by M. C. Planck
“What did you expect? You bring a demon-possessed monster into town, and you don’t even have the decency to chain him up.”
Christopher had replaced Cannan’s clothes in Palar, plain, simple garb fit for peasants, trying to make the man look civilized again. He hadn’t replaced the druids’ chains. Cannan wasn’t going to run away now.
He’d also tried to get Cannan a shave and a haircut, but the local barber had taken one look, turned white, and walked away without another word.
Gregor ignored Cannan and offered his own answer.
“Being ready for trouble often averts it. Or at least, appearing to be ready. The townspeople will be reassured to know that we are prepared to act should anything untoward happen.”
“It might also discourage any unwelcoming parties,” Lalania said. “Cannan left many memories here, but few of them are fond ones.”
“None,” Cannan growled in correction. The word stuck in his throat, deep and bitter. After that he was silent again, remote and inert as he had been throughout the journey.
Christopher’s nerves were jangling by the time they turned into the stable behind the Cathedral. Captain Steuben wasn’t there to greet them. In his place was one of the handful of young knights who served as honor guard to the Saint. The young man gulped at his first sight of Cannan, but he stiffened his spine and put on a brave face. He even went so far as to speak to the dreaded monster.
“You cost me a purse of gold, Ser.”
Cannan blinked, like a man suddenly awakened in strange place. “Then you shouldn’t have bet against me,” he said. Cannan-enough sounding words, but his voice was tired and uncertain.
“I didn’t, Ser. I gambled for you to win. Then the Saint asked me if it was proper to gain from no labor, and another’s suffering to boot. In the end I wound up distributing two pounds of gold to the poor.”
Lalania rolled her eyes, but Gregor laughed. “I never thought of it like that before.”
Christopher sighed, and resolved to ask Torme if gambling were against Church rules. Not that he’d done any gambling. Other than with his life, of course, but that was an occupational hazard.
“Is Pater Torme here?” he asked.
“Yes, Vicar, and in rather better shape than when you sent him to us. Shall I fetch him?”
“Please,” Christopher said, relieved of a worry he had forgotten to worry about. “And let the Saint know I need to speak to him as well.”
The knight bowed his head and left. Christopher dismounted, and then stood around uselessly while Karl and D’Kan settled the herd of horses in stalls. A young groom stepped up to expertly unsaddle Royal, and began brushing him down.
“Never you mind him,” the boy said, flashing a grin. “Your Ser made me three weeks’ pay in one afternoon, and a right good show it was.”
“Don’t tell the Saint,” Christopher said, trying to match the boy’s grin, but failing. He wasn’t looking forward to telling the Saint about the gambles he had taken, either.
“Let’s go,” Gregor said from the doorway of the stable. Cannan stood next to him, looking lost, which was an improvement. Lately he hadn’t looked as if he cared where he was enough to be discomfited by being lost.
Lalania fell in behind him as they made the short trip through the courtyard to the rear entrance of the Cathedral. Mounting the short marble steps up to the door, Cannan finally balked.
Gregor instantly turned and watched the red knight warily. Through the barn door Christopher could see Karl calmly set aside his horse brush and put his hand to the wall, as if reaching for something leaning just out of sight.
“Not that I care,” Cannan said, looking askance at the entranceway. “But you might. You’ve ridden a long road just to watch me blasted to ashes.”
Christopher started to ask what he meant, but decided not to. By now people should just know that they had to explain everything to him.
“We do not command magic so potent, Ser,” the Saint said from the doorway. “Nor would we obliterate you merely for being guilty, even if we could.”
“My lord,” Christopher said, a sigh of relief spilling out.
“Only under the most legalistic interpretation, Brother.” Saint Krellyan smiled at him, and Christopher felt the weight of his recent tension and anxiety only by its sudden departure. “But please, come inside. You must be weary from riding.”
