Duilleog (A New Druids Series Book 1)

by Donald D. Allan

  The Archbishop had once provided religious guidance to the King and he in turn led the Realm with divine authority. Surprisingly, Brent learned that was only how it appeared on the surface. In Munsten, certainly, at the seat of the King and the Archbishop that was true. The people back then had all believed in God and followed the strictures of the Church.

  Outside the cities, it was a different story. The Word was strong in all the small villages and homesteads. The Word taught that science and nature were the strengths of the world. They taught much the same values of morality and ethics, but the Word attributed such values as being human in nature and not divinely ordained as the Church believed.

  Brent believed in the Church. He felt the calling of God and aspired to humble himself before Him. He had to be careful though, for saying you believed in God led to shunning and ridicule. The Protector would remove him as head of the Protector's Guard in a heartbeat if he knew. Within the military, religion was strictly forbidden and you would be dismissed immediately. Your honour stripped from you in a public ceremony. The realm feared the return of religion. They felt that religion clouded actions and religion was to blame for violence. Not so with the Word – the Word was immune from religious zealotry. Or so they said. Brent doubted that.

  He believed that any following could be corrupted, bent and twisted by the hearts of man. Not so with the Church, he knew. The Church provided moral and ethical guidance. He knew that without religion man had nothing to guide his actions by. The promise of heaven kept Brent grounded. But the law of the land was clear, and so Brent hid his beliefs. And it made him angry, if truth be told, if the Revolution had not occurred he could be open with his beliefs and he dreamed of that in private. In his chambers he read from his bible and sought solace in the word of God. He knew his faith was strong and could not be shattered. But it was so hard, he admitted to himself. So very hard at times.

  One day he had come home to find a small notebook wrapped in plain brown paper lying on his doorstep. When he had opened it he was surprised to find it contained the memoirs of Advisor Benjamin Erwin. It covered the events of the Great Debate and Brent verified the handwriting as being the Advisor's. The Church named him the Defiler, the man who had debated against the Church and corrupted Bishop Bengold. It was a rare document and only those with access to the Church library could have accessed it. He tried to determine who had left it for him but failed.

  Brent shook his head remembering reading Benjamin's account of the horror of that day. Surprisingly, Brent read the man's own account that he had been dismayed that the Church had not won the debate. The death that came afterward was too horrific. Unbelievably, he had even written that before the final debate; he and the Bishop had agreed to allow the Church to win. None knew that today. Certainly it wasn't something the village Wordsmiths spoke of. They stuck to the Book of the Word and rarely discussed the Revolution. Now, the memoirs lay hidden in his basement secured in waxed linens to preserve them.

  Brent wished not for the last time that he could have met Bishop Bengold and asked him all the questions he had now. He wanted to tell him that it was not his fault. He wanted to forgive the man. His death had been beyond imagining and Brent shuddered. He would have liked to talk with Benjamin, too. Had he seen a flaw in his own argument that would justify the Church? It will never be known, I guess. Unfortunately, shortly before his memoirs had been found, Benjamin disappeared.

  They searched far and wide for him, for adulation had descended on the man. They scoured the land and cried out his name. His was the name heard whilst torching a church or slitting the throat of a clergyman. But no trace of the man could be found. He had vanished into the night and some whispered that the Church had been behind his disappearance, but Brent thought that was foolish.

  Today the Wordsmiths still gave homage to him even though there had been so much death and destruction in his name. They simply acknowledged his mind and his ability to reason. Brent suspected that Benjamin would not have approved. The anguish in his writings was a terrible thing to digest. He mourned for his friend the Bishop, he mourned for his Realm and he mourned for the loss of humanity that came about when he had unwillingly won the Great Debate.

