Isle of Glass

by Tarr, Judith

  “Better that sort of pain than the one that’s been tearing you apart for so long.”

  “That was a familiar pain.”

  “Yes. Plain old shackle-gall. I’m chasing you out of your prison, Alfred—throwing you into the sky. Because even if you’re blind and senseless, everyone else can see that you have wings.”

  The moon came down into the cup of Alf’s hand, a globe of light, perfect, all its blemishes scoured away. Its white glow caressed his face; Morwin blinked and swallowed. Familiar as those features were, the shock of them blunted by long use; sometimes still, with deadly suddenness, their beauty could strike him to the heart.

  Alf’s hand closed. The light shrank with it, snuffing out like a candle flame; taking away Morwin’s vision, but not his remembrance of it.

  Slowly, wearily, Alf said, “I won’t fight you any longer, Morwin. Not on that account. But must you send Jehan with me?”

  “He has no more place here than you do.”

  “I know that. I also know that I may be riding into danger. The message I’ll carry is not precisely harmless. I could be killed for bearing it, Alun for passing it to me—”

  “And St. Ruan’s could suffer for taking him in. Don't you think I’m aware of all the consequences?”

  “Jehan isn’t. To him it’s a lark, a chance to be free.”

  “Is it, Alf?”

  “He’s a child still for all his size. He doesn’t know what this errand might mean or how he may be forced to pay for it. The game we play, the stakes we raise—”

  “He knows,” Morwin said with a touch of sharpness. “So he’s glad enough about it to sing— that’s not blissful ignorance, it’s simply youth. When the time comes, if it comes, he’ll be well able to take care of himself.”

  “And also of me,” said Alf.

  “Why not?” the Abbot demanded. “He’s only been cloistered for half a year; and he grew up in the world—in courts, in castles." His eyes sharpened to match his tone; he peered into the shadow of Alf’s hood, at the hint of a face. “Maybe you’re not concerned for a young lad’s welfare—pupil of yours though he is, and friend too. Maybe you don’t want to be looked after by a mere boy.”

  Alf would not dignify that with an answer.

  Nor would Morwin offer any apology. “I’ve done as I thought wisest,” he said. “I trust you to abide by it. In the end you may even be glad of it.”

  The voice in the shadow was soft, more inhumanly beautiful than ever, but its words were tinged with irony. “Morwin my oldest friend, sometimes I wonder if, after all, I’m the witch of us two.”

  “This isn’t witchcraft. It’s common sense. Now stop nattering and help me up. Didn’t I give you strict orders to get some sleep tonight?”

  Morwin could feel Alf’s wry smile, distinct as the clasp of his hand.

  “Yes, grin at the old fool, so long as you do what I tell you.”

  “I am always your servant, Domne.”

  Morwin cuffed him, not entirely in play, and thrust him away. “Go to bed, you, before I lose my temper!”

  Alf bowed deeply, the picture of humility; evaded a second blow with supernatural ease; and left his Abbot alone with the moon and the Tor and the ancient Thorn, and an anger that dissipated as swiftly as it had risen. It was a very long while before Morwin moved, and longer still before he took the way Alf had taken, back into the warmth of St. Ruan’s.

  6

  They left before dawn. Only Morwin was there to see them off. Morwin, and Alun’s consciousness, a brightness in Alf’s brain. They stood under the arch of the gate, Jehan holding the bridles of the two horses: Fara like a wraith in the gloom, and the abbey’s old gelding standing black and solid beside her. He shivered, half with cold, half with excitement, and shifted from foot to foot. The others simply stood, Alf staring rigidly through the gate, Morwin frowning at his feet.

  At last the Abbot spoke. “You’d best be going.”

  Swiftly Jehan sprang astride. Alf moved more slowly; as he gathered up the reins, Morwin touched his knee. “Here. Take this.”

  Light flashed between them, Morwin’s silver cross. Alf hesitated as if to protest. But Morwin’s eyes were fierce. He took the gift and slipped the chain over his head, concealing it under his tunic. It lay cold against his skin, warming slowly. He clasped the hand that had given it, met the eyes behind.

