Lich, Please 96: At the Temple Pass

Chapter 96

At the Temple Pass

The Bright One’s Temple nestled on the side of a majestic peak. Overlooking the mountain pass that linked the kingdoms of Einheath to the west and Bretwalda to the south, it had a distant view all the way across the plains to the Quellec Isles beyond. In winter it was sheltered from the driving snow by steep cliffs. In summer it was washed with rays of golden sunshine. A house of healing, and a place of rest for passing paladins, it was a popular training destination.

A small village of buildings had sprung up beneath its sheltering arms. Commerce and a few homes housed those who worked in the temple, and provided services for the travellers that shared the road with the clerics. There was a tiny inn, some vendors offering food, a stable and a messenger service.

Right now the pass was busier than usual, especially for the time of year. Snow still lay thick on the mountaintops, and in drifts at the road's edges. Travellers slogged through it, hooded eyed and weary limbed, moving slowly in the cold. The majority of the traffic flowed in one direction; away from Einheath.

Father Julian stood on the temple’s wide balcony, his blue eyes solemn as he watched the travellers pass below. Refugees, really, not travellers. Whole families with carts piled high, children and grandparents, seeds and tottering piles of furniture. Every now and then there was a fine carriage, bearing the coat of arms of a noble house, followed by a flotilla of covered wagons. Even the ruling classes were spooked. In all honesty, Friar Julian couldn’t blame them.

He looked down at the shells in his hands and shook his head. The Wave Walker was wise, and even he did not know the future. Not with certainty. He closed his fist over them, the hard edges digging into his palm. Glimpses, flashes, currents in the sea of the universe. Outside forces could act unbidden, disrupting the flow. What was likely usually came to be. And sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it didn’t. Friar Julian knew the vagaries of divination only too well.

His god had foretold of pain and suffering to come. The Wave Walkers had sailed the best path available to them but the waters were treacherous and bitter. Also there was something… there was something… what was it? Something tickling at his memory but he could not remember what. With a sigh, he turned away from the window, and sought his seat amongst his peers.

The Temple within was abuzz.

The surviving high clerics of Einheath had gathered here to discuss the future of the realm, and the room was full to bursting with the gleaming armour of the paladins, the plain robes of the Blind Queen’s acolytes, and the sky-blue robes of the Wave Walker’s beloved. The Green Lady, of course, had no representative, if one such even existed. Friar Julian was never sure. If they did they kept apart. A delegation from Bretwalda was seated to one side, frowns marring helmeted faces. Feathered plumes bobbed in impatient discontent.

Anxiety lay across the oval council chamber like a suffocating blanket.

The High Priestess of the Blind Queen was to oversee the debate, and to guide their judgements. So simple was her clothing that she might, by the ignorant, have been dismissed as a beggar, and a poor one at that. Barefoot she stood, all five feet, one inch of her, in a sack-cloth dress, fastened at her waist with a frayed piece of rope. Tiny and ragged she might be, but her back was as straight as an iron rod. A coarse strip of sack tied around her eyes, painful to look at, was a constant reminder of her torment, of her sacrifice to serve the greater good. The mess of raw and tortured flesh a symbol for them all.

Friar Julian was glad the Wave Walker demanded less of him. Physically at least.

A tall crown of thorns finished off the High Priestess’ ceremonial regalia. Resting atop the birds’ nest of her hair it was made not from iron, or gold, like the lower ranks, but of wild brambles plucked from a dirty hedgerow. The only hint of opulence were the silver bells hanging heavy from her neck. Threaded on matching silver chains, they clanged and tinkled as she moved, encasing her in a shimmer of sound.

The sounds skittered long Friar Julian’s bones, setting his teeth on edge. But at least there was no chance the Whisperer would be Listening. Scant comfort.

Despite the shortness of her stature the High Priestess wielded her authority like a bludgeon.

“Order!” she bellowed. “I will have order.”

