Others tried to get close, but the man shoved them away and placed himself firmly in front of me. The heat of his breath washed over my face as he leaned in. 'Come on,' he said, pulling out a small blade barely long enough to shave with, 'let's see what she's got for us.'

My hands were busy holding Ethalia so I gave the man my best Inquisitor's look the one I'd used to such great effect over the past few days, driving doubt into those who tried to get too close. The man looked afraid, to be sure, but his fear was vastly overshadowed by the hunger in his eyes. 'Please,' he said, 'I've done everything killed a dozen heretics, even the boy's mother.' He held the tiny little blade over the exposed flesh of Ethalia's calf. 'I've earned this.'

'You have,' I said, and his eyes came to mine, expecting to see approbation until I smashed my forehead into his nose. He stumbled backwards into the others, his son trying unsuccessfully to keep him standing. Kest and Brasti immediately took up position in front of me before anyone else had a go at slicing into Ethalia.

'What is this blasphemy?' a voice shouted from down the corridor, and the crowd parted silently to make way for the cleric who'd spoken. He, too, wore white robes, but unlike the others, his were draped in layers that perfectly fitted his lean body. There was a subtle inlay on the front, symbols I didn't recognise. Two Knights in white tabards followed behind, heavy warswords in hand.

'Take this one,' the cleric demanded, pointing to the man who'd accosted me as he rose to his feet and tried to back away. He didn't get far before the Knight drove a gauntleted fist into the man's face, filling the corridor with the cracking sound of the shattering jaw. The boy screamed and tried to stop the two Knights from dragging his father away, but the cleric stopped him. 'Your family's wealth has bought you passage to greatness, little Lordling. Will you forgo that, as your father has done, or will you await your turn?'

The boy looked from his father to Ethalia in my arms. 'I'll wait,' he said quickly. 'I'm sorry, Venerati, I'll wait my turn.'

As the two Knights dragged the father away, the boy's eyes remained on Ethalia and he licked his lips. 'I'm going to be the Saint of Righteous Vengeance,' he said proudly to me. 'I've made a list of the people I'm going to punish first do you want to see it?'

My throat tightened in reaction to the bile rising up from my stomach. Is the promise of power all it takes to turn men into beasts? I thought, trying to hide my shudder. Are we truly such cowardly beings that the promise of strength to quench that fear is all we need to do such horrible things?

This wasn't the time to sink into despair. 'Don't just stand there, Cogneri,' the cleric ordered. 'Bring her inside.'

Once again the crowd parted, and for the first time I saw what lay at the end of the hallway: a pair of massive white columns either side of two wide doors, larger and grander than the entrance to the most powerful Duke's own palace. It looked as if it had all been newly made.

What in all the hells have they built here?

'Fascinating,' Kest said when we were about fifteen feet from the massive doors, and as I caught his look, I cursed myself for getting so caught up in my fear and anger that I had forgotten what we were here to do.

'A moment, Venerati,' I said. 'I just need to rest my arms for a few seconds.'

I knelt down, resting Ethalia's body on my thighs as I slipped off my pack and tossed it against the cavern wall.

'No point in carrying these in with us, I suppose,' Brasti said, and tossed his on mine. It landed perfectly on top.

Kest put his down as well, reaching inside to remove an overly large skin of water. He took a small sip and offered it to me. I shook my head and he placed it back inside the bag without bothering to close it. I reached into my coat pocket, pulling out a rag and wiping my hands with it, then tossed the rag onto Kest's pack.

'Time grows short,' the cleric said, and I sighed and got back to my feet, carefully lifted Ethalia and followed him. At the massive doors he stopped and turned to face me. 'Have any of you been inside before?'

'No,' I replied.

'Well, I advise you keep your wits about you. Whatever trials you've endured as an Inquisitor, whatever . . . punishments you've enacted upon the heretics this is different. This will feel different. Remember, what takes place inside is ritual, even though it might look otherwise.' He looked down at Ethalia. 'Do you know which one she is?'

'I think so,' I said.

