by Tony Daniel
“So you two talk—inside your heads? Or is it something worse?” Wulf asked. He couldn’t believe she would do something to purposely harm Rainer.
“The communion is not like talking,” Ravenelle replied. “It’s more like when you finally understand something you’ve been trying to figure out. The meaning just comes to you.”
“What happened?” Tolas asked.
“He wanted to know about Ulla. I wouldn’t tell him anything. But he was strong. And he kept trying, kept pushing at me.”
“I still don’t get how it’s your fault, then,” Wulf said.
Ravenelle frowned. “He had to have gotten something, some thought, from me. How else would he have known Ulla is in love with a commoner?”
“She’s not—how do you know that?”
“Come on, Wulf. It’s not exactly big news around the castle. Everyone knows.”
“But Rainer isn’t the one after Ulla,” Wulf continued, “It’s someone else, it’s—” He almost finished the thought, but did not. He would keep Ulla’s secret.
“Perhaps the princess’s explanation makes some sense, however,” Tolas put in. “If Prince Gunnar learned from her that a commoner was after his bride, the prince may have decided to take out his rival.”
“Stope’s the only commoner any nobleman could believe would have the nerve to go after Ulla,” Ravenelle said. “Anyway, Stope gets tangled up in my thoughts a lot.”
“What does that mean?” Wulf asked.
Saeunn smiled the slightest smile and removed her hands from Rainer’s head. “Once we get the dressings applied, I think he’ll be all right,” she said softly. “We should get word to the duchess.”
Wulf barely heard her. He’d just realized something else that shocked him.
“Are you in love with Rainer?” he asked Ravenelle. “Is that it?”
Last night is enough to deal with, he thought. Is everything going to turn upside down now?
Ravenelle was crying. Little droplets of blood ran down her cheeks. She swiped fiercely at her tears with her sleeve.
“I hate this place,” she said. “I hate everything.” She stood up. “When I get out of here, I’m never coming back.” She ran to the door and flung it open, then slammed it shut behind her as she left.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Wulf turned to the others.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “Talaia is mumbo-jumbo, not real.”
“It’s real,” Saeunn said. “And more evil than Ravenelle can possibly imagine.” She touched a single finger to Rainer’s forehead. “He’ll sleep until tomorrow night.”
“Why don’t you have your man stay outside on watch,” Tolas said to Wulf. “He seems very competent.”
“Yes, I’ll tell him,” Wulf said.
“You’ve been through a lot. You must get yourself looked after,” said Tolas, touching Wulf’s arm gently. “I have my duties at the university, or I would see to it.”
“Look, Master Tolas, I want to stay,” Wulf said. “The doctor will come here anyway. I’ll sit by the fire.”
“Very well,” Tolas said. He walked to the door, then turned and considered the three who remained in the room.
“It seems I did not wholly fail with you three,” he said. He seemed like he was about to add something more, but then bowed slightly and went out.
Wulf sighed. He slumped down into the chair he’d pulled up for Ravenelle.
“I’ll stay with you,” said Saeunn. “There is more mending to do for Rainer.” She looked at Wulf with her usual calm and serene expression. “And for you, Wulf.”
“Tolas,” he said. “Who would have thought he’d be so awesome—you know, today when we needed him.”
“He’s one of a kind.”
“And do you really think it’s real, Talaia mind reading? Red-cake and the holy host and all that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay,” he said, and yawned. “But you’re friends with Ravenelle.”
“Yes, she’s my friend.”
“Are you my friend?”
“Yes, Wulf.”
“Just friends?”
Saeunn cocked her head and looked at him with the slightest of smiles. “Don’t ask me that, Wulf.”
So. Now he knew where he stood with her. At least that was settled. Just friends it was, and would be. But he still felt like he wanted to tell Saeunn his doubts, his worries. He felt like he could tell her anything.
“I fought a draugar last night.”
Saeunn nodded. “I’m worried,” she said, “There are three of them, you know. The draug are terrible beings.”
“Yeah. And they stink.”
Saeunn didn’t answer. She moved her chair toward him and reached out and touched his arm. Wulf jerked up, suddenly alert, but then he felt a calm trickle over him. There was a sound in his ears like a mountain stream falling over rocks.
“Rest for a while,” Saeunn said. “Your servant outside will take care of anything that needs tending to.”
“All right,” Wulf said. “I guess that would be okay. To rest, I mean.”
“You need to heal, too,” she said.
Wulf wanted to reply, but he was so tired, so ready to let it all go for a while. Saeunn was here. She was staying. That was a good enough reason to remain just where he was.
And when he had almost dropped off, when he was more asleep than not, and there was no climbing back to wakefulness, not for a good long while, Saeunn leaned closer.
“Ravenelle and Rainer,” Wulf muttered. “Didn’t see that one coming either. They’re doomed.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Saeunn whispered. But Wulf was already asleep.
Saeunn quietly stood and went to stand by the window and gaze up at the sky, which was now dark enough for the stars to appear for the evening.
Her star.
What does it mean, my star, my own? Can one of the draug really be here in Raukenrose?
