Chapter 106 – The Grand Sanctum

Some recent law had made the Great Library remove all the modern maps of ‘secure buildings’ like Parliament and the Grand Sanctum, but Mirian used the trick she’d learned in Torrviol of scouring old, disorganized shelves for outdated editions. Sure enough, no one had bothered pulling every book in the basement stacks, and she was able to find a very boring treatise on historic architecture that had maps to go along with it. The Akanan Embassy was too new to get this treatment, but the Grand Sanctum was older than even the Second Prophet, so there was a lot written about it.

In a violation of one of her deeply held ethical beliefs, Mirian simply tore the pages she needed out of the book and folded them up in her pocket. She winced as she did it, but it was so much more efficient, and then there would be no risk the librarian would realize the mistake and refuse to lend the book out.

She next found an onerous looking tome on the Fourth Prophet that Arenthia had mentioned, but she hadn’t been able to locate up in Cairnmouth. It was written in archaic Cuelsin, which made it a pain to read or even skim. She ended up borrowing it just so she could spread the misery of deciphering it out over the course of a few more days.

Mirian next spent some time eating lunch across the river from the Grand Sanctum, using an eagle eye spell to watch people come and go. There was robust security outside the entrance, but it also had hundreds of people going and leaving every hour, including whole gaggles of pilgrims and faithful. There was a daily sermon, too. Getting in would be easy.

It was sneaking into the secure areas in back that would be significantly harder.

She went to a tailor’s shop.

“My brother just joined the Order as an acolyte,” she said. “I wanted to get him another set of robes to wear. How long would that take to make?”

“How sweet,” the woman who ran the shop said, paging through her orders.

“Well, and that way he can wash them more regularly.” Mirian cleared her throat. “You know.”

The woman snorted, stifling a laugh. “Looks like it’ll take about two days. Do you have his measurements?”

“We’re identical twins,” she said, then held still as the woman measured her. She thanked her, then left.

She spent the rest of that day and the next analyzing the wards around the Grand Sanctum. It was tedious, but at least this part of the plan she’d only have to do once. Then, she went to one of the daily sermons, just so she could get a better sense of the layout. There was a big difference between looking at a blueprint and being in a place.

The huge cave the Grand Sanctum was built into had been shaped by thousands of years of devout hands. Stalactites and stalagmites had been carved into beautiful totems paying tribute to the Saints, while the walls of the cave had been carefully chiseled and sculpted into reliefs of the Elder Gods creating Enteria, and then fighting for its preservation.

Walking into it was awe inspiring. The walls of the cave in the main sanctum were some 200 feet tall, and so the reliefs of the Gods hiding among the carved stalactites made it seem like she was being watched by giants as she entered, especially because the flickering torchlight that illuminated the cavern cast moving shadows on them.

Here, Eintocarst led a group of monstrous beasts forward holding his blazing lantern. There, Shiamagoth held his arms in front of a group of cowering humans, shielding them from a colossal creature. Even Carkavakom was depicted, razing an entire city to the ground. Mirian had always hated depictions of that God. His cloak of skulls and faces locked in endless screams had disturbed her as a child, going even beyond the usual disturbing imagery that the Elder Gods were shown with. But, it was appropriate enough for a deity associated with law and fear.

Of course, it was the Ominian whose statue stood tall behind the altar, impaled by a dozen blades, but unbroken. Upon his head was the crown of laurels, carved in malachite. Interspersed in the stone laurels were torches that burned green, which made the Ominian’s head glow with an eldritch looking halo. Professor Seneca probably knew what sort of chemistry trick they were using to get that result.

Mirian took her seat on one of the benches as the crowds filtered in. The benches were also carved directly out of the cave’s limestone, polished by a thousand years of use.

She let her eyes wander around the room, ignoring the people around her. Two Luminate Guards dressed in ceremonial armor stood by the entrance, and another two by the door behind the altar. If her maps were correct, that back passage led to the Eight Shrines that pilgrims visited—and also to the holy vaults.

Around the cavern, there were openings at different heights. Once, they had been connecting caves, but they had long since turned into balconies and halls. A few of those caves opened up by the floor, where they led to the living quarters and prayer rooms of the Luminates who lived in the Grand Sanctum. That network of tunnels and rooms was complicated, as it was in three interconnecting layers, and since the construction had followed the pattern of the cave network, the passages constantly switched among the levels. Navigating that was possibly more annoying than even the Torrviol Underground.

And yet, the maps seemed to indicate that it was possible to get to the vault from those rooms as well, and it would be easier.

Mirian had torn out two divination spells from her book so she could keep them in her coat. She started with her focus though. As the sermon began, her gaze unfocused as she meditated, letting her soul-sense cast out into the room.

There were indeed runes laid about throughout the room. They were on doorways, at the base of the statues, and in the altar. They were embedded in the floor, and hanging from the artistically carved stalactites. Their signal felt… weak, though. It seemed to her they’d been poorly maintained, like how an uncharged ward would leak power away until it became inert.

Mirian risked channeling the divination spell detect nyelu resonance. She’d chosen it because anti-divination wards usually targeted key detection spells that were looking for a different subset of glyphs. She already knew the Ducastil alarms and wards by the entrance of the Sanctum wouldn’t pick it up. She let a soft trickle of mana flow into the glyphs of the paper. The pulse went out.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Nyelu glyphs were a mainstay static glyph, used to change the functions of flux glyphs. It was used in a large number of spells and wards. The pages that contained her own came back as positive immediately. In the rest of the room, she could begin to sense that there were nyelu glyphs behind her at the front entrance, which she already knew, but she also detected them at each of the doors.