Chapter 177: The Will of the Church
The Pope’s seat remained empty.
It had been empty for some months now, and in its absence the three Archbishops conducted the Church’s business from their side-by-side positions in the Cathedral hall at Hermes — a triangle of authority with no apex, which suited none of them and which all of them pretended not to notice.
It was Mayne who opened the session. “I’m told there’s been unrest in the Kingdom of Endless Winter.”
“High Priest Coburn has already dispatched Judges to address it,” Tayfun said, folding his hands.
“And the cause?”
“The cause,” Heather said, with the particular flatness she used when she’d been waiting for someone to ask, “is the gift Mayne gave to the kingdom’s nobility.”
Mayne’s jaw tightened. “That was the Supreme Pontiff’s decree.”
“Then the Supreme Pontiff’s gift. The nobles we absorbed after the Queen’s execution have been using the Church’s name to conduct their own private seizures — claiming witch-arrest, taking whatever they find. The common people have run out of patience.” She shrugged. “I told you this would happen.”
“I recall no such warning.”
“Then your memory is selective.” She looked at him sidelong. “The point stands: those men have dragged the Church’s name through the street. I want them escorted back to New Holy City for trial.”
Tayfun cleared his throat. “For the time being, the stability of our position in Endless Winter may be better served by—”
“No.” Heather’s hand came down on the table, flat and final. “Every person in that kingdom knows what those men did. Every person who watched it happen and did nothing because it was done under our seal. The Church’s authority rests on its reputation for justice. If we make exceptions now, we hand over everything we built.” She turned to Mayne. “If you won’t agree to this, I will go to the Pope.”
The Pope, Mayne thought, had more pressing matters than internal discipline disputes. But Heather’s convictions were not open to negotiation, and the Pope would likely agree with her on principle regardless. “I would propose that Coburn’s men escort the violators back to New Holy City,” he said carefully. “That seems—”
“I’ll go myself,” Heather said. “I’ve been meaning to clear my schedule here. The trial will be more effective if it’s held in Endless Winter’s capital — the more witnesses, the better. I can return within two months.”
Mayne frowned. “There are no conductors currently available to accompany you. If you encountered an extraordinary witch—”
“Where would so many extraordinary witches be coming from?” She waved her hand. “A squad of Judge warriors will be sufficient.”
He let it go. Heather in motion was not a force that benefited from further argument. “As you see fit,” he said. “However, I have other news. Our forces in Wolfsheart have suffered a setback at Broken Castle.”
The room changed.
“A setback,” Tayfun repeated.
“We lost more than twenty members of the God’s Punishment Army, and over a hundred Judge warriors besides. The conductor was Bell.” He paused. “She’s been confirmed dead.”
The silence that followed had a texture.
“Twenty,” Tayfun said, slowly. “Do you understand how long it takes to—”
“I understand perfectly. The terrain is exceptional in their favor. The gate is set into the mountain face, ten meters above the approach road; they destroyed the bridge with some kind of alchemical compound. When our forces tried to use ladders, the defenders released a substance from pipes above the gate — white vapor that ignited on contact, producing a fire that could not be extinguished.” Mayne kept his voice level. “It clung to the men. It burned until there was nothing left to burn. We’re currently attempting to reach our believers inside the city, to arrange a simultaneous assault from within.”
Heather made a sound of interest. “The alchemists will exhaust their supply eventually. They can’t produce that substance on any real scale.”
“We don’t know that,” Tayfun said. “And we don’t know their source.” He turned to Mayne. “We cannot keep throwing the God’s Punishment Army against obstacles like this. We have fewer than a thousand of them. If we’re reckless—”
“I know,” Mayne said. “Which is why I have been working on the supply problem.” He looked from one to the other. “Since the Kingdom of Endless Winter is now fully within our sphere, I have requested an additional cycle of seed deliveries. Previously twice yearly; going forward, once each season. Tayfun, this falls under your coordination.”
The old Archbishop’s brow furrowed. “The number of orphans and abandoned infants willing to be taken in by the Church is not unlimited. We cannot simply decide to produce more—”
“Then expand the pool,” Heather said. She had settled back in her chair and was looking at the ceiling with an expression that meant she had already solved the problem and was waiting for others to catch up. “The city streets are full of children. Strays. Street rats. The black market operators have been running networks of pickpockets and runners for years — and the nobility who used to turn a blind eye are now ours. Cover the sewers, send the Judges underground, clean out the networks. You arrest the operators, you free the children, you present the whole operation to the public as a moral improvement.” She looked at Tayfun. “Three purposes at once. Enough children. A blow against criminal elements. And a public demonstration that the Church deals justly with all things.”
