The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  A high ring of shattering glass sounded from the street. Angry shouts followed at its heels. Dante waited for them to settle up who owed whom a bottle before going on.

  "Do you think—"

  The door burst open. Robert half-collapsed through it, sword in hand, face bearing that tight, flat expression he'd held the night of the fight around the campfire.

  "Something's going on downstairs," he said.

  "Just a couple drunks," Dante said.

  "No. Downstairs in the monastery."

  "What's going on?" Gabe said, getting to his feet in a way cassocked hills shouldn't be able to do.

  "One of the monks killed one of the other monks," Robert said. He leaned into the hall and a moment later Blays swung back into the room, sword out, breathing heavily.

  "Killed?" Gabe said.

  "A bunch of them have swords and staffs and things," Blays reported. "It looked like a few of them came in from the street."

  "None of the monks would kill anyone."

  "It's happening," Dante said, the back of his neck tingling the way it did when he heard an animal creeping through woods by dark, or when he finished a book that read like it had been inspired by the gods themselves. "The fighting starts in the temples. That's what they said." Yells and crashes of wood and steel came up from the first floor, underlining his point.

  "Shit," Gabe took a long breath through his nose and nodded at the doorway. "You should leave. You've got other troubles to see to."

  "A compelling argument," Robert said.

  "No," Dante said, drawing his sword. "We can stop this, here. They won't take this one place."

  "Going to save the whole town, too?" Gabe said.

  Dante stuck the point of his blade into the wooden floor. It came to him all at once: the idea that he was more than an arrow shot from another man's bow, unable to deviate his course once he'd been set in motion. He'd known Gabe less than an hour, but already he liked him. By nature he had no patience for the self-important mysticism of the men of the gods, but something about this monastery and the quiet conviction of its men was too important to hand over to the Arawnites. Cally might say their passage to Narashtovik was too important to risk their lives in this place, but he was almost three hundred miles away, was too wrapped up in his own dealings to venture out into all this strife. Dante was here now, and here, he thought, was a place worth saving.

  "We can't defend the whole town," Dante said. "But we will fight them off here before we run like rabbits. At least you'll have time to prepare for whatever comes next."

  "Besides," Blays said, "we still need that token. I'd rather die here than get eaten by barbarians a thousand miles from here."

  "Idiots," Gabe said, with neither a smile nor a scowl. He lifted a sturdy, dark-wooded chair and snapped off a leg. He swung it through the air. "Well. Let's go see what the fuss is about."

  "Yes," Dante said, neck tingling again. He pulled at his sword and found it was stuck in the floorboards. He yanked again and stumbled into Blays' back.

  "What's your hurry?" Blays muttered. He put an arm in front of Robert before they left the door. "Me first. You're unsound."

  "Physically, perhaps."

  "Tell me who not to kill before I do it," Blays called back to Gabe. They pounded down the stairs. At its base lay the still, bleeding body of the young man who'd answered the door. Blays and Robert flanked out, facing the two doors in. Gabe's face went slack and he knelt beside the body. Dante stood over him, beginning a call to the nether.

  "Don't," Gabe said. "He's dead."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Grieve later." Gabe surged to his feet, chair leg in hand, and took them through the parlor and to the outer entrance of the monastery. Drops of blood shone on the slate flooring. Fresh gashes marred the table in the parlor; dusty old fabric spilled from a slash in one of the benches. The rooms were empty. Gabe cracked open the front door and peered into the gardens. From deeper inside the monastery they heard raised voices.

  "Follow me," Gabe said. Blays tried to stay at his side but the hallway was too narrow for any more than Gabe's bearish shoulders. Dante and Robert jogged at their heels. The norren took a right turn and they emerged into a relatively open room of simple chairs and round, roughhewn tables, a dining area or meeting hall. At its far end, some forty feet away, a group of men were pounding on a closed door.

  "What's going on here?" Gabe shouted.

  "We've trapped the usurpers in the kitchen!" a bald man in a cassock cried back.

  "You have swords in your hands," Gabe said, stopping after he'd crossed half the room. "And who are those men with you?"

