“Sancia,” whispered Gregor. “What is in that room?”
She walked forward. Little tangles of logic and arguments sprang to life—all of them small, trivial, and mostly in bunches on the floor.
She swallowed again. Her mouth and throat were very dry. “I think it’s…I think there are bodies in there, Gregor,” she said. “Nine of them.”
Gregor stood there for a moment, totally frozen, his espringal trained on the open door. She saw his brow and temples were covered in sweat. Then he walked forward, and Sancia followed.
They heard the sound again—a strained whimper from within the room ahead.
Sancia watched as one little bundle of scrivings and sachets twitched.
“One of them’s alive,” she whispered.
Gregor stepped into the doorway and held his lamp up high. The chamber had been intended as a meeting or planning room, Sancia thought, judging by the big table and chairs in the center, but it appeared to have been converted into an impromptu assembly bay for scriving work: hundreds of tomes had been stacked up on the table, along with styli and scrived bowls of heated metals, and there were pieces of parchment stuck to the walls, all covered with charts of sigils and strings.
And below these, all over the floor, were the bodies of scrivers. And all of them had been horribly mutilated.
Some had shoved styli into their necks. Others had opened up the veins in their arms, like the man in the hallway. One man had plunged a scrived stiletto into his heart. But there was a commonality to their injuries: all of them had apparently cut or gouged or clawed out their own eyes before finally resorting to suicide.
Sancia stared at the scene around her. Inevitably her eye was drawn to the large door on the far side of the wall. It hung open, though she couldn’t see anything on the other side. Judging by the scrivings she could spy, it looked like there was a very large room on the other side.
And what’s through there?
A wet sob came from the corner. Gregor darted across the room to a man who lay crumpled on the floor, his eyes gouged out, his face and chest covered with blood. He’d tried to slash his wrists, but he’d done a bad job of it, and still lived.
“Who is…who is there?” whimpered the scriver. Then, his voice shaking with terror, he said: “Is it you, My Prophet?”
“Who are you?” asked Gregor. “What happened here?”
“Please,” sobbed the scriver. His mutilated sockets gleamed in the light of their lanterns. “Please, whoever you are. Please, kill me, please…”
“What has happened?”
“Please…”
“Why did you do this to yourself?”
“Please!”
“Tell me,” said Gregor sternly. “Now. Why?”
“Not supposed…to see him,” whispered the dying scriver. “Can’t see what he is…underneath it all…”
“Who?” demanded Gregor. “Who do you mean? Is it…Is it Cras—”
“Please,” begged the man. “Please, kill me! Please, I don’t…I can’t live with this inside me! I can’t have it inside of me!”
Sancia looked at the parchments pinned to the walls. Most of them were scriving designs, but a few seemed to be maps—though they were maps of a place Sancia found very familiar.
She studied the layout of the building they depicted, which was huge, circular, with many floors…and it had six specific areas highlighted, deep in the foundations of the structure.
Why in the hell, she wondered, would they bring maps of the Mountain of the Candianos here? And what’s so interesting in the basement?
She moved on to the scriving designs. They contained countless hierophantic sigils for many permissions and commands: symbols for change, for death, for strength, for recurrence…and then another parchment, with many strings she’d never seen before.
She moved closer to it, held up her lantern, and began to read.
“What did you do?” said Gregor. “What has happened aboard this ship?”
“We had to…had to find a piece of him,” choked the scriver.
“What?” said Gregor.
“He’d left it behind. Hid it away. A tomb among the islands…”
Sancia stared at the new sigils, but none of them were familiar to her. She wished Berenice were here—she had a near-perfect memory when it came to sigils and strings.
She read the notes at the top, written in plain text. One said, Capable of convincing reality of shifting times…
A horrible dread filled her. Oh no.
“A piece of what?” said Gregor.
“A tiny…a tiny bit of bone. You could put it in a living person, and…and argue that this was him, that he’d never died…”
Sancia began ripping the parchments off the walls, folding them up, and stuffing them in her pockets.
“Where are the slaves?” asked Gregor. “What have you done with the people aboard this ship?”
“But…we couldn’t see,” whispered the man. “Weren’t allowed to see. Can’t see him. Cannot see the…the king behind the veil…” He coughed wetly.
Gregor sat back and stared at the mutilated man, his face like ash. “What did you do here?” he asked softly.
“Please…I have seen him.” The scriver’s words were slurred and drunken now. “I’ve looked at him. I can’t have that in…inside me…”
“What has my mother done?” asked Gregor.
The scriver’s head lolled back, and he went silent.
For a moment they did nothing, not daring to speak. Then they stared at the door beyond, leading to the larger chamber.
Sancia looked around again at the books and the bowls on the table. This was their preparation room.
Gregor and Sancia crossed to the large door on the far side of the wall.
But is this where they did their true work?
“Do you see anything inside, Sancia?” whispered Gregor.
She flexed her sight. The room on the other side of the door was dark, devoid of any logic or arguments. She shook her head.
Gregor slowly took a breath, opened the door, walked into the room, and held up his lantern.
“Oh…Oh my God…” he moaned.
Sancia joined him. Then she saw, and she felt faint and fell to her knees.