“He is a master,” Elysant assured the man. “He could be an abbot, if he had so chosen that course. Instead, he has chosen the road, wide and long, to search for the truth of the world and his heart. You would do well to recognize that, perhaps to learn from it.”
“You think to teach me?”
“I think someone should. Take note of Brother Thaddius’s staff, if you will. Ask him to show you what is under the wrappings he placed upon it.”
The man could not hide his curiosity.
“Few in the order are more proficient with the Ring Stones than Thaddius of Saint-Mere-Abelle,” Elysant explained. “He is far more likely to elevate to the position of father abbot than Abbot Cornelius Chesterfield, of course, and may well be next in line, once we have returned to the mother abbey with our find.”
Chesterfield snorted and waved his hands as if dismissing the entire conversation.
“I cannot ask you to treat him, or myself, with respect, Abbot. Respect is given, not demanded. But your hospitality is demanded. We will remain as long as it suits us, and you will be tolerant of our company, if not glad of it. This is the way of Abelle.”
“And if I refuse?”
“We’ll stay anyway.”
“Big words from a small girl.”
“Abbot, if you wish to take up your sword, then pray get it,” Elysant replied. “Perhaps you will quickly understand why I was chosen to accompany Brother Thaddius in his travels.”
“I thought you his whore.”
Elysant smiled, trying to hide the tension in her face.
Chesterfield returned that grin tenfold and reached across as if to stroke the woman’s light brown hair. He almost touched Elysant’s locks before her left hand shot up, slapping backhand against his palm, her thumb hooking around his as she made a fist, then turned and punched ahead, rolling the man’s hand under, locking his elbow and nearly driving his face down to the table.
Elysant slowly rose and stepped around the side of the table, increasing the pressure, forcing Abbot Chesterfield lower.
“Sister … Sister,” he said. “I am an abbot.”
“Would you like to be buried as such?” she asked sweetly. “If you ever try to touch me again uninvited, I can promise you that much, at least.”
“Well now, have I missed all of the fun?” came a voice from the door. Elysant turned to see a man entering, a most curious man, indeed, with a huge gray mustache and unkempt long silver hair sticking out from under a strangely bright red beret. He wore a blousy white shirt with a plaid sash running right shoulder to left hip, blending there with the similar tartan of his kilt.
His kilt? Elysant thought, and nearly said aloud, in her surprise. She tried not to stare at his bony old knees or the bright red stockings rising as if to hold them together. Even his shoes held her attention, black and polished, low cut and thick-heeled and tied with a large golden buckle.
“Pray, don’t break him, lass,” he said. “He’s fat and quite stupid, but he’s all we’ve got.”
Elysant gave a slight twist before letting the man go and stepping aside.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had company?” the newcomer asked Chesterfield.
“I hoped to spare you the drear of meeting them.”
That brought a hearty laugh. “But, my friend, I’m liking this one already.”
“I am Sister Elysant of the Order of Blessed Abelle,” the woman declared.
“Redshanks,” the man returned with a low bow, sweeping his right arm out wide.
“Brother Thaddius,” came a greeting from the room’s other door.
“Greetings to both!” Redshanks said, in such an exuberant way as to make Elysant wonder if the man ever carried a lower level of animation. “I watched your arrival—or at least, my friends did so and told me. And my other friends told me your names and from whence you came.”
“Saint Ursal,” Elysant said, at the same moment that Thaddius answered, “Saint-Mere-Abelle.”
“More recently,” said Redshanks, and his gazed drifted to the wall near Elysant, where rested her new stone staff.
“Is there a problem?” a clearly confused Abbot Chesterfield asked.
“Yes, do tell,” bade Brother Thaddius.
“I’ve no problem,” Redshanks assured them. “Just curiosity.”
“As much as you provoke?” asked Thaddius.
“Redshanks here is the most well-known and revered man in the Wilderlands,” Chesterfield explained. “A legend to those beyond Honce-the-Bear’s western border, and one with many friends, including me.”
The older man shrugged rather sheepishly. He looked directly at Thaddius. “I listen more than I talk, good brother. Hard to believe, I know.”
“And what have you heard, with all of this listening?”
“A tale of some old, old graves, and of a plot to deceive a pair of monks, and of some fools walking gingerly on burned feet.”
“What is this all about?” Abbot Chesterfield demanded.
“And of specters and ghosts,” Redshanks finished.
“You’ve heard one side alone, and that side is incomplete, I expect,” Brother Thaddius replied, and he looked to Elysant and shook his head slightly, and she knew that he had noticed her inching for her staff.
“I was hoping to hear the other side and a tale more complete.”
“Hope is a good thing, whether it comes to fruition or not,” said Thaddius.
“Then I hope you will stay and we will get to know and trust each other. I am curious how you escaped that tomb.” He looked to Elysant and grinned knowingly. “Fine staff,” he said with a wink.
“I prefer a man who speaks directly,” Elysant said. “Are you accusing us of something?”
“Hardly,” Redshanks said with a laugh. “Well, I am accusing you of having a fine and worthy adventure. In my younger years, I attended the Matinee of the frontiersmen each spring, where the tales grew long as the drink grew short. It has been years since I’ve heard tales of a worthy adventure, so I hope we will come to be friends.”