  "They're the gardeners I was telling you about," the monk said, glancing to the men at his sides, dirt-faced men wearing black cloaks and naked swords, one of which streaked blood down its length and tacked against the floor.

  "Hansteen," Gabe said in a quiet voice, "lay down your arms. This can end now."

  "I thought you were one of us," Hansteen said.

  "I thought you were one of us!" Gabe cried. "You killed Roger! He was a boy!"

  "There was confusion." Hansteen pinched the bridge of his nose. "Help us out and he'll be the only one."

  "Have you ever even read the Ganneget? Do you remember that second rule? Where you may willingly harm no man?"

  "Oddly, it mentions nothing of our conduct toward norren." Hansteen smiled, briefly. "I know what you used to be. It's time, Gabe. We will no longer let ourselves be hunted and killed for serving the first among the gods."

  "Then go serve them in the street," Gabe said, taking a step forward, "and get the hell out of my monastery."

  "Why don't you leave?"

  "Because this is the house of Mennok!" Gabe roared, shoulders bunching. The men at Hansteen's side fell back a step, then tightened their grasp on their swords.

  "Then let it be reconsecrated in the name of Arawn," Hansteen said. He glared at his swordsmen. "With their blood."

  They eased forward, leading the way with their blades. Hansteen flung out a hand. Nothing happened.

  "I thought you knew who I was," Gabe said.

  The men walked forward, leaning into aggressive crouches. Blays leapt at the lead man then skipped back, drawing him into Robert's waiting blade. Blood splashed against the slate. Dante swung out his sword, blocking a strike at Gabe, whose hands shook as he absorbed the stream of nether Hansteen had slung at him. Dante screamed and opened a wound across his attacker's forearm. His blade clattered against the ground and Gabe laid out a pounding backhand with his chair leg. The wood snapped in half on the man's skull, dropping him. Blades clashed to Dante's left where Blays and Robert fended off two men. The remaining one on Dante's side feinted, knocking aside the tip of his sword, and Dante spun to dodge the following thrust. It ripped over the thin flesh over his sternum and he felt the woozy scrape of steel dragging over his bones. He stumbled back.

  Wrapped in his invisible tussle with the other monk, Gabe stepped forward, leaving Dante behind. Dante scrambled backwards, scooting on his ass. The swordsman swung down and he rolled away. He tried a swipe at the man's ankles and his sword was knocked wide. The man leaned forward for a crosswise sweep meant to open Dante's guts and his sword bounced from Robert's. Robert followed up with a quick poke that drew blood from the man's left side. Dante found his footing and rose next to Blays, who was falling back under the wolf-like jabs of a pair of attackers.

  "Set my blade on fire!" he hissed at Dante when their shoulders bumped. For once Dante asked no questions, instead shutting off his mind and gathering the shadows. He wiped his hand in the blood dripping down his chest and flipped a few red drops Blays' way. His sword foomped with fire the length of the blade.

  "I'll drink your souls!" Blays shouted, waving his flaming weapon in their faces. They actually dropped back and Dante touched his own sword, shrouding it in a shifting mist of darkness. He fell in beside Blays.

  "I'm going to get the others," Hansteen said, and from the corner of
his vision Dante saw him run across the room to an open door. Gabe picked up a chair and threw it at his retreating back. It shattered on the wall beside the doorway and dropped into a splintery heap. Blays and Dante lowered their shoulders and advanced on the remaining two men. A shout sounded to their right, then a flurry of metal strikes too quick to count and the thunk of a sword burying itself in flesh. Another sword rattled on the ground. Dante glanced back in time to see a man's head spinning over the tiles. Robert staggered back, soaked in blood.

  Dante turned back to his own fight and saw a sword headed for his face. He batted it aside and slashed down, cutting open the man's boot and bloodying his toes. The man hopped back, yelping. From the front of the room, Gabe was disappearing after Hansteen.

  "I'm going to help him," Dante said, sidling away from his attacker. Robert was red-faced and breathing heavily but his mouth was twisted in angry joy. Dante sprinted after Gabe, banging his hip on the rim of a table, hearing swords meeting behind him. He plunged into the room on Gabe's heels and the battle in the dining room immediately grew muffled.

