Beneath Ceaseless Skies #112

by Christian K. Martinez

  “Auden speaks of passes being closed, and he talks of troop movements, but always vaguely and always to imply they must remain longer.” Mauro pursed her lips. “What did this knight want to know?”

  “Nothing in particular.” I tried to recall the things we had spoken of. “He wanted to know what kind of trees they were.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him they were stone oaks. He wanted to know why I prayed to them. I told him I prayed for them.”

  Mauro smiled briefly, but there was something strained in her expression.

  “What would the knights want with the trees?” I asked. “Do you think they were sent here to cut them down?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “That must certainly be it. Someone has sent them to see if the rumors are true and we harbor the last stand. They are likely looking for some pretext to hew them and float them down to the sea.”

  She spoke too quickly though, as if she was as eager to convince herself as me.

  * * *

  I was pulling weeds beside the wall in the garden when the knight found me.

  “Captain Auden wants to talk to you,” he said.

  I was so shocked to see him there that for a moment I just stared.

  He smiled as though we shared a secret. “He’s waiting for you upstairs.”

  “I need to ask the Mistress of Novices to release me. I didn’t think the knights were supposed to be—”

  “Inside the convent’s walls?” He shrugged. “He was meeting with the Mother Superior, and then he sent for me. And then they both sent me for you.”

  I followed him in a daze. Was I to be punished for speaking to him outside the convent’s walls? The knight didn’t seem worried. He walked as though his passing through the halls of the abbey was as natural as walking down the path with me between the fields.

  We went in through the courtyard, past the cloisters, and up a staircase into a part of the abbey I had never visited, then up another set of stairs and finally into a stone chamber with windows looking out over the abbey’s grounds. I realized we were in the High Tower opposite the belfry.

  There were two people in the room besides the knight who had brought me and now waited beside the door. The first was a man at the window who turned as we entered. The second, seated behind a simple wooden desk, was the Mother Superior.

  “This is the novice you were telling us about, Baiden?” The man by the window, obviously Captain Auden, stepped closer. His face was even more lined than Baiden’s, though they carried the rough white edge of scars. He walked with a limp he took no pains to hide.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are Sister Mauro’s apprentice?”

  This was from the Mother Superior. I had seen her often, from a distance, as she spoke or read on occasion at mealtime. The only time she had spoken to me directly was when I had taken my initial vows.

  “Yes, Mother Superior.” I bowed low and wished I had been able to brush more dirt from my tunic before entering.

  There was silence for a few moments, and I wondered if they were waiting for me to say more.

  “I have heard much of these stone oaks,” Auden finally spoke. “There were legends in the south, but I have never seen one. I was unaware this monastery boasted a live grove.”

  “A holdover, merely,” Mother Superior said dismissively. “I am told they once covered these hills. Most went to build the fleets of the baron who originally held these lands.”

  “I would like to see these trees,” Auden said, addressing me. “Will you show me?”

  “With the Mother Superior’s permission.”

  I looked to the Mother Superior, and it seemed she wanted to tell me something but was hesitant to, in the presence of the knights. They did not give her an opportunity though, for they both waited—Auden with crossed arms—in the doorway.

  She nodded curtly.

  * * *

  “You have been a novitiate long?” Auden asked me.

  “Twelve years, sir.”

  I stood at the foot of the trees with Baiden and Auden. The leaves drank in the afternoon light and bled it back as shafts of vermillion and gold. The oaks stretched above us like the masts of a fleet, their million tiny sails as many shades of green. It seemed on that day you could have hidden cities in their branches.

  “I had heard, but I had not credited,” Auden spoke softly. “It is no wonder your order guards this secret so jealously.”

  The two men walked among the trunks of the trees, and it soon became clear they were looking for something.

  “How long do such trees take to grow?” Auden asked me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are there saplings or seeds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His brow furrowed. “I thought you were charged with keeping the trees. I can’t imagine trees such as these need much looking after. I assumed you planted and pruned saplings and such.”

  I shook my head.

  “It might be better to ask her how long she’s had the charge of this grove, sir,” Baiden suggested.

  “How long has it been?”

  “I began this season.”

  “Which would have been,” Baiden pointed out, “just as we were passing back over the mountains and had sent word to the abbey to await our coming.”

  Auden nodded slowly. “And your Sister Mauro had cared for them in all the years before this?”

  “I believe so.”

  “They are wise old hens,” he muttered. “They put them in the care of a girl, hoping we would take no notice. And they’ve saved themselves the effort of having to lie by giving us someone who knows nothing herself.”

  “I know,” I began slowly, “that these trees were growing before your grandfather’s grandfather was a child and that you could hew at them all summer without bringing even a fourth of them down.”

  Auden raised his eyebrows.

  “You might think because we’re a house of women that you can come in and do what you want, but we’re not weak. The sisters are like these trees.” I felt my face flushing and my throat grow tight. “There are deep roots here, and I don’t care if all the western barons together decide they want to build a hundred ships. Whoever they send, you or anyone else, would have to... would have to....”

