by Carol Berg
“Have you a bit of something mild and sustaining for our newest aspirant?” said Gildas, steadying me as I sank onto a pine bench beside the door. “I fear I’ve overtaxed him on his first excursion from the infirmary.”
Brother Jerome spun around, his wooden spoon raised as if it were a hierarch’s crozier, ready to assert his holy authority in this domain. “The supplicant who brought the Cartamandua maps?”
The whole world seemed to stop and stare just then, even the departing layman, who paused in the half-open doorway across the room and lifted his red hood slightly as if to see me better.
“Aye, the same. Still recovering from his injuries and unfed this day. My misjudgment.” Gildas returned his sober scrutiny to me. “And I beg forgiveness for that,” he said quietly. “Unworthy of me to assume…uh…that your strength was greater than you showed.”
I waved off his concern. My leg and back had contributed naught to my weakness that I could judge. Yet if I told Gildas what I had experienced, surely nothing good would come of it. The monks would call it a sign of Iero’s displeasure, pile on penances or rituals to reform me, and likely send me away. If some god or spirit or magical being did live within that garth, it must—
The likely truth stung my skull like a pebble from a sling. The shrine…the font…the murdered Brother Horach! Some people said that spirits loosed in savage torment would linger in the place of death, become revenants. Had I somehow invoked his wrath…or his benevolence? The contrary nature of the encounter left it open to myriad interpretations.
The world moved on again. The monks were back to chopping and grinding. The beardless servant vanished through the door. Forgoing fruitless speculation, I breathed deep, pleased to smell the garlic and to feel the steam that hissed from the wilted cabbage as Brother Jerome tossed aside his spoon and emptied a crock of liquid into his pot.
Brother Gildas filled a wooden cup from a nearby barrel. I drained it before his hand had moved away. Lovely ale, new made, not old. “Iero’s grace,” I said, and he brought me another.
“I’ve a barley loaf and syfling cheese will suit a fragile constitution,” said Brother Jerome, once he had tamed his soup. Thick gray hair fringed his leathery tonsure. He rummaged briskly in the flat basket and extracted a wrapped bundle and a small crock. “Sent back from the guesthouse untouched. Father Prior says Lord Stearc’s secretary Gram is a sickly sort and I thought to bolster him, but all the fellow took this morning was Robierre’s strengthening tea.”
Ah, Gram—the mournful fellow who’d consulted me about the maps. He’d had an unhealthy cast to his skin. A lord’s secretary.
The loaf was chewy where it should be and tender everywhere else, and the soft cheese tasted of almonds. Unflinching, I ate every morsel of both and buried my disturbance in the homely comforts of a well-run kitchen. Jerome and his minions, as with all who worked in kitchens and brew-houses, wielded power I understood.
Brother Gildas and I bade the kitchen staff farewell and trudged slowly past the lay brother’s reach in a light rain. I felt almost myself again. Likely Brother Gildas’s estimate of my collapse had been right, naught but hunger and healing. I’d had little experience of common sickness.
“Gillarine seems a vastly holy place,” I said. Healthy grain, plump vegetables, untainted sheep, spirits in its garth…I doubted any house in Navronne could boast such bounty.
“Many in our brotherhood have found it so. I have discovered my own destiny here—against every expectation of my life.”
His words left an offer hanging in the air, something more generous than tavern friendships. More honest. I was gratified, and a bit astonished, at such trust. But if I probed deeper, he would rightly expect to do the same. And that could not happen. Of all the protections I had built over the years, the surest was to keep my secrets close.
Fumbling about for a new topic, I hobbled across a cart track that led from the lay brothers’ reach southward along the Kay. The view of the wide, shallow river and the mist-shrouded valley, bound by forested ridges and the high mountains far to the south, recalled Jullian’s odd tidbit. “Tell me, Brother, why would anyone be building a lighthouse so far from the sea?”
Even the broad River Yaronal that separated the kingdom from the brutish herdsmen to the east could be no nearer than two hundred fifty quellae, and likely unnavigable at that nearest point. Indeed, I wasn’t certain people built lighthouses on rivers, much less in green vales like these.
