Flesh and Spirit tld-1

by Carol Berg

  When my mind held as much as I could reasonably learn of the grove, I crept toward the closest of the four watchers. Only at the last step did he look my way—Boreas’s needle-chinned murderer. With every minim of strength I had in me, I slammed my walking stick into the man’s throat. Then I darted away. I hoped I’d killed him.

  “Who’s there?” As a loop snapping into a knot did Sila Diaglou’s remaining henchmen gather round her, only to unravel again when one of their company did not arrive. “Radulf?”

  Brisk footsteps sought the victim. “Radulf is down, lady!”

  “Find the intruder!” The priestess’s command slammed my gut like a fist. But I held still and did not flinch. “Falderrene, Malena, all of you, spread out. Do not let him escape! Hold, monk. We’ll finish with you betimes.”

  “Quiet!” spat one of the men.

  The light wavered, shifted. Another light bloomed, coloring the fog piss yellow. Close enough to hear the gasps of the injured man, the harsh breathing of their captive, and the hiss of whispered orders, I pressed my back to the slender trunk and waited for them to disperse.

  The three spiraled outward from the site of their crime. Closing my eyes, I matched their movements with the map imprinted on my mind. Unable to see in the fog, they brushed stalks, snapped branches underfoot, disturbed rocks. As soon as they were spread out from their captive and the cold priestess who guarded him—not so far as I would like—I threaded my way between them. I had little confidence in my fighting ability, but I had a few other skills.

  Yanking my abbey blanket from my rucksack, I returned to the downed man. He clutched his throat, wholly preoccupied with choking. I slipped his dagger from its sheath. If he died I would not grieve, but I could not shed his blood on that ground. Instead, I spread the blanket over his body, considered my intent, and constructed the most rudimentary of illusion spells—the only kind I’d ever learned to any effect. Once prepared, I stared, motionless, scarce breathing, toward the ashen cloud whence came the captive’s harsh breathing. I stared until I could just make out the priestess’s tall figure pacing a short path near the tree. She wielded a short blade.

  “You intrude on matters you cannot comprehend, infidel,” she cried. “Dare you sully a sacrifice offered to the Gehoum? I am the tool of their wrath.”

  You bring murder to Iero’s holy ground, Harrower, I thought, snarling. Against his might, you shall not prevail.

  Touching the blanket, I fed magic to my working. And waited. As the arm of a siege engine seems to crawl on its skyward journey toward release, so my spell seemed to spend eternity in its binding. My heart near stopped when I felt the blanket shift…and then it swelled into the very awkward likeness of a giant monk. Or a giant tent. I didn’t care which way she saw it or how crude the work might be. I was already running.

  “Infidel!” No coward, Sila Diaglou. She charged out of the fog, crashing through trees and scrub straight at my feeble working. “Falderrene! Morgaut! To me!”

  Silently I’d circled wide of her, leaping rocks and pits, dodging saplings and branches and stones, to come up behind the tree. Before she could reach my illusion, I was fumbling at the quivering captive suspended from the thin-boled oak. I could scarce believe my luck—his luck. Two loose, twisted loops of rope were all that held his hands to the limb above his head. I slipped the loops off his wrists, grasped him in my arms, and drew him away from the tree. Though his pale skin ran dark with blood, he expelled only a faint hiss at my handling. He lifted his head—pale, too, shaven as it was, his dark eyes a stain on his white skin…Gildas!

  “Valen?” Even in the wan light, I could feel his shock.

  “Do I need to carry you?” I said, grinning, cheered to feel him supporting his own weight.

  “No…no, not…but….” He shook his head. Though his speech stumbled, he gathered up his cowl and gown that had been stripped off his shoulders and left bunched about his waist.

  “Then follow me.” I grasped his arm and pulled him along.

  “I’ll bleed you for the Gehoum, infidel!” Sila Diaglou’s cry of rage followed us as I led Gildas on the shortest path out of the hollow. I didn’t expect her to follow, and she did not. As I supported the stumbling monk across the broken ground, the dwindling thunder of galloping hoofbeats signaled the Harrowers’ escape. As soon as I was sure, I halted.

