The Highwayman sotfk-1

by R. A. Salvatore

Even on those days when SenWi was able to complete the single fold easily, she could not then go on. There was no "getting ahead" in the crafting of a Jhesta Tu sword. There was only the process, methodical and disciplined.

  The woman drew the heavy curtains closed and moved across the small room to the special metal table and the rolled steel. She felt the heat more profoundly with each step forward, for under the table was set a small oven, which she had fired up before going out to her morning exercise. She picked up another block of coke, slipped a heavy glove onto her left hand, and used an iron poker to pull open the small round hatch. She tossed in the fuel, then paused and watched as the orange glow increased, as lines of smoldering fires ran like living caterpillars across the face of the new block. Above it, waves of heat climbed, funneling into the seams of the furnace and table so that it would be properly distributed.

  SenWi closed the furnace hatch and moved to the side of the table. To her right lay the beginnings of the shaped blade, with the unfolded metal sheet running to her left like an unwound bolt of silk. Just past the blade, farther to the right, was a raised edge, the apex of the heat zone, slightly glowing in the dimly lit room.

  A small diamond-edged rule and cutter, fashioned with a concave edge designed to fit tightly against the edge of the blade facilitated the next part of the process. When SenWi slowly and precisely ran it across the thin sheet, it drew the line of the next fold and also drew a lighter line indicating the breadth of the overlap area. With her bare hand, she lifted the blade and brought it up and over, using all of her focus and discipline to set it precisely in place, so that the scratched line rested perfectly along the raised and heated edge.

  Then she removed her glove and let the metal sit, while she went across the room and prayed, finding her center of focus, aligning her ki-chi-kree. When the appropriate time of heating had passed, she took up a pair of tiny hammers and moved back to the table.

  SenWi began to sing softly, finding a rhythm and cadence. She began to dance around the table, her hands working slow circles, tap-tapping the metal atop the raised edge, but gently, so as not to tear the already thin sheet. It went on for nearly an hour: the soft singing-chanting really-the graceful steps, each bringing her arms in reach of a different point of the crease; and the continual tapping. Never once in all the days of her work had the woman touched the formed blade with those hammers, despite their proximity. That was the discipline of the dance and the movements, to strike precisely along that single, definitive line.

  When she was done, she dropped the hammers and quickly put on the heavy gloves. Moving fast now, she folded the blade back over the raised bar with even pressure, so that the fold line was perfectly in place with the edge of her previous work. She pulled it as tightly as her honed muscles would allow and held it there, squeezing, for a long moment. Satisfied, breathing heavily, SenWi then poured water over the length of the blade, smiling at its hissing protest.

  She was equally quick to dry the blade, thus hardening the fold.

  Then she prayed some more, and added more coke to the oven.

  Then she prayed some more, and when she judged that the table surface was again hot enough, she hoisted a long, thin block of heavy stone and set it in place atop the blade. And another, and another, until the whole blade was covered, the weight of the stones forcing the folded metal tight against the blazing metal surface.

  SenWi went to take her morning meal. She hoped that she would see her lover there, though she knew that he was nearing the end of his scribing and was working furiously so that his finish would coincide with her own. Bran Dynard wanted them to be on the road in late spring or early summer at the very latest.

  Her work this day wasn't nearly done, of course. When she returned, she had to remove the stones and cool the blade, and then she would use a diamond-encrusted file to finish the tip of the last fold, scraping it down, hour by hour, so that it fell into exact place of the triangular sword tip.

  Tomorrow, she'd do it again, exactly the same way.

  Enough tomorrows would produce the sword. And they would give her the sense of accomplishment and ownership: that she had taken a simple sheet of metal and so crafted it into a beautiful weapon, a true work of art, an extension of her martial training. He wasn't shivering with cold-winter was surely loosening its grip on the land-but his fingers trembled so badly that he had to stop.

  Brother Dynard sat back, gave a frustrated snort, then stood up, abandoning the moment that he thought would bring him triumph. He paced away from the desk, determined not to look back.

