Like Fire Through Bone (23 page)

Not being able to visually track Brother Stavros bothered Markos. Vasilios could tell by the tension in his shoulders and the set of his jaw. Soon, their group turned away from the road they had taken to the monastery, and started cutting up into the foothills instead. Vasilios did not bother to ask why or where they were going. He concentrated on not falling off his horse.

They stopped briefly to water the horses and eat some food. Although Brother Stavros did not come near their camp, Vasilios could not shake the sensation that they were being watched. He hoped it was Brother Stavros, although he had thought Brother Stavros was a little ahead of them still.

For the next few hours Vasilios felt the strange prickle along the hairs on his arms and at the back of his head as though they were still being watched. As time went on, his back and ass began to ache from the unaccustomed act of riding. Weariness blurred the edges of his vision, and he began to imagine movement at the corners of his eyes. It was exhaustion, he was sure, nothing more.

Night had come upon them as they rode, and most of their party now carried lanterns. Vasilios was not adroit enough in the saddle to carry one. Everything around them seemed to be flickering, moving masses of blue-black shadow. He could barely make out the rider and horse in front of him and spent most of the time staring at the ground, trying to see anything on the road the mare might possibly trip on. His eyes felt sore and itchy from the strain, and every once in a while a shadow, darker than the rest, would move at the corner of his vision.

He hoped it was Brother Stavros, or his imagination, which was far, far more likely at this point. He had to stop jerking up and turning his head toward the movement every time it happen. He was starting to get a crick in his neck.

“Are you all right?” Lucius pulled his horse alongside Vasilios. “You’ve seemed kind of jumpy for a while now.”

“I’m fine,” Vasilios said, trying to smile reassuringly and not really managing it. “I just keep seeing things at the corners of my vision. I think I’m tired, that’s all.”

Lucius watched him for a second longer before turning away. “I’ll keep my eyes open for anything strange.”

T
HE
sun soon began to lighten the sky, turning it shades of light blue and gray streaked through with pale gold. It was a truly beautiful sight, but Vasilios hoped they were going to reach the city soon.

They turned onto an outcropping of dark-red-brown rocks a short distance from the road they had been on. Vasilios managed to bring his horse to a stop when he noticed that everyone else had already stopped and were forming a semicircle around the side of a rocky hill. From his vantage point on horseback, Vasilios peered at the hill and was able to make out a door with a metal lock on it. Markos dismounted and walked to the door, then searched through the pouch attached to his belt for a minute, and finally came up with a key. He unlocked the door and then, with Lucius and Patros’s help, managed to pull it open. It was several inches thick, Vasilios saw when they had it open, and the doorway was large enough for a man on horseback to pass through. Behind the door stretched a tunnel with wooden support beams holding up an earthen ceiling, and Vasilios shivered, not wanting to go into the tunnel at all.

“Patros.” Markos turned to him, holding out the key. “Wait here for Brother Stavros, and then run to catch up with us. Arsaces, you ride with Amma Aritê until then.”

Patros nodded, and Arsaces swung down from his horse and tethered it to Patros’s saddle. He remounted Patros’s horse, sitting behind Aritê.

“All right, then.” Markos remounted. “Let us go.”

The tunnel was high but narrow enough that they had to ride single file, entering the dark space one at a time. Once inside, it smelled strongly of damp earth, and Vasilios found it smothering and enclosed in a way that made his skin crawl. The tunnel became darker the further from the entrance they went, with tiny points of lights coming from the lanterns several members of their party carried. The air was damp and musty against Vasilios’s tongue, unpleasantly like the taste of stone. Markos led their procession at a slow trot, and after a little while, they halted when Theofilos called out that he heard footsteps behind them. Vasilios’s mind instantly filled with unease, but after a moment or two, Patros came running into the circle of their lanterns, out of breath but smiling.

“You gave me quite a workout.” He untethered Arsaces’s horse and swung up.

“Let’s continue,” Markos said from somewhere too far ahead for Vasilios to make out. “We’re almost there.”

It was probably a good thing too, Vasilios thought, because his horse seemed to like the passageway about as well as he did. The animal kept shifting in a restless sort of way, shaking its head and snorting fretfully. He didn’t know if it was the enclosed space, the dark, or if it could make out Brother Stavros’s scent not far behind them. Whichever reason it was, it made Vasilios equally as nervous as he struggled to stamp down on his own fears and control his anxious mare.

F
INALLY
their group stopped again, and Vasilios heard footsteps on stone and then a deep scraping sound. A band of light appeared straight ahead of him, widening until he could make out a doorway. Markos walked back over to his horse and remounted, then urged the beast through the doorway.

One by one, they filed out, and Vasilios blinked and then blinked again as his horse snorted, then stood still, finally outside the tunnel. They were in a large stone room with arched doorways leading off down different halls set into three of the walls.

It was a church, Vasilios thought. They were inside a church.

“W
ELCOME
to the Church of St. Alexios the Librarian,” Markos said to the rest of them, confirming Vasilios’s guess. Markos swung down once more from his horse and handed the reins over to Patros. “The rest of you continue on to my house, and I will meet you there after I’m done. I’m going to wait for Brother Stavros, close off the tunnel, and then speak with the priest here.”

Vasilios nodded, even though Markos was not looking at him, and followed Theofilos’s gelding out of the room and down a hall. It felt surreal and almost funny, Vasilios thought, to be riding on horseback through a church. Through the high arches that lined one wall of the hallway they were riding down, he could look into the massive sanctuary with its huge gold cross and icons of the saints.