  “I think we’re safe now,” I said, supporting him by his arms, careful not to jar or twist his mangled back. “I’ll fetch Robierre…the litter.”

  “No…no…I’ll be all right. Stupid to get caught out. But, Valen”—his gaze was hot—“what, in great Iero’s mercy, are you doing out here? How did you—? I don’t understand.”

  “I could ask the same of you, Brother,” I said.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he said, after a moment. “I needed to think, and so I played the fool, wandering about out here in the night. Walked right into their little plot.”

  “Exactly so,” I said. “Only, I seem to have lost my blanket as well—hung it up in a tree to distract them. Do you think Brother Sebastian will punish me?”

  He laid his blood-streaked hand on my shoulder and flashed his white teeth in a grin. “I’ll see what I can do.” Despite the smile, his hand quivered like a maid on her virgin night.

  When we reached the gatehouse, Gildas refused my offer to accompany him to the infirmary or even to summon Brother Robierre to see to him. “No need for us both to suffer reprimands,” he said, pulling his disheveled garments tight. “I’ll confess my folly to Father Abbot tonight, so he’ll likely not get after you until morning. Not at all, if I can manage it. I’ll say only what you’ve told me, mention nothing of rucksacks, and bless your name eternally in their hearing. But someday, good Valen, we will speak of this night, you and me.”

  “I’m just happy you’re living,” I said. “The last fellow I rescued was dead at the end of it.” As I slogged back through the hedge garden, I glimpsed Abbot Luviar racing toward the Alms Court, robes billowing. And from the direction of the guesthouse, heading in the same direction, barreled the Thane of Erasku and his secretary Gram. I had not heard that the lord had returned to the abbey. Had I not been ready to collapse as battle fever and tight-held magic drained out of me, I would have gone back to hear what drew them so urgently to the gates. But I could scarce command my feet to carry me.

  I slept astonishingly well, until the bells clanged and clamored, waking me to my first day as Gillarine’s newest and only novice.

  Chapter 13

  The fifth day of my novitiate began as had the previous four. In the dark. After the lengthy service of Prime, we washed heads, hands, and feet in the frigid water of the lavatorium, then broke our night’s fast with weak ale and bread left from the previous day. As every day, I slogged through these activities half asleep. A night of unbroken sleep had taken its place in the pantheon of unachievable delights, alongside my own private cask of mead and a Pyrrhan courtesan in my bed.

  The daily chapter meeting began as usual, too. Abbot Luviar and Prior Nemesio sat beneath the grandest of the lancet windows, the one depicting Kings Eodward and Caedmon worshiping an enthroned Creator. Jullian and Gerard perched on low stools that flanked the door. In between, on crescent-shaped benches that lined the circular walls, sat the remainder of Gillarine’s thirty monks, ordered from eldest to youngest. Every size and shape of man.

  At my first chapter meeting, Brother Sebastian had led me around the circle to introduce me, as if he were a swineherd and I his prized sow. We had skipped no one, all the way from the eldest—straight-backed Brother Abelard, mostly blind and nearing his ninetieth year—to the youngest—walleyed Brother Simeon, eight years my junior. Birdlike Brother Nunius; the aristocratic Ardran Brother Bolene; the cottar’s son Brother Adolfus, whose eyes and throat bulged like a toad’s…My memory for names and faces had been well exercised.

  Sharing this clockwork existence of prayers and work with these men was no bad life by any means. I could surely bear
the monotony and excessive piety for a season. It was only when I thought of living this way unchanging until I was the age of Brother Abelard that cold sweat dribbled down my back.

  I had scarce settled in my own place at the lowest end of the bench, just next to Jullian’s stool and the entry, when every face turned abruptly in our direction. Brother Victor stood in the doorway, looking small and hollow-eyed and unsteady on his feet. Luviar motioned the pale little chancellor to his assigned seat without the least hint of sympathy, apology, or the conspiracy that I believed existed between them. Perhaps that was because the hierarch’s pureblood followed Brother Victor into the room.

  I fixed my gaze on my hands, clenched in my lap. A frigid draft more appropriate to the Frost Moon than Reaper’s Moon funneled up the nightstair, swirled through the open door, and blew straight up my gown.

