As for me, I made what preparations I could, at this early stage. I placed an order for Sentry Rods and warwands from the nascent Vanadori Bouleuterion and haunted the Iron Quarter to see how Cormoran and the Dradrien’s work was coming.
But mostly I stood around Vanador and looked confident, reassuring and wise in the face of the inevitable. Because that’s what the people – human, Tera Alon, Dradrien, Malkas Alon and Tal Alon alike – needed their count to do.
“I would be remiss in this haphazard chronicle if I did not include discussions of Minalan’s relations with the ecclesiastical community, myself included. Whilst most of the nobility suffer the clergy for the warm, pious glow it imparts them, or tolerate it as a social necessity, or – in the rarest of cases – embrace religion with fervent belief, Minalan took a practical approach to the clerics of Vanador. His legendary association with divinities gave him a unique perspective on religion, its function, and its relationship to its own gods. When it came to its practice in his realm, the Spellmonger was far more attentive to the uses and abuses of religion than any noble I’ve ever known.”
From the Scrolls of Lawbrother Bryte
Chapter Twenty-One
A Clerical Error and Sacred Law
High summer in Vanador was a glorious time, and though I missed Sevendor, I reveled in the open spaciousness and abundant fertility of its fields and woods.
The common folk I passed along the road between Spellgarden and Vanador town no longer looked like scarecrows, after a few seasons of eating regularly and well. Most were freedmen, and this time last year they had just been arriving here fresh from their emancipation, emaciated and destitute.
The mark of their captivity would remain on their faces for a lifetime, as malnutrition – always a problem in the hinterlands, and compounded by years of extreme treatment under the gurvani – left a brand on their cheeks that would fade, but never disappear. The stories their eyes told were likewise permanent. All had witnessed horrors no human being should.
But the cheerful greetings and the laughter I heard from work crews and peasants heading to their fields went a long way toward restoring their health. Wholesome food in plenty, good ale and purposeful work was beginning to fill the empty corners of humanity left in their souls. Men who had once fought to the death over a heel of mealy bread for the amusement of their captors now worked together to build, plant and create a fresh start for all. To men who had grown used to the idea of a short life filled with brutal labor followed by an unceremonious and pointless death, this was their wildest hope fulfilled.
That didn’t mean that everyone was happy, or willing to work even when work was abundant. There was a small but persistent number of alms-seekers who haunted the market and the city gates. The Wilderlands folk are proud, but desperation and destitution can gnaw the pride of any man. Though they were freed from the lash of the goblin overlord, some in Vanador, despite the great opportunities afforded by the growing town, saw begging as more expedient than labor for their bread.
Begging is an art, in some places. I’ve seen Remeran beggars actually apprentice to more experienced varlets to learn mendicancy as a trade. In an old city, perhaps, there are no better choices for the poor. But Vanador was not designed to soak up the indolence of the Wilderlands. It was to be the anvil that stopped the blow of Korbal, and I needed strong men with sharp swords, not mealy-mouthed beggars who would flee at the first sign of combat.
So I enacted a series of regulations that banned beggars from the marketplace on market days, save for those who were enrolled as clergy. I don’t mind an honest hermit supplicating himself for a bowl of porridge or a copper penny. Nor do I begrudge the lame and blind from soliciting donations from the tenderhearted, if temple houses are not available. Both of those conditions were excepted by the edict.
But a man who can tote firewood had no reason to beg in Vanador, and I ensured that all who had their hands out were either truly in need, or had taken holy orders. For the latter I ensured that there were limits on their mendicancy. Once a monk had filled his daily requirements, he was stricken from asking for more.
As I tried to tackle the problem, with Gareth’s help, I unexpectedly ran into a religious debate.
That summer, most of the major temples invited to establish new branches at Vanador were under construction, but the clergy were established in snug little halls already, and services were proceeding with regularity.
