Chapter Seven: Tacenda

Tacenda stopped in the doorway of the church as Davriel and the demons spread out to investigate.

She intimately knew the sounds of this place. The way voices echoed in the eaves. The way the small fountain tinkled with the sound of spring water. The prioress had installed that symbol of purity just before Tacenda’s birth—an attempt to represent clean waters to contrast the impurity of the Bog.

Tacenda had come here with Willia for services, though she’d never herself taken the oath of the Blessed Sleep. The church cared about this true sign of devotion above all others: the promise to have one’s body taken to the priory for burial, rather than accepting entombment in the Bog.

Tacenda trailed to the front dais and the altar, which had holes for candles and twin poles at the sides. Once those had borne Avacyn’s symbol, the general symbol of the church. Tacenda remembered kneeling here as a child, one hand on each of the poles. Feeling at the cold metal, the cast bronze symbols, while the priests prayed over her in an attempt to heal her from her affliction.

The symbols of Avacyn had been removed at the prioress’s command. Apparently, everyone in Thraben worshipped a new angel now. But could you really just change your faith? Swap it out like changing shirts? What made this new worship any better? And how long had the old one been flawed?

Willia wasn’t the only one here who had taken to wearing the symbol of the Nameless Angel instead. A mysterious figure who had granted the Approaches the boon of the Seelenstone, the relic of the priory.

Crunchgnar poked around inside the building, his motions exaggerated, as if he was trying hard to prove just how unbothered he was to be inside a church. Miss Highwater stayed close to Davriel, who inspected the beam that used to bar the door. Then he turned his attention to the windows, which he opened in turn, looking at the frames.

Tacenda walked to the bodies, which lay in shadow. Crunchgnar’s solitary lantern left the wide chamber feeling gloomy. Around a dozen people had fallen here, two families’ worth. The faithful among the village, a handful compared to those who had stayed in their homes to instead trust the Bog’s Warding Song.

With them were the bodies of the priests. There were three: old Gurdenvala was their village priestess, a woman Willia had always called stern. She’d fallen at the altar, holding aloft a symbol of Avacyn—a now-forbidden icon. When danger had come, she’d turned back to her original faith.

The other two priests had come from the priory to try to help the people in this emergency. Tacenda didn’t know them as well, though the younger one was Ashwin—the priest who had once done a sketch of Willia. His body huddled against the wall, eyes open wide. Tacenda knelt and slipped a sketchpad from the ground beside him, and inside found sketches of people. Priests, villagers, several of the prioress herself.

The last sketch was a quick drawing of the church from this perspective near the wall: the pews in a line, the front doors wide open and the moon beyond. Standing in the doorway—drawn as quick unfinished outlines—were transparent figures with twisted faces. Ghastly images that reminded her distinctly of what she’d seen earlier at Davriel’s mansion, when the cathar’s spirit had twisted into a fearful geist.

She shivered at the haunting sketch—rough, but somehow compelling. She could imagine the priest there, huddled in the corner, drawing furiously as the church’s wards and prayers failed. She took the sketchpad to the front of the room, where Davriel and Miss Highwater were again inspecting the front door.

“What’s this?” Davriel said, stepping over and taking the sketchpad from her. “Too dark. Crunchgnar, would you get on with lighting the lamps in here? I can barely see how ugly you are.”

Crunchgnar grumbled, but started to do so. Davriel turned the sketchpad toward the light, then nodded. “Makes sense.”

“What makes sense?” Tacenda said.

“Miss Highwater,” Davriel said, handing the sketchbook back to Tacenda, “what would you make of this situation?”

“The church’s wards held for a short time at least,” Miss Highwater said, pointing. “Scratches on the doors and windows, which look distinctly like the marks made by geists trying to claw their way in. They wouldn’t have needed to do so if they could simply pass through these walls, as they did the other homes.”

“Excellent,” Davriel said. “Miss Verlasen, this is compelling evidence.”

“Evidence?” Tacenda asked. “Of what?”

“These Whisperers could not enter the church, at least not at first. The powers of the priests were sufficient to hold them back.”

Tacenda looked back at the picture of the spirits at the doorway to the church. “You said before that it was possible the geists weren’t affected by my song because they were too powerful. But if the Church’s wards held them back...”

