Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

Heden watched at Brys and Isobel and realization dawned. He loved her. He loved her for who knew how long, and she had sworn the vow of Chastity.

  Taethan walked up behind them. They didn’t notice him at first. All eyes were on Lady Isobel. She turned and saw Taethan, held her hands out in front of her, pleading.

  “What have I done?” Lady Isobel asked him.

  Taethan looked at her with naked fury. His fists clenched. His teeth bared.

  Everyone looked between Lady Isobel, shattered and confused, and Sir Taethan, the perfect knight, a tower of rage. Something was happening. Something Heden didn’t understand. All the knights were watching Taethan, and Taethan’s anger was directed indiscriminately.

  He looked from one knight to the other, and then down at the forms of Idris and Sir Dywel, the weasel, cradling the dead knight’s head in his lap and rocking back and forth.

  Speaking to the knights, he hissed. “Nikros and Cyrvis have your bones,” and he turned and strode into the priory.

  “What will he do?” Cadwyr asked. Dywel was sobbing, Idris’ dead face looking up at him, unseeing.

  Brys and Isobel stared at each other. His need was evident, but she could see no way to bridge the gap. She seemed helpless.

  Taethan came out of the priory and, ignoring the knights and Heden, turned and walked north into the forest. He carried his shield, his sword and his spear.

  Heden looked at the knights, watched Taethan disappear into the forest, and ran to the melee where he’d left his pack.

  He scooped the pack up as he ran past, slung it over one shoulder, and ran into the forest after Taethan.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Heden jogged into the forest after Taethan. He couldn’t see the knight and soon had run so far into the wode that he was beginning to get disoriented. The trees were massive, primordial things. The ground was thick with dead leaves and ferns and vines and bushes. The sun was up there, somewhere above the canopy of leaves, but Heden couldn’t orient on it.

  He heard a noise behind him and turned. Taethan had stepped out from behind a tree. A tree Heden had just ran past. Where had he been standing?

  “You should stay at the priory,” the knight said. The knight appeared melancholic. Haunted.

  Heden looked around, as though maybe Taethan was talking to someone else.

  Before Heden could respond, Taethan turned, walked straight into the tree, and disappeared.

  Heden cursed and then spoke a prayer. The same prayer that granted him speed and strength with Aderyn. He looked around sharply. He couldn’t see the sun, and so relied on his sense of direction. Turning to face what he believed was west, and therefore in the direction of the urq army, Heden ran as fast as he could.

  The knight was trying to lose him, but Heden was no acolyte. Heden made a lot of noise but covered a lot of ground.

  He stopped, catching his breath, leaning against a tree. He looked around. Taethan could be behind him, in front of him. Could have gone in another direction entirely. Heden could, in fact, be getting himself lost. There was no way to know.

  He was considering whether to pray for guidance, or continue running when Taethan stepped out of a tree ahead of him. He heard Heden breathing heavily behind him, and turned to see the Arrogate leaning against a tree.

  He paid Heden the compliment of looking surprised.

  Heden was gasping, but pointed at the knight.

  “You kicked me out of the priory,” Heden said.

  The knight recovered from his surprise and looked on Heden with something like pity. This annoyed him.

  “The keep then,” Taethan said. “You may do some good there.”

  The knight turned and walked back into the tree.

  This time would be harder. Heden knew he was going west, trying to intercept the army of urmen. Heden began running again. There was no sound in the forest but his breathing and his boots crunching leaf and branch beneath them.

  This time, calculating the range of Taethan’s ability, Heden stopped and looked around, trying to guess which, if any, tree Taethan would emerge from.

  He didn’t hear a noise behind him, rather he heard the sudden and suspicious absence of noise. Taethan had probably never met a professional thief, and so did not know the difference.

  Heden turned. He’d overshot by forty feet or so. Sir Taethan was standing before the tree he’d just emerged from. He managed to look annoyed at Heden and regal at the same time. Heden hated knights.

