Oath Bound (Book 3)

by M. A. Ray

  Besides, his Lady spoke on. If you looked about, at any hour, you might have seen a homunculus with a long, tufted tail picking up trash or scrubbing a statue. They used to roam continually, keeping things neat.

  Vandis dipped lower and lower into the crater, into Old Town. Many of the oldest temples were here, along with fancy houses, mostly taken over by merchants and traders when the nobles had moved to higher ground. The roofs were all slate or wooden shingles; no thatch in Old Town. Since it was so readily accessed from the wharves, there was plenty of market space, too, with shops and bars marking out squares waiting eagerly for stalls, wagons, and basket-carriers. This quarter wasn’t only a market in those days, My own. Galleries and outdoor stages jammed in with the shops. There was always a place for a talented musician or storyteller in the taverns, and My Knights were first among them. With only a wave of the hand, such pictures! Illusions of sight and scent and sound to enhance a tale—they knew how to trick the mind of the listener, right down to changing their own voices to fit the players in the story.

  As Vandis eased down Temple Row, She filled his head with how it used to be, the great panoply of religious practice in Rothganar Before. The remnants were there all around him: the greenhouse atop Reeda’s temple, for example, still produced food and flowers, and the temple of Dareen still had its long reflecting pool, but it didn’t, as the Lady described to him, lie still and smooth as glass no matter the weather. It purled at his passing. When he reached Hadrok’s temple, with its crystal pillars that used to radiate cold and stand rimed with frost even on the hottest summer day, he crunched his abdominals to pull his feet under him and touched down on muddy cobbles, stumbling a little.

  He stood panting in the middle of the street, hands on his thighs. You’d better get something to eat, She said.

  I will, but once I get in at HQ, I won’t want to leave again. HQ’s tempting lights shone catty-corner from the Glacier’s Heart, set well back from the thoroughfare so that the first third of the lot could be dedicated to the open-air chapel. Most of the windows were shuttered for the night, but a few were cracked open or even flung wide. To Vandis, it was home in a way Vick’s Hollow never had been. He’d lived here since he’d taken the Oath, in one capacity or another: as a Junior to shy, fluttering Regis, a clerk only just into his Mastership; for his single year as a Senior, attending the university; and the wildly busy times as new-minted Master and Head-in-Training, trying to finish his degree and learn, at the same time, how to administer and guide the Knights.

  Because your life settled so much after Hieronymus stepped down for good.

  Right? He shook his head, chuckling. Might as well get it over with and see Disa before I fall asleep on my feet. The Cathedral of the Winds was, in fact, closer than HQ. It lay directly across the street from the Glacier’s Heart. The church proper housed itself in the soaring cathedral, a heavy edifice of limestone and marble with Akeere’s triple spires on the roof, each taller than the last—unlike the Knights, who held that the spires ought all to be the same height.

  Neither he nor Disa were actually accountable to one other, but Disa liked to think “Her Holiness” put her in authority over mere Sir Vandis. Sometimes Vandis was tempted to let the hard-ass old bat slide on it, just to make his own life easier, but if he gave in to her once, he’d never stop the giving. The Knights were technically part of Akeere’s church, but in reality they were something of a church themselves. They served the same Lady and so were allied, but they disagreed on quite a few points of doctrine and held separate services which bore only a little resemblance to each other. The twain came together only for joint charity ventures, and when Vandis met with Disa.

  He jogged up the wide marble steps and pulled one side of the great portal open. When he passed through the narthex, he scowled, and when he entered the sanctuary and gazed up the aisle, all four hundred feet carpeted in lush sky blue, the scowl deepened. On either side, row upon row of polished, honey-colored pews provided seating for the congregation, and great caryatids of the Lady’s saints framed the whole mess. In daylight, the sun would shine through tall panels of stained glass and paint the expanse with jewel tones; now, at night, the sanctuary was lit only from the apse, where Disa stood at the altar, draped in fathoms of blue brocade and wielding a silver shaker almost too big to hold one-handed.

