Chapter Eleven: Davriel

The prioress idled by the door, poking at some of the inky letters that he’d put up on the walls outside—they had bled through the cracks around the door and into the room.

“Will these come off?” she asked.

“I really don’t know,” Davriel replied. “Hopefully nobody in your priory can read Ulgrothan. I chose the letters because they look intimidating, but really, I only learned a few phrases when I was younger—mostly as a joke. What I wrote outside is a recipe for buttered scones.”

The prioress turned toward him, folding her arms. “That’s my seat, Greystone.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, shifting and trying to lounge in the hard, uncushioned wooden chair. He finally got into a position where he could tip it back and put his feet on her desktop. “Would it kill one of you religious types to sit in a comfortable seat? Are you really that afraid of being happy?”

“My joy,” she said, settling down in a chair on the other side of the desk, “comes from other comforts.”

“Such as breaking contracts solemnly sworn?”

She eyed the door. “Don’t speak so loudly. The inquisition might have been ended, but its embers still burn. Edwin isn’t the only hothead in residence at the priory; several members of my staff would string me up if they got it into their minds I was consorting with demons, or their master.”

“That presumes I don’t string you up first.” Davriel put his feet down, then stood, looming over the desk and the woman sitting on the other side. “I will say it again. I do not take the breaking of contracts lightly.”

The prioress slipped a small cup off the desk, then raised it to her lips, taking a sip of something dark and warm. Fool woman always had refused to be properly intimidated. Honestly, it was part of why he liked her.

“Did you kill all of those hunters, then?” she asked.

Davriel sighed. “A few escaped. The old man. The squires.”

“I see.”

“I’ve been a patient man, Merlinde. I ignored the occasional hunter, and even that paladin last week... ‘She must not have known they were going to attack me,’ I told myself. ‘Or perhaps they didn’t stop at the priory first.’ But an entire task force of demon hunters, several with wards upon their minds? Our terms were clear. You were to dissuade such groups.”

The prioress looked down at her tea. “You expect me to honor a promise in the face of what has been happening? An entire village was murdered today.”

“Some of your priests are stupid, but you are not. You know me well enough to recognize I wasn’t involved. So why would you aid a band of assassins bent on murdering me?”

The prioress took another sip of tea.

“Is that Verlasen dustwillow?” Davriel asked, still looming over her as he stood beside the desk.

“The finest,” she said. “Nothing is better at stilling the nerves. This is, unfortunately, my last cup.”

He grunted. Figured.

“Perhaps,” she finally said, “I hoped that the hunters would awaken you, Greystone. Your people suffer, and you barely take notice. I write you of their pains and hardships, only to receive rambling missives complaining about how your toes get cold at night.”

“I honestly expected better hosiers out of a people who live in perpetual autumn.”

“The only thing you do respond to is an interruption.”

“Which was our deal,” Davriel said, increasingly frustrated. He stalked past her, pacing in the room. “I leave the people of the Approaches alone. I don’t demand more than food and the occasional gift of goods! In turn, you were to keep people from bothering me.”

“Their suffering is such a bother, isn’t it?”

“Bah. You’d prefer someone else were their lord? Perhaps some two-faced tyrant who crushes wills during the day, then howls at the moon during the night? Or you’d rather go back to a bloodsucking scion of House Markov, like the one I killed when I arrived? Fool woman. You should be preaching daily to the people how good their lives are.”

He stopped his pacing near the back of the small room, where he noted a framed picture sitting on the floor, facing the wall. He tipped it toward him, and found a painting of the archangel Avacyn.

“I...” Merlinde said. “I did think it was you. Until I heard you interrogating Edwin just now, I thought you must have been the one who took the souls of the villagers.”

He glanced back at her.

“After the merchants were attacked, I investigated,” she said. “My gift for sensing spirits revealed that geists had been involved, just as Edwin said. It made sense. You’re the only thing in this forest I know for sure has the strength to defy that cursed Bog. I thought it must have been you who took the souls of the people.”

