“You’re tall for your age,” Aristodeus said, “and there’s fight in your eyes, but you’ve got it under lock and key. I’m sure if you’d wanted to,”—he leaned over to fling the twig into the fire—”you could have given as good as you got. Probably even better.” He settled back in his chair and blew out a smoke ring.”
Deacon felt his cheeks burn, and he caught himself on the verge of a smile. He pressed his lips tightly together and tried to look like he’d never given it a thought. Aristodeus was watching him, as if he already knew the truth.
“Last time I saw you, you were just a babe,” Aristodeus said. “And here you are almost up to you mother’s shoulders. Another blink of the eye and you’ll be a man, bigger, stronger than your father, unless I’m very much mistaken.”
Deacon didn’t know how he felt about that. Father was a warrior through and through. He was bred for strength, and there weren’t too many who’d stand up to him in an argument.
“You have a good mother,” Aristodeus said. There was something smug in his tone, but he quickly moved on. “Pure and holy.”
“I am blessed,” Deacon said. It was always easier saying the right thing. Nous had been kind to him.
“Indeed,” Aristodeus said, popping the pipe from his mouth and using it for emphasis. “Couldn’t have picked better myself.” He grinned, but there was something unsettling about it, some hidden joke he wasn’t sharing. “A man is the sum of his parents, and a great man is the sum of all he learns and experiences without them. Most people are like iron.” He reached over his shoulder and tapped the pommel of the sword hanging from his chair. “The years weaken them, morally and physically. Rust sets in—flaws and decay. You, young Shader, must be like steel. First, the impurities must be removed from the iron—excess carbon, silicon, phosphorous. In your case, that shouldn’t be such an arduous task. Your mother’s done most of the work for you.”
Deacon scrunched his face up, trying to concentrate. He couldn’t keep up with all the big words. For all he knew, Aristodeus could have been talking about magic, rather than steel making. The thought got his guard up.
“Then you need to add the alloying elements,” Aristodeus said. Catching Deacon’s blank look, he explained: “Manganese, chromium, nickel, and vanadium. Oh, don’t worry, I don’t expect you to understand yet; but I will do in time, and I’ll expect a whole lot more, too. You must be tempered, Master Shader. Trained body and soul so that you are hard as steel and pure as a dove. And your mind,” he added with a jab of his pipe to Deacon’s forehead, “must be a sword against the world.”
A thrill ran along Deacon’s spine. He thought he was starting to get the point at last. “Against the Demiurgos? Strong against his wiles?”
Aristodeus’s eyelids snapped shut and he leaned back with a long sigh. “Yes. Against the deceptions of the Demiurgos.”
“Why?” Deacon said. “Why do I need training? I thought only the grace of Nous could save us from the evil one.”
Aristodeus opened his eyes and focused them on the crackling hearth fire. A string of smoke coiled up from his pipe and glowed briefly in the light of the hanging lantern before it vanished. When the old man finally answered, his pipe had died.
“It is necessary,” was all he said.
The creaking of the stairs broke the spell of the moment. Mom walked to the back of Deacon’s chair and put her hands on his shoulders.
Aristodeus smiled at her and then abruptly stood, holding up the oilcloth-wrapped package. “Know what this is?”
Deacon shrugged.
“Your birthday present!” He flung it to Deacon.
Deacon caught it in both hands, shocked at the weight.
“Happy birthday, Shader,” Aristodeus said, watching intently and raising his eyebrows to say go ahead.
Deacon struggled with the string binding the oilcloth and looked round at Mom. She took a knife from the drawer and cut it away. Deacon unwrapped the cloth and gasped.
“A sword…” He looked from Mom to Aristodeus, not knowing how he should feel.
Aristodeus winked. “Brought it back from the Eternal City just for you.”
“Aeterna?” Mom said. “You’ve been to Latia? Did you see the Ipsissimus?” There was awe in her voice.
“Briefly,” Aristodeus said, as if it were nothing to meet the supreme ruler of the Templum. “But the main reason for my trip was to speak with the grand master of the Elect.”
Mom reeled away from the chair as if she’d been slapped. Deacon was up in a flash, letting the sword clank to the tiles as he clung to her skirt.
