3.
 Kanon came to a doorway with a pair of dead, broken lamps on each side. The heavy wooden doors were bolted shut with iron from inside. On each door was the sign of a circle, with a double cross superimposed. Kanon pounded his fist on the door. A peep hole opened, revealing a startled eyeball. Then someone fumbled with the lock. "Kanon!" said the crippled little priest who pulled him inside.
Kanon embraced him briefly, feeling the ancient, brittle body in his strong arms. "Hello, Ember. Good to see you are still on duty with the Dark God."
"I never thought I'd lay eyes on you again," said the wisp in his bundle of gray rags. He nervously rubbed a bony hand through what remained of his white hair.
Kanon stood, arms akimbo, and looked around at the chapel. The main cathedral was downtown, and the great churches of mosaic and stained glass were in the wealthy neighborhoods among the pyramids. Here, in the old town, where the poor and the rats co-inhabited their streets with rats and unmen, this chapel was the best one could do in the service of Almighty. The walls dripped with ages of wax from melted candles. The vault smelled musty and fetid. Water dripped in the eternal niche, sacred to Him. His face glowered from a single large painting in a gilt frame over the main altar—a foreboding, bearded face, with eyes that bored deep to instill anguish. Dozens of black candles, in all sizes and thicknesses, flickered on the altar slab.
"I have only hours," Kanon said. "I need the key."
"Don't do it," the old man said, tugging at his sleeve.
"I don't have time to argue." Kanon's voice rose and reverberated in the peaked apse. Wind blowing through small, barred high windows made a faint keening sound, like a choir humming.
The old man motioned grudgingly and beckoned for Kanon to follow. "What is yours, you shall have," the priest said. "You left this evil with me for safe keeping, and I prayed you would not ever ask for it again."
Kanon did not answer. He'd spent ten months, which had seemed like ten years, unjustly imprisoned for an alleged involvement in theft and murder. Now he had returned to claim his own.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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