'Those inside will know, at any rate.' The cleric reached into his robes. I expected him to pull out a key but instead, he held a tiny iron bell between his thumb and index finger. He shook it, and it gave only the barest tinkle there was no way that sound could have penetrated the massive doors, but a moment later they opened, the bottoms scraping against the bare stone. The cleric motioned for us to enter. There was a hallway, perhaps ten feet long, then it widened out into a vast circular chamber, and there, we saw what Obladias had kept secret, what Birgid had found before us.

A cathedral! They've built their own damned cathedral inside the depths of a mine.

Then I saw what else awaited us within, and I was startled by a heartfelt moan. It took me a moment to realise it had come from my own mouth. Kest spoke to me, his voice low, words of warning to stay calm, or perhaps some adjustments to our plans, but I took no note of any of it. I was trying not to retch at the sight in front of me. Brasti's words as we'd entered the mine suddenly took on the weight of prophecy: I always knew you'd lead us into some hell eventually.

He was right. I had. Then a darker thought took me. I've brought Ethalia to the devils.

CHAPTER FIFTY.

The Cathedral

The chamber's perfectly smooth walls rose high above us, making the massive chamber feel oddly small, somehow. There were no altars, no religious symbols of any kind, only weapons of all shapes and sizes hanging on the walls. The ground was divided by circles of rough-hewn stones, each containing two pillars rising all the way to the stony roof. Heavy iron bands with six-foot lengths of chain ending in iron cuffs hung from spikes bolted into the top and bottom of each pillar.

Most of the circles were untenanted, the chains dangling loose to the floor, but inside one of the circles a man was held suspended a few inches from the floor by the chains. His naked chest was covered in blood moths, their bodies bloated and crimson from feeding on his wounds. The little of the man's skin I could see beneath the insects looked pallid and withered. His mask of infamy was carved to represent a young man about to kiss his lover.

Around this lone victim crouched seven men and five women, dressed in the same white robes as the crowd waiting outside. As we watched, three of them plucked blood moths between trembling fingers, opened their mouths wide and consumed the living insects whole. Behind each supplicant stood three more, impatiently awaiting their turns.

Brasti, bless both his heart and soul for however much longer we would live, vomited on the floor.

A cleric approached us carrying a long, curved knife in one hand and a whip in the other. 'It's not as uncommon a reaction as you'd think,' he said affably.

'Forgive us, Venerati,' I said, my mind unfreezing and turning to all the ways I would tear this smiling, friendly cleric apart when the moment allowed.

'Not Venerati,' he corrected, holding up the knife. 'Admorteo. Mine is not to preach to the mind, but to free the spirit.'

'Of course.' I bowed my head so he couldn't see the anger I was struggling in vain to hide. 'Admorteo.'

The cleric came to examine Ethalia and only then did I feel the exhaustion in my arms, shaking as I held her; I wondered if the cleric thought it was from fear of his presence. His eyes narrowed as he placed a hand gently against her arm. 'She is . . . Oh, my! You've done well, Inquisitors.' He looked back up at me. 'Do you realise who you've brought us?'

'We've brought you the Saint of Mercy, Admorteo.'

Brasti, in an effort to cover his own revulsion, said, 'Does that mean we get first taste?'

The cleric gave a small, forbearing smile and pointed towards the white-robed men and women eating the blood moths on the dying Saint. 'Only if you want to end up like them.' He paused and looked at Brasti. 'I would have expected an Inquisitor would know better.'

'Forgive us, Admorteo,' I said, my mind racing to understand what this meant. 'We have been a long time on the road.' I looked down at Ethalia in my arms. 'Her . . . presence is sometimes difficult.'

'Of course,' the cleric replied, and pointed to a circle. 'Let us bind her there.'

He led us to the pillars, but I stopped and looked at the men and women who'd been plucking blood moths from the dying Saint's wounds. Another cleric had arrived and was now beating them with his whip, shouting, 'Slowly, fools! Do you wish to lose your minds before you come into your strength? Or worse, for him to die before we have drained him fully?'

Once the men and women had backed out of the way, the cleric reached into his robes and withdrew a small flask which he held to the bound Saint's mask of infamy. He dribbled the liquid into the slots that led into the funnel forced in his mouth, then held the Saint's head back for several moments before letting go. I loathed the self-satisfied smirk on his face.