  Scrutari-Consil had remained sequestered in the abbot’s house, conducting his interviews. My heart had lurched like a besotted beggar every time a new witness was summoned. Every town of any size and every fighting legion bought pureblood contracts, so it wasn’t as if I’d wholly avoided those of my own kind over the years. I told myself I just needed to keep to my usual habits…and pray no one spoke my name in his hearing…or mentioned my book.

  I glanced at Brother Gildas. He appeared soberly attentive as always. To my surprise, I’d never been questioned about our encounter with the Harrowers. Prior Nemesio had cautioned everyone that Gildas had run afoul of them to the peril of his life and that I had chanced upon him and brought him back within our walls. Sometimes I wondered if it had really happened. I had collapsed that morning wrapped in my cowl, but I’d waked with a blanket thrown over me, and my well-brushed cowl hung neatly with my gown.

  “Holy Father, a moment’s intrusion, if you permit,” said Scrutari-Consil without expression, touching his fingers to his forehead.

  “Speak as you will,” said the abbot coolly.

  The pureblood inclined his back to acknowledge the permission. Purebloods bowed to no ordinary but their contracted masters and the King of Navronne. “I must commend you on your brothers’ piety, Abbot Luviar, and on their…ardent…personal loyalty to you and your chancellor. My investigations of Gillarine’s scribes have revealed no purpose to their work but the One God’s glory. As the chancellor’s confinement is ended, I deem my work here complete…or nearly so.”

  Luviar said naught.

  Scrutari-Consil stepped farther into the room, his cloak billowed by the draft from the doorway. “I understand that some few members of this brotherhood labor in the scriptorium occasionally, although they are not considered scribes. I must question those persons that I may assure Hierarch Eligius I have been thorough in my obligations. And one more small matter…”

  I tried not to fidget. I would not be on that list. He would have no reason to speak to me. Soon he would be gone, and perhaps I would be able to pass an hour without imagining my father’s sneer as he devised a method to control me for the rest of my life.

  Hands at his back, the pureblood pivoted on one fine boot, as if to take a final appraisal of our faces. “…I require a review of your membership list. In my general scrutiny of Gillarine and its residents, I have perceived residue of sorcery. My duty to the kingdom and its law demands that I ensure that any pureblood in your brotherhood has received the proper family dispensation. Much better that I, a Karish observant, take on this review, than a Registry inspector, likely an unbeliever, intrude upon your holy precincts.”

  Deunor’s fire, damnation, and all cursed gatzi! Never use magic, fool. Never. You know it.

  The monks Scrutari had questioned insisted that a man could hide nothing from his magical interrogations. I knew better. To deceive a pureblood perceptive you just had to present plausible, consistent testimony and obliterate any distinction in your mind between the truth and the lie—perhaps a difficult thing for holy monks. For me, the lying was easy. Unfortunately, my history, cobbled up in an instant whilst I suffered from wound fever, was as thin as these monks’ finest vellum. And my name was now scribed on the abbey’s roster.

  “Of course you may inspect our membership roster if you deem it necessary,” said the abbot, displaying no emotion the perceiver might probe. “But it would be a waste of your time. Only one of our brotherhood claims pureblood descent. His dispensation is duly recorded, and for more than twenty years he has forsworn the practice of sorcery as our Rule demands. Prior Nemesio can show you this man’s credentials immediately after chapter. As for those who assist in the scriptorium, one could say that every man in the abbey does so, whether he be the lay brother who tends the fire or the boy who mixes the ink or the choir monk who petitions blessings for the generous donors of our books. I see no need for you to interview every resident of Gillarine on some arbitrary quest for completeness. The hierarch would perhaps consider it a frivolous use of our time and that of his valued pureblood servant.”

  Scrutari’s nostril’s flared in disbelief—as did mine, most likely. “Surely, holy fath—”

  “Once you have reviewed the record Prior Nemesio will show you, your horse will be ready for your departure. Bear our prayers for good health and Iero’s blessings to the hierarch. Now please excuse us. We’ve business to attend before the bells ring for prayers.” The abbot’s demeanor stood no more yielding than a granite wall.

