by Tim Mathias
Osmun scratched his chin and looked from his feet up to the top of the Xidian monument. The morning sun was obscured by grey clouds which it struggled to penetrate. He was closer to the truth, but what were the clerics expecting him to do? Did they want him to pursue the truth of the shadow against the grain of their skepticism? He could not imagine that all they wanted was deference to their judgment, that he would agree with them unchallenged and admit that he had seen nothing.
The minutes became hours as he sat outside the Cathedral. Thunder sounded the promise of rain in the distance, and it was not until the first drops began to fall that he knew exactly what he must do.
Osmun went back to the monastery for the night, and he drifted in and out of sleep, the echo of the dark voice troubling him still. When he did sleep he dreamt of the trial, and the many voices. And the one. He awoke hardly feeling rested at all.
“Finish this,” he whispered to himself as he slowly rose from bed. “Finish the trial and the voice will trouble you no more.”
He dressed in his robes and made his way from the dormitory to the monastery’s library. The few bookcases seemed so small and sparse to him after he had seen the library within the Cathedral, but it was a good enough place to start, and not so much for the books themselves but for the monastery’s curator, Brother Nestor.
Well into his sixtieth year of service to the church, Nestor spent much of his time – as much as he could – reading any old book he could, scribbling notes to himself as he went. He had been a historian in his younger years, and the habits he had formed in that time were still with him. In reality, he had never stopped doing their work, always looking for inconsistencies within the volumes of the annals in need of correction. Osmun hoped that Nestor could impart something useful, even if unintentionally. In his old age, Nestor loved to recount stories from his youth at any opportunity, so much so that it seemed to Osmun that it was just so he could prove to himself that he still remembered. Even so, Osmun knew he would need to navigate these waters carefully.
Nestor was, predictably, at a table, hunched over a stack of parchment. A quill in his right hand scribbled words on a separate sheet, almost on its own. The curator’s attention was undisturbed until Osmun cleared his throat. He looked up from the stack of parchment, his eyes nearly bloodshot from hours of reading. He squinted at Osmun and brushed his white, wispy hair from his eyes.
“Brother Osmun.” Nestor gave him a quick smile before turning back to his book. “Is there something I can help you find?” His face was mere inches from the page.
“There is something, though I doubt it will be in one of the books.”
“Ah, something important, by the tone of your voice.”
“Perhaps, though to be honest, I’m not sure. Perhaps, perhaps not.”
Nestor put down the quill, shook the stiffness from his hand and rubbed his eyes before turning in his chair to face Osmun. The priest continued: “It’s something of an afterthought, I’m afraid, from a few months ago when I was in Ellsland .”
Nestor nodded. “Yes, yes, lots of work to do there, I hear. I never went there myself, but I remember when they became part of the Empire. That was… how long… twenty years ago? I remember hearing from priests and clerics about the rifts there. Numerous and frequent. And we’re still sending priests there? Very unusual that we would need to after all this time, wouldn’t you say?”
“It is a troubled land.” Osmun nodded in agreement.
Nestor chuckled. “Troubled. Yes, that’s one way, a very kind way of saying it. Some say cursed. But no difference to the church, I suppose. If there’s work to be done, we’ll do our duty, won’t we?” Nestor reached for a cup on his table and eyed it disappointedly. “Would you be good enough to fetch me green tea from the store room? I’m all out and when I go myself I usually end up getting the wrong leaves.”
“Of course,” Osmun said. Nestor was not shy or embarrassed to tell others of his colour blindness.
“Wonderful,” he said. “We’ll call it a trade, then. So, what questions bring you to me?”
“It was from a few months ago, so please forgive me if I can’t recall everything with perfect clarity.” Osmun scratched his head as if he had trouble remembering. “Have you heard of any instance… or, perhaps you may have heard one of the historians mention something… of a spirit that acted as though it was… aware?”
Nestor pushed himself up from the chair. His limbs were as wispy as the hair on his head, and he leaned on Osmun as he stood. “Well, every spirit is aware, Brother Osmun, as you know. Only dimly aware of the living world, and therefore, likely dimly aware of us in it. But you know this, of course.”
“Of course,” Osmun agreed.
“So you must mean something different altogether.”
“It was not a vague awareness, Brother Nestor. It was very acute. Very specific. It had… deliberate focus.”
Nestor squinted at the young priest. “Is this something one of the other priests in Ellsland told you?” Nestor paused. “Or did you experience this yourself?” Osmun was hoping he would not need to answer this question, and his hesitation must have been obvious.Nestor nodded. “I see. What else happened, Brother Osmun? What else did you see? Tell me everything.”
Osmun told him as much as he could, nearly every detail, except he transposed the event to Ellsland. He did not want to mention the trial or the involvement of the two clerics should those facts taint Nestor’s answer.
“How certain are you of this?” Nestor asked after a long pause. “Is there any way you are ascribing traits or behaviours that perhaps were not being exhibited?”
“There was nothing ambiguous about what I saw. It spoke to me, as certainly and as plainly as I am speaking to you.”
