"Yeah, you don't look like you're going to fold up and blow away anymore," he said.
Though you still look like shit, frankly, he added to himself. Or like a ghost of yourself.
He had trouble connecting the figure before him with the blood-spattered warrior who'd gone striding through the Cutter camp to rescue his friends like a God of War with men dead and crippled in his wake. Rudi Mackenzie was still far too thin, the flesh tight on his strong bones, and there were lines of strain around his blue-green eyes that hadn't been there before. Only the thick red-gold hair that fell to his shoulders was as it had been before. That and his smile.
"I'm feeling much better," the Mackenzie tanist said, with a flash of white teeth. "Which is to say, as if I'm only at death's door, not halfway through the Gate, screaming as my fingernails tear out while I grip the posts, sure."
"How's the shoulder?" Fred asked.
He'd be most concerned with his sword arm, in the other's place. "I'm practicing more sword work with my left hand," Rudi said matter-of-factly.
Then he shrugged at Fred's wince. "It's not so bad; I'm ambidextrous anyway."
"Really?"
"Nearly. Slightly. It's important to keep a positive attitude, my mother always told me."
They shared a chuckle, and Rudi went on: "And the strength is coming back, slowly; I'll have enough in the right arm for shield work, and enough control. It's the range of motion I'm having problems with, though the exercises the monks have me doing help."
"They've certainly got some good weapons instructors here," Fred said. "I've been learning a lot… and I had the best trainers in Boise."
He shook his head. "Sort of odd to think of Buddhists having a military school."
"Well, a lot of the followers of the Old Religion also had qualms about war training back before the Change, from what the oldsters say at times. But the survivors didn't," Rudi said. "From what the Rimpoche 's told me, there were monks of half a dozen different schools here when the day came, and some of them had always walked the Warrior's Way."
Fred frowned. "You know, it's odd… but in a way, Abbot Dorje reminds me of my father. Which is odd because they're nothing at all alike-Dad went to church sometimes, but he was never religious, really."
A waitress turned up with their food; a loaf of brown bread, butter, a platter of plump aromatic sausages hot and steaming and sputtering juices from cracks in their skins, beets with herbs, cabbage, some strong-tasting boiled green that looked like spinach but wasn't, glistening slices of pan-fried potatoes. Weather like this gave you an appetite; he spooned some mustard onto the side of his plate, butter onto the cabbage, and dug in. Rudi did likewise, eating more slowly, as if he had to decide to take each mouthful.
"Well, they're both men who gave everything to what they did-and gave everything to their people," the clansman said after a moment. "Sure, and the Rimpoche reminds me of my mother, but that's a more obvious comparison."
"Dad talked about a government of laws and not of men a lot," Frederick said. "But you know… I've been thinking as we travel, it means a lot what sort of men you have ruling. If they're the wrong people, no matter how good the laws are, they don't do much."
Rudi nodded. "Though good laws can restrain a bad ruler, somewhat, depending of course on the customs of the folk and the badness of the man.
"Or woman," he added after a moment, obviously thinking of someone and just as obviously not wanting to say who.
Mathilda's mother, Fred thought. Who frightens everyone. Even Dad was cautious about her-everyone wanted him to fight Portland over the Palouse, but he agreed to split it with her. But Mathilda's wonderful!
He blushed, and had the uncomfortable feeling that Rudi had followed his thoughts and was amused by them.
Hell, friends have a right to laugh at each other. We've fought side by side, and we are friends. And we've got stuff in common, too. We grew up around rulers. That's something that most of us in this bunch have, and it's… different… to have people who really understand around.
The waitress came back with two mugs of hot cider, pungent with something that smelled of berries. She put Rudi's down and gave him a motherly pat. The glance she gave Fred was anything but; he blushed and reached for some of the bread to mop his plate and ignored her disappointed sigh.
"If you're called to rule, you just have to do the best you can," Rudi said.
"But you need something to guide you," Fred said earnestly, the woman's smile as forgotten as the hunk of barley bread in his hand. "You need… something more than just finding money to pay the soldiers and keep the irrigation canals going and patrols to catch bandits."
"That you do," Rudi said. "Men are ruled by the visions inside their heads as much as by swords or castles or tax gatherers. Sure, and those laws your father mentioned, if they're to be anything at all it's a dream in the hearts of men, not just words on a page."
He sighed and watched the sway of their waitress' hips as she took the empty tray back to the kitchens.
"Not even the Foam-Born Cyprian with a rope tied to it, not right now, ochone, the sorrow and the pity," he murmured to himself, and then turned his eyes back to Fred. "A king is not just a war leader, or a head clerk. He's also a priest, he is; a priest of those Mysteries his people reverence, whatever they call them. And his lady a priestess."
The late dawn of Christmas Eve came bright and cold after a week of storms. Father Ignatius stopped at the top of the ridge and looked down over the roofs of the Chenrezi Monastery, the town below, the mist of driven snow that swirled along the surface of the frozen lake at the mountain's foot, and the distant ruins of a pre-Change settlement. The sky was bleakly clear from the mountain fangs eastward to those behind him; the one gilded with bright sunrise until he had to squint into them, the other still turning from night dark to ruddy pink, but otherwise bone white against cobalt blue.
So simple, so elegant, so… pure, Ignatius thought, inhaling air that smelled of nothing but itself and a little pine.
God is the greatest of artists! How good of Him to give us this world, and the chance to imitate Him by bettering it.
Wryly: If only we did not mar it, and ourselves, so often!
Then the sun rose a little more, and the light was like diamond on the fresh snow, with only a hint of green from the pine trees ahead. He climbed steadily towards them, eyes wide as the crystals sparkled and flew free to glitter in plumes from the branches. His head felt a little light-he'd been fasting for the past day or two, and had taken only a little bread and milk this morning. The light powder was knee-deep, but he had good stout laced boots lined with fleece, and quilted trousers of local make.
After a moment he found the place he wanted, a little clearing with a view down the mountainside and a convenient stump where a lodgepole pine had been pushed over by some storm. Snow hid the trunk, but the splintered base was thigh-high. He drew his sword and drove the point downward into the wood, so that the cross-hilt shape stood black against the sun, and looped his rosary and crucifix about it so that the cross clinked against the steel.
Then he knelt and began to pray, hands folded before him. The familiar words and gestures quieted his mind-which was one of their purposes. Some corner of his mind remembered what Abbot Dmwoski had said to the novices of his class once:
Silent prayer is the highest form. But God gives us a set of steps for a reason-and you must tread every one of them to reach the heights. Better to stay on a step where you can keep your footing until you are ready, than climb too fast and fall. The Adversary can corrupt even prayer, if your pride gives him an opening.