The cathedral doors were heavy oak, banded with black iron, with the shape of the sun carved into each door at head height. He pushed one. It opened with the kind of weight that made his side ache, and the hinges groaned in a way that said they groaned for everyone.
Inside, the air changed.
It went cold first. Not the cold of outside, which had been fresh. The cold of old stone that had been cold for centuries. Underneath that, the smell of wax. Underneath that, dust. Underneath that, something Dante's brain identified before his nose did: the smell of a place where a great many people had come, over a long time, to be afraid.
The nave was long. The ceiling was high. Candles burned in racks along the side walls, small pools of warm yellow in the cold gray air, and each rack stood in front of a fresco.
Five frescoes. Three to one side, two on the other.
He recognized the faces immediately, stylized, flatter, more formal than the real thing, painted by someone who had never met them. But the recognition was total. Selene veiled, with a crescent above her brow. Aneos with her dragonfly wings. Kidora with her dark water eyes. Gurtur with his braided beard and golden gauntlets. Piras with his hammer and his burning forge.
And at the end, behind the altar, alone from every other god, an enormous fresco of Solis: crowned, enthroned, a scepter of flame in one hand and the other raised in a gesture of judgment.
Dante stood in the nave and counted them.
Six.
Not seven.
In the Hall of the Heptarchy, there had been seven thrones.
He had counted them, once when he arrived, once when the mask on the seventh throne caught his eye. Seven thrones in a circle of white stone. Six occupied. One dusty, empty, with a mask on the seat that had been too clean for the dust around it.
The Sixth Sense hummed quietly in his head. The same tug that had pulled him to the chapel was pulling him toward the wall behind the altar now, toward the space between Solis's great fresco and the corner of the nave. A space where the stone could have held another panel but didn't. Where a candle rack had been placed, carefully, against a section of wall that had been replastered more recently than the rest.
(Six gods. Seven thrones.)
He filed it away and kept moving.
"Welcome, traveler."
He turned.
She was younger than he had expected. Younger than a nun should be, he thought: not much older than him, maybe eighteen or nineteen. She was short, hooded in dark brown wool, with a small gold sun-pendant at her throat, a symbol he'd seen before but couldn't place. Her hands were folded inside her sleeves. Her face, when she lifted it, was sharp-featured and pale, with a beauty that had chosen discipline over warmth. Her mouth held a smile. Her eyes held nothing.
"You are new in Oakhaven," she said.
"I am."
"And you have come to the chapel before the marketplace." The smile sharpened by a fraction. "Rare, for a boy your age. Most of them go straight for the Guild and the tavern. Are you here to pray?"
"Not exactly. I was hoping to learn about the religion. Where I come from, nobody in my family believed. But lately I've felt like I needed — something bigger."
"How pious," she said. The word was not a compliment. "I am Sister Marienne. I tend this chapel and its flock, such as it is."
She considered him the way a teacher considers a student who has not yet proven he's worth the effort.
"I would explain the faith to you properly, but I have duties to attend. If you can read —" a pause, as if she considered it unlikely, "— I can offer you this."
She extended one hand from her sleeve. In the palm was a small book.
"The Eptarina," she said. "The liturgy of the Eptarchy, the short version. Take it. Read it. Come back if you have any questions to submit."
He took it. It was small. Smaller than his hand. The binding was dark leather, cracked along the spine, with a gold sun stamped into the front cover. He turned it in his hands.
"Thank you, Sister. I accept this gladly."
"Don't lose it. It's a gift, but it's still our faith. Take care of it."
She turned away with a swish of dark brown robes that said the conversation was over.
He let her go. He turned the little book over in his hands. Then he raised his eyes, one more time, to the five frescoes on the walls and the single enormous one of Solis behind the altar.
(Seven thrones. Six gods.)
(And the cat told me he was a god too.)
He stepped out of the chapel into the square.
He sat on the stone rim of the well in the center of the square and opened the Eptarina.
The morning light was clean and pale. Around him the square was beginning to fill: a woman with a handcart of turnips, a boy leading two goats past the chapel steps, a pair of old men settling onto a bench outside the Red Wolf. Nobody looked at him twice. A boy reading a book at the well was not worth a second glance.
He turned to the first page.
The script was unfamiliar. Dense, angular, written in the same language the guards had spoken, Dort, or whatever the writing system of Dort looked like. He stared at it for a second, uncomprehending.
(ALICE.)
[Working. Give me... yes. Same root language as the spoken form. The written system is phonetic, which helps. I'm cross-referencing the spoken vocabulary we've already acquired against the letter shapes.]
The characters on the page shifted. Not physically, but in his perception. Like adjusting a camera lens. The angular marks softened, separated, became clusters he could parse. Letter by letter, syllable by syllable. Enough to sound out words. Enough, with ALICE filling in the gaps, to read.
[Written Language (Dort) unlocked. You'll read slowly. It will get faster.]
He started from the beginning.
The first page was a dedication, to Solis, to the Eptarchy, to the faithful. Below the dedication, a short passage on the structure of the faith itself.
The Eptarchy is the holy covenant between the Six Divine and the peoples of the world. Each god presides over a domain of existence. Each people serves a patron. Together the Six form the balance that holds the world in order.
The faithful may worship the Eptarchy as a whole, but each nation, city, and people chooses a patron domain to serve and follow. The Church of Solis governs the faith at its highest level, and from the Church flows the light that strengthens all. The more devoted the faithful, the stronger the bond between god and mortal, and the stronger the Blessings granted to those whom the gods choose.