Nestor turned and paced, unsteadily. He muttered to himself for a moment, waiving his hand in the air as if orating. “No,” he said, stopping suddenly. “I have not heard of such a thing. It kept you in place, you say… Quite troubling.”
“I told this to one of the other priests. He thought I was seeing things. Or lying.”
“It could certainly seem that way. Quite unusual that no one mentioned something similar. Quite troubling, I think. You’re not lying, are you?”
Osmun shook his head slowly. Nestor patted him on the arm.
“No, I know you aren’t. Do you know how I know?”
Osmun shrugged.
Nestor smiled. “Because I’m far too intimidating to be lied to.” The old historian chuckled to himself, and the laugh then became a cough. Osmun helped him back into his chair.
“So you believe me? You don’t think I’m seeing things?”
Nestor breathed deeply as he cleared his throat and gave Osmun a strange look.
“Seeing things? No, no. Not in the least. Had you thought that of yourself?”
“What I saw was nearly… impossible to comprehend.”
“Comprehension has nothing to do with your senses. Do we comprehend what a bird says when it sings? Of course we don’t, but we hear it all the same. It’s not possible that your senses were fooled.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Ryfe said so himself. It is written in the Recounting.”
Osmun’s mind raced through the passages of the holy book written by the Beacon himself, but there was no passage he could think of that spoke to this. Nestor noticed Osmun’s confusion.
“You’ve let your studies lapse, Brother Osmun. You don’t know the passage? You ought to, being one who communes…”
Osmun still searched… nothing.
“You need to have a more critical eye, it seems!” Nestor said, pleased as he always was to best someone with his intellect. “It’s actually two passages, in two different doctrines. The first would be…”
“First doctrine, second thesis. What he said about speaking with phantoms.”
Nestor smiled. “Good! Yes, that’s good. He was the first with the ability to commune, so he knew that most people could not
see what you see when you commune, or speak with phantoms, as it were.”
“But the second thesis is only what he wrote about the ability to see the Beyond, it says nothing about…”
“You’re only scratching the surface, Brother Osmun,” Nestor interrupted. “The truths of the Beacon go deeper than their obvious meaning. He said that the spirits that haunt our world deceive us.”
“They deceive…” Osmun opened and closed his hand as he thought. “They deceive those who cannot see them, those who are not aware.”
“Which means…”
“Which means that those who see them are not deceived.”
Nestor smiled, pleased at having guided Osmun to the conclusion. “He had a way of teaching two things by saying only one.”
“It’s something of a reach,” Osmun said.
“Perhaps by itself, but the second passage is from the first thesis of the third doctrine. Xidius said, ‘Follow me and know the truth of the world, and be saved from its evils.’”
“He was referring to the first two doctrines and the formation of the church.”
“Yes he was, but he was speaking to someone in that passage – Anson Marinus, his first disciple, and the first person who later learned from Xidius himself how to commune. Marinus followed him, and by communing, came to know the truth of the world, as Xidius said.”
Osmun was speechless.
“When you get to be my age,” Nestor said, “you spend much of your time reading. And thinking. And reading and thinking some more. It helps pass the time. Takes your mind off of your aching body.” He chuckled again.
For a moment, Osmun felt relief, until the realization set in that he was not being deceived, could not be deceived, and the fear that he felt during the trial returned, reinvigorated and more certain than before.
Chapter 5
Lying on his back, Zayd saw the first hints of daylight through half-open eyes. It gave shape to the trees and an end to the night in which he ran, unconstrained and unconcerned. The trees looked familiar. It took him a moment to realize that this was the place he ran to when he was young: a black oak, centuries old, perched next to the top of a small waterfall. The branches of the tree stretched up and out, waiting for Zayd to perch upon them as if they were showing him the surrounding landscape, holding him in their palm. He ran for an hour or more to get there. The tree, the land, the offered view all belonged to him.
It was a shock, then, when he clambered up the tree one day, to be knocked down from the very first branch. Winded and confused, he heard laughing and thought it was the tree.
Until he saw her.
She was straddling the arm of the tree and covering her mouth, hardly able to control her laughter.
“I thought I saw you at the well as I left,” Zayd said as he got to his feet.
“You did,” Symm replied.
“Have you learned to fly, then?”
She nodded. “Just yesterday. A bird told me.” She laughed.
“How did you really beat me here? Tell me.” Zayd made his way to the branch she was on and started to climb again, but she placed her foot squarely on his chest.
“Being the fastest isn’t everything.”
“Of course it is,” Zayd said. They stared at each other, stern-faced and still, until Zayd cracked a grin. “So now you’re faster and you can stare me down.”
Symm smiled and nodded. “Remember it.” She lowered her foot so he could climb up. He sat beside her, and for a while she did not look at him, instead looking out over the waterfall and the river below, a sight that Zayd had enjoyed many times alone.
Now, though, it was especially beautiful.
He was about to ask her again how she had beaten him to the tree, but she rested her head on his shoulder just as he opened his mouth, so he said nothing.
He was silent for a long time.