I'll bet that's Adoracia Fidelis. So Jillard had been right: they were forcing it into the Saint and diluting the madness that came with it.

The cleric led us to the circle of stones and knelt down to move one aside. 'Make sure the cuffs are firmly attached before I set the prayer-stone in its place,' the cleric said, sounding deadly serious. 'Once the sanctuary is formed, her fever will pass; only the mask will protect us from her Awe, so it is imperative the prisoner cannot reach the mask, nor smash her head against the floor or one of the pillars that's how this one's predecessor escaped.'

'I heard,' I lied, feeling some small shred of joy that Birgid had managed to get out of this place; that she'd died surrounded by love, far away from this hell. 'I was surprised to hear she'd overcome you all.'

If the cleric was insulted by my tone, he gave no sign of it. 'You wouldn't be if you'd faced Birgid's Awe.' He looked at Ethalia. 'Odd, isn't it? One would have thought that Mercy would be the weakest of the Saints, and yet she was quite possibly the most powerful.'

He motioned for me to enter the circle and Kest followed me, then he told Brasti, 'You can bind her to the chains now.'

'Now?' Brasti said.

The affable cleric's mask slipped and he looked slightly annoyed. 'Yes, you fool, now.'

I set Ethalia on her feet, hanging onto her to keep her from sliding to the ground. 'Forgive him, Admorteo, he wasn't talking to you.' I nodded to Brasti. 'Yes, now.'

He cocked his right elbow and smashed it into the side of the cleric's head, grabbing his long knife before he went sprawling to the floor, and before he had any idea what was happening, Brasti had knelt down and pushed the stone back in place, completing the circle. Kest drew a short chisel from inside his coat and with perfect accuracy, smashed the locks of Ethalia's mask in two quick strikes. The pieces fell away and her hands wiped at the hair, slick with sweat, that was matted to her face. 'Gods, Falcio . . .' she croaked, 'the masks . . . they're worse than we could even begin to guess . . . we must save Valiana from this . . .'

'We have to save ourselves first.' I pointed to the other cleric, across the room, who'd noticed us; he was shouting and gesturing at the entranceway, but Brasti was already running towards them. Brasti dropped the heavy bar across the double doors with a clang. I doubted anyone was going to be breaking in any time soon.

I looked back at the cleric; he was pulling weapons down from the walls and handing them out to the twelve men and women arrayed around him. They brandished them eagerly as they faced us, their eyes feral, their mouths open in expressions of ecstasy.

I looked into those faces full of hunger, madness and sheer joy at the thought of what they had done to the Saint and what they were now about to do to us.

I was smiling, too.

In a better world, the God's Needles inside the cathedral would have been newly made and weak; unfortunately for us, these men and women were, if anything, even faster and deadlier than those we'd encountered before.

'This isn't going too well, Falcio,' Brasti shouted, swinging his sword at a man coming at him with daggers in each hand. Despite Brasti's lack of finesse, his blow landed just fine, slicing a deep gouge across his opponent's face. The man grinned, splitting the wound even wider.

'Don't fence with them,' I reminded the others. 'Pain doesn't bother them and they're not afraid of dying we've got to disable them.' To emphasise my point, I brought my mace down with all my strength on the skull of a man who looked oddly familiar. He was close to my age, with aquiline features that had probably been considered handsome, at least up until the moment my weapon broke his head open. That's when I realised that I'd just killed Viscount Tuslien.

'I can't . . . keep this . . . up . . . long . . . Falcio,' Kest said, swinging his mace left-handed, still with his astonishing speed and precision, but every swing was causing him more and more pain.

He'll kill himself from the effort before the damned Needles even get to him. The thought terrified me. I tried to get closer to him but a woman, possibly the Margravina of Selez or was that my perverse mind punishing me? leaped at me. In her right hand she held a long, thin blade, much like the one used by the first God's Needle we'd encountered. I wondered whether these people were being trained in weaponry before undergoing the ritual, or if the Adoracia made them so fast and powerful they didn't need training. Something to ponder . . .

I shook my head furiously and cried, 'Brasti, help Kest!'