  “Go with God,” Morwin said.

  The gate was open, the road clear before them, starlit, aglitter with frost. Only once did Alf glance back. Already they had come far enough to see the whole looming bulk of the Tor, and the abbey against the wall of it, and mist rising with the dawn, turning the Isle to an isle indeed. Small and dark upon it, nearly lost beneath the great arch, the Abbot stood alone.

  A wind stirred the mist, raising it like a curtain. Grey glass and silver and a last, faint flicker of moonlight, and of St. Ruan’s, nothing at all save the shadow of a tower.

  Fara danced, eager to be gone. Alf bent over her neck and urged her onward.

  o0o

  From St. Ruan’s they rode northward, with the sun on their left hands and the morning brightening about them. Jehan sang, testing his voice that was settling into a strong baritone; when it cracked, he laughed. “I’m putting the ravens to shame,” he said.

  Alf did not respond. Here where the road was wide, they rode side by side; Jehan turned to look at him. His face was white and set. Part of that could be discomfort, for he had not ridden in a long while, yet he sat his mount with ease and grace.

  Jehan opened his mouth and closed it again. For some time after, he rode as decorously as befit a novice of St. Ruan’s, although he gazed about him with eager eyes.

  o0o

  At noon they halted. Alf would not have troubled, but Jehan’s gelding was tiring. Already they were a good four leagues from the abbey, in a wide green country scattered with villages. People there looked without surprise on two lordly riders, squires from some noble house from the look of them, going about their business.

  They had stopped on the edge of a field where a stream wound along the road. Jehan brought out bread and cheese, but Alf would have none.

  The other frowned. “Dom Morwin told me you’d be like this. He also told me not to put up with it. So—will you eat, or do I have to make you?”

  Alf had been loosening Fara’s girths. He turned at that. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I know you’re not. Eat.”

  They faced each other stiffly. Alf was taller, but Jehan had easily twice his breadth, and no fear of him at all.

  Alf yielded. He ate, and drank from the stream where it settled into a pool. When the water had calmed from his drinking, he paused, staring at the face reflected there. It looked even younger than he had thought.

  A wind ruffled the water and shattered the image. He turned away from it.

  Jehan was busy with the horses, yet Alf could feel his awareness. Jehan finished and said, “Brother Alf. I’ve been thinking. We're riding like squires, but I'm the only one with a sword. I know you don’t want one, but maybe you’d better know how to use it in case of trouble.”

  Alf tried to smile. “I’d probably cut off my own foot if I tried.”

  “You wouldn’t, either.” He unhooked the scabbard from his belt. “Try it.”

  “No,” Alf said. “If it comes to a fight, you’re the one who knows what to do with it. Best that you keep it by you. I can manage as I am.”

  “That’s foolish, Brother Alf.” Jehan drew the good steel blade and held it out.

  Alf would not take it. “Jehan,” he said. “It’s enough for me now that I dress as a worldling. Don’t try to make me more of one. If you do, God alone knows where it will end.”

  “In a safer journey for us, maybe.”

  “Maybe not. You don’t know what I am, Jehan.”

  “Do you?”

  “I know enough. Put up your sword and ride with me.”

  Jehan sheathed the weapon, but did not move to mount. �
�Dom Morwin talked to me last night. He told me about you.”

  “He did?”

  “Don’t go cold on me, Brother Alf! I’d guessed most of it already. People talk, you know. And it was obvious early on that you had to be the one who wrote the Gloria Dei. You knew too much, and thought too much, to be as young as your face.”

  “How old am I, then?”

  “As old as Dom Morwin,” Jehan answered calmly.

  “And you scoff at the tales of Gwydion of Rhiyana?”

  “That’s hearsay. You’re fact.”

  “Poor logic, student. I should send you back to Brother Osric.”

  “You can’t,” Jehan said. “Dom Morwin won’t let you.”

  “Probably not.” Alf rose into the high saddle, wincing at his muscles’ protest. Before Jehan was well mounted, he had touched the mare into a trot.

