10
Robert had to stop within a couple hours the day their path resumed and for the first few days their march was broken by an equal time spent resting away from the road. Dante and Blays kept a guard at all times, switching between watch and sleep while Robert slumbered or merely stretched out and waited for the throbbing ache to subside. Dante preferred to eat up the hours with sleep, but sometimes it took an hour or more to slip away. Things would go faster once Robert was better, he told himself. They would lose a few days, but it wouldn’t always be these stuttery steps of six or eight stops a day. They would make it in time.
The woods gave way to open grassland peppered with trees in the creases in the land. The road held out. The grass rose to their waists on either side of the rutted dirt, swirling in the winds that swept unbroken from the north, carrying with it the promise of winter. Traffic was heavier than normal, or so Robert said, but nothing like what they’d seen the day Whetton burned. The Chanset forked after three days and they curved along its tributary. The plains rose so imperceptibly they couldn’t feel it in their steps, but then the grass gave way to soft, rolling hills blanketed in stubby yellow and gray grasses that shot long-tailed seeds into the air when they led the horses off the road to graze or rest or camp. They lit no fires in the open land; there was talk on the road of a wider struggle, of bands of pike-wielding men marching through the fields. Rumor had the king’s legions assembling in a counter on Whetton and encamping outside Bressel. But, according to the few travelers they spoke with, the enemy had no strongholds, no apparent homeland whatsoever, and the militia spent more time leaning on their own pikes than carrying them; the cavalry combed out the glens and ponds around the cities, but found nothing more than the miserable camps of refugees from the cities.
After a week’s travel the dirt seemed to crackle under their feet and they saw snow streaking the hills ahead. It was no more than a dusting, two or three days old, and it melted in the sun that stayed strong through the day. As dusk fell the sunlight caught the chimney-smoke of a town. They had passed plenty of villages on the way, dropping in a couple times to purchase food but mostly skirting them entirely, cutting through the open lands until they could reconnect with the road. None seemed under siege. Nor were any more than a few hundred strong resident-wise—dots along the river where two roads crossed or traders found deep water moorings and docked their cargo of grain or hemp or hay or wood. The town they looked on in the buttery sunlight could properly be called a town. It could only be Shay. When they encamped Dante took Cally’s letter from his pocket and rubbed his thumb over the sigil-sealed lump of black wax. What did it say? An introduction of Dante to his long friend Gabe? A warning? A plea for aid? He put it back away and dreamed of a city built of the hollowed bones of giants.
They woke early and tramped through the stiff dirt of the road, breath fogging from their noses. Dante pressed his fist against a knot in his lower back. A night in an actual bed or even a thick lump of straw would be a nice thing. A fire, hot food. He liked to think he was too hardy to need such things, and in a way he was already used to the sparer ways of the road, but if they popped up he wasn’t about to turn them down. The town grew nearer, resolving itself into individual buildings lining the river. He bared his teeth, realizing he still hadn’t told Blays and Robert the full nature of their travel. He meant to go to Narashtovik, they knew, and somehow that could stem the tide of whatever was taking the cities of the south. They didn’t know its end would be the killing of a woman. They didn’t know he sought a knowledge of the Cycle only the dead city might reveal. How did Cally know Gabe? How big a role did he intend the monk to play toward them? If they were old friends, and Dante believed they were, perhaps it would all be spelled out in the letter, and when Gabe questioned him or gave him advice or whatever Cally expected from him, the two he traveled with couldn’t help having questions of their own. Dante watched the town grow nearer. He should tell them. Give them the story on his own terms. Act as if he had nothing to hide. But the day wore on, and soon they were too close to stop without looking foolish, and then they rode past huts and the small, squatty homes of full families, and it was too late. They’d meant to reach Shay in six days from Cally’s shrine, perhaps a week if they hit a delay. Instead it had taken them till the afternoon of the twelfth day.
