Flesh and Spirit (15 page)

Sebastian unrolled the parchment under my nose. I furrowed my brow and inspected the page as if I could comprehend it. His chattering implied the cathedral labor rolls had indeed confirmed my status as a freeborn and legitimate son of nobodies.

Neither bastards nor villeins were allowed to labor on holy works. When I'd wandered back to Palinur a few years before in search of work, I had assembled several tavern acquaintances into a poor but devout family, believable enough to testify and get me hired on at the cathedral. I had cheerfully imagined my mother's face if she ever learned she had been mimed by a whore who had serviced Palinur's garrison so often, she could identify the soldiers' pricks blindfolded.

Brother Sebastian's face shone brighter than the hazy sun. “The abbot has given his consent. And, most excellently, it happens that the Hierarch of Ardra himself has arrived for a visitation and will preside at your vesting! Come along with me, lad.”

Before I knew it, we had collected my secular clothes from the dorter and a provision bag from the kitchen, and he was bustling me through the doorway of the very guesthouse where I had been certain that the Duc of Ardra was hiding from his royal brother.

“Tomorrow dawn I'll come for you, my son. Open your heart for Iero's guidance.” Brother Sebastian pushed a canvas bag into my hands, and for a moment the animation of his round face yielded to a quieter sentiment. “You've a cheerful heart, Valen…yes, yes…Robierre has seen it as well, as has everyone who's met you. Our brotherhood will benefit greatly from the vigor you bring. But nothing sours a graceful spirit more than taking a path it is not meant to walk, so we would have you be certain of each step along the way.” He grinned and retreated down the steps, waving as he disappeared past the granary. Guilt nudged my shoulder, but I quickly dismissed it.

The bag contained bread, cheese, and a traveling flask of ale, provisions for my journey should I decide to abandon the monastic life. An earthenware flask contained a liquid that had no smell. I wrinkled my nose. Water from the blood-tainted abbey spring was to be my only sustenance for my night of meditation. The bag did
not
contain my book. I wasn't sure whether to be insulted that they thought I was so stupid as to abandon my only possession of value, or gratified that they considered me worthy of their company.

I explored the guesthouse, speculating as to where the abbot had installed his royal supplicant if not here. Though its chambers were not elaborately decorated, it was more luxurious than anywhere I'd slept in many years. Plum-colored rugs warmed the bare floors. Brightly woven tapestries blanketed the walls, depicting the events from the life of Karus, the divine mystic from the steppes of far Estigure whose unruly sect had grown into Iero's Karish church.

A magnificent fresco in the dining room illustrated the familiar theme of the
ordo mundi
—the world's proper order. In sweeping bands of blue, yellow, and crimson, the artist illumined the three spheres: the arc of heaven, where the holy saints lived with Iero and Karus; the base foundation of hell, domain of the Adversary and damned souls; and in between, the earthly sphere with its righteous layers of kings and hierarchs, purebloods and peasants, its somber labors and abject wickedness so vividly depicted and its true delights so blatantly ignored. Though Iero extended his hands toward the earthly sphere in invitation, only the winged grace of angels bridged the gaping emptiness between the spheres of heaven and earth. A sad oversight, I'd always thought. In this respect, the Sinduri Council offered a more pleasing view: that every arch, tree, window, grotto, and mud puddle had its pesky aingerou, a messenger to the elder gods. Thus common folk could hold a discussion with our ever-quarreling divine family by raising a glass in an inn or taking a piss in the wood.

It was tempting to build a fire in the hearth, relax on the fine couch, and contemplate this profound and beautifully wrought statement of humankind's place in the scheme of things. But I dared not miss this chance to get out, acquire what I needed, and get back again without prompting uncomfortable questions from my hosts. Unfortunately the guesthouse held no valuables small enough to carry with me.

Though I had been instructed to leave my monk's garb in the dorter for my vigil night, pragmatism had prompted a minor disobedience. Those who prowled the roads of Navronne, whether soldiers, highwaymen, or even the most devout followers of the elder gods, considered it unlucky to touch a wayfaring monk or practor. Interference with traveling clergymen had been a hanging offense since the days of King Caedmon's Peace and the Writ of Balance. The Writ, a declaration of truce between the priests and priestesses of the Sinduri Council and the Karish hierarchs, had been proclaimed at Navronne's birth by King Eodward's great-great-great-grandfather—or his father, if you believed the legend that a beleaguered Caedmon, his beloved kingdom on the verge of annihilation by the Aurellian Empire, had sent his infant son Eodward to live with the angels for a hundred and forty-seven years.

