Round windows in the design of portholes were set high in the walls, undoubtedly affording the temple light by day. A single line of translucent glass blocks of great heft and thickness had been inlaid in the walls not far up from the floor. The churning sea was diffusely visible through them, bathing the interior of the basilica in a greenish glow.
The seneschal shuddered again. He was now outside of one of his elements, away from the wind, inside the holy place of an opposing and stronger element, water.
Besides, the ground beneath his feet was stinging him through his boots, hissing with smoke.
Blessed ground.
The demon within him screamed in anger and pain.
F’dor could not broach blessed ground.
“Rhapsody?” he called, his voice echoing in the cavernous cathedral. To his ears it sounded harsh, like the voice of the demon in his head. He winced; in the never-ending struggle for dominance in their shared body, it appeared that at the moment, the F’dor had the upper hand. He swallowed hard.
With a great swing of annoyance, he slammed the cathedral doors shut.
He strode across the walkway and down to the water’s edge, wading into the low sea. He made his way to the sandbar on which the temple annex stood, the great rusting anchor on its doorstep, and put a foot onto the sandbar.
No smoke rose from his boot.
The annex, unlike the basilica itself, was not blessed ground.
Cautiously he stepped the rest of the way onto the sandbar and stepped inside the open doorway. He turned around and looked at the back door of the cathedral.
Two copper doors, blue-green with salt spray, inscribed with runes, bore raised reliefs of swords which had been wrought into the metal, one pointing up, the other down. Scrolled designs ran down the blades, similar to ocean waves, and the points were flared in a similar pattern.
In the background of the relief was a coat of arms, an engraving of a winged lion.
The seneschal caught his breath, then laughed harshly.
It was the family crest of his most hated enemy in the old land, MacQuieth Monodiere Nagall.
Inside the annex’s archway was a simple, hollow chamber open to the ravages of the sea and the air. When the tide returned, much of the annex would submerge again.
Unlike the temple, which was an edifice built to look like a ship, the annex was a piece of a real one, wedged upright, bow skyward and aslant, in the sand. Whatever ship had been broken apart and now formed the annex had been a sizable one, judging by its wreckage, which appeared to be the better part of the stern and midship. Its deck had been stripped away, leaving nothing but the hull, which now formed the walls of the annex. It was evident that the ship had been built of something other than ordinary timber, something that had not decayed or corroded with time.
Also wedged into the sand in the center of the annex was a block of solid obsidian, gleaming smooth beneath the pools of water that danced across it with each gust of the wind. Two brace restraints of metal were embedded in the stone, their clasps open and empty. There was not a trace of rust on either one.
The surface of the stone had at one time been inscribed with deep runes that had been worn away over time by the insistent hand of the ocean. Now it was smooth, with only a bleached shadow marring the obsidian where the inscription once had been.
Attached to the front of the stone was a plaque, with raised runes similar to the ones they had seen in the copper doors. Like the braces on its horizontal surface, the marker was unaffected by the scouring waves.
The seneschal crouched down and examined the plaque. Its inscription was in an old language, one he barely remembered, and contained a good many characters he could not make out. But the largest of the words caught his eye immediately. A smile began at the corners of his mouth as he read the word once, then again, then a third time, after which he threw back his head and laughed uncontrollably.
MacQuieth, it said.
The horrific sound of the laughter blended with the scream of the sea wind, the harsh cry of the gulls. The seneschal could barely contain his mirth, but more so, another emotion.
Relief.
MacQuieth had been his bane in the old world, the one man whom he knew, deep in his heart, that he feared.
There was something freeing about staring down at his hated enemy’s tombstone, something so vindicating that he could not help but give in to his basest instinct.
Quickly he unlaced his trousers and urinated on the stone, still laughing aloud.
“I have lived long enough to actually see it, your grave,” he said as he put himself back together. “Please accept my humble gift of holy water to bless it; I hope you can feel it as your bones rot in the sand beneath it. But most likely you are nothing but sand yourself by now anyway.”
He glanced quickly around the annex again and, seeing nothing, went back across the sandbar and waded to the shoreline again, where his soldiers were waiting. He drew Tysterisk, the handle coming forth glowing with excitement, the blade intermittently visible on the gusts of wind.
“Aim your fiery arrows for the cracks between the tiles of the roofs,” he instructed the soldiers. “All you need is a spark to catch. I will take over from there.”
The men nodded. A volley of arrows and bolts shot forth from bows, traditional and cross, raining like hail on the rooftops of rectory and the other outbuildings.
The seneschal raised the sword hilt above his head, where the wind danced around it in visible swirls.
The tiny sparks on the roofs roared to life.
The seneschal swept the sword through the air again. Once more, the sparks burst open, igniting the rest of the stone buildings into orange-red stone boxes of fire hot enough to melt the walls.
As the screaming rose in chorus, the seneschal and his men started up the beach, north, looking for more places that Rhapsody could be hiding.
It had almost become an excuse for the burning, instead of the other way around.
41
“How does the melt look, Shaene?”
The journeyman ceramicist peered in through the window of the enormous kiln.
“Red hot,” he said smugly.
The sealed master did not smile. “Dull, or bright?”
Shaene looked in through the window again, then shrugged. “Hard to say, Theophila. Fairly bright, I suppose.”
The woman pushed him impatiently out of the way and looked in herself. She exhaled in annoyance.
“One might think you would recognize dull, Shaene,” she said. “Sandy, increase the heat. I need it to glow like blood spurting from a pumping heart.”
“Lady!” Shaene groaned in pretend shock. “What a gruesome reference! And I can’t say as it’s a color I’ve ever had the opportunity to have seen. Honestly.”
Omet cranked the damper of the furnace open a little wider, allowing for more direct contact with the natural flamewell, averting his eyes, saying nothing. He had no doubt that the woman knew exactly the color of which she spoke.
The test frits had been fired, all save the last, the purple, and now lay on their racks, cooling, awaiting the comparison to the old plates. Omet went about his work, the dizzy sensation of fear that had been clutching his viscera mounting.
He knew that the colors were true by eye; whatever else she was, Esten was a skilled glass artisan, ceramicist, and tile artist. It was rumored her Yarimese father, who had traveled with the Panjeri in his youth, had taught her the nomadic glassworkers’ secrets from childhood, before she killed him for the family’s money to start off on her own. By the time she had become mistress of the Raven’s Guild she had gained entry into the best schools and guild workbenches in the world, and she had made a life’s work of it, employing the tile foundry as a creative outlet as well as an effective cover for the less savory workings of her business.