The Initiate

by Louise Cooper

  From the high vantage point of a ridge that marked the mountains' southeastern extremity, he looked down the smooth sides of an ancient, glacial valley. Detail was half obscured by the heavy rain which had been falling since sunrise, colors dulled and smudged under the veil of falling water, but still the place looked like a haven after the harsh terrain of the peaks. On the far side the mountains rose again, black and menacing, their highest crags lost in fast-moving tatters of cloud; but below were farmsteads and crofts, herdbeasts standing with ponderous stoicism in what shelter they could find. And in the distance, half shrouded by a copse of trees and surrounded by neat, well-tended fields, the white watts of the West High Land Sisterhood Cot.

  Odd emotions welled up in Tarod as he looked at the tranquil building. He could be there long before dusk; and within those walls was Sashka, waiting for him... but he dared not move from this place until darkness fell. It was possible -- just possible -- that a message from Keridil might have reached the Cot; it was, after all, the one logical place in the world where the Circle would expect him to go, and he could take no risks.

  Tarod had driven himself and the horse to the limit since his flight from the Castle. Now he was bone-weary, aching from cold and sleeplessness, and the rain had soaked him to the marrow -- in his haste he had brought neither food nor a cloak, and the wind bit through his sodden shirt, numbing his skin until he could barely feel his own chafed hands on the reins. But he would have to suffer a while longer...

  He slid from the saddle and almost fell as his legs threatened to give way. Supporting himself by hanging on to a stirrup, he maneuvered the mare back from the ridge's edge and into the lee of a steep cliff. He had noted a safe path down the side of the valley, negotiable even in darkness; until night came he'd take what shelter he could find under the cliff, and wait.

  Tarod hoped that he might sleep for a while, but the wind changed direction, blowing the rain in heavier gusts that spattered against the cliff face where he crouched; and that coupled with the gnawing pangs of hunger kept him awake. Although it was already late afternoon, dusk seemed an interminable time coming; at last though the easterly sky began to darken from grey to pewter towards black: the valley sank into a deep gloom, and Tarod pulled himself to his feet.

  It was all he could do to haul his body into the wet saddle, and he had to clutch at a handful of the mare's mane to steady himself. She seemed in better spirits, and set off willingly enough at a touch. In gathering darkness they made their slow way down the path, leaving the mountains behind. The wind dropped away as they neared the valley floor, then they were moving across rough pasture, dotted here and there with the indistinct silhouettes of bushes and brambles and the occasional slumbering herdbeast which lumbered to its feet and shambled away with an indignant bellow. Lights glowed faintly from two cottages nearby, but no one was aware of the stranger riding quietly past; and at last the walls of the Sisterhood Cot loomed palely ahead.

  Tarod reined in and, dismounting, tethered the mare to the first of the surrounding trees. From the outside the Cot showed no lights; following tradition it had been built with a high surrounding wall, intended to deter would-be swains from mooning after the Novitiates. There would be a postern gate, locked but probably not watched; to open it should be a small matter... if he had the strength.

  Tarod fingered his ring, feeling the stone cold but faintly pulsing to his touch. Again, he needed it -- under normal circumstances his own basic skills would be sufficient, but exhaustion had taken too great a toll. He turned to stroke the mare's nose reassuringly and heard her snort uneasily as he slipped out of her sight into the darkness. The wall lay directly ahead: he skirted it silently until he found the gate. A grill, set high in the wood, showed a glimmer of light on the far side, but nothing moved. Tarod closed his eyes, willing his mind to focus and concentrate... and after a few moments he heard the scrape and thud of a heavy bolt moving back. He tried the postern, and it swung open on greased hinges, admitting him to the Cot garden.

  Now the Sisterhood Cot resolved into a comfortable jumble of low, white buildings of one or two stories. Ahead, in the largest, lamplight glowed from a row of tall windows and he could glimpse long refectory tables within, a few white-robed women sitting near a well-made fire. Beyond that lay two lesser but still quite large houses which, he surmised, contained the quarters of the Seniors and full Sisters; beyond that again several cottagelike structures must house the Novices....

