“That is right,” she said. “They were glad enough to have me, although you never would have known it from their treatment of me. I was young and strong and willing to work. But they beat me just the same.”
“You’ll have a chance to rest when we get to the Tower,” said Cornwall. “To decide what you want to do. Is there anyone who knows what kind of place the Tower might be?”
“Not much of anything,” said Hal. “An old defense post against the Wasteland, now abandoned. Once a military post, but now there is no military there. There is the bishop only, although why he’s needed there, or what he does, no one pretends to know. A few servants, perhaps. A farm or two. That would be all.”
“You have not answered me,” said Mary. “Do you go into the Wasteland?”
“Some of us,” said Cornwall. “I go. I suppose Oliver as well. There is no stopping him. If I could, I would.”
“I was in at the first of it,” said Oliver. “I’ll be in at the end of it.”
“How far?” asked Gib. “How long before we reach the Tower?”
“Three days,” said Hal. “We should be there in three days.”
15
The Bishop of the Tower was an old man. Not as old, Gib thought, as the hermit, but an old man. The robes he wore, once had been resplendent, with cloth of gold and richest silk, but now they were worn and tattered after many years of use. But, looking at the man, one forgot the time-worn, moth-ravaged robes. A depth of compassion robed him, but there was a sense of power as well, a certain feeling of ruthlessness—a warrior bishop grown old with peace and church. His face was thin, almost skeletal, but fill out those cheeks and broaden out the peaked nose, and one could find the flat, hard lines of a fighting man. His head was covered with wispy white hair so sparse it seemed to rise of itself and float in the bitter breeze that came blowing through the cracks and crevices of the time-ruined tower. The fire that burned in the fireplace did little to drive back the cold. The place was niggardly furnished—a rough hewn table, behind which the bishop sat on a ramshackle chair, an indifferent bed in one corner, a trestle table for eating, with benches down either side of it. There was no carpeting on the cold stone floor. Improvised shelving held a couple of dozen books and beneath the shelving were piled a few scrolls, some of them mouse-eaten.
The bishop lifted the leather-bound book off the table and, opening it, riffled slowly through the pages. He closed it and placed it to one side. He said to Gib, “My brother in Christ, you say he passed in peace?”
“He knew that he was dying,” Gib said. “He had no fear. He was feeble, for he was very old.…”
“Yes, old,” said the bishop. “I remember him from the time I was a boy. He was grown then. Thirty, perhaps, although I don’t remember, if I ever knew. Perhaps I never knew. Even then he walked in the footsteps of the Lord. I, myself, at his age was a man of war, the captain of the garrison that stood on this very spot and watched against the Wasteland hordes. It was not until I was much older and the garrison had been withdrawn, there having been many years of peace, that I became a man of God. You say my old friend lived in the love of the people?”
“There was no one who knew him who did not love him,” said Gib. “He was a friend to all. To the People of the Marsh, the People of the Hills, the gnomes …”
“And none of you,” said the bishop, “of his faith. Perhaps of no faith at all.”
“That, your worship, is right. Mostly of no faith at all. If I understand rightly what you mean by faith.”
The bishop shook his head. “That would be so like him. So entirely like him. He never asked a man what his faith might be. I distrust that he ever really cared. He may have erred in this way, but, if so, it was erring beautifully. And I am impressed. Such a crowd of you to bring me what he sent. Not that you aren’t welcome. Visitors to this lonely place are always welcome. Here we have no commerce with the world.”
“Your grace,” said Cornwall, “Gib of the Marshes is the only one of us who is here concerned with bringing you the items from the hermit. Hal of the Hollow Tree agreed to guide us here.”
“And milady?” asked the bishop.
Cornwall said stiffly, “She is under our protection.”
“You, most carefully, it seems to me, say nothing of yourself.”
“Myself and the goblin,” Cornwall told him, “are on a mission to the Wasteland. And if you wonder about Coon, he is a friend of Hal’s.”
