The Trials of Empire, page 30
Supporting the chamber and its dome were pillars of rich red marble veined with white, and behind those, an ambulatory ringed with intricate plasterwork. As a chamber it was eerily familiar of other secret rooms I had been in, including the inner sanctum beneath Keraq, and it was clearly a common architectural styling.
The room was silent save for the quiet flicker of the torches. In my fear, I did not notice that someone was in there with me. I immediately recognised the vivid orange robes of a prognosticator. The man could not see me, having been blinded as part of his accession to the College. His head was shaved and his scalp was covered in a network of tattoos which put me immediately in mind of those on Kunagas Ulrich, Lady Frost’s right-hand man. He carried a staff of black lacquer which had at its peak a large ruby set in a golden collet.
He approached me slowly, mumbling and muttering as he did so. This man was a member of the order that led the Neman Church. The Prognosticators were responsible for interpreting various prophecies and oracular productions – not to mention the Neman Creed itself, as set out by Saint Creus – and steering the Church in the correct spiritual direction. Vonvalt was convinced that this august body was as corrupt as any other institution in Sova, and I could well believe it. It was the Prognosticators who had once controlled the lore which now sat in the Master’s Vaults, and who had the biggest axe to grind against the Magistratum.
I had always considered Prognosticators to be gibbering lunatics, and this man did not disappoint. He approached me as though he were in the midst of some religious ecstasy, and my contempt came easily. But before I could say or do anything, Jansen stepped out from the shadows.
“Helena,” he said.
“What are you doing to me you… shit?” I demanded. Even to speak angrily caused the muscles in my abdomen to constrict painfully.
He approached me. “I am sorry, for what it is worth,” he sighed, and strangely, he did look apologetic. “You know me by now to be a ruthless man, of course, but I am afraid you have barely scratched the surface of just how ruthless I can be.”
I shook my head in confusion. “You helped us,” I said. “So many times and in so many ways. How… I just… I do not understand.” But I did understand. My misgivings had been constant since we had first seen him in the patria’s office in the Temple of Savare, and had only really intensified as he had approached us with his little band of supposed defectors on the Creus Road. My confusion turned to cold anger as I said, “The messenger wasn’t intercepted and killed. You killed him. You stopped Vonvalt’s pardon from reaching the traitors.”
Jansen had no difficulty in admitting this with a shrug and a nod. “That is absolutely correct, yes.”
I shook my head. “I just do not understand why you—”
Jansen chuckled. “Helena, I am not going to stand here and waste time explaining everything I have done to this point. It would take too long, and it is so filled with happenstance and misadventure that I rather fear it would dent your opinion of my abilities.”
“My opinion of you is as low as it is possible to be.”
Jansen nodded, accepting this, too, without compunction. “It used to be that I could see all outcomes. I prided myself on my ability to…” he smiled briefly “… predict the future.”
“You helped Sir Konrad. In Galen’s Vale. You helped us here, in Sova. You helped us to escape when the Magistratum was burned. You have done nothing but help us.”
Jansen nodded again. “You see, Helena, for much of this time I have been on Sir Konrad’s side. Well, that’s not strictly true. I have been on my own side. I go whichever way the wind is blowing. Sometimes that means supporting the forces of order; sometimes that means supporting the Church. When Sir Konrad arrived back in the capital a week ago, the shock of it could have killed me. I realised that – by Nema – you might actually do it after all.”
“You told us that you had been working both sides. That you had been undermining the Savarans.”
Jansen pinched the bridge of his nose, chuckling again, sincerely, genuinely amused by my naïveté. “Helena, these are just… words. Meaningless words. Just because I said one thing does not mean… Nema, it doesn’t mean anything. You do understand that, don’t you?” He shook his hand as if to dismiss the thought. I saw a hint of frustration briefly crease his features, as though he were annoyed having to explain any of this to me. “The fact of the matter is, for a long time I was interested in seeing Sir Konrad succeed and the Mlyanars fail. They are unquestionably evil, but evil in… a stupid way. You saw them in the Senate, the rubbish they come out with. It is divisive, hateful rhetoric, but I must admit, I have never seen anything motivate the commonfolk so effectively. We Haugenates have been swimming upriver for years. If the people want some lunatic theocratic dictatorship well…” He shrugged. “Who am I to deny them. I am tired of trying to do the right thing.”
“But we retook the city.” I sounded plaintive. I suppose I was.
Jansen snorted. “Look, Sir Konrad is a tenacious investigator and I do not deny that he has made life exceptionally difficult for his enemies. He is there at every turn, only a step or two behind – and trust me when I say that these plans of Claver’s and his people have been in place for years. That you have managed to disrupt them so much so quickly is testament to his abilities. But Claver’s ascendancy is now unstoppable. His command of the Draedist sorceries is unmatched, and his allies are… Well, let us just say that they are without parallel. It has become clear to me – quite recently – that the Haugenates, Sir Konrad, the secular forces of this world, cannot succeed. And I for one do not want to be on the wrong side of history when they come knocking at the gates of Sova.”
“The wrong side of history?” I said, incredulous. “The very idea that—!”
