Heaven's Needle (30 page)

Their trails wove a dizzying web. The
maelgloth
had crossed and recrossed the pyre pit so many times that there was scarcely a finger's width of ground undisturbed. In places their feet had sunk deep in the ash, indicating that they'd stood still for some time. When they were finished they had trotted off together, heading north.

“Two of the Celestians burned a dead companion within the past three or four days,” she told the others. “
Maelgloth
came after they left. They dug through the ashes, looking for … something.”

“This?” Malentir bent, plucked something from the pit's edge, and tossed it at her.

Bitharn caught it reflexively. It was a splinter of charred bone. Tooth marks pocked its surface and had scraped away its marrow. More bone shards littered the ash. Not unusual, for a pyre pit, but all of them seemed to have been chewed.

She thought of the hunters who had chased down that crippled boy and devoured his dripping flesh. Dropping
the fragment, Bitharn wiped her hand. “Why would they want bones?”

“
Maelgloth
are beyond any need for mortal sustenance, but their god's handiwork calls to them.” The Thornlord smoothed the ends of his sleeves. It looked like an innocuous gesture, but Bitharn saw the cloth catch over the barbs of his bracelets as he pressed them down. Beads of blood seeped into the fabric. “If they came here to chew the Celestian's bones, it means that one succumbed to some degree of corruption. They were Blessed?”

Kelland answered. “Two were Illuminers. The rest were not.”

“Most likely the dead one was not, then. It would take tremendous power to corrupt one of your Blessed into a state where
maelgloth
would be driven to gnaw his bones … and yet, until we know otherwise, it might be safest to assume that is what happened. Regardless, we did not come here to see whether
maelgloth
felt obliged to bid your dead companion farewell.”

Malentir circled the pyre pit, stopping when he was within a pace of the stacked firewood. He gestured to the mushrooms that sprouted from ledges of windblown soil between the logs. “Dead man's feast.
Morduk ossain
is its proper name, but I would not expect you to know that. This was the beginning of the corruption's spread.”

“That's
morduk ossain
?” Bitharn peered at the mushrooms with nauseated fascination. Dead man's feast was infamous among poisoners, herbalists, and anyone who foraged the woods for food. No one could work it. Only madmen tried. It killed scavengers that ate the corpses of its victims; it poisoned people who breathed the dust brushed from its caps. It was perfectly lethal, and perfectly useless.

It was also rarer than a Kliastan's mercy. Folklore claimed
that
morduk ossain
grew only on the bodies of victims who succumbed to the mushrooms' poison. Bitharn had never seen it herself. Most people destroyed it on sight. Over the years, it had vanished from the world, until it survived only on the borders of Pafund Mal and in other blighted places.

One of which, it seemed, was Carden Vale.

Bitharn held her breath as she studied the scrawny fungus. The mushrooms grew in nodding clusters. Their stalks were spindly white and shorter than her finger; the caps were blue as a corpse's lips. Fine white hairs cocooned the dirt where they clung.

She committed each detail to memory, and then she stepped away. “
Morduk ossain
couldn't have been the beginning. Anyone who ate it, anyone who touched it … they'd have died.”

“Possibly,” Malentir said. “It is not always lethal to Maolites. If its victims were under the Mad God's sway, the mushroom might not have killed them. Not instantly. The soil, however, is what I meant. The stories about
morduk ossain
are true: it grows only on the remains of poisoned bodies. But those bodies need not be those of its own victims. If Maol's power touched the corpse,
morduk ossain
can take root on it. We learned that in Pafund Mal.
Maelgloth
and rotworms grew bouquets of dead man's feast when they died, though it was us and not
morduk ossain
that killed them. So. What does that tell you?”

“The dirt it's growing on is … bodies? No. Ash from bodies.” Bitharn frowned, working through it. “Ash blown away from the pyre when they burned. That means the executed criminals were corrupt enough for their ashes to sustain
morduk ossain
… which meant they were deep under Maol's thrall … but we already knew that from the
things described in the gaoler's book. What difference does it make if
morduk ossain
grew on their ashes?”

