The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  He wouldn't get an answer to that question. Perhaps there wasn't one.

  Mouthing prayers, he stopped at the stations, twelve small alcoves that held statues and bas-reliefs of the various guises of holy Decmanus. There was no power in them beyond the power inherent in any image, but they reminded him of what he would soon undertake, for the faneway was akin to these small stations, written large.

  When he had lit a candle in each, he finally turned to the first fane. It lay behind a small door, in the rear of the nave. The stone around the door looked much older than the stone of the rest of the monastery, and almost certainly it was. The saint had left his mark here before the church ever found its way to these lands, before even the dread Skasloi were defeated.

  Once there had been nothing here but a hill. Having a fane or even a monastery did nothing to enhance the power of the sedos itself; it could serve only to prepare those who were about to walk the way, to partake of the saint, for what was to come.

  When he reached for the handle of the door, he felt a sudden prickling in his belly and knew that if he hadn't been fasting for three days he might have lost whatever was in it.

  He stood, staring, unwilling to begin.

  He wasn't ready to begin; his mind wasn't on his goal, on the sanctification of his flesh and soul. There was too much else in there that was decidedly unsacred.

  So, sighing, he knelt on the stone before the door and tried to meditate.

  Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, it was because the events of the day kept scurrying around in his skull, like rats chasing their tails. What he should have said, should have done, shouldn't have said and done—playing over and over again. Trying to meditate now was like that. He tried to will the thoughts away, dissolve them like salt in boiling water, but each time they re-formed, more insistent than ever.

  And chief among those thoughts was a simple question: After doing what he had done, how could he deserve the blessing of the saint?

  After perhaps half a bell, Stephen knew the meditation of emptiness would never work, so he changed his tactics. Rather than trying to empty his head, he would try the meditation of memory. If in remembrance he could find a few moments of peace, he might achieve the state of calm acceptance needed for entering the fane.

  So he closed his eyes and opened the gallery of memory, glanced down it at the images there, frozen like paintings.

  There hung Brother Geffry in the oratory hall of Lord's College, straight and tall in the murky light filtered through narrow windows. Brother Geffry, explaining the mysteries of sacarization in language so eloquent it sounded like song.

  His father, Rothering Darige, kneeling on the bluff of Cape Chavel, white-toothed sea behind and blue sky above. His father, giving him his first instruction in how to behave in the temple. Stephen was eight, and in awe both of his father's knowledge and the fact that he would soon see the altar chambers.

  His sister Kay, holding his hand during the festival of Saint Temnos, where everyone wore masks like skulls and carried censers of smoking liquidamber. Watchfires in the shapes of burning men stood along the coast like immolated titans. Se-fry musicians and acrobats, painted like skeletons, capered madly through the crowd once the sun was down. The Sverrun priests, all in black, singing dirges and dragging chains behind them. Kay, telling him that the Sefry took little boys away and they were never seen again. It was one of the most powerful experiences in his life, for it was the first time he had ever really felt the presence of the saints and ghosts that walked among humanity, felt them as surely as flesh and bone.

  Yet of all these paintings of his memory, it was old Sacritor Burden, the elder priest of Stephen's attish, that brought him closest to what he needed. On that canvas, Stephen could see the old man's sallow face, his quick but somehow sad smile, his brows, almost lizardlike with age—as if time were making of him something quite different from human.

  But his voice was human, and it had been soft that day he had taken Stephen into the small scriftorium in the rooms behind the altar.

  Stephen concentrated, then relaxed, until the frozen painting began to move, until he saw again through eyes twelve summers old, heard the voice of his past.

  He was gazing around the room at the boxes and rolls of scrifti. He had seen his father write, seen the book of prayer his mother kept at her belt, but these he had trouble comprehending. What could all of this writing be about?

  “The greatest gift of the saints is knowledge,” Sacritor Burden told him, pulling down a faded vellum scroll and unrolling it. “The most refined form of worship is in learning that knowledge, coaxing it like a little flame in the wind, keeping it alive for the next generation.”

