“Of course,” Miriamele replied quickly, but her mind did not fix easily on what the little man was saying. It was hard to tear her eyes from the mud-spattered walls, the gloomy, empty streets. It looked as though a great flood had rushed through and swept all the people away. “Of course,” she said again. “But how will we find it?”
“On the map, the tunnel end looked as though it was being in the center of the town. Are we going in that direction?”
“Yes. Main Row goes through town all the way up to the Nearulagh Gate.”
“Then what is that thing being?” Binabik pointed. “It seems to block any going forward.” A few furlongs ahead, a huge dark mass straddled the road.
“That?” Miriamele was still so disoriented that it took her a long moment to recognize it. “Oh. That’s the back of Saint Sutrin‘s—the cathedral.”
Binabik was silent for some moments. “And it is at the center of the town?”
“More or less.” Something in the tone of the troll’s voice finally dragged her attention back from the dreamlike emptiness of Main Row. “Binabik? What is it? Is something wrong?”
“Let us just wait until we are seeing it from more closely. Why is there no golden wall? I thought from the traveler’s tales told to me that such a wall was being a famous thing about this Saint Sutrin’s.”
“It’s on the other side—the side that faces the castle.”
They continued up Main Row. Miriamele wondered whether there might be people here after all—if instead of almost deserted, the city might actually be full-tenanted. Perhaps if all the inhabitants were as fearful as the one she had seen, they were even now watching quietly from behind shuttered windows and through cracks in the walls. Somehow that was just as bad as imagining the people of Erchester all gone.
Or perhaps it was something stranger still. On either side of the road, the stalls which had once housed the various small merchants were empty, but now she thought she could feel a sort of anticipation, as though these hollow holes waited to be filled with some new kind of life—something as unlike the farmers, peasants, and townsfolk who had once bustled through their lives here as mud was unlike dry, sunlit soil.
The golden facade of Saint Sutrin’s had been peeled away by scavengers; even the famous stone reliefs were gouged almost into unrecognizability, as though the gold that had covered them had been smashed loose with hammers in the course of a single hasty hour.
“It was beautiful.” Miriamele had not much room left for sadness or surprise. “When the sun was on it, it looked like the church was covered in holy flames.”
“In times of badness, gold is being worth more than beauty,” Binabik mused, squinting up at the crushed faces of the saints. “Let us go and try the door.”
“Do you think it’s here? The tunnel?”
“You saw from the map that it was coming up in the center of this town of Erchester. I am guessing that this place goes deeper than any other in the town.”
The great wooden doors did not open easily, but Miriamele and Binabik both lowered their shoulders; the hinges groaned and the doors grated open almost a cubit, allowing them to slip inside.
The forechamber had also lost much of its decoration. The pedestals on either side of the door were empty, and the huge tapestries that had once made the chamber walls into windows that looked out on the days of Usires Aedon now lay crumpled on the flagstones, crisscrossed with muddy footprints. The room stank of damp and decay, as though it had been long deserted, but light glowed from the great chapel beyond the forechamber doors.
“Someone is here,” Miriamele said quietly.
“Or at least they are still coming for lighting the candles.”
They had only taken a few steps when a figure appeared in the inner doorway.
“Who are you? What do you seek in God’s house?”
Miriamele was so surprised to hear another human voice that for a moment she did not reply. Binabik took a step forward, but she put her hand on his shoulder. “We are travelers,” she said. “We wanted to see Saint Sutrin’s. The doors were never closed in the past.”
“Are you Aedonites?”
Miriamele thought there was something familiar about the voice. “I am. My companion is from a foreign land, but he has been of service to Mother Church.”
There was a moment’s hesitation before the man spoke again. “Enter, then, if you swear you are not enemies.”
Miriamele doubted from the tremulousness of his tone that the man speaking could have stopped them if they were enemies, but she said: “We are not. Thank you.”