  Smoke rushed toward the shadowed depths of the ceiling from the altar: a thirty-foot stone monstrosity carved with scenes from the Lady’s life and buffed to a diamond shine. The top was hollowed into a dish, and the under-priests kept it filled with glowing charcoal. Vandis’s lip curled. The cost of the charcoal alone could probably feed a score of hungry children for a week.

  Disa laid the shaker aside and intoned a prayer Vandis’s ears couldn’t quite make out, and then picked it up again to repeat the process. She made incense offerings so often her curtain of dry white hair showed yellow and smoke-stained in front. When the smoke reached him, he smelled resin of galbanum, musky and bitter, meant to remind the Lady of the suffering of the world. His eyelid twitched. Whenever he came here, he left angry. Enough galbanum to shake over the altar even once—he couldn’t think She wanted this, not when the money it cost on a daily basis could go so far toward alleviating that suffering. If the priests of the cathedral had a look at Vandis’s operating budget, they’d laugh themselves sick.

  His first, nastiest impulse was to stomp up the aisle with his muddy boots, but it wasn’t the priests who’d have to clean dirt out of the carpet. He went up the right side instead, between caryatids and stained glass. As he neared the apse, he saw the pulpit in more and more detail. He had to admit, the white oak was gorgeously rendered in green granite, and it sparkled in the low light, but if there was one more piece of brass inlay on that thing, it’d collapse under its own weight. Whoever led worship perched at the top, in the deep depression carved for the speaker. His temper flared, seeing it, but She said to him—like She always did—It brings them comfort, My own.

  They miss the point, he replied, like he always did.

  And so do you, She said, which made him scowl just as he passed Gudrun, Her Champion, standing at ease by the edge of the apse. Gudrun wore a sword at her waist, but her shield rested against the pulpit behind her. She stood a full foot taller than Vandis; slightly shorter than Kessa was, as a matter of fact, but with arms and shoulders that couldn’t fail to impress. Wouldn’t it be good for Kessa to meet her?

  “Hello, Vandis.” Gudrun smiled. “You’re always in such a good mood when you come.”

  “Gudrun,” he said. He shook his head to clear it. He loved speaking with his Lady, but if they talked for long, the transition from that to the physical world was a little difficult.

  “Cap.” She’d said it hundreds of times before, and he pulled the cap off, like he always did.

  “Thanks.”

  Disa looked up at his approach, glaring at him from fever-bright eyes sunken in skull and wrinkles. She looked ghastly, that was the truth of it, all frail little bones and pale skin as thin as an onion’s, blue veins standing out ropy in her hands: blue and white and half dead. “Vandis,” she scraped.

  “Disa. Looking a little consumptive these days.”

  She drew her lips into a purse. “There’s a good reason for that. But you are insolent—and unkempt. You might have shaved before you came to see me.”

  Vandis shrugged, raising his eyebrows. “I have to keep you on your toes somehow.” They exchanged a look: almost resentful, not quite tolerant. “You ought to go down to Oasis. Just say the word, and I’ll have six brawny mothers together to take you. Like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “If I decide I’m required in Oasis, Gudrun is more than qualified to escort me.”

  “You ought to go.” It wasn’t entirely selfish. The thought of a sick old lady sucking incense smoke day after day in the coldest, wettest city on the continent didn’t sit well with him.

  “My work is here,” she said, and the old steel glinte
d in her eye. Vandis remembered it from when he was younger, just into his office, and desperate to prove She, the Knights, had been right to choose him.

  “I suppose if you want to feel like reheated shit—”

  “You may have heard about Solveig,” she said, raising her voice to cut him off, sending herself into a coughing fit.

  “Eventually,” he said when she’d finished. “Found out at Moot. That’s mostly why I’m here. I’m calling Conclave.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “After what they did to my people? I should’ve done it months ago. I’ve just…” He looked away, down at the floor, the mud on the carpet. “…had other things on my mind.”

  “As well you should have had!” Disa snapped. “There’s nothing more important. We can’t defend our faith if we don’t pass it on. Let anyone say what he will. I’m behind you.”

  Vandis blinked. “Do we agree on something?”

  “Of course we agree!” She slapped the edge of the altar, and coughs racked her little body. “We—ugh!”