  “The people at the keep,” Heden said, breathing heavily. “Are going to die whether I’m there or not. The smart ones have already left.”

  “Home then” Taethan said, and closed the distance across the forest floor, stepping easily among the roots and ferns. “You hate the forest. You hate us. Sirs Perren and Idris are dead and Commander Kavalen death cannot be absolved,” Heden’s eyes flashed at this. Who killed him? “There is nothing for you to do here.”

  Heden found it easy to agree with the Knight. That was frustrating.

  Taethan turned and walked into the tree.

  “Black gods,” Heden said wearily and ran off west again.

  The knight wasn’t making any better time than Heden, he was using a prayer granted him by Halcyon to thwart Heden’s attempts to follow him. Heden had to bet that Taethan didn’t really want to lose him, just wanted to test him. If he really wanted to lose him he could double back, or step out of a tree a thousand paces north or south and Heden would never find him again.

  This time, Heden stopped at a tree much larger than its brothers. He put his hands on his knees and bent over. His lungs burned.

  Taethan walked directly out of the tree and came up short when he almost ran into Heden. He pursed his lips and rested his forearm on the hilt of his sword, looking expectantly at Heden.

  “And anyway,” Heden said, recovering from his run. “You could use the help against the urq. Everyone talks about the Green like you’re already saints, but I don’t believe it. It still takes more than one man to stop an army.”

  Taethan looked at him and wondered what to do with this former priest.

  “I do not know what one can do against Kadakav and Pakadrask,” Taethan said. Heden didn’t know who he meant, but he knew who he meant. “But two cannot do much more.”

  He wasn’t trying to get away, so Heden acted like he had him cornered.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Heden said. “Everyone told me ‘talk to Taethan,’ so you get the prize either way.”

  “Lucky me.”

  Heden betrayed surprise at hearing him use so modern a phrase.

  “Why just the two of us?” Heden forwarded. He stood up, recovered from his sprint across the forest. “Tell me what happened to Kavalen. Help me speak the ritual. You can lead the order…”

  Taethan grimaced at this, like he tasted something sour.

  “Or Brys, or even Isobel,” he said. “I don’t care! Tell me what happened,” Heden was almost pleading. “And I can absolve the order, speak the ritual and you can stop the urmen. The five of you could do it.”

  Taethan shook his head. “I no longer know the difference between guilt and innocence,” he said. “I cannot tell if we are all guilty, or none of us.”

  “Tell me and I’ll figure it out. I’m good at it.”

  Taethan shook his head.

  “I go to stop the urq,” Taethan said. “I will find my answer there.”

  “Balls,” Heden said. This visibly offended Taethan. Heden understood what he meant. He would test himself against their army. Typical knightly behavior. If he was innocent, he would triumph.

  “You’ll just die like anyone else and you’ll get me killed with you.”

  Taethan peered down at him with something approaching suspicion.

  “Would you die to save the people of Ollghum Keep?” Taethan wondered. It seemed the knight was asking the question rhetorically. Weighing the idea to himself.

  Heden shook his head. “Stupid question. If we die, they die anyway. That
kind of solution is no solution. I reject it,” it was hard for Heden to keep the venom out of his voice. “But I’d fight with you to save them.”

  Taethan looked at him with naked respect.

  “Don’t look so honored,” Heden said. “I’m not here to die valiantly; I’d fight with anyone if I thought we had a chance.”

  “Because you wish to kill many urq,” Taethan suggested. “This is not unusual, many men feel the same way. It comes naturally to them.”

  Heden shook his head again. “No,” he said, it wasn’t a response. It was an order. He pointed to the knight. “I hate killing. It sickens me. Especially urmen.”

  “You would prefer to kill men?” Taethan asked, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

  Heden shook his head. “I prefer to save people from doing something awful. The urq are driven. It’s in their blood, they were made that way. Men have a choice. If they choose evil, well that’s to people like you then. You’re welcome to it. I walked that road for thirteen years, I’m sick of it. But sometimes they have no choice. That’s where I come in.”