As soon as darkness fell—the time when Brother Cadeus the porter gave up his post at the Alms Court—I downed one more swallow of ale, threw the black gown over my jaque and braies, and slipped out of the guesthouse. From the mouth of the gatehouse tunnel, I skulked northward along the outer wall, avoiding the track across the open field so as not to be observed from the sanctuary room. A wooded hollow near the junction of the track and the main road, where the tricky moonlight shifted shadows, provided a likely vantage for less benevolent observers. Prince Bayard would surely have set a watch on the abbey.

Only when I reached a lonely beech grove did I breathe again. I scoffed at my racing heart. What was wrong with me? These were
monks
after all, and they held no bond upon me. No matter what kind of exit I made, they'd likely take me back come morning if I vouched some saintly vision had changed my heart. This constant prickling of unease was wholly foolish—likely naught but my long-muzzled conscience thrown out of sorts in such a holy place. Laughing at the thought of
myself
shipped off to live in the realm of angels, I shouldered my rucksack again and set out along the mist-shrouded river.

A
quellé north from the abbey, the River Kay vanished into ripe-smelling boglands. The road, so firm and wide at Gillarine, dwindled into marshy tracks, scarcely distinguishable from the fen in the patchy moonlight. My steps slowed. No bogwight was going to lure me into a muddy death, doomed to take its place until the next unwary traveler set me free in turn! Unfortunately, a careful pace would never get me to Elanus and back in any sensible time, even assuming Jullian's estimate of three quellae was at all accurate.

Thus, I chose to risk using a bit of magic again. If I didn't acquire nivat, no amount of power would save me. As the moon darted behind a wad of clouds, I knelt to lay my palms on the earth and discover my way using my bent. I closed my eyes. The mud was cold and gummy and smelled of rotting timber, moldering leaves, and animal droppings. Softening the boundaries of my mind, I released magic to flow through my fingertips.

Inhale.
The scents grew richer…stronger. Boot leather and greased axles, cut timber and hay had passed this way. Horses and donkeys. Flocks of sheep and pigs driven to town.
Listen.
Gurgles and trickles spoke of the river, not vanished, but merely hidden beneath and beside and around me, as powerful in its dispersal as in its joined form, just more subtle. I discovered traces of travelers…of voices. My youthful ventures in use of my bent had never been so vivid.

I stretched my mind forward and swept from left to right, as a draftsman ties his pen to a string and stretches that string from a fixed point to scribe a perfect arc. Within that arc I could sense the variance of terrain: puddles and gullies, sucking mud pits, submerged trees, plots of firmer ground, the tracks of thirsty deer and bears and skittering mice, and always the road like a band of sturdy cloth, woven of scents and earth and the quivering remnants of those who had trod or ridden or driven over it, talking, braying, singing.

So many sensations all at once…and the music…A number of singers had traveled this road, leaving behind telltales of their music. One of them…ah, what a gift…the plucked notes of a harp wound through present and past like a thread of silver, woven into the road for a while and then wandering off into the fens…a song to pierce the heart. A prickling crept up my arms, as if I were dissolving into the fens like the river and the road. Beneath my palms the earth swelled, as if a body lay beneath the mud and had begun to breathe. Somewhere eyes were opening…

Quickly, I scribed the shape of the land on my mind and yanked my hands away, rinsing the mud off them in a puddle and wiping them on my gown. A glance around the still, moonlit landscape revealed neither man nor beast. But as I set off again, I could not slough off the sense that my eyes were unreliable.

Forests and bogs were favorite haunts of spirits. Though aingerou preferred cities and other man-built habitations, and revenants preferred the places they'd lived or died, tales spoke of older beings who yet walked in the wild—the guardian Danae, whose dancing wove the patterns of the world and who could merge their bodies with ponds or groves, and the demon gatzi, who were but Danae corrupted to Magrog's service. Both were said to whisk folk away from mortal life. I'd never run across any such creatures, so they didn't worry me all that much, but it never hurt to keep one's eyes open.

Holding the thread of path and direction in my head, I hurried down the road, humming the harper's song that still shimmered in my head. The cheerful melody swelled my heart and kept the night's terrors at bay.

