“Seth?” a voice called. Sophia. The light from her sword fell over him. “What are you doing down here?”
Gently, he set the dog aside and rose, wiping his eyes before he faced her.
“There were shades,” he explained.
Her mouth crinkled with a sneer that reminded him of Zale. They were two of a kind, a matched pair with no room for him.
“You lost control again,” she said, eyeing the charred body and singed garbage.
“I—I did.”
Seth almost lied, but that would’ve been worse in Hyperion’s eyes. Night obscured. Hyperion’s light revealed the truth.
“Good,” Sophia said, nudging the dead dog with her toe. “This cesspool of a city should be burned to the ground.”
Seth stiffened at her tone.
“I didn’t find anything,” he said. “Did you?”
“No. We should return to the temple.”
“Yes,” he agreed, adding a silent please.
Seth needed to pray. For guidance. For forgiveness. For a return of his fleeting control.
It hadn’t been like this in Teshur. There were no ghosts there. The days were too long, the sea of sand too flat and sparse. Perhaps there were too few dead, or perhaps something about Hyperion’s sacred spaces burned them away.
From Teshur he’d been called to Ilium, to Hyperion’s great temple. Seth had not spent enough time in the Hierarch’s city to know the state of her shades, but the roads there were broad, easy to navigate, and lined in rose bushes of every color. The plazas were marked by obelisks with gilded caps and all streets led to the great, golden dome at its peak. He couldn’t have lost his way there.
He kept close to Sophia as they made their way back through the alleys. Dawn lit the sea, chasing back the Grief and the city’s malice. They turned a corner and stepped into the temple plaza. Seth could not shake the idea that Versinae had allowed them to find it, or that the sun had forced it to give them back.
Seth fell to his knees before the altar. The priests encircled it, their faces and arms uplifted, their cupped palms open to catch the light falling from the oculus.
“Thank you, Father, for your light,” Seth whispered. “Thank you for our safe return.”
He considered the dog, the spirits of the dead he’d burned away, and the people who had to live in this haunted place. His armor felt heavier than usual.
“Help them all, Father,” he prayed. “Help me.”
Hyperion seemed to answer as the brightening day eased the night’s terrors and light filled the temple. Seth remained on his knees. Sleep tempted him, but he focused on his prayers.
He’d failed his mission. He’d failed the Hierarch.
He must perform penance. He must beg forgiveness.
Seth inhaled the familiar incense, sharp laurel and black poplar, trees sacred to the god.
“Father, make me whole,” he prayed.
He never should have come here, but he’d been ordered to. The Hierarch himself had chosen him for this mission.
From the ship, approaching at dusk, Versinae had appealed to Seth’s curiosity. Spires of dark granite made a forest crisscrossed by bridges that he’d itched to explore. They sloped up from the Shallow Sea. At the top sat Hyperion’s temple, its golden dome a lesser sun on the horizon.
Then they’d docked and the reek of rotting fish from the bay had tilted Seth’s stomach, costing him his dinner and another measure of his fellow knights’ respect.
Versinae’s people had seemed nearly as gray as the spirits gathering in the shadows. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, they looked hungry. Guarding the cart with the box, Seth had wished for some way to bring the light to them, to ease their desperation.
Lamplight had been rare in the streets, but music from a lonely violin had leaked from a window, surprising him as the Grief whorled about their feet.
He never should have come here.
A shadow blocked the sunlight, pulling Seth from his memories and silent prayers. Expecting Sophia, he opened his eyes.
“Father Geldar!”
Like all of his order, he dressed in simple robes of brown linen and dusty sandals. The old priest clapped a hand to Seth’s back as he stood.
Seth beamed.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said.
Geldar hadn’t sailed with them, not that Seth would have noticed with his head hung over the ship’s rail. He was relieved that Geldar had not seen his weakness.
“I have duties in the city,” Geldar said. “Still, I am glad to see you.”
“It has been too long.”
“Walk with me, Seth. I wish to hear of your progress along the knight’s path.”
“I would like that.”
Seth spoke truly, though his feelings warred within him.