  Tarod moved quickly, keeping well clear of the lamplight, until he came to the first of the Novice cots. He was about to approach when a door opened and two girls with coats pulled over their hair emerged. Giggling and shrieking at the rain they ran no more than an arm's length past the deep shadows where Tarod stood motionless, and vanished in the direction of the refectory.

  He waited until their voices had finally faded into silence, then moved towards the Cot. Intuition led him to the back of the building, where he found two windows framed by a creeping vine; one in darkness, the other showing a bar of light through half-drawn curtains.

  He sensed her presence long before he reached the window and looked cautiously through, but when he saw her it still gave him an unexpected twist of emotion. She was sitting at a small desk, head bowed and haloed by the candlelight, and she seemed to be reading.

  Tarod's hand had reached involuntarily towards the window as though to open it before he checked himself. He didn't want to alarm her -- the Gods alone knew what she would think to see him stealing in on her like some brigand. He drew back, and returned to the door from which the chattering Novices had emerged. It wasn't locked, and, slipping noiselessly through, he found himself in a narrow, unlit hall.

  Sashka's door lay to the left at the further end. His hand on the latch was silent; the door opened easily and for a moment he stood watching her as she sat still engrossed. Then he stepped into the room, closed the door as quietly as he had opened it, and said softly, "Sashka..."

  She screamed, stifled it by instinct and spun round, the chair scraping on the floor. As she saw him her eyes widened and the color drained from her face; she stood, backed away a step, and whispered his name as if she couldn't believe what her senses told her.

  Tarod crossed the room towards her. "I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to frighten you, but I could think of no other way."

  She knew. He saw it in her eyes -- somehow news had travelled ahead of him, and Kael Amion had seen fit to pass on the message from the Castle. Suddenly hope and certainty crumbled away and he felt bereft -- had they corrupted the one living soul whose faith he had thought he could count on?

  Sashka, however, was rapidly regaining her composure. To see Tarod standing in her own room, not five paces away, when at that very moment she had been obsessed with thoughts of him was a shock; but now she took a grip on herself and swallowed to ease the pounding of her heart.

  "Tarod... Gods, what are you doing here?"

  "I came to find you."

  "But -- your clothes, your hair... you're soaked through, and you haven't got a cloak!"

  "There wasn't time for any preparation. I -- left the Castle in too much haste." He paused, then: "They've told you, haven't they?"

  She looked at his face and her mouth trembled. "Told me... ?"

  "Sashka, in the name of Aeoris don't pretend! Word's reached this Cot about me. You know."

  She started to cry; not a storm of tears but deep, gulping sobs that shook her whole frame. She looked so helpless, so vulnerable, that Tarod could only draw her to him and hold her despite his dishevelled state. For a moment he thought she would pull away, but then she relaxed against him as if drawing on the little strength he had left.

  "Yesterday, the Lady Kael summoned me..." Her voice was muffled, halting. "She -- she showed me a letter that had just arrived by messenger from the Castle -- from the High Initiate in person..."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said... that something terrible happened, that you -- had summoned a demon
from Chaos. And... he said there was fear that you weren't loyal to Aeoris, but owed your allegiance to evil..."

  No messenger could have reached the Cot faster than he himself had ridden, unless the man had wings... Keridil must have despatched his letter on the very night of the summoning in the Marble Hall. "Was there nothing more?" he asked.

  "Only that... the High Initiate asked Lady Kael that I should be warned of the danger..."

  "Yes," Tarod said speculatively, "I imagine he would have said that..."

  Sashka's shoulders heaved and she sobbed out, "Tarod, the Lady told me that our marriage can't take place, that if I wed you we'll both lose everything we've ever known and be outcasts! Please -- please tell me it isn't true!"

  He couldn't lie to her. It would have been so easy, looking down at her pleading face, to assure her that all would be well, to leave with her now and take her into the exile he faced -- but he couldn't. She above all others deserved the truth.