The hour was not even Compline when the first glimpse of torchlit roofs and walls, and the first sounds of pipe, tabor, and raucous laughter set up a rampant thirst in me. I stripped off my monk's gown, stuffed it into my rucksack, and trotted the last few hundred quercae up the road and across the ditchwork to the cross-timbered gate. A good-sized town like Elanus should have a fine selection of taverns, sop-houses, pickable pockets, friendly barmaids, and gullible gamblers, not to mention an herbalist or apothecary with nivat seeds to sell. Not to mention a tankard of potent mead to warm away the damp and make a man forget politics, holy men, and conspiracies for an hour or two.

A closer look dampened my optimism. Though the earthwork surrounding the hillside town appeared substantial, the wooden palisade atop it was rotting and the town watch lax and slovenly. My claim that I'd come in search of a secure bed on a journey to visit my brother in Palinur easily satisfied the two half-soused guardsmen who carried but one serious weapon between them—an iron-bladed bill hook that would see its best use as a club. They seemed more interested in my assertion that my brother had a job awaiting me in a Palinur tannery than in the motley bloodstains on my jaque or how I had managed to travel any distance in these perilous times, carrying no weapon but a walking stick.

“Bog iron's failing,” said one of the reeking pair as he cracked some aged walnuts with his bill. His blotched skin was peeling. “Half the smelts are cold. Roads too risky to bring in ore, and them as might haul it are fighting or dead. Elanus won't last a year more.”

The second guard sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Some Harrowers were through here yestereve, preaching. Lot of folk figure the orange-heads have it right. Won't take but another smelt closing down for them to have us all burning for the Gehoum.”

“So they've gone now…the Harrowers?” I asked, glancing around uneasily, happy I'd taken off the monk's habit. I didn't need any ragtag from Black Night taking out their frights and vengeance on a monk. Harrowers didn't honor the Writ of Balance. “You're sure they weren't soldiers—Moriangi?”

“Nawp. Only orange-heads, but soldierly, especially the woman leading 'em. They're burning farms and outliers these last few days, them they say is offending their holy Gehoum. They burnt Mott's granary, saying his plow was a curse. The watch snagged one of her hags for the pillory. Rest got away.”

“Mayhap I'll be on my way sooner as later, then,” I said. “Wouldn't want to cause them offense. But I'm for a tankard first.” I'd need to be careful leaving. The Harrowers would likely hang about the town to get their woman back. Perhaps theirs was the foreboding presence I'd felt on the road.

The town pillory sat just inside the gates. A frowsy woman, face streaked with ash and blood, yelled at me hoarsely as I hurried past. “The day of terror comes! The Gehoum will have their vengeance!” Her hair was strung up in a greasy wad atop her head and tied with an orange rag. She didn't sound so much crazed as excited.

I sloughed off the worry, waded through a knee-deep gaggle of muddy geese that blocked the town's main street, and happily inhaled the scent of civilization—dung, smoke, and burning fat. Just ahead of me, a ragged donkey boy leveled one whip and manifold curses, trying to get a charcoal-laden dray up the steepening lane.

The people of Elanus seemed a grim and unhealthy lot altogether, just like their town. At the edge of the road bony children dabbled sticks in the puddles, and cripples shook empty cups, bawling for a citré. Everywhere were hollow cheeks and peeling, unhealthy skin, and sunken eyes that would not meet mine. Orange head rags stuck out like bits of bright paint on a wall of gray.

As I strolled past an alley, trying to decide whether to locate a source for the nivat or the means to pay for it first, a burly man with a slack lip and a sinner's nose pawed at my sleeve. “A bed companion this night, traveler? Or an hour's pleasure?”

In the shadowed alley, a squint-eyed young woman opened her threadbare cloak to reveal a tight-laced bodice of ruffled lace. A slim, pretty boy with skin the color of milked tea leaned against the sooty brick, smirking as he shivered in naught but a stained silk tunic and a silver ankle bracelet.

“These two come all the way from Estigure. Blessed is the man who lies with divine Karus's kin. Lay away blessings lest the world's end catch you lornly.”

I sighed and let my eyes drink in the sights. “Regrettably I've other holy business must come first.”

The man waggled a finger and the girl spun in place, billowing her cloak and a filmy skirt, slit from hither to yon, offering glimpses of long, slim legs. The tasseled string that fastened her lacy bodice swayed most enticingly. My hands twitched as I imagined the smoothness of those long legs and the delights that lay underneath the shabby lace. Serena Fortuna had cursed me with overlong abstinence already, and now proffered the lonely prospect of winter at an abbey. No prayer I'd ever heard could sheathe a man's ache.