Then, below: the six domains and their orders.
The Church of Solis: the priests, the judges, the keepers of law. The Witches of Selene: the sisterhood of the moon, guardians of magic and the night. The Monks of Aneos: the wanderers, the dancers, the keepers of freedom. The Forgers of Piras: the craft-guild, the smiths, the shapers of destiny through making. The Oracles of Kidora: the scholars, the seers, the keepers of memory and record. The Wardens of Gurtur: the druids, the hunters, the guardians of wild places.
Dante read it twice.
(Six orders. Six gods. The Church of Solis at the top. And the whole system feeds back: more followers means a stronger god, which means stronger Blessings for his people. It's not just a religion. It's a supply chain*.*)
He turned the page.
The next section was titled simply: The Six Divine.
SOLIS: First Among The Gods. God of the Sun and Life.
He is the first and greatest of the gods. He gave men Life. His is the throne of light, the crown of flame, the judgment that does not waver. From Solis came the Empire, and from the Empire came order, and from order came the peace that shields the faithful.
His domain is the Sun, Light, Judgement and Law.
Dante read it.
He thought of the real Solis. The actual Solis, the one he had stood in front of four days ago. The book described a just king, a warm father. The real Solis had been something else. Not cruel. That would have been easier. He had been efficient. He had moved through the hall the way a man moves through a routine, a thing he had done so many times the steps had stopped requiring attention. Twenty children pulled from another world and he hadn't needed to look at most of them twice. He had pressed his finger to Dante's chest the way you press a stamp to a document, checking, confirming, moving on, and when the crystal returned nothing, he had said Tainted Soul the way you name something broken and already stop thinking about it.
(First Among The Gods. He gave men Life. And he took mine apart in three seconds.)
He turned the page.
SELENE: The Lady of the Night and Her Phases.
Consort of Solis. She gave men Magic. Hers is the domain of the Moon, the Night, the Ice, and Dreams. Where Solis rules the day, Selene guards what comes after.
PIRAS: The Smith of Destiny. God of Fire and Strength.
He gave men Passion. His is the domain of Fire, Creation, Craft, and Strength.
ANEOS: The Gentle One. Goddess of Wind and Movement.
She gave men Emotions. Hers is the domain of Wind, Movement, Change, and Emotions.
GURTUR: The Still Point. God of Earth and Endurance.
He gave men Flesh. His is the domain of Earth, Patience, Body and Growth.
KIDORA: The Silent One. Goddess of Tides and Intelligence.
She gave men Spirit. Hers is the domain of Water, Intelligence, Memory, and Souls.
Six entries. Six gods. Six gifts: Life, Magic, Passion, Emotions, Flesh, Spirit.
(Six gifts.)
(In the Hall there were seven thrones. One was empty. The cat, the crow, said he was a god. He said his name was cursed, that the world ate the word when he tried to say it. He said he had been "out of fashion with the rest of the management.")
(Out of fashion. Not dead. Not imaginary. Out of fashion. Which means he was in fashion once. Which means he was part of this. Part of the six. Except six plus one is seven. Which means —)
(Seven thrones. Six gods in the book. One missing.)
(And the religion is called the Eptarchy.*)
The thought came from nowhere and sat there, heavy.
His eye caught on the word on the page. Eptarchy. Unremarkable. A word everyone used without thinking, the way people use words they grew up with. Nobody here seemed to find anything strange about calling a religion of six gods by a name that had never referred to six of anything.
(But the cat was real. He touched me. He gave me a Blessing. He unlocked what Solis said was broken. Why would he do that? Why would he lie about being a god?)
(Unless he wasn't lying.)
(In which case, there are seven. There have always been seven. And someone made the world forget one of them.)
He closed the book.
He sat on the rim of the well a while longer. The square was busy now: the bread stall was doing business, the old men on the bench had produced pipes, a farmer was driving a hay cart across the cobbles. None of them were looking at him.
He opened the book to the last section. A passage on the Awakening.
On the tenth year of a child's life, the light of the Six falls upon them. The crystal of the nearest chapel is brought forth, and the child is asked to touch it, and the crystal reads the shape of the soul. If a god claims the child, a Blessing is issued: the name and the nature of the power the child will carry for the rest of their days.
Those whom the crystal cannot read are called Tainted Souls. Their soul carries a stain: a mark of incompatibility with the divine, a flaw in the weave of their being that no god can claim. They receive no Blessing. They walk the world without the touch of the divine, a reminder to the faithful that not all are chosen. They live as they can.
("A flaw in the weave of their being." "A reminder to the faithful." That's what they think I am. Not a mistake. A warning. A thing that exists so other people can look at it and feel grateful they aren't it.)
(Except I do have a Blessing. The cat gave me one. The crystal couldn't see it because it wasn't looking for it. It was built to read six gods, and the cat is not one of those six. The stain is not a flaw. The stain is a seed that was planted by someone the system doesn't recognize.)
(But they don't know that. Nobody knows that. And if I tell them, they will not believe me.)
He shut the book and tucked it into the inner pocket of the robe, beside the note from his mother.
Six gods on the page. Seven thrones in the hall. Somebody had done this arithmetic long before him and made one of the numbers disappear.
He stood up and started back toward the chapel. He had a question now, and he already knew it was the wrong one to ask.