  But he did glance over his shoulder, to see the large volume, the Book of Jhest, opened wide, with all but one of its many pages turned over to the left now.

  Only one to go. Half, actually, for in the second book similarly opened on the slightly inclining desktop, that last page was half written. Half a page to copy of all the great tome-except for the still-blank two opening pages, which were customarily left so that the scribe could preface the work after completion with a letter to its intended recipient. Up to this point, Dynard had been moving on a roll, momentum gained for the final push and with the hope and expectation that this morning would mark the last day of his copying.

  Then had come Dynard's moment of doubt. For the first time since he had embarked upon this task of expanding his boundaries of understanding and spirituality itself, the monk from Honce had come to realize that this particular part of the journey would be a finite thing: that his work here would end.

  For months, Dynard had been lost in the swirls of the Jhesta writing, the gracefully curving lines and symbols drawing him into contemplation as surely as any chanting ever could. The concentration of exact copying brought him into that same trancelike and prayerful state of meditation. For months, his work had been his purpose and his life; he knew that he could not underestimate the importance of this. This tome that he would bring back to the north could change the very scope of the Church of Blessed Abelle.

  Those thoughts weren't the source of his trembling now, though. With the end of this part of his spiritual journey so clearly in sight, Brother Dynard had finally begun to look toward the next road-the physical road-across the deserts to the coast and north to the mountains and, finally, the sea.

  He knew well the perils of that road: the robbers and knaves, the warfare between the rival tribes of the Behr, the snakes and great cats and other monstrous animals, the dreadful and often vengeful power of the sea itself. Even if he arrived back in Honce, around the mountains and into Ethelbert Holding, the road inland to Pryd was a graveyard for foolhardy travelers.

  Dynard looked back at the book. Had he done all of this, had he buried himself within the curving lines of understanding and enlightenment, had he created this copy, this artwork, only to have its illuminated and illuminating pages rot in a gully in the rain? Or to have those soft pages used by some ignorant knave to wipe the shite from his arse?

  His chest heaved in short gasps. He closed his eyes and told himself to calm down. In a sudden fit of nervous energy, the monk raced out of the room, down the hallway, then out onto the terrace.

  The wind blew fiercely this day, dark clouds rushing overhead. Few of the Jhesta Tu were outside, no clothes were drying on the lines, and most of the flowers had been brought inside. His fears churning his stomach, his arms and legs trembling, Brother Dynard walked to the far edge of the terrace, to the rail and the thousand-foot drop to the valley below. His knuckles whitened as he grasped that railing, partly to secure himself and partly out of anger-anger at himself for being so weak in the face not of failure but of triumph.

  "I am surely a fool," he said, his words whipped to nothingness by the gusting wind. A self-deprecating chuckle was similarly diminished, as the monk considered the simple humanness of his failure. He recalled a day from his youth in Chud, a small village across the forest from Pryd. With his father, mother, and two sisters, young Bran Dynard had been walking the forest path, a pilgrimage of sorts, to see the
new stone chapel being built by this new Church that was sweeping the land, and sweeping the Samhaist religion before it.

  Bran's father had never followed the Samhaists and held some anger against them that young Bran did not understand. Not until years later, after his father's death-indeed at the occasion of his father's funeral in Chud-would he learn that his father's twin brother had been sacrificed by the Samhaists; they always killed one of any twins, considering the second born to be an appropriate offering to their gods.

  On that road that long-ago day, the family had come to know that they weren't alone. Sounds to the side of the path, in the shadows of the forest, had warned them of robbers, or worse. They moved more swiftly-the smoke of Pryd's fireplaces was in sight up ahead. Bran had seen the sign of danger first, a flash of red in the dark shadows, and on his call of "Powries!" his father had gathered up his younger sister, his mother had grabbed the hand of the other girl, and all had sprinted for the village. For powries, the bloody-cap dwarves, were not ordinary thieves seeking gold or silver-of which the family had none. They sought only human blood in which they could dip their enchanted blood-red berets.