Tayfun appeared to be calculating something unpleasant. “I will look into what’s feasible.”
“Do,” Mayne said. “The goal is to consolidate Wolfsheart before autumn. After that, we can redeploy the Judge forces back to Hermes; the Months of Demons will be more demanding this year.” He glanced at the scroll Tayfun had been holding since the start of the meeting. “And Graycastle?”
Tayfun set the scroll on the table in front of him. “Better you read it yourself.”
He read it. His expression did not change, but his jaw set in a line that meant he was controlling his expression carefully.
The letter was from Garcia Wimbledon, Queen of Clearwater. Its contents were brief and deliberate: she had identified the side effects of the Church’s pills. She had executed the Church’s priest in her city — not merely expelled him, executed — and fed the rest of the believers to the river. The church building itself had been dismantled to its foundations. She was returning the remaining pills, and included a line about what the Church would be expected to pay in restitution.
“She hanged the priest,” Mayne said.
“And the congregation,” Tayfun confirmed. “All of them.”
Heather smacked her lips. “I told you this would happen. The pills show their effects clearly enough — once a soldier notices his strength diminishing after each dose rather than holding steady, the conclusion is not difficult to reach. We should have moved faster.”
“How many of her forces have taken the pills?”
“Fewer than a thousand. The bulk of the doses went to the southern barbarian forces.”
“Then the damage is limited.” Mayne put the letter aside. “Where is Timothy?”
“Suppressing a rebellion in the north. A protector of the northern territory refused submission. He’s securing that flank before moving south.” Tayfun interlaced his fingers. “What we don’t know is whether, once he’s finished, he will turn toward Garcia or toward the Western Territory.”
“The Western Territory.” Mayne was quiet for a moment. He had selected Garcia himself, had read her ambition and her competence as reliable instruments. He had not sufficiently accounted for her intelligence. “We are still awaiting word from the envoys we sent there. Until we have it, there is little we can decide about Graycastle.” He rose from the table. “We’ll convene again when they report. Is there anything else?”
“The conversion,” Heather said, as if remembering. “Wasn’t today scheduled?”
“Yes.”
“How many applicants?”
“That,” Mayne said, and moved toward the door, “is confidential.”
The stairway descended for what felt like longer than any stairway should.
It hung in the air like a thought suspended before the speaker commits to it — narrow, faintly illuminated, dropping through the mountain’s core with the indifference of deep architecture. Mayne descended with the care of a man who had learned, over many such descents, not to look over the railing. At the bottom, a mirror-white millstone sealed the passage; beyond it, the Judges assigned to today’s ceremony waited in a cluster, standing with the particular alertness of men about to see something for the first time.
He nodded to their salutes. They were all volunteers. Every person who applied for conversion understood that it was not guaranteed to succeed, that it might kill them, that the only certainty being offered was the opportunity to attempt it. They had still applied. There were sixty-two of them today — more than any recent season, which said something Mayne did not allow himself to dwell on too long about the state of things.
He passed through the third checkpoint and through the iron gate at the passage’s end, into the heart of Hermes.
There were no torches here. There was no need for torches.
The cave stopped him, as it always stopped him — even knowing what to expect, even having made this descent a hundred times, the first sight of it still pulled something out of him that might have been awe, if he had been a man who permitted himself to be awed.
The space was immense. Five or six of the aboveground cathedral could have been set inside it without touching the walls. And throughout it, rising from the cave floor and the walls and the upper reaches of stone: the God’s Stone of Retaliation, growing in formations like crystalline trees, like the frozen moment of an upwelling sea. The smallest were the size of a man. The largest surpassed the Cathedral tower, its lavender light reaching to the cave’s roof and back again. In between: dark blue, fading to green at the edges, to near-white where the newer formations were still growing upward from raw stone.
The light they produced was cold and extraordinary. No flame, no smoke. Just the steady luminescence of stone that had absorbed something no one fully understood and given it back as light, year after year, without diminishment.
The Church sold processed fragments of this stone to every kingdom on the continent. What it did not sell was the knowledge that the source was here, underground, beneath Hermes — a deposit that made the stones’ suppression of magic not a product of craft but a property of the mountain itself.
The cage’s chains clicked and groaned through the descent. Mayne stood inside it with his hands folded and watched the light change as they dropped through elevation — lavender deepening to something that was almost violet near the cave floor, where the oldest formations clustered and the air had a mineral quality that sat in the throat.
