Chapter 12

Icarus hissed when the frame on the basement window cracked, echoing along the empty Church graveyard. He paused to listen for a moment before returning to his work, “Pale God’s going to invent a circle of Hell for this one.”

“We’re already damned,” Maren muttered. “Can’t get double damned.”

He slid feet-first into the rectangular space that used to house one of the few wood-framed windows left in the old building until a few moments ago. He paused and looked up at her halfway in, brow quirked, “If the Church is a home to all, can you ever truly break into it?”

She considered him for a moment before pushing his shoulder with her boot, “A theological discussion for the ages.”

He dropped as silently as he could into the basement room. Dust rose in thick clouds, furious at whoever dared disturb its slumber. Maren hit the stone floor in near-perfect silence and went still while her eyes adjusted to the dark. Storage—boxes and boxes untouched for what could be months or decades at the rate dust gathered on them. Icarus pressed himself to the door and listened, nothing but the faint glow of gaslight dancing in the hallway along the gap in the floor.

“Do we even know where we’re going?” He considered.

She thought, then nodded. Her hand closed on the handle and she eased the heavy door open, avoiding the cry of the old iron hinges as best she could. Maren mapped the layout in her mind and set off deeper into the lower chambers. He followed and glanced back in case there had been some other sneaking priests following along ready to take them out.

The lower chambers were a maze even to one who frequented them, which Icarus surely had not. Maren spent a great deal of time in them as a former Sister, but even with her sharp mind it was still a tangle of halls and turns and rooms that all looked the same to the untrained eye. She led him with a shaky confidence he disliked in his friend, but he followed her anyway. Torchlight and gaslamps flickered in sporadically placed sconces and cradles along the walls, but provided enough light and shadow to make their way around. 

They passed through a hallway pocked with recessed stones embracing icons of saints and angels he could name at a glance. Lazriel—fiery sword of the Pale God, archangel of heaven—seemed to be a favorite. Galriel, archangel of the Holy Cavalry. Esriel, archangel of the Pale Fleet. Infinite facades of angel-generals streamed past them as they moved in swift silence. All beautiful, all suspiciously similar-looking to the face of whichever Pope was in power during their carving. The vanity of man never ceased to amaze him.

Maren threw out an arm to halt him, a finger on her lips. She cocked her head and held her breath. The soft brush of footsteps on stone, a swish from a long robe, then another. Six pairs in all about to pass the entrance or, Pale God forbid, turn down their hallway and collide with them. She motioned and Icarus pressed himself back as flat as he could into the wall. A slight lip between the join where one hall intersected the other served as their best and only cover. His heart fluttered against his ribs like a wild bird that found itself captured in a bony cage. There was no plan if they were caught—hadn’t been much of a plan when he stormed dramatically out of Reed’s office, if he were being honest with himself.

Truthfully, he should have asked Reed more pointed questions—Eilonwy, her wretched brother, the Inquisitor. Absently, he thumbed the empty space the tab collar had once occupied. The only way to get any answers had clearly been to break into the church and sneak into its watery bowels to… well he was not exactly sure. The what would come to him when he knew it. For now, hunting down the lowest chambers seemed to make the most sense—secrets did love a basement.

Shadows fell along the pattern of light, long and ominous—tall headdresses, long robes, quiet voices. The first pair came into view—two nuns in hushed conversation. Never in his life had Icarus been so grateful for their enormous veils. Horse blinders, really, that blocked out peripheral vision. If the Sisters wanted to see them, they would have to turn completely like stiff, holy owls. 

Four pairs of nuns in total passed and they waited another series of heartbeats before Maren waved them onward. The chamber under the nave was enormous, dozens of torch-lined columns arranged in ribs supporting the lungs of the church. Every wall boasted several doorways, a bronchus leading away to another lobe. They stood obscured by one of the larger columns and tried to orient. 

“Left. Second door,” Maren whispered. 

