Ordination

by Daniel Ford

  He turned and watched them disappear in a field, and then heard Torvul clear his throat. “Can ya use that trick to clear us all the way to the front? Handy if you could.”

  Allystaire didn’t answer; he continued to watch the disappearing backs of the boys who had stood, mere moments ago, in line in front of them, and thought perhaps he heard, or felt, a tiny hint of the Goddess’s music.

  * * *

  The small contingent of guards watching the gate were bored, sloppily dressed, and poorly armed. They wore the colors of Barony Delondeur, as well as the arms—a tower of a light sandy color on a bright green field. One unarmored man, in matching livery with a stripe on his arm and a cudgel holding down a stack of papers, sat at a folding camp table, with four flanking the thrown-open gates and several more patrolling the sloping stone walls above.

  Allystaire and Idgen Marte led their horses next to Torvul’s wagon, while the dwarf remained perched upon his seat. When they pulled up, the man at the desk droned questions at them without bothering to look up, meanwhile dipping the worn tip of a quill into a bottle of ink.

  “Names.”

  “Mourmitnourthrukacshtorvul,” Torvul said brightly, fluently chewing upon each twisting syllable.

  The man’s quill stopped upon the parchment, and his eyes fluttered in frustration.

  “Ya can just write Torvul, sergeant. No one’ll know the difference but us,” the dwarf offered in a conspiratorial whisper.

  The sergeant nodded and quickly scratched some lines. “And you two?”

  “Idgen Marte.”

  “Allystaire.”

  The sergeant looked up when Allystaire answered, his eyes instantly focusing.

  “Allystaire of?”

  “Thornhurst,” he answered, with deliberate care.

  “I didn’t know Thornhurst grew knights. Thought it was mostly cabbages and gap-toothed farm girls, when it’s anything at all.”

  “Times change,” Allystaire replied drily. “Though I am not a knight in the way you mean.”

  “Got a knight’s weapons. Knight’s mount. And that pennant.” He peered at it as the wind teased it. “Dunno those arms. You’re a liegeman to the Baron Delondeur?”

  “No.”

  “Then to who?”

  Allystaire smiled faintly, the half-formed and sometimes chilling expression that rarely touched his dark blue eyes. “No man.”

  The sergeant stood from behind his desk and looked up at Torvul. “All three of you together?”

  The dwarf nodded. “Aye, sergeant. We share the road together, have for a good bit of it now. I’m here to take in supplies, do some trading. I’ve useful potions, unguents, solutions, tinctures, brews, philtres—”

  The sergeant spat. The bored gate guards were more interested now; hands were tightening on spearshafts and mail was clinking as their weight shifted.

  “I didn’t ask, dwarf.” The sergeant studied the three a while, waved them in, and watched them disappear through the darkness of the gatehouse. All other traffic was held up; finally, he sat down, wrote hastily on a piece of paper and folded it carefully in half, twice. He stood again, while merchants and farmers grumbled at the delay, and yelled, “Runner.”

  In a few moments a lad no older than twelve emerged from the gatehouse wearing the green and the tower. The sergeant handed the paper to him. “The Dunes. For the Baron. Go.” The lad nodded and went back through the gatehouse; soon he was seen dashing atop the city wall along the parapet.

  * * *

  “Grand old city, this,” Torvul was saying, as he drove his wagon slowly and carefully down the grand central street of Londray. “The buildings are hardly falling into each other, the lanes are near wide enough to squat in and the gutters aren’t choked with garbage. Just sort of, decorated, I s’pose. Arranged, as it were. But…” The dwarf sat up straight in his wagon and sniffed the air, his eyes drifting half-closed. “D’ya smell that?”

  “The harbor?” Idgen Marte and Allystaire answered in unison, and Torvul shook his head sadly.