  Taethan nodded. “Lady Isobel thought more highly of you when she learned you were an Arrogate than when she thought you were a Prelate.”

  “She’s a romantic. It’s awful. She was right when she said it destroyed people.”

  “It has not destroyed you.”

  “I’m bloody-minded,” Heden said, sneering.

  Taethan frowned and looked at Heden’s beaten iron grey breastplate, a dull contrast to Taethan’s emerald-tinged gleaming plate. He seemed to make a decision and started walking, not disappearing into a tree.

  Heden moved to keep up with him.

  They walked through the forest, keeping a brisk pace but not running. Taethan looking ahead, never making a misstep. Heden had to keep his head down to avoid turning his ankle on an exposed root or catching his boots on a grasping vine.

  After several minutes of this, Heden broke the silence.

  “What happened to make you drop the cant?” Heden asked.

  Taethan didn’t respond.

  “Knights have died before, it’s the Mauvan Wode by Cyrvis’ thorny prick, it must chew through knights like bread. So don’t tell me it’s because Kavalen died. It’s how he died. Or why. Which is it?”

  Taethan didn’t respond. Heden remembered that Aderyn said Taethan wouldn’t tell him any more than the other knights.

  “The whole order is trying to kill itself and they act like you’re the only one who can stop it. Why?”

  “Why do you hate knights, Heden?” Taethan asked, as though not having heard anything Heden had said.

  Okay, Heden thought. He couldn’t force Taethan to answer his questions.

  “I’ve never met one who wasn’t a power-mad self-obsessed braggart.”

  Taethan raised his eyebrows at this and looked at the man.

  “Indeed? Not a one?”

  Heden glanced up at him and then back down to the forest floor. “I was going to say I hadn’t made up my mind about you, but then I remembered where we were going.” It was just like a knight to attempt an army of urq just to prove a point.

  “Mmm,” Taethan said.

  Heden looked around. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but Taethan’s cryptic response made him think.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Taethan, maddeningly, kept his mouth shut.

  “This is north. We’re headed north, the urq aren’t this way.”

  No answer.

  They walked briskly. Occasionally breaking into a trot or speeding up to hop over some thick undergrowth.

  After half a turn, Taethan said; “Lady Isobel killed Sir Idris.” He spoke the words like he was noting the time of day.

  “She murdered him,” Heden corrected, chewing the word off. Taethan didn’t dispute his choice of words.

  “And now she is no longer a knight,” Taethan said.

  “I know: I saw her hair. I watched it happen.”

  Taethan said nothing. Heden realized something was expected of him.

  “I don’t know why she did what she did,” Heden said. “No one will tell me anything. But if you’re asking what I would do,” Heden thought for a moment. Trying to find an answer that didn’t sound like a betrayal.

  “I’d find a way to redeem her.”

  “And if it had been Idris who dealt the killing blow?”

  “Same answer,” Heden replied without hesitation.

  “Something’s going on here,” he said, thinking furiously. Wishing someone smarter was here. Wishing for Elzpeth’s intellect or the abbot’s insight. “Something’s driving you people to some horrible extreme. You’re all living in some kind of nightmare.” Heden remembered Perren’s twisted lifeless face, the vines growing out of it. “But it’s not the real world. It’s something you’ve created for yourself out of pain and fear and you don’t know how to get out.”

  He said it quickly, before the idea could get away. He was out of breath when he finished and breathed deeply afterwards. That sounded good, he thought. All that time with the abbot, not wasted.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he said, not thinking, but realizing it as he said it. “I’m here to get you out of this.”

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “That’s not good news for you, by the way,” Heden explained. “That’s called the blind leading the blind.” Heden wondered again where they were going. They were miles north now.

  Taethan glanced at him and kept walking, saying nothing.

  “Yours is a fell insight, Heden.”

