Page 9 of Crucible of Chaos

THE SIGILS OF BINDING

The sacrifice’s spirit will soon seek to flee from the flesh. This, you must not allow, else the vessel becomes porous, a leaky chalice incapable of containing the powers you summon. Inscribe the second set of sigils to bind the spirit eternally to the skin, thus may the rite proceed.

CHAPTER 7

THE BELL CHANT

‘Ring the bell in the old way,’ Malezias had said before abandoning Estevar and Imperious at the abbey’s gate. A bronze bell twice the size of a man’s head hung precariously from the rusted iron frame of the arch. Estevar yanked on the heavy rope dangling from the iron clapper inside the bell, but when both the rope and his palms proved too slick for his grip to hold, he wrapped the end of the rope tightly around one hand, fighting the exhaustion infecting both mind and body to recall the traditional petitioner’s plea.

Any fool could make a bell clang, but pilgrims granted official sanction to call upon the religious houses of Tristia would be trained in the special technique of striking the clapper to the bell, then using the rope to hold it just close enough for it to vibrate against the bronze lip without silencing it entirely. The effect was a sonorous hum the monks called ‘the bell chant’.

Alas, that was the easy part.

The real challenge was in manipulating rope and clapper to play a specific pattern of bell chants, thecodes memorised by journeying monks to convey specific messages to those inside the abbey walls. One pattern might signal that an arriving wagon was full of supplies in need of unloading; another might warn of an invading army mere minutes away from storming the gates. In times of peace and prosperity, such codes were rarely required, for visitors could simply attract the attention of one of the monks within, assuming the gates were even locked.

Clearly, these aren’t peaceful times in Isola Sombra, Estevar thought.Now, what’s the gods-be-damned code for an emissary come on the king’s business?

Trying to recall the details of an obscure language of clangs and hums that he’d rarely employed since learning it at least a dozen years ago, especially while fighting off a raging fever, was proving beyond even Estevar’s usually faultless memory. Fortunately, the Greatcoats had their own secret language. In the sword tongue, the interplay of two blades made it possible to exchange vital intelligence under the guise of a friendly fencing match or even a full-on duel. Estevar’s first judicial circuit included a number of prominent monasteries along his route; he’d observed then that several patterns from the bell chant were almost identical to ones in the sword tongue.

Which makes one wonder if both languages possess a common ancestor?

Imperious, his flank pressed against Estevar’s bulk, was panting sporadically, even though neither of them had moved for several minutes. The jagged gash on the mule’s forehead had stopped bleeding, but the wound looked dangerously deep.

Careful not to rile the beast, he retrieved a roll of bandages from one of the saddlebags and was pleased to discover the leather case had kept the linen blessedly clean and dry. He wrapped one length around his belly, where blood from his duelling wound had begun to seep through the stitches to stain the thin fabric of his drenched white shirt a troubling crimson, then fashioned a clumsy dressing for the gash on Imperious’ head. With one eye partially covered by the bandage, the poor mule was looking like a confused pirate. With a third piece, Estevar dried off the hilt of the dagger he kept at the back of his belt, to ensure it wouldn’t slip from his grasp if he needed to draw it quickly.

‘Steady, my friend,’ Estevar told the mule, whose head was now swivelling this way and that in search of an enemy to fight. ‘The dagger is merely a precaution. Be at ease a moment while I ponder how to solve our current predicament.’

At its root, the bell tongue consisted of four syllables: the clang, which by necessity began every message; the long hum, which was hardest to produce reliably; the short hum, and the silence, which required the greatest physical effort to pull on the rope at a sharp-enough angle that the clapper would press against the swaying bell and silence its ringing.

‘Friend’ is the easiest word, Estevar suddenly recalled.Three clangs ending with the long hum.

Yanking the rope hard to the left, he swung the clapper so it slammed against the side, then immediately swung it to the right, producing the second clang, then again to the left– and this time, holding the rope at an angle, his weary shoulders strained to apply just the right amount of force to elicit the humming sound that made his teeth vibrate.

‘What now?’ he wondered after several minutes of waiting. When no one appeared, he repeated the ‘friend’ bell chant twice more, to deafening silence from within.

‘Perhaps it is not friends they want here?’ he said aloud.

Imperious slumped down on his haunches, gave out a quiet, almost plaintive grunt, and closed his eyes.

I must get him help, Estevar thought, wiping the rain from his eyes. He forced himself to set aside his rising anxiety over the mule’s condition. ‘Ring the bell in the old way,’that Malezias fellow had said– but he’d added something else, after, hadn’t he? ‘Whoever sits in the watchtower will come down to let you in soon enough, assuming there’s anyone left.’

Estevar peered through the rain and mist up beyond the gates to the six towers. The tallest would be the watchtower: from that vantage point, a monk could see for miles and spot a fleet of ships on the horizon hours before they could reach the shore, or a battalion of soldiers hours before they crossed the causeway. Had he still been in possession of his greatcoat, the Gitabrian spyglass would have enabled him to discern whether the watchtower was occupied. But his treasured spyglass, along with the greatcoat itself and all the other tools, tricks and traps that had seen him through every manner of peril, was lost to him.

‘So, we make do with what we have, eh, Imperious?’ he asked, but the mule made no sound save for his continued panting.

The watchtower was too far for Estevar to see clearly, but still he noted the narrow vertical slits arrayed around the outer wall. On the topmost floor, light leaked out from all of them, save one.

Someone is standing in front of that window, blocking the light as they watch us, he reasoned.Yet they do not come when I name myself a friend.

He rang the bell again, but this time followed the pattern for friend with another clang, followed by a short hum and then a stop, which he was fairly sure meant ‘succour’.

When the last echoes faded, he stared up at the watchtower. The same window was still blocked.

‘A friend of the abbey pleads for assistance!’ he yelled, dropping the rope. Barefoot, with no coat and soaked to the bone, not even his fury could fight the chill that had set his teeth to chattering. He doubted the monk could understand his words from this distance, but still he shouted, ‘Is the suffering of a benighted traveller and his injured mount no longer sufficient cause to rouse your lazy brothers from their soft beds?’

No one replied. No one came.

And still the window in the room at the top of the watchtower was blocked by whoever was looking down on Estevar.

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