There were frescoes of several generations of Emperors along with their Empresses, children, notable advisors, clergy and generals from their reigns. The frescoes adorned the walls of the sanctuary. Vasilios saw one of the previous Emperor, Iulianus I, with the hint of a smile on his lips, standing next to his Empress, and the unmistakable likeness of a younger Ilkay standing behind his left shoulder. There was also the reigning Emperor, looking young and much more serious than his father.

Ahead of Vasilios, Lucius dismounted to push open the doors, which were not the main ones at the front of the church but large enough for them all to ride through. Vasilios turned away from the sanctuary.

The trip through the city passed in a blur of light and bright colors to Vasilios. He slipped back into awareness with their arrival at Markos’s house. He finally dismounted and gave his horse over to Lucius to see to and made his way into the house, where he was met by Phyllis.

“Markos said you will be staying here for a while,” she said, as always with an air of disapproval, and Vasilios nodded. She led the way down the hall and opened a door that led up a narrow flight of stairs before ushering him into a small, narrow room that nevertheless looked and smelled clean. Vasilios waited until she left before collapsing onto the bed. His back ached with the combination of stiff muscles and newly healed wounds and bruises. There were still welts that hadn’t been deep enough to break skin that stung and burned. Vasilios closed his eyes and drifted. He’d get up soon. He just needed to rest a little first.

T
HERE
were people talking downstairs; that was what woke him. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could definitely hear them. Vasilios sat up and looked around the room. He’d fallen asleep fully dressed, and when he passed his hand across his face, he found he’d drooled a little in his sleep. His back felt stiff and still ached with a dull pain feeding into a sharp sting. Feeling groggy, he stood and made his way to the door and then down the stairs.

He didn’t see anyone in the hall, but after a moment of listening, he determined that the voices were coming from the garden.

“What do our contacts say?” Markos asked as Vasilios pushed open the gate that led into the garden from the house. A table with tea, fruit, sesame seed sweets, bread, honey, and cheese sat on the tiled patio. Chairs surrounded the table, and Markos sat talking to Patros, who stood next to him. Aritê sat across from Markos, with Ilkay beside her helping her eat, while Theofilos sat beside Ilkay sipping tea and reading a book open over his knees. Curled under a tree a few paces away, Brother Stavros held one of the tiny teacups.

Vasilios wondered about the time. It was daylight out, but whether this was the first meal or evening meal he wasn’t sure.

“Vasilios,” Ilkay called, having looked up and spotted him. “You’re awake. Come, sit with us and eat.”

Vasilios sat at the table across from Aritê but his gaze went to Markos first. Markos seemed tired, Vasilios thought, feeling a pang of guilt for having slept when Markos clearly hadn’t. There was a dark shadow of stubble along Markos’s jaw and equally dark circles under his eyes, and the lines at the sides of his mouth were more pronounced.

“You seem tired,” Markos said, giving him a small smile from across the table.

“I shouldn’t, since I did get some sleep,” Vasilios said, reaching for his tea and feeling slightly self-conscious about his rumpled hair and slept-in clothes.

“The Bishop is making something of a fuss,” Ilkay said, handing a cup of tea to Vasilios. “He is not at all happy about Aritê’s involvement in this, or the monastery of the Archistrategos Mikalos, although he has not met Brother Stavros yet, and with any luck never will.” Ilkay shook his head. “I’ve been holding him off by creating other problems for him to worry about. Luckily for us I can play Church politics too. I also still have some friends within the clergy who are no friend to your Bishop, plus I know of others who, while they don’t like me, like him less. He is a greedy, selfish man. Children’s lives are at stake, yet threaten his position of power and off he scurries.” Ilkay made a gesture as if flicking a game piece across the table. “His predecessor was not this easy to play, I assure you. But that aside, Church politics being what they are, they won’t always work in our favor. The Bishop is afraid his inability to handle the situation will make him look weak. Not to mention, Aritê is officially considered a heretic.”

Vasilios looked quickly over at Aritê, who did not seem at all worried that such accusations were being made against her.

“While she stayed in the desert, the Church was happy to ignore her, but now the Bishop is worried about his image.”

“This is what happens when men of God become political figures,” Theofilos said, shaking his head but not glancing up from his book. “They tend to fall prey to the need for power and put worldly things first.”

“This is not time for a theological debate about the structure of the Church,” Markos said. “We need to figure out what to do. How much do you think the Bishop will move to block us, Ilkay, and do we have any idea where the creature is hiding?”

“I can’t say for sure how much the Church will try and stop us,” Ilkay said. “I don’t have that many willing pairs of ears to listen for me. I can say that the Bishop is fairly concerned about his position with the Emperor. He was, after all, appointed during Iulianus’s reign, and although the Emperor can’t technically remove him from that position and appoint someone of his own choosing….” Ilkay shrugged. “Tragic accidents happen, even to Bishops. Probably one of the reasons I can bait him so easily.”

“Does he know you are the one behind it?” Markos asked, seeming genuinely curious.

Ilkay smiled.

“He probably suspects but he can’t actually trace it back to me. I am better than that.” He reached for the tea. “Xêgodis will most likely scold me though for interfering.”

“As well he should,” Theofilos said. “You make his job harder by doing so. I’m not objecting now because it’s obviously needed, but don’t get carried away. This is business, love, not for your pleasure. So don’t push too hard, especially not Xêgodis.”

Ilkay wrinkled his nose at Theofilos. “You spoil all my fun. But no, I will remain focused on distracting our Bishop and leave Xêgodis out of this. I know better than to try to start fights I can’t win.”

“Back to the important subject at hand. I haven’t found any records regarding where Gyllou might hide,” Theofilos said and then looked over at Brother Stavros. “Do you have any ideas where the demon is?”