The White Tree

by Edward W. Robertson

  "The rebels don't stand a chance." Dante chuckled. They were silent for a while. "He'll be fine," he said, mind on all the weeks that had gone by since they'd last seen him. All the southlands had been under threat of fire when they'd left that world behind. "We'll see to that."

  In the ethereal dawn hours before Samarand's sermon they walked to the bay at the north edge of the city and gazed out at the subdued waters of the northern sea. Gray, brackish on the breeze, calmed by the sandbars at the bay's mouth and the arms of land to either side.

  "How many men can say they've seen both this and the Aster?" Blays said, kicking rocks through the fine dirt of the beach.

  "I'm glad we came," Dante said, uncertain what he meant. The sun struggled against the mists of the waters, cloaked and concealed. He wished he could have watched it rise one last time.

  They arrived some three hours before the sermon. Already the streets were thick with people. Men in rags with strips of burlap tied around their feet, men in finery to shame Dante and Blays' new clothes, passels of boisterous merchants whose rings shone in the sunlight. Norren loomed above the crowd like the Cathedral of Ivars above the dead city. Dante shifted the sword at his belt. Robert's warning about the curiosity of foreigners had cowed him into asking no questions about the legality of bearing arms in this place, but they'd seen many men in the streets who wore blades without worry, including men of obvious lowness and poverty, and this day was no different. He supposed a couple thousand years of constant invasion had made lax the laws of arms so strict in Bressel.

  Dante's nerves felt as tight as the morning before the Execution That Wasn't. He sipped often from his water skin and halfway wished he had something stronger. The boys spoke little, eyes on the crowds, eyes on the men standing post on the walls above the keep's great gate. An hour before noon they entered the cathedral. Half full already and still the streets were packed. They returned outdoors, restless and beware, ambling down the broad way, then leaned against the side of the thick walls of the house of some noble estate. The shield above its gate wore the black and white of Barden and the same spiral horns Dante still wore around his neck. He'd seen other men wearing them, too, men dressed in the plain and frill-less clothes of traders who profit too little to ever stop for festivals and feasts, but he had no idea what the horns meant to those who saw them, whether they were doing him any good to wear them.

  Noon came. The bells of the cathedral pealed for three full minutes. The crowd quieted, then heaved with the volatile energy of anticipation, eyes on the silent gates. The last bell rang and wavered in the cold, crisp air. One moment slipped by, then another.

  The groan of ropes and clank of chains cut through the babble. They hushed as if commanded by the earth itself. Guards emerged from a small door by the gate and helped guide the huge gates apart. Behind them a grille of iron bands as thick as Dante's arm lifted a final foot and locked into place. A stream of footmen bearing swords and short pikes and dressed in the black and silver of the watch of Narashtovik marched from the walls of the Citadel to the street, carving an open lane to the doors of the church. They assembled into two solid lines, arms presented, chins lifted, heads held immobile as a small retinue of fancy-dressed men and clergy in soft, thick-folded robes entered into the open space. A chant thrummed through the silence, a foreign song shot through with grace and loss and renewal. Dante stood on his toes and at the center of the procession he saw a woman in a silver-trimmed black robe that clung to the swing of her arms and the sweep of her legs. Her open face was aged but not worn; rather than the crumbling edifice of something that had once been grand, her features looked like the accumulation of a strength that could only be built through long years, the way a cathedral as eternal as Ivars could only be built by two or three or five generations of architects devoting their lives to its completion. A single black braid ran down her back. Dante heard Blays draw in his breath. Her name rippled through the crowd.

  "Straight from the keep," Blays said, low. Dante nodded.

  "Right out in the open."

