He stared at her, his curiosity piqued. “What would a white witch offer just for me?”
She stepped closer and pulled one of his hands into both of hers. She looked into his eyes, her own quite mild and understanding. He wondered what she was about to do, but he wasn’t afraid. He sensed no ill will exuding from her, no shadows of malice.
She cast a spell, a simple one. She called a cleansing down on him. He hid the pain the casting caused him, but it was a relief when the magic lifted the hairs all over his body. He tingled as if a wind had blown over his skin. The breeze made the headache lighten.
“Why did you do that?”
“For the perfume,” she whispered. He slowly flushed red. “Don’t worry.” She patted his hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry. It will never be told by me.”
“I usually get back in time to strip down and change into my habit,” he whispered, his expression tight with rue. “Then there’s the bath first thing in the morning.”
She smiled understandingly. “Well, try not to be late next time.”
“There won’t be a next time. They’ll post a guard on me now. They’ll keep the cell door open to watch that I sleep.”
“I’m sorry for you, then. It’s a hard thing to live without love.” She patted his hand again, this time in commiseration, and then released him and returned to the two witches awaiting her. She could see they were eager to know what she had discovered. She was going to disappoint them. Herfod stared after her and then at last marched off.
“Wait up, now!” Keth called.
Herfod paused to let the gang surround him. He was forced to permit it, not for protection this time, but for concealment. He didn’t want to be seen in the assassin’s gear. “Oswell. Run ahead. Come back with my habit. I need to hide the gods cussed truth again.”
“Yes, Brother Herfod,” Oswell acknowledged. He dashed ahead.
“Hide the truth?” Keth repeated. “You are not! You’re going back to the truth.” He watched his mentor’s lips shift from a frustrated scowl to a small smile.
“That’s exactly why they let you become a monk, you troublemaker,” Herfod grumbled.
Keth nodded. “It’s the wisdom of maturity. You are just a baby, after all.”
Herfod looked at him sideways and tried not to smile again. It never did to encourage Keth too much. Keth was only five months older than him and wise in spurts. Most of the time, he was just troublesome. Herfod’s best martial arts student other than Ugoth, Keth had been inducted as a monk more for his fighting skills than anything. The seniors required him to protect the even more troublesome Brother Herfod.
“What did you give the witches of me?” Herfod said suddenly.
“A hair we found in your cot,” Keth replied.
“Get it back,” Herfod ordered.
Keth rushed back. “I need that hair back now,” he told Zini as he approached the three women.
“No!” Zini said. “You didn’t keep your promise. You were going to say why Brother Herfod needs a bodyguard.”
“He needs a bodyguard because he’s Brother Herfod. He’s famous! People bother him constantly. People like you!” Before she could stop him, Keth snatched the jar out of her hands and ran off, a big grin playing over his face.
“You big liar!” Zini shouted after him. “Oh! I’m going to zap him!”
“Zini!” Uma reproved. “Leave it be. Trust me on this. The reason must remain a secret.”
Zini glared down at the dumpling. “He told you,” she accused. “What is it?”
“I won’t say. He’s important. That’s all you need to know. And he didn’t say. I figured it out.”
“You figured what out?” Pell said. “Come on, Uma! Why is he the way he is? He was twisting shadows! I saw it!”
“Yes, well, forget you saw it,” Uma advised. “And don’t mention it to him. He’s very sore about it. Don’t mention it to anyone.”
Yes, he was sore enough to kill over it. Uma breathed in deeply and followed after the monks, watching for glimpses of crimson. She’d found her answers, but she was even more fascinated. Brother Herfod was enthralling. It was no wonder to her that giddy Pell had lost what little control she’d had back in the dell. If the man could drive the Shadow Master mad, then Pell’s silliness was perfectly excusable.
Up with Herfod again, Keth commenced to stare at him fixedly. Herfod noticed and glowered. “What?” he said impatiently.
“So? All that stuff you told us about learning to fight in the terrible street gangs in Wistal? Was that all crud?”