  “No! The rivers of weight. Silver links enough to forge a hauberk of them. Enough gold t’choke a troll with…ah, I s’pose that one loses something out of Dwarfish. Ya see, trolls will try to eat metals on occasion, so a big enough lump…” Torvul waved a hand vaguely in the air. “The place is ripe with links, and I—”

  “Cannot touch any of it, best I can see,” Allystaire finished the sentence cheerily. “At least, not in exchange for your craft. Am I correct?”

  Torvul’s face suddenly fell and he slumped in his seat, sullenly flicked the reins. “You’re a cruel man, to remind a friend of his burdens so readily.”

  “There’s more than one way to make some weight,” Idgen Marte replied. “No reason you can’t exchange honest work for—”

  Torvul halted his wagon and stood so that he could look down upon the warrior with a scowl that could’ve shattered shields. “Mind your tongue, woman. We’ll have none of that vile talk.”

  Idgen Marte laughed full-throatedly. “I don’t like it any better than you. And yet we need to find some weight somehow.”

  “We will not be swindlers, but neither are we common laborers. The Goddess will provide,” Allystaire put in. “And besides, I remember Torvul admitting to having a bit put by here and there in his wagon.”

  Allystaire paused and looked off to the harbor; afternoon sunlight gleamed off of the roof of the temple of Braech, probably the second largest building, after the Dunes, in the city. The roof was a bright metallic blue and sculpted as a wave curling and rising threateningly above all who entered. Above everyone in the city, truthfully, for it could be seen from the gatehouse itself, though only just.

  “Rumor has long held that sapphires, tourmalines, agates, and lapis lazulis are crushed into the paint of that roof,” he said, raising a hand to point. “Probably untrue, yet it is very bright.”

  “How d’ya think Her Ladyship would feel about sackin’ the temples o’sworn enemies?” Torvul was rubbing at his chin with his fingertips.

  “Probably poorly,” Allystaire said. “She did not seem happy to be at odds with Braech. More like, ah…” He shrugged slightly. “Resigned, I suppose.”

  “Ah well. Perhaps another day. Now I have to see whom among my folk I can contact. And I’ve ingredients t’buy. And,” Torvul pointed one thick finger at Allystaire. “If y’don’t mind, toss me your gauntlet. The left one.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me, boy. I’ve a mind to do some tinkering and I think I can get what I need here when I go t’make contact with my own people. Where are you bound?”

  Allystaire simply lifted his now bare hand and pointed toward the distant blue gleam that was the Temple of Braech. Then he took Ardent’s reins and tossed them toward the dwarf, who caught them reflexively. “Horses will not be of much use. Find an inn with a good stable, or a hostelry that will not try to steal him.”

  Torvul nodded and gave the reins a gentle pull; Ardent whickered and tugged back, the reins almost slipping from the dwarf’s strong hand. Allystaire placed his bare hand on the horse’s neck and murmured. The giant grey calmed and went placidly along with Torvul’s wagon. Idgen Marte tied her reins along the back of the wagon, next to the pack mule’s lead.

  With that the dwarf rumbled off down the Main Street, and the other two took off for the southwestern corner of the city, to where the Temple District lay.

  CHAPTER 38

  Paladin and Priestess

  “Just gonna walk straight in?” Idgen Marte and Allystaire were watching the Temple of Braech from the shadow of a nearby temple minor. He hadn’t paid any mind to whatever the sign at the front of it proclaimed in flaking paint and crude idolatry. That it was in a cluster of buildings squatting this close to Braech’s Temple meant that it was sponsored by the Sea Dragon’s Church, and would likely disappear within it in
a few months. The temples dominated this particular part of the city, defining points of a triangle, with Braech’s hard up against the water, a plain square of black basalt devoted to Urdaran to the southeast, and the light and airy silver-and-white of Fortune’s Temple directly north of it.

  “Idgen Marte, in the months you have known me, have I done anything else?”

  “No, but you haven’t planned on walking into the primary Temple of Braech in this Barony. There are bound to be temple guards, possible Braech-sworn knights, maybe even islandman crews.

  “Have you seen a great deal of traffic in and out of the place?”

  “No.”

