by Carol Berg
His anxiety surprised me. Karish held no squeamish notions about unquiet ghosts. “I’ve heard the fellow has no further need of it. You don’t think his spirit minds me using it?”
“It’s just…whenever I fetch water from the font, I can’t help but see…” He averted his face.
“See what?” I dragged his chin around again. “Come on, lad. Get it out. It’s not healthy to bottle up a story that turns your face the color of sour milk. And you’ve set up a keening curiosity that needs relieving, else my humors will be more tormented yet.”
“He was murdered,” said the boy in a solemn whisper. “Not a twelveday since, I found him in Saint Gillare’s shrine…in the font. Someone slashed his skin to threads and left him bound in the water until he bled out every drop in his veins. Brother Robierre said they had pricked his throat so he couldn’t scream.”
Spiders’ feet tickled my spine, and I felt an uncommon urge to ward my soul against Magrog’s incursions. I touched the book gingerly—not that I could have said what I was expecting. “Who did such a thing? Not a monk…surely!”
“Certainly not!” the boy sputtered indignantly. “Father Abbot questioned every one of us under pain of hell’s fire. He even sent to Pontia, and the magistrate brought his pureblood investigator. After three days here, examining us and the abbey grounds and questioning every villager within ten quellae, the sorcerer could say only that a nonbeliever had walked the cloisters. The magistrate said the killer must have borne some tormented grievance against Karish folk and sneaked into the abbey in the night to act it out.”
“Such a killing seems more than random grievance. Likely this Horach had made some enemy in his life—before taking vows, of course.”
Jullian shook his head vigorously. “Brother Horach was but sixteen, newly vowed, and had lived here since he was five—an aspirant like Gerard and me. Gerard hasn’t slept properly since, and he’ll not go into the shrine except in company.” The boy sat up proudly and straightened the water flask he’d brought me, as if to demonstrate he’d conquered such fears himself.
I nodded in sympathy, but could not shake my disturbance. Common disputes among those who lived in close quarters rarely caused such savagery. And a boy of sixteen…Ugly.
To make sure murder was no disease festering in these halls—like mold or pox that clings to old stone—I asked the boy to tell me more of the abbey and its works, and he was soon chattering cheerfully about the scriptorium and library, sheep and barley, and thirty-three holy monks and twenty lay brothers who were all that were left to occupy an abbey built for five times that number.
Before very long Brother Robierre blustered through the infirmary door with a mournful monk named Brother Cadeus, who needed a decoction of rose bark to bathe his filmy eyes. Cadeus, as it happened, was the abbey porter, who sat at the gatehouse in the daylight hours, dispensing alms and regulating entry to the inner and outer courts of the abbey. While Cadeus shared news brought by a starving mason in search of work—of a Harrower riot that left half the city of Montesard in ashes and of a new outbreak of murrain in a sheepfold near Avenus—piebald Brother Anselm arrived with a vat of mutton broth. They propped me up on pillows so I could feed myself.
“This world’s in a proper hellish season,” I said when Cadeus finished his news. I regaled them with tales I’d heard the previous winter—of Ardrans frozen in their beds, of ice rivers consuming Evanori villages in a day, of Moriangi chopping frozen fish from the rivers and eating them raw as the wood was too cold to burn. “…and then in spring I dragged myself half starved down to the Cumbran vale, hoping to hire on for planting, only to wonder at the evil-smelling cloud hung down in the vale. Turns out the crofters had found their seed stock rotted in the bins, and their lord had burned every one of their women as Magrog’s whores…begging your forgiveness, good brothers, for the unseemly language.”
While Jullian drank in every word, eyes as wide as if my reports were hero tales of Grossartius the Revenant, Brother Robierre repeatedly made the sign of Iero’s sunburst on forehead and breast as if the Adversary himself sat on my shoulder. Brother Cadeus nodded as if he had expected nothing else. “The roads are fraught with sorrow. Iero punishes humankind’s sinful ways.”
