by K. J. Parker
Poldarn took the sword. It was short, less than two feet long, curved and single-edged, with a grip just about big enough for two hands. He drew it an inch or two from the scabbard. The blade was polished like a mirror, or the surface of a pool on a still day, except for a wavy, cloudy line running parallel to the cutting edge about a finger's width in.
'Religious?' he asked. 'What does that mean?'
Eolla looked at him. 'Must've been a smart old bang on the head you took,' he said. 'Religious, like the temple fencers. Don't worry about it,' he added, as Poldarn carried on looking bewildered. 'It means it's a nice piece of kit, too good to be in the barrel, by rights, but I like to have a few bits and pieces for a good cause. Will that do you?'
Without thinking Poldarn had undone his belt and wrapped a double loop round the mouth of the scabbard. 'I think so,' he said, tightening the buckle, and his hand dropped to the hilt and he drew 'Very sweet,' Eolla said, frowning slightly. 'Where'd you learn to do that? Oh, of course, you wouldn't know.'
Poldarn had sheathed the sword without realising. 'You do, though,' he said.
The old man shrugged. 'I've seen men who can draw that fast before. Temple fencers. If you can do that-well, figure it for yourself. Of course, you could've learned it somewhere else. Maybe you picked it up from a book, or worked it out for yourself, I don't know.'
Poldarn took a step closer. It seemed to him that the old man didn't like that much, 'But you don't think so,' Poldarn said.
'No,' Eolla replied, stepping sideways towards the door. 'If you want my opinion, you learned that in the temple.'
'What temple?' Poldarn asked.
Chapter Nine
'Good afternoon,' the brother called out, leaning forward a little in his saddle and wiping rain out of his eyes. 'I wonder, can you tell me if I'm on the right road for Cric?'
The two rubes looked up at him as if a trapdoor had just opened in the sky and he'd stepped out of it, silhouetted against a dazzling mandala of pure white light. 'You what?' the older man said.
'Cric,' the brother repeated, slowly and loudly. 'There's a village by that name somewhere around here, isn't there?'
What the hell the two rubes thought they were doing, scrabbling about on their knees in the peat-mud in the driving rain, he couldn't begin to imagine. At least, they were building a dry-stone wall; but in weather like this, with the rain lashing down on them? On the other hand, they gave every impression of not having noticed the rain, or the wind.
The older man nodded, tipping water off the brim of his tatty leather hat. 'Keep on the road an hour, maybe two, that'll fetch you to Cric.'
'Thank you,' the brother said. 'I should make it there by nightfall, then.'
'Maybe.'
'Is there an inn there, somewhere I can put up for the night?' the brother persevered.
'No.'
'I see. Thank you, you've been incredibly helpful.' He turned his face back into the rain and nudged his horse on with a slight pressure of his heels. He could feel the rubes staring at his shoulder blades all the way to the skyline.
The lousy weather cut visibility down to spitting distance and he was sure he didn't see a single living thing on the road, so how everybody in Cric knew he was coming he had no idea. But they did; they were standing out under their porches or watching out for him from haylofts, dozens of them-women and children mostly, with a few old men and invalids peering over their shoulders. That was disconcerting for someone who'd spent a lifetime learning how to be too boring to be worth noticing. He looked round for some logical place to stop, an inn or forge or other community centre, but there wasn't one, just a miserable-looking tower at the far end of town, which was bound to be cold and damp and foul-smelling. What he wanted was a nice extravagant fire, some hot soup and warm spiced wine, if possible a bath hot enough to scald the feathers off poultry. No chance.
Plenty of houses, nothing at all to choose between them. He scowled under his hat; there were times when he hated the very concept of choice. Doctrine wasn't terribly keen on it either, he remembered-choice and doubt come between the hand and the hilt, they constitute fatal obstacles to the perfection of the draw; God neither doubts nor chooses, God's thoughts and actions are simultaneous and identical. Lauctans, Fifth Homily of the Edge, XIV, 2. Stuff choice, then; he pulled up, jumped off the horse, tied it to the nearest porch post and banged on the nearest door.