Geldar had been the first to believe that Seth could serve Hyperion. In Teshur, he’d too often felt like Geldar was the only one who had, himself included. The memory of the old man’s kind face had been the thing to get Seth through the worst of his penance. Now the box lay plundered. Seth had failed in his duty, and he could only think, again, that he never should have come here.
Geldar led Seth out into the long plaza stretching between Hyperion’s dome and the blackened wall that sealed away whatever remained of Versinae’s tower.
Curiosity snaked through him, but Seth would not look, would not be tempted by the ruins of Night.
He focused on Geldar instead. The pale hair crowning his bald pate nearly matched the white rope he wore as a belt but his steps were deliberate and unfaltering.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that Geldar was also in Versinae, but it wasn’t Seth’s place to ask questions. Curiosity was discouraged in a Knight of Hyperion, and Inquisitors answered only to the Hierarch.
He tried again to ignore the black wall.
“They call it the Garden,” Geldar said, following the reluctant direction of Seth’s eyes. “A joke. They say Versinae’s prince wanted a new garden, so he tore her tower down. I suppose it’s easier than calling it the Tomb.”
“But it was the knights who brought the towers down,” Seth said quietly.
“It was,” Geldar agreed.
Phoebe’s priests had consorted with demons, the gods’ enemies, who they’d nearly eradicated in their ancient war.
It was the worst of heresies. The knights had been left with no choice. Of course, they’d destroyed her temples, burned her priests, and trapped her in the Underworld.
Some bit of the tower might remain behind the wall. Some bit of the dead goddess might linger, but even if Seth had dared it, he couldn’t go and see. They’d built the wall without a gate, without a means of entrance.
Seth forced aside his curiosity with a shudder.
“I do not like this city,” he admitted.
“It will test you,” Geldar said. “But your mission is important.”
“But Father,” Seth said, choking to hold in a sob as he confessed. “I have failed in my mission.”
“It may seem so,” Geldar said. “But Hyperion has a plan for all of us, as does his Hierarch.”
Seth hung his head but gave a little nod. It did not surprise him that Geldar already knew what had happened. His order had the task of bringing hidden truths to light.
“What are you doing?” a voice broke in.
Sophia. She’d come to meet them on the temple steps.
“We must see to Zale,” she barked.
If Geldar were offended by her tone, he did not show it.
“No shadow shall stand,” he said.
“Against his light,” Seth finished.
Geldar smiled, and gave a nod.
It warmed Seth as he followed Sophia through the temple. Golden braziers caught the light falling from wells in the ceiling. Even the sandstone walls held a glint of mica, spreading Hyperion’s gift through the halls.
It eased the tightness in Seth’s chest. Hyperion would not abandon him, and Seth would never abandon the god who’d saved him from a life of darkness.
Zale lay unconscious in the temple’s infirmary. A priestess stood beside his bed, examining a small bowl of his blood. The light from the window caught on the heavy glass and copper wire of her spectacles.
“Why won’t he wake?” Sophia demanded without greeting.
Seth inched into the room.
Zale lay stripped to the waist. Pale and still, he looked like a corpse, though his muscled chest rose and fell. He had a lot of scars.
The sunlit infirmary had a sharp, astringent smell, nothing like the city’s reek of garbage and coal smoke, but the taste of burned fur clung to the back of Seth’s throat.
“I’ve drained the wound,” the priestess said, ignoring Sophia’s tone. She shook the bowl and peered into it again. “It’s not poison, at least none I’ve seen.”
“And how many is that?” Sophia asked.
“This is Versinae,” the priestess said as though that should answer the question.
Sophia glared at her.
“Then it’s magic,” she said.
“That would be my guess.”
The priestess peeled back Zale’s eyelid. The pupil was covered in black, in darkness.
“No shadow can stand against the light,” Seth whispered.
“True,” the priestess said, lifting her eyes in his direction. “But I’ve never seen this, not even before the tower fell.”
“So, it is new?” Seth asked.
“Or very, very old.”