“Pretty much,” Herfod admitted.
“And the reason you gave us for all these attempts on you, you being the heir of King Gehest’s dead older brother? Was that true?”
“No.”
“You outrageous liar! I believed every word of it.”
“Were there any terrible street gangs in Wistal?” one of the others asked.
“Yes, but they were run by an organized criminal ring that was in turn run by the Ministers of Justice and the Port and by my father, who was a good thief.”
They were silent while adjusting to that. Keth laughed first. “You are so full of fur balls! The Minister of Justice and the Minister of the Port running a criminal ring?”
“Your father a good thief!” another sniggered. They all laughed together. Herfod grinned along with them. Sometimes the truth was stranger than lies.
“So tell us the real reason,” Keth insisted after a moment.
“I can’t tell you,” Herfod denied him. “No more than I could before. So stop bothering me about it or I’ll cough up another load of fur balls.” They stared in wonderment.
“But we guard you as if you were a king’s heir!” Lars protested. Lars was in fact a very tall acolyte who had proven to be very skilful at hand-to-hand combat and thus had won the right to a place in Herfod’s train. “And the abbot almost treats you like one,” he added.
“Oh, shut up!” Herfod said grumpily. “He does not. He just has to speak to me more often because of all the trouble I get into. You know that. I’m not a saint.”
They all blinked at him, their silence a great mass of hurt that made Herfod want to scream. Keth was the only one with the nerve to respond to the outburst.
“We understand, Brother Herfod,” he said. “We’ll stop pestering you for your secrets.”
Glowering, Herfod stomped onward. Keth looked over his head at Lars and nodded firmly. Lars nodded back. They weren’t stupid. They knew a saint when they saw one, and Herfod was it. He was just a very grumpy saint, that was all. There was no canon written that saints had to be sweet and meek.
Brother Herfod caught their silent signals and shook his head in frustration. They never listened. Bunch of troublemaking idiots! If he didn’t like them so much, he’d bash them all upside their heads. If he weren’t so tired he might. If he weren’t so worried.
After they’d managed to outdistance the witches sufficiently, they stopped within a sheltering copse to wait for Oswell. When his junior arrived with the habit, Herfod threw the wool over top of his assassin’s costume, and they continued the rest of the way in silence. He was in no mood for talk, banter, teasing, nothing. He was about to see the abbot, and the abbot was a very discerning old man. Herfod didn’t like lying to him. He was hoping a distraction would suffice, and he had part of the truth in mind to act as such. He put it to the test within minutes of his return.
***
“Master?” the servant said.
The dark-haired figure within the diffuse light didn’t respond. The servant blinked at him uncertainly. His master sat in an armchair in the middle of the pavilion. He slouched within the cushions, his eyes shut, his hands clasped over an object he held tightly against his naked chest. The servant almost let the entrance flap drop, but his master’s voice forestalled him.
“What is it, Domel?”
“The Stohar emissary has arrived with the treaty of unconditional surrender, Master.”
“Is the Stohar emissary the Stohar king?” Marun demanded.
“No, Master.”
“Then send the emissary back until the emissary is the Stohar king,” he directed.
“Yes, Master.” Domel lowered the flap.
Marun opened his eyes and looked unseeingly at the sloping canvas. “Kehfrey,” he whispered.
He’d almost lost him. He had spent the morning struggling to keep him, yet Kehfrey had almost slipped away despite the effort.
Marun was exhausted. He was drained. And he had no time to pity himself over it. He surged out of the chair and stumbled to the large table with its array of maps, scrolls and rejected peace treaties. He knocked them all off, set the granite stone on the dark wood and regarded it balefully.
“You will not know!” he whispered at it. “You will not remember!”
The years! The years of trying to comprehend what that boy was, and Kehfrey had but needed to dance for it. Marun could have screamed his frustration.
“Why did you stop?” he hissed at the stone. “You were almost gone.”
Did it matter why?
“No,” he answered himself. He had to stop it from happening again.
