Barbara shrugged and pulled out a set of keys. “If you think it helps...”
To their surprise, she led them back into the sacristy, where she moved a shelf behind which there was a wooden panel secured with two heavy padlocks.
“When you said vault,” Seraphina said, “I was thinking of a crypt under the chancel.”
“Oh no, our church wasn’t built like that. It doesn’t have a burial vault. This was built in the wall specifically to hold the relic.”
She removed a small, ornate box and handed it over to Rune. The moment he opened it, the room was filled with a minty aroma. The three of them breathed in deeply, feeling like their lungs were being cleared.
“Depending on who is holding it, it smells different,” said Barbara. “When I hold it, for instance, it smells like rosemary. But, as I said, that’s all it does.”
“Yes,” Seraphina said. “I read an entry in the academy ledger from fifty years ago, when Saint Nikolaus’ patella was last brought to Krähenstein for study. It said it gives off a pleasant miasma, but there were no other notes. It was indeed classified as a lesser relic.”
Rune nodded. “I would like to study it myself, nonetheless. If you will allow it, Barbara.”
“Of course. You are the weaver, you know bones better than anyone. I just ask that you don’t take it out of the sacristy. This is for Father Johann.” She crossed herself. “Because he was so protective of it.”
“May I ask for another favor?”
Barbara motioned for him to go on.
“The lattices that were used to poison your wells. Do you still have them?”
Barbara inhaled sharply. “We do. We put them in a box and locked the box in an empty storage room, so no one would accidentally come across it. I can bring them if you want, but I must warn you, we haven’t touched them. Not once. They might make the sickness worse, or who knows, kill on the spot.”
“I will be careful.”
Barbara nodded and went to bring the poisonous lattices.
Seraphina sat at the table, chin in hand, observing Rune’s shadow as he took the relic out of the box and turned it this way and that.
“Who are you?” she asked, lost in thought.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Never mind.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A part of him lived in these pages even if she couldn’t read them.
The smell of the sacristy turned from mint to magnolia when Seraphina touched Saint Nikolaus’ relic. She held it in the palm of her hand, feeling its weight and waiting to see if anything else might happen. Except that she enjoyed smelling the scent it gave off, she didn’t sense any significant change in her body or mind. A relic could affect its wearer, the wearer’s surroundings, or specific people the wearer wanted to influence.
“It is a linen disk stitched in a radial pattern,” Rune interrupted her thoughts. He was studying one of the poisonous lattices, tracing the pattern with his finger. “Imagine a wagon wheel where each spoke ends in a tiny barb. The concentric ring nearest to the rim carries crowded nodes, and the inner ring is linked to it through cross-stitches.”
Seraphina set the relic into its box and tried to picture the lattice as Rune was describing it.
“And the keybone?” she asked.
“Off-center, fixed with a purple knot.”
“If I would have to guess, there’s no kill-stitch.”
“You would be guessing right.”
The keybone was, in fact, the keystone of a lattice, and it was the biggest bone shard and the most significant, which decided the behavior of the lattice. For a medical lattice, for instance, a weaver would choose a shard coming from a relic that had been proven to have healing effects, and support it with smaller shards from similar relics. The keybone directed the power, the supporting bones carried it, and the geometry of the pattern shaped it. A kill-stitch was added – a contrasting thread, usually red, that cut across the working lines and could be easily pulled with a firm tug to snap those lines and shut off the pattern. Thiswas in case the lattice backfired and needed to be turned off quickly.
“So just undo the whole thing and be done with it. Break them both, and they won’t cause harm anymore.”