He ended with a wide smile and another bow, then bade Abbot Chesterfield to follow him and took his leave.
“We should gather our things and go,” Elysant said, as soon as she and Thaddius were alone.
But the brother shook his head. “No, I have waited too long already to open the alabaster coffers. I would not return to Ursal until I better understand that which we have found.”
“Keep your soul stone full of energy, then,” said Elysant. “Abbot Chesterfield tried to touch me, and if he does so again, you will need the power of the gem to reattach his arm to his body.”
Thaddius looked at her curiously. “You should have called for me,” he said.
“You think I need your help?”
“I think I would like to watch,” he replied.
6
THE MARCH OF LIGHT
The summer sun blazed off the golden domes of the recovered xoconai city. The work continued, but most of the repairs were nearing completion, and the sheer beauty of the place had been restored.
Tuolonatl stood down by the lake and the new docks being built on the eastern side of the mountain fissure, looking across the wide waters, contemplating the best ways to move her large army. They needed to march soon, she knew, for more and more warriors kept streaming in over the peaks of Tzatzini, the great mountain that shadowed the valley and city of Otontotomi. The lake could supply this burgeoning place, but the xoconai were running out of room.
Tuolonatl had learned enough of the immediate region about the lake and the rivers running from it to know that the hot sun would not hinder their passage. Once that area had been a great and barren desert and summer travel would have been difficult, but no more.
The question, of course, was where and how far? What conquests awaited them, what resistance might they find? Even Pixquicauh, with his divination, even Scathmizzane himself, in those rare moments when he appeared among them, offered little insight be
yond the immediate area.
So Tuolonatl was pleased indeed that morning when word came to her that Ataquixt, her prime scout, had at last returned.
He came right down to the docks to meet with her, and the two rowed out onto the lake in a small boat to privately discuss his findings.
“We will find weeks of empty travel,” he told her. “Lands untamed and mostly uninhabited, with more goblins than the human children of Cizinfozza. But not enough of either to slow us.”
“Or to make the journey worth the trouble,” Tuolonatl finished.
“The fleeing humans made it,” said Ataquixt. “I followed them all the way to a small village. I think it was a celebration, where the humans who hunt these wilderness lands come together before the season begins in full.”
“How many?”
“Around an equal number to the hundred refugees from this land.”
“We will not need much of an army, then,” said the woman. “We could hard ride a group of mundunugu and take the place swiftly.”
“I moved beyond that small village,” Ataquixt said. “I found high ground that I could survey, further to the east.”
Tuolonatl cocked her head and stared at him expectantly. She could tell from his voice that he was saving the best news for last.
“I saw the lights of other villages across the plains and along the lower foothills of more mountains,” the scout explained. “More and more villages further and further to the east.”
“Enough to sustain an army of a hundred thousand?”
“I cannot say, and because I cannot speak the language of these humans, I cannot know if my suspicion is correct, but I believe that the true nations of the humans lie even further to the east, and what I saw was much like Skithivale and Hashenvalley, or Romaja to the south.”
Tuolonatl leaned back in the boat, digesting that. North of the great cities of Tonoloya lay the valleys Ataquixt had just referenced. These were the borderlands of Tonoloya, full of independent-minded xoconai who held allegiance to Scathmizzane and to one or another of the city sovereigns nearest their regions only for practical purposes. They were farmers and hunters and vintners and needed the trade with the greater cities.
Romaja, to the south, was even wilder and less populated, and with fewer interactions with the southern sovereigns of Tonoloya. Why should the humans be any different in their social constructs, she wondered? In every kingdom, every nation, every group, there were always some who preferred the less tamed lands, who sought space above convenience, and who preferred the dangers of the wilderness to the suffocating rules of the tamed lands.
“You did not see the eastern sea?” she asked.
“I saw mountains in the south, running east beyond my sight,” Ataquixt answered. “Great and tall mountains, as tall as Tzatzini and more. My journey to the east, like that of the refugees I pursued, was mostly on the waterways, and the water flowed swiftly, with few falls or rapids. An easy journey with my cuetzpali hunting for me, may Scathmizzane forever bless that fine mount. The journey back was more difficult and took me twice as long—nearly six weeks of riding, dawn to dusk.”
“A thousand miles?
“Half again, and I do not believe that I was anywhere near the eastern sea. The boundaries of the land beyond Tonoloya are immense, my leader. Vast lands.”
Tuolonatl sighed and rubbed her face, not thrilled at all by the report. Moving an army through civilized lands was far easier than across the wilderness, even if every week brought battles. How could she feed an army the size of the one leaving Otontotomi without fields of grain and cities with huge storerooms to conquer along the way?
“It would seem that the children of Scathmizzane and the children of Cizinfozza were separated by more than the mountain wall of Teotl Tenamitl,” she said.
“The rumored great cities of them, if they exist, then yes,” Ataquixt agreed.
