The Feast of Horns at the House of St. Mitus' Eye
On the fourth day of the pilgrims' sojourn in the House of Saint Mitus' Eye, the Blessed Goodhost called for a reckoning of their bill of fare. The innkeeper was a ruddy mountain crag by the name of Bunstable. Vance Adell suspected him of rank opportunism. Custom permitted the holy order to postpone the settlement discussion until the hour of its departure.
"I'll tell you what I told your Petitioner," Bunstable informed him. "The Great Saints have visited the snows of winter upon the holy mountain early this year. The pilgrim's road is impassable until the spring melt."
Vance welcomed the negotiation. Let my thoughts be filled with anything other than Petitioner Sila Kreiner. "There are no guides who can direct our safe ascent? We can offer not only the Saint's blessing but generous compensation too."
"The generosity of the Order of Rejuvenationists is widely acknowledged," said Bunstable, clapping one solemn hand to his chest and making an expansive gesture with the other, "but alas, no coin can buy the impossible. Any reputable guide will tell you it is certain death. Had you arrived but a week earlier–" He spread his hands in a passable display of abject regret.
Vance pinched his nose hard, a ward against the migraine he was sure would accompany the conversation. The news was unwelcome enough. Bunstable's clumsy exploitation of their misfortune rubbed salt into this fresh wound.
Their delay in arriving at the way-station, the toe on the foothills of the great mountain Luxichre, was all his brother Strake's fault. Roaring acts of public drunkenness were not beyond the precepts of their Order but Strake's timing in the town of Velentionne was poor. The local ruler, Baron Helstedd, had lately lost both a wife and an heir in childbirth. Strake's compulsive revelry had clashed with the Velentiots' idea of suitable mourning habits. The Baron's reeve levied punitive fines which decimated their funds. The scandalised Velentiots had been less than generous with alms for the pilgrims. Worst of all, they lost a week's travel to Strake's detention in Baron Helstedd's gaol-tower. For the last thirty days, the pilgrims had marched with uncomfortable haste to compensate, as the mountain air grew chill.
In theory Saint Mitus' Travelling Order of Rejuvenationists held to no schedule in their pilgrimage to emulate the great expeditions of their patron. The journey could be expected to take years. Certain practicalities held, however, and staying ahead of the weather was not considered irreverent. The superiority of an expeditionary leader's vision was reckoned according to many measurements. By far the metric that mattered most was whether they reached each of the nineteen Venerated Wonders before all eight pilgrims experienced resurrection.
The expedition of Sila Kreiner was stuck at the base of its fifth wonder.
Vance composed himself, banishing a frown. "Goodhost Bunstable, I hope that our protracted stay does not inconvenience you or your family."
"The House of Saint Mitus' Eye has not turned away a pilgrim in more than a hundred years, Master Vance. Not since Mitus himself bestowed his word and blessing upon my great-grandfather." Bunstable looked set to recount the details of that singular occasion yet again, but Vance interrupted with as much grace as he could muster.
"In addition to daily offering of the ash-purse," he said, leaving unspoken the understanding that the traditional gratuity would be increased in accordance with the modern cost of living, "we will work for our keep."
Bunstable hunched his shoulders, drummed his knuckles across the ledger spread across his spacious escritoire and smiled. The starving carrion birds that wheeled about Luxichre's summit could likely not match his look of insatiable hunger.
"Under ordinary circumstances, Master, that would suffice. But the Feast of Horns is a week away and Petitioner Kreiner enjoys uncommon renown. With so reputable an Eight under our humble roof, the whole town will seek invitation in the hopes of sharing your blessings. The House is obliged not to turn them away."
"Don't fear for your livelihood, Goodhost." Vance tasted something sour but returned the smile with studied reserve. "You'll have all you need."
Vance took his leave and went in search of his brother. With luck, he could inspire Strake to reform before the next crisis arrived.
#
He found Strake lounging on cushions before the massive fireplace of the common room with Dessit and Polma, the only remaining unresurrected members of the expedition apart from Vance himself. Before the prophetic dreams had driven him from his business and his family into Kreiner's sphere, Dessit had been a fishmonger, selling narwhals, marlins and giant squid in the markets of Tosrada. Broad-shouldered Polma had been a skirmisher in the Diamond Battalion. She still carried her javelins everywhere.
