Imperious Order, Part 1

They advanced with cautious caution across the front lawn of the Chapel. Franz and Giano had seen only six barbarians, but it was possible there were more.

In the center of the garden they found a cooking fire burning within a circle of spears and pikes driven into the ground, each topped by a chilling trophy. Lady Roselyn's countenance was filled with a look of determination as she gazed at the withered heads of those who had been similar priestesses. A smell of roasting meat rose from the fire. No one looked too closely at what was roasting.

It was evident that a much larger force had recently camped there. All around the garden were the remains of other fires that had gone out, and in the corners were piles of garbage. The rose bushes and ornamental shrubs had been trampled, the statues smashed and the fountains used as latrines. On one side they had erected a crude forge around which were seen broken or half-repaired weapons and pieces of armor.

But none of the wreckage they had seen had prepared them for the horrors that had been committed in the chapel. The marble walls were blackened by smoke and the roof had caved in leaving the interior open to the heavens. And there were worse things than mere destruction.

Apparently the barbarians had reserved their most imaginative blasphemies for this shining symbol of charity and mercy. The statues in the niches in the white stone walls had been torn down and replaced by naked priestesses tied to stakes who had been left to die. They had painted magical runes in blood all over the walls, so evil that they were even painful to look at. The simple wooden carving of dove wings, the symbol of the Mother's faith that was mounted above the door, had been hung upside down and covered with the most obscene profanities.

Inside, among the charred remains of the roof beams, were the bound bodies of more priestesses who had been most cruelly outraged before they died. The beautiful tapestries illustrating the miracles performed by the Mother while she was in the world had been torn from the walls and burned, and, worst of all, a wicked ceremony had been performed on the sacred altar.

On the stone floor around the altar, strange symbols and arrowheads had been engraved with fire, forming a circle and pointing to all the cardinal points. In thin streams of blood they had traced disturbing patterns, and on the altar itself, within a pile of melted candles and stacked skulls, the body of the abbess, who in life had been a plump, middle-aged woman, lay with her legs and arms spread, naked and manacled, runes drawn on her flesh with a knife and a huge sword thrust through her abdomen and into the stone table beneath her, a display of violence that Reiner could scarcely believe.

Around the abbess's corpse, shadows seemed to move. At first, he thought it was a Shadow Demon, but it took Reiner a moment to realize that they were rats devouring her limbs.

A sob escaped Erich's throat, and he ran to the altar.

"Lady of peace, no! This must not be allowed! We have to clean up! We have to fix this place!"

"Erich!" cried Barrister. "Leave him. we have other business!"

But the knight had leaped upon the altar and was beating candles and rats aside and cutting the ropes that bound the abbess.

"Damn rats!"

Barrister advanced to Erich and pulled him down from the altar by tugging at his belt.

"I said leave him!"

Lady Roselyn's countenance was scowling and pale. She made the sign of Mortis, the god of death, over the abbess and then turned toward an archway in the wall to the right without a backward glance.

To Reiner it was strange, a priestess of Radiantus, the god of light, looking for an object in a temple of the Mother goddess, and facing the symbol of Mortis. It was a strange combination, and suspicious.

"This way." Lady Roselyn said.

The archway led to a stone staircase that spiraled down into the darkness. As they lit torches, Barrister ordered Oskar to stand guard outside the chapel, and the others started down the staircase. Barrister was in the lead followed by Lady Roselyn. Erich was bringing up the rear.

At the top of the stairs they came out into an intersection of three short corridors. It was obvious that the barbarians had come that far as well. Lying on the stone floor they found the bodies of some priestesses who appeared to have died defending the catacombs, and the great bronze doors of intricate ornamentation, which flashed in orange reflections in the torchlight at the bottom of each of the corridors, had been burst open and hung on their hinges, revealing the shadowed halls on the other side. The rats were feasting. Giano shuddered.

"The convent mausoleums." Lady Roselyn reported. "Where all the abbesses and high priestesses who have led us this temple through the ages are buried."

Hals shuddered and made the sign of the son, the god of valor.

"Tombs?"

Lady Roselyn shot him a look.

"After the horrors we have just been through, are you afraid of the dead?"

Hals raised his chin.

"Of course I don't. I just don't like it, that's all."

Lady Roselyn started down the center aisle toward the desecrated mausoleum at the end. The men followed her with weapons at the ready.

Barrister bit his lower lip.

"Do you think they found The Dragon Heart?"

"Impossible." Lady Roselyn replied. "The vault door is cunningly concealed and impregnable unless the correct incantation is uttered."

They entered the mausoleum, a narrow, small room. The side walls had been lined with marble memorial plaques bearing the names and dates of birth and death of generations of abbesses. The Norse savages had torn off most of the plaques and then removed the bones they protected and scattered them, looking for something to loot. Hals advanced, meticulously circling the remains while murmuring a prayer.

