Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  The abbot knew that wasn’t the point.

  “How did you feel when you saw him die?” he asked, trying to help Heden focus.

  Heden, eyes red, trying not to show emotion, confessed: “I felt like I was dying.”

  “Were you aware you felt that way at the time?”

  “Yeah,” Heden said.

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  “I don’t know,” Heden evaded.

  The abbot smiled. “You didn’t feel ashamed at all? After everything you’ve seen? You’ve killed giants.”

  “Alright,” Heden said, now ashamed that he’d bothered to avoid the issue. “I felt like there was something wrong with me. I wanted to cry, to…to weep. Why? I wasn’t in control of myself. Like another attack. Yeah. I felt ashamed.”

  “Because you felt so strongly about the death of a marauding thyrswight.”

  “Yeah,” Heden said. “When I was younger, I’d have helped Nudd. Why wasn’t I on his side?”

  “So,” the abbot said sitting back in his chair, trying not to look too pleased with himself, “first you felt ashamed that being in the forest could cause you to lose control of yourself, and then you felt ashamed when you found yourself caring about a dying giant.”

  Heden found himself drawn into his own rehabilitation by his fascination with the abbot’s process.

  “You think they’re related?” he asked.

  The abbot’s head nodded in big swoops, causing his chair to rock back and forth. “I do.”

  “You think if I were better,” Heden said, “neither would have bothered me.”

  “You’re half right,” the abbot said, smiling at something.

  Heden shook his head sharply. He didn’t understand what the abbot meant and was replaying it in his mind.

  The abbot knew Heden had taken it as far as he could, and so gave him the rest.

  “I think the attacks leave you feeling vulnerable,” he said.

  Heden agreed. He had felt vulnerable.

  “That’s good for you; it’s something you’re not used to.”

  Heden’s face fell as realization dawned.

  “Not like at the inn,” Heden said, feeling stupid for not having seen it himself. The inn was his sanctuary.

  The abbot grinned, pleased that Heden saw it.

  “And that vulnerability leaves you open to feel other things.”

  Heden looked at the abbot. In an instant, like remembering someone’s name after you’d forgotten it, Heden realized this was truth. He could see the death of the giant now, and his own reaction, without shame. Though the memory of the giant’s eyes still brought pain, he wasn’t afraid of it.

  “That giant didn’t need to die,” Heden said with certainty.

  The abbot shook his head. “Probably not,” he said.

  “That was Nudd, and his pain. The order collapsing.”

  “The Squire told you as much,” the abbot said. “I think your reaction to the death of the giant was perfectly healthy. You experienced grief at the death of another life. That’s something Sir Nudd could not do,” he said.

  Heden saw the truth. “I think Aderyn was upset too.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen her, but she’d been affected by what was happening. Maybe sheltered from it too. There’s hope for her yet.”

  Heden looked at him, and the image of Isobel and Brys wreathed in fire came unbidden to his mind. He felt nauseous.

  “Let’s talk about the knights,” he said. The abbot agreed, taking a deep breath.

  “The knight you met when you entered the forest was Sir Mór,” he leaned back in his chair, assuming the role of teacher once again.

  “Mór?” Heden asked.

  “Mór was the squire of St. Godwin.”

  “I know him!” Heden was amazed. “By Cavall I learned about them at school.”

  “Mór was called ‘The Green Man,’ that’s probably what he meant when he told you everyone in the north knew him. He became a figure more mythological than legendary. I think there was some Golish antecedent there, some preexisting figure whose role he stepped into.” The abbot was enjoying teaching again, which was fine with Heden. He was enjoying being taught. “The Green Man is the spirit that fights winter, or keeps summer safe. There’s a folktale, almost certainly based on a now-lost Golish legend, about Sir Mór, the Green Knight, going into the Wode to rescue the Lady of Summer. It’s an allegory of the cycle of the seasons.”

  Heden’s eyes unfocused. “Pakadrask called Sir Taethan ‘Green Man.’”

  “Yes, well, there’s obviously a connection there, although what exactly? Who knows. Mór seems interested in the fate of the order, certainly. And he knew something about you. Knew you were, ah…a mess,” the abbot smiled with affection at his pupil.

  Heden managed a smile.

  “Why did he want me?”

  “He was testing you.”

  “Testing me?” Heden objected.

  “Well, testing you and preparing you to be tested.”

  This seemed to upset Heden.

  “Test me for what?! What did he think I was going to….”

  “Heden,” the abbot tried to calm him down, and then his expression turned to fondness, remembering the student from years ago. “You never liked allegory, I remember. You’re very literal-minded. Probably for the best.”

  “What are you talking about? I cut off the man’s head!”

  The abbot dismissed this comment with a flick of his fingers

  “You grew up on a farm, yes?”

  Heden agreed. “Okay,” he was playing along.

  “You go out and collect the harvest, you collect the grain. With what?”

  “With what?” Heden asked, not understanding the question. “With a scythe or a…” he realized what the abbot was getting at, and he disapproved. “Or a sickle. Okay, I get it.”

