but after that man had died Rambolt was still the same. Unfazed, even. He recalled sickly one night when he had discovered a young Rambolt Eells sitting alone in the cloister, clutching brass reliquary containing the bones of long-dead saint. When questioned, the boy had said he could hear the saint’s secrets speaking to him, and that the saint had been falsely canonized. Primio had lashed the boy severely for that.

Primio rose to his feet, legs shaking. Standing was an ordeal for him at this age—one that he only chose to undertake two or three times a day. He bowed his head again.

“What do you seek from me, Bereaver?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fingers around Rambolt’s sword relax. The tip of the blade gently went to the floor.

“You may be seated, Scribe.”

Primio nodded once more and took his seat. Rambolt Eells sheathed his rapier and stepped up to the desk. He glanced down at the piles of scribblings and notes and disregarded them.

“I have a task for you. It must come before anything else you may be doing.”

“I am quite busy.”

Eells paused and waited for the scribe to continue. When he didn’t, he went on.

“There has been a Schism. I don’t need to explain to you how important that is. All you need to know is that the Schism was caused by a human being—a woman, to be precise. A woman from Lormian.”

Primio stared in silence, listening.

Rambolt reached into his robes and pulled out a wet stack of paper. “I know that this woman arrived within the last few days, and went through the interworld hub. I’ve procured a transcript of all travelers from Lormain in the last week. I require you to figure out who she is.”

“I see.” Primio took the papers. Seven sheets, with hundreds of names. “Do you have any other information for me to go on?”

“None that I can share with you, Scribe.”

Primio let out a short sigh. He scanned the list, and recognized lineages and surnames from across the Real. Lormian was only recently colonized. A Lormian citizen could come from anywhere. He began to calculate how best to categorize these people. Surely he could scratch off a number of people simply from knowing family businesses—a scion of the Rennegush dynasty would surely pass through the apertures frequently enough that they couldn’t be the source of this Schism. It would have to be someone who hadn’t gone through in years, or decades. He could likewise cross-reference with records of employees of the hub, rule out any of them. Powerful land owners would surely have been noticed before if their traveling caused disturbances in the fabric between worlds, likewise their servants and soldiers. Right away he could cut this list in half, and with minimal source-checking he could cut it in half again.

“This will take me some time.”

Rambolt Eells frowned. “Every second I spend here is another second that the source of the Schism gets away from me.”

“I will prioritize my every moment to this, Bereaver. But even then, I do not know anything of the person that you seek. At its soonest, this will take me a few days.”

Rambolt’s fists tightened. He breathed heavily through his nose for a moment before speaking.

“Does anyone know you are down here?”

“Yes, most people. These days the Rectors and the other Scribes leave me to my work down here, but they know where to find me should they need me. Brother Zemple brings me bread and water in the mornings, just to check up on me. Makse sure I haven’t died at my desk.”

“Then you are mostly undisturbed.”

Primio nodded.

“Well,” Rambolt said. “Then I will wait here.”

“For days?”

“You forget, Scribe. I was a monk. I am well-trained in the ways of fasting and waiting.”

“I thought you told me that everything you once were has been annihilated?”

Rambolt grabbed the ledger from Primio’s desk and hurled it into the darkness. Something glass shattered.

“Do not be cute with me, scribe,” Rambolt said, clutching the back of Primio’s chair and leaning in so that his face was only inches from the Elder Scribe’s. His breath was hot and rancid, like he had been eating old meat, and the wound on his face was irritated and almost glowing with infection. His steel eyes pierced through the gloom.

“The Bereaver has set set you about a task,” he said, spitting. “You will obey, and will not speak to me unless spoken to. You will be lucky to come out of this encounter with your fat tongue still in your wrinkled skull.”

Primio swallowed again, and nodded. Rambolt stood tall and breathed in deep. Then he looked away and marched into the darkness.

“Begin,” he said. “I will be here, at all times.”