They idolised Strake Adell, and why not? Vance saw nothing of the pious, bookish mouse he'd grown up with in this brash, charming athlete. His resurrection had burned away a boy's shuddering nervousness exposing a surprising core of boisterous confidence. He was a walking emblem of the Saint's blessing: tall, hairless and assured.
Not that he seemed to care anymore.
"Brother, join us! Falaha will make some room for you." He shifted his hips a little to reveal Bunstable's eldest daughter pressed against his side, half-buried by cushions.
"Good evening, Master Vance. My father has kept you too long at your book-keeping. May I offer you refreshment?" She gave Vance a wide, lazy-eyed smile as she fumbled to straighten her clothing. He caught a generous glimpse of exposed skin and cast his eyes away at once. He tried to tell himself that his preoccupation with Goodhost Bunstable's rapacious accountancy left him impervious to all distraction. Then his thoughts strayed to Sila, collapsing the delusion.
The four saluted each other from brimming saki cups and drank. Not their first round, Vance suspected. On the verge of replying to her solicitation with a curt, automatic "No thank you," he paused to consider the question. Would it cost the expedition so dear if he were to take an evening's relaxation? His fellow pilgrims were doing whatever they could to dampen the tension smouldering in the bones of the Eight. If they held him responsible, Dessit or Polma would have spoken against the invitation. Nor it seemed did they attach blame to Strake, who shed responsibility like sweat on a cool breeze.
That left Sila. None of the company would dare speak against their Petitioner who was blessed by their patron Saint. But tradition accorded her full responsibility for their deliverance into Resurrection.
He sighed, shaking his head. The long winter loomed ahead. Were his disciplined habits observed to slip, he would soon see them reflected by the others. Besides, Vance could not recall the last time his food and drink did not taste of ashes.
"Do you not have duties to perform, daughter of our Goodhosts?"
"This hour belongs to me, Initiate. Your companions have convinced me I need not spend it alone with my books." Falaha beamed at him, oblivious to his weary turmoil. "Master Vance, your brother speaks passionately of the fires of the Saint but he declines to show me his scar. Can you persuade him to share his blessing?"
Vance was taken aback. "Don't you know where it is?"
A round of giggles and Strake's sly grin answered his question. The fires of resurrection begin in the lower abdomen, the same point where a Hantan spearhead fatally wounded Saint Mitus long ago. The hairless, flawless flesh of the Resurrected was marred only by a burned patch above the groin.
Vance supposed Falaha would ignore any warnings concerning his brother's dangerously ephemeral attentions. Strake's whims were like mayflies, buzzing distractions to everyone in his vicinity but soon dead to Strake himself. How little he resembled the Strake-of-old, whose ecstatic fervour was the only force capable of rousing him from crippling shyness and a life of monkish study. It was Strake-of-old's urgent piety that drove them both to pledge themselves to Sila Kreiner's pilgrimage.
Vance himself lacked the conviction that his occasional dreams of strong-armed, toothy Mitus were genuine Saint-blessed visions, despite Strake's needy, self-serving interpretations. Even now
he knew he would have surrendered his place in the Eight and gone back to his quills and ledgers, had he not made the terrible mistake of falling in love with Sila Kreiner.
If Vance had ever been transported by a captivating vision, it was that of Sila-of-old. Raven-haired, blue-eyed and freckled with the sun of the freezing northlands, her curves were muscular and her hands as quick with a boning-knife as a zither. Her smile, shy at first with the natural caution of her people, became warm and wide as she and Vance became friends. They formed a natural partnership. Her wit and zeal attracted the best pilgrims. His disciplined organisation and head for numbers ensured the expedition was better outfitted and funded than any before or since.
They fell in love.
Sila Kreiner died and resurrected eight months after the expedition embarked. Vance still felt the heat of his tears, the brute muscularity of her convulsions, her grey lips blistering as they parted to howl in triumphant horror. At last the first flames licked from her belly. Then he could hold her no longer. Fire and ash consumed her and left behind a stranger.