Ten thousand people, if he had to guess, and most of the ones they rode by on the way into town gave them looks. Not dirty looks, exactly, but the kind with questions behind their eyes. Rumor had reached them, then, but not battle. They killed a few minutes wandering, turning down progressively broader streets, reminding themselves what housing and other people looked like.
“Fun though this is,” Robert said, head following an eaveside painting of a stag’s head dipping its tongue into a mug, “it’s neither enlightening nor intoxicating, and thus must be said to be beside the point.”
“It’s probably near a churchyard or some of the other temples,” Dante said, glancing down the street. He thought he saw the clean lines of Gashen’s red shield a few blocks down.
“Probably,” Robert said. He pulled up beside a heap of rags containing a man and eased himself down from his horse. “Well met, good man.”
The pile grunted at him. Robert smiled at it, then turned to the saddlebags and extracted a hunk of bread.
“We’re looking for the monastery of Mennok,” he said, “but all this food’s weighing us down. Afraid we’ll never make it unless we get rid of it.”
“Got anything of a more fluid nature?” the man in the rags said, pulling himself to a sitting position and squinting up at them.
“Ah,” Robert said, favoring the cobbles with a wry smile. “That lack is one of the many tragedies we wish to unburden on Mennok’s ears.”
The ragged man accepted the hunk of bread and snapped it in half. He munched down a couple bites, glancing between the three of them.
“Been on the road a while?” he said, crumbs flecking from his mouth.
“A fortnight or so,” Robert said, taking a bite of the bread he’d kept.
He nodded. “Did you travel through Whetton?”
Dante tensed. Robert bit his lip, as if trying to remember, then jerked up his chin.
“We passed around it about a week ago.”
“Is it true? That they burned it to the ground?”
“They?” Dante said.
“The rebels,” the man said, frowning. “The black-cloaks.”
“It was on fire,” Robert granted, “but not to the ground, as such. You’d still recognize the city if you saw it.”
The man’s whiskered face twisted up. He set his eyes on Dante. “You mean you haven’t heard of the rebels? From what I hear all the southland’s awash in blood.”
“We’ve been on the road a while,” Robert said, cutting Dante off.
“Weren’t there others on the roads with you?”
“We’re men of the cloth,” Robert said, surreptitiously pulling his cloak over his sword. “Our vows allow us to pass words only from necessity.”
“Hell’s bells! And I’ve been flying off with the questions,” the man said. He forked his fingers in the sign of the Owl of Mennok, gaze drifting between the swords at Dante and Blays’ backs. “These must truly be trying days if the monks of the gray god won’t travel without steel at their side.”
“You have no idea how trying,” Blays said, glaring down the causeway.
“The monastery?” Robert said. He placed an arm over the bandages under the mailed vest he’d taken from the body of the sorcerer Dante’d killed.
“Of course,” the man said. He pointed them down the street and described a couple turns. “My apologies for delaying you, sirs. Might I ask you to make a prayer for me of Mennok?”
“We’d be some damned awful monks if we wouldn’t!” Blays said.
“Thank you, my son,” Robert said, working his way back into the saddle in a careful series of limb-maneuverings meant to minimize stress to the vast
scab on his chest. “Your aid will not go unrewarded.”
He took the lead, leaving the other two to catch up. Dante spurred on his horse, sending a cluster of men wrapped in debate scattering from his mount’s heavy hooves.
“Over the years I’ve worked out a sort of system of classification for the kinds of questions one may need to ask or hear while on the road,” Robert began once they’d made their first turn. “There’s the rhetorical and philosophical questions, i.e. the ones you can ignore or maybe nod at if the asker’s giving you a look like you should have been paying attention. There’s the immediate, practical, and useful questions, i.e.’Where is a good pub?’ and’For the love of the gods, man, where’s the nearest pub?’ And then,” he said, raising a finger, “there are the stupid, why-did-I-just-open-my-mouth questions, the kinds that are a fancy way of saying’I’m too dumb to see my next birthday,’ such as’Please sir, I’m too drunk to make it to the goldsmith’s with all these heavy bags, do you know a safe place I might lie down for an hour?’ or’Who’s been burning all the known world?’” He shot Dante a daggerly gaze. “Guess which one yours was?”