The shadowy figure vanished from the doorway and Miriamele led Binabik through. She was still wary. In this haunted city, anyone could live in a cathedral. Why not then use it as a trap spider used its burrow, as a lure to the incautious?
It was not much warmer inside than out, and the great chapel was thick with shadows. Only a dozen candles burned in the huge room, and their light was scarcely enough to illuminate the vaulting high overhead. Something was strange about the dome as well. After a few moments’ scrutiny, Miriamele realized that all of the glass was gone but for a few splinters clinging to the lead frame. A solitary star glimmered in the naked sky.
“Smashed by the storm,” a voice said beside her. She flinched, startled. “All our lovely windows, the work of ages, shattered. It is a judgment on Mankind.”
Standing beside her in the dim light was an old man in a dirty gray robe, his face sagging into a thousand wrinkles, his white-wisped, balding head covered with a lopsided hat of strange shape. “You look so sad,” he murmured; his accent marked him as an Erkynlander. “Did you ever see our Saint Sutrin’s before ...” he hesitated, as he tried to find a word, but could not. “Did you ever see it ... before?”
“Yes.” Miriamele knew it was better policy to profess ignorance, but the old man seemed so pathetically proud that she did not have the heart. “I saw it. It was very beautiful.”
“Only the great chapel in the Sancellan Aedonitis could compare,” he said wistfully. “I wonder if it still stands? We hear little from the South these days.”
“I am sure it does.”
“Ah, yes? Well, that is very good.” Despite his words, he sounded faintly disappointed that his cathedral’s rival had not suffered a similarly ignoble fate. “But, may our Ransomer forgive us, we are poor hosts,” he said suddenly, catching Miriamele’s arm with a gently trembling claw. “Come in and shelter from the storm. You and your son—” he gestured to Binabik, who looked up in surprise; the old man had already forgotten what Miriamele had told him, “—will be safe here. They have taken our beautiful things, but they have not taken us from the watchful-ness of God’s eye.”
He led them up the long aisle toward the altar, a block of stone with a rag stretched over it, mumbling as he went about the wonderful things that had once stood here or there and the horrible things that had happened to them. Miriamele was not listening to him closely: she was preoccupied by the scatter of shadowy human shapes which leaned against the walls or lay in corners. One or two were draped lengthwise across the benches as though in sleep. All together, there seemed to be several dozen people in the huge chapel, all silent and apparently unmoving. Miriamele had a sudden, horrid thought. “Who are all these folk?” she asked. “Are they ... dead?”
The old man looked up, surprised, then smiled and shook his head. “No, no, they are pilgrims like yourself, travelers who sought a safe haven. God led them here, and so they shelter in His church.”
As the old man recommenced his description of the splendors of Saint Sutrin’s as it once had been, Miriamele felt a tug at her sleeve.
“Ask him whether there is anything beneath this place like that thing we are searching,” the troll whispered.
When the man paused for a moment, Miriamele seized her chance. “Are there tunnels beneath the cathedral?”
“Tunnels?” The question set an odd light burning in the old man’s rheumy eye. “What do you me
an? There are the catacombs, where all the bishops of this place lie resting until the Day of Weighing-Out, but no one goes there. It is ... holy ground.” He seemed disturbed, staring past the altar at nothing Miriamele could see. “That is not a place for any traveler. Why do you ask?”
Miriamele did not wish to upset him any further. “I was told once that there was a ... a holy place here.” She bowed her head. “Someone dear to me is in danger. I had thought that maybe there was a special shrine....” What had seemed a lie had come to her quickly, but as she thought about it, she realized it was only truth: someone dear to her was in peril. She should light a candle for Simon before they left this place.
“Ah.” The old man seemed mollified. “No, it is not that sort of place, not at all. Now come, it is almost time for the evening mansa.”
Miriamele was surprised. So the rites were still celebrated here, even though the church seemed little more than a shell. She wondered what had happened to fat, blustering Bishop Domitis and all his priestly underlings.