“As, will, be, written!” Jansen snapped, losing his temper. “Have you listened to nothing I have said?”
“But you have said so little worth listening to!”
“Insolent girl!” He stepped forwards to slap me, but pulled the blow at the last moment. He took a moment to regain himself. “Just… be quiet, damn you,” he muttered.
There was a silence, filled only by the sound of our breathing.
“Was it only ever an act?” I asked him. I thought of Danai, who had little but contempt for Jansen and his compatriot Sir Anzo, years – possibly decades – before I had ever known them. “Your good humour? Your agreeable manner? Was your decency only ever a guise?” Strangely, it was that which seemed to wound him more than anything else, judging by the shift in his expression. He said nothing, though. What could he say?
“What do you mean to do with me?” I asked quietly. “Am I to be some sort of bargaining chip? A hostage?”
Now Jansen looked at me with something approaching sympathy. He truly was insane – but not insane like Godric had been in the bowels of that cog in Kormondolt Bay, nor insane like Claver in that his mind had become a vessel for the aggressive lunacy of malevolent demonic entities; it was an understated insanity, a quiet, intellectual belief in self-preservation at the cost of absolutely anything. Such calculated, selfish ambition was only possible in a person who lacked all empathy.
“I have always liked you, Helena. You are beautiful and intelligent, both in ways that belie your history. You were an orphan, no? Sir Konrad told me you grew up on the streets of Muldau.”
“Yes,” I said guardedly.
“But for a moment in time, a quirk of Fate, you would never have met him. I wonder where you would be now, if your paths had not crossed.”
“Well I wouldn’t be in this fucking chair, for one,” I snapped.
Jansen laughed heartily, as though delighted by this unexpected joke. It transformed his manner, in a stroke, from performative hand-wringing to wry and insufferable. “Would that I had found you instead. What a team we could have made. Sir Konrad was right about you; there is some… quality to you. I do not know how to put it into words.”
“Feel free to keep it to yourself.”
“Such a shame. Such a waste.”
“What do you mean, ‘waste’?”
I noticed the first time the prognosticator was making marks on the walls in the ambulatory. I squinted to see if I could make them out in the gloom, and realised, with a sickening lurch, that they were the same marks that had been daubed on the walls in the Temple of Savare.
I looked sharply at Jansen. “No,” I breathed.
“Yes,” he replied, adding, “It will be over quickly.”
I shook my head, my whole body shaking. “You do not know how to do it. You do not have the means. You are going to kill me.”
“Oh, you will die. But we are perfecting the process. Or, rather, they are.” He gestured to the prognosticator. “Lessons have been learnt. I confess I am not familiar with how it works.”
“Why are you doing this? How is Claver directing you?”
Jansen chuckled. “Claver isn’t. I need to get on his good side. After all, I have done plenty of things to stymie his efforts here – things I now must undo.” He winked at me. “This seems like the best way to do it, do you not think?”
“You will kill me out of… obsequiousness?” I said, aghast. Never had I felt so offended. So used. So violated. I would have lain under the Truth-taker in the Imperial dungeon for an eternity rather than endure this. “You stand here trying to convince me that this is some… political masterstroke, and yet you have no idea what you are doing. Just a silly child trying to impress an adult – trying to light a fire and burning the house down.”
“Careful!” Jansen snapped, pointing at me. Then he laughed at this fresh loss of temper. “You are quite proficient at vexing me, girl.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand it. Why are you helping him? If you helped us we could stop him!”
“But you cannot, Helena. You cannot. When you have been in politics for as long as I have, you know when gestures are needed. Not mere words. A demonstration of faith and loyalty.”
“So do it with someone else!” I shouted. “You don’t need me. Use one of your fucking Templars!”
“They are not my Templars.” He seemed genuinely displeased with the idea of being associated with them. His behaviour baffled me. I did not have the measure of him at all. His explanation – that he was only out for himself – was truly the only thing that fit. And that was what made him so terrifying. That he could be so completely devoid of anything which made a person decent.
“And besides,” he continued, “using you has a welcome corollary.”
I felt a surge of dread at these words, as though someone had lined the bottom of my stomach with lead.
“What?”
“The thought of you suffering such a horrifying and despicable death is sure to drive Sir Konrad completely, irretrievably insane.”
The following hours were a horror. Jansen left shortly after, and more prognosticators arrived. Each of them took to transcribing the runes on to the walls, warding the chamber so that the emerging demonic energies would be contained within my body.
I thrashed against my bonds, and screamed and cried as one might expect, but this did not go on for long. Faced with such monumental apathy, I lapsed to silence. I was sure that Vonvalt would be doing everything in his power to find me – assuming he knew I had gone missing – but with such an obscure and secret location, it seemed profoundly hopeless. I imagined him chancing across the chamber weeks later, sadly picking over my remains, having long given into despair.
It was such a brutally calculated move by Jansen that I was sure the man was not human. To have spoken with me, counselled me, eaten and drunk with me, and saved my life on at least one occasion – to have done all those things and still be capable of this monstrosity, put him on at least a par with Claver.
