Lynn Viehl - Darkyn 1 - If Angels Burn (v1.1) by If Angels Burn

Author:If Angels Burn [Burn, If Angels]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Published: 2011-07-31T22:32:08+00:00

Half a world away, in the bowels of La Lucemaria, novitiate John Keller emerged from the cubiculum where he had been sealed in for eight hours without food or light. His watch and personal possessions had been confiscated his first day of training, and he could no longer tell if it was dawn, noon, or midnight.

Waiting for him was his novitiate master, Brother Ettore Orsini.

“Ah, Brother Keller.” Orsini allowed him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light of the oil lamps that illuminated the gallery. “Did you have a restful night?”

John glanced back at the cubiculum, which was one of the smaller family tombs of La Lucemaria. The twenty loculi niches in its walls had all been stuffed with corpses on top of bones of other corpses, so he had slept on a mound of rotted linen in the center of the floor. It had felt like curling up on a cold stone postage stamp, but it was not the worst place he had slept in since beginning his training. On one memorable occasion, he had been forced to sleep in one of the stone sarcophagi, on top of a dusty corpse. With the lid on.

Part of his training was the rule of silence; John was not permitted to speak except to recite his daily paternosters, and those he murmured in a whisper. To answer a direct question, he either nodded or shook his head.

John nodded.

Orsini’s thin lips stretched into the peculiar grimace that passed as a sneer or a smile; John had never been sure which. “Do you wish to stop the training?” He asked John that question before every session.

John couldn’t move naturally anymore. Strained muscles, lacerations, and aching bones made pain his constant companion. A mass of scabs covered the soles of his feet; he was not allowed to wear shoes and some of the stone floors had unexpected sharp edges.

Sometimes he forgot the pain while praying. Orsini required him to recite 148 paternosters each day, with John counting off the number said at the end of each prayer.

“Fourteen paternosters each hour,” the novitiate master instructed, “and eighteen for the glory of God at vespers. Then thirty when you wake each morning for the living, and thirty before you sleep for the dead.”

Hunger gnawed at John as constantly as the pain. The food he was given to eat had been gradually reduced over time; he was now subsisting on a single slice of bread and a small cup of water each day. He knew the day ahead would push him to the limits of his endurance, and he wanted nothing more than to make it stop.

Orsini, ever vigilant for any sign of weakness, stepped closer. His voice took on a soft, understanding tone. “You have come far, Brother Keller, but you are tired, and hurt. No one will castigate you for giving up and choosing the path of the helot.” He waited a few moments. “Your answer, Brother?”

John slowly shook his head.

Cardinal Stoss had

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.