  Hansteen stood in the middle of a dark hallway. Maroon drapes and pious paintings hung from the walls. Dante reached Gabe's side. Hansteen did something with his hand and Dante's ankles and knees locked and he skidded over the stone flooring. Then his elbows were tight, mid-swing, his wrists and fingers frozen. He couldn't turn his head. Every breath felt like a massive hand was squeezing back against his chest. He tried to blink and his eyelids fluttered. Hansteen snapped his fingers and a gout of flame whooshed down the hall. Gabe grunted and tamped it down with an angled strike of his hand like a cougar stretching out its claws for the rump of a buck. He took a step forward and so did Hansteen. They both raised their arms at each other and for a few long moments they looked to be trying to carry a 15-foot invisible table between them: shoulders shifting, wrists bending over their heads, muscles shaking, Gabe's columnar body bulging like a boulder and Hansteen's spindly limbs twitching beneath the drooping folds of his cassock. Dante watched, literally paralyzed. He felt hot blood slipping down his doublet, a faint breeze where the cloth had been opened by the attacker's sword. The two men huffed and grunted and spat curses between their teeth. He could feel the tingle of power in the air, the way his arm hairs stood when clean clothes rubbed dry skin, or the way the air felt during a storm, but moreso, as if they stood within the thunderhead itself. An audible crackle started between the two men, cutting over a droning hum that twisted Dante's stomach. Sweat dripped from the norren's broad brow. He could see the veins on Hansteen's temples. Gabe's lips opened, showing those flat teeth clenched tight. He growled, an animal noise that started low and suddenly burst into a guttural howl.

  "To hell with this!"

  He waded forward, one foot then another, as ponderous as if he were walking underwater. A step at a time he closed the distance between himself and the other monk. Too late Hansteen deciphered his plan. The thin man bent back and Gabe reached forward with a hand as thick and knotty as the bole of a pine. He closed his fingers around the other man's neck and lifted him into the air. They grimaced at each other, the nether flipping between them in swift streaking shadows, and then Gabe slammed Hansteen against the wall. His head and hands flopped. Howling again, Gabe lifted him higher, wrapping the trunks of his arms around Hansteen's back and hugging him to the barrel of his body. Dante wanted to close his eyes, but whatever Hansteen had set on him held fast. He watched as Gabe's shoulders flexed and elbows tightened, heard the dreadful snap, saw Hansteen's body bend like a broken fish. Gabe raised the corpse and flung it down the hall. He stared after it, shoulders heaving, breath whistling through his wide nostrils. He turned, then, and Dante was glad his bladder seemed as frozen as the rest.

  "Cally never taught you about rooting?" Gabe rasped. Dante tried to shake his head. He tried to speak, managed little more than the weak moan of a sleeper caught in nightmare. Gabe closed his eyes and folded his hands and Dante flopped to the floor. He'd been mid-stride when the thing had caught him. Gabe cleared his throat and spat toward the body. "You'd have died long before you met Samarand."

  "Show me once this is over?"

  "Of course."

  Dante nodded, gazed down the hallway at the pile of robes that looked like a man but bent in a way men didn't.

  "I thought you had vows against things like that."

  Gabe pushed out one of his bearded cheeks with his tongue. "What is it with you heathens? Always searching for a contradiction. The laws of Mennok aren't like the laws of man—you don't break one and whoops, it's time to pop your neck. Mennok, in his wisdom, knows there are times his holiest laws must be broken." He gazed at the corpse he'd made. "He'll judge me fair."

  "Robert's hurt!" Blays shouted from around the corner. They started, then turned back to the room they'd left. The floor was awash in blood. Stretched out by the last of the armsmen, Robert lay prone, rolling back and forth on his stomach. Gabe knelt beside him, turning him to his back and pinning his shoulder to the ground to stop his mindless rocking. He pulled back cloak and chainmail. The wound on his chest had reopened, and below it another gaped on his belly where a few of the links had been split. Narrow but deep. Dante saw something slimy and purplish winking beneath the welling blood. He put his hand over his mouth.

  "Stay sharp," Gabe said, pressing his unbloodied fist to his mouth. "I'm going to be out of it for a minute."