Bearing in mind that he'd seen six women of various ages and a seven-year-old boy gawping at him from the loft hatch, it was pretty stupid of them to pretend not to be at home. He banged again, waited a little longer, then lifted the latch and walked in.
That stare, again; I really must do something about this second head, he thought as seven pairs of eyes stuck into his face like bradawls, it's turning out to be a liability. Years ago he'd been to a place where they still had the quaint old custom of sticking the heads of criminals up on pikes in the market square. That was it; he knew he'd seen that expression somewhere before.
'Excuse me for barging in like that,' he said cheerfully, dislodging a small torrent of water on to the dried-clay-and-cowshit floor as he took off his hat, 'but I don't think you heard me knock, and it's raining. You wouldn't happen to know of somewhere I could hire a bed for the night?'
The magic of the word hire unfroze them like the secret incantation waking up the sleeping giants in the old kids' story. 'Not round here,' the oldest woman said. 'But you could stop here, I s'pose. We got room.'
'Splendid,' the brother replied. 'Would three quarters a night be enough, do you think? It's probably only for tonight, but I may have to stop over tomorrow if I don't finish my work in time to get to the next inn by nightfall.'
There was a younger woman sitting next to the old matriarch whose face showed that she didn't believe there was such a sum as three quarters in the whole world, unless you melted down the wheel tyres of the wagon of the moon and ran the bloom under a coining-press. 'That'll do fine,' the old woman said. 'And this is my daughter Melja.'
If Melja's part of the deal, he thought, I'll try my luck next door. Not giving offence is one thing, but there's limits. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said, with a slight bow. 'My name is Monach.'
(Monach was, of course, just the word for 'monk' in southern pidgin Torcean, but it was easy to remember, and nobody had figured it out in all the years he'd been using it.)
He clinked four quarters in the palm of his hand, then put them down on the table. 'Any chance of something to eat?' he asked. 'And I suppose a bath would be out of the question.'
He supposed dead right, but after a shocked silence the matriarch prodded Melja in the ribs and she vanished into the back room and came back almost immediately with the end of a loaf and a block of greyish cheese that looked startlingly like the medium-grit waterstone he used for sharpening halberds. Nothing to drink with it, but of course he hadn't asked for it; the moral being, with rubes, specify exactly.
As it turned out, the cheese was too crumbly to have made a good waterstone, though the bread would probably have done the job at a pinch. 'Is that all you want, then?' the old woman asked when he couldn't face any more. He nodded. She shrugged. 'That'll be just two quarters, then,' she said.
He paid up, dipping his head to her in sincere respect as he did so. He'd been to a lot of places, been rooked and shaved by some of the best short-changers and cheese-scrapers in the business. This old woman, though, was something else.
They were all still there, of course. Seven pairs of needle-sharp eyes, pressing on him like a headache, and they showed absolutely no sign of moving so long as he was there. So he stood up, wincing slightly at the touch of very wet, cold cloth against his skin. 'Do you think you could tell me who's in charge here?' he said.
'You what?'
Something under the table was sniffing his leg, pressing a cold, wet nose against his ankle. He really didn't want to know what it was. 'You know,' he said, 'like a town council, parish board, levy and muster committee, burial clu
b-anything like that,' he added, trying not to sound as wretched as he felt. 'I've got some questions to ask, and I need to know who to see.'
The old woman appeared to have lost the power of speech. 'Nothing like that here,' My Daughter Melja said eventually. 'No call for it in these parts. Bloody fuss,' she added, dismissing all hierarchies everywhere with a rather magnificent hint of pride. 'What kind of questions?' she added, her eyebrows crowding together.
'Nothing terrible,' he replied, smiling weakly. 'I'm not the government or anything. Truth is,' he ground on, feeling like a man pouring wine into the sand, 'I'm a scholar.'
'A what?' the old woman interrupted.
'A scholar. I like to learn things about-well, things. Religion,' he added quickly, before any of them could ask What things? 'Not that I'm a priest or anything. I'm just interested.'
There was a long silence; then the old woman shook her head, as if wondering sadly how it had come to this, and said that maybe he should go over to the old man's place, because he knew all manner of interesting stuff. The edge she put on the word interesting would probably have cut silk in its own weight.
'Thank you,' the brother said. 'Which old man would that be?'
