The Fractured Orb

By Kari McKay

Leo Terra and his entourage make it into Florentia to the safety of the Inventor's stronghold. But it is a tenuous safety threatened by an escalating turmoil, for while the Followers eagerly anticipate the inevitable rise of the Renaissance,
the ever-more desperate Church clings to its waning control over the city and its people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524544676

Kari McKay

Kari McKay has a Bachelor of Arts in Honors English. The Fractured Orb is the third and last book in the Light of Orb trilogy, which begins with Painted Invisible and continues with Flight to Florence.

Book preview

Prologue

The Cathedral di Santa Maria del Fiore bustles with somber sound—the soft scuffing of leather shoes and the gentle sweep of heavy robes on marble floors, the low mumbling of many whispered prayers recited before candles quietly dripping wax onto polished altars.

The sound travels ever-upward, reaching closer and closer to the frescoed ceiling, wafting toward the plaster walls, dipping through open doorways and against closed doors until it drifts toward the threshold over which no sound escapes. Repelled as if by a continuous foul exhale, no murmur dares push into the room, though the door stands boldly ajar.

Silence dwells within the room, creating an invisible shroud tucking around the edges of the door, and though it cannot be seen, it makes itself felt. The other priests avoid the corridor, choosing to go the long way round to the stairs, rather than cut past.

Beyond the door lies a room, dustless and tidy, without any impression of who inhabits it. Nothing interrupts the basic allotment of chairs, desk, bookcase, and threadbare rug; each item could have been bought in any market fifty or so years ago, and though showing the strain of time, they have no trace of use: nothing soils their immaculate cleanliness. A small round window in the back wall is the one luxury the chamber boasts, looking out to the gorgeous waters of the Arno and in the distance, a glimpse of the majestically arched Ponte Vecchio.

The door to the hidden alcove fits seamlessly into the wall behind the carefully polished desk. If one didn’t know the trick of it, it could never be stumbled upon. The knowledge of it was left in a recessed compartment in the desk, noticeable only to one accustomed to secrets.

The walls of the alcove are doubly thick; there are no windows, only another low door leading to the back staircase the other priests refuse to use. Nothing takes focus from what happens in that space; the very air seems to still so no whimper sounds, no sigh expresses, as though a vacuum is pulling all energy, all life away from what lies outside that room.

Brother Bartolo lounges. One lean leg casually thrown over the arm of his high-backed chair, richly covered in plush lavender and gleaming in resplendent mahogany. He props his head up with his elbow placed on the other arm as he studies what is before him.

From a hook in the low ceiling runs a chain, rusted and edged in copper from age and foul moisture. The chain connects to hand and ankle restraints. A second connection is possible between the ankles so that a man may be strung up, legs and arms lifted above the torso, suspended as though in midfall. Only a few inches of air lies between the man and the pool of his own blood beneath him.

Brother Bartolo has learned men find it unnerving to see their own blood drip, dripping out of their bodies.

The breath of the man in chains comes in ragged gasps. His blurry eyes no longer focus. He has not said a word, even under threat of having his tongue cut out—an ironic torture, Brother Bartolo thinks to himself with a silent chuckle, and one he would reconsider, were information his only aim.

The man is the enemy, a lowly butcher with a meager income and slovenly family, who dared to take up with the Followers and boldly defy Brother Bartolo, preferring to experience pain rather than give up his Fellows. Brother Bartolo cannot help but be fascinated at the glory and the utter futility of such loyalty.

Continue, he says.

The hangman, his dark clothes so spattered with blood as to be dyed with it, looks at the priest. He cannot speak.

But he can feel, Brother Bartolo reminds. Continue.

The hangman presses on until a few moments later when he again pauses and looks to the priest.

Brother Bartolo smacks his hand hard on the arm of the chair. What now? he cries.

He’s dead.

The priest squints, leans in closer to the man, then gives a soft sigh. Ah, so he is. He stands up and straightens his black robe, pushes back his shoulder-length golden blonde hair, and gives a defeated smile. He did well.

Brother Bartolo’s ice-blue eyes flicker quickly over the hangman before he impatiently gestures to him to tidy this all up. Only when the torture is over does he find the tinny smell of blood unpalatable.

They bested the priest. They bested the cardinal. They escaped our ambush on the mountain and eluded the men following them when they entered the city. They still have the orb, and we are approaching the time when the power of it cannot be undone, when the change in the lives of men will be irreversible. Will men be swayed by the goodness of God or the wickedness of reason? Brother Bartolo extols, already deep in conversation though he has just entered Isidor’s snug chamber-cum-library.

Must they be mutually exclusive? Isidor asks, looking up from the book he holds on his lap. Are we certain this is not part of God’s better plan?

Better plan? Brother Bartolo asks, stepping over a book here, lifting his robe to keep it from a dusty volume there until he finds a comparatively empty space to stand and face Isidor.

To compel men to better themselves, to make them understand for themselves His wisdom and His goals, to make them accept His better judgment, not just because He commands it, but because it is what they know to be true. Would not an educated obedience better endure than a blind one?

Brother Bartolo meets the young priest’s eyes. Brutality shines in their icy depths, aching to release itself on the delicate naivety of Isidor, but instead, he bursts into laughter, mirth clumping off his lips, creasing his brow in perplexed