Aristodeus raised his palms, and for a moment he looked genuinely sorry. “They will accept him, Gralia, but not until he’s turned thirteen, and not unless he’s proficient with a blade and fluent in Aeternam.”
Mom’s breaths came in great heaves. She shut her eyes for a few seconds, her lips working silently over a prayer. She planted a kiss on Deacon’s head and sighed. “Six years, then.”
Aristodeus nodded. “Six more years. He’ll be well on his way to manhood by then, Gralia, and I’m sure the last thing you and Jarl will want is a teenager on your hands.”
Mom blinked back tears, and she shuddered as she drew in another breath. Deacon knew what she was doing: offering it all up to Nous in reparation for her sins and those of the whole world.
Aristodeus stooped to pick up the sword and hand it back to Deacon. “Come on,” he said, grabbing his own sword from the back of the chair and drawing it from its scabbard. “No time like the present. Let’s get started.”
With a hesitant look at Mom, Deacon followed him outside. It was still spitting, but there was a growing patch of blue sky coming from the north as the clouds blew out to sea. The sun shone through the passing haze, and a half-rainbow hung above the trees of the forest.
Mom followed and lingered in the doorway.
“I’m to join the Elect?” Deacon asked. Was that Nous’s will for him—to fight demons?
“Few are chosen,” Aristodeus said, and then with a smirk he added, “and even fewer are squeezed in by men of wisdom and not a little influence.” He gave a mock bow.
Deacon tested the balance of his sword, imagining he was a knight going to do battle with the unnatural monsters of the Liche Lord in Verusia.
Aristodeus put a hand on his wrist, forced the sword down. “It’s not just demons they fight, you know. It’s men you have to watch out for: changing allegiances, broken oaths. I may not share your faith, lad, but the Templum brings order out of chaos, and sometimes order comes at the tip of a sword.”
“But, Mom—” Deacon turned to implore her with his eyes.”—you can’t serve Nous and the sword. That’s what you told me.”
She touched the Monas pendant around her neck, enclosed it in her fist. Father said the same; said he knew what kind of man he was. Knew he couldn’t be anything else. He nodded when Deacon and Mom prayed, drank with the monks at Brinwood Priory, but he was clear about one thing: to be a Nousian, he’d have to give up the sword. Anyone who told you otherwise, he said, already had one foot in the Abyss.
“The Elect have done so for centuries,” Aristodeus said. “Almost as far back as the Reckoning.”
“But—”
Aristodeus clanked his blade against Deacon’s. “A little thing called malicide.” He chuckled as if he’d make a joke. “Perhaps we’ll make it the subject of your first philosophy lesson.”
Deacon frowned at him dumbly.
“Yes,” Aristodeus said, raising his sword. “Uses and Abuses of Theology, I think we’ll call it. But that’s for another time. I’m sure I come across as somewhat long in the tooth and a pontificating ivory-tower philosopher, but the things I aim to teach you are by no means limited to the mind. Heads up!”
He lunged, but Deacon dropped his sword and scampered out of the way. “Wait. I can’t. I mean, I thought the Elect fought monsters, like they do in the stories. They can’t kill men. Mom, tell him. They can’t.”
&nb
sp; Mom shook her head.
Aristodeus rammed his sword into the ground and put his hands on his hips. “Erlstein did. I take it you’ve heard of him?”
He had. Erlstein was one of the greatest heroes of the Elect. He was the one who’d knocked out the Demiurgos’s tooth and turned it into an arrowhead that never missed its mark. He was the one who’d faced down a horde of dragon-riding devils with nothing more than a bone club.
Aristodeus seemed to read his thoughts and laughed. “Remind me to lecture on legends and their embellishment. For now, you’ll just have to trust me: Erlstein was a great luminary, in his own way, but he was indomitable and as ungiving as … well, as steel. Now, pick up your sword and let’s gauge your reflexes.”
As Deacon bent to retrieve his sword, Aristodeus whipped his own from the earth and came at him, batting him on the shin, and when Deacon turned away, slapping him on the buttocks so hard it hurt. Deacon stumbled and fell, but Aristodeus was on him in an instant, sword raised high as if for the killing blow.
