SIX
KARL HOPED SHAWNA was having a more interesting and informative day than he. Since he had been unceremoniously dumped onto the balcony of this pleasant prison, no one had come to greet him, interrogate him, torture him, or taunt him—no one had paid him any attention at all.
Why go to all the trouble to seize me and fly me to this castle, and then not even come to talk to me? he asked himself—and had no answer.
He explored every inch of the chamber, fortunately discovering the privy, whose entrance was hidden behind a tapestry, well before not discovering it would have been a major problem. The bread and cheese and meat and wine and water he’d found waiting for him would sustain him for that day, but they would not last another. He hoped that meant someone was certain to see him before the day’s end. But the day went on and on, and no one came.
He spent some time in silent meditation, searching within himself for some signal from the alien technology in his blood that it had picked up the location of this world’s Shaper. He had never entered a world where that signal had failed him . . .
. . . until now.
What that meant, he could not say. He could only wait and hope that eventually, when he had the opportunity to talk to someone in authority in this strangely silent castle, he might tease out some information that could point him in the direction of the Shaper.
If he ever had that opportunity.
He wished for a book, or ink and paper, but found neither, so in the end, he simply sat and stared down at the courtyard to pass the time. He tried shouting at the figures he saw there, who looked like ordinary humans. One or two glanced up at him, but no one responded.
The day passed, but it passed very, very slowly.
I pulled open the door through which the sobbing came, revealing stairs spiraling down. A glimmer of yellow light, too steady to belong to candles or a torch, spoke of a lantern or two at the bottom. And now I could hear, not only the boyish sobs I was certain were coming from Eric, but the soft voice of Father Thomas, providing comfort.
I hesitated, then sat on the steps and listened.
“I know it was a terrible thing,” Father Thomas said. “I, too, have killed the creatures of the night, and felt as you do. Just ten years ago, we saw them as our friends, as fellow children of God. We thought God Himself had sent them to us because that was what they told us.
“But that was before the Pact shattered. You were only five years old. You don’t remember what it was like, the first attacks on humans. We couldn’t believe it was happening. Farm families slaughtered; villages decimated. The emissaries of Mother Church stopped coming. The vampires and werewolves went to war. The queens denied they had anything to do with the attacks on humans, but the attacks continued: clearly, they were lying.
“We had to defend ourselves. We fortified the largest villages, brought everyone into the walls at night, began armed patrols. And in the absence of new instructions from Mother Church, we fell back on the edict written in the Pact itself, the warning to the vampires and werewolves of what would happen if they were lying to us, if they broke their solemn promise not to hunt and feed on humans.” Father Thomas paused. “Eric?”
A deep, shuddering breath. “‘If the Pact be broken,” Eric said in a quavering voice, “it is the duty of every human to kill every werewolf or vampire they encounter, beneath the moon or the sun.’”
Typical parent, I thought. Surrogate parent, anyway. The poor boy is crying, and he’s trying to make it a lesson.
“And there you have it.” Thomas sighed heavily. “There were children of the night I, too, counted as friends, before. But were they to call on me now, I would have no choice. To protect the village, our friends, our kind . . . I would have to kill them, though the bolt would pierce my heart, too.”
Silence. Then, “May I . . . be excused?” Eric said in a small voice.
“Of course,” Thomas said, his voice sympathetic. “Talk a walk around the village, or out by the lake.”
“I think . . . I’ll just go to my room.”
“Or that,” Thomas said softly.
I heard the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back across a stone floor, scrambled up, and hurried back into the church. Halfway down the aisle, I turned and waited. The moment Eric appeared, I started forward.
“Hello!” I said cheerfully. “Have you seen Father Thomas?”
Eric started at the sound of my voice. “Yes,” he said after a moment. He looked over his shoulder. “Down there. In the library.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Eric exited through the front doors of the church, flooding the aisle with daylight for a moment before he banged them shut again.
I returned to the spiraling staircase and this time continued down it, the air growing cooler and staler as I descended. I emerged into a larger chamber than I anticipated, the walls lined with books. Two more doors, both closed, presumably led to crypts or storage rooms or janitor closets or whatever else might be in the basement of a medieval church.
Maybe not janitor closets.
Thomas sat, head down, at the table at the room’s center, where there were only two chairs, one of which, pushed well back, must have been the one Eric had occupied moments before. Books and papers were scattered across the table, surrounding a single oil lantern.
“Hi,” I said, walking up to the table. “I saw Eric in the church. He told me you were down here.”
Thomas murmured something, crossed himself, and said, “Amen,” and I suddenly twigged to the fact he’d been praying. Awkward, I thought, but just bulled on. “A lot of books,” I commented, looking around at the surrounding shelves.
“Church records, mostly,” Thomas said. “But not entirely.” He got up and went to the shelf opposite the bottom of the stairwell, pulling from it a book instantly distinguishable from the others because it was the only one bound in white. He brought it back to the table, pushed aside a couple of other books in front of the chair where Eric had been, put it down, placed his hand on it, and said earnestly to me, “If you want to understand this world . . . this valley . . . why things are the way they are . . . then you must read this next.”