The prognosticators moved about the chamber, murmuring in low voices, able to inscribe the walls with a precision which belied their blindness. The longer the process went on, the darker and more filled with whispers the chamber became. I was no stranger to these eldritch goings-on, yet knowing what was to come breathed fresh terror into the process.
Eventually, the prognosticators finished their evil work. I expected Jansen to return at this point, to oversee matters or perhaps offer some parting words, but he did not. I realised with a pang that he had probably gone to continue to gild his subterfuge with Vonvalt; after all, I was the only one who knew of this defection, or re-defection. Of all the people in the world, I suspected only Jansen knew where his loyalties truly lay, or even if he could be said to possess any loyalties at all.
The chamber filled with quiet. It was a deep, abiding silence, the kind that precedes a séance. I began to tear my bonds anew, drawing blood around my wrists and ankles, which seemed only to excite and exacerbate the demented whisperings in the air around me. The prognosticators were arranged in a wide circle around the very extremity of the chamber, each with their arms outstretched, their palms facing upwards, their heads craned back. They chanted softly, and the runes on the walls began to glow.
There was that same damn dripping noise which I had been hearing for weeks.
Ramayah.
And then I felt myself buck sharply in the chair.
It was as though someone had shoved me from underneath, with great violence. The marks which had been painted on to the floor began to glow, too, bleeding a sick pink light. Blood dribbled from my nose.
Another violent shove, and all of the breath was knocked out of me. It was as though the movement was emanating from within me, my core pushing against my ribs, my skin.
By now I was breathless with fear and excruciation. Every muscle in my body was tense. It felt like someone was pulling on each one of my bones. My whole body vibrated like a tuning fork, thrumming with energies from the afterlife. These energies coursed through me like evil blood, like chain fire. Corposant light began to spark and flicker and crackle around me.
I vomited. The pressure on my midriff was unbearable. My brain bulged against the walls of my skull. My vision swam in and out of focus.
Another violent lurch. I was lifted two feet out of the chair, my arms and ankles held tightly by the manacles. Now I remained in place, held up by an invisible hand. I would have screamed if there had been any air in my lungs. For the very first time I felt a presence. My guts roiled and bulged and my skin felt as though it was about to separate from my flesh. Something was entering me, filling me like poisoned wine poured into a goblet. Some intrinsic part of myself I had never been conscious of before, something which could only be described as my spiritual essence, grated and chafed against my mortal body.
I heard a roar, as something of incredible malevolence and power began to violently stuff its way into the space occupied by my soul. And as this wretched sound enveloped me, I felt myself falling away, my mind collapsing and drifting into the aether. I began to divest myself of my mortal body in the truest sense. This was no warded descent into the Plain of Burden, the journey of some argonaut travelling to the holy dimensions on the back of pilfered magicks. I realised, with a distant part of my crumbling mind, that this was it. This was the true death. I was being killed, permanently and irrevocably.
And then something changed.
Even now I struggle to recall it. There was a shift in the quality and timbre of reality. The darkness was being beaten back by a burst of unbearable light. It was like witnessing the eruption of a volcano filled with molten gold. Soundless explosions of energy tore through the immaterial realm – and a roar, this time not of malevolent triumph but of rage and fury, ripped through that liminal hell.
My vision had changed. I could still see the chamber, still see the prognosticators standing in a circle around me. But where once there had been an arrangement of simple, earthly materials – stone and marble, gems and slate, wood and plaster, flesh and bone – now there was a second, overlapping image. It was as though I was seeing these things through some lens which allowed me to view them as a web of aethereal substance. They were not real, tangible things, but constructs of inter-dimensional matter.
But that was not all. There were things there. Presences. The same figures I had seen arranged around my bed on that bizarre night in the Imperial Palace. At that time they had been the barest hint of an image, a splinter in the mind’s eye, impossible for the brain to comprehend and grasp and coalesce into thought. Now I could see them for what they were.
Angels.
There is no other word to describe them. These were celestial beings, creatures wreathed in white light. Each wore plate armour of gold, and each wielded a sword wrought from the sun’s matter. But I had no hint of their faces; they were concealed behind visages, the kind a leper king might wear. Mounted on each one’s back were furled wings, not like those of a bird, but wrought from a spider’s web – if the spider’s web in question was made of coruscating pink light.
These beings moved amongst the prognosticators and… killed them. Slaughtered them. Dispatched them with ruthless efficiency. Their sun-blades scythed through them unresistingly, and for a moment I thought nothing was happening; then I saw that, whilst the prognosticators’ mortal bodies remained upright and untouched, their souls were cleaved in two. I watched as skeletal forms of black energy burst apart in huge welters of ectoplasm, their mouths locked open in screaming agony, issuing sounds which I have long purged from my memory.
One of the guardians was suddenly next to me. I was terrified. Its immobile, expressionless mask of gold loomed over my face whilst above its head danced a constellation of glowing runes. But whereas the runes that had been above the head of the Muphraab had filled me with dread and horror and nausea, these filled me with awe. I felt myself weeping uncontrollably at the sight of it, beautiful and terrible all at once.