The priesthood ran the show aboveground, but down in the lower chambers was the empire of sisterhood. The Church of Saint Lazriel was not a small building. By all rights, it was a small town within the city of Dublin, the Vatican in miniature. An iceberg of religious architecture, the building was only the tip of what lay underneath it. The Sisters of various Orders ran its organs, flowing through every mysterious layer like blood pumped by the heart of the calderist faith. Icarus knew little of the nuns, much to his shame in this moment, but Maren had been among their initiates. She knew these chambers enough to get where they needed to go—at least where she believed they did anyway. 

It was dizzying to try and map it in his head when he followed her. Doors, empty rooms, halls, chambers larger than the refectory itself. They blurred together as she led him down and down and down. His ears popped at one point. It was late enough they encountered few Sisters and fewer Fathers, but behind some doors they slunk against, Icarus could hear the whispers of perpetual prayers. A shiver spidered along the back of his neck. Nothing more unsettling than whispered prayers in the deep, dark belly of a church underground. 

Finally, Maren motioned for him to help her open one of the many doors they passed. Its most defining feature, oddly enough, was how plain it was. Every other had a scorched sigil or carving of icons or some specially-cased hinge or knob. Not this door—plain wood, plain metal. Nothing about it was special and that’s what made it special. 

They eased it open and slipped inside, Maren closed it as quietly as she could. Icarus stared into what he had expected to be an empty room, which it was, arguably. Rectangular, dotted with only two torches despite its enormity. At the end, an arched doorway yawned the amber glow of distant fire beyond.

“This is as far as I ever got,” Maren whispered. “Whatever’s down there brings a lot of traffic with it. If there’s some hidden oracle of the divine, it’ll be that way.”

Icarus frowned at the lintel above the door, “I’ll say you’re correct.”

She followed his gaze and bit her tongue to stop from cursing—calderist sigils carved and inlaid with molten silver. Magic warded the doorway against those not permitted to pass the threshold. Maren’s calderism came as salt magic and exorcism, Icarus’s in angelic tongues and exorcism. Neither of them had the gift for breaking calderist sigilism. 

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“Fuck indeed.”

“We could break it,” he offered unhelpfully. 

She shot him a look, “Yes, stonemasonry is an often silent affair.”

He stared at the glimmering shapes, eyes narrowed, and slung open his satchel. Sigils were—in effect—just language. Language was tongues and calderist sigils likely were angelic language. He could navigate language. This was a matter of knowing exactly what script was written there and reversing its flow when he figured it out. He opened a copy of the Pale Doctrine and began to leaf through the pages. This was something he had wondered at for many years and never been given the chance to experiment with. Now that he was effectively cut off from the Church completely, who would stop him from trying?

Maren watched him, “I doubt a sermon will help, but do go on if you disagree.”

“Sigils are just words woven together, Mare,” he sighed. “I can do languages. I can unwind these. I just need to figure out what I’m speaking.”

She huffed and revealed she was a little impressed by the logic. Icarus rarely had an opportunity to use his calderist gift, it was often fairly useless and part of the reason he had chased exorcism to begin with. Ego was a hell of a drug and his could be measured in kilos, not grams.

He leafed through page after page, symbol after symbol, alphabet after alphabet. The Pale Doctrine was more than a holy text—it was also a manual for holy magic. The Church-sanctioned copies of the book itself were imbued with it, but it also gave instructions on how to wield it and the gifts of the Pale God. A giant magical tutorial booklet.

Maren’s hand was on his arm and her grip broke the focus he had carefully cultivated. She jerked him towards the corner closest to the door. He opened his mouth to scold her, then he heard it. 

Footsteps. Coming from the other end of the enchanted hall. 

Fuck, he mouthed at her. A finger flew to her lips and she slunk back deeper in the shadowy corner. He turned, letting his dark wool coat bear the burden of disguise. It was not perfect, but the room was poorly lit and it was all they had. In his head, Icarus offered a prayer for the hairbrained.

Voices carried, an indistinct murmur until they closed in—a woman and a man. An ancient Sister and an elderly priest. When they came into view, they were each carrying a torch. Icarus slinked closer to Maren to hide them from view and watched over his shoulder. The ring of gold firelight threatened the edge of their cloak of shadows, but never broke it. He swore internally he would light a votive and offer up several Hail Martines for the blessing of old eyes adjusting badly to sudden darkness. 