The old woman pursed her lips; then she reached out sideways and grabbed the eight-year-old boy. 'Ebit'll show you the way,' she said. And then he'll come straight back, or I'll clip his ear so it'll make his head spin.' The boy muttered something and took a short, nervous step forward. 'Straight back, mind,' the old woman added.
Ebit led him down and across the street. They were all still there, under their porches and up in their lofts. Absolutely nothing whatsoever better to do, he guessed. Ebit stopped outside a plank door that was grey with age where it wasn't green with mould, and lifted the latch. 'In there,' he said, as if he was feeding a condemned man to the timber wolves at Torcea Fair.
'Thank you,' the brother answered, ducking his head as he walked in.
It was almost completely dark inside, apart from a faint orange glow from the last embers of a fire. He found a table by walking into it, and leaned his hands on the rough-sawn top. No sign of an old man, or sound of breathing apart from his own. Rustic humour? Or had the old boy died and nobody had noticed yet? In support of the latter theory was the extremely strong smell; though nauseating, however, it wasn't quite the odour of decaying flesh. Or at least, not exclusively.
'Over here,' said a voice in the shadows. 'By the fire.'
'Ah,' the brother said. 'Sorry, I didn't see you there. My name's-'
'Monach.' It was a very dry, thin voice, tenuous as the glow of the dying coals, but it wasn't a rube voice. The brother was very good at accents, but this was one he couldn't begin to place.
'That's right,' he said. 'How did you know my name?'
The voice laughed. 'Lefit Melja's eldest girl was listening under the window when you told her mother,' it said. 'She guessed they'd send you over here when they'd taken some money from you. So you're the priest, are you?'
Shrewd, too; as if it had experience in interrogation. 'Well,' Monach replied, 'sort of. Actually, I'm not a priest-not ordained or anything. I'm more of an amateur scholar, a bit of a dilettante really.'
Slight pause. 'It's all right,' the voice said, 'I know what the words mean, I'm just thinking about it.' Thin laugh; essence of laughter, strained and purged so many times that all the flavour had been lost. 'I've passed your test, but you haven't passed mine, or at least not yet. It takes me so long to think things through these days.'
Monach shifted uneasily. 'What's to think through?' he said. 'I haven't even told you what I'm here for yet.'
'Don't need to,' the voice replied gently. 'I ask myself, what's a priest-I'm sorry, what's a scholar doing in Cric, assuming he's not hopelessly lost on the road? It's got to be something to do with the god in the cart. And if it's something to do with that, then yes, I suppose you could be a gentleman scholar, or you could be a priest; and there's all sorts of different kinds of religious, so if you're a priest, what sort are you?' A soft, dry chuckle. 'Twenty years ago I'd have had the answers before you were through the door; not now, though. So suppose you help me along and tell me the answer. It'll save you an hour or so, if you're in a hurry.'
Definitely not a rube. 'By all means,' Monach replied. 'My name is Sens Monach; you may just have heard of my father, Sens Reuden, if you were ever in the military. I'm his younger son. Anyway, I've been making a study of manifestations of the divine for twenty years, gathering material for a book, and so when I heard about this god in the cart business-'
Loud coughing fit; then: 'Yes indeed, I've heard about General Sens. I never heard he had two sons, never heard he didn't. It's perfectly possible, I suppose; if Sens had a younger son, he could well have turned out idle and bookish-often the way with a self-made man. I'll say this for you: if you're a liar you're a conscientious one.' Slight pause, and a muffled scraping noise, possibly the foot of a chair on a stone floor. 'So you want to hear about the god in the cart.'
Monach perched on the edge of the table; it wobbled a bit. 'Yes please,' he said.
'All right. You'll have to excuse the dark, by the way,' the voice added. 'It rests my eyes and I can't afford to waste charcoal. If you've brought your own lamp, though, you can feel free to light it.'
'Left it in my saddlebag,' Monach replied truthfully. 'It doesn't matter. I can remember well enough without having to take notes.'
'Good.' Pause, and more scraping. 'I expect you're curious about me, too,' the voice said (still the same weary, strained tone, slow delivery of words). 'And yes, I'm wandering off the subject, but you'll have to bear with me, sometimes I like to talk while I'm thinking. I don't suppose they told you my name.'