  As soon as the Protector had been hastily voted in to rule the realm, he had reached out and with Redgrave at the head of the Army, they quelled the rioting. They arrested those they could and executed the worst offenders. No trials. No testimony. Just judgment. Instantaneous and irrevocable. It had been called the Cleansing. Bairstow was one of those in charge of the cleansing as a young lieutenant in the Army. Once he had been in the King's Guard, oath sworn and proud in his livery and suddenly he was one of the Revolutionaries. His captain gave orders and he followed them as any good soldier would. It still bothered his brother today and would likely always do so. He sought solace in the Word but Brent knew that the Word was cold and calculating and that his brother would find relief there.

  Brent sighed and began the climb up the back stairs to his chambers. Inside, he would find some refreshment left by his squires. Right now he only wished for water to slake his thirst. He paused on the stairs and pinched the bridge of his nose to quell the sharp pain that lingered behind his eyes. My squires will need to stay behind, he thought suddenly. I won't risk them.

  Brent wondered what Bishop Bengold would have to say, had he lived. He had been the strongest theist the Church had ever known, and yet – suddenly – he had surrendered the Debate to Benjamin. The Word spoke in awe about that moment. The words of the Bishop had been heard throughout the city. Magyc most said. Evil, others said. Preposterous, Brent thought. The questions he had gnawed at him though and he needed to know the truth of that day. It was a critical point – it wasn't that the Word won the debate; it was that the Church had surrendered to the Word. It was fine distinction to be sure, but one that the Church still grasped to like a drowning man clings to a piece of driftwood. Church writings were clear that they were about to win the debate. Benjamin Erwin's writing confirmed that, and yet the Bishop surrendered to the Word. Unbelievable, thought Brent.

  Brent reached his chambers, grabbed a goblet and splashed wine from the ewer into it and finished it in three strong gulps. He gasped for air, went to the washbasin, rinsed his face and neck and wet his hair. Looking into the mirror above the basin, he wiped his hands down his face to draw out the tiredness. His eyes were dark hollows and he needed a shave. He looked like shit. His mind was full of cobwebs and he was spending too much time dwelling on the past. He had a task to do and not much time remained to sort out the logistics of the road.

  What a long journey this will be, he thought and cursed to himself. He hated leaving his brother behind. It seemed to him they were being separated and it was probably exactly that. The Protector was a conniving son of a bitch; Brent would need to remain vigilant the entire time. For months. He sighed, not relishing the prospect. He would need to find men within the troop heading south that he could trust.

  The major was going to be a problem. He was one of the men that had his hands deep in the Protector's pockets. The major should have been tracking him down to go over orders. That he hadn't meant that he felt he was in charge of this particular mission. No doubt the Protector had already spoken to him. This does not bode well, Brent thought. He turned and entered the squires' room and kicked the two of them awake and started shouting orders.

  Sixteen

  Munsten, 878 A.C.

  THE KING'S ADVISOR Benjamin Erwin located Bishop Arnold Bengold sitting in his usual place in the back corner of the library, where he was reading with the light of a single candle. His attending priests had removed themselves out of earshot from his presence but loitered to attend to his needs, should he want for anything. The Bishop looked up at his approach, gave him a tight smile and nodded in greeting.

  When they had last spoken in private, Benjamin saw the haunted look in the Bishop's eyes and realised that the man had at last recognised the truth. They ended the session an
d the Bishop had quickly retreated back to his faith to look for comfort and answers. Answers he would not find in the false words of an imaginary god, mused Benjamin.

  Benjamin truly liked and admired the Bishop. He had a kindred spirit and the Bishop was an intelligent man. The only problem was that he suffered from a lifetime of forced theology that excluded all rational thought. Children in the Church were pressed into their false beliefs at an age when anything an adult told them was to be believed unreservedly. They were told of the horrors of hell and fell asleep with nightmares of falling into the pits of Hell. Simply horrendous, thought Benjamin. The Church was manmade and was created to serve the lust for power that men craved over others. There was no greater power than ruling the souls of men and holding them in fear.

