Copyright © 2011 by Lynna Merrill
All Rights Reserved.
Cover artwork © 2011 by Lynna Merrill
Map and title page artwork © 2011 by Lynna Merrill
Also available as a trade paperback.
http://www.lynnamerrill.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, concepts, and events are either products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book, as well as the whole series, is dedicated to my husband, Alex
Chapter 1: Mentor
Mentor Maxim to Apprentice Mentor Ardelia, Mierber, Year of the Master 700:
You can only become a Mentor when, left alone in the middle of the darkest forest, you can find your way back again. This is the first part of the Mentor's Trial.
The second part is entering a human mind for the first time and finding your way out of that. Only after you have done both, can you receive your detector—Oh, but you thought you needed the detector in order to do those? Oh, no.
A detector can only make the way easier; it will never find the way for you. A detector, like any tool, and even more so than other tools, can be deadly in the wrong hands.
Before you are trusted with one, you must earn it. Before you are trusted with walking inside others' minds, you must learn to walk with no props, and to walk alone.
Dominick
Morning 8 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706
Dominick could hear the echoes of his steps, although he had stopped walking a while ago. The temple walls always affected sound. However, just before daybreak, when the first tiny rays of skyfire battled darkness into ghastly long shadows, sounds were especially contorted in the empty House of the Master.
The time just before daybreak had been special for Dominick, once.
He walked further, the echo falling silent for a moment as his right leg slid beneath him. He gritted his teeth and kept his balance, then continued walking. The detector vibrated strongly in his hand, but he ignored that, too.
The circle beneath the central dome was still dark, and a draft brushed Dominick's face, chilly despite its deceptive softness. He pulled his cloak more tightly around himself, as he stood inside the circle and closed his eyes.
"I need wisdom, Master," he whispered, barely inaudible, almost in his mind. The only answer was the draft tugging at his collar, and the echo, reverberating nonsense from the walls and dome above his head. He opened his eyes. "If you are ever going to offer me any"—his voice was louder now—"this is the time. This is the time I need it."
Nothing.
What had he expected? A great voice from the sky? The detector vibrated again, and he slapped at it with the other hand. Perhaps a voice, any voice, was too much to expect twice in a lifetime.
It had been eight years ago; he had been twelve. Just the age for the fifth son of two Balkaene peasants to decide whether he was going to toil in the same rotten field in the same filthy, backwards village as his father, or seek a life and fortune of his own. However, whereas other Balkaene boys seeking their own life and fortune mostly found other rotten fields in other filthy villages, Dominick succeeded in finding Mierber.
The central, largest city in Mierenthia—perhaps people would say it should not be too difficult to find. But it would be people who had never even seen Balkaene Province, never wallowed in drudgery, superstition, ignorance, and misery, thinking (in the rare cases when they managed to scrape a thought or two) that this was life.
The journey from Goritsa Village to the Blessedber Pass took him tens of days walking, or riding in the occasional donkey cart, living on what the merciful amongst the superstitious and ignorant gave in exchange for helping in the fields. Then, from the Pass to Mierber, it was just four day-nights riding in the biggest, fastest, most beautiful thing he had ever seen—what now he would call an old, dusty, screeching, bumping intercity stage coach. A symbol and harbinger of civilization. A new world.
Dominick watched the first rays of the Sun stream through the painted windows, with colored light spots dashing inside his circle. Soon the day would come, and the circle would be illuminated fully, the windows designed to concentrate bright light in this very spot while leaving the temple walls in shadows. A light designed for the Mentor, the father (or mother) of the masses who crouched beside the walls every tenth day to hear the wisdom of his words, and every thirtieth day to confess and await Cleansing.
Light captured and directed by a system of glass and mirrors. Not by the Master.
Trickery.
"Make it shine beside the walls, will you? Do something to show me you exist."
Nothing.
"I did not bring you anything this time."
He had, eight years ago. Thin, little, dirty, scruffy, meandering through wide, brightly-lit streets and gaping with wide, ignorant eyes at what to him had been enormous buildings, he had stumbled upon the temple and before it, the little tree. He had broken a little branch from it as an offering, like his simple, heedless parents had taught him for years.
It had been just before daybreak, and he had proceeded to walk inside the dark, empty temple, like a Balkaene peasant passing for a quick early prayer before leaving for the fields. He had later learned that sophisticated Mierberian people never did that, for in Mierber temple prayer was done only once every ten days and only under the guidance of a Mentor. (Sophisticated people rarely were out in the streets before daybreak, too.)
Then, like today, the temple had been tall, dark, and forbidding, despite the sleep candle that glowed on one wall. Whereas the temple in Goritsa was a small, smooth-cornered, crudely painted, unassuming stone building with a tiny circle and chairs beside the walls, this one offered no place to sit at all. The walls were stark and high, painted with dark pictures of a harsh, disquieting beauty. There was the Master, drawn as a black-clad, lean young man with a shadowed face, a book in one hand and a sword in the other. To fight the zmay—that evil, handsome fey man who could change shape into a giant flying serpent so that he could steal peasant girls, young Dominick had thought. Georgi the Balkaene fairytale hero had fought the zmay like this.