“I had not wondered about the coon,” said the bishop, rather testily, “although I have no objection to him. He seems a cunning creature. A most seemly pet.”
“He is no pet, your grace,” said Hal. “He is a friend.”
The bishop chose to disregard the correction, but spoke to Cornwall, “The Wasteland, did you say? Not many men go these days into the Wasteland. Take my word for it, it is not entirely safe. Your motivation must be strong.”
“He is a scholar,” said Oliver. “He seeks truth. He goes to make a study.”
“That is good,” the bishop said. “No chasing after worldly treasure. To seek knowledge is better for the soul, although I fear it holds no charm against the dangers you will meet.”
“Your grace,” said Cornwall, “you have looked at the book …”
“Yes,” the bishop said. “A goodly book. And most valuable. A lifetime’s work. Hundreds of recipes for medicines that can cure the ills of mankind. Many of them, I have no doubt, known to no one but the hermit. But now that you have brought me the book, in time known to everyone.”
“There is another item,” Cornwall reminded him, “that the hermit sent you.”
The bishop looked flustered. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I quite forgot. These days I find it easy to forget. Age does nothing for one’s memory.”
He reached out and took up the ax, wrapped in cloth. Carefully he unwrapped it, stared at it transfixed once he had revealed it. He said nothing but turned it over and over, examining it, then laid it gently in front of him.
He raised his head and stared at them, one by one, then fixed his gaze on Gib. “Do you know what you have here?” he asked. “Did the hermit tell you?”
“He told me it was a fist ax.”
“Do you know what a fist ax is?”
“No, your grace, I don’t.”
“And you?” the bishop asked of Cornwall.
“Yes, your grace. It is an ancient tool. There are those who say …”
“Yes, yes, I know. There are always those who say. There are always those who question. I wonder why the hermit had it, why he kept it so carefully and passed it on at death. It is not the sort of thing that a holy man would prize. It belongs to the Old Ones.”
“The Old Ones?” Cornwall asked.
“Yes, the Old Ones. You have never heard of them?”
“But I have,” said Cornwall. “They are the ones I seek. They are why I am going to the Wasteland. Can you tell if they do exist, or are they only myth?”
“They exist,” the bishop said, “and this ax should be returned to them. At sometime someone must have stolen it.…”
“I can take it,” Cornwall said. “I’ll undertake to see that it is returned to them.”
“No,” said Gib. “The hermit entrusted it to me. If it should be returned, I am the one—”
“But it’s not necessary for you to go,” said Cornwall.
“Yes, it is,” said Gib. “You will let me travel with you?”
“If Gib is going, so am I,” said Hal. “We have been friends too long to let him go into danger without my being at his side.”
“You are all set, it seems,” the bishop said, “to go marching stoutly to your deaths. With the exception of milady …”
“I am going, too,” she said.
“And so am I,” said a voice from the doorway.
At the sound of it Gib swung around. “Sniveley,” he yelled, “what are you doing here?”
16
The bishop, when he was alone, ate frugally—a bowl
of cornmeal mush, or perhaps a bit of bacon. By feeding his body poorly, he felt that he fed his soul and at the same time set an example for his tiny flock. But, a trencherman by nature, he was glad of guests, who at once gave him an opportunity to gorge himself and uphold the good name of the Church for its hospitality.
There had been a suckling pig, resting on a platter with an apple in its mouth, a haunch of venison, a ham, a saddle of mutton, a brace of geese, and a peacock pie. There had been sweet cakes and pies, hot breads, a huge dish of fruit and nuts, a plum pudding laced with brandy, and four wines.
Now the bishop pushed back from the table and wiped his mouth with a napkin of fine linen.
“Are you sure,” he asked his guests, “that there is nothing else you might require? I am certain that the cooks …”
“Your grace,” said Sniveley, “you have all but foundered us. There is none of us accustomed to such rich food, nor in such quantities. In all my life I have never sat at so great a feast.”