  “I doubt there is an islandman crew in the barony right now, much less in that temple. Sometimes you are overly cautious.” He pushed off the edge of the building and some of its brickwork flaked away at his touch, which drew a backwards look and a frown. “Shoddy work.”

  “What do you expect a rented temple to be made of?” Idgen Marte stepped forward and grabbed Allystaire by the arm. “And stop tryin’ to distract me. Sometimes you are not cautious enough. You haven’t any idea what you’re walking into, or whether you can walk out.”

  “Which is why you are here, yes? If it goes wrong, you will find me, and we will find our way out.” He reached up and took her hand, gave it a companionable squeeze, and let it go. “Faith, Shadow of the Mother.”

  She sighed and nodded. “Faith,” she agreed. Then she watched as he walked brazenly into the temple of their enemy.

  * * *

  The first hint the Marynth Evolyn had that things in the Temple were amiss was the sound of clattering metal and shouts and the heavy thud of a fist against flesh. Ismaurgh burst into her study so quickly that she did not sense his coming. He slammed her door and threw down the bar to bolt it and leaned against it, heaving for breath.

  “He’s here,” he was saying, wild-eyed. “I sent two guards to detain him. They didn’t even slow him down.”

  She took a deep breath, maintaining the equipoise and composure expected from a priestess of Braech, and set down her quill and quickly gathered up the papers upon which she had been making notes, stuffing them into a drawer of her desk. She had just drawn forth a long, curved knife from another drawer when the door pressed hard against the bar with a booming rattle, and a voice called from the other side.

  “You can unbar the door and we can speak like civilized folk, or you can keep it up and I will treat everyone in this building as an enemy. Your choice. But I will see the choiron. You have a count of five.” There was a brief pause, then in the same commanding, powerful tone. “One.”

  There was barely a pause before “Two,” which was quickly followed by a loud, rattling blow against the door, which sent splinters flying and cracked two of the stout planks.

  “Three.” Another heavy blow, and the blunt head of a maul poked through a crack in the door.

  “Your bow,” the Marynth Evolyn hissed, and Ismaurgh, color quickly draining from his face, patted his hip. The priestess rose from her chair, stalked to his side, and slapped him across the face with her open hand.

  Even as she did the boards of the door rattled with the force of another clout. The head of the hammer wedged through the door and ripped another plank away as it was pulled clear. An armored arm slipped underneath and worked the bar loose from its brackets, and the broken door swung open.

  “Four and five,” the paladin said.

  For the first time, the Marynth saw him close, with her own eyes. From a safe distance, through the eyes of a sword-at-hire whose mind she’d dominated with salt-water, he seemed dangerous, yes, but not so commandingly present.

  He was, she realized, arrestingly unattractive. With an oft-broken nose, scars about his eyes, blocky cheeks, and the dark hint of perpetual stubble around his chin, he would turn few heads. His eyes, though, were a dark and piercing blue, and standing there in his grey and scarred armor, hammer in hand, with a cold and deadly anger radiating from him so vividly, he was terrifying.

  In that moment, when his eyes met hers, the Marynth Evolyn knew she had been judged. Braech help me, this man will kill me, and he’ll be right to do it, she thought, but then Ismaurgh leapt to the attack with a long knife drawn from his belt. She knew instantly his strike was doomed, for he’d pounced like a street-brawler, slashing across the chest, and the point of the knife simply skirled against the thick steel of the paladin’s armor.

  Her guardsman and lover was lucky, perhaps, in that he’d immediately gotten within the arc of the paladin’s hammer, so he was safe from the weapon’s head. Not, however, from its iron-clad haft, which the armored man raised and brought straight down onto the crown of Ismaurgh’s head. Her guard staggered and fell to one knee. The paladin changed his grip, freeing his left hand, grabbed the back of Ismaurgh’s hair and simply smashed his face, with no small amount of force, against his own breastplate.

  Ismaurgh cried out, crumpled, with the sound of broken bones, a ruined face, and a smear of blood on the paladin’s armor.

