The Silver Knight by Kate Cotoner Page A

out there in the darkness for a long time before he went back inside the church. His concern for his lover's safety became anxiety and then fear. A thought, horrible and impossible, nagged at his mind. Sufyan ignored it. He stood in the middle of the nave, the lamplight flickering around him, and waited.
    A sound roused him—the slow, steady drip of water. Sufyan blinked, looking around, and then his gaze fell on the puddle beneath the font. There seemed to be less depth to it now, as if the water had found someplace to run to—somewhere lower than the church floor...
    Sufyan cursed and strode forward, the bones and skull shifting against his chest as he held on to them. He stood over the grille set into the pavement and looked down. Holy water trickled between his feet and drained away into the chamber cut beneath the church.
    “A crypt,” Sufyan muttered. “By God, you ignorant fool!”
    He searched the nave again, this time looking for a door. He found it built into the wall within the chapel with the red-paned window. Sufyan curled his fingers tight around the lamp and held it high as he descended into darkness so intense and still it felt almost solid.
    The narrow staircase ended in a small room, dank and cold, with wall niches hewn from the rock. On each ledge, several skulls peered out from where they lay scattered upon a jumble of bones. Sufyan had seen such an arrangement before in the churches of the Orthodox Christians, and the sight did not seem odd to him. He deposited the few remaining bones of the blood-fiend in an empty niche and then stood straight. His head brushed the roof of the crypt, and he felt a splash of water. Looking up, he saw the grille above him, and through it, the font.
    A whisper stirred the air. Sufyan glanced around the crypt, shining the lamplight over the heaps of bones before he realized something was wrong. In the Orthodox Church, he recalled, the skulls of the dead monks were marked with their names and dates. These skulls were smooth and white, unrecorded and carelessly piled as if they were nothing more than rubbish.
    The bite began to throb again. Sufyan cursed it and swung around, the lamp held in front of him, as he advanced into the darkest corner of the crypt. Something lay against the wall—something long, draped with a sheet. As he got closer, Sufyan felt cold fear worm up his spine. The cloth was a shroud, and beneath it lay a body.
    He didn't want to touch it. He didn't want to see. He knew he should turn from this place and go, run up the stairs and slam the door behind him, run to the village and take his horse and flee far, far from this church—but Sufyan couldn't turn away. Not now. Not yet. He had to know, even if the truth destroyed him.
    His hand was steady as he reached out and took hold of the shroud. Sufyan pulled it away from the body and let it fall to the ground. He gasped.
    The lamp's flame burned brighter, its golden light flickering over the cold, beautiful features of the effigy on top of the tomb. Sufyan stared at the life-sized polished stone figure, taking in every detail—the delicate tracery of mail, the folds of the surcoat, and the emblem of the serpent and the oak tree upon his breast; the perfect mouth and the pointed chin; the sword held in front of him and his helm at his feet, crossed at the ankle.
    The mason who had made the effigy had been a master of his craft. Sufyan had never seen anything so exquisite. Sorrow overwhelmed him as he read the scrolling Latin inscription alongside the knight's body.
    Everard de Montparnasse. Died in the year of Our Lord 1099 .
    Sufyan brushed gentle fingers over the effigy, letting his touch linger on its lips, its cheek. “Everard,” he whispered, his voice catching with emotion, “I didn't understand when you told me that you had darkness within you. If only I'd realized—if only I'd known... oh, my angel, I never would have killed you.”
    He leaned down and kissed the cold, pale lips of the