“He won’t remember it by tomorrow,” Dante said, face prickling with heat.
“You won’t either if you wake up with an axe in your brain.”
“Am I supposed to be able to understand that?”
“I suppose not. Since evidently you don’t even know asking stupid questions tends to get a damn sight more thrown back at you.”
“I know that. I was trying to find out if he knew anything about them we didn’t,” Dante said. His face lit up. “Look, there it is.”
The monastery was a tall, narrow structure of dark stone. Its upper windows bore shadowcut glass of what Dante presumed were important scenes from the god’s life. Its entrance receded from the street, giving way to a well-tended garden of small shrubs and dead flowers. At the garden’s center was the boulder of Mennok, meant to represent his imperturbability, his gravity, the solidity of his pensive presence next to mercurial Carvahal or many-faced Silidus or the crimson rages of Gashen.
“What do we do with our horses?” Blays said. “Hide them under that rock?”
Robert winced as he got down. Dante didn’t think it was for his wound. He tied the reins to the open gate at the street entrance and rolled his hands at the boys to hurry it up. They tied their horses and scampered after Robert up to the thick wooden door of the monastery. By the time they got there someone had already opened the door to his knock.
“May I help you?” said a skinny, sallow man little older than Dante.
“We’re here to see Gabe,” Dante said.
“Brother Gabe is deep in meditation.”
“Then he’s probably bored,” Blays said. “Let us in.”
The man smiled. “Focused meditation is the closest we men may come to understanding the wisdom of Mennok.”
“How long’s he going to be?” Dante asked.
“As long as it takes,” the man said, tipping back his head. “Even a meditation on the worms and the dirt may take days to unravel. Especially those kinds, since in thinking we know so much about them in truth we know so little.”
Robert squinched up his eyes. “Is there somewhere we might wait? We were sent by an old friend.”
“All friends are old,” the man said, “for all of us are made of dirt, and what’s older than dirt?”
“Rocks?” Blays said.
“But rocks turn into dirt when they’re old enough.”
“Dirt dust?”
The man opened his mouth, then closed it and raised his brows. “Have you ever considered our order?”
“Can’t say I have,” Blays said. He wriggled his back. “Got anywhere to sit down? All that riding’s put a pain in my ass.”
“You can wait in the parlor.” The man glanced over their shoulders toward the gates. “I’ll have a boy see to your horses.”
“Thanks,” Robert said. “You just let us know when Gabe wakes up.”
“Meditation’s the opposite of sleeping.”
“Sounds awful,” Robert said. He snagged Blays and Dante by the sleeves before the conversation could go on and drew them toward the room the man had indicated. The floor was of slate, the walls painted a steely gray. A statue of a droop-eyed dog sat vigilant in the corner. For all the room’s simplicity, it was furnished with padded benches, and they plunked down and stared at each other.
“Doubt Gabe will be like that,” Robert said to the look on Dante’s face. “Mostly it’s you young ones who want to preach at you.”
“I don’t preach at you,” Dante said.
“I meant monks and things,” Robert said, waving a hand. “Suppose it can be applied to all youth, now that you mention it.”
“You’re the one always explaining things for hours.”
“Because you’re too dumb to know things for yourself.”
Dante set his mouth and tried to think of a reply.
“You sure Mennok’s not the god of death?” Blays said, raising a brow at all the gray and black.
“He was originally just this guy who sits around and mopes,” Dante said, examining the walls. “When Arawn was expunged, people did start to look to Mennok about death. But it’s not the same.”
“Arawn?” Robert asked, face suddenly drawn.
Dante unlatched his teeth from the thumbnail he’d been biting. “You know about Arawn?”
“Enough to be suspicious of the fact you do.”
