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Silas Octakiseron was dead.
The assembled nobility of the Eighth House watched as the skeleton-festooned monolith that had couriered the Master Templar and his cavalier home in paired marble sarcophagi slowly drifted back into the void and towards its final delivery.
When the last gleam from the Seat of the Emperor ’s hull could no longer be discerned among the stars, two dozen templars turned away from the polarized windows at the apse of the Cathedral of Joy. They blinked for a moment in the brightness of the hallowed halls, a vast and geometric edifice built of pristine white plex, irradiated by ten thousand years of ceaseless magnesium lighting.
There were a few moments of awkward shuffling. The only sound was the rustle of heavily bleached fabrics.
“There’ll be a conclave, of course,” said someone.
“It would be graceless to make assumptions-”
“-died without heirs, try not to be a simpleton-”
“-you would go and say something as tactless as-”
“-only a reformist would take twelve hundred years of precedent and conveniently forget-”
“-you dare to accuse-”
“Enough! Brothers, sisters, please!” One voice silenced the others. “There will be no conclave. Gene selection is already underway for the new Master, and until he or she comes of age, I call for a Steward to be chosen by trial!”
Two dozen heads swiveled, and four dozen eyes narrowed.
“We’re not going to trade blows like savages,” someone guffawed.
Lydia Octella stepped up to the altar, where a huge paper book bound in faded white leather lay dustless and immaculate upon the marble. She was imposing under her spotless vestments, eschewing the conventional necromancer’s mail coat for a full suit of plate armor. Her skin, showing only on the face, was obsidian black, with voluminous curls of the same color only barely contained under a broad white cowl. She faced the remaining templars from behind the Tome.
“Do I need to quote protocol or precedence?” she said, raising an eyebrow and gesturing at the giant book. “If no one will face me in combat, then I will have a trial of the Glass.”
No one guffawed at that. Those who didn’t gasp outright were baring their artificially whitened teeth. Ezekiel Octestos, Silas’s blind, ninety-eight-year-old great-great-uncle, collapsed to the floor with a pleasant little wheeze.
“You’ve gone too far this time, Octella. This is craven even for you.”
“Would you seek to deny my claim, and be made Heretic?” Lydia said, standing tall beneath her thick white hood.
Two dozen heads turned away. The great and the good of the House of the Eighth said no more. One by one, they paraded down the nave and out of the snow-blinding Cathedral in silence. A few minutes later, a pair of medics hurried in and briskly collected Octestos on a stretcher.
The trial was arranged for the next day. In matters of dogma and protocol, the Eighth could move with terrifying speed. Power here had only one currency: frozen, ruthless orthodoxy. A trial by the Glass was the ultimate expression of faith and self-righteousness, and thus the ultimate power-move. Yet the number who had attempted it through the millennia were vanishingly few, owing to the tremendous risk of mental injury.
“History suggests you will not survive with your mind intact,” said Lydia’s cavalier with a shrug, when she was told what Lydia had done.
Bova Aiglos was only three years older, but she had seen enough in her time to justify her - aha - cavalier attitude towards the coming trial. There wasn’t much of her six-foot body that wasn’t scarred, burnt, or in the case of her left ear, amputated.
“I know all about history,” said Lydia. “Are you with me?”
“Naturally,” said Bova, placidly, while she helped Lydia with her armour. “There is no risk to me. Past supplicants universally report an absence of physical danger.”
“My dashing cavalier. How selfless.”
Bova shrugged again. “I swore one flesh, not one sanity. I will be by your side while you spend the rest of your life unable to speak or feed yourself.”
“Don’t sound so hopeful,” said Lydia, chuckling despite herself. Bova was the only person in the Eighth House who had ever made her laugh.
They approached the Glass Chamber, the holiest site in the universe to a member of the Templar Order, with their game faces on. If they were in any way excited to witness the sacred mystery of the White Glass - a relic of unutterable sanctity which only the Master Templar was ordinarily allowed to approach - they betrayed not a jitter nor a goosebump.
A trio of templars waited as witnesses, watching mawkishly while the Custodians of the Chamber, in their ornate white-steel armor and helmets, read the ye olde terms of the trial, which Lydia guessed had been written a very long time ago by an insufferable, over-eager zealot. So just about anyone in the history of the House, then.