  “What does this say?” Stephen asked, pointing to the scroll.

  “This? I chose it at random.” The priest gazed over the contents. “Aha. See, it's a list of all of the names of Saint Michael.”

  Stephen didn't see at all.

  “Saint Michael has more than one name?”

  Burden nodded. “It would be better to say that Saint Michael is one of many names for a power that is actually nameless— the true essence of the saint, what we call the sahto.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “How many saints are there, Stephen?”

  “I don't know. Hundreds.”

  “If we go by their names,” the sacritor mused, “I should say thousands. Saint Michael, for instance—he is also known as Saint Tyw, Nod, Mamres, Tirving—and that names only four of forty. Likewise, Saint Thunder is also called Diuvo, Far-gun, Tarn, and so forth.”

  “Oh!” Stephen replied. “You mean they're called that in other languages, like Lierish or Crothanic.” He smiled and looked up at the priest. “I learned some Lierish from a sea captain. Would you like to hear?”

  The priest grinned. “You're a bright boy, Stephen. I've noticed your quickness with language. It recommends you to the priesthood.”

  “That's what Father said.”

  “You don't sound very enthusiastic.”

  Stephen looked down at the floor and tried not to squirm. His father didn't like it when he squirmed. “I—I don't think I want to be a priest,” he admitted. “I'd rather be the captain of a ship that sails everywhere, sees everything. Or a mapmaker, maybe.”

  “Well,” Sacritor Burden said, “that's something for later. Just now you made a keen observation; some of the names for the saints are just what other people call them in other languages. But it's more complicated than that. The very true essence of a saint—the sahto—is without name or form. It is only the varying aspects of the sahto we experience and name, and each sahto possesses many aspects. To each of these many aspects we attribute the name of a saint, in the king's tongue. In Hansa, they call them ansi, or gods, and in Vitellio they call them lords. The Herilanzers call the aspects angilu. That doesn't matter; the church allows local custom to call aspects whatever they wish.”

  “So, Saint Michael and Saint Nod are the same saint?”

  “No. They are both aspects of the same sahto, but they are different saints.”

  He chuckled at the confused look on Stephen's face.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Then Sacritor Burden led Stephen to a small, rickety table, and from a small wooden coffer lying on it he withdrew a peculiar piece of crystal, cut to have three long sides of equal width and two triangular ends. It rested easily in the sacri-tor's palm.

  “This is a prism,” Burden said. “A simple piece of glass, hmm? And yet see what happens when I place it in the light.” He moved the prism into a shaft of sunlight coming through a small, paneless window and shining on the desk. At first Stephen didn't notice anything unusual—but then he understood. It wasn't the crystal that had changed but the desk. A small rainbow spread upon it.

  “What's doing that?” Stephen asked.

  “The white light actually contains all of these colors,” the priest explained. “Passing through the crystal, they become divided so that we can see
them individually. A sahto is like a light, and the saints like all of these colors. Distinct, and yet a part of the same thing. Do you understand?”

  “I'm not sure,” Stephen replied. But then he did, or thought he did, and felt a sudden giddy excitement seize him.

  “Ordinarily,” Sacritor Burden went on, “we can never experience the truth of any sahto. We know only their aspects, their various names, and what their nature is in each form. But if we take care, and understand the colors, and put them back together, we can briefly experience the white light—the real sahto. And in so doing, we can become, in a way, a minor aspect of the holy force ourselves.”

  “How? By reading these books?”

  “We can understand them here, using the books,” Burden replied, tapping his wisp-locked skull. “But to understand them here—” He motioned toward his heart. “—to put on even the feeblest of their raiment, we must walk the fanes.”

  “I've heard of that. It's what priests do.”

  “Yes. It is how we become sanctified. It is how we know them.”

  “Where do the fanes come from?”

