Ordination

by Daniel Ford

  “My grandmother planted linden trees everywhere there was a bare patch of grass around Coldbourne Hall. You would never find it,” Allystaire said, smiling broadly.

  “You’re lying.”

  Allystaire’s smile widened until it encompassed his entire face, the expression incongruous with his oft-broken nose. “I cannot.”

  Idgen Marte cursed and spat on the grass, looking down at her boots for a moment before squinting back up at him. “We’re going t’be leaving soon,” she said.

  “Clarify we.”

  “The two of us, I think. Mol is too young for the road, and besides, she is not meant to leave Thornhurst. A temple will rise here, and it will be hers to guide.”

  “Will the villagers mind her words once we are gone?” Allystaire asked doubtfully.

  “I think they will with Renard standing behind her,” Idgen Marte said. “He isn’t meant to leave either.”

  “Where are we going, and what are we waiting for?”

  Idgen Marte frowned, shook her head, and stuck her hands uncomfortably on her belt. “The answer to either question is I don’t know. She told me to wait for a sign. He will see. That is all She said. I suppose he is you.”

  “Then we wait for a sign.”

  “If it helps, I think I know why we have to leave.”

  “Well?”

  “The Wit, or the Will. Both. Whoever they are. We’re to search them out.”

  “The Wit and the Will,” Allystaire murmured, thinking the words over, gaze drifting to the trees. Then he looked back toward Idgen Marte, tilting his head to the side. “Why the Shadow?”

  She merely smiled slightly and said enigmatically, “You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 22

  A Storm

  Days passed, became weeks, and summer slowly began to burn itself out. Summer and winter were the longest seasons by far in the baronies, and this summer seemed determined to drag on and erase as much of autumn as it could. The business of throwing up walls and thatching roofs was made all the more miserable by the relentless heat. After three solid weeks of work, with scores of the trees that had surrounded Thornhurst now stumps, none of the folk were any longer sleeping outdoors except by choice. The wagons that had been their prisons, then briefly their homes, were tucked away inside a barn; cows were milked once again; hearth fires lit; crops and gardens repaired and tended. Life slowly returned to a kind of normalcy.

  Rough stone walls began to take shape surrounding the altar field. Early afternoons, with thunderheads often looming above, usually found Allystaire stacking stones alongside a handful of village folk. Different Thornhursters came each day, when they could find an escape from their own work, to help build the temple Allystaire had preached of nearly a month before. Mol always appeared with them; she had early on insisted on certain elements of the building, especially the space within. Allystaire had envisioned something much smaller than what was now being laid out.

  This afternoon found Mol standing in front of the altar, arguing insistently with the local stonemason, Giraud.

  “E’rywhere I tell ya, Giraud, including in the roof,” she insisted. For a lass of ten summers, there was a remarkable dearth of pouting or temper. She did not put hands on hips or stomp her feet. She was simply implacable.

  “’It ain’t possible, lass,” the large, heavy-shouldered man insisted, tugging on his thick brown beard. “I dunno how t’do what you’re askin’.”

  With a sigh, Allystaire set down the pile of stones he was hauling and stepped over the wall, which rose almost to his waist, his boots sinking a bit into the hay-strewn floor.

  “In the first place m’not askin’,” Mol was saying calmly, carefully, when Allystaire came up behind Giraud, who was even broader than the paladin.

  “Giraud, neighbor, let me save you the trouble. If Mol is insisting it must be a particular way, it must,” he said gently. “You may not know how to leave windows and gaps for the light where she is telling you, but it is not simply Mol who is speaking, eh?” Allystaire pressed his lips together and tilted his head forward a bit, hoping to impress his meaning on the other man.

  “I can’t build somethin’ I dunno how t’build,” Giraud replied, exasperated, his hands thrown into the air in frustration.

  “I did not know how to do anything the Mother has asked of me, until the moment I did it. Faith, Giraud. Right now, faith means doing what the lass says.” He dropped his voice a bit, glanced at a satisfied Mol nodding her head and walking off to go oversee something else, and added, “Trust me, goodman. You will do what she says in the end no matter how you argue.”

  The large, dour-faced but gentle man closed his eyes, murmured, “Faith,” and went back to overseeing the afternoon’s construction.

  Allystaire clapped him on the shoulder and followed after the girl. “Mol…what was that about?”

  She turned and said, “Light. What else would it be?”

  “What do you mean, ‘light’?”

  She sighed, very faintly, and explained in careful tones. “She wants light. In the mornin’, at midday, at sunset.”

  “Then perhaps we should be building in the mountains and not in a valley.”

  Mol smiled brightly, and for a moment looked like any excitable child of ten summers. “We could build another one, there’d be time ‘fore winter—”

  Allystaire stopped her. “Mol. If the Mother herself tells me to go climb a mountain and build a temple there, I will, and by myself if need be. Short of that, let us finish this one first, aye?”

  She deflated, just a little, a child with an idea discarded, but soon brightened and wandered off on bare feet to instruct someone else.

  Allystaire hauled a few more piles of stone from the stocks that had been gathered over the past weeks, but soon drifted from the temple and wandered back into the village, his steps carrying him into the mostly rebuilt inn he had burst into his first time in the village center.