  He undid a buckle to reach into his cloak and pull out one of his blue handkerchiefs. She accepted it when he offered, and when she took it away from her mouth, it was stained with red. Vandis waited.

  “In any case,” she went on after a minute, in a thin, straining voice, “it won’t be necessary to call Conclave, because—hm. I’ve already called it. Hem. Five weeks after Longnight. In Oasis.” She stopped, and gasped. “Oh. Oh, blast those black-robes to Oda’s eternal night!”

  She fell to coughing again: dry, whistling coughs that made Vandis want to do something, he didn’t know what—just something to help her. Instead he waited.

  “That’s another thing we agree on,” he said, as if it hadn’t happened.

  “Solveig was my friend.”

  He folded his arms and took a few steps toward the altar. “They came for you, too, if I heard right.”

  “Our Lady be praised, Gudrun was watching over me. That woman is pure blessing. Where’s yours, eh?”

  I left him in Windish. “I don’t need one,” he said aloud.

  “Don’t be so sure,” she wheezed. “They’re still making trouble.” Disa turned from the altar to look him in the eye. “They’re banned from Dreamport, but that hasn’t stopped them. Just the other day those hoodlums staged a protest on the street, trying to keep people out of your headquarters. I went and gave them a piece of my mind—hm. And what do you suppose they did?”

  “Threw garbage, I’ll bet.”

  “If only they’d thrown something that pleasant.” She pursed her lips again. “What is this world coming to?”

  “Nothing new.”

  She shook voluminous brocade sleeves over her wasted arms and huffed. “I suppose not, but they stoned Sir Hjaldi within an inch of his life.”

  Vandis flinched, as if from a blow. Hjaldi had led services in the outdoor chapel while he was away.

  “If anything, the ban’s made them more dangerous. They’re traipsing about in plain clothes.”

  “Really.” He rested his palms on the warm lip of the altar and bowed his head.

  “That’s right. Lady knows they don’t like me, and they didn’t like Solveig, but you, they hate.”

  “I know that.”

  “You haven’t heard what they say of you. Seditionist, consort of demons, defiler of youth, and a drunkard besides! In case you haven’t noticed, you blackguard, I’m telling you to be careful.” He sent her an exhausted look, but she drew herself poker-straight and returned it with one of her own, ice down her nose. “If I outlive you, I shall be most displeased. At my age, the last thing I need is to break in another troublemaking Knight.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right. I need to go, Disa. Let’s talk again before I leave town.”

  She sniffed. “Just as well. It’s past my bedtime.”

  “Good night, then.” He pushed off the altar and walked back the way he’d come. “Good night, Gudrun.”

  “Good night, Vandis. Watch yourself now.”

  He grunted sourly, wondering how many more people were going to tell him to be careful. Half-dried mud crumbled off his feet and onto the marble floor. He stiff-armed the portal and let his boots snap on the way down the steps. HQ was next door, but “next door” on Temple Row didn’t mean much. The trip would’ve amounted to four or five blocks on any other street. Across the open space of the chapel in front of HQ, he could see the black basalt fortress built in Kradon the Warlord’s honor, and the statue of the god raising His hand over the street in a rally call. Torches arranged on the plinth lit the effigy from below, but once it had been the Eternal Flame.

  The world’s loss had snuffed it.

  Vandis turned away from Kradon’s temple and slouched between weathered wooden pews, up the aisle in the open yard of HQ. At this hour of the night, nobody hung around, protesting or otherwise—more was the pity. He would’ve liked to give them all a piece of his mind, dangerous be damned. He stopped at the front to touch the eroded shapes of little oak leaves on the stone incense burner, thinking, If it were only me—

  But it isn’t.

  I know.

  They need you.

  I know. He straightened a little. First Hjaldi, then the office, he decided, and just then the hair on the back of his neck prickled. Eyes on him. He paused, just for a moment, to ensure his path was clear; his impulse was to stop, to turn and shout, “Show yourself,” but he denied it. Instead, he hurried to the double doors and ducked inside.