With apologies to the goddess Arrosa for refusing her sweet gift, I worked to cool the growing heat in my loins.
Think of battlefields, Valen. Winter. A starving belly. Monks. Nivat seeds. Family.
“Perhaps later.”

His pitted, leaking nose twitched, and he licked his sagging lip, revealing stained teeth. “Five citrae will hold the girl for you until midnight. Ten for the boy. I've others as well. Locals. Cheaper, but blessed, all the—”

“I'll come back if Serena Fortuna is kind.”

Even if I'd had the price, I wasn't fool enough to give it on a promise. But I bowed to the girl, which brought a lovely flush to her pale cheeks and set her licking lips much finer than the procurer's, and I winked at the youth, which replaced his smirk with a soft and subtle eagerness. Perhaps four years older than Jullian, he stretched an arm behind his head and thrust out one slim hip just enough to make a graceful curve.

I cleared my throat and dragged my eyes away. “Tell me, goodman, where in this sober town might I find good mead and honest dice?”

“Cross-hill toward the smelts, you'll find the Blade. Tell Holur that Tigg sent you for a game and a taste from his cask. He'll see to you.” He shrugged and turned his attention back to other passersby.

My stomach rumbled as I meandered down the lane that leveled off westward, “cross-hill,” rather than taking the steeper way that climbed the rounded mound of Elanus. A few tight-shuttered houses lurked among others collapsed into weedy ruins. The sweet pale smokes of peat fires laced with pork fat hung over the lane like mist over the bogs. At the far end of the lane, darker billows rose from the charcoal fires of the “smelts,” where the folk of Elanus teased workable iron from treasured pellets dug from the peatlands.

I'd tended a bog-iron smelter one autumn. Hot, smoky, tedious work to keep the fires stoked and burning evenly for days on end. I'd been no good at it. The sheer ugliness of the task could not but set a man's mind wandering.

Just down the lane, a knot of shouting people broke into cheers. Peering over the bobbing heads revealed a squirming, muddy tangle of scrawny limbs and occasional glimpses of bared teeth and bloodied cheeks and noses. One of the boys, significantly smaller than the other, seemed favored by the crowd, and every twist that gave him a moment's advantage elicited a cheer and a jostle of backslapping. A stringy man with bulging eyes collected coins from the onlookers. One lad would likely get a meal for his bruises, the other naught but a boot in the backside. I'd earned my share of both. When the pop-eyed man stuck his tin cup in my face, I showed him my empty palms, bellowed an encouragement for each of the boys, and moved on.

A wedge of hammered iron dangling above a lettered signboard announced an establishment blazing with light and bursting with jolly music and fine smells. The Blade. Ah, I did love a friendly tavern, a pocket of warmth and enjoyment amidst all the cold world's ills. My spirits, far too sober with deceptions, politics, abbeys, and damnable diseases, perked up.

The doxy held the law at bay with tit and toe and tongue.

All while the bandit stole away that night before he hung…

As ever, the singing snared me like a hook trap. I joined in even before I walked through the door, and as I slammed the splintered plank behind me, a woman draped her arm about my neck and warbled the next chorus right in my ear. Laughing, I grabbed her waist from behind and whirled her about as the song required, while other men tried to pinch her tits or stomp her toe. Spoiling for action and good cheer, I let the music liven my feet to glide and pivot, heel and toe. The rhythm of the tabor took us up and down the room through the clapping crowd as I spun her dizzy and protected her from their gleeful pawing.

Well into the doxy and the bandit's fourth escapade, we collapsed over a table in breathless merriment, and I first glimpsed the woman's face. Beneath a lank cascade of mud-colored hair swelled smooth cheeks of a pleasant pink and naught else worthy of mention. My brother Max would have called her a mirror-bane.

“Two more on my coin, Holur!” she yelled over my shoulder as our pursuers abandoned us in favor of a new ale barrel being hauled in from the back room. “Though my head be swimming, my tongue is dry. And this fellow sings like a carpenter's rasp.”

Coins rattled in the piper's basket, and a new dance went on without us. Still laughing, I dragged the woman up and into my arms, my hands finding a sure downward path toward the generous curves beneath her skirt. Max had always been too particular by half. Such yielding firmness demanded further explorations. My feet moved to a more languorous tempo.

She moaned softly deep in her throat, and a pleasant heat rose from her skin and through her layered clothing. I drew her closer.