Chapter 81

The Tome of Power was supposedly a thing lost to the mists of time. A book, bound in ancient wood, consecrated, embedded with sacred metals. It did not just contain text, but power, and so much more. Only one consecrated to the Golden Lady could read it. Even then, for the uninitiated, it was simply text. Words and illuminated text on priceless, indestructible pages. For those who knew how to use one, it contained the memories, the meanings and intents behind the words, and unlocked the power sleeping within.

The makings of a Tome of Power was stolen from the mages; altered and consecrated in the name of the Goddess. There weren’t many sacred Tomes of Power; seemingly the Anglish Empire had forgotten that it was the Shapers that had brought them the art. Katarina had learned of it during her travels in Tassili, shortly before her return to Blackwall. She’d requested seven, but the other six would be needed later.

In her study, she poured herself a glass of wine, sat down, and began to write. She normally didn’t write much at all; there wasn’t much call for that while travelling between cities or wandering forests, but a few false starts had apparently loosened something in her head, allowing her to translate her thoughts to the page with a little effort.

"If you walk the path of the Righteous, the Faithful, and hold no fear of the screaming hate of the unbeliever..." she began, and nodded, then continued. "The gun does not make the Witch Hunter. The sash, the bells, the spurs, the Holy Symbol don’t make the Witch Hunter. What makes the Witch Hunter is sheer undying determination and unwavering faith in the Golden Lady..."

At first, she wrote of mundane things; wilderness survival, observational techniques, self reliance. Suddenly the floodgates seemed to open and she wrote about the depth of faith it took, the abandonment of the Churches’ policies of using rote prayer. The need to love, and be loved. The compassion towards the weakest, the unwavering fury to the mutant, heretic, and Witch. No fear. No pity. No remorse.

"The Golden Lady wants to know us, to love us, and it falls to us to want to know Her and love Her in turn. Only then, through love and faith, can the true Witch Hunter stand true."

She paused, and thought, and drew on the ancient memories of the long-dead Witch Hunters she’d consecrated to the Goddess in the sacred pyre. Under her pen flowed the instructions for the growth and cultivation of magical resistance, and its three fold uses: magical nullification, protection, and finally, offensively, as a weapon.

She had no idea how long it had taken her to write, but when she finally uncramped her hand from the pen she was using, the fireplace was smoldering coals and the bottle next to her glass was empty. A pity; she couldn’t remember drinking a single drop.

The book was filled, page to page, front to back with text, illumination, diagrams and drawings. She closed the book and rose to her feet; her limbs were dull and felt numb and heavy, as if filled with sand. She closed her eyes, placed her hands on the cover, and prayed. As she prayed, she could feel the bindings of the previous Witch HUnters unhook themselves from her body, through her body, through her arms where it burned like fire, and down through her fingertips into the book itself.

To the uninitiated, it was simply a treatise on the role of the Witch Hunter. To one who resonated with magical resistance, who strove to walk the path of the Witch Hunter, they would receive the marks and the guidance of the Witch Hunters from hundreds of years past, and they would, in turn guide the new Witch Hunters in their quest to rid the world of malignant mages.

She paged through the contents. Hidden in the text, whether intentionally or not, were clues, riddles, puzzles. The greatest strength of the Witch HUnter was to take clues and hints and put them together to reveal the hidden, the inexplicable, the mage. She paused in consideration, and then carefully drew the symbol for NAHA, circled it, and sanded the page so that the ink would not smear. If those that came after read the book and understood its intimate meaning, that symbol would be the first step in unlocking the power of the Witch Hunter. If not, they’d be blinded, at the very least.

She got up and stretched, surprised to find herself so exhausted. She left the book on the desk of her study to discover the darkness of night, the lamps lit. She would drop the book off at Alaine’s house. She could borrow a horse from the Church stables, but there were other ways.

The lamps in the High Court were brilliant and banished shadows. Flanking the high bench, the temple guards occasionally shifted their posture slightly, causing their armor to clink. Katarina stood on the embossed Seal of the Lily, casually leaning against the rail of the Petitioner’s Stand, idly twirling the end of her braid, affecting calm she didn’t feel.

The last time she was here, Katarina mused as she stood in the High Court, she faced six Lady Cardinals, the women known collectively as the Book of the Golden Lady, the governing body of the whole of the Anglish Empire. More, she faced the Grand Cardinal, the one woman who oversaw everything occurring across all five continents where the Anglish Empire held sway. At the time, Katarina had regarded them with indifference, impatience, and a measure of sneering contempt.

Now the High Court was populated by only four people, none of them Lady Cardinals, but Katarina inwardly quailed under their gazes, while outwardly affecting boredom. She had every reason to, because they held more authority over her than she would care to admit. Moreover, these people were people she respected.