Tuolonatl looked to the west, to the towering mountain range the xoconai called Teotl Tenamitl, God’s Parapet. She had thought that range the dividing line of the world, with the xoconai to the west, the humans to the east, and while that might be true, she had never imagined that those lands to the east were so much larger than the basin of Tonoloya, a strip of fertile land from the mountains to the western sea that was only a few hundred miles of ground east to west, and perhaps thrice that north to south. How many Tonoloya-sized journeys would they have to undertake before they even looked upon the rumored great cities of the humans?
“We must go to the great pyramid and tell this to Pixquicauh,” she told Ataquixt. “Let us hope that he has the ear of Scathmizzane this day, that we can find guidance. I would not lose the whole of the summer in empty wilderness.”
“Will we even march?” the scout dared to ask.
That had Tuolonatl looking to the east, the seemingly endless east. She nodded her head, though. Whatever surprises the land beyond the conquered plateau might hold, whatever trials they might face in their long journey, whatever years might pass in their conquests, she understood the will of Scathmizzane.
The god would see the sun rise over his kingdom from the beaches of the eastern sea and would see it set behind his kingdom from the beaches of the western sea.
Of that, she had no doubt.
* * *
“He is still providing valuable information?” Tuolonatl asked High Priest Pixquicauh, when she caught up to him on a high balcony in the main temple of Otontotomi. She had expected that, by this point, Pixquicauh would have executed the human she had captured on the mountainside, but there he was, in a chamber below them in this very temple, hanging from his hooks in front of a golden mirror. Curiously, the room was filled with other augurs, all staring into mirrors of their own.
“He has no valuable information for us,” Pixquicauh said. “His knowledge of any lands beyond this plateau is weaker than our own. It would seem that he and these other Cizinfozza spawn typically spent the entirety of their lives in their miserable little villages. This one, Egard, though the nephew of a chieftain—”
“Chieftain?” Tuolonatl interrupted.
“A sovereign of his tribe,” the augur explained. “This one knew the northwestern face of the mountain and the few villages immediately beneath it, along the lake. Nothing more. He had never seen the desert that is now a lake from anywhere but the high peaks of Tzatzini.”
“Yet he lives.”
“Because he does possess one thing of value to us: he speaks the language of the humans.”
“These humans,” Tuolonatl replied. “I am slow to believe that the language found here in this place is common throughout the lands to the east.”
“Why?”
Tuolonatl couldn’t see much expression in Pixquicauh’s face, of course, since most of it was covered by an embedded skull, but she was fairly sure that her remark had shaken the augur.
“My scout has returned from his travels behind the escaping humans.”
“Only now? More than two months?”
“More than a thousand miles of wilderness each way, and even the lands he came upon were full of no more than small and scattered villages. It is a vast world east of us, high priest.”
Pixquicauh nodded slowly, digesting the information, and Tuolonatl recognized the same doubts within him as she had known when Ataquixt had reported to her. How were they going to march an army of a hundred thousand warriors, perhaps even more, across thousands of miles of wilderness?
“You have learned the language of the humans from this one?” she asked at length.
Pixquicauh nodded. “Much of it. It is easy with the mirrors.”
Tuolonatl didn’t hide her confusion.
“His mirror reflects to the others,” the augur explained. “When they look into their mirrors, they look into the mind of Egard, where his every thought is translated to them. In but a few lessons, every one of them will speak enough of the human language to interrogate a child of Cizinfozza.”
“I should like to learn thi
s language.”
“Of course.” He gave her a sly look, a grin under the skull’s teeth, and narrowed clever eyes behind the empty bone sockets. “If the God King orders it of me.”
“And where is the Glorious Gold?” Tuolonatl asked. “I have seen neither Scathmizzane nor his dragon in many days.”
“He will come forth soon. Otontotomi is nearly to its full shining beauty. He is up on the mountain with the other humans. I know not why, or what is so important to him up there, but I share this warning with you: Bring no harm to the human women dancing about the crystal obelisk. I thought to bring one in to question, as I have done with this wretch, but the God King would not hear of it. He needs them—all of them.”
“Xoconai females will not suffice?”
The high priest shrugged. “We will march soon, of course,” he told her. “The lands to the east might be vast, but there is no amount of ground that will save the children of Cizinfozza. We will reach the eastern sea.”
“I would like to learn their language before that march,” Tuolonatl pressed.
Again, the augur shrugged and grinned.
“A tactical necessity,” the warrior woman insisted. “I do not think the God King will be pleased to have his army delayed because his high priest was afraid to make an easy decision.”
That took the smile from his face, she saw, and was glad.
“They are nearly done this day,” he said grumpily. “I will have a mirror in there for you tomorrow.”
“And one for Ataquixt,” she instructed. “If my most skilled and trusted scout is versed in the human tongue, he will be far more valuable to us all.”
A hard stare took a long time to turn into an agreeing nod, but it came at length, and Tuolonatl left the great temple feeling that she had won that round.
* * *
More than a week passed before Tuolonatl glimpsed the God King again. Scathmizzane, in giant form, rode his dragon Kithkukulikhan down from the great mountain Tzatzini, across the city, and down to the docks in the east, where Tuolonatl had gone with Pixquicauh at the old augur’s bidding.
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