“I—” Cannan stuttered, and tried again. “I do not wish to profane your sacred ground.” His voice was low, without the hard edge of bitterness it had worn for so long. Forever, even: before the ring Cannan had been as hard as nails too, if not quite so depressing.
The Saint shook his head gently. “Shame cannot profane us, Ser. Only lack of it.” He moved away, leading them inside. Cannan climbed the short steps with more visible effort than he had shown while carrying a hundred pounds of iron chain.
Christopher followed, with plenty of effort of his own. Despite the relief of having someone wiser to talk to, he wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.
Sitting in a stuffed leather easy chair, with a cool light ale in one hand and a plate of tiny slices of colored cheeses in the other, Christopher was once again reminded that army life left some things to be desired.
“Those aren’t all for you, Christopher,” Lalania said, helping herself to several of the blue-green slices.
“We should get some of this shipped out to the fort,” he told her. “Especially the red.” Red cheese was a novelty for him, but the taste was as close to Cheddar as he’d found here.
“It would be wasted on your peasants.” Sometimes Lalania forgot to play the part of champion of the common people. Christopher let it slide; back on Earth she would be a movie star, swaddled in luxury a thousand times greater than a few slices of cheese. And no doubt still jetting off to impoverished countries to do what she could. “Until you decide to set your own table, you’ll have to live with porridge. Something you’ll have to take up with Karl.”
He grimaced, knowing how that discussion would end. “I’m sorry, Lala.”
“Don’t be sorry for me,” she said. “I’m taking two wheels of this, along with several saddlebags’ worth of other pleasantries. I’ll be fine. But as they’ll never leave my tent, and as you’ll never enter it, you’re the one who will do the suffering.”
Saint Krellyan came into the room on the tail end of her words. “If all suffering could be alleviated by the provision of cheese, we would live in a much happier world.”
“I don’t know about that,” Lalania said. “Have you seen the cost of this stuff? You’d think they put the blue in there with tael.”
“Perhaps they do,” the Saint mused aloud. “It would explain the shortage of tael on the open market, if gourmands have resorted to eating it. But I confess I know little of cheese-making.”
Both of them looked at Christopher.
“No,” he said. “I don’t do cheeses.”
“A pity.” Saint Krellyan smiled wryly. “You’ve made paper plentiful enough that my clerks no longer panic over an inkblot. It would have been pleasant to see how much good could be wrought by an abundance of dairy products.”
“Speaking of good—how’s Cannan?” Christopher blurted out the question that had been burning him for the last half hour.
“As well as can be expected. His affiliation is improved, if I am to understand previous reports. He flickers on the border of Blue, well above the ordinary shade of Green. Though of course his deeds weigh heavy on his mind.”
Lalania looked dubious, so Krellyan offered an explanation.
“Brother Christopher has extended mercy to him far beyond the bounds of kin or friendship. I believe this has shown Cannan, in a personally compelling manner, the value of a moral code that exceeds mere honor.”
Lalania bit her lip in a terribly fetching way. “Now, Christopher, we are in the presence of a theologian.”
Krellyan winked at her. “‘Even the Void ends before the arguments of theolo
gians,’” he quipped. “I know our fine distinctions have little practical value to men and women of action, but someone has to worry about them. Better myself than those doing useful work.”
Lalania had been growing redder and redder as Krellyan spoke. He wasn’t mocking her; he was mocking himself in Lalania’s language. Christopher would have thought it hilarious if he wasn’t so concerned about when it would be his turn.
Torme joined them, looking terribly serious, and Lalania jumped at the escape.
“I can see you gentlemen wish to discuss professional matters, so with your permission, I shall withdraw.”
Christopher didn’t particularly want her to leave. He relied on her for magical advice, and he wanted to bring up her allegations about atonement. But Krellyan let her go with a polite, “As it please you, Lady.”
After she was gone, Krellyan glanced at his troubled face. “Do not push her too hard, Brother. You present enough dilemmas for a seven-headed hydra. Let her come to her own decisions in her own time.”