  “How do you know my name?” he shot back. He’d asked the question back at the priory and gotten no answer but a metaphorical boot up his backside.

  “I prayed to Halcyon,” Taethan said. As far as Heden could tell, it was the first straight answer he’d given.

  “That’s how you knew about my father,” Heden said. Taethan had spoken personally about Heden’s father back at the priory in a way that made it seem like Taethan had met him.

  “I’d forgotten about her,” Heden said. “She told you I was coming.”

  “She told me a great many things.”

  “Oh.” Heden said drolly. “Good.”

  “She told me you were more lost than I,” he said.

  “Well that’s a matter of opinion,” Heden bit back.

  “She told me you were possessed by fear and pain. She said you couldn’t survive in the forest anymore. Your memories take hold of you and unman you. I asked what could do that to a man and she told me about Elemein and Parlance. And a man named Stewart Antilles.”

  “You didn’t know them,” Heden growled. He had to restrain himself, his instinct was to violence. He felt the memory of people he loved had just been desecrated. But Taethan continued smoothly.

  “I could tell she was keeping something from me, something darker than death. But she would say no more on that matter.”

  Heden kept pace with the knight.

  “What else did Halcyon tell you?”

  “She told me you and I are the same,” Taethan confessed, and it was clear the idea worried him.

  “Well that’s horseshit,” Heden said.

  “That was my reaction as well.” Taethan said. “Though, of course, not in those words.”

  “But now that you’ve met me,” Heden asked, trying to smile like Gwiddon.

  Taethan stopped suddenly. Heden smelled moisture in the air and the sound of birdsong was suddenly very loud.

  Taethan was a head taller than Heden and looked at him with open judgment.

  “Now I’m certain it’s horseshit,” the knight said.

  Heden barked a laugh.

  Chapter Forty

  “Where are we?” Heden asked.

  They had walked out of the forest and stood at the edge of a huge lake that stretched before them like the mirror of a vain god. There was no distinct shoreline, the forest just stopped, and the lake began. It was so big, the fare shore disap
peared into the line of trees beyond. It was miles across. To the east, he saw a fawn drinking from the water. Picking its head up regularly to look for predators. It took no note of the two humans.

  Flies buzzed above the lake and fish occasionally broke the surface trying to gulp them down. The water rippled slightly as the wind caught it, but was otherwise still.

  “This is the center of our demesne,” Taethan said, and walked until he was standing ankle deep in the water. “We are still hundreds of miles south of the center of the Wode. But for us, this is the heart of the forest. It is sacred to us. All the Wode knows this is our holiest of places, more so than the priory, and none would disturb us here.”

  “Alright,” Heden said, accepting this. “So what?”

  “I wanted to see it once more before I died,” Taethan said, and looked out over the water as though in prayer. His face sparkled with reflected silver light.

  “Black gods,” Heden said. “You’re not making this easy for me.” Taethan looked to him quizzically.

  “Aderyn said talk to you. I thought it was because you knew who murdered Kavalen. But I don’t think she knows what happened. Brys says ‘talk to Taethan’ and I figured you murdered Kavalen to save the order. Then I got it from Idris and his two idiots, Isobel and Nudd with the three fingers,” he said holding up the three fingers in mocking imitation, “and by the time you showed up I was so sick of all of them I was willing to believe you were the only innocent person in the whole forest.”

  Taethan turned back to the lake as though ignoring Heden.

  “I don’t know what you’re guilty of,” Heden said. “But you’re guilty of something. It’s killing you. I know the signs.”

  “I am sorry that you are a part of this, Heden.”

  “What?” Heden asked. Taethan was deflecting so much Heden was off-balance.

  “I believe you when you say you would stand alone against the urq for the sake of the people of Ollghum Keep, if you thought there was a chance.”

  “Well,” Heden said uncomfortable. “I’m still a…a servant of Cavall, I….”

  “But moreover I do not believe you when you say you hate knights. Hate the order.”

  “You don’t,” Heden said.