It’s a time of turmoil, my child my own. Do you doubt what the young men saw?
No.
Then a terrible shadow is falling.
Which draugar is it? It can’t be all three, can it?
I do not think so. Geizul is in Rome. Gauss works in the south. This is probably Wuten.
Who can stand against a draugar?
Yet someone has.
They said they killed it…him.
They have forced him to change forms. He won’t like that.
We can’t stand against something like this. We need help.
Her star did not answer for a while. She twinkled in consideration.
There is one who might aid you. He was once a draugar. He may know what to do.
Eifer? The Gray Company? But I thought that was just a story.
It is just a story. That happens to be true.
Can he help?
His ways are strange. We will ask. The star’s voice softened. But you have enough worries for now, my child, my own. Tend to your wounded. Look after your heart.
I will do what I can, my star, my own. My heart…seems to have its own will.
Gentle, sparkling laughter. Tend it like a garden and you will find your answers, my child, my own. And remember, I love you.
And I love you.
Rest, my child. We are being useful and we are together with people who care about us. That is enough for today. Rest.
Wulf woke near dawn. A single candle burned on the bedside table. Saeunn was still there, and still awake.
“How is he?”
“Better.”
Wulf sat up in his chair and looked at Rainer. Sometime in the night, Saeunn or someone had put on ointment and several bandages. His legs stuck out from beneath the covers. They were wrapped around the knees with strips of cloth that must’ve held in the honey and fennel mixture Saeunn had ordered.
He turned and looked at the window. The faintest of gray morning light shone through the chinks between the boards in the closed shutters.
“What t
ime is it?” said another voice in the room. Wulf and Saeunn were both startled. They turned to see Rainer, his eyes open, sitting up in bed. “What are you two doing, anyway?”
Wulf followed his gaze and saw that he was looking at Saeunn’s and Wulf’s hands, holding on to one another. Saeunn smiled and gently withdrew her own.
“Waiting for sunrise,” she said.
Rainer nodded. He winced and put a hand to his head. “I didn’t win, I guess?”
“It was pretty much a draw,” Wulf said.
Rainer let out a ragged breath, but followed it with a smile. “That prince is going to wish he’d killed me,” he said.
PART THREE
Chapter Fourteen:
The Adherents
Out with the gnome! Out with his unclean ways! Gnomes lie. They steal. Their smiles are evil, and their hands are dirty from counting their hoard of filthy coins. This one is the worst. He’s clever. He’s dangerous.
He’s my friend.
He must go! Go, go, go! The gnome must go!
The constant chatter was what got to him. The voices. The repetition of the same idea using slightly different words. Yes, that was it. The never-ever-ending stream of words, words, words.
He had once loved words. That was what had set him apart.
That was what he and Albrec Tolas shared, and what had made them good friends over the years.
He’s the enemy. He wants to kill us. He wants to kill you.
No.
Gnomes drip with hate. He hates you!
But even the cluster of voices in his head couldn’t convince Master Docent Lars Bauch that Albrec Tolas hated him in particular. He and Albrec had shared too many beers for him to think such a thing. They had shared too many late evening conversations, gentle jokes about students and their jobs at the university—not to mention many, many pipes of good tobacco.
The chatter shouldn’t bother him. He was part of the Adherents now. He should welcome the voices. He’d chosen freely to join. Nobody had forced him. He was part of them, and they were part of him.
So why did his head feel like it was about to split open from all the jabbering?
He admitted the failure was his own. But couldn’t they, just once in a while, shut up?
Your doubts are the problem, not us. Trust us! Trust us! We know. We know all about filthy gnomes!
Bauch missed being alone. He hadn’t been truly alone for the past year and a half. He had loved his visits to the university library before he’d joined the Adherents. His gold and gray robe, showing that he was a full university scholar, allowed him to wander to his heart’s content in the restricted section in the library where the scrolls and codexes were shelved. Sometimes he would just stand in the library and take in the smell of ink and sheepskin. As a boy growing up the second son of a country squire, and a very sickly boy, he’d spent many days in his father’s small library while everyone else played outside. He felt safe there. He’d dreamed of living in a roomful of books once he was grown.
That was another thing he shared with Albrec. They both were, at heart, librarians first and foremost. They would talk about new scrolls added to the university collection, wonderful scraps of poetry scratched down hundreds of years ago by some mostly illiterate, genius skald, or codexes filled with ancient scholarship—things they’d come across all the time in the library’s vast collection. They could even spend a whole evening discussing simple things like the storage and care of manuscripts.
He was going to miss Albrec.
Sentimentality! You have your position to think of.
Yes, he had his position to think of. He’d done it, what he set out to do as a boy. He didn’t literally live in a library, but he had a two-room apartment attached to Klugheit College, one of the nine colleges and three women’s halls that made up Raukenrose University.
Putting up with the chatter of the Adherents was worth it. He was a soldier—well, a mental soldier—in the cause of reason. His task was to bring rational philosophy to the superstitious, heathenish mark. He had always hated the divine beings. What had they ever done for him? Had they cured him of his constant cough and weak, spindly legs? No. Because they couldn’t. Regen, Sturmer, the Allfather. What nonsense!
