by Damien Black
The vaulted chamber had been built well over three hundred years ago, along with the cloisters, inner sanctum and other older parts of the monastery. Two-thirds of it was given over to the main common area where the novices and journeymen ate together, with the remaining part raised above floor level and reached by a broad stairway. This was where the Abbot and the adepts ate and discussed important matters concerning the Order, save of course on Silence Days.
The high stone walls were punctuated by arched windows and draped with tapestries depicting scriptural scenes from the life of the Redeemer. Life-size statues of the saints looked down gravely at the diners from alcoves, an eternal reminder of the sacrifice and labours that had preceded their abundant repast.
From its lofty perch in one corner the statue of St Ionus caught Adelko’s eye. It was his favourite. Of all the statues in the refectory it was the only one that betrayed a hint of a smile on its stone lips. Adelko liked to think it meant the savant had learned things on his travels that brought him a joy none of the others could know.
Yalba, who was just behind him in the orderly line of novices filing towards the tables, nudged him and whispered excitedly: ‘Adelko! Did Arik tell you? We’ve been raiding the scullery again! We’ve managed to get a flagon of cider! Old Sholto never even knew! We’ll be over at Arik’s pallet after sunset prayers – come and drink with us then and tell us the real story of your travels!’
Adelko glanced back at Yalba and managed a half-smile before the four friends sat down together at the far end of a table. Sholto was nearly blind with cataracts: it hardly came as a surprise that he never picked up on their regular excursions to the storehouses – in fact why he was still in charge of them was anybody’s guess. Arik had suggested that the Abbot simply didn’t have the heart to dismiss the fiercely proud and irascible old monk from his duties, and that in any case he would probably die soon anyway. Hargus’s more jocular theory was that Sacristen was only too glad to have someone virtually blind in charge of Ulfang’s food stores, so he could help himself whenever he liked.
Adelko suddenly felt a little anxious. As much as he liked the idea of getting tipsy on Sholto’s potent scrumpy while playing the returning wanderer, he hadn’t forgotten his mentor’s stern admonishments.
He suppressed a shudder as the memory of Gizel’s suppurating skin and the hellish voice of her tormentor flashed through his mind. The Five and the Seven and the One… he’d never heard of devils giving prophecy, unless disguised as false prophets to deceive mortalkind. Perhaps Horskram was right – was that really the sort of thing to make light of over a gourd of cider?
And what had the Abbot been hiding? Not fit for a novice’s ears. That remark had been rolling around in his head all afternoon. Something was clearly afoot.
When the novices and journeymen were seated in the lower hall the adepts filed in, according to monastic custom. The thirty-odd senior monks walked solemnly up the middle of the refectory and ascended the stairs to the upper part of the hall. Horskram, the Abbot, and Udo were among them.
So were the merchants – as honoured guests they would eat at the high table. That was normally a privilege given only to visitors of noble birth, Temple perfects, or friars visiting from other chapters of the Order. Adelko guessed that the traders had been generous with their donations.
Looking around the refectory he caught sight of their bodyguards for the first time: sitting at a separate table near the entrance were about a dozen burly men. Heavily scarred and dressed for the road, they had a rough, ill-favoured look about them, and he was glad they were sat apart from everyone else.
All the adepts took their seats at the high table save one. This was Brother Calistrum, a hoary old scholar who had seen well over eighty winters and was in charge of the library. He also presided over the recitation before supper.
This was unfortunate, because for all his scholastic talents, Calistrum wasn’t an inspired speaker.
Yalba glanced over at Adelko and rolled his eyes, as if to say bet you haven’t missed this much. But no pious monk dared break with monastic observance, and so as Calistrum began droning his way through a chapter from the Life of St Argo on the lectern by the high table, Adelko and the four hundred novices, journeymen and adepts of Ulfang clasped their hands and bowed their heads.
The sun was low on the horizon by the time Calistrum finished. The prayers over, novices and journeymen on refectory duty busied themselves lighting torches ensconced in brackets about the hall, while others brought trenchers and carving knives to the tables.