  “But that’s not the end of the world,” the abbot continued, ignoring Heden’s disdain. “More crops will grow next year. With some work on your part of course. So you chop off the head of the Green Man with your,” the abbot pointed to Heden’s scabbard. “Your scythe-substitute there. His head grows back, all is well,”

  “You’re right,” Heden said. “I hate allegory. Okay, so what? He wasn’t doing that just to be…just to be poetic.”

  “No,” the abbot agreed, “he obviously thought you weren’t up to the task of saving the order and this was his way of seeing how far you’d go.”

  “Well, I went about as far as you can!”

  “Yes, and he accepted that. Probably he knew what I know.”

  Heden got goosebumps at that.

  “What do you know?” he asked, wary of the answer.

  “That if you couldn’t save them, no one could.”

  Heden sulked, he didn’t like this insight.

  “You don’t like knights, and I think Mór somehow knew that about you. But the true knightly ideal has very little to do with the Hart and their ilk. The true knight is about purity, which is where you get that oath of Chastity. That, and courage. Those were your tests. Aderyn at the river: that was chastity. Fidelity. Love unrequited, all of those in one. And then courage, a test you passed several times, but mostly I think it was going back in after you left the first time.

  “We can never be sure of these things, but I think when you cut off his head, he saw that he had no right to judge you. He knew, or believed, that you had to be in the forest as much as the knights. That it was as much a test for you as it was for them. Sir Taethan knew that, I think. That’s why he accepted you. He saw a man going through the test of knightly virtue and I think he judged you a truer knight than any of his brothers.”

  “You think the wode brought Mór forward from his time?” Heden asked. The abbot screwed up his face thinking about it. “Or sent me back to his?” He was using Mór as an excuse to avoid dealing with the real problem. The abbot knew this.

  “I…think it’s a mistake for us to talk in terms of forward or back when it
comes to the wodes. In a wode, you could meet a you who never lived and never will. I find its best not to think too hard about it. You could meet anyone in the wode.”

  Heden’s face went blank.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Heden confessed.

  This didn’t appear to alarm the abbot. “I’m here for you, Heden. By now, if you don’t want to tell me something, I trust you.”

  That helped. “When I came to, after the Yllindir almost killed us. Taethan and I were separated.”

  The abbot didn’t say anything.

  “Halcyon brought me around.”

  The abbot took this in stride. “You mean…when you awoke, you felt her presence in or around…”

  “No, I mean she was there,” Heden corrected him. “She was actually there, I met her. I talked to her.” I looked at her legs. “She made me soup.”

  The abbot accepted this.

  “Why do you think she appeared to you?”

  This was not the question Heden was expecting.

  “She wanted to help me,” Heden said. The abbot nodded.

  “That’s why we’re granted prayers,” the abbot reminded him. “The saints aren’t allowed to intervene directly. So why appear before you?”

  “She was afraid,” Heden guessed, and in guessing discovered the truth.

  The abbot nodded. “Afraid of what?”

  “Afraid her order was being destroyed.”

  “So why not appear before Taethan?”

  “I don’t know!” Heden shouted. The abbot’s eyes rose. Heden was at his wits’ end.

  The abbot let him have his frustration, and let the matter lie.

  “Well,” he began, returning to the larger issue, “my first reaction is; you probably didn’t make anything worse.”

  Heden didn’t say anything. He tried to accept this, it wasn’t easy.

  “I failed.”

  The abbot frowned. “Well nobody’s perfect,” he said.

  “You sure about that?”

  The abbot raised his eyebrows theatrically. “Confidence is high, as the Castellan says. But one never knows. I loathe certainty.”

  No one said anything.

  “So there’s this girl back at the Hammer & Tongs,” the abbot said, changing subjects.

  “What?” Heden asked.

  “Did you know I used to drink there, before you bought it and closed it down?”

  “You what?” Heden asked, disoriented.

  “I was talking with Gwiddon about the Hammer and you opening it. I miss the place.”

  “I can’t talk about…listen I need to know what to do about the knights.”

  “We’ve talked about them,” the abbot said. “I want to talk about the girl.”

  The abbot could see it was killing Heden, but did not relent.

  “What’s her name?”

  Heden didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s talk about the trull.”

  “Vanora.”

  “What happens if you let her down?”

  “What?” Heden heard him, but couldn’t process the question. It was too hard to switch midstream. The answer scared him too much.

  “She’s not a thousand people at a keep no one’s ever heard of,” the abbot said. “She’s not a knight who spent sixty years in service to a practically monastic order. She’s just a girl whose parents don’t remember her. No one cares about her. What happens if she just goes back to what she knows? Back to being a whore?”

  “She’ll be dead in ten years,” Heden said.

  “Well, me too in all likelihood.”

  “You’ve lived a life.”

  “Then that’s it,” the abbot said. “A mathematics of the value of a man.”

  “Come on,” Heden said. He didn’t like it when the abbot was patronizing. Something that rarely happened.