“I doubt something powerful enough to completely ignore the Bog would, in turn, be stopped by the wards of these priests,” Davriel said. “That said, we have proof that the priory’s authority can ward away the Bog’s influence. The claim it can make upon the souls of those buried there, for example.

“As the Whisperers were unaffected by your song, but were stopped by the priests, I find it increasingly likely that they are from the Bog. In fact, the spirits you heard whispering were likely people from your own village.”

He strode across the room, cane clicking on the church’s tile floor.

Tacenda hurried after him. “What?” she demanded. “What do you mean?”

“The attacks started slowly,” Davriel said. “At first, just two people—your parents—on a trip to the Bog. Then a few more, rising in frequency, until the final attack on the village. Why so many days between the first attacks, then a growing, overwhelming attack at the end?

“I suspect it was because these ‘Whisperers’ are the very spirits we’re searching for, the disembodied souls of your villagers. The spirits can perpetuate the theft—once a few geists were made, they could be sent to gather others. The multiplicative effect would compound their numbers quite quickly, growing their ranks for larger and more daring attacks.”

Tacenda froze in place, horrified by the idea—but it made a twisted kind of sense. Her sister’s face...it hadn’t been frightened when she was taken. Could it be that she’d somehow recognized the geists coming for her? Could it have been...her parents?

“Miss Highwater,” Davriel said. “Several questions remain. Someone seems to be helping the Bog, as evidenced by the footsteps she heard. This leads us to the answer to how the church was breached. The wards were, after all, holding.”

“Vampires?” Miss Highwater guessed.

“An excellent guess.”

“But wrong?” she asked.

Davriel smiled.

“Wait,” Tacenda said. “What is this about vampires?”

“The door was opened from the inside,” Miss Highwater said, pointing. “The bar was removed willingly, with no signs of a forced entry. Your sketch proves that the spirits entered through the doorway. So someone let them in—that’s why I guessed vampires. A creature who could control the mind of someone inside and get them to open the doors.”

“And would open doors alone allow spirits to enter a warded church?” Davriel asked.

“I’m not sure.” Miss Highwater frowned.

“Beyond that, could an Approacher even be mind-controlled?” Davriel asked. “Have you ever tried to reach into one of their brains? I’ll tell you, it is not a pleasant experience. The Bog’s touch is quite powerful.”

“So...” Tacenda asked. “What happened then?”

“Check the bodies of the priests,” Davriel said, waving toward the corpses.

“I just did that,” Tacenda said.

“Then do a better job this time, Miss Verlasen.”

She frowned, but walked over and knelt beside the corpse of the young priest. She looked him over, then—timid at first—turned his body. He’s not really dead, she told herself. He’s just sleeping. I’ll save him, like I’ll save Willia.

His body didn’t seem different from any of the others. She moved to the older priest from the priory, who lay on his front, with his head turned to the side. He had the same frozen, glassy expression as everyone else. Tacenda rolled him to the side.

And found a stab wound in his chest.

She yelped, letting go, but Miss Highwater took the body and rolled it all the way over. He had been killed with a blade. How had Tacenda not noticed that?

There’s barely any blood on the floor, she thought. It stained the front of his robes, but hadn’t pooled underneath him.

“His body froze like the others, once his soul was taken,” Miss Highwater said. “Damn it, Dav, how did you know?”

The Man of the Manor walked past, looking self-satisfied as he began to rummage at the altar.

“What does it mean?” Tacenda asked.

“Someone stabbed him, which interrupted his prayer,” Miss Highwater said. “Then that someone opened the doors and let in the Whisperers. There was a traitor in the village.”

“Yes,” Davriel said. “Do you know exactly who was in this room when they first barred those doors?”

“No,” Tacenda said. “It was a confusing time, and I was still blind. My eyesight didn’t return until just after dusk.”

“Might be worth having someone audit the town anyway,” he said. “So we can see if anyone is missing. A task we could perhaps assign the priests of the priory, come morning. Unless...Miss Tacenda, your sister is dead, so we can’t interview her. But you said a priest was among those who identified me. Do you know which priest?”

“Edwin,” Tacenda said. “A younger man. He happened upon you...or someone dressed as you, I suppose...attacking some local merchants. That was the first time anyone reported seeing geists involved...”

She trailed off. Those were the first attacks after her parents had fallen, and Edwin had reported seeing two geists. It seemed obvious, now that Davriel had pointed it out. Those two had been...had been her parents.