“Ah, well,” the bishop said, “we have few visitors. It behooves us, when they do appear, to treat them as royally as our poor resources can afford.”
He settled back in his chair and patted his belly. “Someday,” he said, “this great and unseemly appetite of mine will be the end of me. I have never been able to settle quite comfortably into the role of churchman, although I do my best. I mortify the flesh and discipline the spirit, but the hungers rage within me. Age does not seem to quench them. Much as I may frown upon the folly of what you intend to do, I find within myself the ache to go along with you. I suppose it may be this place, a place of warriors and brave deeds. Peaceful as it may seem now, for centuries it was the outpost of the empire against the peoples of the Wasteland. The tower now is half tumbled down, but once it was a great watch tower and before it ran a wall, close to the river, that has almost disappeared, its stones being carted off by the country people to construct ignoble fences, henhouses and stables. Once men manned the tower and wall, standing as a human wall of flesh against the encroachments and the depredations of that unholy horde which dwells within the Wasteland.”
“Your grace,” said Sniveley, far too gently, “your history, despite the centuries, is too recent. There was a day when the humans and the Brotherhood lived as neighbors and in fellowship. It was not until the humans began chopping down the forest, failing to spare the sacred trees and the enchanted glens, not until they began building roads and cities, that there was animosity. You cannot, with clear conscience, talk of encroachments and depredations, for it was the humans—”
“Man had the right to do what he wished with the land,” the bishop said. “He had the holy right to put it to best use Ungodly creatures such as—”
“Not ungodly,” said Sniveley. “We had our sacred groves until you cut them down, the fairies had their dancing greens until you turned them into fields. Even such simple little things as fairies …”
“Your grace,” said Cornwall, “I fear we are outnumbered. There are but two of us who can make a pretense of being Christian, although I count the rest as true and noble friends. I am glad they have elected to go into the Wasteland, with me, although I am somewhat concerned …”
“I suppose that you are right,” said the bishop, more good-naturedly than might have been expected. “It ill behooves any one at this jovial board to contend with one another. There are other matters that we should discuss. I understand, Sir Scholar, that you seek the Old Ones out of the curiosity of the intellect. I suppose this comes from the reading you have done.”
“Reading most painfully come by,” said Oliver. “I watched him many nights, hunched above a table in the library, reading ancient scripts, taking down the books that had not been touched for centuries and blowing off the dust that had accumulated, reading by the feeble light of a too-short candle, since poverty dictated he must use them to their bitter end. Shivering in the winter, since you must know that all the buildings of the university, and perhaps the library most of all, are ill-constructed old stone piles through which the wind has little trouble blowing.”
“And, pray,” the bishop said to Cornwall, “tell us what you found.”
“Not a great deal,” said Cornwall. “A sentence here, another sentence there. Enough to convince me that the Old Ones are not, as many think, entirely myth. There is a book, a very thin book, and most unsatisfactory, which purports to instruct one in the language of the Old Ones. I can speak that language, the little that there is of it. I do not know if it is truth or not. I do not know if there is a language or not. No niceties at all, no nuances to the thought that it conveys. I cannot be convinced, however, that such a work could be entirely without basis. Surely the man who wrote it thought the Old Ones had a language.”
“There is no clue as to why he might have thought so? He does not explain how he learned the language?”
“He does not,” said Cornwall. “I go on faith alone.”
“It is not,” the bishop said, “when you give it thought, an entirely bad reason for the going.”
“Good enough for me,” said Cornwall. “Perhaps not good enough for others.”
“And it is good enough for me,” said Oliver. “It is an excuse for me, if nothing else. I could not spend my life as a rafter goblin. Now that I look back on it. I was getting nowhere.”
“Perhaps,” said Cornwall, “I can understand you, Oliver. There’s something about a university that gets into the blood. It is a place not of the world; it partakes of a certain fantasy. It is, in many ways, not entirely sane. The reaching after knowledge becomes a purpose that bears no relationship to reality. But Gib and Hal I worry over. I could take along the ax.”