Vance thought, I could give it all away right now. I could drink until dawn, every day until winter breaks or the money runs out. I could walk back down the valley to Velentionne and get an assaying job in the Baron's silver mines.
He could turn his back on years of work and sacrifice. Saint Mitus. His fellow pilgrims. Strake. Sila.
The dissolute moment guttered like an expiring candle. "Get off your backsides," he said. "Goodhost Bunstable needs a new alpaca pen. Hard work and snow will sober you up."
#
The House of Saint Mitus' Eye had withstood two hundred years of everything the holy mountain could throw down at it, from the scouring icy winds of winter to spring floods, to wild fires and rock falls. Its travails left it with a surprisingly long list of minor repairs. Bunstable was as good as his unspoken word. The pilgrims grumbled for a day or two but soon became accustomed to the steady flow of odd jobs, the biting cold blasting down from Luxichre's heights and the feel of woodworking tools in their hands. Gerrolt-of-old had been a carpenter for forty years. The oldest pilgrim might no longer speak of his former responsibilities to the fortifications of Chancel Banholdt nor the family he left there but the scourge of resurrection had not stripped him of his skills with a saw and plane.
"Perhaps it's fortunate we are only waylaid for one season, Goodhost," observed Sila Kreiner one morning as the pilgrims tore down the rotten walls of the bath-house. "If we stayed any longer, Saint Mitus himself would not recognise the place."
Bunstable grunted. He'd ceased to lavish praise on the pilgrims' tirelessness or compliment their workmanship a few days earlier. Having established that their efforts under Gerrolt's exacting supervision was of exemplary quality, he now contented himself to present the Eight's Petitioner with a list of desirable repairs, refreshed daily, and withdraw to his other affairs.
On behalf of the rest of his uncomplaining Eight, Vance had taken umbrage at being taken for granted. He exacted an unsaintly revenge, insisting on providing exhaustive, painstaking pecuniary assistance to Bunstable and his wife Yousta as they prepared the Feast of Horns. His intervention intercepted a few cut corners and inflated fees but any savings were dwarfed by the sheer scale of the planned enterprise. More than two hundred townsfolk were expected to squeeze into the large tent fixed alongside the stables, devouring groundfruit platters, sweet loafs and jugs of steaming spiced liquor and dancing reels to a ten-piece pipe band. Saint Mitus' traditional songs would be rendered by a local chorist, considerable in both voice and fee. Most of those were the discordant bawds of a marching army but in practice a lot of popular modern music would be included. "It's what Saint Mitus would have wanted."
"Sila, can I have a word?" Vance whistled quietly by her side. Shortly after they became lovers, he had developed the habit to drag her attention from some internal communion. She used to smile.
Now she turned a cold green eye. "Are you referring to me?"
"I beg your pardon, Petitioner Kreiner." Vance looked at his feet, nipping in annoyance at his thoughtless tongue.
"Is there a problem?"
Vance cast a wary look at Bunstable and said, "It concerns a member of the Eight."
The sceptical squint she directed at him from beneath the pronounced brow and sandy lashes was withering. She knew which pilgrim he meant. She marched off behind the shearing sheds, expecting him to keep up. He kept up. "What did he do this time?"
Vance grimaced. "It's the daughter. Falaha. He says he's in love." A pang of jealous longing speared Vance's constant state of mild exasperation when Strake confided in him. Not dismay at his brother's cavalier foolishness, nor delight at his romantic joy. Strake was of his blood, but he felt nothing of his brother's mood. Would a genuine visionary feel this awkwardness towards a Resurrected loved one? Probably not.
Sila Kreiner shook her head, her expression one of sour distaste. Sila-of-old had weathered with boundless good cheer the interminable delays, detours and unexpected crises of pilgrimage. Now she had taken to endless brooding, sullen and impatient. Her fiery passion to lead her Eight in the footsteps of the saint was gone. Now her capacity to inspire had dimmed but her grim determination to complete the ritual was undiminished.
"You Adells," she growled. "Is there no end to the trouble you will put me through?"
Vance was taken aback. "What do you mean, Petitioner?"
"Did you think it wouldn't get back to me? Strake has been talking about abandoning the expedition. Of breaking the Eight."