Their feasting fell short of the groaning boards of the gluttonous Wolding barons, but the monks ate well. Adelko’s mouth watered as pewter platters holding wild boar, goat’s meat, salted fish and an abundance of vegetables were set along the tables. Of course today the food was especially fine because the Order wished to celebrate Horskram’s safe return – and impress its wealthy visitors.
During the hearty meal, washed down with watered wine, Adelko’s friends and other novices nearby pressed him for further accounts of his travels, but his mouth was too full most of the time to tell any tales.
‘Adelko must have been possessed himself!’ joked Hargus. ‘He’s eating for ten!’
Though the wine was too weak to have a strong effect, spirits ran high, and Adelko’s friends laughed and chatted boisterously throughout dinner until the nearest journeyman told them sternly to pipe down.
Afterwards, with the platters cleared away and the tables wiped clean, the Order prepared for evening prayers.
The prayer hall was next to the refectory on the circuit of buildings that perambulated the cloisters and inner sanctum. The monks filed across in customary silence, broken only by their sandals crunching noisily across the gravel.
A nondescript domed edifice, the hall’s interior consisted of a round auditorium supported by high columns of stone. No decorations graced its cold precinct save for a vast stone rood depicting the Redeemer being broken on the Wheel – unlike Temple perfects, Argolians believed that places of worship should be austere.
The rood was set directly behind a dais at the centre of the chamber, from which the Abbot addressed his congregation. Wooden pallets were set at regular intervals on the stone floor so the rest of the Order could kneel in prayer. Behind the dais and rood was a separate walled enclosure housing the sacristy. The Order’s most treasured relics were kept there, including a set of prayer beads strung together with hairs from St Argo’s head, along with the monastery’s supply of holy water. Adelko had never set foot in there – like the cloisters and inner sanctum it was out of bounds to novices.
The Abbot led the prayers and gave additional thanks to the Almighty for returning Horskram and Adelko to the Order safely – and moving the hearts of the merchants to grace it with a handsome donation. Adelko’s head was bowed in prayer, so he couldn’t see the expression on Horskram’s face as Sacristen spoke, but he could imagine what he was thinking and guessed it wasn’t all that charitable.
The merchants themselves were present, doubtless only too glad to join the pious Order in prayer and reap the spiritual rewards of their material generosity, but of the freeswords that protected them Adelko had seen nothing since supper. He wondered if such men were so godless that even the prayers of the Order could not save them.
Their devotions over, the monks filed out of the chapel. Outside it was dusk. A chill wind was blowing through the valleys that lay about the monastery. The adepts and journeymen retired to their quarters or the cloisters, to study for another hour or two before sleep.
Adelko and his friends made their way back to their dormitory. There were about a hundred and twenty novices at Ulfang, crammed into four long low buildings situated in the same circular compound that housed the prayer hall and refectory. The four dorms were situated at the main points of the compass, lending each a ready nickname.
Adelko and his friends belonged to North House. At fifteen summers, Yalba and Arik were among the eldest t
here – upon reaching their eighteenth year novices who passed their exams became journeymen and moved out of the dormitories. Many of the strictest older boys were seconded to friars and would not be present. The remainder would be busy studying in the cloisters for their final exams. As for the younger novices, none of them would dare cross Yalba.
The four of them gathered around Hargus’s pallet an hour after sunset. Lights were not permitted after curfew, but the clouds had parted to reveal a waxing moon. Hargus pinned back the curtain covering the window nearest his bed to allow enough light to seep in. One of the novices their age lying nearby began to complain until Yalba told him to shut up.
Each novice had a small trunk at the head of his pallet in which to store his meagre possessions. Hargus rummaged through his and produced his prize, a round stoppered gourd fashioned of hide. His yellowy teeth flashed in the moonlight as he beamed at it.
‘Well don’t just sit there staring at it!’ said Yalba in a loud whisper. ‘It’s a gourd, not a parchment scroll! Open it up and pass it round!’
