Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(22)
Unfortunately, I did. It meant that I was stuck with the revenant indefinitely. My soul would never know a moment’s peace. I would suffer a miserable, profane, defiled existence, constantly on guard against possession, poisoned by incense and consecrated steel.
But it was right. Perhaps I hadn’t realized the worst part after all. Back when I’d made the offer, I hadn’t known the revenant would talk so much.
It still hadn’t stopped. Now it was saying spitefully, “Before, you used the possibility of an eternity trapped in your company to threaten me.”
“I know how you felt when we fought in the chapel,” I said through gritted teeth. “You miss feeling things. You like being in a human body.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to be in yours!”
The last of my patience evaporated. “Then we can forget about last night.” My voice sounded like a death knell. “You can go back into your reliquary. Maybe you’ll never get another vessel. How long do you think it will take Saint Eugenia’s relic to disintegrate? Hundreds more years, probably. That’s a long time to be imprisoned inside—”
“Stop!” the revenant cried. I felt a painful scrabbling clutch, as though it had sunk its claws into my insides. “Stop,” it hissed again, more quietly this time, even though I already had.
I waited, then asked, “Are you finished?”
“The shackles,” it muttered after a pause. “When the spirits attack, we need to rid you of these shackles, or else we’ll both be next to useless. And my reliquary—we’ll need to retrieve it as well. If the humans believe that I’ve possessed you, they might decide to destroy it.”
I opened my mouth to argue that the Clerisy would never consider destroying a high relic. Then my eyes fell on the shackles’ holy symbols. I swallowed my words.
The revenant might not behave the way I had expected, but it had slaughtered thousands of people. Tens of thousands, the populations of entire cities. It would do all of that over again in a heartbeat if it gained control of my body. The devastation in Roischal was only a shadow of the terror it had wreaked during the War of Martyrs. To prevent that from happening again, the Clerisy would destroy Saint Eugenia’s relic if they had no other choice.
With the revenant’s power, I could save everyone. But if I lost control, I might burn the world to ashes.
I found it difficult to believe that this was truly what the Lady wanted. In all probability, it wasn’t, and She was merely making do with what She had. Which was, unfortunately for everyone, me.
I had come too far to start having second thoughts. We did need to take the reliquary with us, and not just for the reason the revenant had suggested. If it tried to possess me again, I might be able to resist its power for long enough to destroy the relic myself as a last resort. The bone had looked old and brittle enough to crush in my hand.
“All right,” I said aloud, before it could grow suspicious. “I’ll think of a way to get the priest close to us. He’s the one carrying the key.” Somehow I knew that to be true. Leander wouldn’t entrust it to anyone else.
* * *
By the time the sun reached its zenith, I still hadn’t come up with a strategy to lure him into the harrow. The revenant was growing increasingly impatient, pacing back and forth in my head as it pointed out every spirit that it noticed in the fog.
“Whatever you plan on doing, hurry. They’re close enough that I can sense them even through these accursed shackles.”
I was wondering whether I should finally admit that I didn’t have a plan when a raven’s raucous cawing erupted outside. A horse whinnied, and one of the knights swore. I straightened in my seat. Something about the raven’s cries sounded familiar. Looking through the screen, I couldn’t see anything useful: a knight had ridden close to the harrow, and his armor filled my field of vision. As I watched, he raised his arm as though to fend off an attack. Another flurry of heckling caws followed.
“It’s just a bird,” Leander snapped. “Stay in formation.”
Wingbeats flapped past. “Pretty bird!” the raven shrieked defiantly.
I tried to stand up, only to get jerked back down by the shackles. “Trouble.”
“Oh, do you think so?” the revenant hissed. “Aside from an impending attack by spirits for which we are completely unprepared?”
“No, that’s the raven’s name. Trouble.” His timing didn’t strike me as a matter of chance. “The Lady must have sent him to help us.”
“I would be interested to know how many hours daily you nuns spend inhaling incense. Clearly, it has an effect on your brains.”
I ignored it, listening carefully to the knights’ disgruntled shouts, the chaotic jingling of tack. It sounded like Trouble was diving from the sky, spooking the horses.
I wasn’t worried about his safety. My favorite book in the scriptorium was a collection of parables describing the gruesome fates of wrongdoers who had offended the Lady by harming Her sacred birds. Even the knights wouldn’t dare hurt a raven. As the knight blocking the screen rode past, I saw another waving his scabbard in the air, futilely attempting to shoo Trouble away.
Their efforts were in vain. At last, infuriated, Leander called out orders to stop the harrow. As it slowly bumped to a halt, I heard him issue a few more indistinct commands. The loud, grinding vibration of the winch drowned out the rest. I clambered to the floor and crouched there, watching the links rattle into the mechanism.