Mom screamed, and Aristodeus whirled on her. “No! No, Gralia, you will not interfere! Now, make yourself useful, and go cook us up a meal. I’m sure we’ll both be famished by the time this is over.”
The sight of Mom’s terrified face, then of her obediently doing as she was commanded, filled Deacon with rage. He kicked out at the old man’s knee. As Aristodeus staggered back cursing, Deacon rolled across the grass, coming up with his sword. He swung it in a wild arc, but Aristodeus blocked it with casual disdain. Deacon hacked and stabbed and sliced and bludgeoned, but each attack was turned aside, as if the old man were out for a leisurely stroll.
“Good,” Aristodeus kept saying. “Good. Now all we need to do is channel the ire we’ve awoken. Who knows, if you’re everything I hope you are, a few years of this and you’ll stand a chance of winning.”
Deacon stopped, doubling over and panting heavily. “Winning what?”
“Why, the Sword of the Archon,” Aristodeus said. “Isn’t that every little boy’s dream?”
The old man’s eyes flared, and for a moment Deacon thought they reflected the light of the sun, but already another bank of cloud had rolled overhead and the day had been swallowed by a far too early dusk. When he looked again, flames swirled in Aristodeus’s eyes, and Deacon was drawn deeper into their depths. Shadows flickered in the blaze, and a terrible keening filled his head.
Suddenly, he was running through burning streets. Torrents of lava flowed in great walls to either side of him, and geysers of fire spouted high into a sky of acrid smoke. His skin was bubbling and blistering, and his lungs were filled with scorching fumes. Behind him, there was such screeching, as if all the souls of the damned were coming for him, coming to tear him to pieces. He pushed himself faster and faster, screaming at the leering horrors shambling from every twist and turn of the fiery maze. Must keep running! He told himself. Keep running.
* * *
City of Aeterna, heart of the Nousian Theocracy
Year of the Reckoning: 908
Shader woke with a start and flung the bedclothes back as if they were on fire. Sweat drenched the sheets beneath him, and his throat felt like he’d swallowed sand. Lots of sand. He must have been yelling in his sleep again. It was starting to become a problem.
He propped himself up on one elbow and groaned. Every muscle in his body protested, screamed at him to lie back down and stay there for a week. He screwed his eyes up against the stark light lancing through the louvered shutters. With a jolt of panic that he’d missed the final bout of the tournament, he stood, wincing at the cramp in his calves, and hobbled over to the window. Throwing wide the shutters, he blinked against the blaze of the sun, and bit by bit the skyline of Aeterna came into focus, an infinite panoply of domes and spires, columns and arches indistinguishable from those that had been reduced to rubble during the Reckoning. Every brick, every mosaic, every statue painstakingly restored to the greater glory of Nous at the bidding of his vicar on earth.
Down below, the piazza was awash with color as the red-robed Exempti processed from Luminary Tajen’s Basilica on the way to the Colosseum. There was still time, then, but not as much as he’d have liked. The preliminaries had taken it out of him. Not that he’d received even a scratch, but the footwork, the thrust, parry, slice, block took its toll on a body—and it wasn’t as if he was a young man anymore.
The dream still hovered on the edge of his consciousness. Seven. He’d been seven when Aristodeus had first sewn the seed that he might one day win the Sword of the Archon, and here he was now, thirty years on, finally within a bout of achieving just that. And for what? To make up for his failures in Sahul? To prove himself worthy of something after he’d given up all that he was, all that he had. First his adopted life at the abbey, where he’d found the inaction stifling, and the confinement a cauldron bringing all his flaws bubbling to the surface; and then the new Order he’d established for the youth of Oakendale in the wake of the mawg attacks—Nousian warriors in the mold of the Elect. He’d abandoned them. Left them to their own devices, and all for the sake of a woman who had cut him deep. All for Rhiannon. He grimaced. The thought of her rejection still chafed. Was that all this was about, really? Restoring his hurt pride? Wasn’t that the antithesis of the Nousian way?