“Think of who would have been here when they burned,” Kelland said quietly. He turned a hand outward, encompassing the dandelion-spotted sward. “Remember how many people came to see justice being done when we rode through Langmyr? The bloodiest crimes, the most vile killers—those always drew the entire town. People wanted the reassurance of knowing those murderers were dead. Imagine how many would come to see the monsters of Carden Vale burn. All of them stood here, watching, while the ashes blew into their faces and the smoke blew into their lungs. That is how the corruption spread.” He glanced at Malentir. “That is what you came to see.”

“One of the things, yes,” the Thornlord said. “I wanted to confirm my guess. I also wanted to know if the
maelgloth
were here recently … and, if they were, where they went when they left.”

“North,” Bitharn said. The hair she'd tugged from her braid tumbled into her eyes; she pushed it back impatiently. “They left in a pack. If they were human I'd think they were in a hurry, by the length of the strides, but maybe
maelgloth
always move like that.”

“They do not.” Malentir half-lidded his eyes for a moment. Wisps of darkness gathered around him, fluttering over his robes like wind-torn cobwebs. Bitharn gave him a questioning look, but the Thornlord ignored her. “Were they following the Celestians?”

She shrugged. “I don't think so, but I can't be sure. Once the pyre had finished burning, the Celestians went back to the inn. After that? Bright Lady only knows. I couldn't follow their trail. The
maelgloth
didn't hide theirs, though. Do you want me to track them?” Not that she
wanted to. Something had the Thornlord uneasy enough to gather a shield of shadows around himself, and that put her on edge too.

To Bitharn's relief, Malentir shook his head. “It isn't important. What matters is that they left. With them gone, it might be safe enough to investigate the chapel.”

The chapel hardly looked safe when they reached it, though. The doors were smashed wide open, as they'd been when Bitharn examined it hours earlier. Rubble cluttered the entrance, spotted with stringy ichor and blood new and old. There'd been bodies among them, earlier, but something had eaten them and licked at the blood spilled during that macabre feast. Swooped smears showed where tongues had lapped over the stones.

“Desecration,” Kelland muttered, striding over the dirty stones into the chapel. His lips moved in a near-silent prayer that Bitharn knew well: godsight. It enabled the Sun Knight to read the patterns of divine magic and thus counter its attacks. While it lasted, he would be disoriented in the mortal world, but in this place it was invaluable.

As the knight prayed, Bitharn felt the malevolence she'd sensed earlier intensify around them. She couldn't see anything, but she
felt
it gathering like a bank of bruised clouds on the horizon, massing in preparation for the storm. The air thickened until she could scarcely breathe. An invisible hand pressed down on her, pushing her hair into a sweaty mat on the back of her neck.

A shimmer of gold settled over the knight's deep brown irises as his prayer came to a close. That much was ordinary … but as he spoke the last words, motes of blackness seemed to break away from his pupils. They swam amidst the gold like leaves caught in a whirlpool, spinning faster and faster, then expanding into streamers that widened until
they eclipsed Kelland's eyes completely. Black sheeted his eyes from lid to lid.

“Kelland?” Bitharn whispered. There was no answer. The knight stared at her with black, blank eyes, his face vacant. His mouth fell open slightly; a rattling moan came out. Alarmed, Bitharn turned to the Thorn. “What's happening? What's wrong with him?”

“Take him out of here,” Malentir ordered. “Quickly. Into the sun.”

Fear gave Bitharn strength. She pulled one of Kelland's arms over her shoulders and wrapped her own arm around his back, guiding his unresisting steps across the rubble and back into the waning light. He was weeping, she realized, dismayed. Inky tears trickled across his skin, burning it like lye. One struck her shoulder and ate into the leather of her jerkin with a bubbling hiss.

Once outside, she guided the knight into a seated position on a rough-edged chunk of stone. Malentir grabbed his jaw and turned his face into the sun; Bitharn winced, but Kelland never blinked. More black tears ran down his cheeks, leaving blistered streaks across his face.