“And you did nothing?”

“Of course I did something,” Merlinde said. “I sent to the church in Thraben, begging for their strongest hunters. I asked for men and women specifically talented in killing demons, and warned them that you could pierce minds. I had been...worried for some time that eventually you’d show a second face. The hidden face that so many lords have.”

“Idiot,” Davriel said. “You’ve been played for a fool.”

“I realize that now,” she said, sipping her tea. “If you’d been the man I feared, you would have destroyed the priory instead of walking in to demand answers. But...what is going on?”

“I thought maybe it was Edwin,” Davriel said. “Someone physically stabbed one of your priests in the village late yesterday. They let whoever it was into the church, so your priests must have trusted them. Whoever it was killed the priest. With a knife—it was not the act of a geist.”

“Which...which one?”

“Which geist? How should I know?”

“No, Greystone. Which priest? Who was stabbed?”

He looked at her, frowning. The prioress was a hard woman, but she’d leaned forward in her seat, holding her cup and seeming...weighed down. The priests she sent, he thought. She’s thinking how she sent them to their deaths.

“I don’t know. The older one, with the beard.”

“Notker. Angels bless your soul, my friend.” She took a deep breath. “I doubt Edwin is behind this. He is difficult to manage, but he is sincere in his faith. I suppose, perhaps, we could get him to open his mind to you so that you could tell for certain.”

“I can’t read minds. That is not how my skills work.” Davriel spun the painting of the archangel on its corner, thinking. “What about your other priests? When I was a young accountant working ledgers for the partnership, one of the first things they taught us was to find embezzlers by tracing motivations. We were to look for the person with the unique mixture of both opportunity and incentive. A sudden financial pressure, or news in their life that left them desperate. Change is the true catalyst of crisis.”

“I can’t account for each of my priests specifically,” the prioress said. “But I don’t think any had opportunity or incentive. We’re here to save the people, not kill them—and we certainly wouldn’t consort with evil spirits.”

“But you’ll consort with evil men?” Davriel said.

She looked at him. “That depends on how much hope we have in them, I suppose.” She shook her head. “I think you’re ignoring the true culprit in this. The obvious answer. When I saw the trail of the geists who did this, the light was tinged a sickly green. I’ve lived here for almost twenty years now; I can recognize the Bog’s touch when I see it.”

“Someone stabbed that priest, remember. And Tacenda claims to have heard footsteps. Someone was controlling the geists.”

“That girl,” the prioress said. “She and her sister are an...odd case. I have read accounts of the past, and can find nothing like their curse of blindness. I was making progress with the people of the Approaches some ten years ago, bringing them to the Angel’s light—and then those two started manifesting powers. It made the people follow the Bog again, upended nearly everything I’d accomplished since arriving here.”

“The sister was claimed by the Whisperers,” Davriel said. “But Tacenda said they would not take her. I wonder why.”

“The answer is obvious,” the prioress replied. “I managed to get through to Willia. She was training to become a cathar. Willia turned against the Bog, and so it killed her. I never managed to reach Tacenda though...”

“I feel there must be more,” Davriel said. “Something I’m missing about this mess.”

“Perhaps the Bog left Tacenda because it has another purpose for her,” the prioress said. “You say you think this person was controlling the geists—but perhaps you have it wrong. The Bog could be controlling the spirits directly, but also be using one or two living pawns to accomplish its tasks. The priests might have let a stray villager, crying for help, into the church. Either way, the Bog is the true evil here.”

“But why would it kill its own followers?” Davriel said.

“Evil often has no reasons for what it does.”

No, he thought. Evil has the most obvious reasons.

He didn’t say it, because he hadn’t the energy for a prolonged argument. But it wasn’t the people without morals that confused Davriel—they tended to align best with their incentives, and were much easier to read.

It was the moral person who acted erratically, against their self-interest.

Still, the prioress did have a point. Multiple trails pointed toward the Bog. “Do you know what it is?” he asked her. “Really?”