“You think so,” Gib told him, “because you did not know the hermit. He did so much for all of us and we did so little for him. We’d look up at the craggy bluff where he had his cave and knowing he was there made the world seem right. I can’t tell you why it was, but that was the way of it. I sat with him the last hour of his life. I pulled up the blanket to shield him from the world once the life was gone. I built the wall of stone to keep away the wolves. There’s one thing more I must do for him. No one else, you understand; I’m the one to do it. He put the trust into my hands, and I must see it carried out.”
The bishop stirred uncomfortably. “I can see,” he said, “that there’s nothing I can do to stop the rest of you from going out to get your heads smashed most horribly, and it might be a mercy if the head smashing was all you’d have to suffer. But I cannot understand why the sweet child, Mary, must insist—”
“Your grace,” said Mary, “you do not know because I have not told you. When I was no more than a toddler, I came stumbling down a path and an old couple took me in and raised me as their own. I have told the others this, but I did not tell them that I’ve wondered many times where I might have come from. The path, you see, came out of the Wasteland.…”
“You cannot think,” the bishop said, aghast, “that you came out of the Wasteland. It makes no sense, at all.”
“At times,” said Mary, “I have a certain memory. An old house high upon a hill and strange playmates that plead to be recognized, but I cannot recognize them. I do not know who or what they were.”
“You do not need to know,” the bishop said.
“It seems to me, your grace, I do,” said Mary. “And if I do not find out now, I will never know.”
“Let her go,” said Sniveley. “Quit this pestering of her. She goes in goodly company and has every right to go. Perhaps more right than any of the rest of us.”
“And you, Sniveley,” said Hal, trying to speak lightly. “I imagine it will be old home week for you.”
Sniveley snorted. “I could not sleep of nights. Thinking of the hand I had in it, and how destiny had so unerringly guided my hand to take a part in it. I forged the sword that the scholar carries. Fate must have foreordained the shaping of that sword. Otherwise, why would there have been this single pocket of the purest ore? Why the pocket
of it in a drift that otherwise was acceptable, but of much poorer grade? It was placed there for a purpose, for there is nothing ever done without a purpose. And I could not put out of my mind the feeling that the purpose was the sword.”
“If so,” said Cornwall, “it was badly placed. I should be wearing no such sword. I am not a swordsman.”
Hal said, “You did all right that night back in the stable.”
“What is this?” the bishop asked. “What about a stable? You were brawling in a stable?”
Cornwall said, “We had not told you. I think we felt we should not tell you. We fear we have fallen greatly out of favor with a man named Lawrence Beckett. You may have heard of him.”
The bishop made a face. “Indeed, I have,” he said. “If you had sat down and thought and planned and really put your mind to it in the picking of an enemy, you could have done no better than Beckett. I never have met the man, but his reputation has preceded him. He is a ruthless monster. If you are at cross-purposes with him, perhaps it is just as well you go into the Wasteland.”
“But he is going there as well,” said Gib.
The bishop heaved himself straight up in his chair. “You had not told me this. Why did you not tell me this?”
“One reason I can think of,” said Cornwall, “is that Beckett is of the Inquisition.”
“And you thought, perhaps, because this is so, he stands in the high regard of everyone in Holy Mother Church?”
“I suppose we did think so,” said Cornwall.
“The Church is far flung,” the bishop said, “and in it is the room for many different kinds of men. There is room for so saintly a personality as our late-lamented hermit and room as well, lamentably, for sundry kinds of rascals. We are too big and too widespread to police ourselves as well as might be wished. There are men the Church would be better off without, and one of the chief of these is Beckett. He uses the cloak of the Inquisition for his own bloodthirsty purposes; he has made it a political arm rather than ecclesiastical. And you say that now he is heading for the Wasteland?”
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