  Perching high above on one of Hadrok’s angular gargoyles, a figure in dark gray leathers watched Vail disappear into the building. He failed to see why he should keep vigil, or what was so special about one little cleric anyhow—but pay was pay. He propped his back against the spire and settled in for a long night.

  Under the Cedars

  Windish

  There was even more exploring to be done in Windish than in Seal Rock. Everything Dingus saw interested him. The night Vandis left, Tikka had invited him and Kessa to stay in her house, and in the morning they went out to the campsite. She’d lent him two small books that she herself had written. They were in Traders’: guides to the flora and fungi of Windish, with color plates, which pleased him on account of he’d been wondering what they could gather to eat.

  Kessa had moaned about that. “Couldn’t we just buy food? You’ve got money!”

  “Yeah,” he’d said, “my money. Why should I spend on food when we can eat just fine?”

  All the same, he’d spent three sovereigns trying the local cuisine. The best thing about Windish, bar none, was the food. The morning they woke up in Tikka’s house, she’d fed them what she said was the traditional Windish breakfast: silky red smoked salmon, a thin slice of purple onion, and soft white goat cheese between two halves of a wheat roll. It was about as far from pickled herring on rye as breakfast could get, and Dingus and Kessa both got sorely addicted, to the point that they were in the little marketplace nearby every afternoon to buy cheese and rolls for the morning.

  Tikka gave them a comfortable place in a clump of hemlocks, with tall cedars thrusting above. A big cedar had fallen through the middle of the site. Moss and seedlings carpeted the trunk, and if you didn’t mind your ass getting damp, it made a cushy seat. Somebody, probably Tikka, had already dug a nice firepit and lined it with stones, and there was a storage pit in the ground lined with cedar to keep out the wet. Dingus had found a canvas awning in there, to cover the fire and keep the drips out, and two small tents—a little short for them, but serviceable. They pitched the tents on the fire side of the log, and used the other side for exercise and tasks that weren’t cooking. He spent a little time examining the hammock, netted out of the same kind of rough bark twine he carried everywhere, and made another one so things would be fair.

  Kessa liked sleeping late. When they were on the road, it was Dingus’s job to wake her, and she slept hard. Here, they weren’t on Vandis’s schedule, so he got up right
before dawn like always and let her waste half the day if she wanted—which meant he never had to share the early morning. He liked to lie in the hammock munching on salmon buns at daybreak. The light would stream through the gaps in the canopy to strike the morning fog, so thick it looked like swirling smoke; birds and waking animals would trickle sound into his ears. Alone with it all, Dingus could relax. He loved it.

  It would’ve been better, so much better, if Vandis were here to share it, but there was plenty to distract him. Inside of four days, he’d searched out almost everything in the little guidebooks. Early one morning he’d climbed to the very top of one of the cedars. The tree swayed gently in the breeze, and being so far off the ground made him kind of nervous—but once he popped his head out of the canopy, the view stole both breath and anxiety. Like rolling waves of green, the treetops spread out over the hills all around him, lined deeply, like an old man’s face, by the rivers. Diaphanous drapes and shreds of fog floated gently along the top, and thin tails of smoke rose from the little tin chimneys that poked up here and there. Out to the west was the great wide bay, misty in the new light and dotted with small green islands. The scents of smoke and cedar and ocean blended deliciously on Dingus’s tongue, fresh and dark at once.

  He hadn’t had any of his bad dreams since they’d been here. Sure, it’d only been about a week, but in the space of a week he’d come to expect at least a couple of nightmares, and he’d slept easy instead, the whole way through. Even with his worries over Vandis’s safety, Dingus enjoyed a measure of peace.

  When Kessa woke—well, that was pretty okay, too. Not as good as being alone, but if he had to have company, he would’ve picked her. Eventually, she’d get up and crawl out of her tent with her hair exploding from her head every which way. It made him smile, but she’d spend about an hour trying to get it into braids, without much success. It was the dampness in the air, she said, and she also said that she hated her hair—but she always said that. He’d never tell her so, but he sort of liked it. She called it “a frizzy orange nightmare,” but to Dingus it looked bright and fluffy and cheerful.