The Huinites, a popular cult in the Wilderlands, had been busy blessing the fields and preparing for the harvest rites; the Luinites had established their small chapterhouse where my Chancellor, Lawbrother Bryte, and the other lawbrothers and lawsisters were building a scriptorium and library as part of their temple complex.
The temples of Trygg and Ishi were beginning to grow as missionaries arrived from Vorone and new novates were initiated. The Temple of Duin was manned with an old warbrother who conducted funeral rites and recruited for the Iron Band. And my personal patroness, Briga, had ten clerics overseeing the rites of the Flame That Burneth Bright, one of the largest temples in Vanador at the time.
Other deities had smaller shrines or temples around the town. I was used to the odd monk or nun singularly manning a shrine devoted to less-popular deities. Most wore distinctive habits, tonsures or headgear indicating their order. But when I went to market to see if my edicts on begging were being enforced, I discovered a new group of clergy had arrived in Vanador while I’d tarried at Spellgarden, soon on the heels of the Tera Alon.
I was surprised to see a number of odd-looking characters in the market who I quickly realized were monks, of a sort. Instead of the tonsure the Huinites, Herusites and other monks wore as a mark of devotion, these fellows let their hair and beards grow long and ungainly tangled. Some even sported twigs and leaves entwined in them. Instead of a traditional habit they wore long, undyed robes of homespun wool or linen.
I learned that they were devotees of the minor god Erwagan, one of the more mystically inclined of the pragmatic Narasi divinities. Originally a god of goatherds and fishermen in Upper Vore, Erwagan was generally associated with the less-violent elements of Nature. A fringe cult, it had attracted various proponents over the years, but had rarely amounted to anything, institutionally.
Erwagan’s symbol was an acorn, and his devotees wore necklaces of the nuts bound with fishing string. Erwagan was known in the myths as a fair and just god who was sometimes asked to judge disputes between other divinities. He was most famous for his role in the Lay of Huin and Reis, when he was asked to decide which was of superior importance for the sacred harvest, the labor of the farmer or the rays of the sun. I forget what his decision was, but that was the only reference I’d ever seen to the god. I’d never met any of his adherents.
The focus of his cult, I discovered, was a combination of natural history and natural philosophy that emphasized solitary contemplation. Bathing, it seemed, was optional. And not particularly important to the god.
The Hermits of Erwagan, I learned, had originally migrated to the Wilderlands a few generations before, when courtiers from Vorone became enchanted with the wild beauty of the lands and stumbled off into its vast forests and hills to contemplate its infinite majesty. They saw solitude as a holy pursuit, and eloquent discussion of its spiritual meaning as an expression of religious fervor. They tended to live alone, deep in the forest, near sacred springs or streams.
They had a surprisingly large, if loose, body of religious literature, about two thirds poetic, that they read aloud and traded with each other at convocations. Many of them were quite educated fellows, choosing their life of devotion in preference to much more lucrative pursuits in civilized lands.
Without much in the way of a temple structure, they subsisted on begging, preaching for alms and gathering the bounty of nature to trade at market. Instead of temples, the informal, penniless order found remote groves or inspiring clearings in the forests to arrange their convocations. Apparently, solitary contemplati
on of Nature is more holy if you talk about it a lot.
At the time of the invasion, the hermits fled with everyone else. Some had returned to Vorone and elsewhere. Some hid and avoided the gurvani. Those who survived retreated to one of their most defensible groves in the Penumbra, known as Cornivil, a rocky hilltop on the eastern bank of the Wildwater. They’d spent the last several years in a small community there, clinging to existence on the raw bounty of nature and the sustenance a spiritual life provides. They harvested their own reeds and made their own ink to write down their thoughts and poetry. It all sounded very holy.
When they realized that some kind of order and stability was being re-established in the Wilderlands, they voted to relocate to Vanador, for a time, to spread their meditations to the general public. And possible eat something more than wild greens and the occasional squirrel. They arrived in the lateness of summer, singly or in small groups. Like most newcomers, they marveled at the orderly mixture of races and rapid development magic encouraged. And they found the markets abundant with food they didn’t have to dig out of a riverbank with their hands.