  The men from the keep moved with formal deliberance. None looked younger than forty; most much older, bearing varying degrees of beardedness and baldness, walking on knees and hips stiffened by the clutch of time. A single norren walked with them with ponderous strides. Ninety seconds spent crossing the street, no more, and then they walked through the same cathedral doors as everyone else would. When the last priest had disappeared from the street the castle guard turned as one and filed back through the Citadel gates, leaving behind a small detachment of troops, half of which followed the retinue of clergymen within while the other half split itself to posts on either side of the church doors. The crowd woke from the spell of having looked on something holy and piled up through the doors. Elbows jostled Dante's ribs and back. Blays clung to the back of his cloak to keep from being separated. They squeezed inside and after that crush of people the soaring interior of the cathedral felt as open as the head of a hill.

  Seated to either side of the dais at the great hall's rear were the monks and priests of Samarand's detachment. She was nowhere to be seen, though through the close-pressed masses and the shaggy heads of norren and the faint smoke of candles and braziers she could have been standing at Dante's shoulder without him having the wits to notice.

  By habit and instinct as deeply felt as the drive that calls sea-salmon to take to the rivers and streams of their birth, the men with fine dress and tongue-tripping titles had settled in the benches at the front, and like the striations of rock the boys had seen in the shelves of the Dunden Mountains, the men and women who filled the temple grew progressively grubbier the closer they got to the front doors. Blays said something Dante couldn't catch. He tugged Dante's cloak and they slipped off to the right, cutting through the relatively loose crowds that filled the space between the solid clumps of men lining the alcoves and the clustered masses toward the church's center. After a minute of rubbed shoulders and dirty looks their fresh clothes matched those of the men around them. They stopped roughly two-thirds of the way toward the altar, perhaps eighty feet from where Samarand would speak. It would have been impossible to fire a bow within these person-choked confines.

  Blays leaned toward Dante's ear. "So this is the part where they make us wait to remind us just whom Arawn loves most, right?"

  "Lots of guards out front," Dante said.

  "Lot of crowd, too. That could help."

  "Yeah." Dante rested his hand on the pommel of his sword and wondered how many of the priests up on that altar could channel the nether. He could sense it, he thought. Power like a gaping chasm. When he narrowed his eyes he thought he could see the shadows hovering around them. Perhaps it was just his eyelashes. He giggled, covered his mouth. Seconds birthed and died as the masses waited and he found himself strangely awed by the precision of time, ever revolving, matched with the undeviating courses of the sun and the moon and the five roving planets and the backdrop of the stars. Perhaps these believers were right; something so regular could only exist through the glory of the gods of the Celeset.

  The crowd inhaled as one. There she was, alone at the center of the dais, materializing as if she'd always been there. Her hands were folded in front of her stomach. Despite her robes, Dante could tell she was a thinnish woman, possessing no more body than was necessary for the discharge of her responsibilities. He had a clearer look at her face, both plain as a farmer's wife and unadornedly magnificent as the standing stones of the long-dead people they'd seen in the hills on the northern side of the mountains. It held no arrogance, however, none of the severe lines of austerity that should come with the isolation of her holiest stature.

  "Welcome, travelers," she said into the light buzz of voices. Her voice spread through the acoustics without echo. The people fell utterly silent. "Welcome to this place and to this time. Many of you have come from distant lands. Cities and hamlets I couldn't pronounce." She gave a wide smile, then let her face grow sober. "Let us first offer pra
yer to any who may have left this world along their way. It's a cold season. A dark time, though we see the promise of dawn and will soon feel the warmth of the sun. Not everyone who stepped out on the path toward that sliver of sunrise now plants their feet inside this cathedral. They are honored but not grieved on, for they are with Arawn now, culled back to the form from which we all sprung. Let us remember the years they spent among us in this world."

  The people bowed their heads as one. A couple coughs broke the stillness, but no one spoke. Blays leaned in toward Dante again, whispered so softly he could barely hear it.

  "She's speaking Mallish?"

  Dante opened his mouth to offer some insult, then stopped. He hadn't thought about what language Samarand would choose in this swapped-up place, or how they'd hope to understand her assuming she chose Gaskan, but she spoke clearly and without accent. There had been a kind of hum to her words, though, an undertone which couldn't be explained by any special architecture of the church. It was as if she spoke through a vibrant fog that cleansed her words even as it enshrouded them. A trick of the nether, perhaps. Dante shook his head, shrugged.