At the bottom: the Pantheon.
It was older than the Cathedral above. Its stones were worn to a smoothness that predated the concept of tools sharp enough to carve them that way; they had been smoothed by time itself, by the hands of the devout, by centuries of contact with an institution that had not yet become what it was now. The iron gate set into the mountain wall behind it connected, through passages running inside the mountain, to the Old Holy City at the foot of Hermes — the original city, the first city, the one that had existed before the Church decided to build a new one on the summit. In all meaningful senses, this cave, this building, was the actual origin of what had since become the most powerful institution on the continent.
Mayne straightened his robes and followed the messenger inside.
The conversion hall held the warmth of a thousand candles.
They filled every available surface — three-tiered chandeliers overhead, iron candle-stands lining the walls, smaller holders placed in rows between the conversion tables. The light they cast was orange and moving and entirely unlike the cold lavender of the cave, and the warmth they generated was sufficient to push back the underground chill that persisted even in summer.
Standing between the two conversion tables, making his last adjustments to the equipment with hands that moved carefully and without speed, was O’Brien.
He wore the red-gold papal vestments and the gem-set headpiece. Even so — even in the full authority of that costume — the thing Mayne noticed was how much smaller he seemed than the last time he had been here.
He knelt. Kissed the old man’s fingers.
“Rise, my son.” O’Brien’s voice had not weakened, at least. It was still the same voice: measured, with a warmth that was not performed, that seemed to come from somewhere genuine. “There are no witnesses here. No need for ceremony.”
Mayne stood. And then could not look away.
The Pope’s face had always carried the marks of long years — he was the oldest living member of the Church’s hierarchy, perhaps the oldest living person Mayne had personal knowledge of — but the change since their last meeting was of a different order. Wrinkles had deepened into crevices. The skin had gone to an unhealthy pallor, loose at the jaw, dry-looking. Brown spots had appeared on his hands, his neck, the visible skin at his wrists. He moved with the deliberateness of someone for whom motion had become a calculation.
“Your Holiness,” Mayne said, and his voice had something in it he had not planned for. “You’re—”
“Old,” O’Brien said gently. “You can say it. It isn’t an accusation.” He set down the implement he’d been adjusting and turned to face Mayne fully, with an expression that was neither frightened nor resigned but something quieter than either. “Time leaves no exceptions. My life is running low — I know it, and I have made my peace with it. I will not live to see the day when this is finished.” He paused. “But I am not sorry for the work I did while I was alive. That will have to be enough.”
“You could still—”
“No.” Not harshly. Just completely. “I could not. And I want you to stop thinking about it.” The old man looked at him steadily. “What I want you to think about is what comes after. You have done well. The Judges grow — over a thousand added in recent seasons. Today sixty-two applicants stand waiting for the ceremony, which is the largest number I have seen.” He let that settle. “That is your doing.”
“It is the Church’s doing.”
“The Church’s, yes. But guided by your hand.” O’Brien turned back to the conversion tables. “You have questions.”
“I always have questions.”
“There is one you haven’t asked aloud.” The Pope moved slowly along the table’s length, checking each station with the attention of a man who had performed this ritual so many times that checking had become its own ritual. “About the scale. What it will require. You have read everything the Holy Book records about the Devils, and you have felt the weight of what it does not record. You’ve wanted to ask me how many.” He glanced sideways. “How many members of the God’s Punishment Army we will need.”
“Yes,” Mayne said quietly.
O’Brien was quiet for a moment.
“The answer you’re looking for,” he said finally, “is in the library. The secret collection at the top of the Pantheon. When you become Pope, the answers will be there.” He smoothed the surface of the conversion table with one slow palm. “What I can tell you now is this: the more, the better. The number I know is not one that can be arrived at quickly or through ordinary means. It will require everything we are doing, and more, and whatever comes after more.”
He said it without drama. As a plain fact, to be understood plainly.
“Now.” He gestured toward the hall’s entrance. “The applicants are waiting. I want you to preside over this session. I will stand here and observe.” He paused, and in the pause there was something that was almost an apology for what was being asked. “You should begin accumulating the experience. It will not be long before the responsibility is yours entirely.”
Mayne looked at him — at this diminished, certain, still-luminous figure standing between his conversion tables with the candles moving around him — and felt the weight of succession as a physical thing.
“As you wish, Your Holiness,” he said.
O’Brien nodded and stepped back.
Mayne turned to face the hall.