The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Book Three: The Desert on Midgard // Chapter 1: A Lore Master's Third Rune Gate

i. The Boy from Byzantium

It's too quiet.

Jacob frowned and slowed to a jog. His hand grasped the pommel of the sword at his hip. He'd borrowed the blade to replace the one Marcus had taken, and he'd made good time reaching the hospital wing of the Krak des Chevaliers. He need only find the physician Brother Belvedere, convey Ibn-Khaldun's request for help, and there still might be a chance to join Ríg's fight against the intruders.

Despite the urgency, he slowed to a stealthy pace. Some instinct screamed of danger in the infirmary.

Where are the physicians and monks who were working here?

Something felt terribly wrong, and as he drew near, it began to smell even worse. An acrid odor filled the air, part musky perfume and part coppery smoke. His eyes began to water and his stomach tightened.

It smells like when they burned a plague ship in the Golden Horn. It's human beings burning.

The memory ignited his determination, a resolve fueled by fear for his mother.

Move, Jacob. Ima was in this section.

He clenched his teeth and fought the impulse to flee. If this foreboding proved true, his first real sword-fight might come even sooner than expected.

Moments ago, a flash of eerie, aquamarine light had bathed this entire section of the Hospitaller castle. He'd thought that the warrior-monks were practicing some kind of secret warding-off ritual before the siege of two armies began in earnest, but now he realized that the disquieting sight had been nothing of the kind.

Anxiety shifted into battle readiness as he crept down the hallway, stepping over incandescent chunks of limestone, concrete blocks, and some smaller feathered forms he couldn't initially identify, then realized were dead birds.

That glaucous, blue-tinged glow must have been a massive explosion!

Rubble lay on the ground beneath a destroyed window and scorch marks blackened the corridor's walls for some distance beyond it.

This is bizarre. How do dead birds come to be in the middle of a castle? Were the knights keeping them as message carriers?

He stepped over a cluster of pigeons that lay amidst the wreckage, their grayish, plump bodies blown inward from some point outside.

More destruction and gigantic holes in the walls awaited around the corner. Even worse, to his right rose a ceiling-to-floor mound of limestone debris that blocked the hallway leading to his mother Rebecca's room.

Oh, Ima, what happened here?

This wasn't just one explosion, but a series of them, and the detonations seemed to get worse the closer he got to the main ward. He'd planned to check on his mother while getting Master Belvedere, but now he wasn't sure what to do.

Think, think. Go back and find another way?

No. He still felt too uncertain about the labyrinth of passages. Searching for an alternate path might mean a fatal delay. He needed to try to find Belvedere and make sure the area where he'd last seen his mother was truly impassable.

He took the one direction that did seem clear, into the hospital wing. The boy's nape prickled as he entered the burned antechamber of the ward. Small fires burned and guttered amongst the broken tables and cots. Jacob blinked rapidly against the smoky haze, wondering at the strange shapes visible in the weak late afternoon sunlight. He'd seen the light, but heard nothing. How, he wondered, could there be all this destruction and no sound?