“No, I— What?” Christopher realized he had no idea what Krellyan was talking about.
Torme did. “You challenge her, Brother Christopher, to the very core of her beliefs about the world. As you challenged me. It can be a difficult experience.”
“I— How?”
“Forgive me,” Torme apologized to Krellyan for what he was about to say, “but as you must already know, many consider the White to be soft and weak. When I lived under Black Bart, it was a tried and trusty joke. Pig iron, we called it: the right color, but of no use to anyone.”
“I can hardly take offense at a claim so close to the truth.” Krellyan smiled wryly.
Torme turned back to Christopher. “But then you show up, guns blazing, and it becomes apparent that strength wears more than one face. To ask politely, and then to back it up with sky-fire, is a compelling argument. One most people are wholly unprepared for.”
Speak softly and carry a big stick, Christopher thought. That’s not what he said, though.
“But guns don’t care about morality. Anybody can use gunpowder.”
“No,” Torme said, “they can’t. Black Bart ruled by fear of his personal prowess. I and all his soldiers lived in utter terror of the day he would turn on us, cut us down like a weed for some imagined slight or merely for his momentary amusement. If Bart had armed his men with weapons powerful enough to kill even him, he would not have survived his first battle.”
Christopher thought of another, less pleasant phrase from Earth. In Vietnam they had called it “fragging.”
“That’s no guarantee,” he said. “Evil men can still field an army of rifles.” The democratizing effect of firearms hadn’t hindered Hitler or Stalin.
“But not through personal strength alone. I do not know if the Iron Throne can adapt to your methods, Brother Christopher, but at least the Bartholomews of the world cannot.”
“It is true,” Krellyan said. “Your continuing adventures raise many eyebrows. We have been healers so long that many have forgotten we chose healing. It was what the Kingdom needed. The blessed Prophet Bodecia believed that greater strength lay in unity than in ceaseless wrestling for power. Since no others would give up personal gain for the sake of the realm, she chose to. And we followed her example. For generations now we have bound the wounds of the Kingdom, trying to hold it together.”
Christopher felt his own face growing red.
“It has been hard.” Krellyan spoke simply, without blame or complaint. Those were qualities his audience would have to supply on its own, if it chose to. “We have had to make common cause with wickedness, for the sake of a nebulous vision. We have had to choose the lesser of two evils for so long that we no longer seem to be striving for good.”
“But you’ve been expanding,” Christopher argued. Cardinal Faren had made the strategy sound successful, back when he’d first lectured Christopher on the follies of warmongering.
“The King favors us. I believe he thinks a realm administered by passive churchmen will enhance royal power at the expense of baronial privilege. But he does not intend to share that power with us. Nor does he intend to do away with the peerage. In his view supreme heroes must still take up the sword to tame the Wild. Only the ranked strength of the nobility can defeat monsters, and thus the nobility is necessary to the safety of the realm.”
Torme’s face was undergoing its own difficulties as he absorbed the Saint’s words, and what they inevitably implied. Christopher watched Torme’s eyebrows rise, then lower, and then beetle up into a frown. Torme opened his mouth, changed his mind, and bit his lip instead.
“Indeed,” Krellyan said softly, also watching the young priest, who had once been a knight, piece together the realization that his boss was intent on obliterating not just a few bad nobles, but the entire institution of nobility itself.
“If it’s any consolation,” Christopher offered, “I couldn’t do it without you. The peasants of your counties have lived with justice and dignity long enough to assume they deserve it. They have money to spare, a strong spirit, and faith in the power of collective action.”
“The consolation lies in the fact that Marcius sent you. Were you one of my own priests, I would let Faren drub some sense into you. But you come with the sanction of a god. That allows me to preserve some shreds of my self-esteem.”
It wasn’t so much a sanction as a deal. Christopher wasn’t positive that was worth betting a kingdom on.