He staggered over to his trunk and thudded to his knees on the furs that littered the tarp before it. He threw the lid open, letting it fall back so quickly the trunk rocked. He dug beneath the packed items and pulled out the one article that meant almost as much to him as the soulstone. He hugged the sack close. It was only a small leather bag. It appeared nondescript, unimportant, but for him, what it contained was worth more than gold.
He struggled to an aching stand and returned to the table. He set the sack down. Very carefully, he opened the ties and withdrew exactly one hair from within. He held it high. In the muted light beneath the canvas pavilion, he could not see the true colour, but he knew it. He knew it.
He looked down at the sack and smiled. He had filled it with the last cuttings taken from Kehfrey’s head, a trim he had performed on the boy himself. Though the clerical vow prevented the bodily rejects from being used to call Kehfrey back, they could still be employed to control him.
Somewhat. The gods owned Kehfrey’s ecclesiastical name. Marun couldn’t fight divinity, but so long as Kehfrey’s soul existed in the stone with his own, Kehfrey shared his weaknesses. What the Shadow Master intended to do, the goddess had already set in place, a curse Marun could not lift, a curse she had levied against him many years ago, a curse he would now spread to Kehfrey. “I protected you, and she cursed me for it. Now feel it. Feel what she did to me because of you.”
He closed the bag, his movements conscientious, tucking in every stray strand that attempted to poke out. With the single hair, he began the spell to bind the strange and potent memories that Kehfrey had attempted to awaken, to bind them to the murkiest reaches of wherever they lay dormant.
The boy had already become someone slightly other than Kehfrey by becoming Brother Herfod. Marun would not permit him to become whoever hid within the strangeness he had struggled with that morning. He dared not. Marun knew, with freezing certainty, that Kehfrey was someone who could not be bound once his full strength was upon him. Thus, with the hair, with the stone, with what little remaining power the birth name gave him, very carefully, very thoroughly, he crippled Kehfrey’s mind.
***
Oswell had alerted Herfod’s mentor that he had been discovered. Brother Samel awaited their arrival at the gate. Without a word, Samel grasped Herfod by the arm and marched him straight through the yard, up the monastery steps and through the west wing doors. Past staring monks, Samel conducted him, direct to the abbot’s office.
The three of them crowded together in the small cell and waited for the elderly man to ward the doors and walls from spying ears and eyes. The moment the chant ceased, Abbot Anselm shouted at the truant monk. If Herfod had any doubts that he was in trouble, he lost them all. The abbot never shouted. Warded from the rest of the monastery brothers, he shouted then.
“You! You frightened us all! We thought he’d gotten you! Vik thought he’d gotten you! We had to put him under guard! We had to sedate him! Why did you do this?”
“I dreamt of Marun again. This time it was very strong. I was desperate to end it.”
The abbot’s angry expression slackened. “To end it? What do you mean?”
“I danced in the glade. I almost pulled free.”
“Danced?” Samel said. “You danced to free yourself? How does this make sense?”
“I have no idea! All I know is that I was desperate to feel at peace. I started the Pek manoeuvres and suddenly I …!”
“Suddenly what?” Abbot Anselm pressed.
“Suddenly I felt as if every secret I’d ever wanted to understand was about to become clear to me. And Marun just started to lose his grip.” Herfod looked away in frustration. “I was interrupted,” he said and stomped tiredly over to Anselm’s cot and sat on it. “I felt so close,” he said, hunched into a dejected slump.
“Then you must dance again!” Samel said, eyes bright with fervour. “Herfod! You must free your soul!”
“He’ll be ready for it. I know he will.”
“That doesn’t mean you won’t succeed,” the abbot said. “You must try again. Tonight! Go! Eat! Rest!” He pulled the young man up and shoved him toward the door, but then jerked Herfod back before he so much as moved a pace forward. “And don’t ever frighten us all like that again!” he bellowed.
Samel flinched at the volume.
“I’m sorry,” Herfod said. “I will try not to.”
“Yes, you’ll try!” the abbot said. “That’s just it. You’ll try! But you will again eventually. You can’t stop being you.”