Little had Dominick known that Georgi, the zmay and the whole assortment of halli, heroes, tallasumi, forest spirits, samodivi, enchanted lords, and ladies who married grubby dim peasants who could not blow their own noses, were not real. Never had been.
Dominick sighed, then tiredly ran his right hand along his forehead, before resting it on the left wrist, where the detector was still throbbing. Whatever had happened, whatever was going to happen, they were not going to become real. Ever.
"But how about you, Master?"
The young man with the sword was silent, and so was the old-aged version of the same man, painted on the wall across from him, the one dressed in a red Ber robe, whose hands were empty and whose eyes watched Dominick with inexplicable sadness.
It was before the old man's painting that twelve-year-old Dominick had laid the blossoming tree branch—a boy knew to keep away from young men with weapons. The branch had lain lonely on the swept and polished stones. Had this been Goritsa Temple, there would have been many flowers, some still fresh, others wilting, shrunk petals and leaves sprinkled on a floor made of unswept earth.
Flowers grew freely and were picked freely in Balkaene, unlike in Mierber, where they were the province of little parks and nobles' gardens. Peasants often left flowers in praise of the Master, and every spring, on the Day of Flowers, each would take a flower to the temple and return with a flower brought by someone else. Such a flower carried the Master's blessing with it, they believed—as if the Master cared to bless wor
thless, rustic, good-for-nothings.
"Master, I offer you this flower. Please bless me," Dominick had said, or rather, "Masta', I offa' ye dis flawa. Plis bless m'."
And then a deep, disembodied voice had changed his life. It had echoed through the empty hollowness of the temple, behind the shadowed curtain between the dark, unlit chandeliers; a voice of harsh authority with the barest hint of softness. It had pervaded the little peasant's worthless little heart, even before his mind had registered the words themselves.
"Do you believe that this is right, my son?" the voice had said, while the boy fell on his thin, dirty knees before the wall, trembling. "You did not plant the tree, you did not water it, you did not cover it in winter to keep it from the cold. Do you think that it is right to just come and break a little branch so that you can offer it?"
Think? No one had ever before asked Dominick what he thought—or if he could think at all.
"Forgive me, Master, I swear I'll give you something else," was all he could initially say, through tears. Then he shook his head and cast his gaze down to the floor, and said quietly, to himself, "I've heard the Master's voice. The Master has spoken in my ear."
"The Master? In your ear?" The same voice, but it sounded closer now, more human and almost amused. When Dominick raised his head he met an old man's eyes—bright, intense eyes nested between bushy eyebrows, and long gray hair and beard. The eyes became slightly more gentle when their owner almost smiled, but still the boy felt as if the old man could see through him.
"The Master, my boy ..." He bent his long, bony fingers and reached towards Dominick, knocking on his forehead with a knuckle.
"The Master only speaks here. The question is, will you listen to him?"
Dominick watched the knuckle, transfixed. The man had not lied. At the same time, other people, people in Balkaene, had claimed that they had heard the Master's voice (as well as the voices of samodivi and halli) with their ears, and they had not lied, either, even though Mentor Spiridon had whipped them for it. Dominick always knew when people lied; once or twice it had saved him from some quite unpleasant things. Now, faced with contradicting truths, he was confused.
What do you do when you see many truths, or, rather, see no truth at all? Doubt. It was the path to a Mentor's undoing, the grown Dominick knew.
"I ... I will, sir. Sir Blessed Mentor. I will listen to the Master," the little Dominick said.
The man wore a Mentor's brown robe, but he looked stern, not at all like Goritsa's Spiridon, who had a wide, red face and liked to laugh long and loudly, especially when someone had brought wine as an offering. This man was broad-shouldered, but whereas Spiro had a barrel of a belly, this one's belly was flat—but he moved with more stability than Spiro, and somehow his lack of fat did not make him look as if he were starving. Somehow, Dominick thought he did not drink wine, either.
"Will you, now?" The old man was examining Dominick with concentration, bearing the same expression that Goritsa overseers sometimes assumed when examining plow oxen. Dominick shivered, then rose his chin and met the old man's eyes fixedly. He had been whipped for that before, even if Spiro rarely whipped people.
"This kind of staring is like trying to see directly into a person's quintessence, it is," Spiro had said. "It is for Mentors, not for churls like you."
The old man inclined his head. He did not seem offended.
Dominick shifted uneasily on his feet. He had expected the whip, and now that the whip had not come, he was at a loss. The whip was a remedy against impertinence, disrespect, aberrant thoughts. He needed the whip when a certain sense of insecurity crept to the inside of his chest and he wondered about the world so much that he felt bruised by the world's sheer heaviness.