“In any case it is too late for second thoughts. We must continue to act as neutrally as possible, but only to buy you time. Nothing we can do now, short of hanging you from the bell tower tonight, will distance us from your actions. Should you perish or fail, our Church will inevitably pay the price as well. In the minds of the rest of the realm, one is either innocent or guilty, nothing in between. Having failed to denounce you at the outset, we have become tarred with your sins.”
“You can always say I took advantage of you. The King will like that; he’ll think he can take advantage of you, too.”
Krellyan gave him a sad smile. “I fear if we play the role of patsy that well, we will become it. Our faith will wither and shrink, and we will be eclipsed by some stronger, more vibrant color.”
Christopher sat back, troubled by the Saint’s pessimism. He had enough to worry about. He didn’t need to be charged with the fate of all that was good and pure as well.
Krellyan, apparently incapable of not being helpful, offered him solace. “Cardinal Faren does not share my dismal view. He believes that with appropriate caution, we can survive your destruction and suffer only a temporary setback.”
“Then by all means, be cautious.” Christopher jumped at the escape. It took him a few moments to realize he’d fallen into the same trap Lalania had: volunteering to do what the Saint wanted him to do. In this case, to accept as little help as possible.
“Then you understand why I must charge you full price for this,” Krellyan said, indicating the long, thin box Torme had brought with him. As if gold had been all they were discussing.
“Another priceless relic?” Christopher regretted it instantly, but consoled himself by pretending it was what he would have said if they really had been discussing money.
“Not exactly. More of an evasion of my responsibilities, though a necessary one. I cannot atone Cannan. The process must be voluntary, and he does not look to me for absolution.”
“About that,” Christopher said uncomfortably. “I had some questions. . . .”
“No doubt. It is poorly understood by most, and any number of ridiculous superstitions cloud around it.” Krellyan spoke with the slightest tint of exasperation, as if he was tired of making this particular argument. “However, you will receive your answers in the most direct manner possible.”
Torme held the box open, and Krellyan carefully withdrew a scroll. This one was new, on clean, bright parchment that was still soft and white.
“My apologies, Brother, but I did not care
to risk so much on the quality of your paper.”
“That’s okay,” Christopher said. The market for scrolls was pretty small. He’d only seen two in the last year. His industry could sustain a loss of sales on that scale.
He took the scroll gingerly, opening the first few inches of it. In plain language it stated the name of the spell it contained, and then a line that said, “Read no further.” So he didn’t.
“I don’t know how to do this.” Surely there was more to it than casting a spell. Psychological counseling or something.
Krellyan looked at him earnestly. “You brought Cannan here, alive, when he had bent all his power on self-destruction. You need only bring him a step further.”
“But what’s going to happen?” How would Christopher even know if the magic replaced Cannan with a Cannan-bot? He had no idea what such a process would look like, or how to tell the difference afterward.
“Cannan is tainted with a rank of something foul and dark. I would think the first step would be to remove that. Then the two of you must decide how much pain he can bear. The spell will let you remove anger, grief, shame, or even knowledge. I do not advise the latter, however. The truth of his acts are publicly known, so eventually he must become aware of them again.”
Torme spoke, from his perspective of firsthand experience. “I recall the evil I did when I served Bart. But the memories no longer poison me. It is as if someone else did those things while I only watched. Someone who was once me, but is no longer.”
Krellyan nodded in agreement. “Cannan’s cause is just. He did not choose his evil willingly, and he repents of it. In time he might well make his peace on his own. Assuming he survived that long, which we must admit seems unlikely. So we are justified in this act. Or at least I believe so; you will have to make the final decision while in the spell. Cannan will not be able to deceive you, nor will you be able to deceive him. As long as the spell lasts, you will share his knowledge and his pain, as if through his eyes.”
Christopher paused. Was he about to Vulcan mind meld with a man who’d murdered his wife and burned her corpse? Wouldn’t he need some psychotropic medication after that?