Cyrillus was a former warpriest, a cleric of such renown and skill his tactics were taught across the empire. He looked every bit as though he meant to stride across a battlefield once more. Bald, and powerfully muscled. In Darnell, his classes drilled feverishly, frantically, lest his gaze fall upon them. Katarina had trained under him when she was only eleven, and learned how to turn her hate into an indomitable weapon. His presence was dimmed only slightly by the woman to his left, Nadette.

Nadette was a former paladin, now in charge of training the elite warriors of the Anglish Empire. If Cyrillus was a weathered boulder against which the waves broke, Nadette was the old tree that stubbornly refused to bend, with ancient, gnarled roots churning earth and breaking rocks with inexorable will. Half of Nadette’s face and neck was covered in a thick pink scar, her ear no more than a melted lump. Three thick, twisting scars ran up the remainder of her hairline, a reminder from a campaign older than Katarina herself. Nadette had taught Katarina the way of the warrior, how to turn every element to an advantage, to wield sword or mace and break the enemy.

The woman to her left, eyes smoldering with barely-suppressed anger, lips twisted with contempt was Lady Alayne, former High Lady Inquisitor of the Anglish Empire. She had taught Katarina to sharpen her mind, to note the tiniest detail, to think around corners, to investigate, infiltrate, to separate facts from truths, to separate lies from bias, pare down a situation to bare numbers and act accordingly. Alayne wasn’t supposed to be here, but even when you retired from the Church, they still managed to get their hooks in and drag you back.

Next to her was another woman, as radically different from the others as Katarina was from them. Cardinal Priestess Frederika Edelweiss was as young as the others were old, as beautiful as the others scarred and disfigured. Her expression was filled with a studious concern. Katarina considered her to be her closest friend. There was a half-realized desire for more, but Frederika had swiftly put a stop that that wish, preferring to treat her as a loving and cherished sister rather than anything more.

Katarina was a Witch Hunter, a far-ranging bounty hunter for the Anglish Empire, tasked with finding apostate mages and rooting out mutation, heresy, and corruption. She’d been a Witch Hunter since her sixteenth birthday, now ten years. The life of a Witch Hunter was a life filled with privation; most Witch Hunters died by their second year. The hardiest of those that had graduated from Katarina’s class had lasted five. With the death of Morgan Blackhand, Katarina was the only Witch Hunter on the continent of Hesperia, and the first to attain the rank of Justicar. Now the panel of four that stood before her were reviewing the salient points of her career, and deciding her fate.

Olivia had been strangely distant since Katarina had forgiven her, Katarina mused. She frowned in thought. No, it wasn’t so much distance as it was ...attitude. Her whole mien had shifted. The way she presented herself to Katarina, how she responded, there was a definite change. Katarina couldn’t put her finger on it. No, it wasn’t that she couldn’t put her finger on it; she couldn’t remember. What had she done to the Lady Cardinal? Why couldn’t she remember? There was a great many things she couldn’t remember, and it pricked her like a stupid cut on the roof of the mouth that would evenutaually heal, if you could simply stop prodding it with your tongue.

She glanced up at the quartet of people in the High Court, who argued amongst themselves quietly. Try as she might, Katarina only heard small bits.

"...yes, but..."

"...right, exactly..."

And once Katarina caught a "I still say no, because..." from Cyrillus, which caused a knife-thin jolt of adrenaline to slip between her ribs and skewer her heart, like a stiletto razor made of ice. She didn’t know what it was in reference to, but they had been at it for hours and even Katarina could see the discussion was going nowhere. How much discussion was needed for Katarina to be formally given the Justicar rank?

Katarina’s mouth twisted at that. Quite a bit, actually. Her insouciant and occasionally rebellious attitudes notwithstanding, she was the first Justicar Witch Hunter since the death of her master more than ten years prior. He hadn’t been formally raised, either. He’d pursued a particularly elusive Witch for several decades, across at least two continents.

They were determined to make a proper example of her. Protocol had to be followed, but nobody could remember exactly what the protocol was. It was so rare for a Witch Hunter to attain the rank of Justicar that archives were scoured, clauses and stipulations argued over, some stretching back to the beginning, when Witch Hunters were independent and beholden to no nation.

There were several possible outcomes from this hearing, and only one of them appealed to her.

First, they could grant her the rank of Justicar Witch Hunter long enough for her to attend a congratulatory banquet, at which point they would strip her of her responsibility, and place her as an instructor in the Arm of the Sword to raise future legions of Witch Hunters. She wholeheartedly wished they did not give her this honor. She belonged out there, hunting the Witch.

