“A man who cannot use the Ring Stones…” the monk began anew, and again was interrupted.
“Cannot properly serve your god?” the mystic remarked. “It would seem that you serve a narrow-minded god, my friend.”
Master Viscenti started to argue, but this time, Braumin Herde cut him short. “Tradition,” Braumin said with a derisive chortle. “Who can know the truth? We thought we followed tradition when we sent the Windrunner to the island Pimaninicuit.”
“Bishop Braumin!” Viscenti scolded, for such matters were not to be openly discussed to those who were not masters, let alone in front of non-Abellicans.
Braumin laughed at him. “Tradition,” he scoffed again. “So we were taught, and yet, through the actions of Master Jojonah, we found that so much we thought traditional was the furthest thing from it!”
Viscenti stammered and could not respond.
“It is all too confusing,” said Viscenti, and he threw up his hands in surrender.
“Then follow your heart,” Pagonel advised. “Always. Look to the spirit of morality to find those best traditions you should seek, but be not dogmatic. Seek the spirit that rings true in your heart, but fit that spirit to the needs of the time. And the time, Bishop Braumin, calls for…”
“Reformation,” Braumin Herde said, nodding.
“A bold move,” Viscenti remarked, his voice barely a whisper.
“Did Master Jojonah truly ask of us anything less?” Braumin asked. “In those days when we hid in the bowels of St.-Mere-Abelle, we five with Master Jojonah, hoping Father Abbot Markwart would not discover us, was he calling upon us to do anything less? Is the sacrifice of Brother Mullahy worth less?” he said, referring to one of their conspirators who had leaped from the high walls of the blasted Mount Aida, a public suicide rather than renouncing the teachings of Jojonah. “Or the murder of Brother Anders Castinagas by De’Unnero?”
“We do not even have a Father Abbot at present,” Viscenti reminded. “Yet you would seek a rewriting of Church Doctrine?”
He turned to Pagonel. “Reformation is a formal council of the leaders of the Church, to rethink practices and make great and enduring decisions,” he explained. “In the first Reformation, it was determined that gemstones could not be used to make magical items. In the third and last Reformation, it was decided that some few stones could be sold to lords of the land — a tradition that is formally denied to this day and known by only a few.”
“It was not a decision with which Marcalo De’Unnero agreed,” Viscenti said dryly, for indeed, as Bishop of Palmaris, De’Unnero had begun a purge of privately owned gemstones and magical items, usually accompanied by great punishment to the merchant or lord caught with them in his possession.
“That last Reformation was almost six hundred years ago,” Viscenti reminded.
“Then the answer is clear before you,” Pagonel insisted.
“To allow entry to all of the brothers currently in training,” Braumin said, “regardless of their affinity with the Ring Stones.”
“You are half correct,” the mystic replied with that grin. “As your Church is half of what it could be.”
The two monks looked to each other, then back at him curiously, and skeptically.
“When I return to the Walk of Clouds, I will train Brynn Dharielle further in the ways of the Jhesta Tu,” he explained. “Half of those at her rank will be women.”
“A monumental proposition,” Viscenti said. “We should begin training women in the ways…”
“You already have them, so you have just told me,” said Pagonel. “Need I remind you of your own St. Gwendolyn? If Jilseponie had agreed to remain at St.-Mere-Abelle, as you begged her, would you have not nominated her to serve as Mother Abbess of your Church?”
“Jilseponie is a remarkable exception,” Braumin replied.
“Perhaps only because you prevent any others from proving the same of themselves!” the mystic countered. “Bring them in, brothers and sisters equally. Indeed, empty your convents and fill your chapels and monasteries! These are proven Abellicans, are they not?
“And you take them in at too old an age!” he went on, passionately. “Twenty? Find your disciples among those just becoming adults. The clay is softer and easier to mold.”
“Men and women, cloistered together,” Viscenti said, shaking his head doubtfully. “The temptation.”
Pagonel, who had lived most of his life in the mountainous retreat of the Walk of Clouds, surrounded by the men and women of the Jhesta Tu, laughed aloud at that absurd notion.
“If we are cloistered, then perhaps we have already lost,” Braumin said to Viscenti. “Is not the word of Avelyn that we should go out and serve? Do we not consider Brother Francis redeemed because he went out among the sick and died administering to them?”
“Perhaps Brother Avelyn has shown us the way, then,” Viscenti agreed.
Braumin patted his friend on the shoulder and moved to stand directly before the mystic, looking him in the eye. “Stay and help us,” he begged.
Pagonel nodded. “Where is the nearest convent?”
“In the village of St.-Mere-Abelle, an hour’s walk.”
“Take me.”
“We cannot formalize the changes you desire until the College of Abbots is held, and that will not be for months, perhaps a year.”
“And on that occasion, we will show your brethren the error of their ways.”
PART 3: THE BATTLEFIELD PHILOSOPHER
Pagonel returns,” Master Viscenti announced one dreary Decambria morning in God’s Year 847, nearly four months after the Jhesta Tu mystic had left the monastery for the town of the same name some three miles away.
Bishop Braumin had expected the news; the winter weather had broken for a bit in that last month of the year, and for the previous week, young brothers and sisters from the convent of St.-Mere-Abelle, and even from some other convents of nearby towns, had begun pouring into the monastery, bearing word from Pagonel that they should be considered for immediate ordainment into the Order.
“We are well ahead of the College of Abbots,” Viscenti ominously warned, for the formal meeting of the remaining Masters and Abbots of the Abellican Order wasn’t set until the fourth month of 848, or perhaps even longer if the Gulf of Corona was still impassable and the brothers from Vanguard could not safely make the trip south. “These dramatic changes you are instituting are hardly approved.”
“Necessity drives our decisions,” Braumin replied.
“You rely wholly on the counsel of one who is not of the Church.”
“Brother, who is left among the Church to counsel us?” Braumin countered. “Brother Dellman and Abbot Haney? Dellman is with us — we know that much. He has been an ally since the days of Jojonah and our quiet revolt against the edicts of Dalebert Markwart. And he has been young Abbot Haney’s invaluable advisor and confidant these last years up in Vanguard at St. Belfour. King Midalis will support us, as well. There are leaders of the other abbeys, and indeed other brothers, who will no doubt bristle at these changes, and some perhaps who will openly argue. But I will be elected as the next Father Abbot, and with you, and Dellman, and Abbot Haney by my side, and following the guidance of Pagonel, we will rebuild the Abellican Order.”
“With women, open to ascend to any rank? And with these dramatic changes in a training regimen that has stood for centuries?”
“Do you see another choice?”
“No,” Viscenti admitted, and he gave a self-deprecating chuckle. Ever was Viscenti the worrywart, they both knew all too well.
“Dangerous times,” Braumin admitted, and he patted his friend on the shoulder. “But not as terrifying as that which we faced last midsummer, yes?”
Viscenti could only laugh at that, for it seemed a trivial matter when measured against the recent events at St.-Mere-Abelle, when De’Unnero and Aydrian had come to kill them all — and with an army behind them that made De’Unnero’s victory seem almost a foregone conclusion!