Ordination

by Daniel Ford

  “Aye,” Allystaire said, with a sharp nod. “It might be. Braech’s justice. Fortune’s justice. A lord’s justice. But it is not the Mother’s justice.” Repeating that phrase filled him with a quiet certainty that he was right; he felt that radiant, unearthly smile again, if only for a fleeting second.

  “I want Thornhurst’s justice,” Henri shouted, taking a step closer and raising his stick uncertainly. “I want justice for my sons, who died with bolts in their necks!” His voice climbed as he spoke, trembled with ready tears.

  “And the men who did that are already dead, Henri,” Allystaire said, quietly. “Killing this lad will not add one link to the price they paid. Nor will it cut a copper shaving from the cost laid upon you.”

  Henri took another half step closer, close enough for Allystaire to see the tears on his stubbled cheeks and the stick raised a bit higher.

  “Stop,” Allystaire said coldly. “Stop now, because if you try to hit me with that stick, I will take it away and break it over your head. Stop because I do not want to hurt any of you, but if you doubt that I will do so, to defend an unarmed, sleeping boy, think back on what that warehouse looked like after I set you free. Stop because the Mother calls me to defend him now, as I did you, then.” His heart pounded at the front of his ribcage, his body tense with the fear that his words would not convince, and he would have to hurt them.

  “Stop, turn around, and go back to sleep with this promise: he will do more good for Thornhurst alive than he would dead. He will pay everything he owes, like the dead men on that floor did. The Mother’s justice may not always be as swift or as final as it was then, but I will be damned if I shall not see it done, no matter what form it takes.”

  The other three men dropped their weapons, such as they were—a mallet, the rope, a long skinning knife—and melted into the night. Henri stood before Allystaire, trembling in anger; finally, the stick fell from nerveless fingers, and the man pitched onto his knees, weeping openly.

  “Where was ‘er justice then, m’lord,” he moaned. “Where was She? Where were you?”

  A day’s ride north of your valley and hoping not to see Garth’s great black charger on the road behind me, Allystaire immediately thought, once again chastising himself inwardly with a sharp frown. He knelt next to Henri and put a hand upon the farmer’s shoulder.

  “She told me, Henri, that She had forgotten this world. Or that it had forgotten Her. I cannot explain the past, and I cannot bring back your sons any more than I can roll back the ocean or cleave down a mountain. I can tell you this: She hears your cries. She will hear the cry of every father like you, and those cries will not be borne forever.”

  Henri knelt on the grass and rocked slowly back and forth, shaking his head, tears spilling from his shut eyes. What good am I, then? Allystaire was shamed by his thought, but he had no answer, so he knelt in the grass with his arm around a man he was sure was older than he was, and waited. At least I did not have to kill him.

  As Henri’s sobs slowed and he collected himself, Allystaire stood and helped the farmer up with a proffered hand. Henri refused to look at him, staring straight at the dark ground as he spoke.

  “M’sorry m’lord. I ‘ad no right t’gainsay you. Or t’threaten. Please fergive me,” he mumbled, embarrassed and apologetic.

  “Henri, I have been lax in this, but it is time for you folk to stop calling me lord,” Allystaire replied, quietly. “And since I am no lord, I will not order men silenced.” And you were as much threat to me as a mouse is to a tomcat. He took a deep breath and clapped the other man on the shoulder.

  “Yet mark this and mark it well; I will do the Mother’s will as clear as I may see it, no matter who—foe, friend, neighbor, or stranger—opposes me. Aye? It is not my forgiveness you need ask, in the end. If you knelt last night, it is Hers.”

  Henri looked up, and even in the meager light of the quarter moon, puzzlement was plain upon his rounded peasant face. “’Ow d’I do that?”

  “Ask,” Allystaire replied with a certainty that startled himself. “We are all, I think, as children to Her. When you were a lad, could you not simply ask your own mother’s forgiveness for your mischief?”