  “There are places where the saints rested or dwelt, or where parts of them are buried. We call these places sedoi— sedos in the singular. Little hills, usually. The church is blessed with the knowledge to find these sedoi and identify the saint whose power lingers there. Then we build fanes, to identify them, so those who visit them know to whom they pray and offer.”

  “And so if I go to a fane, I'll be blessed?”

  “In some small way, if the saint chooses. But walking a faneway is something different. To do that, one must walk many fanes, each left by a different aspect of the same sahto. They must be walked in a prescribed order, with certain ablutions made along the way.”

  “And the saints—er, the sahto—gives you his powers?”

  “They give us gifts, yes, to use in their service—if we are worthy.”

  “Could I—could I walk a faneway? Could I learn from these books?”

  “If you want,” Sacritor Burden said softly. “You have the potential. If you study, and devote yourself to the church, I believe you could do well, bring much good to the world.”

  “I don't know,” Stephen said.

  “As I said, your father is in favor of it.”

  “I know.”

  And yet, for the first time, it didn't sound so bad. The mystery of the words all around him pulled at his imagination. The prism and its patterns of colored light enthralled him. In a few words, Sacritor Burden had shown Stephen an unknown country, as strange and distant as rumored Hadam, and yet as near as any beam of light.

  Burden must have seen something in his face. “It's not the easiest path,” he murmured. “Few walk it of their own free will. But it can be a joyous one.”

  And in that instant, Stephen had believed the old man. It was a relief, really. He didn't know if he could have stood up to his father even if he wanted to. And now wonder had a grip on him, and he remembered how Sacritor Burden could bring light from the air, coax music from stones, summon fish from the shoals when the catch was poor. Little miracles, the sort that were so everyday no one even thought about them.

  But there must be bigger miracles in such a wide, complex world. How many faneways were there? Had they all been discovered?

  Maybe being a priest wouldn't be so bad after all.

  He bowed his head. “Reverend, I would like to try. I would like to learn.”

  The sacritor nodded solemnly. “It's a joy to an old man to hear that,” he said. “A joy. Would you like to begin now?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. We start with the first gift of Saint Decmanus. With the alphabet.”

  Stephen came back from remembrance to the sound of a jay chasing some other bird in the high reaches of the nave, complaining loudly. He managed a troubled smile. Sacritor Burden had been a man of faith and principle, a good man. Fratrex Pell seemed like a good man, too, if a bit severe at times. The fratrex knew exactly what Stephen had done, and still thought him fit to walk the faneway. If there was any lesson that the past few months had taught him, it was that taking his own thoughts too seriously led only to trouble. What was he, anyway? Only a novice. No—he had trusted Sacritor Burden, and he would trust Fratrex Pell.

  That sounded good, but he wondered if Sacritor Burden could have imagined that, hidden in the bright colors of the rainbow, there was a streak of purest darkness. That wonder held in its embrace more than its share of terror.

  Fratrex Pell knew. And if that wasn't enough, the ineffable something that some called Saint Decmanus could judge whether Stephen was still worthy.

  He pulled himself up by the door handle, tried once again to settle his thoughts, and opened the wooden portal. He hesitated briefly at the entrance, his hand on the weathered stone, then, murmuring a prayer, he stepped in and closed the door behind him. Darkness swallowed him.

  Once inside, he produced his tinderbox and a single white candle. He struck fire to tinder and touched it to the wick, and watched the flame climb its ladder of smoke.

  The fane was small enough that he could almost touch both walls by stretching his arms wide. It was spare, as well; a stone kneeling bench and the altar were its only furniture. Behind the altar, on the wall, was a small bas-relief of Saint Dec-manus, a weathered figure crouched over an open scroll, a lantern held up in one hand and pen in the other.

  “Decmanus ezum aittis sahto faamo tangineis. Vos Dadom,” Stephen said. Decmanus, aspect of the Sahto of Commanding Knowledge. I surrender to you.

