Therefore.

“Let those who aid this patricide be cursed. May they be cursed in their towns and in their fields. May they be cursed in their cattle and in their flocks. May they be cursed in their children and in their graveyards, in their granaries and in the work of their hands. Those who do not obey this decree, those who offer aid and comfort, will disappear from the Earth. They will be swallowed by fire and swept away by the sea. In waking and sleeping, in eating and drinking, in both bread and wine will they be cursed. They are bound by the chains of anathema. They are exiled from the Circle of Unity.”

She extended a hand. Brother Petrus, standing at her left, handed her the trio of scrolls on each one of which the ban was recorded. These she offered to Lord Berthold, who took them without a word of comment and without any change in his mask of stone.

‘As these tapers are extinguished, so shall the light of those who disobey us be extinguished and cast into the darkness.”

Each cleric knelt and ground out the flame against the floor. The church drowned in darkness, but for the single lamp burning behind the holy mother who rules over all, skopos and guardian of God’s Truth.

The Abyss must be dark like this. Black and empty to the eye but swarming with the pitiful breath of souls who wonder, hopelessly, what will come next. Because, of course, nothing will come next. They are doomed to fall forever. That is the true meaning of the curse.

She savored the silence. Every soul there was cowed, as they should be, wondering what power she had that she might raise. The skopos was most powerful of all, and it was necessary for them to remember that.

“Come, Jonas,” said Berthold quietly behind her. “Wolfhere and the others should have come now with the horses from the stable. Let’s go.”

Something about the tone of his voice bothered her. “You will deliver the decree, Lord Berthold,” she said in a low voice, not wanting her words to carry. “Others will follow on your trail, in case you do not survive the journey. Lest you think to shirk your duty to the skopos.”

Out in the nave and aisles, no one had yet gained enough nerve to act or speak.

“I will survive the journey. The Eagle will guide us.”

“So he will. He was spared for that purpose. As were you.”

“Think you so?” he asked defiantly, and she would have had him scourged for his disrespect, but then it would be all to do over again. No one else had heard. This one time, she would have to let it go.

He rose and, with Jonas following at his heels like a dog, walked down the center of the nave until he and his companion faded into the gloom between the ranks of clerics. She heard the door open, but not close. As they waited they all of them heard a few distant comments, the cheerful ring of harness, and caught a glimpse of a lantern raised high and moving out of sight as the riders left the courtyard on the first stage of their long journey.