"He made some foolish comments over dinner, Petitioner. Nothing more impious than that. Whatever you heard, I'm sure it was exaggerated." Sila Kreiner no longer ate her meals with the rest of the Eight. Since their stranding at the House of Saint Mitus' Eyes, the only time they could rely upon her company was the morning and evening rituals of veneration. She never missed those.
"If his talk breaks my expedition, Master Vance, I will hold you responsible. Correct him."
A peal of hearty laughter erupted from the work party. Strake and Polma were lifting the new wall into place when an alpaca cantered up it, mistaking it for some high mountain passage perhaps. Falaha, the Blessed Host's daughter, laughed hardest, her hands slapping the rails of the llama pen.
"I will do what I can, Petitioner." Vance frowned. She had specified both of them. "Petitioner, have I also done something to displease you?"
She looked at him again as though he were a beet stain on her sacramental tunic. She turned on her heels and left without a word.
"Don't be concerned, Master Vance," said Bunstable, coming over to lay a familiar hand on Vance's shoulder. Vance was too distracted to take offence. "She's anxious about the Feast of Horns. Understandable but unnecessary. The preparations are all but perfect."
Vance knew the details of their preparations to the last coin. He recognised Bunstable's tone. "Have we overlooked some additional expense, Goodhost?"
"There is a boy, a herder with a talent for the longhorn. It occurs to me that perhaps the celebrations should begin with a dusk sounding."
"That is an old tradition, little in favour in these times."
Bunstable leaned close, his air one of concern. "Your petitioner strikes me as a traditionalist, Master. Perhaps it would ease her burdens were we to, ah, resurrect the spirit of Mitus' ways."
When Vance asked what fee he supposed the herder might charge for the service, Bunstable replied with a figure almost double the fair price.
Vance authorised it anyway.
#
That night, after their evening rituals were complete and before Strake could disappear into the inn's rambling interior in search of his paramour, Vance steered his brother to their shared room.
"You've got to cut this out, Strake," he said. "You can't keep this up all winter. The Host is already measuring you up for a wedding robe and counting your treasury share as dowry. If you break the Eight for this girl, Sila will kill you."
"She doesn't seem to have her old sense of humour, does she?" Strake grinned down at him from the top bunk, his bare scalp gleaming in the candle light. He was changing into a fresh shirt that smelled uncharacteristically of lilac blossoms. Was Falaha doing his laundry, on top of everything else?
"Be serious. You know what this means. Polma and Dessit haven't Resurrected yet."
"Nor have you, big brother."
"I don't – I mean, that's right. You're putting all of that in jeopardy."
Strake climbed down from his bunk and wrapped his arms around Vance. "Saint bless you, big brother. Without you we would have fallen apart months ago."
"What do you mean?" Vance squirmed in the embrace. Once he had enjoyed his timid brother's rare outbursts of filial affection. Now that they visited with greater regularity than a clock's chimes, the novelty had burned down its wick.
"Dessit doesn't want to Resurrect any more. He wants to go back to his wife and his fish. Sulsan and Hiram are so taken with Polma's war stories that they want to turn south and enlist. And as for you, Master of the Purse Vance Adell –"
"As for me, what?" Vance was disoriented. How had his simple purpose of talking sense into Strake gone so far astray?
"You've spent a year moping over your coins and your ledgers, mourning a woman who's been standing right next to you."
"Sila Resurrected, damn it."
"That's right, she Resurrected. She didn't suddenly forget everything." Strake tightened the embrace, as if Vance might break his grip and flee. Vance was seized with the urge to do just that. "Oh, brother, you've never really grasped the doctrine, have you? I dragged you into this and you found your own reasons to stay but it was never a question of simple faith for you, was it?"
Strake's firm grip on his shoulder forced Vance to look him in the eye. Vance saw his brother-of-old, earnest and alive with the simple joy of doctrinal interpretation. "Saint Mitus blesses us in order to make us who we need to be. He takes what is weak and imperfect and burns it away. The rest of the world sees a new man, but the man-of-old is still there. When you Resurrect, your priorities change as much as your looks, but you are still you. Your memories are intact. Some of them are just buried deeper than others."
Mnemo's Memory Page 16