The man led them to the first row of benches facing the altar, then gestured for them to sit down. The irony did not escape Miriamele: she had often sat there before at her father’s side, and at her grandfather’s before that. The old man walked to a place behind the stone and its ragged covering, then lifted his arms in the air. “Come, my friends,” he said loudly. “You may return now.”
Binabik looked at Miriamele. She shrugged, unsure of what the man wanted them to do.
But they were not the ones who had been addressed. A moment later, whirring and flapping, a host of black shapes descended from the shadowy wreckage of the dome. Miriamele gave out a little squeak of surprise as the ravens settled upon the altar. Within moments almost a score of them stood wing to wing on the altar cloth, oily feathers gleaming in the candlelight.
The old man began to speak the Mansa Nictalis, and as he did, the ravens preened and ruffled.
“What is this thing?” Binabik asked. “It is not a part of your worship that I have heard of.”
Miriamele shook her head. The old man was clearly mad. He was addressing the Nabbanai words to the ravens, who strutted back and forth along the altar giving voice to harsh, grating cries. But there was something else about the scene that was almost as strange as the eerie ceremony, some elusive thing....
Abruptly, as the old man lifted his arms and made the ritual sign of the Great Tree, she recognized him. This was Bishop Domitis himself at the altar—or his wasted remains, since he seemed shriveled to half his previous weight. Even his voice was different: deprived of the great bellows of flesh, it had become reedy and thin. But as he rolled into the sonorous cadences of the mansa, much of the old Domitis seemed to return; in her weary mind she could see him again as he once had been, swelled bullfrog-great with self-importance.
“Binabik,” she whispered. “I know him! He is the bishop of this place. But he looks so different!”
The troll was eyeing the capering ravens with a mixture of amusement and uneasiness. “Can you then be persuading him to help us?”
Miriamele considered. “I don’t think so. He seems very protective of his church, and he certainly didn’t seem to want us wandering around down in the catacombs.”
“Then I am thinking that is just the place we must go,” Binabik said quietly. “We must be looking for the chance to come to us.” He looked up at Domitis, who stood with head thrown back and eyes closed, his arms widespread as if in imitation of his avian congregation. “I have something that I must be doing now. Wait for me here. It will take me only a little time.” He got up quietly from the bench, then turned and moved quickly back down the aisle toward the front of the cathedral.
“Binabik!” Miriamele called softly, but the troll only raised his hand before disappearing into the forechamber. Unsettled, she turned reluctantly to watch the rest of the odd performance.
Domitis seemed to have completely forgotten the presence of anyone but himself and the ravens. A pair of these had flown up from the altar to settle on his shoulders. They clung there as he swayed; as he windmilled his arms in the fervor of his speech, they flapped their great black wings to maintain balance on their perches.
Finally, as the bishop began the last stages of the mansa, the whole flock of birds rose up and began circling his head like a croaking thundercloud. Whatever humor the ritual had held was gone: Miriamele suddenly found the whole thing frightening. Was there no comer of the world left that had not succumbed to madness? Had everything been corrupted?
Domitis intoned the last Nabbanai phrases and fell silent. The ravens circled a few moments more, then went whirling up toward the ruptured dome like a whirlwind, vanishing into the shadows with only the echoes of their rasping cries left hanging in the air behind them. When even those had died and the cathedral had fallen quiet, Bishop Domitis, now almost gray with expended effort, bent down behind the altar.
When some time had passed and he had not stood up again, Miriamele began to wonder whether the old man had fallen into some sort of fit, or had perhaps even dropped dead. She got to her feet and moved cautiously toward the altar, keeping an eye cocked toward the ceiling as she went, half-fearing that at any moments the ravens might descend again, talons and beaks flailing....