“Of course, sorrowful roads can lead to interesting places,” I said, swallowing another savory bite. “When the late blizzard hit Cumbra, a shepherd took me in. The snow buried his hut until only a spelled candle he’d got from a witch gave us light. We ate naught but milk and cheese for seven days and taught his favorite goat to walk on her hind legs and play ball games with us. And he taught me twelve new stanzas of ‘Caedmon’s Lay’…”
My tales were not even the worst I’d seen or heard. For eight or ten years now, self-named prophets had roved the length and breadth of Navronne crying out that our spate of cold stormy summers and savage winters foreshadowed the end of the world. Magistrates flogged the doomsayers, which succeeded only in making more folk who spent their days in a frenzy trying to placate the gods. I’d seen a man walking the length of the kingdom naked. I’d seen a cadre of women throwing burnt sheep in the sea. Villeins dangled so many charms and amulets from their wives and children, the whole countryside jingled like a tinker’s wagon, and painted their lintels or their foreheads with mule droppings to stave off ill luck.
A man could say what he would of such activities—and I had scoffed at the general foolishness as much as any—but two years had gone since I’d tasted wine from Ardran grapes, though war had never touched the precious vineyards. The vines had now frozen three winters in a row, and folks said they would never recover. Perhaps the bowl of the sky had slipped askew as Sinduri astrologers claimed.
One thing was certain. With grain fields burnt by soldiers or afflicted with smut from the cold damp, with plants unable to thrive in the changing weather, and herds dead or sickly, famine would surely strike again before the new year. And I’d been perilously close to starving three winters running—which unhappy counterpoint with the delectable soup reminded me that I could likely tolerate a few monkish restrictions.
I’d certainly no wealth or earthbound power to give up. Gambling held no allure but for the coin it could provide. And so long a time had passed since I’d experienced the pleasures of excessive drink or fornication that they were easy to bargain away when tucked in a warm bed with a full stomach. Magic was another matter.
I lopped off that consideration faster than a farm wife could wring a chicken’s neck. Did I allow thoughts of my worst troubles to take hold, my life would shrink to a hard black knot exactly the shape of a nivat seed.
Once Cadeus had gone, Brother Badger held his hands under his black scapular and peered into my rapidly emptying bowl. “When you’ve sopped up the remainder of your supper—not long it would appear—it will be time to take a walk. A man with such an appetite as yours must, of necessity, be getting stronger.”
“But it’s only been—”
“—four days since I took out the fiendish bit of iron. I know. But you’ve wallowed in your blankets long enough. Damaged sinews need using or they’ll knot or wither. You’ll thank me.”
The infirmarian snatched away my empty bowl and dropped a short brown tunic on my lap. He watched as I eased it over my head and bandaged shoulder and relinquished my lovely blankets. The air felt dreadfully cold on my bare legs. Indeed, as he eased me to my feet, my excessive height left the skimpy tunic excessively short, exposing half my rump and privy parts to Brother Anselm’s open window. “You are the Adversary’s lackey, Robierre,” I mumbled, shivering.
Brother Robierre was a mere half head shorter than I, and built with the sturdy bulk of a smith. Even so he called on Brother Anselm to help propel me up and down the long infirmary. I clutched at their shoulders, scarcely touched my right foot to the ground, and moaned and gasped, only muting my groans when young Jullian looked ready to pound the infirmarian for his cruelty.
“To feel the wound is only to be expected,” said the
good brother, inspecting my bandages when he at last allowed me to sit again. “See? No fresh blood or drainage.” Adding insult to insult, he then insisted I drain Jullian’s flask of water from the abbey’s spring, swearing that the holy font had been resanctified since Brother Horach’s gruesome death.
“You’re a proper villain, Brother,” I said, wincing as I rolled over and let them prop my leg up again. “I’m not thanking you as yet. This activity has surely stirred up the poisons in my blood. And this drink fit only for dogs and horses, tainted by ill-let blood, will compound them. I could die from it.”
“You’ll not die today, Valen.” Chuckling, Brother Badger tucked me in more gently than my mother had ever done. This was indeed a fine and friendly place.