With no set social mission and an utter lack of resources, the Cornivil hermits began preaching in the markets, retreating to encampments in Nature (meaning, wherever they wouldn’t be told to move on) and begging. I was surprised that the pragmatic Wilderfolk held as much deference for the hermits as they did, but many considered them sincerely holy and worthy of respect.
I thought they were an ecclesiastical eyesore. I like the clergy, when they do meaningful jobs. But these slobs were just stinking up the markets and giving nothing but poetry in return. I like poetry, too, but the unwashed hermits bugged me.
They were each fiercely independent and proudly accountable to no temple hierarchy. They disdained horticulture in general, and encouraged all to harvest the endless bounty of Nature, no matter how impractical that was. And while they preached against the sophistications of civilization in general, they had no problem, it seemed, enjoying its fruits, in the form of fermentation. One of them spread the rumor that buying a hermit a cup of ale would earn you a blessing to improve your luck. They eschewed marriage, too, but had no trouble seducing gullible young peasant girls into exploring the wonders of Nature in any convenient grove.
Like every group, there were good ones and bad ones. And like every situation, the bad ones made the trouble. When a drunken hermit began preaching against the construction that was tearing up the natural beauty of the plateau, and tried to raise a crowd to tear down a home under construction, a small riot broke out. Six people were hurt, and nine ended up in the custody of Lord Gareth’s reeves, the monk among them.
The hermit was clearly the leader of the rioters, and it should have been a simple case. But then the idiot claimed ecclesiastical privilege to be judged by fellow members of the clergy.
Ordinarily, that’s not a problem, but Vanador wasn’t an ordinary town. It was a town under construction, from the homes and streets to the civic institutions. The largest freestanding temple in the town so far was a modest shrine to Huin on the site of the Sower’s eventual temple. We had clergy – birthsisters, flamesisters, herbsisters, woolbrothers, landbrothers, and lawbrothers – but they tended to actually work for a living in the busy town. The relocated Temple of Huin, late of Tudry, was the closest we had to a fully functioning temple structure, and that poor old landfather was barely keeping his sheaves all in one field.
In the end, Gareth satisfied the requirements of the request by getting Landfather Gorin, Herbmother Lordella, and an unoccupied young lawbrother from Vorone to sit in hearing of the case.
The Landfather and the Herbmother sensibly found the monk guilty of inciting a riot . . . but the lawbrother ruled that the monk was within his rights to preach against the construction. While the verdict carried – and the hermit was fined and sentenced, when he could not pay the fine – the lawbrother’s verdict established the right of the hermits to become a festering pain in Vanador’s collective ass, for a while.
Things were quiet until Summer’s End, when a small festival for Crouthr – the god of innkeepers, taverners and victualers – was interrupted by the sustained preaching of a trio of the ragged, stinking hermits who saw base commerce and inns in general as a corruption of Nature.
The innkeepers took offence – they were merely trying to establish a new shrine to the god of hospitality to support their trade. The Cornivil hermits got belligerent and demanded ale to go away. Though they didn’t start it, the drunken argument escalated into a general brawl that could have become a riot when the Croutherites refused. It would have gotten messy if the town watch hadn’t intervened quickly and forcefully.
That’s when Gareth appealed to me.
“Minalan, I cannot abide any more of these useless market hermits,” he complained to me over dinner, a few days after the otherwise-successful pre-harvest festival. “They aren’t even a proper cult: there are major sectarian differences among them, which they argue about in public. Incessantly. And the drunker they get, the louder they argue. But every time I try to get my men to police them, they start shouting about the law. Isn’t there something you can do about it?”
“I’m sympathetic,” I agreed. “But I can only intervene lawfully if there is a threat to the security of the Magelaw. Not until I actually have a body of laws in place to prohibit it. I’ve already enacted my decree against begging . . . that’s about all I can do, officially.”