  “You embody the power of the written word,” Stephen continued, in the liturgical language. “You gave us ink and paper and the letters we make from them. Yours is the mystery and the power and the revelation of recorded knowledge. You move us from past to future with the memories of our fathers. You keep our faith clean. I surrender to you.”

  In the inconstant light, the statue of the saint seemed to be laughing at Stephen, a gentle but mocking laugh.

  “I surrender,” Stephen repeated, very faintly this time.

  When the candle was half-gone, and his vigil was complete, nothing had changed; he felt no different. With a sigh he reached to snuff the flame with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

  The flame hissed out, and for a heartbeat Stephen understood something was wrong, but couldn't place what. Then he realized that he hadn't felt the flame at all. Or the wick.

  He rubbed his fingers together, and again felt nothing. From the tips of his fingers to his wrist, his hand was that of a ghost. He pinched it until the blood welled red, but he might as well have been pinching a piece of roast.

  Stephen's astonishment turned quickly to horror and then to brittle panic. He bolted from the fane, out into the empty chapel, where he fell to his knees and heaved dry, croaking sobs from an empty belly trying to be emptier. The dead thing that had been his hand disgusted him, and he suddenly found himself tearing into his pack, looking for the little wood-chopping ax.

  By the time he found it, he had gotten around to asking himself what he wanted it for. He sat there, wild eyed, switching his gaze from the ax to his unfeeling hand. He felt like a beaver with its foot in a trap, preparing to gnaw it off.

  “Oh, saints, what have I done?” he groaned. But he knew; he had put himself in their hands, the saints' hands, and they had found him wanting.

  Trembling, he put the ax away. He couldn't chop it off, now that the moment of madness was passing. Instead, still shaking and occasionally retching, he lay on the stone, staring up at the light coming through the stained glass, and wept until he was almost sane again. Then he rose shakily, retrieved his candle, and said another prayer to Saint Decmanus. Then, without looking back, he went through another door—a small one, which led outside to where the trail began.

  Bleakly, he looked at the trail. From this point it went in only one direction. He could stop now, admit failure, and be done with it. His father would despise him, but that would har
dly be anything new. If he quit now, he could escape it all—Brother Desmond, the awful texts, Fratrex Pell's demands, this cursing by the saints. He could be free.

  But a hard resolve came after his panic. He would see this through. If the saints hated him, his life was done anyway. Perhaps, when they had punished him enough, they would offer him absolution. If they didn't—well, he would find out about that. But he wouldn't turn around.

  The path went in only one direction.

  He reached the fane of Saint Ciesel a few bells after noon, under a sky already dimmed by clouds, in a grove of ashes. It was fitting, for the story of Saint Ciesel was a dark one.

  Once he'd been a man, the fratrex of a monastery on the then-heathen Lierish Isles. A barbarian king burned Ciesel's monastery and all of his scrifts, many of which were irreplaceable, then threw Ciesel in a dungeon. There, in the dark, the saint had written the destroyed scrifts again, from memory— carved them into his own flesh with his fingernails, sharpened by filing them against the stone of his cell, using the oily filth from the floor to darken the scars. When he died, his captors threw his body into the sea, but Saint Lier, lord of the sea, delivered the corpse to the shore of Hornladh, near a monastery of Ciesel's own order, where the monks found him. Ciesel's skin had been preserved and copied through the ages. The original skin was said to be preserved in salt in the Caillo Vallaimo, the mother temple of the church in z'Irbina.

  Stephen burned his candle and made his ablutions. He left the fane without feeling in the skin of his chest.

  Two bells later, Saint Mefitis, patroness and inventor of writing to the dead, took the sensation from his right leg. He camped a little later, and while building a fire to keep the beasts at bay, he was surprised to discover blood on his breeches. He had hit his leg a glancing blow with his ax and not noticed. The wound was minor, but he could have chopped the foot off and it would be no different.