The horror of it suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. She slumped down on the ground beside the stabbed priest, surrounded by corpses. Her parents, her sister, the people of the village—they’d been taken, corrupted, forced to come back and rip out the souls of those they loved. And Davriel said the Bog was involved? That it wanted this for some reason?

Tacenda had been using a kind of focus to keep herself moving—first, a narrow focus on attacking the Man. Then a focus on trying to save her sister. But if she really stopped to think about how terrible it all was...

She was the village’s last protector. But in the end, she was barely an adolescent, and she had no idea what she was doing. What would she do if the Bog itself was against her? If its gift was useless, what was she?

She hugged herself, and wished—for once—she had someone to sing to her, as she’d sung to Willia in the night. She wished she could hear that Song of Joy, the one that—moment by moment—she seemed to be forgetting...

“The priest, child,” Davriel said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “What do you know of him?”

“Not...not much,” Tacenda said, shaking herself. “He’s Approacher born, but trained in Thraben. Surely you don’t think he was involved in this?”

“They might have opened the church doors here for a priest,” Davriel said.

“It would explain a lot,” Miss Highwater said. “Someone seems to have gotten through those doors, then stabbed the priest saying the prayers—letting the geists flood in.”

“I’m making no absolute judgments yet,” Davriel said, still poking around behind the altar. “I have no concrete theories on why a priest would work with the Bog. I can’t even say why the Bog would go about murdering its own worshipers, if indeed that happened.”

“Then...what do we do next?” Tacenda asked, blinking, trying to recapture her focus. She couldn’t think about it all too much, or it would overwhelm her.

They weren’t dead. Willia wasn’t dead. Focus on that.

“We need magic that can deal with geists,” Davriel said. “I’d best want a spell to track them. Sometimes if you can isolate a geist, then confront it with something very familiar to it when it was alive—a tool of its trade, perhaps—it will recover enough to answer a few questions. We might also want some magic to stabilize and anchor their forms, forcing them to remain corporeal so they can be resisted physically.”

“Do you have that kind of magic?” she asked.

“No,” Davriel said. “Technically, I have few talents of my own.”

“But—”

“I can but borrow from others, Miss Verlasen,” Davriel said. “I am an unassuming beggar, a servant of all people.”

Crunchgnar snorted as he lit another lamp. It still wasn’t very bright in the room.

“Many people,” Davriel continued, “have some kind of minor talent—a magical knack, an aura of faith, or even some practiced wizardry. They’re truly uninspired in the use of these blessings. I give them a little help.”

“He does that,” Miss Highwater noted, “by reaching inside their brains and forcibly ripping out their magical abilities, which he then uses as he needs them.”

“That’s horrible!” Tacenda said.

“Now now,” Davriel said. “It hurts me almost as much as it does them, especially if the magic I steal is from someone particularly self-righteous. And they recover the talents soon after my intervention, so what is the harm? Aha!”

He stood up suddenly, holding something aloft.

“What?” Tacenda asked. “A clue?”

“Better,” he said, turning around the small jar. “The priestess was hoarding some dustwillow tea.” He unscrewed the lid, then his face fell.

“Empty?” Tacenda asked.

“You peasants have been exceptionally lazy these last few weeks,” he said. “Yes, yes. Being murdered by geists and all that. But really...”

A thump sounded outside, and a shadow darkened the front of the church. One of the two flying demons—Tacenda couldn’t tell them apart—ducked into the chamber, holding a spear and speaking with a gravelly voice. “Master. Riders on horseback bearing lanterns have approached the town.”

“What?” Davriel said. “At this time of night?”

“They shot at us when they saw us,” the demon said, holding up a wicked crossbow quarrel. “Gutmorn got hit in the leg. He landed on top of a nearby home to recover, but the riders are coming straight this direction. They look like demon hunters.”

Davriel sighed a loud, deliberate sigh, and shot Tacenda a glare.

“You can’t possibly blame me for this,” she said.

“I’ll blame whomever I want,” he snapped. “Yledris, go fetch Brerig and the wagon. See if he can get here before—”

A crossbow bolt snapped against the wooden door next to Yledris, and shouts rose in the near distance.

“Or,” Davriel said, “perhaps just bar the door.”