My inquiry, posed in all innocence, halted Brother Gildas in midstride. “Who spoke to you of a lighthouse?”
One never reveals one’s sources when queried with such severity. “Mmm…I don’t recall. So many people come in and out of the infirmary.”
After a moment, he smiled and nudged me onward. “Well, of course, you haven’t yet seen the church windows on a day when the sun shines, else you’d grasp the reference. Come now, tell me more of Palinur.”
A nice recovery, but I didn’t believe him in the slightest.
As we crested a slight rise between the cart track and the infirmary garth, a cloaked horseman barreled up the track through the increasing drizzle, passing just behind us. He vanished in the cluster of buildings behind the lay brothers’ reach.
Brother Gildas halted again, glancing after the rider and then to the infirmary, squatting peacefully with its back to the river. “Can you make it the rest of the way on your own, Valen? The hour is Sext, and I’ve duties before prayers.”
“Certainly. The air has done me good. I was beginning to feel like a sheep in a pen, shut up in that infirmary.”
With an admonition to inform Brother Badger of my weakness at the cloister garth, Gildas hurried off, not in the straightest path to the church, but in the same direction as the rider, soon lost to sight as well. A departure as enigmatic as his excuse. No bells had rung for the holy Hour. This place seemed to nurture mysteries: lighthouses, savage murders, an intelligent abbot who welcomed vagabonds like me, and a spirit in the cloister garth who did not.
Monastery life moved slowly, so I understood. Though abbots might be required to heed the winds of politics, their flocks of holy brothers sat outside of the stream of time and events, wrapped up in scholarship that spanned centuries and prayer and contemplation that spanned the boundaries of earth and heaven. So why, of a sudden, did I feel as if I were being rushed down a dark alley by a gang of smiling jacklegs who would pick my pockets and plant a shiv in my spleen before dawn? I hobbled quickly toward the infirmary.
Chapter 5
Vesper bells clanged and hammered. The monks were gone to prayers again, the lingering draft from their departure my only company in the quiet infirmary. Robierre had left me a brimming posset, dosed with extra honey in apology for sending me out walking too strenuously.
In truth my leg felt better recovered from the day’s adventure than my spirit. I could not shake my thoughts free of the murdered monk. Had this Horach truly made himself known to me? Surely of all residents of this abbey, I knew the least that might ease a tormented soul. But a man left himself open to mortal peril did he ignore the demands of the dead.
My fingers traced the smooth curves of the turned wood mug. The bells fell silent. The monks would go to supper after prayers, which meant near two hours alone here with naught to think of but a youth left in agony to bleed, unable to cry for help.
Before I knew it, I’d thrown my damp gown over my dry shirt, pulled my boots over my bare feet, and retrieved my walking stick. Guided by the church towers and wafting smoke that smelled pleasantly of onion and garlic, I limped across the infirmary garth and through the puddled passage between the kitchen and refectory, retracing our path of the morning. Pigeons’ cooing and the fading echoes of plainsong accompanied me into the deserted cloisters. Thick clouds had stolen the early-evening light.
I shivered. Saint Gillare’s wingless angels gleamed pure white against the dusk. The chill air, heavy with moisture, clung to skin like mud and smelled of rich earth an
d green grass. To retreat felt stupid and cowardly, yet now I was here, I couldn’t steel myself to step wholly into the garth. My hand squeezed the smoothed knob of the walking stick. There were other ways to approach uncertain ground than just blundering in.
Though I had denied it for years, adamantly avoiding occupation as a scout or guide as if to prove that denial, I had inherited the familial bent for route finding and tracking. My Cartamandua bloodlines were well documented, of course, enshrined in the Registry in Palinur before my birth and witnessed on the day I took my first breath. I’d always felt like a prized cow, bred to supply Navronne with the cream of sorcery.
I wandered down the south cloister, past the kitchen wall and around the corner into the walk that fronted the lay brothers’ reach. Dared I release magic here? Whether I used it in formulated spellwork or to trigger my family bent, it would leave traces, detectable by a Registry inspector. Or perhaps an abbey sanctified to Iero, its Rule forbidding use of magic, might be warded to prevent spellcasting and give off noises or explosions if I breached its protections. Every instinct said not to risk it, but then again, my instincts were unused to the requests of unquiet spirits.