  To this day, Dynard didn't know whether or not there really were powries on that forest road. Perhaps it had been a red-headed bird or the bright behind of a wild tusker pig. But he remembered that flight and the sensations that had accompanied it. Barely into his teens, he had dutifully taken up the rear, his father's spear in hand, and had even lagged behind the others so that his engagement with the powries would not force any of them, particularly his father, into the battle. What Dynard remembered most keenly was that he had not been afraid. At that first sighting of the red, he had been terrified, of course; but during the run, his helpless family before him, he had felt only a sort of elation, the pumping of his blood, the determination that these monsters would not wash in the blood of his loved ones, whatever he had to do.

  It wasn't until the very end, his family already reaching the wooden gates of Pryd and with only fifty yards left before him, that young Bran Dynard had felt the return of fear, of a terror more profound than anything he had ever known. He was not carrying the spear, but he didn't even know at the terrifying moment that he had dropped it.

  By the time he reached the gates, his cheeks were wet with tears, and he stood there before his family and the townsfolk who had come out to see what the commotion was all about, trembling and sobbing and feeling a failure.

  A couple of the townsfolk had laughed-probably not at him, though it seemed that way to the teenager. His father, though, had clapped him hard on the shoulder and tousled his hair, thanking him for his courage over and over again.

  Bran hadn't believed him and felt himself a coward, but then one man dressed in cumbersome brown robes had come forward and had wrapped him in a hug. He pushed Bran back to arms' length and saluted him. That was when Bran Dynard had first met Father Jerak of Chapel Pryd.

  "Is it not strange that only at the end of our run, when the goal seems attainable, that we allow our fears to surface?" Jerak had said to him, and those words echoed now in his mind as he stood on that balcony of the Walk of Clouds.

  The monk stepped back from the railing and turned into the fierce wind. He spread his feet shoulders' width apart and brought his arms up before him, entwining his fingers and lifting them high over his head. He found his center of energy, his chi, as the Jhesta Tu had taught him, and he extended that line of power down through his legs and feet and into the stone of the terrace.

  He stood against the breeze, rooted as firmly as any tree, as solidly as any stone. With his internal strength, he denied the wind, and while his light clothing flapped wildly, Brother Bran Dynard did not move the slightest bit.

  In that place and in that time, he found again his heart. Some time later, he went back inside, back to his work; and before the last rays of the sun disappeared from the light of his western window, he closed both books, his task complete. Only reluctantly did SenWi relinquish her hold on the diamond-faced file, laying the wondrous tool, one of only three such items in all the world, down at her side.

  There was no need to continue; the sides of the triangular tip were smooth and even, and no amount of working them would make them more perfect.

  The tip was done. The wrapping was done. The final heating and beating of the metal was done, including the attachment of the blade to the hilt and crosspiece. Earlier that same morning, SenWi had finished her own scribing, marking the lines, both delicate and bold, of the flowering vines enwrapping the length of the blade. These symbols, so precise, tied the sword back to the Hou-lei traditions, the warrior cult from which had long ago sprung the Jhesta Tu. There could be no mistaking one of these blades, for there was nothing like them in all the world. The wrapped metal ensured that the blade would only sharpen with use, as layers wore away to even finer edges.

  Looking at her sword now, this weapon of few equals, crafted with her own hands, SenWi felt a sense of her past, of her kinship to those who had come before, perfecting their methods, defining the very nature of her existence in their accrued centuries of wisdom. She appreciated them now, more fully perhaps than ever before.

  With hands moist and trembling, SenWi lifted the sword and felt its balance. Assuming a two-handed grip on the hilt, she stepped into a fighting stance and brought the weapon slowly through a series of thrusts and parries, as she had done so many thousands of times with wooden practice blades on the terraces of the Walk of Clouds.