With a last furtive glance around the darkened dorm to make sure no one bigger than them was watching, Hargus removed the stopper, took a swig, and handed the gourd to Yalba.
Adelko took a good long pull on it when it came to him. Sholto’s scrumpy tasted delicious: say what you like about his skills as a quartermaster, the old coot certainly made good cider. The predictable taste of the monastery orchard’s apples was offset with something else – Adelko had once overheard a journeyman say that Sholto used something called lemons for extra flavour, strange exotic fruit from the Southlands that he bought from the odd passing merchant.
As Adelko’s senses exploded with warmth he reflected that perhaps those fork-bearded devils were good for something after all. His reverie was interrupted by Arik poking him impatiently.
‘Adelko! Be a good chap and pass it on! One sip and you’re already grinning like a village idiot!’
The other two burst out laughing at this, quickly stifling their mirth into none-too-quiet sniggers so as not to draw too much attention. Sheepishly Adelko did as he was told, trying not to laugh too loudly himself.
They passed the gourd around a few more times. Sholto’s scrumpy was as strong as it was tasty, and before long Adelko’s head was feeling pleasantly light. After filling him in on a few of the more interesting things that had happened at Ulfang, his friends pressed him eagerly for more stories of his travels.
Made merry by the potent combination of the Archangel Kaia’s gifts of nature and human ingenuity, Adelko was more than happy to oblige. Besides the demon at Rykken, he reckoned the witch at Lönkopang and the banshee spirit at Urebro were probably his best stories.
The banshee had been the unclean spirit of a village girl who had taken her own life after murdering her husband. Her essence had coalesced in a dark cave overlooking the village three days after her burial in an unmarked grave nearby. Every night for seven weeks she had driven its inhabitants to distraction with her continual screeching, to such an extent that several of the frailer villagers had died of exhaustion or sheer fright by the time they arrived.
‘She was a fearful sight alright,’ said Adelko, drinking in the rapt gaze of his friends as eagerly as Sholto’s scrumpy. ‘A shimmering likeness of a village girl, but you could see the rain falling right through her – her face was all twisted, covered in ghostly blood it was! Her hands too... I was scared, but Horskram just marched right up to her and started reciting the Psalm of Banishing. I joined in with him, she didn’t last long. But that wailing screech – if we hadn’t been chanting the Psalm of Fortitude all the way up the hill towards her cave I reckon we’d have died of fright too!’
‘What did you do afterwards?’ asked Arik, his black eyes glinting keenly in the moonlight.
It was a shrewd question. Any good exorcist knew that a banishing should nearly always be followed by a blessing.
‘We marched straight back to her grave,’ said Adelko, taking another sip of the cider. His head was humming pleasantly by now. ‘Horskram put a blessing on the grave and sprinkled it with holy water. That’s one banshee you won’t be hearing from again – she’ll be in Gehenna now where she belongs.’
The others exchanged glances and nodded approvingly as Adelko launched into his next story. A few weeks after the banshee they had arrived at the hamlet of Lönkopang, to find its distraught folk at a loss as to why their harvest crop was in a state of decay, and the milk and cheese intended to sustain them through winter curdled instantly every time it was exposed to the air.
After a few days spent divining in the local area they had apprehended the witch responsible. Shackling her with cold iron to stop her using pagan sorcery on them, Horskram had brought her back to the villagers and convened a council. It soon transpired that the witch, Uselda, had lived in Urebro until she was forced to leave after being caught using Enchantment, one of the Seven Schools of Magick, to charm the local tradesmen into giving her discounts.
At the council she claimed she had been exiled without her belongings, which the greedy villagers had taken and kept for themselves. This, she claimed, had provoked her into using Transformation, another of the Seven Schools, to ruin their precious food crop.
‘Hah, typical!’ snorted Yalba, upon hearing this. ‘Witches always lie!’
‘Hush!’ said Arik, gesturing irritably with the cider gourd. ‘I want to hear what happened next!’