Domitis was curled on a ragged blanket behind the altar, snoring softly. In repose, the loose skin of his face seemed even more formless, sagging into long folds so that he seemed to wear a mask of melted candlewax. Miriamele shuddered and hurried back to her chair, but after a few moments even that began to feel too exposed. The room was still full of silent figures, but it was not difficult to imagine that they were only feigning sleep, waiting to be sure her companion was not returning before they rose and came toward her....
Miriamele waited for what seemed a long time. The forechamber was colder even than the broken-domed chapel, but escape was within reach at a moment’s notice. A little of the night wind slipped through the partially open door, which made her feel closer to freedom and hence a great deal safer, but she still jumped when the door hinges screeched.
“Ah,” said Binabik, slipping inside, “it is still raining with great forcefulness.” He shook water onto the stone floor.
“Bishop Domitis has gone to sleep behind the altar. Binabik, where did you go?”
“To take your horse back to where Homefinder and Qantaqa wait. Even if we are not finding what we seek here, we can easily travel through the town by walking. But if we find a tunnel-entering-place, I am fearing that we would come back at a later time to find your horse as part of some hungry person’s soup.”
Miriamele had not thought of that, but she did not doubt that he was right. “I’m glad you did it. Now what should we do?”
“Go hunting for our tunnel,” said Binabik.
“When Bishop Domitis was talking about the catacombs, he kept looking over to the back of the cathedral, that wall behind the altar.”
“Hmmm.” The troll nodded. “You are wise for noticing and remembering. That is, I am thinking, the first place we should search.”
“We have to be quiet—we don’t want to wake him up.”
“Like snow-mice we will be, our pads whispering on the white crust.” Binabik squeezed her hand.
Her worries about the slumbering Domitis were unfounded. The old man was snoring thinly but emphatically, and did not even twitch as they padded by. The great wall behind the altar, which had once been covered in a tiled representation of Saint Sutrin’s martyrdom, was now only crumbling mortar with a few remaining spots of ceramic color. At one end of the wall, tucked behind a rotting velvet drapery, stood a low door. Binabik gave it a tug and it opened easily, as though it had been used with some frequency. The troll peered inside, then turned. “Let us be taking some candles,” he murmured. “That way we can be saving the torches in our packs for a later time.”
Miriamele went back and plucked two of the candles from the sconces. She felt a little shame, since Domitis had been kind to them i
n his own strange way, but she reasoned that their greater goal outweighed the sin of theft, and would benefit the bishop as well—maybe one day he would even see his beloved cathedral rebuilt. She could not help wondering if the ravens would be welcome then. She hoped not.
Each holding a candle, Miriamele and Binabik went carefully down the narrow staircase. Centuries of human traffic had worn a groove like a dry river bed in the center of the stone steps. They stepped off the stairs into the low-ceilinged catacombs and stopped to look around. The walls on either side were honeycombed with niches, each containing a silent stone effigy of a figure in repose, most wearing the robes and other symbols of church office. But for these, the narrow halls seemed entirely empty.
Binabik pointed at one turning that seemed less traveled. “This way, I am thinking.”
Miriamele peered down the shadowy tunnel. The pale plaster walls were unmarked; no would-be saints lay here, it seemed. She took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
In the cathedral above, a pair of ravens dropped down from the ceiling and, after circling briefly, settled on the altar. They stood side by side, bright eyes glaring at the door to the catacombs. Nor were they the only observers. A figure detached itself from the shadows along the wall and crept silently across the cathedral. It moved past the altar, stepping just as carefully as had Miriamele and the troll, then paused for a while outside the vault door as though listening. When a short time had passed, the dark shape slipped through the doorway and went pattering quietly down the stairs.
After that, nothing was heard in the dark cathedral but the bishop’s even snoring and the faint rustle of wings.
16
Roots of the White Tree
Simon stared at the amazing thing for a long time. He took a step closer, then danced back nervously. How could it be? It must be a dream-picture, like so many other illusions in these endless tunnels.