I gave it a wary look. It looked . . . thick. “What is it?”
“The Pact.”
“You want me to read this whole thing here and now?”
“Of course not,” he said impatiently. “The Pact itself is only a few pages. The rest is commentary. Read the introduction, which has additional background information, then read the Pact. It will only take you a few minutes.” He returned to the chair he’d been in when I entered and looked at me expectantly.
I sighed, sat, and read.
Abbot Costello (the introduction told me) had not trusted the werewolves and vampires who had appeared at the door of his monastery any more than one would expect a priest to trust such creatures. But he had wanted peace above all, to protect the innocent people living in the valley, and the self-proclaimed prophets, the vampire Barnabas and the werewolf Remus, had professed to want the same thing. And so, the Pact proclaimed peace among all three races . . . but it hedged its bets. Abbot Costello had made it clear that if it were broken by either the vampires or the werewolves, the protections it offered them would end, and humans would not only be permitted to kill them, as was the custom, but commanded to do so. Remarkably (or perhaps not so remarkably, since this was, after all, a Shaped world, and all of this had been made up out of thin air), Barnabas and Remus had agreed.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch or a vampire or a werewolf to live,” the church had long decreed, taking the infamous biblical injunction two steps further. The fact Abbot Costello had been willing to suspend that injunction in the hope that Barnabas and Remus were telling the truth about their desire to live peaceably in the valley with humans also spoke to this being a Shaped world: in my world (which matched, I believed, the First World), I doubted that would have been the case.
Then again, perhaps it would have been. Might makes right, as they say, and no doubt the abbot’s remarkable reasonableness had been influenced by the horrifying, undeniable truth of the Great Cataclysm, which lapped up to the edges of the valley literally on the heels of the refugees . . . and then stopped, just as they claimed to have been told it would by God. He had every reason to believe that the humans, werewolves, and vampires in the valley were the only ones remaining in all of the world—and he knew perfectly well that in a straight-up fight, the vampires and werewolves, though few in number, would have made short work of the unprepared humans of the valley.
The introduction of the book told me that the valley was about two hundred miles in length. The Pact gave the vampires the northern end of the valley—fifty miles of lands north of the crag where the vampire castle now perched. It gave the werewolves the southern end—fifty miles south of where the werewolf queen established her court. Humans could choose to live within the realms of either the werewolves or the vampires, or they could live in the one-hundred-mile stretch known as the Lands Between, under the injunction they were not to raise up a king for themselves: their governance would fall solely to Mother Church. (Abbot Costello clearly knew a thing or two about the importance of secular as well as spiritual power; prior to the Pact, each village had had a reeve, but there had been no government above that.) Vampires were not to feed on humans, ditto werewolves, nor were vampires to feed on werewolves or werewolves on vampires. The lion would lie down with the lamb and the peace that passeth all understanding would reign for a thousand years, or something like that.
Under the Pact, humans were only to be changed into werewolves or vampires if they chose the change—and if the werewolves and vampires agreed. For those who sought the privilege, it was a great honor to be accepted. (The Church, of course, had a different viewpoint, viewing such people as choosing damnation over salvation, but under the terms of the Pact, agreed to do nothing to stop it, however much it was discouraged.) The changed individuals moved into one of the respective kingdoms.
I pushed the book away. “Fine,” I said to Thomas. “Sounds like a great plan. So what went wrong?”
“It is unclear,” Thomas said. “But a decade ago, the Pact shattered. Creatures of the night began killing humans, and each other. Humans were changed without their consent. Mother Church fell silent, providing no guidance, but the Pact’s instructions are clear: if it fails, it is the duty of the church to uphold the age-old command to suffer neither witch, nor vampire, nor werewolf to live.”
“Are there witches?” I asked.
Father Thomas shook his head. “No. The last known witch was executed some two hundred years ago.”
Meaning the Shapers had decided they didn’t want any around. “And this decree was acceptable to you even though the Lord Himself spoke to Barnabas and Remus and told them to save their people by coming here?”
“Barnabas and Remus claimed the Lord spoke to them. Abbot Costello, as the caveats in the Pact make clear, was not entirely convinced they spoke the truth. The breaking of the Pact would seem clear evidence they did not.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it again, because what did I know?
I know a few things, I answered myself. I know I need to find the Shaper of this world. Which means I need Karl. But Karl’s been taken by the vampires.
“I need to find out what happened to my companion,” I said. “I need to go to the vampire castle. Will you help?”
Father Thomas stiffened. “No,” he said flatly. “It is forbidden to go anywhere near the borders of the Lands Between, north or south.”
“By whom?” I said.
“By Mother Church, and by secular law,” he said.
“I don’t belong to your church or your village,” I pointed out.
“We have given you sanctuary. That makes you subject to our laws.”
“Why do you care?” I countered. “I’d be risking nothing but my own life.” I couldn’t believe I was saying that since I wasn’t a big fan of risking my life, generally, but I had to find Karl, and if that meant going alone . . .