  “Not ‘less I wanted a ladle aside m’head,” Henri answered, after chewing his bottom lip for a moment.

  “I could fetch a ladle if it would help,” Allystaire said flatly.

  “You couldna hit harder than me mum did,” Henri stubbornly insisted.

  Sighing, Allystaire took half a step back and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Just ask, Henri. Ask Her. Kneel and pray. Beg of Her some task, if you must. But for the Mother’s own love, head for your blankets and go back to sleep, aye? The turn is late.”

  Perhaps Allystaire’s small prayer was answered, for the grizzled farmer cracked a yawn as he nodded; Allystaire fought back his own yawn, and Henri took a few steps away before turning back to him. “You won’t tell no one about this, will ya?”

  After a moment’s pause, Allystaire replied, “Only if I must. I will not hold it over you; that I can promise.”

  Henri nodded, and Allystaire struggled to read his face. As the farmer walked off, Allystaire stood listening to the sound of boot steps until he could hear no more; then he settled himself against the door of the shed and slept again, lightly, till dawn.

  CHAPTER 17

  Serving in Grief

  Allystaire awoke to the rattling of the door behind him as Norbert pounded upon it from within. Yawning, he stood and rapped back with a sharp blow of his fist. “I wake, lad, I wake. What is it?”

  “I need the jakes, m’lord,” came Norbert’s voice from within, frantically.

  “Fine, fine.” Shaking his head, Allystaire unbarred the door and stood aside; Norbert trotted out and looked, blinking, from side to side.

  “Where—”

  “Find a tree, boy, and be quick. And do not get out of my sight,” Allystaire called out to Norbert’s suddenly retreating back. Cursing and stamping the feeling into complaining limbs, Allystaire trotted after him, but pulled up when he saw the boy stop in front of a large oak and start fumbling with his clothes.

  When he was done, Allystaire waited as the boy turned toward him, then had to choke down his surprise as he saw Idgen Marte emerge from the thickly leaved branches of the tree Norbert had just pissed on. He saw her carefully climb down and jump a few feet from the base of the tree in distaste, her hair knotted and carrying more than one or two twigs, her clothes disheveled, unstrung bow in hand. Quickly, he turned away and started walking, silently counting in his head, reaching exactly four when Norbert caught up with him.

  “M’lord, will I be free to go now? I did the work you—”

  Allystaire turned on him and gave him a baleful stare, his eyes widened in sudden fury. He said nothing, only stared, and kept boring his gaze on the gangly lad until Norbert quailed and apologized in a tiny voice.

  Turning back away from him, Allystaire walked again, waiting three steps before he said, “I have decided I will not hang you. Not after the trouble I have gone in order to keep you alive.” Behind him, Norbert commenced a chorus of thank-yous. Allystaire turned and cut him off with another glare. When silence was restored to the warm, early morning, he said, “What I will do is much worse.”

  Soon enough, Allystaire, Norbert, and Idgen Marte had made their way back to the camped wagons, where all the village folk stirred; they were cooking, waking later sleepers, seeing to animals, milking the meager herd and flock that had been rounded up, and carrying out other domestic tasks that seemed like the work of mad arcanists to Allystaire. He sent Norbert off toward Renard to be fed, then walked off, alone, toward the mass grave that had been dug the day before.

  The ground was uneven in places and showed the marks of shovel and mattock. Allystaire had seen to it that stakes were placed at each corner, so they could skirt the grave itself, and
he walked around to the head of it, facing east over the rising ground of the lip of the river valley, and knelt, fixing his eyes as close to the sun as he could manage.

  “Mother,” he began, then almost immediately faltered, grasping for words that would not come. He started again after a few deep breaths.

  “Mother, if these are our people, what do I say to them this morn? What can I do for their grief in the face of this enormity? I killed the men who did it. They deserved it, and they have neither my pity nor my grief. Yet their deaths healed nothing.”