  Throughout the Realm, believers in the Church suffered from those same forced beliefs and rarely did Benjamin find someone thinking outside the box or willing to listen to reason and logic. At least that was mostly true in the cities. Outside the cities, Benjamin knew that the beliefs of the people were far different. The people in the villages and those who worked the land believed in the power of nature and pursued a balance in the world. There, far from the cities, the people planted seed and tended the plants and grew life. Through them, the great balance of the world was maintained. More or less, thought Benjamin. It is far from perfect, but it is enough.

  Benjamin was the Freamhaigh, or head druid, of the Aretha Tacuinum Sanitatis. Theirs was an ancient, secret order of druids sometimes referred to by the other druids more lovingly as The Tree. For the people in the land, they simply knew their teachings as The Word. For most people in the Realm, particularly those who lived outside the harsh, lifeless cities knew it for Truth. The Word was not a religion. The Word was the knowledge of how nature worked and how people, animals, plants and insects all lived in balance in the Realm. His order lived and moved through the Realm and worked diligently to educate the people and reassure them through the teachings of the Word. These druids, called Stocs, maintained the balance as best they could. The people outside the cities, being closer to nature, were seldom religious people. They lived simply by the Word and all was well. Where there were not enough druids the order employed Wordsmiths; simple but learned men and women trained in the Word and science and Truth. The Wordsmiths were numerous and they taught the children and adults to respect nature and look at the world with logic, reason and compassion. The order had produced the Book of the Word and distributed it to the Wordsmiths. It had been this way for centuries and the balance it preserved was wondrous to behold.

  As head of the order, Benjamin placed himself where he could most influence the politics of the land. He dearly missed the feel of grass and soil beneath his feet. He communed often with Cill Darae Analise Bracewell. She was the High Priestess of the Tree and together they maintained the balance. Always when the Freamhaigh was a man, the Cill Darae was a woman. The balance demanded it. Benjamin snorted and thought to himself: More accurately, Gaea demands it.

  Benjamin was troubled at the moment. Analise had been quite upset at him and he struggled to understand. She was deeply troubled with him and yet she was unable to discuss what her concerns were. She said that Gaea had forbade it and that troubled Benjamin. Friction between them was unheard of. Usually, the Freamhaigh and Cill Darae connected at a level that begged no misunderstandings between them. Their bond with Gaea allowed it. He had seen the fright in her eyes. She told him to trust Gaea. He could see that she yearned to explain the problem to him but could not and so he had relented in the end. His urgings had caused her considerable distress and it had pained him also. The Great Debate was surely the root of the problem. It was why he was here in the library. It was why he needed to talk to the Bishop and convince him to accept a solution he was sure he would not like.

  Fortunately, the Bishop was a man who thought outside the strict tenants of his orthodoxy. He was an expert theologian, and yet open to new ideas for change. But he hid it well under layers and layers of dogmatic theology. And thus, he was hiding in plain sight right in front of the Archbishop and the other senior clergy of the Church. It delighted Benjamin, who could see it so plainly now that he knew what to look for. The Bishop hid his true nature so well that he had been personally selected by the Archbishop to represent the Church in the Great Debate. Benjamin worried for him, for he knew that the Church could not tolerate free thinkers. Free thinkers, they knew, would tear down the foundations of a belief system that was built on lies, circular arguments and fabricated stories.

  Hypocrisy cannot stand the light of truth and reason, he thought. Arnold needs to listen to me this time. Perhaps I need to make a demonstration? But Benjamin immediately thrust that thought aside and forced a smile upon his face. He nodded politely to the two priests sitting quietly some distance from where the Bishop sat and increased his pace to something more energetic and positive.