“If you go to the castle, you will either die or be changed,” Father Thomas said. “If you die, well and good. But if you were changed, you would be a threat. You could return and be let through the gates by someone unwary. Or you could tell the vampires details of our defenses against them, perhaps enabling an attack.”
“I don’t know any details of your defenses!”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said stubbornly. “It is forbidden. I forbid it, and the reeve forbids it.”
I bit my tongue before I gave the two-word response that first came to mind. The fact that it was forbidden for me to travel to the vampire castle meant nothing to me except that it would make it harder for me to do so, since now I would have to somehow get out of the village without being stopped.
How I would do that, I hadn’t a clue. Which meant, for the moment, all I could do was bide my time.
“This isn’t my world,” I said after a moment. “I am still learning.” I decided a little buttering up might be in order. “I apologize if I gave offense.”
After a moment, the tension in Thomas’ shoulders eased. “There is no offense in honest questions. And I know it seems hard. It seems hard to me, too. There were those among the children of the night I counted as friends, who would visit me during the day. I have not seen them since the Pact shattered, and if I did, I would have to . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. I had already heard him say something much the same to Eric, but I couldn’t tell him that. I simply waited.
Finally, he took a deep breath and raised his head to meet my gaze again. “Your ignorance of all these things speaks to the truth of your claim of being from another world.” He leaned forward. “And even if you were from this world, there are things you would not know that perhaps you should, to understand why we are so harsh, so determined to kill the creatures of the night when we identify them, though once we thought them friends.”
I glanced at the book containing the Pact. That was clearly the world the Shaper had intended. Perhaps Thomas’ no-doubt tragic backstory—I could sense one coming—would help explain why it had gone awry.
“My parents died when I was a child,” Thomas began, confirming my expectation as to what kind of tale he would tell. “I was raised in the very orphanage I now run, here in Zarozje, where Eric and others live. Father Davin, my predecessor, taught us our letters, and I developed an interest in the priesthood.
“I traveled to Mother Church, to the seminary, took my vows, and returned here to assist Father Davin, who by then was in failing health. Then the Pact collapsed—and Father Davin, who should have died in bed, surrounded by friends and parishioners, instead was torn apart by a werewolf who had slipped inside the village during the day and hid until nightfall. The monster was killed trying to escape, but it changed nothing: at the age of twenty-five, I became the village priest. And ordered the building of the walls that now protect us.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, unsure if that was the correct response. “What about Eric? What happened to his parents?”
Thomas shrugged. “We do not know. He was placed in a basket in an alcove at the top of the church steps, a basket we keep there, with blankets inside, for just such deliveries.”
I blinked. “This village is small . . . you must know . . .”
“There was once much travel among villages, none of which were then walled. Even now, there is travel among the surviving villages during the day,” Thomas said. “But there have always been few orphanages. Zarozje has one, and so children have come here from many places and by many torturous paths. No, we do not know his parentage. But from childhood he has shown an interest in the church, a desire to serve her as a priest. And so, as Father Davin guided and taught me, I guide and teach him. The hand of God at work, clearly. He cannot go to the seminary, so I must train him and will, in time, administer his vows.”
Though I held my tongue, I did not think God—the God of the First World, if He existed—had much to do with anything that happened in the Shaped worlds.
Thomas replaced the copy of the Pact on the shelf. “It is lunchtime. I can offer only simple fare, but you are welcome to share it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You are most generous.”
I followed him up from the library, into the church, and out into the sunlight of the village square. With the sunlight came an idea. “On second thought,” I said, shading my eyes against the sun and looking across the square, “I would like to explore Zarozje.” I lowered my hand and met his gaze. “Unless I am a prisoner.”
He hesitated, as if he would have liked to say yes, I was a prisoner, but in the end, he said only, “Of course.”
I suspected he did not, as the village priest, technically have the right to imprison someone. That kind of power would surely fall to the reeve. The fact that Father Thomas had effectively both arrested me and brought me into the village for testing without me ever seeing the reeve perhaps indicated where the real power in Zarozje lay, but still . . .
And even if none of that entered into his mental deliberations, in truth, there was nowhere I could go. South of Zarozje lay the lake. I hadn’t been that way yet, but from what I’d seen up above, it lapped almost at the base of the village wall. What was I going to do? Steal a boat?
To the north rose the cliff face I’d already come down. I could no more climb that without being pursued and caught than I could fly, and since I hadn’t been turned into a vampire (yet, my mind unhelpfully added), I couldn’t do that, either.
To the west stretched the broad flat basin of the valley, open fields where there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. I knew there were other fortified villages out there somewhere, but I would face the same questions there as here. No doubt I would be arrested, a message would be sent to Father Thomas, and soon enough I would be returned to him.
To the east, and not all that far away, rose the valley slope, rising to snow-capped mountains. Impassable, everyone said.
And to get to any of those places, even if I wanted to, I’d have to leave through the village gate, which was guarded by people who were unlikely to let me do so.
And so, in the end, “of course” was Father Thomas’ answer. He went back inside the church.
I went in search of the orphanage.