Chapter 4
“I need to be gone now,” said Jullian, scrambling to his feet not long after the bells for the Hour of Compline—night prayers—fell silent. “I’ve duties.”
The door banged behind him. He had been regaling me with descriptions of the various monks, while the infirmarian and his assistant hied off to pray again. Though guileless as a newborn calf, the boy had a wit about him. I felt as if I knew the denizens of Gillarine already.
Left alone, I wormed my way down into the bedclothes, more tired than I ought to be from another day of sleeping and eating and taking Robierre’s enforced exercise. Before I could settle, a draft from the door set the rushlights wickering. Another visitor. Boots, this time, curiously enough. Quiet, measured steps.
“Yes, I’m awake,” I said over my shoulder, wishing I could lie facing the doorway at least. “And pleased for visitors.” The infirmary was beginning to feel more like a public marketplace than a house of healing.
“Good. I’ve no wish to overtax you.”
The quiet boots and low, pleasant voice belonged to a gaunt man soberly dressed in secular garb and a round-brimmed felt hat. As he came round the bed, he grabbed one of Robierre’s stools. Under his other arm, he carried my book of maps.
My welcome froze on my lips, and I set myself ready to muster a host of ailments if the conversation grew dangerous. Jullian’s talk of magistrates and pureblood investigators still had me twitching.
“My name is Gram Scriptor,” he said, inclining his back and extending his open palm in greeting as southerners do. “My employer is visiting Gillarine and got wind of this magnificent volume. He’s an educated man of wide-ranging interests and bids me learn what I can of it while we bide here that I might record the information in his journals. Abbot Luviar graciously permitted us to view the book and suggested I consult you with my questions, if you felt up to it.” Scriptor…a secretary, then, of unnotable family.
“I don’t know that I could tell you aught you cannot read from the book itself,” I said as he settled himself on the stool.
He was something near my own age, and not a bad-looking fellow, save for an unhealthy gray hue to his complexion. His close-trimmed black hair, beardless chin, and conservative attire—ash-gray cape over an unadorned knee-length tunic of dark gray—accentuated the hollows in his cheeks. His eyes sat deep, dark, I thought, though that could just be shadows from his hat.
“If nothing comes of my questions, so be it.” A grave, modest smile softened his severe appearance. “At the least I can report to my master that I did as he asked, which is often quite enough to satisfy him once the…mmm…storm of displeasure…is past. Just tell me if I press too much or if you tire.”
I had to be careful. To refuse this fellow might offend the abbot. And I’d not wish the abbot—or this man, whoever he was—to conclude I’d stolen the book after all. Likely I knew enough to satisfy a besieged secretary. “Ask what you will. I’ll do my best.”
“I’m ever grateful.” He scooted his stool closer to the bed, so we could view the book together. He leafed through several pages. “Of course I’ve seen common maps—a few scratched lines and place names and perhaps a landmark or two. But I’ve no experience of such fine maps—a sorcerer’s maps—and so great a variety of them. The written explanations in the book itself are confusing. I thought perhaps that the lord who’d given it to you might have explained what kinds of maps these are and how their magic works.”
Gram offered me the book, and I turned a few pages, opening to a leaf displaying four small maps of different kinds. I stared at the page—its lines and symbols evoking far too much of memory. On his random appearances at our house, my grandfather had forced me to sit with him and look at his book, whispering in my ear of its importance, of its perfection, of its cleverness and magic, and how I must learn to use it. His breath had smelled of cloves, onions, and black ale, his body of unwashed skin and horses despite his fine clothes. Disgust rippled through me alongside the recollection. Those sessions had lasted only as long as it took me to spit on his shirt and wriggle out of his grasp. But his lessons had always begun with this page.
“My—Mardane Lavorile told me that every variety of map is represented in this book,” I began. “Most, like this one, are fichés.” I pointed to the rigorous little rendering of roads, mountains, and rivers—very like the great maps stretched and mounted on the walls of my father’s library. “It is accurate in heading, scale, and proportion, so that a lesser distance on the map implies a lesser distance in truth. And the details are as precise as the cartographer can make them…”
The secretary listened intently, as I explained about keys and compass roses, and interpreted some of the symbols—for mountains, water features, towns and cities, shrines and temples, and the like. He asked me to clarify a few points, but otherwise did not interrupt.