  Idgen Marte was already there, with the place to herself, a large flagon of what Allystaire knew to be a rather sour beer, and two cups. She filled one and slid it toward him.

  “See anything yet?”

  “Naught but stone and dust.”

  “Storm seems likely. It’ll be the most entertaining thing since the hang—”

  Allystaire cut her off with a look and a curled fist on the bar. She held up a conciliatory hand and went back to drinking. Allystaire took a painful first swallow, tried to splash the liquid past his tongue and down his dry throat. After swallowing, he said, “You have a point.”

  “I have at least three.”

  He snorted, tried to quickly toss down more of his beer, only to grimace when it found his tongue despite his best efforts. “Tell me again what She said.”

  Idgen Marte groaned and, for a moment, dropped her head into her arms. “I’ve told you every day since She told me. You know what She said. We’re to wait for the sign. He will see. That’s all She told me about how long we need t’remain here. The sign will tell us where t’go.”

  Allystaire raised his cup, set it down empty with his teeth clenched in near pain. “We are doing the Mother’s work. It will rarely be pleasant, and not always exciting.”

  “We’re in the way, Allystaire,” Idgen Marte protested. “Well on our way to being useless mouths. If this drags into winter then we’re stuck here till the spring thaw.”

  “We are only just getting into autumn now. Why so worried about winter?”

  “You’ve lived all your life in a place where people swear by the Cold and you wonder why a southerner like me is concerned about winter? It’s too long by half. And your autumns are plenty cold enough for me.”

  “We are where we are supposed to be,” Allystaire insisted. He reached for the flagon and poured a second cupful, then drained it quickly. “If you are so desperate for something exciting, why n
ot a bit of sparring?”

  “I can only smack you around so much before growing bored, old man,” Idgen Marte replied, already uncoiling off the bench she’d sat on, “but if you insist.” She reached for her swordbelt buckled against the wall, and the two of them headed for the door.

  They stepped outside and had taken perhaps five steps from the door when the thunderheads finally cracked above them and rain began pouring in sheets. Allystaire stopped and laughed, turning his head up to the rain. Idgen Marte did the same, and the two of them headed back inside.

  “Build up the fire,” Allystaire told her. “The folk will all crowd in here soon enough. I will start fetching up beer.” He took the flagon they hadn’t quite emptied and knelt, pulling open the cold well, and dipped the flagon to fill it. He set it upon the bar, reached up onto the shelves for another pair of the crude earthen vessels, filled them, and reached for another. While fumbling around on the shelf above him, his fingers brushed against something with a different texture than the typical pottery of the inn’s flagons and jars; it was cool and hard. He stood and peered into the shelf, pulling forward a thick, squat, darkened glass bottle. It was covered in dust; when he blew it off with a quick breath, he discovered a faded sigil stamped upon it.

  He turned to Idgen Marte with a wide grin tugging at his features. “Brandy. From the south of Innadan. Most of the best wine in this part of—”

  She cut him off with a wave of her hand, then reached for the bottle. “If it won’t taste like this green beer the reavers provisioned us with, hand it over with all due haste.”

  Allystaire carefully placed the bottle on the bar in front of her. She snatched it and stared at it, frowning, turning it side to side. “How in the Cold d’ya drink out of this thing?”

  “You do not.” Allystaire lifted the bottle, still holding it carefully. “This…this was meant for a very wealthy man. Or woman. You break the neck of it off. With a sword, if you are feeling showy, I suppose. Then carefully pour out the contents and drink it all at once. By intent, the bottle is ruined.”

  As he spoke, the door banged open and the first clutch of rain-drenched villagers began pouring in. Instinctively, Allystaire ducked low, tucking the bottle of brandy underneath the bar, by his feet. Idgen Marte finally hopped off her stool and went to the hearth, most of its stones still black with soot that would never wash away, and began poking at the logs with an iron bar, causing the fire to spit and flare.

  Some of the village folk directed themselves instantly to the bar, and Allystaire began handing over flagons with good cheer, while palpably concerned about the bottle resting by his boot. Soon a crowd filled the inn, and the fire was pouring smoke and heat into the place, and Allystaire was busy hauling ale up from the cold well and filling jars and flagons—before he knew it, Mol was standing barefoot on the bar and drinking beer from a small cup he hadn’t given her and couldn’t reach to snatch away. Idgen Marte was sitting with Renard and occasionally looking back at Allystaire with pleading eyes. Thunder cracked and rain pelted the newly patched roof, forcing its way through the thatch in spatters. Allystaire gave a minute shake of his head and Idgen Marte turned to survey the crowd with a sigh and her lips pressed into a thin line.

  Suddenly, as Allystaire handed over yet another cup of small beer, Idgen Marte stood and made for the door, flinging it open and stepping into the storm, with a discreet wave for him to follow. He glanced down at the bottle, started to kneel, thought better of it, and came around the bar, edging his way through the crowd; the sweat he wiped from his forehead was enough excuse, and he wouldn’t have been heard among the hubbub of people suddenly enjoying an afternoon free from worry and full of free drink.