He wished he could make Albrec see the beautiful simplicity at the heart of the Roman belief system called Talaia. It was a philosophy that had built an empire and created a high culture that put the ugly and simplistic ways of the northern heathens to shame. When he had gained his first position as docent of Klugheit, he had taken it as his greatest responsibility to break his students of the misguided ideas they’d gotten from their parents and families. He would expand their minds. And he had. For the past twenty-three years Bauch had risen through the ranks of the university system to become master docent of history and lore. His introductory class was part of the required curriculum, and he didn’t have to drum up students anymore like most of the other docents.
His teaching fees had gone up as well. He liked to tell students that he chose to live at Klugheit Chambers near them when he could really afford a much grander place—which was very true.
But there was always failure lurking in the back of Bauch’s mind. Every term he chiseled away trying to break his students of their heathen delusions, and every term he succeeded with a few. But then those would move on to other classes or graduate, and he was once again faced with a bunch of students made ignorant by their upbringing and their parents.
Maybe that was the real reason he had started taking the red-cake. It was the sheer boredom and grind of teaching the same material over and over again. All of the students had started to look alike and sound alike. It felt as if he was getting nowhere against the heathenism and ignorance that surrounded him.
He knew that the Adherents were taking over Klugheit College, and he’d resisted it at first. Secret societies seemed so silly. But one day he had tried the celestis, and after that everything changed. Then the new celestis, the blackened ater-cake, came along, and everything changed again.
The Adherents. It was really only a community of like-minded scholars. Yes, they did occasionally exchange wafers dipped in one another’s blood. But the blood was collected in tiny glasses. It was Roman and civilized.
Each docent of the Adherents had one thing in common. He or she thought it was only a matter of time until Talaia philosophy swept the north.
No more divine beings. No more teaching the laws of revenge killing and lore of animal sacrifice. No more heathen ugliness. No more silly superstition.
Some called this treason. Some might agree that it was treason and welcome it. For Bauch, there was nothing treasonous in freeing people from illusions that chained their minds. And for those who clung to the old ways—
There are casualties. Regrettable causalities. There have to be. All revolutions have them.
Like today.
Albrec Tolas was Bauch’s friend. They had both come in at the same time and, although he was not fond of gnomes, they had hit it off. They both had an interest in Harrald Harraldsson the Younger and his sagas first written down seven hundred years ago. Bauch believed “Harraldsson” was secretly a nobleman, probably Sir Gustav von Kinder, and Harrald Harraldsson was a name he used to hide his identity. Albrec insisted that Harraldsson was a commoner, just like Harraldsson claimed to be, and that he had performed his tales for money in the taverns. Though they never could agree on Harraldsson, they’d become friends.
Now every Regensday evening after classes they had a standing appointment to drink a mug of beer at the Wiesel and Frosh Pub near Ironkloppel College, where Albrec was a master docent. They’d come to know each other pretty well. Bauch had told Albrec about his dictator of a father. Albrec had confided that he felt very alone here in the north. Ironkloppel was a college that welcomed gnomes both as students and as docents, but outside of the halls of the college there weren’t a lot of gnomes in Raukenrose.
Yule had come and gone. Now in the coldest month, Wintervo
ll, he was going to destroy his friend’s life.
They found their usual table. After taking off their winter cloaks and draping them over the stools for padding, they called for fresh pipestems and firebrands. When the pipestems arrived, they’d broken off the used ends, packed their pipes with tobacco taken from the leather pouches produced from their university robes, and now both lit up the first smoke of the evening. Albrec smoked the strong perique that gnomes liked so much. Bauch stuck with the more common orinoco.
Tell him. Get it over with. Do it!
All right.
“Albrec, there’s no easy way to say this.”
The gnome had been contentedly watching the smoke rising from his pipe. Now he turned and faced Bauch.
Beady eyes. Gnomes had such devious, beady eyes.
“What is it, Lars?” Albrec said, gently but firmly.
“I . . .” Bauch faltered and put his pipestem in his mouth and pulled a cloud of smoke into his mouth.
“Come, out with it.”
Bauch blew the smoke from his mouth and lowered his pipe.
“Very well. The faculty guild has voted, and they’ve decided to…I hate to even say this…take back your scholarship privileges at the university library. And you know that without scholarship privileges—”
“I’m not a university scholar anymore. I can’t wear the gold and gray,” Albrec said with a sigh.
“You act as if you expected this.”
“I suspected something. Not exactly this. And I never thought you would be its messenger, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I’m sorry, Albrec.”
“To be sure,” the gnome said. He puffed a moment on his pipe, considering. “I can’t go back to being just a master docent at Ironkloppel, of course. The guild knows that I gave up being master when I became a university scholar, and now Raffen Mohaut has that spot. They are throwing me out of the university.”
The life seemed to go out of the gnome’s muscles temporarily, and he lost his balance on the stool on which he sat. He tottered for a moment before he caught himself. Then he straightened himself again. Albrec never lost his balance. He never even slumped as far as Bauch could recollect.