“A false god,” she said. “Some horrible thing that lurks far beneath the waters, consuming offerings. When I first arrived—sent to this region to teach the people the correct path of faith—I confronted it. I went to that Bog and I looked into it, using my powers. There, I found something terrible, vast, and ancient.

“I knew then that I could not fight it with conventional prayers or wards. It was far too strong. I built up this priory on top of the catacombs, and I dedicated everything I had to converting the people of the Approaches. I felt that if I could prevent them from giving their souls to the thing, it would eventually wither and die.”

“You converted Willia,” Davriel said, thoughtful. “One of its chosen champions. Perhaps that provoked all of this.”

“It is...possible. I can’t say for certain.” She hesitated. “At first, I assumed that you had come here to study or control the Bog. Perhaps that was why I was so quick to believe you were behind these deaths. It seemed an impossible coincidence that a person of your talents had come to settle in a place so remote.”

“I didn’t know about the Bog before I arrived,” Davriel said.

Ah, the Entity said in his mind, but I knew about it.

What? You did?

“Whatever it is,” the prioress said, “it is hungry. The Bog consumes the souls of those who die here. Even the Seelenstone’s influence can barely resist it, despite being given to us by the Nameless Angel specifically for this purpose.”

What do you know about the Bog? Davriel asked the Entity. You imply you led me here. For what purpose?

For strength, the Entity said. You will see...

Davriel frowned, then looked to the prioress. “It seems, unfortunately, that I am forced to confront the Bog. What a bother. Still, if I can find the cause of these manifestations, I’m reasonably certain I can return the souls to the people of the village. Or at least an acceptable number of them, considering the circumstances.”

The prioress started, then twisted all around in her chair to look back at where he stood, still at the back of the room, idly spinning the picture of Avacyn.

“Save them?” she asked. “It is possible?”

“If it has been done, then I can see it undone.”

“I don’t think that is always going to be true. But it will be enough if you try. What do you require of me?”

“Once this is over, you must travel to Thraben and do whatever it takes to make certain the fools there believe I’ve died, or left, or been humiliated into hiding.”

“I could do better,” she said. “I could tell them that I was wrong, and that you saved us! If you bring the people back, I’ll cry it from the steps of the great cathedral itself! I’ll proclaim you a hero, and—”

“No,” he said. He dropped the painting and walked up to her seat, looming over her. “No. I must be made out to be nothing special. Another minor, petty lord who has claimed an insignificant slice of land nobody cares about. A fop unworthy of attention or note. Nothing special. Nothing to care about.”

She nodded slowly.

“For now,” he continued, holding out his hand, “I’ll need to borrow your talent for sensing and anchoring spirits.”

“You shall have it willingly,” she said, putting her aged hand in his.

“It will be painful,” he warned. “Our...natures do not align. And you’ll be left without access to the ability for a short while, perhaps as long as a day.”

“So be it.”

He gritted his teeth, then pierced her mind. In turn, he felt an immediate spear of pain right through his skull. Hellfire, this woman was wholesome. He couldn’t see her thoughts, but he was drawn, as ever, to power. The energy inside of her, the glow of ability, strength, magic.

He ripped it free, wincing at the terrible sensation. This granted a new spell, raw and radiant: one which would let him track the movements of spirits and—if needed—force them to remain corporeal.

The prioress slumped in her seat. He held her by the arm, keeping her from sliding to the ground. She was a tough old hound, and—to an extent—he did recognize the importance of her work. People needed something to believe in. Something to provide comfort, and keep them from being crushed by the realities of human existence.

The truth was a dangerous thing, best left to those who could realistically exploit it.

The prioress finally recovered, and squeezed his arm in thanks for supporting her. He nodded once and turned to leave, suffering—still—from the spear of pain through his mind.

“You’ve been roused to action,” she said from behind. “But you seem reluctant still. What would it take, Greystone? To make you really care?”

Corpses. Death. Memory.

“Don’t ask that,” he said, stepping back into the hallway. “This land is not ready for a version of me who cares for anything other than his next nap.”