“You thought me already dead.”
“A death you earned with your treachery.”
“Your definition, not mine. I followed that which was in my heart, and many of the brothers here, I would wager, were glad of it. I find it difficult to comprehend that I was alone in my distaste for our imprisoning of the Alpinadorans.”
“What you find difficult to comprehend is that you make no rules here, or anywhere in the Church. If Father De Guilbe wished for your opinion on the matter, he would have asked. And he did not.”
“Ever the dutiful one, aren’t you?” Cormack replied, and Giavno narrowed his eyes.
“Alive?” came a shout from behind, and Father De Guilbe, surrounded by an armed entourage, appeared over the crest of the hill. “Are you mad to come back here?”
“How would I know differently?” Cormack asked. “I remember little beyond the sting of your mercy.”
“Play not coy with me, traitor,” said De Guilbe, and unlike Giavno, there wasn’t a hint of compassion or mercy in his tone. He turned to the nearest guards and said, “Take him.”
“I would not,” said the man standing beside Cormack.
Father De Guilbe dropped a withering gaze over him-except he did not shrink back in the least. “And who are you?”
“My name is Bransen, though that is of no consequence to you,” Bransen replied. “I am a man here not of my will, but of misfortune, and I come to you only to repay the debt that I owe to this man, and to the people of some of the other islands.”
De Guilbe shook his head as if not comprehending any of it, and Bransen let it go, for it was of no consequence.
“I bring a grave warning that your world is about to be washed away,” Bransen said. “It is my duty to tell you that, I suppose, but whether you choose to act upon it or not is of little consequence to me.”
A couple of the monks bristled, obviously focusing on the last part of his quip and not the more important announcement. Of the group, now twenty brothers, only a few raised their eyebrows in alarm, and even that became a past thought almost immediately, as one of Father De Guilbe’s entourage announced, pointing at Bransen, “He has a gemstone!”
Cormack glanced at Bransen in alarm, but the man from Pryd Town seemed bothered not at all.
“Is this true?” asked Father De Guilbe.
“If it is, it is none of your affair.”
“You walk a dangerous-”
“I walk where I choose to walk and how I choose to walk,” Bransen interrupted. “Feign no dominion over me, disingenuous old fool. My father was of your order, a brother of great accomplishment. No, not any accomplishment that you would understand or appreciate,” he answered De Guilbe’s curious look. “And more to your pity.”
“From Entel?” Father De Guilbe asked. “Your swarthy appearance bespeaks a Southern heritage.”
Bransen grinned knowingly at the obvious ploy.
“It matters not,” De Guilbe said. “You are here with a criminal and carrying contraband.”
“Contraband?” Bransen said with a mocking chuckle. “You presume to know how I came about this gemstone. You presume that I have a gemstone. You do not understand Jhesta Tu philosophy, yet pretend that you have any understanding of me, or of what I will do to your guards if you send them forth, or of how I will come back in the dark of night and easily defeat any defenses you construct, that you and I will speak more directly at your own bedside.”
It took a while for all of that to digest, and Giavno at last broke the uncomfortable silence by berating Cormack, “What have you brought to us?”
“A man to deliver a message, and then we are gone from here.”
“The glacier north of your lake is home to a Samhaist,” Bransen announced. “The Ancient himself. Ancient Badden, who wars with Dame Gwydre of Vanguard.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there, just yesterday,” Bransen answered. “Badden claims dominion over this lake and works to ensure that all here, yourselves included-and especially, if he should ever learn that Abellicans reside on this most holy of Samhaist places-will be washed away on a great wave of his murderous wrath. If he executes his plan there is for you no escape. If he is not stopped this place you name as Chapel Isle will become a washed stone on an uninhabited hot lake.”
“Preposterous!” said Giavno, while the monks around him whispered and shuffled nervously, and looked all around for someone to settle their fears from the sudden shock.
Bransen shrugged, as if unconcerned.
“We are to believe you?” Father De Guilbe asked skeptically. “You come to us beside a traitor…”
“A man I hardly know, but one possessed of more sense than you it would seem. I have come to deliver a message as repayment to this man you name as traitor and yet who feels obligated to you still. Whether you act upon that message or not is not my concern. I hold no love for your Church. Indeed, from what I have seen you are more than deserving of my contempt. But I am Jhesta Tu, and so such feelings as contempt have no place in my world.”
He turned to Cormack, but before he could address the man, Giavno assailed him, “Jhesta Tu? What is Jhesta Tu?”
Bransen eyed the fiery man out of the corner of his eye. “Something you could never begin to comprehend.”
“Take them!” Giavno yelled, and immediately a pair of guards, brandishing short swords, leaped at Bransen and Cormack.
They never got close. Bransen, expecting it, even coaxing it, leaped at the first, kicking his right foot out to the man’s right side, then sweeping it across. It posed no real threat to the monk, but had him distracted so that that the real attack, a snap-kick from Bransen’s left foot, caught him right in the chest, blasting out his breath in a great gasp. Bransen landed lightly back on his right foot and propelled himself forward and left, beside the staggering monk’s awkward thrust. He snatched the man by the wrist with his right hand, drove his left hand brutally against the monk’s straightened elbow, then quickly covered the man’s sword hand with his own, bending the monk’s wrist over painfully and stealing his strength-and his grip on the sword.
The blade didn’t fall an inch before Bransen snapped it out of the air, and he spun away, back-kicking the wounded monk in the side to ensure that there would be no pursuit, and also to shift his own momentum, driving him to intercept the second approaching guard.
The short swords collided repeatedly in a series of arm-numbing parries that ended with Bransen looping his blade over that of the confused monk. A twist and jerk sent the short sword to the ground, and left the tip of Bransen’s sword at the stunned monk’s throat. And it all happened in the space of a few heartbeats.
Bransen laughed and straightened, moving his blade back from the terrified man. He hooked the fallen sword with his own and deftly flipped it into his left hand, then turned to Giavno and flung both swords, spinning end over end, to stick into the ground right before the monk.
“You have been warned,” Bransen announced. “Ancient Badden will destroy you.”
He turned and walked away.
Cormack lingered a short while longer, looking mostly to Father De Guilbe. His expression was one of apology, perhaps, but mostly it was filled with pleading. But there was no more to say, so he followed Bransen back to the boat.
Both Cormack and Milkeila accompanied Bransen onto the forested island of Yossunfier. Many more people came out to greet them before they even got their boat ashore. The whole of Milkeila’s tribe, it seemed, came down to the waterfront, shielding their eyes from the morning glare, whispering among themselves at this surprising group approaching their island home.