Chapter 132: Bread Crumbs

Chapter 132: Bread Crumbs

Ghroshian was not aware of the Templar when he first entered Rahkin, but when the Lich informed them the following night, they were not surprised. They had felt the menace from the moment the man had walked through the gate and scurried to find new, deeper hiding places for many of the rats that made up its greater whole.

It was an old scent. The scent of a predator. However, because everyone had said that Siddrim was dead and gone, it had been hard for them to reconcile that baleful aura with the Lord of Light.

It was him, though, and as soon as the Lich spoke those words, the rat god trembled. The fear only grew stronger when it was given the terrible order that they feared most in the moments after that.

“You are to follow him,” the darkness whispered to him from the mouth of its incapacitated reaver. “You are to watch all that the man with glowing eyes says and does as in this cursed city! We spent the winter denying them food and hope, and now, in a single day, the citizens are renewed. This is an outrage!”

They agreed, of course, but Ghrosian would have said anything to the Lich to avoid becoming the target of that rage. Its wraiths had already abducted more than a few rats that made up the pieces of their soul, and even without a physical manifestation here to enforce its will, the hungry God dared not oppose the thing that had become its master.

Of course, they dare not get too close to the specter of Siddrim’s light, either. They remembered too well how it burned, even around corners and through doors. Those terrifying memories were some of the oldest, most vivid parts of themself, and they had a feeling that they had not been quite so fearful in the days before that God taught them humility.

Still, the twin fears forced them to agree, at least to a very small degree, and that night, they sent dry, desiccated mice into the walls of the palace to observe what they could and report back. They would not get too close, but they would do enough so that they would not earn a punishment either. They had few enough bodies after the reaver had practically hunted them to extinction, and they would need time to grow from hundreds to tens of thousands all over again.

Getting into the palace was easy enough these days. Everywhere except the kitchens, of course. Thanks to all their hard work, the places in the city that might contain food were the most tightly guarded.

Everything else, though? The movement of dead armies beyond the walls attacked all the human attention, and since the reaver’s nightly attacks had been brought to an end weeks ago, the guards and the mages focused their attention on the darkness outside the walls.

The palace was an empty place these days, though, after the King and his sons had died. There were no longer banquets or parties, and even if there had been food to spare, it would have been unlikely to change things.

Why should it? According to every corpse they had feasted on, from the high-born to the gutter scum, the queen was in perpetual mourning after the death of nearly her whole family. The fact that they’d never really found out who did it and simply hung a few criminals as servants of the dark only twisted the knife.

Ghroshian didn’t mind, though. They enjoyed twisting the knife. Torment and grief were both fine spices for rotting meat, and any corpse that came from the palace these days had at least a hint of both.

So they would have enjoyed this little expedition as their mice fanned out through the grand hall and the private chambers of the royal family in search of their quarry and other tasty secrets, were it not for those terrible eyes.

When the mouse first saw them in the private dining room of the royal family, it retreated almost immediately, and it took all of the hungry God’s willpower to force that small tendril of itself to return to the tiny crack in the corner of the room where it could see the Templar talking with the queen and her generals about the cities defenses.

This was exactly the sort of conversation that Ghroshian should have been listening to, but it couldn’t. It couldn’t focus on anything but those twine golden eyes, which were brighter than any of the other lanterns in the room.

“I... I had to, you understand. It was terrible, but he was going to—” the Princess said.

“Enough,” the Templar interrupted. “I am not your confessor; do you understand that? These terrible eyes allow me to see everything you have done, but I cannot punish you for it, do you understand? All of that will be between you and whatever God judges each of us in Siddrim’s absence when we pass over to the other side.”

“But—” she persisted.

“But nothing,” the Templar said, shaking his head. “Let me ask you this. Did you do the things that you did for your own benefit or for the light?”

“I had to fight the darkness,” she pleaded. “All who seek to ally with evil or placate them are evil themselves.”

“Correct,” he agreed. “Then you have nothing to fear.”

Ghroshian wasn’t quite sure what it was they were talking about, but they were intrigued. Nothing tasted better than a secret. At least nothing that wasn’t still warm and bleeding.

This had the taste of something older, and it desperately wanted to know more, but the holy man kept cutting her off. That was just as well, unfortunately, because their frustration was doing an excellent job of counteracting their collective fear as they watched the scene.

“That isn’t enough,” she whined. “I did something terrible. I demand to be punished for it, and you’re the only one left in the kingdom that can grant me that!”

The older man sighed. “Do you think I haven’t had to do terrible things? Sometimes, the light requires that and more. Do you think that these men haven’t also had to do terrible things to preserve the balance? Perhaps if we’d all done more, there would still be one sun in the sky instead of four.”

As he spoke and gestured at the men in the windows who were presumably saints or at least other holy men, a strange thing began to happen. They started to illuminate. One at a time, the panes began to glow. Worse than that, some small part of the consecration was returning to the ancient tile floor.

Ghroshian could feel their tiny feet beginning to burn at the unwelcome sensation, and most of their bodies fled. Even so, though, one remained to try to see how this would play out.

The Templar was merely lecturing her on the nature of morality and the terrible deeds that each of these men had done for the greater good. As he spoke, though, candleless candelabras were relighting, rays of a non-existent sun were streaming through windows that no longer seemed to be missing glass, and even the thick coat of dust that shrouded the entire room had disappeared.

“That’s nothing though,” she declared. “I did so much worse than that. I—”

Ghroshian strained to listen, but even as she moved to finally spill her secret, their final mouse body burst into holy white flames, and it was unable to make out whatever terrible burden it was that this woman was holding. It would tell all this to the Lich, of course. Hopefully, it would be able to make heads or tales of both the Princess's disposition and the way that the temple could return to life like that, even for a moment of grandeur.