There was a feeling of sadness, as there always was, as he woke fully and left the memory behind. Zayd was visited by memories of that kind too frequently, and as he neared the end of his service in the army, the sadness he felt began to grow in its intensity like a flame struggling for air. If only he could stay in that blissful state of half-sleep, he could pretend he was already home.
Perhaps that particular dream had been brought on by the night march. Leading the column on foot, there were moments when he could not hear anything but his own breath. It was in those moments he forgot the hundreds behind him.
They had gone six miles before they found a suitable place to make camp – a clearing that one of Tascell’s men had found. Talazz dragged several fallen trees to barricade the road on either side of the camp right before he fell asleep and began snoring loudly.
“What is this?” The voice startled Zayd as he stood up.
It was Stern.
The knight wore only the clothes he had slept in, and while the ornate armour he wore normally concealed his build, he was almost more daunting now, his chest and arms taught, threatening to explode into violence. He pointed straight at the ground where Zayd had drawn his sigil in the dirt.
“Did you hear me? What is it?” Stern shouted. Only then did Zayd hear the voices, distressed and angered, coming from somewhere further away in the camp. He looked, over tents and through trees, and he could see a crowd forming.
“What’s happening?” Zayd asked. He took a step, but Barrett shoved him backward with one hand, almost knocking him over.
“I think I know what this is,” Barrett said. “Some kind of hex. Worshipping your false gods is forbidden. Have you forgotten?”
Zayd tried to walk past again, but Barrett moved in front of him. Zayd glanced down at the ground where his blade rested beside his bedroll. Barrett saw that, too.
“Go ahead. Pick it up. Show everyone what I already know. You and all your kind, you’re liars and cowards. False allies.” Barrett’s fists were clenched tight. “Pick it up. Or don’t you have the damned spine for it?”
Alain Tullus approached and, as he neared, cast a long glance between Zayd and Barrett before he spoke. “Go see Areagus.”
“Gladly,” Barrett grumbled.
“No, Barrett. Not you.”
The expression on Stern’s face brought Zayd some satisfaction as he walked past him.
“There is a problem.” Areagus stood with his arms crossed. There was no one else in the commander’s tent other than Zayd. “A very… a very serious problem.” Zayd knew that the commander had slept for, at most, three hours after the march. Despite this, the pause in his speaking was the only sign that he was even slightly fatigued.
“There was another death last night,” Areagus continued. “Lucius Willock. A corporal from Lycernum, from what I’m told.”
“What happened? How did he die?”
“We’re still not sure,” Areagus said. “It doesn’t appear that there was a struggle, so he may have died in his sleep.” The commander turned and walked to a small table and took a piece of dried fruit from a half-empty plate. “Some of the men believe he was suffocated.”
“Why would they assume that, sir?”
“Willock was friends with Perrin. He was there when Perrin was killed by your kinsman.”
“Not my kinsman, commander.”
Areagus waved his hand. “Very well. Countryman, as you’ll have it. Willock wrestled the bloody blade from Renton’s hand. I’m sure you now share my concern. This looks like one of your men taking revenge.”
“No, sir,” Zayd said.
Areagus raised his eyebrows. “You disagree, captain?”
“It looks that way if you want it to look that way. Sir.”
“So what would you suggest happened?” Areagus sat down at the table and crossed his arms.
“He could have been ill, sir.”
“He was hardly at death’s door. There is no evidence to suggest that.”
“And there is no evidence to suggest he was murdered.”
Areagus exhaled. “You’re being obstinate, Zayd. I did not call
you here to accuse you or your men. Whatever the truth is, a conclusion has already been reached by some of the men, and by midday it will be a good deal more that agree with them.” The commander stood and walked back over to Zayd. “You need to be cautious. These scouts of yours… do you really know them?”
“Yes, commander,” Zayd said. It was a lie in service of the truth. Most of them he knew only by name, but he was confident that none of them would do something so foolish.
Areagus nodded slowly before sticking his finger in Zayd’s chest. “Then keep them under control. You’re dismissed.”
Zayd saluted and turned to leave. Areagus spoke again before he had even taken a step. “If it is one of yours that’s done this and you fail to report him to me, I’m holding you responsible for Willock’s death.”
He felt dozens of eyes on him as he left the command tent, so he looked ahead, not bothering to meet the stares of the fearful and angry. He kept his hands from balling up tightly. It would accomplish nothing to show them his own anger, he knew, since it would only make him more isolated. These were his brothers in arms, after all. Brothers in faith. He would feel the same, were he a Trueborn. He thought of Cassian, and it calmed him to know that his son would not suffer as he had. Cassian could live like any Trueborn.
Zayd made his way back to his gear and began to ready himself for the march ahead. Areagus would likely address the soldiers before the march began in hopes of dissuading any thoughts of reprisals against the Tauthri, and he hoped they would listen to the commander’s reasoning, though part of him doubted they would. They were soldiers, fresh from the victory of a newer foe, now sharing the glory with an older one.
Two forms blocked the morning sun – Tascell and Daruthin, followed by the nine other Tauthri. All of them wore their leather armour, and all were armed with either a sword or bow.