  "Thank you," she said softly. "May they find peace in the kingdom beyond our own." She gazed out over the crowd, letting long seconds speak of her contemplation. "These times are indeed troubled. It's easy to forget we're not alone in our strife and struggle, that our fathers and mothers and their mothers and fathers saw troubles every touch as serious as our own. It's been that way as long as our city and indeed the race of man can remember. There is a story I've heard that speaks to this, from a place very far from here, from a time that's beyond the memory of any of our long lines, about a young man named Ben."

  She paced forward on the dais, gave her head a little tilt, spent a moment examining the mathematical beauty of the arch of the ceiling.

  "Ben was the second of the eleven sons of an old and clearly well-loved man, a miller who'd lived on the banks of the same river all his years. For all his heart, his home was humble, and as his sons came of age he could no longer support them all in its modest walls. When the last of them reached the age of fifteen, he gathered them in the yard, for none of his simple rooms could contain them all, and said to them as follows: 'I've been your father for many years, and I've done what I can to see you never want for food or shelter. But now I'm old and you are young, and it's time for you to become men of your own right. Go out into the world. Make your fortune. Return here, in seven years' time, so we may share your joys, for I know all of you will grow to be fine and honest men.'

  "His sons nodded and they embraced and went their separate ways. The years passed and it was as the father had said: they prospered, found the love of wives and the respect of men. At seven years they ventured back to their home, families in tow, to rejoin their father and support him as he had once supported them.

  "The father and his sons wept openly when all were back in one roof. They built a grand house around the old, one to keep them all in warmth and safety, and after the final hammer stroke they gathered in its airy kitchen to toast each other and tell the stories of their seven years apart.

  "'All of you are healthy, wise, rich,' he said, though Ben, in his unclean robes, showed no wealth of coin, and possessed no more than the clothes on his back and a sad-eyed black hound. 'Tell me what you have become, my sons, and how you've made your way in this world.'

  "'I have become an armsman, strong of arm and stout of heart,' said the eldest. 'I am a farmer, a man of wide fields and sweet grain,' said the third son. 'I am a harlequin of the king's own court,' said the fourth, 'and every time he calls me my tricks lift the clouds from his brow and lift his heart to rule with the wisdom of the gods.' And so they went through the line, each telling the story of his wealth and place, until at last only Ben remained, second-son Ben, swathed in his simple robes and unshod feet. 'And what wealth may you share, Ben?' the father said.

  "'I am a monk,' he said. 'I have no temple, no mass or brotherhood to call my own, and I live only through the charity of alms. But I am at peace, and perhaps I can bring that to my brothers and my father.' The father smiled and again embraced his sons. But the others looked askance at Ben, lone among them who'd have no place in the gardens of the nobles."

  Samarand paused her story and drank from a plain copper cup. She smiled out on the people. For the first time Dante thought he saw a crease of skin beneath her eyes.

  "And so the brothers lived together as they'd done while young. The armsman kept their fields free of bandits, the farmer fed them each meal, the harlequin made them laugh and clap each eve. All shared their gift and talent—even Ben, silent Ben, would tell them stories of the gods and their prophets when asked. And for a time they did leave in peace.

  "But as with all men who don't understand those whose joy comes from a different source, in time the brothers grew resentful and jealous. 'Ben swings no sword,' the armsman said. 'Why should I protect him from the thieves?' 'Ben grinds no bread,' the farmer said. 'Why should I feed him of my harvest?' 'Ben knows no dances,' the harlequin said. 'Why should I pass his long hours with mine?' And so they decided to cast Ben from their house. The father tried to argue, saying Ben was of their blood, he was wise as any, but he was old and couldn't stand against these ten sons. And so they took Ben up, breaking his fingers when he tried to hold fast to the doorway of the house, and they cast him on the street with his dog, penniless as the day he'd returned.

