by Vox Day
“That being?”
“I anticipate a considerable number of questions arising as I make my way through the text. Are you willing to answer them?”
“With all my heart!” Waleran exclaimed. Then he stopped and reconsidered. “You realize I may not be able to answer all of them in a manner you find sufficiently convincing.”
“I should be astonished if you did. I have not yet begun working on it, since I was waiting for your permission first, but will you consider granting me one question on credit?”
“If that gives me one evasion to save for an occasion when I feel the need for it.”
The elf laughed and raised his glass in a salute, like a swordsman preparing to address his opponent. “Granted. Now, your sacred manuscript starts with the phrase ‘In the beginning,’ does it not?”
“To be sure.” The abbot smiled and responded with his own half-empty glass.
“But my thought is that, contra the text, the world cannot have had a beginning. That which exists has always existed. It does not exist at certain times and not exist at others. And every incorruptible thing naturally has the capacity to exist always because its existence is not, due to its incorruptible nature, limited to any determinate time. Therefore no incorruptible thing sometimes is, and sometimes is not, whereas everything which has a beginning does not exist prior to its existence. So, either there are no incorruptible things to be found in the world, or no incorruptible thing ever begins to exist.”
“That seems a rational dichotomy,” Waleran said. “Though surely you are not saying that the world is incorruptible!”
“The world? Let us assume not. What matters is that there are many incorruptible things in the world, such as the celestial bodies and all intellectual substances. To say nothing of what I suppose you would term the immortal soul.”
“Can one truly call that which is fallen ‘incorruptible’?” The abbot smiled, knowing he couldn’t expect the observant elf to miss his devious exchange.
“You know very well that is not the sense in which incorruptible is meant.” Bessarias dismissed the sleight of tongue with a wave of his slender hand. “The point is that if there are incorruptible things to be found in the world, and you agree that there are, those things clearly cannot predate the world in which they are found. Therefore the world did not begin to exist, because it could not have a beginning while simultaneously playing host to incorruptible things that did not. That do not.”
Waleran raised his finger in an admonishing manner. “That may be, but you must first note I have agreed to nothing of the sort. It is true that whatever has the power always to be, from the fact of having that power, cannot sometimes be and sometimes not be. But there is no reason we cannot state that, before it received that power, it did not exist.”
“So you deny the existence of the incorruptible?”
“Not at all. It is not necessary to prove that incorruptible things never began to exist, only that they did not begin to exist by means of the natural mode whereby things are generated and become corrupted. And, I must say, I find it amusing that you should seek to appeal to the incorruptibility of an object the existence of which you consistently deny.”
“A mere rhetorical device.”
“Naturally. And yet, can we be certain that the celestial bodies are truly incorruptible? We see them for but a short time—”
“Speak not of the limits of Man! Have you forgotten that I am more than three hundred years old?”
“What of it? Were you three thousand years old, you could still not testify to their eternal incorruptibility—”
Waleran broke off, interrupted again, but this time by a knock on the door that indicated a degree of urgency.
“Come in,” Waleran called. Bessarias raised his eyebrows, and Waleran shrugged in response. He wasn’t expecting any visitors and the entire brotherhood had attended Vespers earlier in the evening.
It was Brother Sperarus, his face red with cold, bearing a torch in his hand. His eyes were wide with confusion and wild with fear.
“Friend Bessarias, something calls for you from outside the gate!”
The abbot and the elf looked at each other. It was well after nightfall, and although they were weeks past Hivernalia, it was still much too cold for anyone to be travelling the road to Bithnya. Perhaps one of the other magisters had come in pursuit of their missing colleague, Waleran thought. But that seemed unlikely. After all, the young brother had faced Bessarias, alone, with no lack of aplomb upon the occasion of the elf’s arrival at Saint Dioscurus, so meeting another like Bessarias shouldn’t upset him.
“Is aught amiss?”
The young monk’s mouth opened and closed twice, drawing a high-pitched cackle from the elf. Waleran winced—elven humor could be crude and often bordered on the cruel.
“Bessarias, please!”
The elf chuckled a few more times, then the laughter subsided and he cleared his throat.
“Do forgive me, Brother Sperarus. I suspect I understand the precise manner in which the cat has stolen your tongue. Say no more, I beg of you.” He pushed himself gracefully up from his chair, took a large sip of his wine, shuddered at the taste, then nodded at Waleran. “Honestly, I simply never considered how this sort of thing would naturally be well outside your experience. Indulge me for a moment and come with me. I should like to show you something.”
The abbot frowned, but Sperarus had visibly relaxed in response to the elf’s words, and it appeared that the whoever this mysterious visitor was, he posed no immediate danger to anyone. Waleran put on his cloak and followed the others outside.
“Bessarias!” a strange voice called. It sounded ragged and raspy. “Bessarias, I know you are there.”
Sperarus looked at him and moved aside so he could look through the peephole.
Waleran shook his head and held out his hand.
“Open the gate.”
The young brother handed him the torch and lifted the large post out from its supports, unbarring the gate. He pulled the right door back, and there, in the flickering light of the torch, Waleran was astonished to see that instead of an elf standing there, a small fox was sitting in what had once been snow, but over the course of the winter had been trodden into ice.