  "You can put that out at any time," Blays whispered, nodding to his sword laying on the ground, its flames licking at the stone. Dante waved a distracted hand, wiping them away.

  Gabe mumbled to himself, planting his hands on Robert's shallow-rising chest. Dante glanced down from the door he'd been watching and saw motes of light and darkness swathing Gabe's fingers. They left him in a murky curtain, the way rain looks falling from a distant cloud, soaking into Robert's body. Robert tensed, arching his spine, teeth bared, the cut skin folding together, pushing out blood and small meaty things that made the back of Dante's mouth taste bitter. Gabe wiped it away with Robert's cloak. The skin was red, welted, as disturbed as a fresh burn, but it was whole. Robert went limp. He blinked as the others looked on. Gabe slumped back, resting on his elbows, chin touching his chest.

  "The problem with getting stabbed," Robert started, then turned his head and spat blood. "Is you can only kill the man who did it once."

  "I got him," Blays said, shaking Robert's shoulder so hard the man's head wobbled. "His sword got caught in your chain and I stuck mine through his heart."

  Robert sat up, closing his eyes. He rubbed the side of his head.

  "Surprised they hung around at all after your sword literally caught fire."

  "I know!" Blays said. "It looked great, didn't it? Like a demon come to take them away?"

  "Yeah," Robert admitted. "You fought like one, too." He cracked open one eye. "What's all that pounding? Or is that in my skull, too?"

  Dante realized he'd been hearing it, too. Behind the locked kitchen door. He crossed to it, put his ear to the wood. The pounding started again and he jerked back, rubbing his ear. He cupped his hands to the door, shouted into them.

  "Stop that!"

  The hammering ceased. "What?"

  "I said stop that!"

  "No."

  "Open up. We're friends of Gabe's."

  "That's a rather old trick, don't you think?" said the voice on the other side of the door.

  "It's true!"

  "I think we'll take our chances in here. It's worked so far."

  "Look," Dante said, glancing back over his shoulder to where Gabe still rested, "if you don't open up, I'm going to get Gabe over here and he'll break it down."

  He heard murmurs on the other side. Someone cleared his throat.

  "We're armed!"

  "Good! Then if I'm lying you can cut me down!"

  More murmurs, longer this time.

  "Just a minute," the voice said. "We'd just about had these bars all set."

  Dante heard
squeaks and the scrabble of tools against the door. Something clinked mutely on the other side. The process repeated. Behind him, Gabe got to his feet, followed by Robert and Blays, and they came to Dante's side.

  "What was that thing you did to Robert?" Dante said to the norren.

  Gabe raised an eyebrow. "Fixed him."

  "With the specks of light."

  "Ether," Gabe said, giving him a look like he'd just said breakfast was his favorite meal of the day. "It's better at building than the shadows. Restoring and creating is all it can do, in fact. Didn't Cally teach you this stuff, either? This is elementary."

  "His methods are a little unorthodox," Dante said.

  Wood jangled against the floor on the other side and then a lock clicked. The door swung back, revealing four men in cassocks crouching back, kitchen knives held ready in their hands.

  "Gabe!" cried a short, elderly monk. The norren stepped forward and they embraced. The monk gazed past him to the wreckage of the dining room. "Brother Hansteen and a couple of the others let in some black-caped men. They told us to join them or leave. When Roger told them this was a house of peace, one of the men struck him down."

  "I saw," Gabe said. He hunched his shoulders. "Brother Hansteen is dead."

  "I'm sorry," the old man said.

  "I don't understand why he did this." The others nodded, saying nothing for a time.

  "Who are these with you?" one of the monks said to break the silence.

  "Friends," Gabe said, gesturing to them in turn. "Dante, Blays, and Robert Hobble. They helped put down this treason."

  "There's going to be more," Dante said. "Where did the other turncoats go?"

  "Hard to say," the old monk said, knitting his brow. "We put a lot of wood between us and them. We weren't prepared."

  "Better than being put to the sword, Brother." Gabe curled his arm and massaged the hamhock of his biceps. "Find yourselves some real weapons. We'll be ready for whatever comes next."

  "We'll secure the place," Robert said. His face was pale but his voice was steady. "Get some arms and then bar everything but the front door. We don't know what's going on out there."