  I trailed off, the anger leaving as quickly as it had come, to be replaced with an understanding of my own impotence.

  “You’re supposed to be in the service of the Court-in-Exile,” I finished weakly, “faithful to the Departed King.”

  Over Auden’s shoulder, the lines on Baiden’s face were erased. He was laughing soundlessly.

  “Girl.” Auden shook his head. “We don’t want your trees.”

  It was my turn to stare, and I felt my face coloring again.

  Auden turned away “There is no hidden cavern,” he said to Baiden. “There is no secret passage to the mountains. They will come here, to the trees.”

  Baiden was still watching me, though.

  When Auden had satisfied himself that he had indeed found whatever it was the knights had been seeking, we walked back. Baiden fell into step beside me, and the memory of the first morning I had found him beneath the trees filled me with a sudden suspicion.

  “What kind of wine was it?” I asked him, slowing my steps.

  “What?”

  “Red? White? I don’t think you were drunk at all. You were searching the abbey’s grounds, and you needed a reason to be found where you weren’t supposed to be.” The anger was returning. “And then you needed to befriend someone who knew something about the trees, so that whatever suspicions you had could be confirmed.”

  Auden snorted but did not turn. From Baiden’s face it was clear I had been correct.

  He spread his hands. “You wouldn’t even tell me your name.”

  “You couldn’t care less about my name.” I whirled on him now, stopping him in the path. Auden paced on ahead. “I don’t know what you think is happening
here that’s so terrible, but you think because we don’t wear armor or carry a sword, because we’ve chosen a different life, you think....”

  I was running out of words again, and Baiden was smiling. He seemed to be aware of it, and aware that it was making me angrier, for it would disappear for a moment, reappear in his eyes, and then break out on his face.

  “You’re not welcome here. I don’t care what the rest of the novices say or how courteous the senior sisters think they have to be. No one wants you here.”

  His lips stopped twitching. “What do you think we’re looking for here?” he asked. “You think we’re woodsmen interested in falling a stand of particularly old trees?”

  “I don’t care who you are.”

  “Do you know what happens here at Endsummer Eve?”

  “We pray,” I muttered. “There’s an all-night vigil to greet the changing of the seasons.”

  “Is there?” He seemed genuinely interested. “And the Mother Superior and the rest of the sisters—they keep this vigil?”

  I nodded.

  “You see them?”

  “Well, no.” I was confused. “The senior sisters keep a separate vigil in the Mother Superior’s chambers.”

  “And you’ve seen them there?”

  “Of course not.” I force a stray length of hair back behind my ear, frustrated. I was angry that Baiden seemed intent on making me some kind of co-conspirator, still angrier that he had feigned friendship. “The novices remain in the main chapel.”

  “So you don’t know what happens.” He looked toward the trees when he said this. They stood like gaunt giants, their uppermost branches waving slightly in a breeze I could not feel.

  I had seen Mauro’s eyes flash when she was angry with a clumsy novice, occasionally with me. I tried to will my own to do that now. “This isn’t a coven,” I told him. “That is not a pagan grove. Are you here hunting witches, Sir Knight?”

  “I know this is not a coven,” he said mildly. “And I would think again before letting Auden hear you believed us inquisitors. But even the best among us have secrets, and at times those secrets can be a threat to even our allies.”

  He smiled again.

  “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “You won’t see us again after Endsummer.”

  He was almost right about that, as he was almost right about other things. He did not leave in the way I thought he would though: in a cloud of dust, the tramp of boots, and scraps of blue cloaks growing smaller on the road. Had he left that way, I would not have seen him go. There perhaps would have been other novices watching from the walls, but I would not have been among them.

  But he did not leave that way.

  * * *

  On Endsummer Eve, as I went to take my place with the junior sisters and the other novices gathering in the chapel for the vigil, Baiden caught my arm from a doorway as I passed.

  “Can you make some pretext to be outside when the vigil begins?” he whispered, his face close to my ear.

  “There’s a garden gate that lets out—” I began, but then pushed him away. “What are you talking about? What do you want?”

  He pressed himself further into the arched doorway as a cluster of sisters passed in the corridor.

  “Come with me,” he said when they had gone. For a moment a distillation of all the absurd stories the novices had exhausted themselves with all summer passed through my mind.

  “With you where?”

  “To the trees. You need to see what happens tonight.”

  I shook my head stubbornly.

  “I know the gate,” he said. “Be there when the service starts. Auden says I’m a fool and that you won’t come.” He grimaced. “I owe him my best blade if you don’t.”

  “You need to learn to mind your own business,” I hissed and stepped back into the corridor. If I managed to toss my hair as I turned, I cannot say it brought me no satisfaction.

  * * *

  Yet, preserve me, I found myself making some pretext of forgetting to cover the late peppers against a possible frost—there was, in fairness, a chill in the air—and venturing back to the garden as the final bell for vigil tolled. Beyond the gate Baiden, Auden, and three other knights waited in the shadow of the outer wall. Two carried huge cross-bows.