  They rode at a soft pace to spare their aching bodies. After some little time Jehan said, “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I won’t betray you.”

  “I know,” Alf murmured as if to himself. “You and Morwin: fools of a feather. I could be a devil sent to tempt you both to your destruction.”

  “You, Brother Alf?” Jehan laughed. “You may be a changeling as people say, or an elf-man, but a devil? Never.”

  For the first time Jehan saw the other’s eyes, direct and unblurred. It was more than a bit of a shock.

  He faced that bright unhuman stare, firm and unafraid. “Never,” he repeated. “I’d stake my soul on that.”

  Alf clapped heels to Fara’s sides. She sprang into a gallop.

  They raced down a long level stretch. At the end, where the road bent round a barrow, Alf slowed to a canter and then to a walk.

  Jehan pounded to a halt beside him. “There,” he panted. “Feel better?”

  Alf bit his lip. “I’m being foolish, aren’t I?” He essayed a smile. It was feeble, but it would do. “Yes, I do feel better. My body is glad to be under the open sky. I’ll train my mind to follow suit.”

  o0o

  By night they had traversed close on eight leagues, fair going for riders out of training. They slept in an old byre, empty and musty but still sturdy, with ample space for themselves and their horses.

  Tired though he was, Jehan did not go to sleep at once. He prayed for a while, then lay down with his cloak for a blanket. Alf knelt close by him, praying still. Moonlight seemed to have come through a chink in the walls, for though it was pitch-dark in the barn, Jehan could see Alf’s face limned in light, his hair a silver halo about his head.

  But there was no moon. Clouds had come with the sun’s setting; even as Jehan lay motionless, he heard the first drops of rain on the roof.

  He swallowed hard. In daylight he could accept anything. But darkness bred fear. He was alone here with one who was not human, who shone where there was no light and stared into infinity with eyes that flared ember-red.

  They turned to him, set in a face he no longer knew, a moonlit mask, white as death. But the soft voice was Alf’s own. “Why are you afraid, Jehan?”

  “I—” Jehan began. “You—”

  Alf raised his hands that shone as did his face. The mask cracked a little into a frown. “This happens sometimes. I can’t always control it. Though it’s been years...” He closed his eyes. The light flickered and went out.

  Jehan sat bolt upright. “Brother Alf!”

  Hands touched him. He started violently and seized them. They were warm and solid. Keeping his grip on one, he reached into blackness, finding an arm, a shoulder. Like a blind man he searched upward, tracing the face, the smooth cheek, the flutter of lids over eyes, the fringe of hair around the tonsured crown.

  “Bring back the light,” he said.

  It grew slowly, without heat. He stared into the strange eyes. “I’m not afraid any more.”

  “Why?”

  Jehan paused a moment. “You’re still yourself. For a while I was afraid you weren’t. You looked so different.”

  Alf leaned close. They were almost nose to nose; their eyes met and locked. It seemed to Jehan that he could see through Alf’s as if through glass, into an infinity the color of rubies.

  “Jehan.”

  He rose to full awareness, as from water into air, and sat staring. He still held Alf’s hand; it tightened, holding him fast. He shivered convulsively. “How? How could I see like that? I’ve never—”

  Alf looked away. “I did it. I’m sorry. I was looking at the mettle of you; you saw behind my looking.”

  “Has—has it ever happened before?”

  Already Jehan had regained most of his self-possession. “Pure gold,” Alf murmured. And, louder: “A few times. I think...some humans have in them the seeds of what I am.”

  Jehan’s eyes went wide. “I? Brother Alf, I’m no enchanter!”

  The other almost smiled. “Not as I am, no. But something in you responded to my touch. Don’t worry; I won’t wake it again.”

  “Of course you will. I said I wasn’t afraid, and I’m not. Show me what you can do, Brother Alf!”

  Most of it was bravado, and they both knew it. Yet enough was true desire that Alf said, “I can do many things, which probably will damn me, if I can die, and if I have a soul to give over to perdition.”

  “Dom Morwin said that you can do what saints do. That you can heal hurts, and walk on air, and talk to people far away.”

