The Court

The Falcon's Children, Chapter 30

She had fainted but she did not fall. Something fell, a body that no longer quite belonged to her, a sister of Jophiel who was caught by the Bryghalan prince and then borne away with the princess and the others, back toward the bright door and the noise of battle.

Part of Fidelity remained tethered to that fallen form, enough to make her dimly aware of a burning on its neck, a burning in its veins, a jolting feeling as she was lifted up onto horseback. But her true self was still standing in the Dernbridge shrine, where the shadows were suddenly deeper than before, the shapes of people blurrier, the walls and benches less distinct.

She felt a strange calm where a moment before all had been in tumult. Her passions were stilled, her mind somehow entirely unafraid. A group of villagers went by her at a rush; it almost felt like they went through her, headed for the doorway; none of them seemed to take any notice of the blue sister standing in their way.

There was still a small crowd at the far end of the shrine, beyond the altar, but it felt entirely unreal to her gaze. What felt more real was something up above her — a pulsing light, stronger than the sun, that seemed to burn through the frescoes on the ceiling, infusing the figures with a special light, drawing her gaze upward, drawing her upward …

… but then something drew her back, a figure passing her, stark and oddly familiar, moving with brisk purpose despite being completely ill suited to the scene. A fool in motley, checkered black and white, the costume of a revel, yet somehow here in Dernbridge on a day of battle.

He moved like a man late for an appointment, cleaving through the remaining villagers around the altar and then disappearing behind it, following the same route as Paulus bar Merula, down into the crypt.

For some reason she thought of the cardinal in the woods. A moment before she had been stunned and bleeding, wanting nothing but to flee the shrine, and a host of devils couldn’t have driven her in the same direction as her terrible smiling enemy. But her terror had been carried off with whatever version of her body Prince Maibhygon had taken, and the remaining self was cool, unafraid, and more than a little curious. Who was the fool? Where was he going? What was actually down beneath them?

The light still pulsed above her, but there would be time to look up later. She followed where the fool had gone — down the aisle, around the altar, down into the crypt.

The crowd of villagers at the foot of the stairs was packed tightly, a gallery of faces staring up in fear. But they stared unseeing as she passed through them, passed the torches lighting old tombs and monuments, passed the wooden door that stood ajar to let in a shaft of daylight from a different stair, passed from a stone floor to an earthen one, from a higher ceiling to a lower, from the flood of torchlight to its dimming edge.

She didn’t see the fool at first but somehow she knew where he had gone, and finally she saw him, bent in a corner, roots hanging from the earth above his head — and then the nearest torch flickered, dim to dark and back to life, and when the faint light returned he had vanished.

She reached the place where he had knelt. Surrounded by a wall of earth there was the outline of an arch. It was too dim to see the carvings on the stone, or else time had effaced them. The arch itself was not tall enough for anyone to pass without crawling, and in any case it was filled in with dirt that didn’t suggest any kind of passage.

She brushed at it regretfully — the fool must have magic of some kind, and she did not.

But instead of crumbling at her touch the earth simply wasn’t there any more, indeed the entire wall wasn’t there, and she realized that the arch only looked small because it had been half-buried in the earthen floor of the crypt, and buried with it was a flight of steps that seemed to float over an abyss of stars, and far down and far away she saw the fool descending.