  She knew that a wondrous journey was before her, with the man she loved, on a road that would lead her farther from her home than she had ever imagined.

  Holding this sword, this tie to her past, this tangible reminder of all that she had learned, SenWi was not afraid. In a display of dazzling colors and sound, of snapping pennants and richly colored clothing, the entire body of Jhesta Tu mystics stood on the terraces, flying bridges, and walkways of their mountain monastery. They sang and played exotic instruments: carved flutes, harps small and large, and tinny, sharp, and strangely melodious four-stringed instruments the like of which Bran Dynard had never before seen.

  Sounds, smells, and colors everywhere greeted the couple as they made their way along the terraces. Propelled by the dance-inspiring music, Brother Dynard picked up the pace as they neared the end of that last terrace, the entrance to the long stone stairway that had been carved into the mountain wall eons ago. As they approached, SenWi paused, holding his hand and holding him back.

  The monk looked at his new wife and recognized the myriad emotions flowing through her. This was the home she had known for most of her adult life; how terrifying it must now be for her to walk down these steps, knowing that perhaps she would never again make that long and arduous climb.

  Dynard waited patiently as the moments slipped past, as the celebration continued around them. He noticed the great masters of the Jhesta Tu, standing in a line beside the stairway entrance, and he saw SenWi's stare focusing that way.

  One by one, those masters nodded and smiled, offering both permission and encouragement; finally SenWi glanced over at Bran, smile widening, then pulled him along.

  Down the couple went, away from the Walk of Clouds.

  Neither of them would ever return.

  2

  My Dear Brothers My Dear Brothers of Blessed Abelle,

  I had no idea how wide the world really was. I thought that in my studies I had learned the truth of our lands, of God and of Man. I believed that within the tomes of the philosophers and the fathers, and within the writings of Blessed Abelle himself, I could find the entirety of human existence and purpose, and the hope of ascension beyond this physical experience.

  This is what we all hope, of course. This is our prayer and our faith and our reason. These truths shown us by Blessed Abelle have loosened the fear-inspired hold of the Samhaists, and rightly so!

  Knowing all of this prepared me for my Journey Proselyt, so I believed. With wisdom in hand, I could travel the world sec
ure in my beliefs and in the notion that I could extend those truths to those I encountered. My confidence in the teachings of our faith lent me confidence in the validity of my mission. And, of course, such conviction of the ultimate truths of our faith also bolstered my own courage, for my understanding of what will ultimately befall me, of the existence my spirit will find when my physical being is no more, grants me freedom from fear of the specter of death. Faith led me out of Chapel Pryd. Faith allowed me to place one foot before the other, to travel through lands unknown and dangers unforeseen, though surely anticipated. Faith allowed me to meet peoples of other cultures and lands, and to tell them with confidence of the revelations of Blessed Abelle and the sacred gemstone gifts of God.

  With all that knowledge and all that confidence, I hardly expected to find, out there in the world so wide, cultures and ways beyond my expectations. With all the surety afforded by the supreme calm of blessed insight, I hardly expected that I would find my horizons widened even more!

  I pray to Blessed Abelle, as do we all, and to the God he showed us; and there is no tremor in my voice-not of doubt, at least!-unless it is the usual shakiness I feel when I attempt to communicate to those so far greater than I.

  And yet, my brothers, for all the beauty of Blessed Abelle and for all the completeness of serenity in his teachings, I found myself with eyes wide and heart opened once more. For I have discovered that we who follow the words of Blessed Abelle are not as alone in our faith as we assume. For I have traveled among the Jhesta Tu, generous in spirit and wise in nature. The Jhesta Tu, who understand the same sacred powers offered by our godly gemstone gifts. These mystics, ancient in their ways, are as akin to Blessed Abelle as any man might be. They, too, have found the strength of God, not from gemstones falling from heaven to the shores of holy Pimaninicuit Isle, but within themselves! With energy internal, they replicate the beauty of godly magic.

  Are these Jhesta Tu who we shall become?