A nice recovery, but I didn’t believe him in the slightest.
As we crested a slight rise between the cart track and the infirmary garth, a cloaked horseman barreled up the track through the increasing drizzle, passing just behind us. He vanished in the cluster of buildings behind the lay brothers’ reach.
Brother Gildas halted again, glancing after the rider and then to the infirmary, squatting peacefully with its back to the river. “Can you make it the rest of the way on your own, Valen? The hour is Sext, and I’ve duties before prayers.”
“Certainly. The air has done me good. I was beginning to feel like a sheep in a pen, shut up in that infirmary.”
With an admonition to inform Brother Badger of my weakness at the cloister garth, Gildas hurried off, not in the straightest path to the church, but in the same direction as the rider, soon lost to sight as well. A departure as enigmatic as his excuse. No bells had rung for the holy Hour. This place seemed to nurture mysteries: lighthouses, savage murders, an intelligent abbot who welcomed vagabonds like me, and a spirit in the cloister garth who did not.
Monastery life moved slowly, so I understood. Though abbots might be required to heed the winds of politics, their flocks of holy brothers sat outside of the stream of time and events, wrapped up in scholarship that spanned centuries and prayer and contemplation that spanned the boundaries of earth and heaven. So why, of a sudden, did I feel as if I were being rushed down a dark alley by a gang of smiling jacklegs who would pick my pockets and plant a shiv in my spleen before dawn? I hobbled quickly toward the infirmary.
Chapter 5
Vesper bells clanged and hammered. The monks were gone to prayers again, the lingering draft from their departure my only company in the quiet infirmary. Robierre had left me a brimming posset, dosed with extra honey in apology for sending me out walking too strenuously.
In truth my leg felt better recovered from the day’s adventure than my spirit. I could not shake my thoughts free of the murdered monk. Had this Horach truly made himself known to me? Surely of all residents of this abbey, I knew the least that might ease a tormented soul. But a man left himself open to mortal peril did he ignore the demands of the dead.
My fingers traced the smooth curves of the turned wood mug. The bells fell silent. The monks would go to supper after prayers, which meant near two hours alone here with naught to think of but a youth left in agony to bleed, unable to cry for help.
Before I knew it, I’d thrown my damp gown over my dry shirt, pulled my boots over my bare feet, and retrieved my walking stick. Guided by the church towers and wafting smoke that smelled pleasantly of onion and garlic, I limped across the infirmary garth and through the puddled passage between the kitchen and refectory, retracing our path of the morning. Pigeons’ cooing and the fading echoes of plainsong accompanied me into the deserted cloisters. Thick clouds had stolen the early-evening light.
I shivered. Saint Gillare’s wingless angels gleamed pure white against the dusk. The chill air, heavy with moisture, clung to skin like mud and smelled of rich earth and green grass. To retreat felt stupid and cowardly, yet now I was here, I couldn’t steel myself to step wholly into the garth. My hand squeezed the smoothed knob of the walking stick. There were other ways to approach uncertain ground than just blundering in.
Though I had denied it for years, adamantly avoiding occupation as a scout or guide as if to prove that denial, I had inherited the familial bent for route finding and tracking. My Cartamandua bloodlines were well documented, of course, enshrined in the Registry in Palinur before my birth and witnessed on the day I took my first breath. I’d always felt like a prized cow, bred to supply Navronne with the cream of sorcery.
I wandered down the south cloister, past the kitchen wall and around the corner into the walk that fronted the lay brothers’ reach. Dared I release magic here? Whether I used it in formulated spellwork or to trigger my family bent, it would leave traces, detectable by a Registry inspector. Or perhaps an abbey sanctified to Iero, its Rule forbidding use of magic, might be warded to prevent spellcasting and give off noises or explosions if I breached its protections. Every instinct said not to risk it, but then again, my instincts were unused to the requests of unquiet spirits.
I tossed some of Robierre’s stock of bergamot onto the grass that young Horach might use it for the Ferryman’s tally, apologizing that I’d naught better to offer. Then, clutching my walking stick, I eased myself to kneeling. Crouched at the verge of the west cloister, some halfway down its length toward its meeting point with the church, I laid my palms on the cool wet grass, shaped my intent, and released just a spit of magic.
My limited experience of such trials led me to expect an image of the square to resolve itself in my mind: the grass and stones, the shrine, the bounding columns and walkways, the size, shape, and source of the font. Not a visual image, but more of an understanding of structure, composition, direction, and history, and if I was fortunate, a sense of what obstacles, spells, or spirits might lie here. But the sensations confounded all expectations.
The earth pulsed beneath my hands, warm and living, its lifeblood a deep-buried vein of silver, as plainly visible to my eye as the shrine itself. The memory of all who had walked here wove a pattern in the earth, each path sharp edged against the clarity of a long and reverent quiet. The understanding of the garth’s composition and direction existed, not as some separate image to be analyzed, but embedded in my flesh as plainly as the skill of walking or speaking. And even beyond these marvels, something more teased at my spirit…
I breathed deep and tried to quiet my trepidations, to open my senses and push deeper. Just on the edge of hearing, the sighing notes of a vielle quivered in the stillness, and a woman’s clear voice intoned a haunting, wordless melody that swelled my soul with wonder and grief. A memory…and yet a presence, too…if I could but sort out the music and its meaning—
The unseen bludgeon struck again. Saints and angels! I toppled backward, landing hard on my backside. As on my first encounter with this place, the blow slammed me square between my eyes. Dizzy and befuddled, I pressed my fingers to my forehead, sure I’d find a bruise swollen the size of a cat. But, though my wounded thigh complained loudly that it was twisted to the point of tearing Brother Badger’s stitches, both brow and temples seemed intact.
If Brother Horach wanted my attention, he had gotten it. But did he want me to see what lay here—something far older than a youthful monk—or was he the one who so forcibly forbade my intrusion? I rubbed my brow and tried vainly to recapture the moments before the blow: the warmth of the earth, the silver thread of an underground spring, the music—so beautiful, so dreadfully sad.
I had long speculated that Iero was just another name for Kemen Sky Lord, Creator of Earth and Heaven. But neither Kemen, nor Iero, nor any god or spirit had ever made himself known to me so forcefully. I didn’t like it. My hands trembled and my stomach shifted uneasily.
As I stumbled to my feet and untwisted my gown, a brief burst of plainsong from the church intoned the perficiimus that ended every Karish prayer and service. Someone threw open a side door that opened onto the east cloister walk, directly across the garth from me. The monks would soon be filing out on their way to the refectory. Unwilling…unable…to explain what I had just experienced, I hobbled quickly through an arched passageway that divided the undercrofts just behind me.
The sturdy simplicity of the clustered buildings behind the lay brothers’ reach implied design for use rather than devotion. Lingering scents of roasted barley, yeast, and sweetly rotting refuse named the rambling structure with arched doors a brewhouse. The tall, windowless building set on stubby stone piers was likely a granary, its floor raised to discourage vermin and damp. Twilight had already gathered in the warren of wood and stone, and a light drizzle fell from the heavy sky.