Rain pounded the soggy ground. My gut sent a warning, like a lightning flash beyond the hills. “I thought we could use the seeds to make feast bread come season’s turn. Offer it to the Danae. Change our luck. Come, you wouldn’t take everything.”
“Ye said yerself a man makes his own luck. I’m making mine.”
No plea could induce him to leave anything he thought he could sell. Nivat was very expensive, as were the quickened spells worked from it. Only nobles, pureblood sorcerers, or desperate twist-minds without any choice could afford either one.
Boreas straightened up and kicked the book parcel and the ragged rucksack toward my head. “The monks’ll heal your hurts if anyone can. Pay ’em with your valuable book.”
I dragged the rucksack under me, lest the slug-witted ox change his mind.
“You’re a coward and a thief, Boreas!” I shouted as he trudged off. “You stink like a pureblood’s midden!”
Only moments and he was gone, the heavy footsteps and ponderous breathing that had been a passing comfort at my side for a year’s turn swallowed up by the pounding deluge. He couldn’t go far. The light was failing. I could scarcely see the slender arches of the abbey church through the sheets of rain. Monks—especially these pious fellows out in the wilderness—put themselves to bed before a meadowlark could sing. Before a whore had her skirts up. Before an owl had its eyes open. Before…
Alehouse riddling threatened to squeeze out more useful thoughts. Shaking my head, I stretched out my forearms, dug my elbows into the muck, and dragged myself forward on my side perhaps one quat—the length of a man’s knucklebone. Ominous warmth oozed out of the gouge on my back. My leg felt like a molten sword blank awaiting the smith’s hammer.
I rested my head on crossed forearms. One moment to catch my breath…
Much as I pretended elsewise, even to myself, I could shape spells, of course. Mostly destructive things, minor illusions, a child’s wickedness. Nothing that could heal a wound. Nothing that could summon help. Nothing useful.
The driving rain splashed mud in my face. Sleet stung the back of my neck. The cold settled deep in my bones until I wasn’t even shivering anymore. I hated the cold.
“Magrog take you, Boreas,” I mumbled, “and give you boils on your backside and a prick like a feather.”
Groaning shamelessly, I jammed my left foot into the rut and rolled onto my back. The dark world spun like soup in a kettle, yet I felt modestly satisfied. I might be doomed to blood and water and ice—madness, too, if breeding held true—but by Iero’s holy angels, I would die face up in this cesspool.
Rain spattered softly on my cheeks and the ground, on the puddles, the leaves, and a large rock, each surface producing a slight variant of the sound, defining the world on the far side of my eyelids. The scents of rotted leaves and good loam filled my nose…my lungs…seeped into my pores. My body blemished that vast landscape like a fallen tree, soon to be rotted, dissolved, and completely one with that cold, dark, and very wet place.
Soft padding steps rustled the wet leaves, stirring up smells of grass and moss and sea wrack, everything green or wet in the world. Paused. Fox? Rabbit? Mmm…bigger. Cold rain and warm blood had long washed away fear. Moments more and I wouldn’t care what kind of beast it was. A faint shudder rippled through my depths. Terrible…wonderful…to dissolve in the rain…
Creaking wood and iron sent the beast scuttering away. Soft yellow light leaked around my eyelids—a lamp spitting and sprizzling in the rain.
“You heard him at the sanctuary gate? From all the way up here?”
“By Iero’s holy name, Brother Sebastian. His cry sounded like the seven torments of the end times. When I poked my head out the shutters and saw none lay at the gate, conscience forbade me to lie down again without a search.”
“Never use the One God’s name lightly, boy. And in future you must seek Father Prior’s permission to go beyond the walls, even when on duty.”
A warm weight, smelling of woodsmoke and onions, pressed lightly on my chest. If I could have moved, I would have wrapped my arms about it. Kissed it even.
The weight lifted. “He breathes. I’d call it a miracle you found him, but now I look, I’m coming to believe you heard the fellow, after all. For certain he’s been through the seven torments. Here, lend me your hand.”
Hands grabbed me behind my left shoulder, where Boreas had extracted a second arrow and a sizable hunk of flesh. I left off any thought of joining the conversation. Breathing seemed enough. Keeping some wit about me. Listening…
The two mumbled of Iero and Father Prior and Saint Gillare the Wise, as they laid me on my side on a wooden platform that stank like a pig wallow and then proceeded to tilt it at such an angle that all my painful parts slid together in one wretched lump. The cart bumped forward, causing me to bite my tongue.
“Was he left by highwaymen, do you think, Brother?” The eager young speaker labored somewhere in front of me, expelling short puffs of effort.
“Highwaymen don’t leave boots with a man, even boots with soles thin as vellum. No, as his outfit’s plain and sturdy underneath the blood, I’d name him a soldier come from battle. Doesn’t look as if he’s eaten in a twelvemonth, for all he’s tall as a spar oak.”
“A soldier…” The word expressed a wonder that comes only when the speaker can’t tell a pike from a poker or a battle from a broomdance. “One of Prince Bayard’s men, do you think?”
“He might serve any one of the three, or this mysterious Pretender, or the Emperor of Aurellia himself. Such matters of the world should not concern you. Once Brother Infirmarian sees to the fellow, Father Abbot will question him as to his loyalties and purposes.”
Bones of hell…one would think an abbey so out of the way as this one might not care which of the three sons of King Eodward juped his brothers out of the throne.
The cart jounced through a pothole. The older man grunted. I sank into mindless misery.
Anyone might have mistaken the cold uncomfortable journey for the everlasting downward path. One of the two fellows—the younger one, I guessed, not the wise Brother Sebastian—chirruped a psalm about running with Iero’s children in sunlit fields, a performance so cheery it could serve as proper torment on such a road.
Eventually we jolted to a stop. Above my head arched a stone vault of uncertain height, not an ever-raining sky, though a round-cheeked aingerou carved into a corner spat a little dribble of rainwater onto the wagon bed. The yellow lamplight danced on the pale stone.
“Run for Brother Robierre, boy, and tell him bring a litter.”
“But I’m posted sanctuary, so I must give—”
“You’ve walked me halfway to Elanus. I’ll stay right here and give the fellow his blessing.”
Elanus. A small market town. South? West? Ought to know. How far did we run? I’d been more than half delirious on the road.
Bells clanged and clamored from the church towers, and out of the night rose the sound of men singing plainsong, clear and strong like a river of music, quickening my blood like a fiery kiss.
“Brother, it’s the call to Matins!” said the boy. “You have to go!”
“All right, all right, my hearing’s not so bad as that.”
Matins—morning at midnight. A perverse custom.
The wind shifted the lantern so that its beams nearly blinded me. I squeezed my eyes shut again. The night’s edge seemed sharp as a razor knife. I’d always heard the Ferryman’s mortal breath dulled the senses.
A dreadful thought shivered my bones: Had the Ferryman himself been breathing at my ear? He’d even smelled of sea wrack. I’d never truly believed…
“I’ll send Brother Infirmarian,” said Brother Sebastian. “When he no longer requires you, hie you to prayers yourself. The good god excuses no green aspirants.”