I tossed some of Robierre’s stock of bergamot onto the grass that young Horach might use it for the Ferryman’s tally, apologizing that I’d naught better to offer. Then, clutching my walking stick, I eased myself to kneeling. Crouched at the verge of the west cloister, some halfway down its length toward its meeting point with the church, I laid my palms on the cool wet grass, shaped my intent, and released just a spit of magic.
My limited experience of such trials led me to expect an image of the square to resolve itself in my mind: the grass and stones, the shrine, the bounding columns and walkways, the size, shape, and source of the font. Not a visual image, but more of an understanding of structure, composition, direction, and history, and if I was fortunate, a sense of what obstacles, spells, or spirits might lie here. But the sensations confounded all expectations.
The earth pulsed beneath my hands, warm and living, its lifeblood a deep-buried vein of silver, as plainly visible to my eye as the shrine itself. The memory of all who had walked here wove a pattern in the earth, each path sharp edged against the clarity of a long and reverent quiet. The understanding of the garth’s composition and direction existed, not as some separate image to be analyzed, but embedded in my flesh as plainly as the skill of walking or speaking. And even beyond these marvels, something more teased at my spirit…
I breathed deep and tried to quiet my trepidations, to open my senses and push deeper. Just on the edge of hearing, the sighing notes of a vielle quivered in the stillness, and a woman’s clear voice intoned a haunting, wordless melody that swelled my soul with wonder and grief. A memory…and yet a presence, too…if I could but sort out the music and its meaning—
The unseen bludgeon struck again. Saints and angels! I toppled backward, landing hard on my backside. As on my first encounter with this place, the blow slammed me square between my eyes. Dizzy and befuddled, I pressed my fingers to my forehead, sure I’d find a bruise swollen the size of a cat. But, though my wounded thigh complained loudly that it was twisted to the point of tearing Brother Badger’s stitches, both brow and temples seemed intact.
If Brother Horach wanted my attention, he had gotten it. But did he want me to see what lay here—something far older than a youthful monk—or was he the one who so forcibly forbade my intrusion? I rubbed my brow and tried vainly to recapture the moments before the blow: the warmth of the earth, the silver thread of an underground spring, the music—so beautiful, so dreadfully sad.
I had long speculated that Iero was just another name for Kemen Sky Lord, Creator of Earth and Heaven. But neither Kemen, nor Iero, nor any god or spirit had ever made himself known to me so forcefully. I didn’t like it. My hands trembled and my stomach shifted uneasily.
As I stumbled to my feet and untwisted my gown, a brief burst of plainsong from the church intoned the perficiimus that ended every Karish prayer and service. Someone threw open a side door that opened onto the east cloister walk, directly across the garth from me. The monks would soon be filing out on their way to the refectory. Unwilling…unable…to explain what I had just experienced, I hobbled quickly through an arched passageway that divided the undercrofts just behind me.
The sturdy simplicity of the clustered buildings behind the lay brothers’ reach implied design for use rather than devotion. Lingering scents of roasted barley, yeast, and sweetly rotting refuse named the rambling structure with arched doors a brewhouse. The tall, windowless building set on stubby stone piers was likely a granary, its floor raised to discourage vermin and damp. Twilight had already gathered in the warren of wood and stone, and a light drizzle fell from the heavy sky.
The sudden sounds of a slamming door and a horse’s whinny, just as I reached the corner of the brewhouse, flattened my back against the stone wall of the deserted alley. No question the evening’s events had set me on edge. Heart galloping, I peered around the corner. A small muddy yard fronted a well-built three-story house with a steep-pitched roof and many fine windows. Soft light from the upper windows and a single torch in a door bracket illumined three saddled horses tethered by the stoop.
A man in a brick-colored cloak darted down the steps and wrestled a leather satchel onto one of the saddles, buckling straps to hold it. But the horse sidestepped nervously, the fellow’s arms were too short, and the satchel slid back onto his shoulders, dragging off his red hood. Fine boned and fair, he was younger than I’d guessed from his height. A tight braid bound his thick bronze-colored hair.