The Thorn hissed. He dug his fingers into the knight's face, murmuring an invocation to his Pale Maiden. Crescents of blood welled under his nails. Flecks of black grit emerged with it, and drop by drop the blood washed it away. Kelland's poisoned tears stopped as Malentir worked; his vacant expression twisted into a grimace of pain.

The bloodletting went on for an age—long enough to turn the knight's tabard into a butcher's apron, long enough for Bitharn to contemplate sending an arrow through the Thornlord's back to stop the torture—but she held off, shaking with anxious anger. As much as it hurt her to see
Kelland suffer, it was better than the terrible emptiness that had claimed him before.

Finally it ended. Malentir removed his hands and stepped back. There were no wounds on Kelland's face; the cuts and blisters were gone without a hint of swelling. Blood and black grit dripped across the golden sun on his tabard.

The knight jerked to his feet and yanked the dirty tabard off. He balled the cloth up and hurled it away, swearing and brushing his chest afterward. Malentir watched him with open amusement, Bitharn with equally open worry.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Maol,” Kelland answered. The name sounded like a curse. He rubbed his cheeks where the tears had run. “The chapel is corrupt. I saw threads of poison swimming in the ever-flowing bowl; I saw it hanging in the air. It was so strong that it blinded me. I felt it … clinging to my eyes, trying to push its way in.”

“Windows to the soul,” Malentir said, visibly amused. Despite what Kelland had just endured, the Thorn seemed on the brink of laughter. “Do you want to go back in?”

“Yes.” Kelland avoided any glance in the direction of his discarded clothing. “There's something in there that the Mad God does not want us to see. If he's trying to stop us, that's all the reason I need to go inside.”

“After you,” the Thornlord said.

“No,” Bitharn said. “I'll take the lead. If we can't use Kelland's godsight, I have the best eyes.” Without waiting for either Blessed to answer, she started back in.

There was more blood in the entry hall. Crinkled papers lay in drifts where the wind had pushed them against the walls. Some were trampled and stained with black grease; others were clean. Soot smudged the floor in a trail leading
to the temple's east hall. Clots and streaks of ichor, and a few spatters of red-brown blood, dotted the largest smear.

“Something was dragged here, and died here,” Bitharn murmured. “Or some
one
.” She couldn't think of any reason the Celestians would have dragged the corpse of a
maelgloth
from the east hall to this room. More likely the marks had been made by their companion's body. If she was reading the signs right, he'd been the source of the ichor as well, somehow. Not a comfortable idea.

Only the ever-flowing bowl in the anteroom looked clean—and if what Kelland had seen was true, that was a font of corruption worse than the rest. Bitharn glanced at it uneasily.

“This place was a locus of contagion,” Kelland said. “The water. The soil. Even the writing on those pages … the ink is soaked through with Maolite magic. What
happened
here?”

“My guess?” Malentir shrugged. “Maol did blindly what you or I would have done with purpose. He eliminated the only thing that could pose a threat to him. Perhaps he was drawn to your goddess' presence in the consecrated fountain; perhaps there was some other magic that it sensed. Regardless, once the temple was compromised, there would be no magic to oppose his and no moral authority to raise the people against him. A surprisingly sensible strategy for a madman.”

Kelland's jaw set. “East. It was stronger that way.” He took the lead from Bitharn, drawing his sword as he stepped forward.

Darkness cloaked the curving hallway. The only light came from windows in the rooms and the garden door at the end; there were no windows in the hall itself. Half-burned candles, rooted in their own wax, sprouted from
the walls and floor like crooked mushrooms. The air smelled of stale smoke and rancid tallow. Ash and blood streaked the floor, unmistakable despite the gloom.

Like most provincial chapels, this one had rooms for patients who had traveled too far, or were too ill, to return to their homes the same day. One was fitted for birthing, another not, and the third one … the third one, Bitharn realized with deep dismay, was a cell.

Before she could ask Kelland what a prison was doing in a holy place, the knight walked past. He glanced at the cell, shook his head, and went on. “Not there. That wasn't what I saw—what I sensed. It was here.” He stopped outside the drying room. The faint scent of dried herbs and liniments lingered there, barely perceptible through the newer smells of smoke and sulfur.