  “Where is Symod?” With Ismaurgh out of the fight, those cold, hard, blue eyes focused on her, and she shivered and half-fell back into her seat. “Put your hands where I can see them,” he quickly spat out, advancing until he stood over her desk, resting the head of his hammer threateningly on its edge. “And answer my question. Where is he?”

  “You. You can’t simply kill me,” she sputtered, forcing herself to meet his gaze, sitting up straight and placing her hands deliberately upon the wooden surface of her desk, as if she had a say in the matter.

  “No. Yet it may be that I can do much worse. Answer me.”

  “He is not in residence; he has left to attend to an oath-breaker.”

  The paladin’s head tilted to one side, his lips pressed into a thin line. Her eyes flicked to movement behind him, and she suppressed a smile as she saw Ismaurgh climbing, albeit unsteadily, to his feet, his second knife drawn and clutched in his right hand.

  Her eyes had given him away, for the paladin instantly turned, weapon at the ready. Seeing Ismaurgh with knife in hand, he wasted no time, quickly driving the butt of his hammer into the guard’s stomach. The paladin caught him as he began to fall and dragged him in front of the desk. He placed Ismaurgh’s hand, still clutching the knife, on her desk, wrapping his left hand around the wrist, and raising his hammer with the other.

  “I will heal him before I leave, but I will not be backstabbed while I speak to you.” The hammer rose in the air and then descended heavily against Ismaurgh’s hand, crushing it to a pulp against the thick wood of the desk. Ismaurgh cried out, but swiftly and mercifully fell into a swoon upon her floor.

  “Monster,” she breathed, regaining some of her innate imperiousness. “He was trying to defend me.”

  “He is a murderer, and a man too afraid of me to try and kill me himself, except at desperate need. And after locking himself in a room with a priestess to protect him. Such courage, such boldness. Braech must be so proud of His Church. Cravens and employers of assassins.”

  Evolyn’s fingers curled against the wooden surface of her desk and her knuckles whitened. She forced herself to sit upright, to not peer over the edge at Ismaurgh laying upon the floor, but suddenly her vision was filled with the impossibly eye-drawing presence of the paladin, as he leaned forward and set the head of his hammer on the desk between them. His scarred and beaten face loomed over hers. His brows were as much scar as they were grey-flecked dark hair, and his nose splayed hard to the left. His hair was carelessly shorn above a creased forehead that bore the same hard marks as the rest of his face. His jaw quivered with a tension that shot up into his cheeks as he stared down at her. She felt almost physically assaulted by his simple, unblinking glare.

  Still, she had borne worse. Are you not a student of a better and a harder man than this? She met his stare with her own, set her chin, and said in a voice that d
id not quaver, “I am Lady Evolyn Lamaliere, daughter of Lord Lamaliere of Tideswater Watch, a Marynth of the Church of Braech, Second Seat in this Choironal to the legendary Symod, and if you think you can stare me into fear, you will be staring till we are both dust. Speak your piece on behalf of your up-jumped spirit or demon and then be gone before I turn the power of the Sea Dragon upon you.”

  As she spoke, confidence filled her, and her voice rose, and finally so did she, extending one hand toward the paladin, whose left arm suddenly shot forth and seized her wrist, transfixing her with an immoveable grip.

  “The man Rede. Why did you promise him a temple to the Mother?”

  She tried to gather her will, to bring the power of Braech to bear upon him, to force him away. To her shock and dismay, she found herself answering his question without dissembling. “This is the nature of temple politics. We thought it would be useful. If a new goddess is indeed risen, her church could be beholden to us…”

  His hand tightened around her wrist and Evolyn gritted her teeth against the pain of his grip, afraid that she would cry out, but his hand relaxed before her bones could snap.

  “You would try to enslave even Her. I should kill you, and everyone in this temple wearing your robes,” he growled, before clearing his throat and shifting his grip, but Evolyn did not, for a moment, imagine that she could move her hand.