A chill ran up his spine. There were demons left in the world, in the wild places. The knights were sworn to destroy them lest they corrupt the people, lest the high demons, once mistaken for gods, returned.
Zale muttered something and shifted in his sleep.
“He dreams,” the priestess said, running a hand across his brow. “Nightmares mostly. He cannot kindle the fire, not in this state, so he cannot drive out the darkness that smothers his light and clouds his mind.”
“I could try to light it within him,” Seth said.
Zale was not flawed as Seth was. The god’s fire wouldn’t burn him.
“I’ll do it,” Sophia snapped. “Your faith is too weak.”
She jerked the glove from her hand. The priestess gently wrapped a hand around her wrist.
“You should wait,” she said. “We’ve called for the Bishop.”
“I will not.”
The room warmed as Sophia jerked free.
Looking resigned and a little angry, the priestess took a step backward.
Sophia spread her fingers and pressed her hand to Zale’s face.
Seth began a whispered prayer, “Father, guide her—”
“Shut up,” Sophia hissed through clenched teeth.
She conjured the god’s fire. Seth’s flames were like burning wood in an iron forge. Sophia’s were different, still intense, but more like sunlight concentrated through a lens.
The priestess looked to Seth, silently pleading with him, though he did not know how to alleviate her worry.
Steam rose from Zale’s body. He convulsed. His eyes opened. The blackness swirling over them ran like ink. Cold leaked from him, driven out by the fire.
Sophia grimaced as she struggled against something unseen. Her eyes narrowed with their usual determination, then widened as she paled too.
“Help me,” she said.
Seth pulled off his glove and pressed his hand to Zale’s bare chest. The dimpled flesh felt clammy beneath the woolly hair. Seth took a breath and closed his eyes. He willed the fire to rise, to fill Zale and burn away whatever shadow plagued him. Seth’s palm blistered as the fire poured out of him. The ink coating Zale’s eyes burned away.
He jerked upright, wisps of smoke wafting off him.
“Demons!” Zale shouted. “Heretics! The Day of the Black Sun—”
Tears lit Zale’s wide eyes. Crazed, he seized Seth by the arms, knocking Sophia aside and spilling the bowls of ichor. The priestess made the sign of Hyperion and muttered a stream of prayers.
“Shadow. Heresy. Lies,” Zale hissed, spraying spittle. He fixed his gaze on Seth. “Not a relic. Not a corpse. It’s a man.”
“What?” Seth gasped.
“The box,” Zale spat. Foam flecked his lips. A puff of smoke spilled from his mouth as tears ran down his cheeks. “I heard them in Ilium. The Oracle. The Hierarch. It’s a man. A living man. I confess. Father Hyperion save me. I confess.”
“What are you confessing to?” Sophia said. She put her hands on Zale’s shoulders. “You’re fine. You’re going to be fine, Zale.”
Zale never took his eyes from Seth’s. “The Oracle. She told the Hierarch it had to be him. Black hair. Green eyes. You have to find him.”
“A living man?” Seth said. “You mean he was in the box?”
“Black hair. Green eyes,” Zale repeated. “It had to be him.”
Seth remembered the weight of the box, the cold of it, like the Ebon Sea, like death itself.
“Forgive me,” Zale said, his wide eyes fixed hard on Seth’s.
He collapsed back onto the bed and lay limp, his fever spent.
Seth struggled to find his voice. His arms ached where Zale’s fingers had dug into them.
“What do we do?” he managed to ask.
“We get back what they stole,” Sophia said. “We find this man, and we put him back.”
“But the Bishop—” the priestess began.
“Is not here,” Sophia snapped.
She glared at Seth, challenging him to argue, but he said nothing as Zale twitched and shook from the fire and darkness warring inside him.
“Come,” Sophia ordered, jerking her head for Seth to follow her out of the infirmary.
“What are you going to do?” Seth asked, straining to match her pace.
“I am going to fulfill our mission,” Sophia said, her face as hard as marble as they passed through the temple doors and out into the plaza. “At any price. This is what Hyperion wills, what the Hierarch set us to. I will find this man and return him to the box if we have to burn this city to the ground.”