At the sight of Bessarias, it flicked its bushy tail as if in recognition.
“There you are! I have been searching for you for months. I passed these walls three times, but I never imagined you would stop here!”
Waleran stared at the animal in mute astonishment. Now Waleran understood Sperarus’s strange behavior. The poor lad must have thought he was going mad! To his surprise, the elf’s only reaction was to shake his head and sigh. “What do you want, Mastema?”
“I want things to be as they were. I want you to return to the Collegium. I want you to give up this nonsensical search for the nonexistent and take your place again among your fellow magisters. I know you took that monk’s death hard, Magister, but this is lunacy!”
“Get thee behind me,” Bessarias muttered under his breath.
“How is it that it talks?” Waleran couldn’t help asking the elf.
“I might ask the same of you, priestling!” the fox snarled at him in a more contemptuous manner than anything he’d heard directed his way in decades.
Waleran stepped back, startled.
“It’s not a fox,” Bessarias told him. “Or rather, what you hear speaking is not the fox. That is only the body it wears at the moment.”
“Look at them—now you’ve frightened them,” the fox sneered. “Do come away, Bessarias. You can’t possibly learn anything from cretins such as these!”
“Exorcizamus te,” Waleran began the traditional ritual, as he attempted to find his courage, “omnis immundus spiritus—”
Bessarias gently placed his hand on Waleran’s wrist. “That’s not necessary, my dear abbot. There is no need for brute force when a simple request will suffice.”
He folded his arms, and his long hai
r rustled as he shook his head.
“This will not do, Mastema. My affairs are my own, and I do not answer to you, you answer to me. Now begone, lest I request the good abbot here to complete his banishment spell.”
Waleran nearly choked upon the elf’s words. An exorcism was a sacred rite, not a magical spell!
Regardless, the little fox demon acquiesced.
“I will go, if you insist.”
“I do insist,” the elf confirmed.
“Very well. But I shall return in a year’s time. And if you are still here, I shall return the next, and I shall keep returning until you come to your senses and agree to come back to the Collegium. You are missed there. Without you, there is no one to keep Gilthalon in his place.”
“Ah, at last your true concern is revealed. Do not trouble yourself. The Collegium has survived much worse. Now go!”
“One year,” the fox insisted, glaring balefully at the two monks. Then he was gone, vanished into the night’s shadows.
“Was that a demon, Father Waleran?” Sperarus spoke for the first time since they’d reached the gate. There was deep fear in his voice. “I can’t… It was… I can hardly believe it! So they do exist!”
“Of course they exist,” Waleran rebuked him a little more sharply than he intended, in part because he too was finding it hard to credit what they’d just seen. “Did you think the various stories about them in the Sacred Script are merely myths?”
He pretended he didn’t notice the amused smile that crossed the elf’s lips.
The years passed. Waleran’s hair turned grey, then white. Brother Hejorus died and was buried. Bessarias succeeded him as the de facto chief archivist, although a brother by the name of Gilbertus was given the formal position. In reality, the young monk, who was barely out of his teens, acted as the elf’s assistant, and Bessarias went about his unofficial duties as conscientiously as any of the brothers in the monastery went about theirs. His manuscript grew, vellum page by vellum page, illumination by illumination, although when the end of the tenth year arrived, he had completed only thirty-seven books.
And each year, the demon returned, calling out for its erstwhile master. Sometimes it came in the form of a squirrel. At others, a rabbit. Once it even appeared in the shape of man and attempted to gain entrance through subterfuge, although its inhumanly staring eyes alerted the brothers to its true identity. Each year, it waited patiently until Waleran arrived to inform it that while Bessarias was still at the monastery, he remained unwilling to see it. Then it would depart at once in silence. He almost felt sorry for the demon. Its loyalty would have done credit to any servant less purely evil. At times he wondered what Bessarias could have done that had so powerfully bound the foul spirit’s allegiance.
It gradually became apparent to the entire brotherhood that the elf was in no hurry to complete his task. Bessarias might not have found that for which he was searching, but nevertheless, it seemed he had found something in their quiet community of monks that soothed his soul.
His soul. The abbot didn’t even hesitate to permit himself to think of the elf in those terms anymore. He found it impossible to imagine that any creature as intelligent and civilized as the elf did not possess one. Those thoughts might not pass muster with the Congregation of the Doctrine, the Sanctiff’s intellectual army of formidable theologians who were charged with the awesome task of maintaining theological purity throughout the Church, (and especially within the fraternal orders as they were notoriously inclined towards falling into various heresies of one sort or another), but the Congregation was a very long way from Saint Dioscurus.
Waleran had taken to scribbling notes during their post-Vespers conversations, then using them to compile the arguments, pro and con, that each had presented to the other. They covered a massive range of topics, from pure scriptural interpretation to speculative theology, philosophy, and even an amount of legal theory. Man and elf discussed whether notional acts could be attributed to the divine personas, whether the goodness of the will depended on the intentions or the ends, if it was correct to lay ambushes in war, and if the Immaculate was both a wayfarer and a comprehensor.