  He stepped outside and found Idgen Marte standing in the flimsy shelter of the overhang of the inn’s thatch. The thunderstorm would, surely, break the heat and cool the evening when it passed, but the rain-filled air was still muggy and hot, the wind like a breath of steam. And yet the swordswoman shivered as Allystaire approached.

  Unsure of how to approach, he decided on a light tone and said, “What? Do you need a brandy that badly?”

  She scowled at him, the scar by her lip livid against her brown skin. “I’m no trembling sot. I thought of something and it frightened me, and I don’t know why.” She looked off into the storm, then turned her face back on him accusingly. “I don’t frighten easy, but…”

  “What? What could it possibly be?” Allystaire spread his hands wide, palms up, eyes and brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Look back inside. Almost the entire village—everyone we rescued, and a few stragglers that lived far out in the valley, or fled to the hills—is in that common room. Look.”

  Allystaire ducked his head back in and began counting up the people, noting the names: Mol, Timmar, Gram and his parents, Giraud, Henri, the latter actually sitting at a table with Norbert. Leah sat at a corner table with Renard. His gaze started to move on, then slid back to the two of them, alone in a dim corner. Despite himself, Allystaire smiled, and thought, You sly old soldier. Good for you. He moved on, trying to see what could’ve scared Idgen Marte. Seeing nothing amiss, he ducked back outside.

  “Well?” she insisted defiantly, arms crossed over her chest.

  “I saw nothing but folk happy to have a day free of labor, storm or no.”

  “Allystaire, who took them from this village and why?”

  “Reavers, to make slaves of them.”

  “And so, think like a slaver,” she went on, raising a hand to lead him on like a tutor with a reluctant student. “Whom do you take from a village like this? Whom do you leave behind?”

  “You take the younger women, obviously,” Allystaire said after a moment’s pause, his jaw tightening a bit as he spoke. “You take the grown men. Not the elderly, but those used to work. They grew up around here, they will be used to hopping at the sound of orders. I suppose you take the children.”

  “Right. All of which they did; and not so very many young men, because…”

  “Their blood is hotter. Most of them probably were killed first. Probably by plan.”

  Idgen Marte nodded again, folded her hands together under her chin as she fixed him with a stare. “Whom do you not take? Of all the folk in a village like this, which have the least profit in ‘em, if you’re the sort who thinks that way?”

  Allystaire thought back to the laughing, stylish captain in his fine green brigantine, felt a dull, satisfied ache for a moment in the knuckles of his right hand. “The older women, I suppose. Panders will not buy them, and no one is likely to make oarsmen of them.”

  “And there’s nearly a score survived the taking, most of ‘em sitting in that common room right now with their children,” Idgen Marte replied.

  Allystaire tilted his head to the side. “And this frightens you because?”

  She stepped forward and slapped him on the shoulder with an impossibly fast hand. “You said yourself that the reaver captain was dangerous, that it wasn’t his first time. So what does it mean?”

  He shook his head slowly, and she smacked him again, her eyes widening as she said, “It means someone wanted to buy them, Allystaire. Someone wanted to buy women—not maidens, not comely lasses, but farmwives. That’s not what scares me though. What scares me is I can’t think of a good freezin’ reason why, but someone has.”

  As Idgen Marte spoke, a sudden shiver went down Allystaire’s back, matching hers from when he’d stepped outside, and it was nothing to do with the hot, wet air or the rain or the lightning that flashed on the green. “Goddess,” he murmured, blinking for a moment and staring at the rain before turning to her. “Why does that thought frighten us?”

  “I don’t know,” Idgen Marte replied. She waited a moment, then tightened her jaw and exhaled sharply. “I do mean to find out. We haven’t asked these folk what their captivity was like. And you didn’t leave any Cold-be-damned slavers aliv
e to ask them, so we’ll have to ask—”

  As she was speaking, another flash of lightning illuminated the village green, and Allystaire suddenly made out the forms of three robed, hooded figures struggling down the track. They were thin, and the one in front, shorter than the others, held a long stick behind him that the other two held onto. Allystaire grabbed Idgen Marte by the arm and ran down off the steps of the inn and into the rain.

  He caught up with them in moments, Idgen Marte a few steps behind, and yelled over the din of thunder. “Come, there is shelter this way, and fire. It is dangerous to be out in this.”

  The three figures all turned toward the sound of his voice. The one in the front was barely out of boyhood; the other two, one a young man and one a grey-bearded elder, turned eyeless faces to him in silent supplication, and Allystaire felt his stomach quail. Blind monks, he thought, before the boy started to speak, his words lost to the rain and wind.

  CHAPTER 23

  He Will See

  The three Urdarites sat together at a table dragged so close to the hearth it was in danger from sparking cinders. The village folk gave them a wide berth, with benches, stools, and tables drawn tightly against the walls. The silence was nearly complete, broken only by hissing logs and the occasional slurp of beer or creak of bench.

  Allystaire and Idgen Marte stood on either side of the bar, with Mol sitting at the far end with her legs drawn up beneath her, staring with murderous intensity at the cluster of sopping, grey-robed men at the other end of the room.