  “’Tis not healin’ we need, only a way forward,” put in a quiet voice behind him, which Allystaire didn’t have to turn toward in order to recognize. “We’ll heal on our own, wi’ time. Just set our feet on the right road.” He heard quiet footsteps on the grass and turned to look at Mol; while he knelt, she was roughly at eye level with him, and she lay a hand upon his shoulder. “Ya din’t kill those men t’heal anythin’. Be a trap t’start thinkin’ that way.”

  Nodding distractedly, Allystaire looked to the ground in front of him for a moment, then stood, patting Mol on the shoulder as he did. “Go and gather them, Mol. Words need to be said over this grave. Tell them I need half a turn.”

  She nodded and rushed off, running without apparent worry across the grave, passing Idgen Marte on her way. Similarly, the warrior walked heedlessly over the burial site, blinking sleep out of her eyes, carrying a mess of ropes over one shoulder, and clutching her bow and swordbelt together in one hand. “How’re the funeral rites coming?”

  “Be better if people did not keep treading all over the grave,” Allystaire remarked.

  She snorted. “Foolish northern superstition, that. We don’t even dig graves where I come from.” Then she cracked a yawn, holding a hand for his patience. “Do funerals happen before or after breakfast?”

  “Before. Now, come help me fetch some stones. Large and flat.”

  “Markers?”

  Allystaire shook his head as he turned. “Too many bodies to mark them all. I mean to make an altar, such as I can.” With fair precision, he sought out the spot where he’d made a campfire a lifetime ago, on the day he’d found Mol shivering in the inn’s cold well.

  Reaching out with the sheathed tip of her sword, Idgen Marte tapped the ring of stones he’d put together. “Stones. Large and flat.” She gestured with her free hand from him to the stones and began belting her sword back around her waist.

  Allystaire squatted and hauled one up easily, then stood to hold it toward her; Idgen Marte’s only response was to cock an eyebrow and tilt her head.

  Allystaire gestured toward her with the stone, as if to hand it off, and she held up her hands by her shoulders, palms out, shaking her head. “I don’t haul rocks. Nor water nor coal. Nor do I split wood, plough fields, tend to animals, wash pots, sweep floors, beat rugs, or clean hearths. You want the rocks, old man, you carry ‘em. Only rocks I’m carrying best be small, shiny, and for preference, set in gold.”

  Sighing, Allystaire squatted down and gathered up as many of the stones in his arms as he could, then stood straight, with visible strain, and began walking with short, jerking steps back toward the pit. “Little honest labor would not hurt you,” he grunted, waddling.

  “’Honest’ and ‘labor’ are both ugly words. They hurt me here,” Idgen Marte protested, touching her chest lightly. “Only labor I’ll do with my hands is with bowstring or hilt.”

  It took Allystaire three trips to gather all the stones, and though Idgen Marte walked with him, true to herself, she didn’t carry so much as a single one. When he finally had the entire ring, Allystaire busied himself with arranging them into a crude pile; finished, it didn’t stand much higher than his hip, but its surface was flat and mostly even.

  Wiping sweat from his eyes, he glared at Idgen Marte and knelt, reaching out to the pile of stones and retreating into himself. Mother, he thought, I do not know if it is temples you want. I do know that these folk will want something of you when I am gone. Faith without an object will wither. Let them make a place here, a temple in your name; make this its center. Let it mark forever the graves of those I could not save.

  When Allystaire opened his eyes, for they had closed as he prayed, Idgen Marte was kneeling on the opposite side of him, one hand reaching tentatively out toward the small pile of stones. When her hand joined his upon it, her fingertips lightly brushing the opposite side, he felt a jolt run through him. From the way she jumped, so did Idgen Marte. He flattened the whole of his hand, splaying his fingers, over the stone. It felt warm. He heard a very faint cracking sound.

  Idgen Marte had opened her eyes, her fingers still just lightly brushing the stone. “Look,” she said, jumping to her feet; Allystaire slowly pushed himself up and took a step back.