Least he was consistent in that, he supposed, as he strapped on his sword belt and slipped his father’s longsword half out of the scabbard. It was nicked in a dozen places and badly in need of sharpening, but there hardly seemed much point. One more fight, and it could go back into retirement, same as it had the first time he went to Sahul, when he’d finally left the Seventh Horse and betrayed his vows to the Elect. He slammed it back in its scabbard.
He’d always known what this was about really. Prove to himself he could win the Archon’s sword. Prove he was the best of the best, and then give it all up for Nous. That is, if the monks at Pardes would have him back. He’d have plenty of time to think about that on the return voyage to Sahul. Plenty of time to lick his wounds if he lost, or to temper his pride if he won.
Somewhere outside, a dog barked, and Nub’s ugly face drifted up behind his eyes. Poor old Nub. He’d pretty much forgotten about the dog until the dreams had started, and maybe that was a good thing. Mom had praised him for the Nousian way he’d handled what had happened, but even now, when he thought about it, he still had that burning rage towards Brent. Chances are, if he saw the boy—man, now—he’d cut him down before he could stop himself. He gave a wry smile at that. It would make for one hell of a confession. Still, if he’d read the looks right between Mom and Father all those years ago, someone had paid for Nub’s death. Jarl Shader wouldn’t have been able to help himself. It was all about justice, in his book. He would never have gone after the boy, but Brent’s father would have been fair game.
He poured himself a glass of tepid water from the pitcher on the nightstand and plonked himself down on the bed to drink it. Every sip soothed his throat and cleared the cobwebs from his mind. He caught himself staring at the Monas on the far wall. It was a symbol he’d seen every day of his life—hell, it was even on his surcoat, embroidered in red—and yet he still wondered how it came to represent the son of Ain the Unknowable. It was vaguely man-shaped: a cross for a torso with stick arms and wavy legs. The head was a circle with a single eye at its center, and the whole was topped with a crown in the shape of a crescent moon. He knew the meaning of each aspect inside out, but something about the Monas had always nagged at him. He couldn’t say what it was, only that it felt … wrong.
He scoffed at that. There was nothing wrong with the Monas. Nothing wrong with Nous and his holy Templum. The problem was with him. Always had been. Jarl Shader had got it right all those years ago when he’d refused the faith, knowing he could never give up what he was. Shader shook his head and finished off the water. He’d given it his best shot, fought the holy wars in the black forests of Verusia, sent hundreds of Nous’s enemies back to the Abyss that spawned them, an
d yet he’d never once felt like he was doing Nous’s will.
A knock at the door saved him from wallowing deeper in a past he’d sooner have forgotten. He set down the glass and pulled his hair back into a ponytail as he stood.
“Come,” he called as he took his greatcoat from its hook and shrugged it on.
The door opened a crack, and then, as if gaining confidence, a few inches; and then a hand appeared on the jamb, followed by a broad-browed face with ears an elephant would have been envious of.
“Magister!” Shader said. “I wondered if you’d come.”
“No need for you to call me that any longer,” Adeptus Ludo said, rounding the edge of the door. “It’s been more years than I care to remember since you had to endure my classes.” He straightened his black and purple cassock and beamed.
Shader had forgotten just how huge the man was; even with his stooped stance, the result of sixty plus years of study, his old theology master towered above him, and Shader was a tall man by any measure.
Ludo raised his bushy brows high above his spectacles. “Widow’s peak. I knew it! You hide it well under that hat of yours, old friend.”
Shader smiled and took the hat from its peg, tugging the brim low. “Keeps the sun out of my eyes, Adeptus. Every little advantage…”
Ludo came all the way in and shut the door behind him. “You’ll need all the help you can get against my man Galen.”
Shader had watched Galen coming up through the rounds. He had some skill, it’s true, but his main asset was brawn; that and a self-belief bordering on arrogance. “Galen’s yours?”
“My warden, and I must say I’m glad of it. Oh, it’s a new thing they brought in since you left. Dangerous times to be a priest, my friend. The hand of Sahul reaches further with every passing year.”
“You don’t believe that,” Shader said. “The Templum’s always needed an enemy outside of Nousia. Keeps the masses from focusing too closely on the politics at home.”
Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels Page 128