  “It seems to be a night for mutinies,” Auden said when he saw me. “An absent novice, and my own lieutenant demanding we not complete our mission until she arrives.”

  Baiden would not meet my stare.

  “What is going on?”

  “The reason we are here,” Auden said gruffly. “Something you will not soon forget, I assure you. But if you step beyond the shadow of this wall, you are bound to us. You remain silent and do as you are told for your own safety and ours. If you want to go back, go now.”

  “The doors of the chapel are locked,” I told him. “I always thought it was just symbolic. It’s too late for me to go back inside now.”

  The knights were disappearing as the dusk thickened. Only their hands and faces were visible.

  I looked at Baiden. “Why?”

  “They’re your trees.” He shrugged. “You’ve been caring for them. You should see what they are for.”

  I nodded and stepped forward. It felt for a moment as though I was striding into empty space. When I looked down it was with mild surprise to see that I had only stepped out onto the turf of the field. Baiden fastened a dark cloak around my shoulders. The others were moving across the field in silence. The cloaks mirrored the shade of the darkening evening as perfectly as though they were cut from the same cloth as the sky.

  Faintly at my back I could hear songs beginning in the chapel. Heard from outside the walls, they sounded strangely mournful, as though I was not hearing the sisters themselves but instead echoes of songs sung in that place a hundred years before, only audible now through a trick of wind and stone.

  The knights stayed off the paths as they made their way toward the grove, circling the trees far to the south and coming up through a thicket at the rear where the abbey’s land began to give way to waste at the mountains’ feet. They walked as though they had been here before, stopping in a clearing far enough from the trees to give a good view of the whole grove. Dropping to the grass, they pulled their hoods about their faces and slipped seamlessly into the night. I followed.

  Then we waited.

  I would have thought myself alone but for the sound of Baiden’s breath in the grass beside me. After a time even that faded, and the shadows among the trees before me ran together like water as darkness flowed down from the hills.

  The trees were pillars, I saw now, and wondered how I had missed it before. They held the sky. Mauro wanted them strengthened because tonight, on the boundary between summer and autumn, the sky was heaviest. If the trees failed—if I had failed—the sky would fall.

  They were growing even now in the darkness, expanding up into the black places between the stars.

  I stared upward, caught in this fancy, until I felt a light touch on my arm. White-robed figures were coming slowly up the path between the trees from the direction of the abbey. Each carried a small lamp, and though it was too far to distinguish faces, I recognized their forms as the Mother Superior, Sister Mauro, and the other senior sisters. They proceeded single-file, weaving through the mammoth trunks. When they had reached the center of the grove, they extinguished their lights.

  The night deepened and the wind shifted so that we could again hear faint singing from the abbey.

  Then there were other sounds.

  Once as I child I had surprised a flock of geese along the banks of a river. They had risen as one at my approach, and for a moment I had been overwhelmed by the movement of hundreds of wings and the confused rush of air. The noise now was something like that, but not of a sudden. It was slow, coming down from the hills at our backs like approaching footfalls. I thought of the moon in my dreams, tangled in the branches of the oaks, and I shuddered.

  The beating of wings grew l
ouder until it seemed a gale raged around us. When I felt those huge wings were right above us, I closed my eyes and dug my fingers into the roots of the grass.

  When I opened them again, the moon had indeed come to roost in the branches of my oaks.

  I could never recall afterward how many there were, but it seemed there must have been hundreds. Surely there was at least one in each tree, and those enormous trees shook like saplings when they landed among their branches. They fell from the sky like stones, huge claws gripping the branches that seemed now little more than sticks, carving the twisted wounds I had attributed to lightning strikes from years past.

  They were lovely, in the way that the funnel of a windstorm on the horizon is lovely—silent and arching. In the darkness, though now the sky was touched by a rising moon, they seemed luminous, shining in gold, silver, blue, and purple. Their scales jutted in spurs and spines from joints of leg and neck. But the wings—it seemed impossible that such gossamer sails, though they were large enough to shade the largest of the trees, could lift the bulk of such creatures.

  I found myself straining for the sound of splintering wood, and something warm burned through me in spite of my fear as I saw the oaks quake as the dragons settled to rest among them. No trees failed. No limbs fell. The perches I had spent the summer unknowingly shaping and strengthening held their burden.

  Dozens of pairs of lantern-eyes kindled in the trees as the dragons stared down at the sisters gathered below.

  The largest perched in the tallest tree at the center of the grove. Its neck wound down around the trunk like a silver serpent, and it was toward this that the Mother Superior advanced. It lowered its head at her approach.

  The other sisters and dragons waited. Baiden made small, strangled noises under his breath beside me.

  Then they spoke to one another.

  It was impossible to hear words at this distance, but it was clear they were conversing, as though between equals. The Mother Superior’s voice came up to us through the stillness of the night, her tone clear and unafraid. The dragon answered in a low murmur that brushed through the leaves. I could feel the sound come down from the tree and through the ground to the grass I still gripped.