  “I’m not asking about her, Heden,” the abbot pointed out. “What happens to you if she goes back to being a whore?”

  Heden shook his head.

  “I don’t think I could take it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she deserves better.”

  “Everyone deserves better.”

  “I didn’t save everyone’s life,” Heden said.

  “There are many people whose lives you haven’t saved, why start with the girl?”

  “Vanora.”

  “Why start with Vanora?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure,” the abbot said.

  Heden ignored the abbot’s sarcasm and thought about the question. “She needs me.”

  “Ah!” the abbot said, Heden having finally said something revelatory. “And what do you need?”

  “I guess I need her too.”

  “A happy mutuality of purpose,” the abbot said, and smiled again.

  “I think she’s afraid of me though,” Heden said. He was trying to remember. A lot had happened in the three days since he left Vanora. Suddenly he wanted to go to her, to hold her and make sure she was safe. To give her a chance.

  “Nothing unusual about that. A lot of people are afraid of you.”

  “I’ve given her no reason to be afraid,” Heden said, seeming wounded.

  “Haven’t you?”

  “I just said I haven’t.”

  “Well that’s it then.”

  Heden thought about how he and Vanora met.

  “I cured her,” he said.

  “That you did.”

  “So she…she thinks of me when she thinks of her problem.”

  “Not an easy thing to get over.”

  “But I cured her.” Surely that was a problem solved, wasn’t it?

  “Some people never come see me or any of the other abbots. They think seeing us…ah, manifests their problems. We’re healers, but some people associate us with sickness.”

  “Well there’s nothing I can do about that.” Heden frowned.

  “If that’s your attitude,” the abbot said, and gestured to the door.

  “Black gods,” Heden said.

  The abbot smiled and gestured to the door again.

  “What does she think about you?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t know about me.”

  “Doesn’t know what to think about you.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not a patron.”

  “All the men she knows are patrons?”

  “And the muscle at the Rose.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Like muscle. Thick and hard. And they take payment where they find it.”

  “I see some of them here,” the abbot said nodding.

  “She probably knew her father.”

  “But doesn’t now.”

  “He was probably a pigfucker.”

  “If he was only a pig fucker,” the abbot pointed out. “She’d probably not be a whore.”

  “Ugh,” Heden said, and slumped back against the wall.

  “Hard,” the abbot said.

  “There’s just so much pain everywhere. It’s all I see when I leave the inn.”

  “And guilt,” the abbot said.

  Heden just stared at him.

  “So, I guess, she looks to me as a surrogate.”

  “Then there’s no problem,” the abbot said. “She badly needs a father, you badly want to be a father.”

  “I do?” Heden asked, not entirely surprised.

  “You do, trust me,” the abbot said. He always said this when he was telling Heden something he already knew.

  “That’s not all,”

  “No,” the abbot said.

  “I don’t think…” Heden was sidling up to it. “I don’t think she knows what to do with…how to deal with people who aren’t patrons.”

  “That’s it,” the abbot said, not affirming, just drawing the information from Heden.

  “When I first saw her look at me, she was scared. She saw something. Something in me.”

  The abbot let him off the hook
. “She saw someone she couldn’t control.”

  Heden breathed out, unaware he’d been holding his breath as he groped for the answer. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Well it’s early days yet. Give it time. Give her time, the hard part’s still ahead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean children are hard.”

  Heden obviously didn’t know what he meant.

  “Didn’t seem hard to me. She seemed pretty normal to me.”

  “Of course she did.”

  Heden scratched his eyebrow and looked at the abbot.

  “She was doing that on purpose?” Heden asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Heden sat up. “Shit.”

  “At some point she’ll drop that and try something else. That’ll be hard. Then you’ll get down to the real thing and that will be hard, too. I don’t know this girl, I haven’t met her, but this is a project that’ll take a year or two. And you won’t be able to head off to the forest for a fortnight.”

  “It was only three days.”

  “You think it felt like three days to her?”

  “You’re saying I should forget about the knights and concentrate on the girl?”

  “What does Duke Baede say?”

  “’Fight the battle in front of you.’”

  “Heden, I don’t think you could forget about the knights, or the people at that keep, even if you wanted to. The knights are still there, the keep is still there. For a little while at least. But I think the Knights are at the end of something and Vanora is at the beginning. You need beginnings more than you need endings.”

  “And I need to fight the battle in front of me.”

  “I think you should go to the inn.”

  “I will,” Heden said.

  “No, I’m saying I think you should go home,” the abbot explained. “You’ve been gone three days.”

  “What do you mean?” Heden asked, frowning.

  The abbot waited a moment for the import of his words to sink in.

  “I mean three days is a long time.”

  Chapter Forty Eight

  The war-bred urman sat at a table in the middle of the common area, on Heden’s left as he came in. He was the only figure in the room. Though ten inches over six feet and dwarfing the chair he sat in, he wore normal clothing, city fashionable, from the tailor. No sword, no weapons that Heden could see, and a half-empty bottle of wine sat alone in the center the table, an empty glass next to it.