Scar Night Page 0,29
returning to the heights.
Gaine had told him stories of this gloomy place: winter storms when the whole temple swayed and the relics rattled their chains in howling draughts. Dill peered along their ranks, half expecting to find his dead father among them, but there were only the bones of the Ninety-Nine, staring out at nothing, collecting dust.
With a clank the stable doors on one side of the corridor swung open. Torchlight fanned out over the floor, bringing with it the odour of straw and animals. Borelock led two huge mares out into the corridor. Behind them, the soulcage rumbled into view on its wooden wheels.
A heavy structure of iron and tarred wood, the soulcage had been specially blessed by the priests to ensure that souls given over to the temple’s care were protected until the time they were released into the abyss. It was empty now, but when full was big enough and sturdy enough to keep fifty souls safe. In the dead, unblessed blood was dangerous. Hell opened its doors to receive unblessed blood, and when Iril’s doors were open there was no telling what might get loose.
With awkward precision, Borelock walked the horses across the polished marble floor. A sour line of a mouth jutted from his cowl; his chin protruded like a spike of bone. The rest of the priest’s body hobbled and shifted beneath his cassock as if there were more than one set of arms and legs under there. Once he reached Dill he stopped, clutching the reins with yellow-stained fingers.
Dill wondered if the priest’s eyes were yellow too. He swallowed, and said, “Fine animals.”
The nearest horse bared its teeth and snorted. Its coat gleamed black as a temple guard’s armour.
“Five years,” Borelock grumbled, “I’ve been driving this cage in your stead. Five years until the Presbyter saw fit to pluck you from your tower and put you to honest work. Don’t you think I’ve had better things to do with my time than face the scorns of those miserable bastards outside?”
“I’m grateful,” Dill replied weakly.
“Don’t mess it up,” Borelock said. “Mark Hael and his sister are in there.” He jabbed a thumb at the Sanctum doors behind them. “The late general’s son and daughter.”
Dill clambered into his seat at the front of the cage, and leather creaked. The seat was even higher than it had looked from the ground and Borelock had to throw the reins up to him. The horses bobbed their heads and whisked their tails, eager to be off.
“Wings,” Borelock said.
Dill spread his wings.
As the horses lurched into motion, Dill almost toppled back onto the cage bars. He pulled hard on the reins, but the animals ignored him. The soulcage lumbered forward, picking up speed.
“I’ll be watching you,” Borelock called after him.
They clopped along, uncomfortably fast, under the scrutiny of the decaying angels. Rust had eaten the name plaques beneath the skeletons’ feet, but Dill still recognized a few from his one previous visit down here.
He’d been eleven years old when his father had brought him to this dismal corridor, ordered the temple doors to be opened to let some light in, and left him with a slab of parchment on which to sketch the relics. In daylight, the skeletons had seemed less threatening, so Dill had relished his task at first, writing each name in his best hand beneath his sketches, determined to draw them all. That morning passed quickly, and occasionally Gaine returned, bringing him cups of sweet tea, to admire his handiwork. When they paused for lunch at a rough table outside the kitchen, Dill proudly displayed his drawings to everyone and anyone who passed by. Everyone had seemed impressed.
By mid-afternoon he’d drawn eight and was bored. They all looked the same. So he squeezed the remaining ninety-one of them into a giant battle played out on a single sheet of parchment—with a dozen stick-like Heshette enemies fleeing into the bottom corner. At Dill’s insistence, Gaine counted the pencilled archons and admitted that there were, indeed, ninety-nine in total. There hadn’t been space to fill their names in, but his father had liked his composition all the same. It was one of the last times they had spent together. Gaine had died only weeks later at the hands of a Heshette bowman. Presbyter Sypes had brought Dill extra candles that night, helped him set them up around his tower room.
The soulcage now passed beneath the archon with the lopsided wing, repaired at some point with brass staples, and