The pair lowered their tone as they approached the door, but he caught snippets.

“-never lasted in an earthly vessel this long.”

“I’ve concerns about what that means.”

“Perhaps Brother Athelde is stronger than we knew?”

“Or perhaps Mariusz is.”

The conversation cut off when the door shut behind them before he could catch anything of value. After a moment of listening for any stragglers, he exhaled and stepped back from their protective corner. Maren watched the door, the ghost of recognition haunted the edge of her expression. 

“What is it?” Icarus whispered, closer than he needed to be in case more came.

She shook her head, “I know the name but I can’t place it.”

“Athelde?”

“Mariusz.”

“Hm,” he concentrated on the slight tickle of familiarity, but had no time to pull it apart. He went back to his book and scanned the remaining appendices. The jolt of triumph in him almost came out in a shout. He tapped the page in victory and turned his attention to the woven silver symbols above the door. 

Eyes closing, he took in a slow breath, then let it out. His hand hovered over the Pale Doctrine and its pages glowed ivory as he stretched his awareness into them, drawing up the gift he had been given by the Pale God. A breeze from nowhere ruffled his hair, the pages, his clothes. Maren watched unmoving, but kept the shotgun cradled in her arm ready if she needed it. 

Icarus whispered to himself. 

“Benedicta sint dona Patris Pallidi. Pare mihi, magistro verborum et omnium rerum dictarum,” he opened his eyes and tore the page from the book. It stiffened in his hand and he held it against his fingertip against a wall of empty space. 

The sigil writhed in his mind’s eye, a shadow of light overlaid onto the pressed silver. Each letter began to pull itself apart, unthreaded and unspooled. He saw several tongues woven together in its making. Most of them he knew, could pull from the Pale Doctrine and unmake them slowly. So he began. Each letter was like gunpowder beside an open flame, one wrong twist and the whole thing would blow them apart. He twisted the air with his breathy words, reversing the complex tonal speech they represented. Every layer a different alphabet, each a language layered upon itself, growing older as he peeled them back. 

He stumbled over the turn of an L into a T and the metal glowed a warning—not tripped, but aware. Alive, sensing his presence without being able to reach him. He was too far from the threshold for the sigils to feel his intrusion properly. He held the word on his tongue until the red-orange glow receded. 

At the third layer, sweat beaded on his forehead. He was sweltering. Damnable wool was lovely in the cold outside, but the slow warming and ever-increasing burn of magic flowing through his fingers turned its blessing into a curse. He tried to concentrate and ignore the salt that dripped into his eye. Almost done, one more layer of impossible rolls and breaths and tangled consonants. 

The third layer fell away and the fourth replaced it. 

The fourth in a language he had never seen. 

Not listed in the Pale Doctrine. 

His heart sank. Shit.

He didn’t have time for wallowing, much as he might want to. Everything in him screamed to complain to Maren and drop the work he had already poured literal sweat into, but he had come too far for this, dealt with too much, absorbed too many secrets and lies. One of the answers to his questions lay beyond this idiot, stupid, cunting door and he was damned if he would let a little scribble stop him from getting it.

He planted his feet and spread his fingers wide along the rigid paper in front of his outstretched hand. It flared with light for just a moment—a moment where he tilted his head and caught the ghostly image on the back of the page. 

Inverted. And mirrored. And the last of the alphabets in the Pale Doctrine. 

He grinned like a wolf in a henhouse. With a turn of his hand, the page turned upside down. He could make that work. He spoke in the rhythmic, soothing rumble of Old Maerlin—spoken language of the Pale Son Himself, lost in the centuries between His crucifixion and the founding of the Holy Church. Morphed and evolved and blended into the English used today in this very room, between that very nun and her priest. 

Icarus had been bored and lost a bet at cards in grade school that ended up with him studying the droll language for a month. He’d had to recite Psalm 16:4 in front of the class—the one about the generous size of ancient King Soloddin’s… well it’s not important. He got in loads of trouble, detention for weeks. But his calderist gift for language meant he never lost his ability to speak it. 