Second, they could again grant her the rank of Justicar Witch Hunter, only to forcibly retire her. She’d been killing for the Church for ten years, and she showed signs of what was politely referred to as ‘battle-fatigue’. She’d lived through all sorts of horrors and fought against uncountable blasphemies. Even Katarina had to admit they were taking their toll on her. There was a begrudging sense of agreement from Katarina; if she were to be forcibly retired, she would return to her family in Begierde, something she was not wholly adverse to.

Finally, but least likely, they could give her the title of Justicar, and allow her to continue her Witch Hunt. The last assignment she’d been given was her own sister Alsabet, and Katarina struggled with her feelings on the matter constantly.

There was another option, however. One Katarina had told no one about. Katarina was not wholly powerless. She had her own cards she could play, secrets that would or could give her an immense amount of leverage. A secret that burned within her breast, demanding to be let out and free. A secret that could tear the Empire asunder. A trio of secrets in a crate, currently residing in Lady Alayne’s estate. Six secrets that lurked in a second crate.

But to play those cards, reveal those secrets, could spell disaster for her, if she wasn’t careful.

She wholeheartedly didn’t want to play those cards, because if she did, then there would be no way for her to leave Darnell ever again. Among other things, Katarina had recovered several relics of the Saints of the Golden Lady: The ashes of Saint Alicia the Silverthorn, the reliquary of Saint Andrianna, and the Crux Rosarius of the Living Saint, Celestine.

The moment Katarina turned the relics over to the Church, Katarina would find herself by necessity elevated to sainthood. The Church would never let a Saint wander the savage lands of Hesperia. Instead, she would find herself forcibly retired and every imaginable honor heaped upon her. Probably some I can’t imagine as well, Katarina thought to herself.

She had every intention to leave the saint’s relics behind when she left Darnell, to be discovered only after she had gone. Hopefully, Katarina would be able to stay gone, this time. She was immune to scrying, she was immune to magic, she had lived nearly a decade in the unexplored forests of Hesperia. She could disappear and never return.

Katarina closed her eyes and focused her thoughts inward. From time to time there was a small, subtle voice that counseled patience, and it was that voice she sought. Her feet ached from standing nearly motionless for several hours in the High Court. Her heart raced with nervousness. The mutter of discussion faded away, and Katarina floated in the warm darkness behind her eyelids. Katarina’s breath slowed.

Patience, she thought.

No. No patience. With every minute that passed, Katarina’s chances of finding her sister got that much smaller. With every minute that passed, the inexorable advance of undead, beastmen, and demons moved towards Norn, unopposed. Whatever corruption existed in the heart of the Church of Norn spread that much further, like a malignant tumor.

Think. Remember that feeling of predestined inevitability. The patience that comes from the Golden Lady. I will find my sister. I will root out the corruption in Norn. I will kill all who stand in the shadows. Her vow was straightforward and unvarnished. She would do these things.

For all things there is a time. The sword rests easy in the sheath. The bullet dreams comfortably for want of a gun.

Katarina opened her eyes to the four shocked gazes of Alayne, Cyrillus, Nadette, and Frederika. Eyeing their expressions, Katarina cast her mind back, but if they had said something to her, she had missed it.

"What?" Katarina asked crossly.

"W-" Frederika began, but Cyrillus interrupted the albino.

"Are you ...well, Katarina?" He remarked sharply. His voice was unsteady. What had she done, that worried him so? Was it the damned halo? The thing kept popping on at the most inappropriate times.

"I’m tired." Katarina complained honestly. "And I was praying for patience. For the peace that surpasses all understanding. I have been standing here for..." She trailed off.

Cyrillus nodded. "Well, for your sake, I hope She grants you the peace you seek." he grumbled. "For now, though, get some food and some rest. We’ll continue in the morning."

Katarina blinked at that. How long had she been out, daydreaming in her own mind? She glanced around, for some clue. There were no windows in the High Court. She swung her gigantic coat over her shoulders and strolled out, spurs jingling, boots clocking hollowly on the polished basalt flooring.

"Does anyone have any idea what just happened?" Cyrillus asked, and wiped his head with a utilitarian handkerchief that he pocketed indifferently. "I wonder who it was that taught her that." Cyrillus mused. "A Witch Hunter should have no need of it."

Frederika and Alayne nodded, and Nadette shrugged indifferently. "She looks a lot better today than when she first arrived." Alayne observed, and Nadette nodded at that.

"She probably took my advice and visited the Baptistry." She growled in her gravelly voice. Cyrillus raised an eyebrow at that, but nodded. If there were anyone that needed to relax and unload her burdens, it was Katarina. Still though; to see her limned in the warm glow of the Goddess, eyes closed and serene, was unsettling.