  "Ben grieved for the loss of his brothers and his father, but he told what he'd learned to the beggars and the vagabonds and they shared their bread. He preached in the street and the people came to hear his words until no traffic could pass that throng in the square and still the crowds grew larger. A year from when he'd been cast out the people of the town came together and built him a temple: a proud, simple shrine of stone to hold his flock and hear the things he'd learned in his years and his travels. Twice each week Ben spoke his sermons, and in those times he smiled to see the joy he brought to those who'd listen.

  "The brothers heard of his temple, came to town to see it. It was simple enough, but beautiful, in its way, and when they looked on it the shame of what they'd done to Ben burned inside their hearts. Instead of coming to him with open arms, they clustered together in angry words, and that night they came upon the temple and burnt out its roof and smashed down its walls with great golden hammers in defiance of the success Ben had earned.

  "When Ben saw what they'd wrought, he wept. Not for the temple: temples can be rebuilt. Nor for himself: he knew the permanence of his temple had been an illusion, and that though it had been built for him, it was in no way his.

  "He wept for his brothers. He wept for the anger that had turned them from joy; he wept for what he knew was next to come. For the townsfolk came to Ben and cried out at the sight of the ruins of what they'd built. 'Who did this?' they said, and Ben, who in his virtue told no lies, answered them: 'My brothers.'

  "He tried to salve their anger, to tell them this was an earthly matter, that more stone could always be dug from the ground and set in place. His words fell on ears deafened by righteous rage. The crowd marched upon the house of the brothers and drove them out. They put the fine house to the torch and the brothers to the sword. The flames of their destruction cast long shadows on the town. They spared the father, the old man, and with damp cheeks and beard he walked from that place forever, taking with him Ben's black dog."

  Samarand paused to smile forlornly and from his distance Dante saw Ben's terrible sadness reflected in her eyes.

  "In time they built a new temple. Its spire kissed the heavens. It was more beautiful than the first. They brought Ben to it, and said unto him, 'We are sorry for the fate we brought your brothers, but they tore down what we put up.' Ben looked at them and nodded. 'I do not condemn you,' he said. 'There was no right in what they did.' 'Then we did right, to burn their house, to plant them in the earth?' the people said. 'No,' Ben said, and he held up his hands for silence. 'I do not condem
n you. But do not mistake vengeance for justice. The gods look on us all with sorrow, for truly we have forgotten the harmony of their sphere.' The people bowed their heads. Ben returned to his sermons and the people returned to his temple. He spoke with joy and with righteous visage, and never again let the townsfolk see the sadness that had stolen his heart."

  Samarand sighed. She stepped down from the altar and paced its steps, meeting the eyes of the barons, the ships' captains, the farmers, the docksmen, the landed gentry, the wandering vagabonds. She turned her back on the assembly and stepped back up to her place at the altar's peak. A few men coughed, muffling their weakness in their hands and cloaks. She let a minute go by before turning her plain face back toward their sight.

  "The jealousy of men finds us all. The men of the south and the east, even some of our brothers and neighbors in our own land of Gask, they look on what we do and they mistake piety for threat. Who is Arawn? He takes us all, this much is true, but he does not seek nor want our end. He takes us in his time, and when he does he welcomes us to his fields in the stars.

  "Still, we strive for Ben's virtue. His patience. We try to make his peaceful compassion our own. We try not to blame our brothers for the wrongs they do us. After all, they are our brothers. I've been to a dozen lands and I see the same faces here as any corner of the earth. Look around you. Go ahead." Thousands of faces turned and met each other. Samarand met men's eyes and nodded. "I see the same men and women, sons and mothers, uncles and sisters as anywhere else. Are we so fearsome? So foreign? Such a menace to the ordered world?

  "Maybe we are. Our brothers think so. When they see our temples they look upon their own mortality. When they hear our scripture they hear the bells that toll for their souls. When we speak our truths, we speak of things that trivialize the weight in their purse, the bounty of their soil, the flash of their brooches and rings. Still, we want no man's death. We don't even seek to own his mind, which is more than can be said for some orders of the house of the Belt. We want nothing more than a place at the table.