The doors swung open. Although it was called the Glass Chamber, it was in fact made of white stone - on the outside. Behind that was three feet of concrete, and another foot of lead, each layer necessitating the unbolting of a further set of large doors illuminated by carved scripture and blindfolded skulls.
Lydia and Bova stepped into a small circular room made entirely of translucent alabaster. Lit by a soft white light, it produced a wondrous effect, diaphanous and peaceful.
And there in the middle was a pedestal; the White Glass was atop.
The doors closed behind them. They looked at the Glass. Like the Chamber, it was not made of glass. Instead, it was a thin white box the size of a ledger, no more than an inch tall, composed of antique plex. From one side trailed a white cord which vanished into the floor below. And on its top could be seen the unmistakable image of a grey apple missing a single bite.
“I believe the idea is that the Glass is found inside,” said Bova, politely.
Lydia had told herself she wouldn’t react like a perfect Eighth moron, gawking and stammering and sweating from the sheer holiness. Yet she found her heart was dancing a hymnal rhythm, and not one of the slow hymns - one of the awful clap-along numbers. Bova put a hand on her shoulder.
“Courage, Lyds.”
Lydia had no choice but to roll her eyes and feign indifference in response to that. She knelt heavily on her armored knees and levered the White Glass open along the crack around its center, pushing the top half up on the hinge running along the back length. Finally, she was face to face with the true Glass: a perfect invisible rectangle of the stuff. For a moment she was confused to find that it was black, but in the next instant light broke forth with a magnificent single chord in a major key, produced by an unseen, unknowable electronic source. There again on the glass was the once-bitten apple sigil, blazing white. Lydia instantly understood the terrible sacred power of this arcane instrument that was the center of her House.
The symbol disappeared and was replaced by the much more lifelike image of a regal, feline creature that Lydia guessed to be an example of pre-Resurrection First House megafauna. The mythical beast gazed at an unseen object, while tiny icons appeared on top of it, and around the sides of the Glass.
Lydia had done more research than was healthy for her. The oldest scrolls described this lighted relic, but only now did those ancient texts begin to reveal their true meaning. Lydia recognized the grey rectangle on the lower half of the device, and using a finger gloved in plastic at the insistence of the Custodians, she found she was able to guide a small arrow across the surface of the Glass. With additional taps, she could activate its magical functions.
The situation deteriorated almost immediately. The first icon she tried produced a new image: five pubescent women in a row, arms linked around necks, and in the distance a giant copper-green statue raising something with one hand, far behind them. Everything about these women was inane, from their absurdly impractical clothing to their bizarre gestures and expressions. None of them showed any sign of being a necromancer, soldier or scholar. Lydia was involuntarily drawn to the girl on the end of line, whose arm was outstretched towards the viewer. There was something instinctively off putting about her face, and her dead apricot hair.
“What is it?” asked Bova, nervously studying Lydia’s expression from the other side of the room.
“It’s...hideous,” the necromancer whispered.
“We can retreat. There’s no shame in it,” said the cav.
“No. The trial demands I find a scripture not found before. But most of these are images of a stupid teenage girl with pink hair, or-”
She froze as she tried a new icon labelled “Picture to Burn”, and it produced… music. Now even Bova’s face was grim. Lydia flailed desperately as she tried to find a way to stop the horrendous sounds.
Forty-five minutes later she and Bova left the Glass Chamber, the blood drained from their faces, breathing hard. Lydia’s right eyelid was twitching irregularly. Bova was trying to project strength and support, but she was betrayed by an occasional involuntary moan. The three templars were waiting with smug grins.
“I have been chastised by the power of the Glass,” acknowledged Lydia, bowing her head. “I have trained all my life in the arts of the adept, I count myself foremost among the scholars of the Eighth, but I was made as naught by this ordeal.”
“But were you successful in your trial?” asked a Custodian.
“I was, at great cost.” She held out a piece of flimsy, where she had transcribed a line of text she had finally found among the reams of nonsense under an icon stylized like an envelope. It read:
I can’t believe Kayla wore the same top as me and wouldn’t change. I saw it first.
“Most holy Writ,” confirmed the Custodian with a small bow. Then, turning to the assembled templars: “Lydia Octella has passed the trial of the Glass. Hail, Steward of the Eighth!”