“Do not speak of the Cathedral brother. Not even here,” Malefic hissed in the other’s ear. “Unless there is some other ‘holy society’ to which you refer?”
Still, he found himself thinking about Rontu’s words.
Perhaps for the same reason, he slightly loosened his hold after that last, hard squeeze.
“He could be an asset,” he commented next. “To the cause.”
Rontu shook his head. “N-n-no. No!”
“Why not?” Malefic demanded, tightening his fingers more.
“U-u-unstable,” the Obeah gasped. “Inherently so––”
“Howunstable?”
“D-d-deadly. Volcanic. None has made it past their twenty-fifth year––”
“Cananyof the Obeah see him?” Malefic demanded.
Rontu looked confused, then alarmed. “N-n-no.”
“How many?”
“Some.” The pale, bony fingers tightened without mercy and the Obeah groaned. “Maybe four… no, five, of my caste. Including the Obeah Regis––”
“Who never leaves the Sanctum,” Malefic muttered. Another thought occurred to him. “Could he be seen by the Regis from a distance? From his hole in the ground?”
Rontu again looked confused. When Malefic shook him by the throat, he sputtered out words. “N-no. No. He could not. It would need an audience… him… your son––”
“Which of the others can see as well as you, brother?” Malefic asked, his voice dangerously smooth. Cajoling. Silky. “I need names.”
Rontu nodded quickly. “Yes. Of course. I can give you––”
“Today,” Malefic cut in. “You will give them to me today.”
He gauged the black eyes. Rontu’s face looked rodent-like to him now. Cornered. Afraid, but still crafty, cunning. If Obeah had primals, would Rontu’s be a rat, Malefic wondered?
He decided it would be.
“And?” he prompted. “Members of your caste would see him, and what? Run hysterical to the Ethnarch? Hold a meeting of others to verify? Declare him unfit to live?”
“––To reach adulthood,” Rontu managed in a gasp, holding up a hand in a silent plea for mercy. “But you misunderstand. His aberrations will show, even to non-Obeah. He will be unstable by the time he leaves adolescence… perhaps before. Even if an exception were made, precautions taken, those precautions would of necessity be extreme, Malefic. Grotesque for one of your illustrious bloodline. He would spend his life drugged and imprisoned. Likely insensate for the majority of his lifespan. How would deathnotbe preferable to such a life?”
But the Lord of the Black Tower was still thinking.
Thinking about what this could mean.
Remembering the old stories. Fragments of them, at least.
He would need to read more.
He would need toknowmore, not merely guess, nor read between the lines of what arrogant, cunning scholars like Rontu deigned to tell him. He would definitely need better sources, not the children’s tales he’d learned in his youth.
He must consult the family libraries, not only the vast library that took up an entire tower of the eastern outer wall of the Black Tower, but those in other parts of the world. He would also need access to texts which had been outlawed for centuries, whichnow mostly resided only in vaults guarded by the Obeah and their many servants inside the Sanctum. Malefic’s own foolish ancestors had even contributed to those vaults, although they had held back some of the family knowledge, rather than turn it over in the Tyrenus Decree.
Malefic knew, from a very distant memory of reading he had done on the subject in school, that phasing was only a fraction of what a wyverm ignis,also known ascaleum ignisin some of the older texts, could reportedly do.
But yes, most of what he remembered fell into the realm of fairy tale, of myth.