  Though I applauded his decision, Luviar’s refusal made no sense, unless…I glanced at the young face beside me. Jullian’s eyes were fixed in the vicinity of Brother Nunius’s wrinkled neck, and his fingers clenched in a knot tighter than my own. He breathed in shallow fits.

  “As you say, Father Abbot. I shall pass your message—and my conclusions—to the hierarch.” Stiff as Erdru’s prick, the pureblood touched his forehead and withdrew. Were I Abbot Luviar, I would not request any favors from the Scrutari-Consil family before Judgment Night.

  An unruffled Prior Nemesio began the day’s business. Boring business. He invited Brother Nunius to speak on the fifteenth chapter of Saint Ophir’s Rule—that which addressed the management of an abbey’s lands and treasury and the apportioning of alms. My attention wandered.

  Weak sunbeams shone through the lancet windows behind the abbot’s chair, transforming the colored glass into rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. I examined King Eodward’s features in the window, searching for some trace of the man I had met. He had been the exemplar of Ardran manhood—big and ruddy, beard and hair as red-gold as summer sunset, his bones sturdy and well formed, his face equally suited to laughter and sober intelligence. I glanced at Jullian—the boy was breathing again—and wondered about a rumored Pretender…a child…and an abbot who juggled hierarchs and purebloods and princes as if they were oranges. And told myself I was a lunatic.

  By the time Brother Nunius’s sermon had labored to its conclusion, and the prior began assigning reading tasks for the day’s services and mealtimes, my eyelids were drooping. But somewhere between “Brother Aesculpius, Vespers” and “Brother Jerome, Matins,” he announced, “Brother Valen, Compline.”

  Gods’ bones! They wanted me to read! Cold dismay wafted up my gown with the draft. My conscience bloomed hotly on my cheeks. Rabbitlike thoughts of escape drew my glance to the door, where I found Jullian staring curiously at me.

  Except on the coldest or rainiest days, I was supposed to spend the hours between Terce and dinner pursuing my studies in my carrel in the north cloister. Brother Sebastian had selected a dreadfully thick book for me to study over the next months. I didn’t even know its name.

  I riffled the pages of the book and contemplated the cloister garth and the shrine, mulling the problems of undead spirits and why one of them might have an interest in me, and of how I was to convince Brother Sebastian to read me the text I was supposed to proclaim at Compline.

  I had already spent an hour concluding that I couldn’t possibly guess which of Saint Ophir’s brothers was a pureblood. My own appearance evidenced that “straight of hair, deep of col
or, short in stature, large in talent” was not an infallible guide to Aurellian heritage, but most purebloods did conform to the type. Whoever it was—and a careful recollection of every face in the chapter circle yielded no suspicion—either he was not insightful enough to connect me to the infamous Cartamandua recondeur or he had truly shifted his loyalties to the brotherhood and broken contact with the Registry. I was likely safe enough as long as I kept to my usual precautions. I hoped.

  Inevitably, as it had all week, my mind returned to the incident in the wood. The more I recalled, the stranger it all was. The Harrowers had not been doing the same to Gildas as they had to Boreas. Sila Diaglou had said they wanted to “draw them out”—referring to her enemies. And Luviar and Thane Stearc had been running to the gates…

  Ow! I bit my lip to keep from yelling aloud when Brother Sebastian’s knucklebone rapped my skull. I stuck my books in my pockets and traipsed after his wagging finger.

  Though rigorous in matters of decorum, liturgical observance, and adherence to the Rule, the tidy Sebastian had been undemanding when it came to my studies. He seemed more than willing to believe that my healing shoulder wound restricted any writing tasks and that illness still caused my eyes to tire easily, limiting my reading. In the main, he complained I talked too much, and was forever exhorting me shift my verbal excess from flesh to spirit.

  “Fine mornings are too rare of late,” he said as we left the cloisters for the maze of yew and hawthorn hedges in front of the church. “Let us discuss the lesson you were to master for today, and, at the same time, give praise for the sunlight. So, Brother Valen, the structure of virtue: Recite for me the seven great virtues and twelve great vices and expound upon their signs and meanings.”