Then he took the ring.
She didn't know whether to protest or to swoon, and behind him, the Highwayman heard the growls of Prince Yeslnik. He offered a salute to one and then the other, then stepped behind the coach where he freed two packs bulging with coins. Slinging them over his shoulder as if they were weightless, he seemed to fly away, with a great leap that brought him to the top of the coach. He glanced at the driver and his slumping companion, then moved closer to inspect the wounded man.
The Highwayman closed his eyes and placed a hand on the wound. His focus brought warmth to his hand, and that warmth brought some healing to poor Orrin.
"You turn and get him to Chapel Pryd," the Highwayman instructed Harkin. "The brothers will help him-his wounds are not as grave as they seem."
Harkin nodded stupidly.
The Highwayman bowed to him, turned and bowed to Prince Yeslnik, then leaped again, even higher, back to the low branches of the tree from which he had come.
In a matter of only a few minutes, he had arrived, rescued, robbed, healed, and vanished.
Part I God's Year 54 1
Walking in the Clouds Brother Bran Dynard stepped out of his room into the brilliant morning light. The sun reached down through the few patches of cloud, which were really no more than jagged lines of white torn by the fast winds. Bright flashes dotted the terrace and the bridges, as puddles from the night's rainfall caught the rays of morning and threw them back into the air with exuberance.
Brother Dynard walked across the landing to the waist-high railing and leaned over, looking down at the clouds that drifted across the mountainsides below him, then looking past them to the valley floor, hundreds and hundreds of feet below. Though he had grown up just north of the mighty Belt-and-Buckle mountains, though he had sailed around the eastern fringes of that great range, right under their shadow, Dynard could never have imagined looking down on the clouds.
Looking down on them!
He noted the sparkle of the river snaking through the valley, weaving around the sharp stones and red-streaked rock that seemed to grow right out of the mountains. In the six years he had been here, this view of the strange land that the nomads of Behr called Crezen ilaf Flar, the Mountains of Fire, had never ceased to amaze Dynard and had never ceased to send his heart soaring with the possibilities of…
Of anything. Of everything.
When he had left Chapel Pryd of the Honce holding of the same name on his Journey Proselyt (as the monks called their evangelical missions) seven years before, weary Brother Dynard had never expected any of this. He had served the Church of Blessed Abelle well, so he had thought, through his twenties and past his thirtieth birthday; and it had come as a surprise to him when Father Jerak had pointed him south for his mission. "Go to the desert of Behr," the elderly Jerak had told him one cold and wet winter's day in God's Year 47. "If we can turn the good people of Honce from the dark pagan ways of the Samhaists, then surely even the beasts of Behr will not be beyond the call of Blessed Abelle."
"The beasts of Behr," Dynard quietly mouthed, and how many thousand times had he sarcastically repeated that denigrating phrase used by the fair-skinned people of Honce when referring to the darker-skinned people of the great desert to the south of the Belt-and-Buckle. The Behr were nomadic tribesmen, wandering the windblown sands of the desert from oasis to oasis, from the sea in the east to the steppes far in the west. They rode misshapen beasts-humped horses-and spoke in gibberish, so said the men of Honce who knew them. An excitable lot, they were, by all reports, quick to laugh and quicker to anger, and fierce in battle-as would be expected of any animal, so the general reasoning in Honce went.
Thus it was with great trepidation that Brother Dynard had sailed on one of the small, shore-hugging fishing boats from Laird Ethelbert's domain. He hadn't known what to expect of the southerners; could these people even properly communicate? Were they merely savages or animals?
His string of surprises had begun before he had stepped off that fishing boat, for the structures of Jacintha, the largest settlement in Behr, exceeded anything Brother Dynard had ever before seen, even in the great Honce city of Delaval. White towers topped with brightly colored pennants captured his imagination that morning on the boat. And to this day, what he most remembered about Jacintha was the colors of the place, the brilliant hues and dazzling patterns of the clothing and the rugs. So many rugs! The city seemed to be one sprawling marketplace, anchored by the great houses of the tribal sheiks, more elaborate and beautiful than any of the castles of Honce, and shining pink and white with polished stone. The city bristled with energy, with life itself; and it was there that Brother Dynard believed he truly began his journey and found his heart once more. Before Jacintha, he had walked with weariness, dour and depressed, but a few weeks in that place had him alive again and ready to spread the good word of Blessed Abelle.
He spent many weeks in Jacintha, learning the ways and the language of Behr and coming to recognize the ridiculousness of the labels his people placed upon these civilized and cultured people. Then came the months when Brother Dynard had traveled with the nomads through the stinging, windblown sands and in the shadows of the great dunes. He spoke with the tribesmen about his faith, of the great Blessed Abelle who had found the sacred isle and the gemstone gifts of God. He showed them the gemstone powers, using the gray hematite, the soul stone, to heal minor wounds and afflictions. And they had listened, and they had been amused and tolerant, though not amazed at all, to Dynard's surprise. A few even seemed genuinely interested in learning more about this wondrous prophet who had died nearly a half century before. From those potential converts, Dynard had heard of this place, Crezen ilaf Flar, and of the mystics who lived here, the Jhesta Tu.
According to his guides, these mystics could perform feats of magic similar to those Dynard had displayed, only without the use of any props, gemstone or otherwise.
And so, on a blistering summer day nearly six years before, Bran Dynard had arrived in the valley below his present perch, in the dry bed where the spring waters now ran as a river, at the base of the magnificent staircase, built into the mountain wall, that wound up to the lower terraces of this mountain monastery, the Walk of Clouds.
Thinking back to that day now, it seemed to Dynard to be a lifetime ago. And indeed, in the six years since, he had learned more about himself, about the world, and-he truly believed-about God, than in the three decades he had lived before that.
And he had learned about love, he silently added as his gaze drifted to the solitary figure who had come out on the open walk to perform her morning exercise ritual. Warmth flooded through Dynard as he gazed upon SenWi. Ten years his junior, with delicate, birdlike features and shining black hair that hung to her shoulders, the brown-skinned woman had won his heart almost upon first glimpse. She smiled often-continually, it seemed!-and filled her steps with a bounce and twirl that made her movements more of a dance than a walk.
Dynard watched her precise turns and twists now, as she wove her limbs gracefully and slowly through the ritual of practice, stretching her muscles and playing one against the other in moves to strengthen. The wind gently ruffled her loose-fitting clothing-the off-white ankle-length pants and her rose-colored shining shirt, decorated with intricate embroidery of flowery vines. The light material rippled and whipped, but beneath the clothing stood the anchor of a solid form.
For there was a strength about SenWi, though she wasn't much more than half Dynard's weight.