Swallowing hard, Lore opened her eyes again, making herself actually look at her surroundings.
Not a cell, technically. Just a bare stone room, with the chair she was bound to and a wooden table as the only furniture. On the wall hung a tapestry, its vibrancy made garish for being the only spot of color. The tapestry depicted a man with gleaming brown hair and milk-pale skin, blood-smeared hands outstretched, blood seeping from a gaping wound in His chest and dripping into the mass of darkness below Him. In the background was something that looked like a fountain, edged in gold, and above the man’s head, a message was picked out in silver-gilt thread.
Apollius, may we hold fast Your Citadel, protecting the world from Death and living in purity until Your return, when the world shall rise in the Light of a New Age.
The nebulous form below Apollius’s feet appeared to be a shadow at first glance. But if you looked closely, you could almost pick out the shape of a woman, see where the weaver had used threads of varying darkness to suggest a moon-crowned head, feminine curves. The Bleeding God’s feet were directly above the points of the vague woman-shape’s crescent crown, turned on Her forehead so the points speared up like horns. It gave the impression of the god stomping Her into the earth.
The Buried Goddess, Nyxara.
The Church, then. Of course the Presque Mort had brought her to the Church.
The thought made panic spike anew. The one who’d drugged her said they meant her no harm, but that could be semantics, a cruel game. The Presque Mort might not be authorized to execute her themselves, but the Priest Exalted certainly was. Or maybe the King would want to do the honors. It’d been ages since they’d had a real necromancer to burn. All of them had been killed in the year of the Godsfall and the decade afterward, when Mortem leaked from the Buried Goddess’s body like blood from an arterial wound.
A deep breath, an attempt to quell the fear. She wondered how her captors might react if she asked for chloroform again. A drugged sleep was preferable to this churn of anxiety, especially when her fate was all but sealed.
Her stomach gurgled, hunger making it twist in on itself. How long had she been down here? There were no windows, nothing to help her mark the time, but the stiffness of her limbs and the emptiness of her stomach made her think it’d been hours.
Lore barely reacted when the Presque Mort filed in, only two of them: the one who’d drugged her and another she didn’t recognize, with a shaved head and walnut-brown arms marked in deep, silvery scars.
The one with the scarred arms looked her way and cocked a brow. “You might’ve gone overboard with that chloroform, Gabriel. She looks a moment away from losing her lunch.”
“I didn’t use that much.” The tall Presque Mort—Gabriel, apparently—looked curiously at her from his one working eye, then grimaced at the air. “It’s still so thick in here, even after a day.”
A day? Gods dead and dying, she’d been knocked out for a whole day?
“She channeled so much…” Gabriel turned to his companion. “Do you feel it?”
The other’s expression darkened. “A bit,” he said, almost begrudgingly. “Not as much as you do. Some of us have to pay our dues in Dellaire, instead of out in one of the country monasteries. We’re used to Mortem being thick here.”
There was a bite of defensiveness to his tone, for all that it sounded like he’d meant it as a joke. Gabriel raised a candle-inked hand. “I meant no offense, Malcolm.”
“None taken,” Malcolm replied. He rubbed his scarred arms and scoffed good-naturedly, as if trying to lift the mood. “If I’d had to spend my entire training period in one of the country monasteries, I would’ve gone raving mad with boredom. I nearly did in just the two months a year I did have to spend there.”
“They certainly aren’t barrels of fun,” Gabriel agreed. “Though the two days I’ve spent in the city have me wishing to return.”
“You’re on your own there. The library in Dellaire is far superior.”
“And we all know that’s what you care about,” Gabriel snorted. “Don’t worry, we’ll finish this quickly and you can get back to your true love.”
“Good. I only agreed to come along since we’re short-staffed. Running about the Wards doesn’t agree with my constitution.”
Gabriel turned his attention back to Lore, a thoughtful crease to his brow. “I think that’s the problem here,” he said softly, with an air that could be mistaken for sympathy if Lore didn’t know better. “If we can sense so much Mortem, imagine what she can sense.”
“Too much,” Lore tried to say, though it came out garbled from behind her gag.
It startled them both, made them flinch back, as if she were a piece of furniture that had suddenly decided to speak. For her part, Lore was barely aware that she’d managed to make a sound. Her head was full of death, her nerves vibrating against the onslaught of so much entropy.
Gabriel nodded, as if something had been decided. Malcolm just looked more confused. “I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “Does it… can it hurt you? Some of the others report discomfort, but all I ever get it a little numbness—”
“It can hurt,” Gabriel said, almost rueful. “It can really, really hurt.”
Something flashed across Malcolm’s face, halfway between fear and jealousy. He rubbed at his scarred arms again.
Gabriel crossed the room and knelt by Lore’s chair. Even on his knees, the top of his head was nearly level with her nose, and his short hair wafted a scent of Church incense. That taut feeling in her middle pulled tight again, that sense that she knew him, somehow.
Gently, he reached behind her head, untied the gag so it fell out of her mouth. “Listen to me,” he said quietly, a command. “The sense of death, it’s all in your head. You can block it out.”
“How?” Her mouth still tasted like sour cotton. Behind Gabriel, Malcolm stood with his arms crossed, expression equal parts intrigued and disturbed.
“It’s your head.” His one-eyed gaze was stern. “Nothing can stay there unless you let it. You make it leave.” The words came out like a lesson often repeated.
Lore tried to laugh, but panic still had its teeth in her, and it sounded more like the start of a sob. “You’re gonna have to give me step-by-step instructions, Mort.”
He nodded smoothly, like this was a perfectly normal request. “Imagine a wall. Make it a thick one, soundproof. Imagine a barrier around your mind until it’s so solid you feel like you could touch it. And then don’t let the sense of death in. There’s no way to not be aware of it, not when you can channel so much Mortem. But it doesn’t have to take you over. It doesn’t have to rule you.”