  "Sashka, I must tell you the whole story." He released her gently and moved to a chair -- he had to sit; his exhausted body wouldn't support him any longer. "I've ridden from the Peninsula without stopping, but before I rest I must tell you." He glanced towards the door. "Are we safe here?"

  "As safe as anywhere... even the Novices' own rooms are sacrosanct."

  "Then listen. Since that letter was written, much more has happened... on the night that followed, I killed a man."

  "You... oh, no, I can't believe -- "

  "You must believe, because it's true!" He had deliberately couched the revelation in cold, harsh terms, knowing that any dissembling would do more harm than good. Now as she stared at him he recounted the entire sequence of events in painful detail, without emotion and without meeting her gaze. He felt as though he were baring himself to the bone before her, but it was the only way -- to hide anything would be to do her a terrible injustice. He could only trust to his own belief that she would keep faith.

  At last, the full story was laid before her. She was silent, and the silence was unbearable.

  "And now," Tarod said, "there's a price on my head, Sashka. I'm far worse than an outcast -- I'm a condemned man."

  "Oh, Tarod..." Twisting her hands together in distress Sashka turned and paced across the floor to the window. Her voice shook as she asked, "What will you do?"

  "I don't know... so much depends on you."

  "Me...?"

  "Sashka, you're the only one I can trust not to betray me! You hold my life in your hands. I can live -- I can go far to the south and start afresh; and the Gods alone know it's easy enough to create a new identity. That's a small skill to any Adept. But without you there's nothing to live for. Lady Kael was right -- you'd lose everything you've ever known; clan, friends, station... but we'd be together. Isn't that what matters above all?"

  She took a deep breath and thought for what seemed a very long while. Then, slowly, she said, "Yes... that's what matters, my love."

  Tarod could have wept with sheer relief. He gazed at her where she stood still with her back to him -- even looking at her hurt, though he accepted the pain gladly. He rose. "Then -- "

  "No." She turned and came towards him, placing her hands on his arms. "Then nothing, until you're rested. You say you rode without stopping -- when did you last eat?"

  It had been before Themila died... Tarod made a negative gesture. "That's unimportant."

  "It is not unimportant! By the look of you you couldn't even sit astride a horse, let alone ride. You're to wait here, and I'll fetch food for you. After that, you sleep -- and later we'll leave quickly and quietly before anyone suspects anything amiss." She nodded towards the window. "The rain has stopped -- if the sky clears it'll be dangerous to go before second moonset anyway."

  He hesitated. With freedom so close he was reluctant to put their flight off for any reason -- but his own body was arguing on Sashka's side. He was bone-weary, too exhausted to think beyond the next moment; he needed sustenance if he was to be capable of anything....

  "Sashka..." His uncertainty showed in his voice and she bent to kiss him softly. Her lips lingered on his, awakening memories of their time together at the Castle.

  "Don't be afraid, my love," she whispered. "All will be well. Depend on me..."

  He closed his eyes, nodding, suddenly too tired to answer her. Her hand smoothed his hair and she said, "Wait here -- I'll fetch food, and then you can sleep."

  She stole to the door, opened it, peered out into the hall and found it deserted. Looking back over her shoulder she saw that Tarod's head was already drooping, and she slipped outside. As soon as the door had closed behind her she leaned against the wall, shut her eyes tightly and made the sign of Aeoris over her own breast. Her heart was hammering again, with a mixture of the shock brought on by Tarod's revelation and relief at having escaped from the room. She hadn't believed it -- she had pretended compliance to the Lady whilst secretly rebelling against the news, but now her thoughts and feelings had been violently overturned.

  Bitterness and disappointment filled her. She had had such hopes, such dreams... and in one dismal night they had all been snatched away. A condemned man... a seventh-rank Adept, with a price on his head, accused of consorting with Chaos... she didn't pretend to understand half the implications and was impatient with them; but the consequences were clear enough. And tonight he wanted her to go with him, run away and face a future that held nothing....