'No.'
'That's good, too. Let's see. My household name is Joiect, and my family name's nothing to interest you; but you may want to have a name to call me by. You're Monach and I'm Joiect.' Another of those laughs. 'For the sake of argument, at any rate.'
'If you say so,' Monach replied.
'Now then. Who I am, I'm a retired soldier. I was born here, and when I was through with my work, I came back here, and here I've been ever since. But I've seen a thing or two, Brother Monach-oh, I'm sorry, there I was still thinking you're a priest. I've seen a thing or two around the empire, let me tell you, and I know a little more about some things than my neighbours. Is that about in line with what you'd imagined?'
Monach laughed in spite of himself. 'Almost,' he said. 'I had you down for a religious yourself, possibly a renegade from the order. I suppose the room being in darkness put that thought into my head, but you've explained about that, so I must've been mistaken. After all, not everybody who sits in the dark is hiding from something.'
'I must also apologise,' Joiect went on, 'about the smell. When I was a soldier I was more than usually fussy about my kit-I used to annoy the drill sergeant no end because he couldn't ever find fault with it. These days, though, it's a terrible effort to stand up, let alone do all the cleaning and tidying and throwing away' A sigh. 'An old woman used to come in and see to the place, but she died. Hardly surprising, she was older than me. I don't like it much, this mess,' the voice said, 'but it's not as if I have a choice.'
'I can imagine it must be hard to bear,' Monach replied. 'I like things neat and tidy myself, though I hope I don't take it to extremes. Of course, it's easy to be fastidious when you've always had people to tidy up after you. About the god in the cart-'
'Oh yes. Let me see, now, what's the best way to explain? I suppose it depends on whether you believe in the gods. Do you?'
'Yes,' Monach answered promptly. 'Well, up to a point, at any rate.'
'I see. And do you believe in a god called Poldarn?'
'Yes. At least, I see no reason not to believe in him, though I don't actually know very much about him. But that shouldn't make any odds. After all, I don't know very much about the forests of northern Beltach, but I believe that they exist.'
'That's an inte
resting approach,' the voice said. 'Very well; if you believe in Poldarn, then he was here a month or so ago.'
'And if I don't?'
'Then some very bad people pretending to be Poldarn were here a month ago. Or another god passed through here in a cart, and for reasons best known to himself he pretended to be Poldarn.' The voice laughed. 'Let me put it another way. If there are such things as gods, there was one in the cart. I'm sceptical about virtually everything, but that's a fact.'
Monach smiled in the dark. 'And if there's no such thing as gods?'
'Ah. In that case, some very bad people who could raise the dead, heal the sick, predict the future and call lightning down out of the sky passed through here not long ago in a cart, but they weren't gods. Exactly the same as a god, but different.'
Monach nodded. 'And you saw all this?' he said.
'Oh yes. I can still see, you know, and I can hear, and people in these parts answer my questions truthfully. I saw the thunderbolt, I saw the healing and the raising from the dead, and I heard the prophecy. I was at the back of the crowd, mind you, having to peer over Pein Annit's shoulder, but I saw it.'
'And you believed?'
'I believe that I saw what I saw. Of course, the woman who was with him wasn't really a priestess. She was a Torcean, about your age, quite pretty in a blanched sort of a way. She didn't believe; I suspect she thought she was a confidence trickster.'
'Really,' Monach said, in a rather strained voice. 'How could you tell?'
'She was afraid,' Jolect said. 'It wasn't particularly warm, but she was sweating-the ends of her fringe were stuck together in little spikes, and there were dark patches in the cloth of her gown under the arms and in the small of her back. She was trying quite hard to take no notice of us-a very good performance, well thought out-but she couldn't help flicking very quick glances at us out of the corner of her eye; I don't suppose she even knew she was doing it, but she was. Also there were inconsistencies in what she told us, things she simply couldn't have said if she actually believed. Oh, and the people she gave medicine to didn't get better; she made a false diagnosis, though it's hard to blame her for that. She thought they had pneumonia, and what they really had was deer-tick fever. The symptoms are almost exactly the same in the early stages.'