***
As Ruairí wheeled Argyll through the marbled halls of the Basilica, the shouts and cries of the looters elsewhere in the building echoed overhead.
“Do you think they’ll heed your words?” said Ruairí. “They’ve had so much taken from them; it’ll be tempting to claim it all back.”
“Perhaps,” said Argyll. “But they’ll have to leave most of it here if they wish to board our ships. If they want to stay, they are welcome to it all.”
Ruairí slowed Argyll to a stop as they reached the end of the hallway. There, a steel grate in a doorway marked the entrance to a large cargo lift.
“I trust this is it?” asked Argyll. “Let’s make this quick, please? There’s still much to be done.”
“Of course,” said Ruairí. “We’ll take the tome, and we’ll be gone.”
They entered the lift, and Ruairí examined the pulley mechanism on the far end. After some fiddling, the lift lurched into motion, with ropes pulling and pushing either side. A counterweight quickly passed by as they descended deeper into the darkness.
In silence they waited, until the lift slowed to a stop. There, Ruairí opened the portcullis and wheeled Argyll outside.
A thick door stood before them across a small stretch of marbled floor. The door bore no obvious locking mechanism, nor did it seem to have a keyhole. But adjacent to it, some three feet tall, was marbled column, one face of which was white and smooth. It bore an imprint of the three circles of the Trinity.
As they approached, wordlessly, Argyll handed the arch-canon’s ring to Ruairí. The Human handled it carefully and pressed it against the imprint on the column. A moment passed where this seemed to have no effect, then slowly, with a creak and a grind, the door opened.
“Is this some sort of magic?” asked Argyll.
“A lost kind, yes,” replied Ruairí, pocketing the ring, and removed a lit torch from beside the column. “And inside, we shall find a great many more lost things.”
The door revealed to them what seemed like a cross between a storage room and a museum. Two silver suits of armour stood in attention at the entrance, with piles of neatly packed boxes filling shelves either side. Immediately in front of them, a parchment depicting a map hung behind a glass case.
“I don’t recognise those lands,” said Argyll, as they passed it.
“The Church would prefer to keep it that way,” said Ruairí. “Those are the lands to the east, where Móráin was born. This vault contains a great many treasures from the time of our first king, but there is one treasure in particular I seek.”
With a torch in one hand, and the handles of Argyll’s chair in the other, Ruairí forged onwards, raising the torch to examine old portraits and busts on display, but he never stopped moving.
Everything he has done was for this moment, Argyll reminded himself. Not for loyalty to myself. Not for belief in our cause. But for these treasures.
They took a corner, passing many more shelves of many more books, when Ruairí came to an abrupt stop. Trembling now, he raised his torch up, and pointed ahead.
There, at the end of the room, was a display case containing a red velvet cushion. And on that cushion, sat a book, bound in black leather with golden pages within.
“The Truth,” whispered Ruairí. He let go of Argyll’s chair. “Written by the hand of Móráin the First Himself.”
“That’s often how autobiographies are written, yes,” said Argyll. Sure, he was intrigued by this Truth he had heard so much about, but it was not his greatest concern right now.
Ruairí did not respond to Argyll’s comment. He left Argyll in the middle of the chamber and dashed towards the display case. He hung his torch on a nearby sconce, and with the butt of his firearm, broke open the glass. Its shatter echoed through the room.
“Finally,” he said, taking the tome into his hands. “The Truth shall be known to all, and the Church shall no longer have power over us.”
Argyll sighed, slightly amused by how Ruairí’s body seemed to be convulsing with excitement.
The Human opened the first page.
“‘It is against the advice of the Church that I recount the things I have seen,’” he read, “‘but I do not believe truths as important as these should be forgotten. It is my wish that this account is recorded and locked away, so none may ever look upon these pages. But I do not wish for them to be lost. The truths of our existence, no matter how terrible, should never be lost.’”
“Terrible?” asked Argyll, leaning forward. “That’s not what I was expecting.”
“Yes,” muttered Ruairí. He flicked through the pages. “He describes how he came to power among the disparate Human clans of the eastern lands, and the visions Seletoth showed him. Then he describes the voyage…” He flicked forward a few pages. “… the settlements they established and their struggles with the natives.”
Argyll scoffed. “Not dissimilar from your other history books then. Now please, can we go?”
Ruairí didn’t respond, seemingly absorbed entirely by what he read. Argyll went to speak again but held his tongue. This was an important moment for the Human, he reasoned, so best to let him have it. For a few minutes, anyway.
Ruairí continued to read, lips moving silently. Every so often, he’d shake his head in disbelief and flick the page. Or often he’d flick the page back, to re-read something, then move a few pages forward.
Then, abruptly, with the turn of another page, Ruairí screamed.
This was no scream of fright, or of excitement, but a disturbing, high-pitched wail that resounded through the room. With the tome still clutched in his hands, and his eyes locked onto it, Ruairí fell to his knees.
“Nooo!” he cried, prolonging that howling syllable until his voice broke. His face contorted into a twisted expression; his eyes shut tight and his mouth fell ajar. He gasped, trying to catch a breath that would not come, and when it did, he inhaled with another maddening note. Once his lungs were full, he shrieked again, louder this time, with the faint impression of no-no-no-no behind the inhuman screech.
“Ruairí!” yelled Argyll, still stationary and seated across the room. “What’s wrong?”
But only a deranged barrage of sobs answered him, which spluttered out of Ruairí’s heaving chest.
“They… found Him,” he wheezed, his voice cracking. “In the Glenn….”
“Ruairí,” said Argyll, in a softer tone now. He held out a hand. “This was a mistake. Put the book back and let’s return to the others.”
“In that valley,” whimpered Ruairí. “They found no god.”