  “I can do those things. Though by them I may defy the Scripture which commands that you shall not suffer a witch to live.”

  “He also said that you could never use your powers for evil.”

  “Would, Jehan. Not could. I can heal, but I can also kill.”

  There was a silence. Jehan searched the pale face, although the eyes would not meet his. “I can heal, Brother Alf. And I can kill.” He lifted his hand. “This can stitch up a wound or make one, wrap a bandage or wield a sword. Is it any different from your power?”

  “Other men have hands, Jehan.”

  “And others have power.”

  Alf cuffed Jehan lightly. “Out upon you, boy! You’re death to my self-pity. Though it’s true I’d no more threaten the powerless than you would attack a handless man. There’d be no fairness in it.”

  He drew back, and his light died. His voice was soft in the darkness. “Go to sleep now. We’ve talked enough for one night.”

  Jehan delayed for a moment. “Brother Alf?”

  The other paused in lying down. “What?”

  “I’m really not afraid of you.”

  “I know. I can feel it in you.”

  “So that’s how you’d get around vows of silence.”

  “Good night, Jehan,” Alf said firmly.

  The novice wrapped his cloak about him and grinned into the night. “Good night, Brother Alf.”

  o0o

  On the second day the travelers could barely move, let alone ride. Yet ride they did, for obstinacy; with time and determination, their bodies hardened.

  By the fourth day Jehan had remembered his old sturdiness. Even Alf was beginning to take a strange, painful joy in that ride, even to sing as he rode, to Jehan’s delight. Hymns at first; then other songs, songs he had learned a lifetime ago, that rose to the surface of his memory and clung there. The first time or two, he stopped guiltily, as if he had been caught singing them in chapel; then, with Jehan’s encouragement, he let his voice have its way.

  Sometimes they met people on their road, peasants afoot or in wagons, who looked stolidly upon their passing. Once there was a pilgrim, who called for alms and blessed Alf for what he gave, not seeing the tonsure under the hood. And once there was a lord with his meinie, inviting the strangers to spend the night in his castle.

  Since it was early still, Alf refused, but courteously. Their camp that night seemed rough and cold, even with a fire; and it had begun to rain.

  o0o

  Open land gave way to forest, dark and cheerless. More than ever Alf regretted his refusal of the lord’s hospitality; thoug
h Jehan laughed and said, “Don’t be sorry. If someone had known me there, there’d have been a huge to-do and we’d never have got away.”

  “Maybe,” Alf said. “But our food is running low, and we won't find any here. More likely, what we have will be stolen.”

  “Do you want to go around?”

  “It would add two days to our journey. But maybe we’d better.”

  “Not I!” Jehan cried. “I’m no coward. Come on; I'll race you to that tree.”

  He was already off. After an instant, Alf sent the mare after him.

  o0o

  It was quiet under the trees, all sounds muted, lost in the mist of rain. Leaves lay thick upon the track; the horses’ passing was almost silent to human ears.

  The travelers rode as swiftly as they might, yet warily, all their senses alert. Nothing menaced them, though once they started a deer, to Fara’s dismay. Only the high saddle and Alf’s own skill kept him astride then.

  The farther they rode, the older the forest seemed. The trees were immense, heavy with the memory of old gods. Elf-country, Alf thought. But the cross on his breast made him alien.

  Wild beasts moved within the reach of his perception, numerous small creatures, deer, a boar going about its dark business; even the flicker of consciousness that was a wolf. Nothing to fear.

  o0o

  Night fell, early and complete. They found a camp, a cluster of trees by a stream, that afforded water and shelter and fuel for a fire.

  When they had tended the horses and eaten a little, they huddled together in the circle of light.

  “I wonder how Alun is,” Jehan said after a while.

  Alf glanced at him, a flicker in firelight. “Well enough,” he answered. “Brother Herbal has had him up and hobbling about a little. And he’s had Morwin bring him treasures from the library.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  Jehan tried to laugh. “What’s he wearing? You’ve got his clothes!”

  “He borrows mine. Though he says he looks a poor excuse for a monk.”

  “Does he fret?”