  He approached the table where the Bishop slouched with little dignity, his rotund belly was pressed up against the lower wood and threatened to lift the table off the ground. Books were towered all around him, and papers were strewn every which way. The bright flame from the candle on the table lit up the disturbed motes of dust and they danced thick in the air currents like smoke. The candle was scented and a pleasant lavender scent filled the air. On the table, Benjamin could see the familiar large ink pot with several pens stacked beside it sitting precariously near the edge closest to him. Trails of splashed ink led from the ink pot to papers recently scribbled on in haste by the Bishop. Books and papers covered the remainder of the table except where an untouched plate of food lay pushed by the spread of books over to the far edge of the table. Placed on top of books, on the table nearest where Benjamin's chair lay waiting, was a small bowl of fruit. A silver tray had been placed on a small stool next to the Bishop that held two tumblers and a small pitcher of wine. It is a chaotic sight but a familiar one and it balances the tidy and brilliant intellect of the Bishop himself, thought Benjamin with amusement.

  As if hearing his name in thought, the Bishop looked up to Benjamin and gestured with ink stained fingers to the chair beside him. Benjamin smiled in a friendly way, serendipitously pushed the ink well away from the edge of the table, and sat down quickly in a mirrored slouch to the Bishop. He crossed his legs in a pose of nonchalance and started bobbing his extended foot up and down. He immediately spied an orange in the bowl next to him and feigned surprise to see it there. He reached out and snagged it with a viper's strike. Rolling it in his hands, he reached to Gaea and breathed some life back into the fruit that had probably been picked a couple of months ago. He then reached out to the orange with his gift and pushed a tiny amount of his own life force into the fruit to freshen it and then asked the orange to separate its peel. He placed the two halves of the peel on the table and started to section the orange into two piles on the table.

  The Bishop watched all this in silence. This was a ritual of sorts between the two of them. Benjamin knew that the Bishop had yet to determine how he managed it. He knew that he thought he must be swapping the orange in some sleight of hand, but had yet failed to detect the swap and it frustrated him. He knew it made his mouth water in anticipation by the rapid swallowing that always followed the sectioning of the oranges. He had learned that the Bishop had even queried the kitchen staff at length about Benjamin's source of the oranges only to be met with strange looks from the staff.

  With the two piles of orange segments complete on the table, Benjamin waved magnanimously at the pile closest to the Bishop. He then waited respectively a moment while the Bishop spoke a few words of thanks to his god before popping one from his pile into his mouth. The Bishop took his time selecting one and then after placing it in his mouth, closed his eyes in pleasure, chewed and swallowed.

  Benjamin watched as the emotion of guilt flashed on the Bishop's face and he sighed and simply enjoyed his own fruit in quiet contemplation. These poor religious types, he thought, so many self–imposed
issues. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not feared. Certainly not full of guilt over the simple pleasures in life. Perhaps, if I could remove the guilt from their religion then this Great Debate could be worth it, he thought, but I doubt it. Nothing good is coming out of it. He cursed himself for even thinking it. It is, after all, my own stupid idea. Well, not the way it is now, he admonished himself, but what it has grown into. He had tossed out the idea to quell an argument and now here he was. Deep in the shit.

  The Bishop finished his orange segments with a satisfied sigh and fulfilled his part of the ritual by filling the goblets with the fine wine he had brought in from the southern region he had grown up in. Benjamin savoured the wine above all others and rightly so. The southern sun sweetened the grapes to perfection and the wines the vineyard produced were highly sought after. The Bishop had several cases hidden in the wine cellar. They clinked rims together and sipped their wine in quiet contemplation.

  Benjamin and the Bishop had been meeting in the library for months now. What had started as a quiet conversation at a Provincial dinner had grown into this friendship between the two. They came from opposite beliefs and opposite backgrounds but shared a common love for debate. To the Bishop. Benjamin was simply the King's advisor and a non–religious type. Perhaps he saw Benjamin as a conquest to be had, a man to convert over to the teachings of the Church. Benjamin had no idea, but suspected the Bishop simply enjoyed being able to openly discuss his Faith with another who could provide an intelligent response and counter argument. Perhaps it was a way for the Bishop to convince himself that his Faith was strong.