  The pile of rock before them, while still only a few feet in height, was no longer made of individual stones. Instead, they had fused, somehow, into one unbroken whole. The edges not regular, the top not even, but a single block of grey stone nonetheless.

  “Let it mark forever the graves of those I could not save,” Idgen Marte murmured; she looked from the altar to Allystaire, attempting her usual smirk, and failing. “Why that? Why make it a reminder of what’s past?”

  Allystaire thought on this for a moment, letting his fingers trail over the top of the still-warm stone. “Memory matters.” He paused, then, unable to contain himself, adding, “I did not say that out loud, you know. I was praying, aye, but silent. You heard my thoughts.”

  Snorting, Idgen Marte said, “I am no sorceress able to pluck thought from your mind.”

  “I did not say that you were, or that you could. Yet you did hear the prayer, because She let you hear it. Do not try to deny it,” he added sternly, as she opened her mouth to protest.

  “So what if She did?”

  “Must I also point out that the stone fused only when we both touched it?” Allystaire smiled knowingly. “She is not done with you, Idgen Marte. You know this. Sooner, rather than later, She will Call to you, and you will have no choice but to answer.”

  Tightening her lips into a thin line, Idgen Marte searched in vain for a response, but the folk of Thornhurst had begun to gather around, and Allystaire simply smiled at her as he moved forward to address them.

  Instinctively, they avoided the grave, except for Mol, who dashed across it to join him once more. She labored to carry a large stone, but she smiled as brightly as the morning air around her. “She spoke t’me,” she said, her voice a note of pure joy. “Told me t’bring a rock. Er, She weren’t real clear on why, she just told me…” Mol held up the rock at the end of her skinny arms, toward Allystaire, her mouth twisting from bright smile to slight confusion.

  Pointing to the altar behind him, Allystaire smiled back at her. “Go set it there, and come back and join me.” The girl bounced off, and Allystaire took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and boomed to the gathered villagers.

  “Neighbors.” He paused, shaking his head. “Friends? Are we friends, good folk? I am afraid that many of you fear me. To some of you, mayhap I am just another man in a steel suit, with arms and a will to see things done his own way. Mayhap I have acted too much in that manner. I am sorry for frightening you.” He found that his hands were clasped behind him, his bearing instinctively military. He dropped his hands to his sides and went on.

  “Understand this: folk like you have naught to fear from me, or from any servant of the Mother. I serve Her by serving you.” He paused to let that sink in, then added, “This does not mean I am going to start fetching your ale or drawing your water.” There were a few chuckles in the crowd, and some lightened faces. Allystaire decided that was a victory and moved on.

  “Today, I have asked you here so that I may serve you in grief.” Another pause. “In front of you, as you well know, is where we laid your murdered kin to rest yesterday. Today we are here to say fare
well to them, to let them move to the mild summer and the warm winter of the next world. The Mother will find them there, as She found you here, and gather them to Her care.”

  He waited, watching the crowd; many faces began to fall, eyes to cloud and well. “I do not know what your custom is for moments like this. Where I hail from, we speak words of praise and, if need be, blame, over our fallen kin before we move on. If any of you wish to speak, come forward.”

  Allystaire waited; the crowd in front of him hesitated, but then he felt Mol brush past him. He expected her voice to be small, but it carried powerfully in the otherwise quiet morning.

  “Slavers killed my father, I ‘spect,” she said, digging her bare toes into the grass and folding her hands in front of her. “I din’t see it happen, but he weren’t with ya when y’were rescued. Was him who set me into the cold well when he saw thin’s goin’ wrong. Did it quick and made cert no one saw ‘im do’t. Saved me, I thin’.” She paused, wiped her hand under her eyes, and added, “He always let me listen t’the stories minstrels or peddlers would bring to the inn, e’en when I was s’posed to be asleep.” Her voice thickened with tears; many in the crowd lowered their heads, eyes shut tightly. Quickly, biting off the words, she finished with, “And he made the best beer fer forty mile in any direction.”