Waleran was in his chambers putting the final touches on his summary of their five hundred and eleventh discussion, which concerned the validity of the Three Penances, when there came a knock on the door.
“Enter!” he called, being careful to place his quill away from the vellum so it would not drip ink and soil the page.
It was Bessarias, his face obscenely unlined and his eyes wholly undimmed by age.
“My Lord Abbot, may I have your permission to travel to Ligornalia? I require more red ink, and our supplies of azurite are almost exhausted as well. More gold leaf would also not be amiss, as I have something rather spectacular planned for the initial T in the Apocalypsis.”
“Of course, not that you need my permission. Gilbertus is perfectly capable of overseeing the copyists in your absence, is he not?”
“It’s not for me that I require the permission. I should like to bring Brother Umbrus and Brother Guigues with me, as well as a pair of mules. I intend to acquire a considerable amount of goods that will require transport. We are down to the last four bottles of drinkable wine, and the thought of going back to that dreadful pink soured water is more than I can bear.”
“Does the concept of mortifying the flesh still mean nothing to you?”
“The flesh, Father, not the palate.” The elf chuckled. “You cannot tell me you have any more desire to curdle your tongue with it than I do. And does not Samuelis teach that we must not consort with foul spirits?”
“Or mediums,” Waleran arched a hairy white eyebrow at the elf. “And you know that sort of spirit is not what the prophet meant.”
“I find a certain flexibility in translation can prove useful at times. Come, it’s winter, you know you don’t actually need either of the young men.”
“They have their spiritual responsibilities to consider as well as their material ones, my friend.”
“I shall be your proxy and ensure that all the appropriate rites are performed at the correct bells.”
“Prayers, Bessarias.” The abbot sighed. Even after all his time with them, the elf remained an unrepentant heathen. Perhaps the Tertullians had it wrong after all. “Prayers to be prayed, not rites to be performed.”
“So I can take them?” The elf placed his hands together and half-bowed. “Praise your god! My lord abbot, I thank you for your trust. I shall not let you down.”
Waleran laughed. To be honest, the thought had never crossed his mind. With the possible exception of Brother Elmuin and Brother Zacho, with him fellow founders of the order, there was no one in the abbey he trusted more. And yet, how absurd it sounded, even to his own ears, to be sending two young brothers on a twelve-day journey to Ligornalia under the spiritual guidance of an soulless, inhuman creature who was known to have consorted with demons. God did indeed work in mysterious ways.
Although it had been years since he had last been on the road, Bessarias did not find the journey to be a difficult one. He quite enjoyed the company of the two young monks, neither of whom seemed to find his companionship to be the least bit remarkable. Of course, he had been at St. Dioscurus longer than either Umbrus or Guigues. The former was a foundling raised by the local nunnery, and the latter was the fourth son of a Sablemese knight who already had an heir as well as two spares. But if neither young man appeared to have a particular vocation for the monastic life, neither did they chafe at its restrictions.
Through their innocent eyes, Bessarias was able to find delight again in even the simplest things. The construction of a stone bridge over a frozen creek. The curious eyes of the people in the little towns they passed by. An owl swooping low over the evening campfire. The way in which the icy crust on the snow dazzled the eyes when the insipid sun came out from behind the grey winter clouds.
Thanks to a heavy snowstorm on the third day, it took them seven days to reach the s
mall Sablemese coastal city that was a minor destination for elves from Kir Donas and the pagan men from the wealthy southern islands. There, Bessarias was able to acquire everything he needed, although there was rather less sepia available than he would have liked. Therefore, he bought a small barrel of iron gall ink, an extract of oak apples mixed with the residue of nails boiled in vinegar, which would serve as a substitute. The wine, from Illyris Baara, cost him more than he would have liked. He realized that if he did not finish his manuscript within two years, there was a chance he would have to arrange for more gold to be delivered from Elebrion.
The thought displeased him. It concerned him a little that on the demon’s most recent visit, it hadn’t even spoken to the brother at the gates but had simply crouched on its stubby little legs—it had come in the form of an ermine—and stared at him for a long, silent moment before turning away and disappearing in the darkness of the forest across the road.
Perhaps he would speak to Gilthalon and ask him to banish the wretched spirit to the nether planes, where it belonged. He could do it himself, of course, but he was loath to break his promise to the abbot. There had been times, particularly when working on a difficult detail of an illumination, when he’d been tempted to resort to magic. But resisting the desire gave him a strange feeling of pleasure he had not known for many years.
They spent six days on the road back. The weather held throughout except for an overcast sky and a brief flurry of snow on the morning of the last day. The occasional flake was still falling when they came within sight of the monastery’s familiar walls. All three of the travelers, five, if one counted the mules, picked up their pace at the sight of home.
But as they came closer, Bessarias sensed that something was wrong, though precisely what that might be he could not say. Even though it was too far to hear anything, there was something about the roofs and chapel tower that rose above the walls that seemed lifeless and empty. Then he realized what was missing: there was neither sight nor scent of the smoke from the friendly, warming wood fires that burned throughout the day in every building except the catholicon.