Who put the stars in the sky? Why was it wrong to wonder? Why did not Spiro, in his endless wisdom, know who of his clods of peasants were lying to him through their teeth, but whipped those stupid enough to tell him what they were thinking? Why did the Master, who saw everything, let someone steal old Haralambi's plow? Why did the Master, who loved everyone, let little Kalinka cough and wane and wriggle for tens of days before he supposedly took her to him? Little Dominick blinked furiously. Why didn't the Master heal her? Why didn't the samodivi, those rotten Byas harridans if they ever existed? Well, did they exist!? He clenched a fist. He had never seen them, and he had never seen the Master, either. And why should he never look old Spiridon in the eyes? Why could old Spiridon look him in the eyes? Why was Spiridon the Mentor and he the peasant, anyway?
Spiridon had whipped him hard at moments like this, then sent him straight to the fields, and it had all been a good thing. The Mentor's fat, good-natured heart did it from mercy. Bending your bleeding, writhing back over work that would have in any case been too hard for your scrawny self, could do wonders for thought clarity.
If left none. Everything was blended and dulled in the boy's little head, whenever at last his little body barely managed to drag itself to bed and fall into oblivion. But there were no aberrant thoughts left then—nothing to endanger himself, not a single breach in his mind for the eternally depraved Lost Ones to reach out and sully the world.
But then, he left to seek his own fortune and found Mierber.
The old man in the Mierberian temple was just watching little Dominick, doing nothing else, and Dominick stood with eyes narrowed and fists clenched, hating him for it.
Then the man reached towards his belt, and a whip surfaced from below his cloak. In a moment, it dropped before Dominick's feet with a clang. The man's bright, acute eyes were still watching him.
"You want to hit me, don't you, boy? Here, a whip will make the job easier."
He wanted to hit him, yes. He wanted to trash him, break him, hear his bones crack. He wanted to hit the paintings next, to whip them until the glossy, perfect paint peeled into dirty flakes and mortal wounds marred both the young and old Master. And the Sun—the soft morning rays that had just sneaked through the high, multicolored windows, forming a circle of light beneath the dome—he wanted to hit them, too, and to beat them until the Sun screamed.
Somehow, he did not pick the whip. It was not because if he did, someone would whip him, severely and perhaps to the death, later. Right now he did not care about that.
Dominick stood there for a long time. He did not pick the whip, did not move from his place at all, but somehow his body felt as if he had been in a serious fight. He was dizzy, trembling, sweating, panting, not well at all.
The old man's eyes bore into his.
"So, my boy, you do not think it would be right to hit me?"
He could barely nod.
"Why?"
Why? There were only so many why-s an exhausted, perturbed boy could take at a time. Angrily, he blinked, but still the tears wet his face.
"My son." He blinked again as a bony hand softly brushed his head. "I never said listening to the Master would be easy. And responsibility can be a hard, thorny path. Do you wish to learn how to walk it?"
Again, he could only nod.
"Good. Good. What is your name, then?"
"It ... it is Doncho, sir. But I don't like it."
The old man almost smiled. "Well, is there a name you like?"
Was there, truly? The grown Dominick wondered. He had been wondering about many things, wondering too often in the last days, often enough to make up for eight years of walking on a straight, nondivergent path like a harnessed horse whose side vision was obstructed by the bridle. For, even Maxim's hard, thorny path was still a path. It might bend your back and scrape your knees, it might sometimes beat you so hard that it forced the air out of you, but it was there—in the dark forest, between murky shadows, beneath overcast trees, it was a bright thread to follow. It was a way. It kept the forest out.
Twenty-three days ago, this thread had ended in the middle of dark leaves, green twilight, and shadows, and there were times Mentor Dominick felt as lost as a pitiful little peasant with a flower in his hand.
He was still a Mentor. Even though he might be a most foul murderer, one who would attempt to destroy a fellow Mentor—one who would destroy the man who had been like a father to him for eight years. The Bers had restored his whip and title upon Maxim's own words, and time after time he still preached the Master's infinite wisdom and unerring ways.
But it all felt empty. Even the Day of the Master eight days ago had felt empty. Dominick's own preaching, the Judgement of youths, the Bers charging his Mentor's detector for the New Year—none of these had touched his heart this time. If anything, the detector had started hurting even stronger. Perhaps the Master had erred this time. For twenty-two days now, ever since he had awakened, Maxim had been supporting Dominick's innocence but still refusing to see him, as well as refusing to disclose what had happened that night and why.
A samodiva who could not exist, together with the vague image of a man whose face he had not seen, and his own dagger stabbing Maxim. Dominick turned his hands before himself and watched the now bright morning light stream on his clean, pale palms.
"You are not much of a help, are you, Master?"
The shadowed images of the Master stood silent on their walls.
"Damn you, if you are not here for me, at least be here against me!"
His right palm colored red as he smashed one of the chandeliers, but he felt nothing, so he smashed the other one, too.
"Punish me, all right? Prove that this world is not an accursed, profane chaos where anything can happen!"
Shards of glass and metal pieces sprinkled the polished stone floor, but besides that, nothing. He tore the curtain next, kicking the bed behind it—the bed, the temple's Confession secret, the place for a Mentor who had entered too many base, dirty minds to lie down and dream of trees, Lost Ones, and shadows, until his own mind broke through the web of stark confusion and made him walk and talk again.
The Makers of Light Page 1