Blundering into strangers’ urgent business violated my usual practice, so I did not step out to help. In moments, Brother Gildas appeared on the stoop, holding open the heavy door for two other men. These two descended the steps slowly, one supporting the other. The more robust of the pair, a big, hawk-faced man with a narrow beard and meaty shoulders, barked an order at the squire—for the red-cloaked youth was surely Squire Corin from the kitchen. The house must be Gillarine’s guest quarters, these strangers the abbey’s noble benefactors.
The squire yanked his strap tight and hurried around to help the others lift the weaker man into the saddle. The gaunt, dark-haired fellow, racked with coughing as he gripped the pommel, was none but the gentlemanly secretary Gram. The hawk-faced man’s cloak fell back as he shoved his charge into the saddle. The sleeves of a hauberk gleamed from under his holly-green surcoat, and his jewel-hilted great-sword sparkled in the torchlight. A warrior, then, as well as a lord—Gram’s “excitable” employer.
Horrid weather to ride out. The faint drizzle had become an insistent shower, pattering on the brewhouse roof and dribbling from the gutters and downspouts. To get back to my dry bed in the infirmary, I had either to return through the cloisters or cross this courtyard, inviting Brother Gildas’s perceptive examination. If they would all just go…
Relieved, I watched as Brother Gildas gave the squire a hand up to his mount and retreated to the sheltered stoop. The warrior swung his bulky body into the saddle, exposing a device on his surcoat.
I uttered a malediction—under my breath, so I thought, but the lord’s head jerked up and twisted in my direction. Snatching my head out of sight, I slammed my back to the wall. Water sluiced down my neck. My skin felt as if swarming with midges.
Once, when I was eleven or twelve and lay in my bed bleeding from an encounter with my father’s leather strap, my elder sister, Thalassa, had chosen to break her longstanding habit and be civil. She told me of obscuré spells—certain patterns created in the mind and infused with magic that could cause one to be overlooked. In my usual way I had spat at her, called her a vyrsté—a pureblood whose parents had not paid enough attention to breeding lines—and ignored her.
Not for the first time, I regretted that choice. Embroidered in silver thread on the lord’s holly-green linen was a howling wolf with a lily under its paw—the device of Evanore and its sove
reign duc, Osriel the Bastard.
Lords of the night! Afflicted with a sudden case of the shivers and a raging desire to hide, I hobbled back down the alley and around a corner of the brewhouse, doing my best to keep my stick and my booted feet quiet. Behind me, a man issued a sharp command. In moments, the three horsemen rode right past me.
“Teneamus!” Brother Gildas’s call followed them through the alley.
One of the three called an answer, softly enough no one but his companions and I could possibly hear. “Teneamus!”
Once the riders had vanished into the rainy gloom, I exhaled and took out as fast as I could down the alley. Though the torch was extinguished, lamps yet shone from within the guesthouse, but I saw no sign of Brother Gildas. As I hobbled across the yard and down the cart track that led through the lay brothers’ workyard, inside my sleeves I splayed the three middle fingers of my left hand, and inside my head I recited three saints’ names three times each. Whyever would a man of Prince Osriel’s party be welcome at a Karish abbey?
Chilled to the marrow, I stripped to the skin before diving gratefully into my bed. By the time Brother Robierre and Brother Anselm returned from supper, bringing me leek soup and hot bread, I had managed to stop shivering. As the two men changed my dressings and fussed about their evening duties, I put my mind to an escape plan should I need to abandon the abbey in a hurry. I would winter in a cave before crossing paths with King Eodward’s crippled bastard.
I ought to have had some sympathy with the youngest of Eodward’s progeny or at least with his pureblood mother. Though not strictly a recondeur—she had not actually run away—Lirene de Armine-Visori had defied her family and the Registry’s breeding laws by mating outside the pureblood families, an unforgivable offense, no matter that her lover was a king. Lirene had died when the boy was quite young, and stories named the halfbreed Osriel, raised out of the public eye, twisted in both mind and body.