The faintest brush of color limned the walls, shading blackness into a rainbow of subtle grays. The tunnel down which they walked split at a crossroads, branching off in five directions, but Diocletia led them toward the light, toward the whistling wheeze.
“God save us,” said Gerwita faintly, pressing up behind Rosvita as the tunnel opened into a cavern no larger than a village church, the rock walls marked with odd striations, ribbons of color painted onto the rock.
Here, the nuns had constructed a crude living quarters. Four pallets lay along one wall, three neatly made with feather bedding and one heaped up untidily. At the single table and bench a thin woman wearing tattered nun’s robes sat fretfully twisting her hands; she did not look up as they entered. Three medium-sized chests, enough to store clothing or a small library of scrolls, sat beneath the table. A dozen assorted pots and amphorae lined the far wall, half lost in shadow, although Rosvita found it remarkable that she could see at all. Two oil lamps rested on a rock shelf in the cavern wall, but neither one was lit.
“What is making the light?” Hanna murmured.
“What is making that noise?” asked Fortunatus.
The untidy pallet stirred, like a beast coming alive. “Have they come safely?”
“God be praised!” Rosvita rushed heedlessly across the cavern to kneel beside the pallet. “Mother Obligatia! God is merciful! You are still alive.”
“Sister Rosvita!” A painfully thin hand emerged, shaking, from under a blanket. Rosvita grasped it, careful to hold lightly so that she might not crush those ancient bones. “I had prayed to see you again, but I confess I did not hope that God would bless us so. We are prisoners here, but against what enemy we do not know. Have you come to rescue us?”
Rosvita laughed bitterly. Obligatia looked so ill that it was impossible to understand how someone so frail could still live except through stubbornness, a sense of duty, or the simple inability to give up hope. Age had worn her skin to a dry fragility; a touch might crumble it to dust.
The others ventured cautiously into the cavern, spreading out so they wouldn’t feel cramped, glancing around nervously, looking for the source of the light and that constant wheezing whistle. Sister Diocletia leaned down beside the seated woman and spoke to her in an undertone. It was Sister Petra, the librarian and scribe. She looked so changed, as though half of her soul had fled, leaving the rest behind in a broken vessel.
“Pray tell me what has transpired, Mother Obligatia. Why have you fled the convent? Where are the others?”
“There are things we never dreamed of that still walk the Earth although they are mercifully hidden to our sight most of the time. Pray that it remain so. We have seen—” That strong voice faltered. Her body was weak, but her gaze remained sharp and solid, fixed on Rosvita. “We have seen terrible things, Sister.”
“Look!” said Hanna from the other side of the cavern. “It’s the lichen that gives off a glow.”
“I have gone over the events so many times that I begin to feel as though I have lived through them a hundred times or more. Yet first, Sister Rosvita, tell me. We sent poor Paloma, that good girl, to Darre to seek you. Did she ever find you there?”
“God have mercy on her. She found us, but she was murdered. We had no way to send word to you. Nor do we know who killed her, or why. We can only guess.”
The sigh that escaped Mother Obligatia’s lips whispered out like an echo to the rhythmic wheeze that serenaded them: schwoo schwhaa schwoo schwhaa. “I feared as much. I knew she would not abandon us. I pray she rests at peace in the Chamber of Light with Our Mother and Father of Life.” She murmured a prayer, and Rosvita joined her, the words falling easily from her tongue. How many times had she said the prayer over the dead?
Too many.
“After that a cleric came. She sought access to our library, saying she came from the schola in Darre to examine old chronicles. We had no reason to distrust her.”
“You do not think she came to study old chronicles in the library?” Rosvita asked, rearranging the bolster that allowed the old woman to lie somewhat propped up. Obligatia grunted in pain as Rosvita helped her sit up.
“The good sisters move me frequently,” she said, “yet still I have sores from being bedridden. Yet is it not a just punishment for my blindness?”
“Your blindness?”
“She called herself Sister Venia.”
Heriburg and Fortunatus had crept forward to listen.
“I recall no such cleric,” said Heriburg.
“The name seems passing familiar,” said Fortunatus. “There are so many clerics in the palace schola, but I believe a woman who went by that name served the skopos.”