The chamber settled, the various clerics finding their seats. The High Priestess settled onto her chair and waited, hands clasped in her lap.

Friar Julian and the Bishop of Barrowmere stepped forward.

“We are here,” said the Friar, “to pass judgement. We are here to decide the future. Will you rise to the occasion? Will you serve your gods? Or will you cower in your seats like snivelling children?”

Friar Julian assumed this was a rhetorical question, but some of the paladins shouted and cheered. When they had settled the Bishop continued.

“A lich has claimed the throne of Einheath,” he said, hazel eyes snapping. “A momentary truce has been brokered. What do we do? Do we negotiate for further peace? Do we ride to war?”

“I propose peace,” said Friar Julian.

“I propose holy war,” said the Bishop.

“Present your arguments,” said the High Priestess of the Blind Queen. “And may the gods bless us all with wisdom.”

“Let me get this straight,” demanded the Archimandrite of Bretwalda, clattering to his feet. Every head in the assembly turned to him. His armour shone to a mirror-sheen, and in it the clerics could see themselves reflected back in horrific, contorted detail. The large man strode to the dias, waving his gauntletted fists. “You have a lich on the throne! A lich! An undead creature, a skeleton that consumes the souls of the living, a dead thing possessed of the greatest evil ever known to man, and instead of saddling your chargers you are sitting here? Talking? And some of you are suggesting we sue for peace? Have you all lost your minds?”

“Be seated, Brother,” said the High Priestess in clipped tones. “Judgements will be made. Have patience.”

She rang a bell. The silver clang echoed around the chamber, and most within clapped their hands to their ears. The Archimandrite sat, his face pale, knuckles white over the pommel of his broadsword.

“Call your witnesses,” said the High Priestess.

The doors opened, and a varied selection of men and women were shown into the room. Eyes wide they took their places in the centre of the oval, looking around at the waiting clerics with wide eyes. A few of them were clerics themselves.

“All of you are a piece of this puzzle,” said the High Priestess. “If you are called to testify, be truthful. The Blind Queen will judge the weight of your words. Friar, Bishop, please continue.”

“The evidence speaks for itself,” said the Bishop, his robes smouldered at the hem for a brief moment. “Since the arrival of this lich many hundreds, nay, thousands of lives have been lost. The Fairhaven Temples have been slaughtered, fully half the citizens slain. The Donheath Abbey decimated. Towns and villages have been laid to waste, the undead stalk the land unchecked. The blight spreads. If we do not cut it off at the source this kingdom will soon belong to the Whisperer. My witnesses to these events.” He waved them forward. “The Lady Marguerite Alderton, formally Baroness of Greater Downing, who escaped with her life. Mrs Adeline Thomlinson, a widow from Greater Downing. The Postulant Lila, who sought shelter at the Blind Queen’s Abbey after the slaughter of Fairhaven.”

“Speak then,” said the High Priestess.

“Your grace,” said Lady Marguerite. The young noblewoman curtseyed. “It is true. The lich killed my husband and took the barony for herself.”

Another woman stepped forward. A sad looking peasant in sturdy, well made clothing.

“The lich murdered my husband, likewise” she said. “My Thom. The monster took his body and I never saw it again. Now my family is impoverished and my children are without a father. I threw myself on the mercy of the temples to survive.”

A young acolyte with a sour expression moved to the dais. “I watched her seduce the young women of Fairhaven with necromancy and diabolical wiles,” she said. “Before I escaped to dedicate myself to the Blind Queen’s embrace.”

“Others would claim Fairhaven had the misfortune to be caught in a territorial dispute. And that it was the female lich who liberated the city,” said Friar Julian.

“Then let them speak,” said the High Priestess.

Friar Julian beckoned a nervous old woman in a multicoloured woollen robe to the front.

“Janet Higgens, co-chair of the Fairhaven Knitting Guild,” he said.

“She saved us, yer honours,” said the old woman. “Without Lady Maud we would have perished. She even saved the wool.”