“I was wondering if perhaps there was something you could do, unofficially,” he said, uncomfortably. “I think this is a situational problem, more than a policy problem.”
I was surprised. “You want me to speak with them?”
“I’ve tried, but I just don’t have the . . . charm to convince them to stop preaching so disruptively.”
It was a powerful admission from a relatively powerful man, but then Gareth was not one to succumb to the allure of illusion – not after the Dara affair. He knew his strengths and weaknesses.
I sighed. “I’ll speak to them. Unofficially,” I added.
“Maybe we can bribe them to go away . . .” he trailed off.
“That’s a thought,” I agreed. “But it seems like a wasted opportunity. Send me the three most important of them, and I’ll see what I can do.”
What I did, a few days later at one of the nicer taverns being built around the market, was deliver an ultimatum to the unwashed, unkempt and undeniably holy hermits who gratefully accepted cups of ale on my coin.
“Brothers, we have a problem in which I have need of your counsel,” I began, after introducing myself and ensuring that they were provided drink. As much as they preached against the vanities of the nobility and the misplaced investigations of the magi, anyone invited to drinks with a count has a tendency to feel important. I was counting on that. “I have an increasing number of complaints about your brethren interfering with the market, the roads and now a near-riot with the lay-brothers of Crouthr.”
The monks’ expressions ranged from defiant to guilty.
“My lord, we cannot be held accountable about the passions of a few,” one of the more articulate – and cleaner – monks pointed out.
“That’s the problem,” I agreed. “Other temples manage to keep their religious passions within the bounds of their sanctuaries.”
“When all of Nature is your sanctuary,” one of the other monks quoted, “a temple is a pointless obstruction between man and divinity. The people have a right to hear that,” he emphasized.
“In designated places, at designated times,” I agreed. “Not in the middle of another order’s festival.”
“The lay-brothers of Crouthr regularly refuse to contribute to our sacred mission,” the filthiest of the hermits objected. “They cast us out of their inns and taverns when we preach, and they deny us alms!”
“Because you scare away their customers with your . . . zeal,” I said, as politely as I could. “No innkeeper wants a smelly, wild-looking her
mit in his great hall, begging for ale and screaming poetry at the top of his lungs. It’s bad for business.”
“Commerce is the fever of civilization!” the third monk said, disdainfully. “Every man should be free to take from Nature what he needs, when he needs it! Reducing the harvest of Nature’s bounty to a mere transaction is profane!”
“There are plenty of orders which might agree with you, philosophically,” I reasoned, “but plenty which depend upon commerce. Indeed, some find the sacred in the exchange of value.”
I wasn’t merely arguing theology with them. One of the issues that concerned Gareth about the Hermits of Cornivil was the fact that at Luin’s Day, fast approaching, the Brownfriars of Kaupa would be coming to inspect the market.
The Brownfriars are a secretive cult dedicated to Kaupa, the Imperial Goddess of Commerce. Indeed, the Brownfriars saw the market as a sacred place, much as the Ifnites saw gambling halls as sacred, Huinites worshipped the plowed field, and Ishi’s devotees considered whorehouses to be holy. Embracing a mystical appreciation of market forces, the monks, in their plain brown habits, used their far-flung monasteries and ecclesiastic freedom from tariffs to conduct trade to the credit of the temple . . . in addition to inspecting and blessing the markets with which they traded.
The Brownfriars were often hired to administer markets, ensuring fair trade and judging whether a market’s rules are in accordance with Kaupa’s dictates of fair dealing and honesty. They had the right and sacred obligation to test scales, measures, and prices for fairness. Their seal across the market gate endorsed it, which allowed professional merchants to trade in security, and local folk to buy and sell without fear of being cheated. They are a quiet, unassuming order which nonetheless wields great power across the Five Duchies. They are thankfully non-political to a fault.
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