Mirrored and inverted, he righted the words slowly in his mouth before releasing them into the world. One by one, he peeled out the final layer of woven language in the sigils. They glowed again, angry and frustrated, but the glow diminished with each word he pulled free. 

He choked out the last and released his hold on the well of holy magic. The paper fluttered to the floor, Icarus dropped to his knees, and the silver toppled out of the carved sigils in a clatter. 

Maren froze. 

Neither of them moved. Despite his aching lungs, Icarus dared not to breathe. Every second they stood listening passed in agony. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. 

When Maren released her breath, so did he. His, unfortunately, doubled back on him in a cough he fought into submission. She touched his back and motioned towards the doorway. He nodded, trying to ignore the spasm in his chest, and she patted him as hard as she dared until he settled. 

Hand on his elbow, she hauled him back to his feet, “Impressive.”

“All magic has a doing and an undoing,” he shrugged, but the pride on his face was unmistakable. 

She stepped carefully over the fallen silver pieces and past the threshold of the hallway. Nothing struck her down, no alarm sounded, the torches along the wall beyond barely flickered at her presence. Icarus followed, trying to quell the tremor in his hand. This was a point of no return now—getting caught slinking through the lower chambers might have earned them a reprimand and a period of banishment, but knowingly removing what was likely a very important sigil set over a door to something very significant and dangerous was another thing entirely. This was excommunicable. 

And Icarus did not give a single shit. 

He followed Maren, lightfooted and lightheaded. The hallway wound in a lazy corkscrew, hiccuped by the occasional short hall or closed door. So many doors and hallways, a veritable honeycomb. He wondered at its ability not to cave in on itself. 

His wondering nearly caused him to collide with Maren’s back. She stood straight as a rail, immovable as a mountain, staring around the corner of the spiral hallway’s end. Beyond the exit, another long, cut-stone chamber far better illuminated than the one overhead. He could see the glint of light off inlaid lines of brass in the tawny stone. Peering around her, he saw even more. 

The chamber was enormous, possibly larger than the Church itself. Three rows of three sisters knelt in supplication before a statue of Martine Magdala, Virgin Mother of the Pale Son. Candles flickered weakly before the statue set into mountains of wax, the bodies of their forbears molten and dripping to the floor in solidified puddles of pale yellow. Each Sister bore the emerald sash of the Order of Eternal Vigil around her waist, the nuns who kept constant prayers and vigils against the rise of the Stygian Lord and his agents of shadow. Wax magicians, all. 

“Why are they here?” He whispered. 

She shook her head. Eternal Vigil Sisters were kept near hellgates, suspected openings to the demon realm where their constant prayer battered back any demons that might spill forth. They were also found in places where demons could only be contained, not sent back. No matter how he considered it, they always seemed to be where demons were. 

“I have a terrible feeling,” Maren murmured, “that we will not like what we find here.”

They risked a shared step farther down, changing the angle they could see. Icarus swallowed a gasp. To the left of the praying Sisters, a set of double doors had been set into the wall. Ornate, shimmering with more sigilwork. This was more than just words written and coiled together—these were keys, glyphs, and runes. He recognized them from apocryphal texts stored in the library reserved for Church exorcists to study. Old, intricate shapes in six-pointed stars, etched with spiraling script around the edges. 

Containment. Command. Banishment. Warding. 

They did not bode well individually, together was worse. Flanking the haunting doors were four men—priests, draped in black, a rosary of jade and quartz around their necks. Loose black pants tucked into tall black boots, black shirts overlaid with a black and indigo tabard. Emblazoned in gold thread on their chests was the roaring lionhead, the symbol of the Warrior Priests. 

Each of them held an iron-tipped spear, an iron blade at their hip, and probably an iron dagger somewhere on their belt. A rare posting, hard to be accepted to, arcane even in this house of arcane and mysterious things. There was little chatter about them, nor of their order or how they came to be. Nobody knew how many of them there were—could be these four, could be four thousand. The Pope himself selected them and gave their posting. 

And his Holiness deemed four of them necessary here in this deep underground chamber while Sisters prayed in perpetuity against whatever was behind those doors. Four of them and a host of Sisters meant to guard whatever was behind that door. Icarus intended to find out what, precisely, they guarded.