Yalba glowered at Arik and snatched the gourd from him as Adelko continued his story. It had taken Horskram a full day to extract the truth, but eventually the villagers had confessed that Uselda wasn’t lying.
‘Hah!’ said Hargus. ‘There you go, Yalba – what happened to “witches always lie”? You should become a Temple inquisitor – you’ve got the right amount of zeal and the right amount of brains!’
Arik snorted with barely suppressed mirth. Yalba stared menacingly at the pair of them. Arik and Hargus stopped laughing abruptly. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Yalba if you were in his quarterstaff class.
‘So what happened?’ asked the burly novice, turning back to Adelko. ‘Did you have to burn her?’
Arik rolled his eyes. Hargus turned away so the bigger novice wouldn’t see him laughing again. It was a well known fact that in the Kingdom of Northalde such cruel punishments were reserved for those who practised the diabolical Left-Hand Path of magick. Uselda, a hedge witch at best, hardly qualified. Even her powers of Transformation were relatively weak, and could only effect a minor change upon things. A legendary practitioner like Proteana, the Golden Age sorceress who infamously turned the mariner Antaeus’s crew into slugs, would have laughed at Uselda’s fumbling attempts at revenge.
‘Of course not!’ said Adelko, humouring Yalba with a straight answer. ‘He even ordered the villagers who stole from Uselda to pay compensation to the others who had suffered from her curses – said it was their fault for provoking her!’
The others let out a few gasps and whistles at this. It wasn’t so uncommon though – Argolian friars often found themselves acting as much as justices of the peace as exorcists and witch hunters in remote areas cut off from the authorities.
‘What about the witch?’ asked Arik. ‘He didn’t let her off surely?’
‘No,’ Adelko shook his head. ‘Horskram took his own shackles back and ordered the local blacksmith to put iron bands about her wrists, to stop her using sorcery again, then he had her branded as a witch so everyone would know what she was in future.’
‘Quite right too,’ said Yalba, his voice slurring. ‘She got what she deserved – filthy pagan witch!’
Adelko bit his lip. He wasn’t so sure about that. Uselda had been spiteful and malicious, but she’d also had some reason to be angry, and it wasn’t as if she’d killed anyone. He had even protested at the apparent vindictiveness and cruelty of the punishment at the time. But Horskram had countered that it was necessary, because convicted witches had been known to submi
t to iron bracelets before travelling to another village and seducing another blacksmith into freeing them. If everyone knew a witch immediately when they saw one, such seductions would be more difficult to accomplish. Or so the reasoning went. Adelko wasn’t entirely convinced. His training was testing him in ways he’d never expected.
They passed the gourd around some more, their conversation stoked up by Adelko’s storytelling. He revelled in the moment, and was especially pleased with himself when he was able to counter Arik, who challenged him a couple of times on some of the Psalms he said they’d used (much to the consternation of Hargus and Yalba, who told Arik to stop being such a rivalrous swot for one evening at least).
Even so, he couldn’t quite bring himself to tell his friends about his most recent and harrowing encounter. Despite the cider’s effects, something in the back of his mind told him this was no tale fit to tell in an open space, where anyone might overhear. In fact he wasn’t sure it was a tale fit to tell at all.
Presently they drifted off on to more general subjects, the conversation taking a random turn as it always does when drink is involved. Hargus started in with his latest mockery of Udo, which had them all in stitches. Arik, relentless scholar that he was, turned the subject back to Adelko’s use of scripture. The other two looked at each other, rolled their eyes and went back to lampooning their grizzled combat trainer, while Adelko did his best to answer Arik’s searching questions. By now he was getting the distinct impression that Arik was jealous of him for having been chosen above him by Horskram, and was trying to find some flaw in his account of their travels to show him up.
Arik was absently holding on to the gourd. Hargus, who was next in line for a swig, tugged at his brown habit impatiently. Without breaking off or turning around Arik stretched out his arm and let go of the gourd, dropping it on to Hargus’s pallet and spilling its contents.