“This map, on the other hand”—I indicated a fanciful colored drawing of a town with buildings and bridges and roads all mismatched in size—“is of the type known as a grousherre. The streets and structures are drawn with proper connections and relative positions, so that you can know which road leads to which, or which house stands beside which bridge. But the size and proportion of each object is determined by its importance not accurate measure.”
“That seems a strange way to make a map.” Gram pored over the drawing for a moment, his face drawn up in a puzzle. “Makes me think the maker was an odd sort of fellow.”
I grinned. “Exactly my own thought. I’ve never seen the purpose of them, save for making a page where the cartographer could show off and splash around all his colors of ink.”
“So what about these other two? This one looks to be a coastline, but I don’t understand the markings.” The little map detailed the fanlike outlets of one of Morian’s great rivers and the creneled inlets and channels on either side of it. Tiny numbers littered the expanse of land and sea.
“That’s a portolan,” I said. “A navigation map. The marks are winds and tides and notations for sailors’ instruments. I’ve no skill with ships to be able to tell you more than that. And this last is an example of a mappa mundi—a rendering of the wider world as if viewed from Iero’s heaven. You can always tell them by their oval shape.” My grandfather had included three mappa mundi that spanned two pages each. “The one in the very back of the book shows the trade routes to Aurellia and to Pyrrha, the land of volcanoes.”
“Now, what of the magic? I’ve heard tales of Janus de Cartamandua’s maps…”
“Well…” I bit my lower lip, a reminder I often used to watch my mouth. This visitor had set me too much at ease. “I know little of that. I used only a few of the maps, as the mardane needed.”
Supposedly, unlike those created by my father or my brother, Max, or any other cartographer in Navronne, my grandfather’s maps showed the earth’s most secret and holy places—magical pools, sacred groves, the earthly dwellings of spirits and angels, places that no traveler would ever “happen” upon. Places that could be found only by using these maps. So I had been told.
“But the abbot says you used the guide spells that unlock their power. I’m sorry to press. My master is”—he cleared his throat and ducked his head, his gray skin taking on a ro
sy cast—“excitable. So I beg your indulgence. Whatever you can tell me would be valuable. I’m afraid he’s going to ask me to copy one of these before we leave the abbey.”
Though I didn’t begrudge him the knowledge, I sincerely wished the fellow would stop asking questions. Yet he was gently spoken and seemed a mournful sort. And I knew well of excitable masters who asked the impossible.
“You see this oval banner on the larger map,” I said. “It’s called a cartouche. Look carefully and you’ll find the words of the guide spell scribed there, or if the map is too small to have a cartouche, you’ll find it buried in the border decorations. But copying won’t give you any use of it. The mardane told me that the cartographer’s magic is in the rendering, not just the words and symbols.”
“Ah.” He sat up straight and sighed. “Well, that’s good news for me, if my lord will believe it. So how would you invoke the spell?”
“Speak the words of the spell while tracing your finger along your desired route. With the aid of the spell and a bit of common wisdom, your mind and senses will tell you when you stray from the path. It’s useful enough.” So I had been told. Endlessly.
“And that’s all?”
I sagged back onto my pillows. “If a fellow like me can do it, I’ve no doubt anyone can.”
Gram smiled again as he closed the book and stood to go. “I think you speak yourself an injury, sir. Your explanations were very clear, and you’ve surely a good head for maps and scouting. Someday perhaps I can return this favor.”
I appreciated his effort to be kind. Old resentments about family and books and written words could not but taint my answers. He had no way to know that maps were of no use to me. “Your employer…he would like to own such a book as this?”
“In truth, not. He gives all his books to Gillarine.” Gram cocked his head to one side, curiosity blossomed like a daylily at dawn. “But I thought you were taking vows. Don’t initiates give—?”