'I'm trying not to die here, Falcio,' he shouted back, kicking out hard at the second woman, who was now grabbing at him with her bare hands. 'You know, Ethalia, this Awe of yours would be helpful anytime now.'

'I . . . can't . . . not yet . . .'

I sidestepped, letting my opponent's thrust go by me, and wrapped my arm around her blade, praying the sleeve of my Inquisitor coat would protect me, then smashed the mace down hard close to the guard. The blade broke off, vastly reducing the weapon's reach.

I sneaked a look at Ethalia. Her eyes were closed, her face taut with concentration. I glanced at the captive Saint, hoping against hope that perhaps he might have freed himself somehow, but he simply hung limp from the chains.

The woman attacking me dropped the hilt and instead locked her hands around my neck. Instantly my windpipe felt the crushing pressure. Damn, but these people are hellish strong.

A choke hold requires leverage, and I broke hers by bringing both my arms up between her hands, trapping her forearms under my armpits and driving my right heel into each knee in quick succession. I stepped back and let her fall forwards, both her knees shattered, yet still she crawled towards me, that same unearthly smile on her face. 'I am the God's Needle,' she said. 'His will calls me forth.'

'I'm Falcio,' I said, bringing the mace down on her skull. 'And a terrible fear of death commands me.' I shouted to the others, 'Get in close around Ethalia form a circle.'

'Watch your left!' Kest shouted and I swung round just in time to see the other cleric coming at me. I'd expected a weapon, but instead he threw the contents of his flask at me I couldn't imagine what pure Adoracia would do to me if it got into my face and I threw myself backward and sideways, falling into one of the pillars. The liquid splashed over the ground at my feet.

Hells! Just what I need, to become even crazier than I already am- But before the cleric could try again I knocked the flask out of his hand with the mace and drove my foot into his knee. I don't think I broke it, but the pain on his face told me he wasn't going to try to get close to me again.

At least you're not immune to pain, Admorteo.

I drew back inside Ethalia's circle. A grunt from Kest drew my attention. I turned and saw that he'd downed his opponent but he had a nasty wound on his forehead and blood was dripping into his eyes. Around us I counted five of the God's Needles either dead or so badly wounded all they could do was drag themselves on the floor towards us.

That still left seven. 'Hey Kest,' I said.

He wiped the blood from his eyes with his right arm even as he drove his mace into his opponent's head, smashing his eye. 'Yes, Falcio?'

'How would you rate our odds now?'

He reversed the mace and plunged the stick end into his opponent's other eye. 'I'd rather not say. I was rather hoping, this being a holy place, a miracle might be forthcoming.'

'Saint Laina's tits!' Brasti shouted and I heard a clanging sound as his knife hit the floor. His hand was now covered in blood. 'That's my draw hand, you bastard,' he said, kicking out at a man who'd lost half his jaw and didn't look at all bothered about it.

'There is no Saint Laina any more, Brasti,' I reminded him.

Kest's eyes narrowed as he worked through our chances. 'Then we need another Saint, Falcio, because they're about to swarm us.'

'Ethalia,' I said softly, not even sure if she could hear me, 'it has to be now.'

I could hear her laboured breathing for a few brief instants as the God's Needles, their victory clearly in sight, rushed as one towards us. Then I heard a long, slow exhalation and felt my legs fall out from under me. For a moment I thought one of the God's Needles had somehow got behind me and hamstrung me, but then I felt the weight inside me: a heavy sadness made from my own anger, my own need for violence. Tears of regret filled my eyes as I sank down, barely able to muster the strength to check on Kest and Brasti, who were on their knees too, also afflicted and then I heard the sounds of our enemies falling to the ground. They gazed up at Ethalia, standing behind me, and their eyes, moments before filled with madness and lust, had suddenly turned soft and uncertain, begging forgiveness. Then I looked at the woman I'd loved and lost, standing in the centre of the circle and shining white as the sun. What I felt in my heart was, I knew, shared by every one of us in that room: we were in awe of her.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE.

The Escape

I don't know quite how long we stayed that way, all of us kneeling, bound by Ethalia's Awe, but after a while I felt it fade enough that I could get back to my feet. Kest and Brasti followed.

'The God's Needles don't seem to be moving,' Brasti remarked.