The far wall was a beautifully painted frieze showing the Mother raising a golden chalice to the lips of a dying hero as a host of priestesses watched. Although time had faded it and the barbarians had disfigured it with axes and fire, it was still beautiful, with lots of gold leaf and intricate detail. Reiner could make out in detail every hair in the Mother's braids. Barrister looked around, confused.

"Is this it?"

"Stay back." Lady Roselyn said. "And I'll show you."

Barrister backed up to the door and gestured for his men to stand behind him. Lady Roselyn faced the painting and began to speak in a language that Reiner half recognized as the esoteric language used by wizards. The woman's hands moved steadily as she spoke, tracing precise drawings in the air. Finally, she opened her arms wide and, with a brush of stone on stone, the back wall slowly rotated outward on hidden hinges, reducing the bones and marble chips on the floor to dust, until it touched the wall on the left.

As torchlight penetrated through the rippling bone dust to the area behind the secret door, Reiner saw that it was wider than the mausoleum, much wider. A wide staircase descended to a central vaulted-ceilinged chamber that seemed almost as large as the chapel above, and dark arcades led to other rooms around the perimeter.

From within came to them a faint voice.

"Abadesa? Is it... is it you?"

"Who's there?" Lady Roselyn tried to see through the dust.

Small forms dressed in the habit of a priestess lay like snowdrifts of gray snow around the door. More priestesses, skeletal, with haggard faces and black lips.

One of them was still alive. A gangrenous wound had blackened her left arm to the shoulder, which smelled of death. A pinkish pus bubbled from her lips. Apparently, he had tried to eat the leather of his sandals and belt to stay alive. He lifted his head as if it weighed as much as the chapel. His opaque, sunken eyes blinked.

"Praise the gods, we thought you had killed..." He was interrupted as he saw Lady Roselyn approach and his eyes widened. "You..." she gasped in a broken voice. "You are not a priestess..." but these last words were almost unintelligible.

Lady Roselyn knelt down and covered the priestess' mouth with one hand.

"Do not speak, sister. There is no need. I know what you wish."

Roselyn drew from her belt a dagger whose edge glinted slightly, it was notoriously a magic dagger, and, before either of the men knew what she was doing, she plunged it into the neck of the dying priestess just below the jaw to pierce the artery, then did the same on the other side. The woman's blood gushed out like water.

"Lady!" cried Barrister, shocked. The others murmured among themselves, confused.

Roselyn paid him no heed as she whispered a prayer over the dying sister and moved her hands as the ritual dictated. When she had finished and the sister had breathed her last breath, she turned to look at the captain.

"I apologize. Her wounds were too severe and I possess no prayer capable of combating the infection this one possessed. I could only offer her mercy."

Barrister stared into her eyes for a long moment and then nodded.

"I understand, my lady. I am sorry I spoke."

"No matter. Come, let us finish the business that has brought us here and leave this wretched place."

Barrister and Lady Roselyn were the first to enter, raising wisps of dust with each step as they descended the staircase to the central chamber. The others followed, still in awe of the priestess' act.

"That was cold, of that there is no doubt, mercy or no mercy." Reiner heard Hals murmur to Pavel.

Pavel nodded and Reiner agreed with the verdict.

Roselyn stopped in the center of the main chamber.

"These are the most sacred treasures of the convent, acquired over the centuries. Gifts, relics and books of forgotten wisdom. Here lie also many heroes and martyrs who gave their lives for the mother's cause centuries ago, when the goddess came into the world and, together with the father, protected mankind in its darkest age.

Giano, Hals and Pavel looked around with greedy eyes, but were soon disappointed.

"It's nothing but a pile of old books." Hals said.

Reiner smiled mockingly. Although he was as fond of money as any man who has made dice his life, he had also been a student, and the 'old books' Hals sneered at were far greater treasures to him than the gem-encrusted swords and gold chalices.

Reiner longed to be able to leaf through them all and nourish himself on the ancient knowledge, on the narratives that had their origin in the dawn of time, on the strange stories contained in them.

It would be a privilege!

Books were piled everywhere around a few material treasures such as statues, paintings, armor, bones from the fingers of saints displayed in reliquaries, iron-banded chests that could contain anything from manuscripts to gold coins.

"Which crypt is the one where the Dragon Heart is located?" asked Barrister.

For the first time since he had met her, Reiner saw uncertainty in Lady Roselyn's eyes, which pursed her lips.

"I've never been to this place, I've only read a vague description in old scrolls. But I believe it is one of three located along the opposite wall, but I'm not sure."

Barrister sighed and to the group.

"All right, gallows meat, if we want to get out of these mountains before sunset, we need to find that relic soon. You will help the lady look for it, but you will put absolutely nothing in your pockets, because if you do I will tear your fingers off one by one. Have I made myself clear?"

The men nodded in agreement.

"Then listen first." Barrister continued. "What we are looking for is a magic banner." Suddenly, the captain's voice trembled with emotion. "The emblem of the Dragoon, the symbol of Kain 'The Dragon Slayer', known as..."

"The Dragon Heart!" said Erich in a reverent whisper. "By the gods!"