“Why would a lich care for the fate of a small guild?” mused an acolyte.

“No doubt for nefarious purposes of her own,” cried a paladin.

“Silence,” called the High Priestess. “Do you have other witnesses, Friar Julian?”

“I do,” he said. “Bennett Mathers, a monster hunter from Uttoexter and current resident of Downing Forest. Nigel and Alice Baker from Little Whirring.”

The monster hunter stepped up to the floor. A grizzled old man with a glass eye, in stained and worn forester’s green, he cut a sober figure.

“She saved me,” he said without preamble. “Not once, but thrice. She took the monster in and tamed it. She saved us from the undead plague. She gave us all a place to live when our homes were razed by the lich-demon.”

“I thought she was the lich-demon?” frowned an Abbot.

“There was another,” said Friar Julian. “Whom she destroyed. According to our reports.”

There was a pause, then the chamber was filled with whispers.

“Your last witness?” asked the High Priestess.

“Oh yes,” said Friar Julian, and he beckoned forward two lowly looking peasants whose knees were visibly shaking beneath their smocks.

“You have testimony?” she asked them, kindly. “A sentence or two will do.”

“Test-testimony?” stuttered the man. The woman, his wife, hung on his arm and gave a little mewl of distress.

“What have you come to tell us,” boomed the Bishop.  “Come on we haven’t got all day.”

“The lich,” said Friar Julian softly. “You are here to tell us about the lich?”

The peasant’s eyes brightened, and his wife stood straighter.

“Yes, my lord! The lich! Praise the Lady Lich!”

“Why, um, can you explain to these ladies and gentlemen,” said Friar Julian, “what happened?”

“She saved us, your grace,” piped the wife.

“Saved you? How?”

“Your Grace! We were starving!” The peasant clasps his hands together, sinking to his knees, skinny shoulder blades pressing against rough material of his tunic.

“What?” asked the bishop, forgetting his manners in his disgust. “What does a lich have to do with that? Don’t tell me she fed you?”

“She did, your grace,” the peasant’s face turned upwards, his smile bathed in the sunshine of contentment. “She appeared out of nowhere! Flying-”

“Flying?”

“Flying!” The peasant sighed dreamily. “She dropped bags of flour! Good, wholesome flour! Some of them burst but enough of them didn’t and that night we had bread for the first time in weeks!” He sighed again, lustily, eyes glazing over at the memory. “And then she just flew off! Didn’t even wait for our thanks! Praise the lich!”

There was an awkward silence.

“Thank you,” said the High Priestess. “Does anyone want to question the witnesses?”

A few clerics came forward, questions were asked and answered, but nothing new of substance was brought to light. The witnesses were dismissed.

“Your closing arguments,” said the High Priestess, as the Friar and the Bishops stood before her.

“We have brokered a truce with the lich,” said Friar Julian. “With the blessing of our god. Our council is to approach the capital and offer to extend this arrangement. What king or queen ever held the throne of Einheath without bloodshed? Does it truly matter if our reigning monarch is dead or alive as long as the people are served? The land has suffered enough. The lich proclaims that she will not kill without cause. We have evidence that she allows the living their peace, even accepting them into her home, protecting them. Should we provoke her in a holy war? Or let the land heal?”

“Should we not condone evil in all its forms?” demanded the Bishop. “What depths have the Wave Walkers descended to?”

“Your charter is to serve the greater good, yes?”

He nodded his face tight.

“But Friar, I know you mean well, as do we all, we are all here to serve a higher purpose. But you must concede, that it is an undeniable fact that since the lich appeared thousands have died, and the blight of the Whisper’s corruption has engulfed fully a third of the kingdom. If we allow this to go unchallenged we are doomed.”

Friar Julian found he had no more words.

He looked to the High Priestess. She stood from her seat, with a jangle of bells.

“I have made my judgement,” she said. “We propose peace, and prepare for war.”