Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 893: Fate Passes On

Two weeks later, summer nearly gone, Roland arrived at Hermes.

The witches and the First Army garrison from the Northern Region met him at the gates of the Holy City, along with several nuns in black church clothing among the welcoming group. He had heard from Lightning that all senior figures of the church had vanished. He had believed it when he heard it. Standing now inside this emptied stronghold, he found that belief and the reality of it were entirely different things.

The fierce battle he had prepared for had not come. Neither the God’s Punishment Witches nor the new mortars had been needed. Things could not have gone better by any measure, and yet something about it sat wrong — anticlimactic, the word that kept returning to him, as though a chord had been struck and then not resolved.

Bringing Isabella had been the correct decision. The reports from Eagle Face and Agatha made that plain. The former Pure Witch had registered the church’s strange disappearance almost immediately, and without waiting for orders, she had proposed that the army investigate the Holy City of Hermes directly after finishing with the cloisters. What they found: an entire city empty except for the people living in the surrounding areas — ordinary people who had not had time to flee, performing the appearance of a functioning institution simply by remaining in it. They understood nothing of what was happening in the inner city. All they had been told was that the church was preparing for a final battle.

After that, the nuns Isabella organized moved through Hermes house by house, carrying the explanation. The flow of evacuees toward Wolfheart and Everwinter slowed. No more large groups were seen departing. The church abandoning the Holy City — the magnitude of that act, the ruin it made of every claim the church had built its authority on — could not be undone by anything Roland might say. But the nuns who came forward and worked to restore order, who stayed when the leaders fled, had become the face of the old church’s legitimate legacy almost by default. Compared to the men who had run, they looked like successors.

“How did they escape?” Roland could not help asking. The reports had been thin on this. “There must have been thousands of people in the inner city. How did they leave the plateau without passing through the city wall?”

“There are many tunnels under Hermes — some run beneath the city wall itself.” Isabella spoke without inflection. “If they evacuated in batches, they could have left without alarming the residents in the outer city. The tunnels were designed to operate in one direction only, so intruders couldn’t exploit them. And they can only be used once. I’ve checked a number of entrances. Most have already been destroyed.”

“Where do the tunnels lead?”

“Only those who used them would know.” She shook her head. “If the escape was planned well in advance, tracking them now is essentially impossible — they’ve had six weeks.”

Roland turned it over in his mind. The church, cornered, cutting off its tail to buy time — hoping, perhaps, that the tail would grow back someday. Except abandoning the Holy City was a great deal more than a tail. It was the body. The nerve center, the mines, the accumulated weight of four hundred years of institutional authority. What possible base could rival what they had surrendered? Would they scatter and harass? Would fanatical believers surface in his territory for years, quietly?

The thought gave him a headache.

“No need to worry, Your Majesty.” Isabella spoke with what sounded, faintly, like amusement. “They won’t be coming back.”

“Why?”

“They left behind a messenger.”

The messenger was an old man in a brand-new red priest’s robe hemmed with gold — the robes, Roland noted, of a High Priest. He came out of a small church on the north side of the Holy City with a thick book pressed to his chest, seized by two guards, walking with the careful unsteadiness of a man whose legs were not entirely reliable. He kept his chin raised anyway, working to project something that might have passed for dignity in a younger body.

He looked at Isabella with cold eyes. Then he looked at Roland.

“Are you the King of Graycastle, Roland Wimbledon?”

“Yes, that is I.”

“You have your father’s grey hair and grey eyes,” the old man said, unhurried. “My name is Jacob, High Priest of the Holy City. In your terms, the position would be comparable to a duke — though I own no land and require rather fewer servants.”

“I heard you insisted on waiting here.” Roland kept his voice easy. “What happened? Why didn’t they take you with them when they ran?”

“I wanted to stay.” Jacob’s tone was solemn, as though the words carried the weight of a last testimony. “I am too old to run. Even if I had gone with them, I haven’t much time remaining. I would rather be buried in this city than spend what is left of it beginning something new.”

“New life?” Roland caught the phrase immediately.

“Yes.” Something sardonic moved through the old man’s voice. “Lay down all duties. Live in peace until the end. You’ve won, Your Majesty. The church will not be fighting you anymore. This city comes to you whole — buildings, walls, armories, and our nightmares with them, if you desire.”

“Oh?”

“What did you think made us guard this barren plateau?” Jacob’s voice rose, the measure of restraint cracking slightly. “Look at what you’ve done. Humanity is going to perish because of you!”

“A harsh accusation.” Roland recognized what he was seeing — the last move available to a side that had lost the field: not force, but doubt. Zero had attempted the same thing before the final engagement, though the logic and the motive behind hers had been different. If Roland had known nothing of the Battle of Divine Will, this revelation — humanity’s imminent destruction, the king’s presumed guilt in it — would have hit with real force. Frame Roland as the man who ruined the church and therefore doomed the species, and even a victory becomes a weight. “However, I don’t see why I’m required to bear it.”

“Accusation? Gibberish?” Jacob exhaled with exaggerated patience. “O, young and untested King — it appears Her Holiness the Pure Witch neglected to tell you the truth.” He cast Isabella a pointed look before continuing. “The church carried a responsibility beyond imagination, unknown to all but a handful of its most senior figures. You have no idea what enemy we spent centuries preparing to fight. Now that you have dismantled us, you must bear full responsibility for what follows — whether you accept that or not. When the end comes, you will be able to do nothing except watch your kingdom burn.”

Not only trying to break my will — also trying to drive a wedge between me and Isabella. Roland looked at the old priest with something approaching sympathy. The man had aimed carefully and missed on both counts.

A line surfaced in his memory: All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

“You don’t have to believe me,” Jacob said, “but a truth is a truth.”

Another line surfaced, unbidden: People die if they are killed.

Jacob exhaled — a long, heavy breath — then flipped open the thick book and held it out. “This is the Canon of the church. Everything you have done wrong will be clear to you once you read it. Our — no. Humanity’s real enemy is—”

“The demons,” Roland said, pleasantly.

Jacob blinked.

“You built the Holy City here not to fight demonic beasts, but for the God’s Stone mines in the mountain. There is a Pivotal Secret Area under the cathedral — four hundred years old, where you mined the God’s Stones, studied the Sigils of Magic Stones, and held the incarnation ceremonies of the God’s Punishment Army. That is the true body of the church.” Roland spoke at the same unhurried pace the old man had used. “I don’t know how much you were told — perhaps only the pope was entitled to know all the workings of the incarnation ceremony. Were you about to tell me about the Battle of Divine Will? The Divine Smile? A battle that occurs every four hundred years or so is not news to me. The demons are not invisible ghosts, either — I have fought them myself. So.” He tilted his head slightly. “What else did you want me to know?”

Jacob’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. His shaking finger came up and pointed at Isabella.

“It was you who told him—”

Isabella shook her head slowly. “I didn’t. From the very beginning, he knew far more than any of us had anticipated.” She let a half-beat pass. “You underestimated him. We all did.”

“Now that you’ve finished your story,” Roland said, allowing himself the cold laugh he had been holding back, “let me tell you mine.”

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