  She'd been a fool. She should have realized from the very beginning that there was no smoke without fire -- and instead of speculating and worrying and gnawing over the injustice done to Tarod, she should have been more concerned with the injustice to herself. Now though, her path was clear. And the tone of the High Initiate's letter, the message he had imparted to her personally, gave her new hope....

  Exhausted as he was, Tarod's sleep was punctuated by dreams that allowed him no real rest. Several times he half woke, aware of the strange room and disconcerted by it, then he would fall into yet another fitful and unsatisfying doze.

  On the fourth such occasion, something more than the dreams shook him out of his uneasy state. He could barely open his eyelids, and when he did the room seemed misty and blurred. And someone was moving towards him....

  Tarod blinked, trying to see more clearly. White-robed figures... several of them. And at their head was Sashka.

  He tried to speak to her, but mistook dream-state for reality and uttered the words only in his mind. She stood over him; holding something; a stave he thought....

  Intuition roused him suddenly, but not in time. He had one glimpse of Sashka's furious, half-terrified, half-vengeful face before the wooden staff cracked across his skull and an unbelievable pain pitched his consciousness into oblivion.

  Lady Kael Amion, leaning heavily on the arm of the plump-faced Mistress of Novices, pushed through the crowd of whispering, wide-eyed women in the doorway and stared down at the still figure of the man slumped in Sashka's chair. A livid crimson mark was already spreading across his forehead where the stave had struck him and, soaked, dishevelled and helpless as he was, he looked incapable of any atrocity. For a moment Kael saw him again as the thin and badly injured child of so many years ago; then she remembered the contents of Keridil's letter, together with her own fearful precognitions, and hardened her heart.

  "You did well, child." She eased her arthritic body round so that she could regard Sashka. "It was a terrible decision for you to have to make; but it was the only right way."

  "Thank you, Madam." Sashka didn't meet Kael's gaze: her face was flushed and her voice bristled with thinly disguised fury that hadn't abated since the moment she had burst dramatically into the refectory and announced that a dangerous man, sought by the Circle for consorting with Chaos, was in their midst. The reaction of the Sisters had been gratifyingly spectacular, and under the gaze of Kael Amion, who had hastened as best she could from her rooms which she rarely left these days, Sashka had told Tarod's full story to a stunned audience
. Now as the girl glanced at him, still clutching the stave, Kael had the distinct feeling that she would be prepared to use it again at the smallest provocation. Could all the love she had professed have turned to hatred so suddenly and vehemently, Kael wondered? She had struck Tarod down almost with relish, as though he were her lifelong enemy rather than the man she had been on the brink of marrying... the old seer shook her head, dismissing the speculation. She couldn't pretend to understand a girl like Sashka Veyyil -- and whatever her motives, she had captured a dangerous man, a murderer and worse. That was all that mattered.

  A breathless Sister approached along the corridor, running with skirts hitched up and no regard for dignity.

  "The men from the farmstead have been sent for, Madam -- they're bringing scythes and hoes and anything that'll serve as a weapon."

  "Weapons won't be needed now, thanks be to Aeoris," Kael said. "But we'll need good men to serve as escort back to the Star Peninsula. How much have they been told?"

  The Sister shook her head quickly. "Nothing, Lady, save that a wanted criminal has been apprehended."

  "Good. As well not to alarm them with any talk of sorcery, or they'll vanish into the night like frightened rabbits. Now -- I want Sister Erminet Rowald brought to me here. We'll need her herbalist's skills to keep this man drugged until he's safe back at the Castle." Someone ran to do her bidding and she looked again at Sashka. "My child -- are you sure Tarod made no attempt to deny the High Initiate's accusations?"

  Sashka's eyes glittered angrily. "Yes, Madam! He said it was all true -- and worse, far worse, as I've told you!"

  "Very well, very well -- no one's doubting your word; we simply have to be certain." Kael paused. "If there's a price on his head as you say, then it's likely the Circle will have sent out men to hunt for him, and our Cot could be one of their first destinations. With Aeoris's blessing on our side, our party might meet them before we even reach the mountains."