Herfod’s head dropped as tears filled his eyes. He would have given anything just then to be anyone other than himself.
The abbot sighed and pulled him into his arms, forgiveness in the embrace. “Stop weeping, Brother Herfod. We wouldn’t change you for the world. It was fear that made me yell.”
“I know. I’m still sorry,” Herfod said.
Anselm nodded and propelled him toward Samel. “Take him along to eat. Make sure he sleeps. Post a guard if you have to. Cancel anything he had planned for today. Let no one bother him.”
Samel nodded firmly and escorted Herfod out, but before they reached the stairwell, Samel drew him to a halt. “You will have to confess sooner or later, boy,” he whispered. “The abbot knows you less well than I. You have been up to something more than dancing in the night.”
“Not now,” Herfod said. “Later. I promise to confess later.”
“Now would be better for your soul,” Samel insisted.
Herfod laughed darkly. “My soul? If I did what my soul wanted, I wouldn’t be here at all!” He jerked his arm out of Samel’s grasp and walked the rest of the way to the refectory unassisted.
Samel stayed at his side. He watched him eat in silence. Afterward, he conducted Herfod to his cell and refrained from speaking while the young man divested himself of the assassin’s gear, but as Herfod climbed beneath his blankets, Samel thrust an opinion in. “Your soul wants many things, Herfod,” he said, “but it is not to return to that slavery. You are a young man. Some of what you are feeling has very little to do with spirituality. I think you will see that I am correct if you think on it.”
He snatched up Herfod’s costume and weapons and stepped out of the cell. He waved a trustworthy senior monk forward. Once that fellow had set himself to watch Herfod sleep, Samel walked away and out of sight, carrying the confiscated gear off.
Herfod slammed his fist into his pillow and averted his face from the vigilant monk. He was trapped, trapped by them as much as by Marun. At the moment, he was uncertain which slavery bothered him more.
***
After departing Herfod’s cell, Samel proceeded immediately to the guest apartments to confront Vik. He found the man pacing in his room. The sedative they had forced him to drink had worn off an hour ago
.
“I know he’s back,” Vik said the moment he saw the Turamen senior. “I want to see him.”
“He must sleep,” Samel denied him. He lifted the costume in his hands. Vik recognised the black assassin’s suit and his mouth shut on a protest. “You had this made for him, didn’t you?” Samel accused.
“Yes,” Vik admitted. “I didn’t see why not.”
“He’s a monk, Vik! He is not an assassin! You gave him the means to leave the monastery in secret. You! You let him fly out in the night alone! Into danger!”
Vik reddened with discomfort. “I didn’t intend that. He said he couldn’t move right in the habit. I didn’t see the harm in it. He said he just wanted to practice on the roof.”
“On the roof!” Samel cried. “He could fall!”
Vik laughed at this fear. “Fall? Kehfrey?”
“Herfod! Not Kehfrey! How many times must I say it?”
“Forever! He’s both!” Vik shouted. “You can’t take the assassin out of the monk, Samel. He was a monk of Amut’s teaching before you ever knew him. He taught a true Pek assassin how to be a compassionate human being. Gods, Samel! He needs to be himself, whatever that might happen to be.”
Samel swallowed bitterness. “This is what I am afraid of. He is being himself. Worse, however, I think he is being himself with someone in the city. He is of an age for it.” He watched Vik turn white before his eyes. “What is it, Vik? Who is it?”
“If you want his confession, have him give it,” Vik snapped.
“He puts himself in danger going to her!”
“Not anymore. You’ll have him watched day and night. Go away! Deal with Kehfrey over his sins.”
“Vik! You must help me! Urges like this can instigate grave mistakes, hasty and unwise decisions. It may give Marun the edge he needs to pull the boy back.”
“Brother Samel,” Vik said curtly, “Kehfrey is no longer a boy. He’s not a juvenile without sense. Gods! He’s never been a juvenile without sense! He’s a man. You must discuss this with him as one.”
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