They sat with their thoughts. Maybe a quarter hour went by before the man who’d met them at the door stuck his head around the corner.
“Gabe will see you shortly.”
“Good to know the universe has been solved,” Blays said. He kicked his legs against the base of the bench and waited some more. “Next time, suppose we can go to Simm’s temple instead? Get some apples? Fresh pears? Some—ahh!” He bolted upright as a massive, fur-covered beast lumbered through the door on two legs. Blays fumbled out his sword and held it before him. “Get out! I’ll hold it off!”
“Put that away,” Robert hissed, barring his arm over Blays’. The thing in the doorway blinked at them. Dante saw human-like eyes in its face, that it wasn’t furred but deeply bearded, that the man’s whiskers climbed so far up his cheeks they nearly met his eyelashes. “He’s a norren, you sack of rocks.”
“Boo,” the man said. His voice rumbled like the gurgles of the earth. He’d had to duck when he walked through the doorway—six and a half feet, Dante guessed, if not taller, and at least three hundred pounds, though it was hard to tell beneath his loose black cassock. For a moment he couldn’t see his ears, then noticed they were just small and round as fresh-cut coins and pressed flat against his densely-haired head.
“A norren?” Blays said.
“From the north,” Robert said, smiling with embarrassment at the monk. “Usually.”
“Was too cold for my blood,” the man said. He smiled, showing broad, flat teeth that looked like they could grind Dante’s bones. “You’re here to see me?”
“You’re Gabe?” Dante said.
“That’s right,” the norren said.
“We’re friends of Cally’s. He sent us to you.”
“Cally?” Gabe blinked at them.
“The old man,” Dante said, biting back further words. He had the notion, reinforced somewhat by the fact he was a hermit, Cally’s popularity wasn’t great. What if, in a slip of his twilight years, he’d sent them to an enemy instead? Or a friend he’d forgotten he’d quarreled with? Or someone he didn’t know in the slightest?
“You know,” Blays said. “Lectures a lot. Thinks he’s quite funny.”
Gabe chewed on his mustache, nodding blankly. Dante reached in his pocket and took out the letter.
“He sent you this.”
Gabe’s hand reached out. It was large as a plucked chicken.
“Oh,” he said, scratching the wax seal. “Cally. It’s been a while.”
“So you
know him,” Dante said.
“Yes,” Gabe said, showing his teeth and looming forward till he seemed to take up all the room, “and now your fates are sealed.”
Blays gasped and went for his blade. Its bright snap cut over Gabe’s barking chuckles.
“I see he’s up to no good again, then,” the norren muttered. He considered them a moment. “Come with me.”
They followed him deeper into the monastery. He glanced balefully at a cell that would barely have room for his shoulders, let alone all of them, then led them up a set of spiral stairs and down a hall into a kind of sitting room or library. A great many books lined the walls, at least, though who knew with pious types. Gabe settled onto a mat, sitting on his heels, and nodded the others into some normal-sized chairs next to the window. An odd, dreary light cut through the smoke-stained figures worked into the glass. Gabe slid his thumb under the seal with a dry crack and unfolded the papers onto his lap. Dante examined the window while Gabe examined the letter. The figures were impressionistic, shadows of men, but he thought the window depicted the scene of Mennok soothing Gashen’s anger before he could blast the land with sunfire after he discovered his priest Ennan had lain with his daughter.
“You didn’t read this, did you?” Gabe asked once he’d finished a couple minutes later.
“Did the seal look tweaked to you?” Dante said.
“I assume you’re a clever lad, if Cally took you up.”
“That may be,” he said, meeting Gabe’s stare, “but however much I may have wished, I didn’t read that letter.”
Gabe frowned, then nodded. “So you’re off to kill Samarand.”
“Kill who?” Blays said.
Gabe glanced at Dante, then laughed, a bubbling thing that may have been called a giggle if it hadn’t sounded like a bull choking to death.
Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels Page 77
