The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) (37 page)

Javor took a deep breath. “On the way, we found a fort north of the Danuvius. We met a Roman centurion named Valgus who was beset by a dragon. A different dragon, bigger than the one I saw. We helped him kill it—I used this same dagger. It cuts through dragon hide, even though the best Roman spears and swords can’t! But Photius died from the dragon’s spit.”

Austinus nodded. “I feared as much. And what of the first dragon, the one that is following you?”

“
I saw it three times as we followed old roads south, but I haven’t seen it since I crossed the frontier.”

“
And then you came here.”

“
Yes. It took me a long time to find you. I had a hard time to find the church—” Malleus barked another laugh at that— “but I did find you, now.”

“
And what do you want?”

“
I want to join you. I want to find out what in this world is real and what are stories to frighten children. I didn’t believe the old stories that my mother told me, about dragons and monsters and fairies, but now I see that some of them, at least, are true.

“
And I want to know why Ghastog killed my parents. And what is so special about my great-grandfather’s knife. Why can it kill monsters and dragons, and why did it come to me?”

Austinus said nothing then, just looked Javor in the eyes. But Philip, the bald man, back to fussing over the parchments that Javor could now see were maps, protested. “We do not allow untutored barbarians to come in and join us at will. We are an ancient and, most important,
secret
order.”

“
He already knows about us,” the woman in white pointed out.

“
Then I’ll kill him,” said Malleus, stepping forward.

Javor’s dagger was in his hands before he thought of it. He shifted his weight to feel the amulet brush comfortingly against his chest.

Malleus held a thin sword in one hand and moved lightly around Javor. “Don’t embarrass yourself, boy,” he said, smirking. “Put your blade down and lift your chin, and I’ll make this quick. And just a
little
painful.” In a blur, he danced one way and then another, feinted twice and then struck toward Javor’s arm. The thin sword rang sweetly as it glanced off Javor’s dagger, and then Malleus sprang back, out of reach.

“
Ho ho! Well, he doesn’t want to take the easy way, does he?” said Malleus.

Malleus swung again and his sword hit Javor’s blade. Faster than Javor could see, he lunged, but faster than he himself could think, Javor dodged and the blade passed between his arm and his side.

Malleus’ sword moved faster every time he lunged or thrust, and somehow Javor moved faster in response to meet Malleus’s blade with his own. The thin man danced forward and tried a killing blow, but Javor somehow parried.

Javor realized that Malleus was showing off. He jumped, waved his arms, smiled a gruesome smile at Javor or at the
domestikos
, spun on one foot and made flourishes with his sword. Javor couldn’t hope to strike back: the man was just too fast, too tricky, too subtle. It was all he could do to block and parry.

It was as if his opponent could read his mind—every time Javor moved, Malleus was right in front of him.

Javor jumped up and slashed, but Malleus dodged easily, and the dagger hit the polished marble floor, leaving a deep gouge.

Javor panted, sweat blurred his vision, his knees started to shake, he lunged wildly. He knew he was getting sloppy, cursed himself for being a fool every time Malleus evaded a lunge.

But at the same time, Malleus was also getting visibly tired. No longer did he dance back and forth; the flourishes disappeared from his attacks. But he was still unbelievably fast, his sword thrusts and slashes blurs, his eyes penetrating.

They crossed the floor back and forth, their breathing ragged, both pushing to their  limits, neither able to hit the other. Malleus was too fast, too experienced, too good; and Javor was just barely good enough, barely fast enough, to dodge.

The thin man jumped up on the map table, leaped over Javor’s head and slashed. Javor dropped and kicked the table, sending papers scattering over the floor, but Malleus was already coming from behind. Javor heaved the table at him, but the man was in mid-air, slashing again.

Javor jumped forward, knocking one of the scholars sprawling. A candelabrum tipped over and papers caught fire. Men scrambled to put it out as Javor aimed his dagger at Malleus’s throat. Malleus squirmed away, kicking Javor in the thigh. Javor spun—

“
Stop!” echoed over and over off the stone walls. Javor and Malleus froze in mid-stroke. Scholars stamped out flames and looked mournfully at burned paper. “We have seen enough,” said the woman in white. “Malleus, there is clearly something special about this boy. Put your sword away.”

Without taking his eyes off Javor, Malleus sheathed his sword and then took up an alert position beside Austinus.

“
Javor, please lower your blade,” Austinus asked gently. “I would dearly like to see it more closely. Its style, the markings on the handle and the blade—they are very curious. Please.”

He came close to Javor, holding out his hand. “May I see it, Javor?” Javor hesitated. He held out the dagger toward Austinus, carefully, but held onto it.

Austinus ran his fingertips over the inscriptions that curved along the blade. “Where did your great-grandfather get this dagger, my son?” Austinus asked quietly, but Javor heard a tremor deep in his voice, something the older man was trying to hide.

“
My mother said he brought it back with him from the Persian wars. She said he killed a giant in the Caucasus Mountains and came back with this knife.” He didn’t know why, but he decided not to tell them about the amulet.

“
This blade is very ancient. The writing on it is strange, but bears traces of similarity to ancient writing from the far East. These marks, here—”

“
Runes?” asked one of the young men in tunics.

“
No, not runes. They are ideograms, like those in far Cathay, but different. It will take much study.” He looked at Javor again with his piercing dark eyes. “Where did you learn to fight, Javor?

“
Photius taught me some …” Austinus nodded.

“
Yes, you have learned some of our basic techniques. You will have to learn more.”

“
Magister Domestikos!” Philip sputtered. “You cannot mean to initiate him! Tell me, boy, can you read?”

Javor nodded. “A little. Photius showed me letters and taught me to speak Greek.”

“
Badly,” Malleus sneered.

“
In four months, you learned this much Greek from one man?” Austinus asked. “Very well. Nikos,” he said to one of the young men. “Take our guest to some quarters with the novices. And give him something to eat. It must be close to lunch-time. Philip, you will see to it that Javor is enrolled in basic education: reading, writing, better Greek, and of course, religion. And Malleus, you are to take an especial interest in his safety.” The thin man stiffened and his mouth opened to protest. “I mean it, Malleus: I will hold you responsible if he suffers any injury to body or spirit.”

The young man in the blue tunic held out his arm, indicating the dark corridor that Javor had entered by. He took a torch and led Javor, accompanied by one of the guards. As he walked toward a meal and finer quarters than the Inn of the Four Winds, Javor heard Austinus say “Find out who was guarding the back door, and have him flogged!”

Chapter 21
: The Abbey

Nikos led Javor to the kitchen, where he had his first good meal since arriving in Constantinople: fresh vegetables, cheese and wine that actually tasted good. Then, Nikos took Javor to the novices’ quarters: long rows of cells, each equipped with a sleeping mat on the floor. There was also a little table and a curious sloped shelf. “You will put your Bible there, so you can read prayers while kneeling,” Nikos explained. 

He gave Javor a jug and cup for water, new trousers and a long, grey robe. “Get rid of your rough-spun tunic, Javor. You will dress as a member of the Order of St. Mary Chalkoprateaia.”

Indoctrination began before the next dawn. Second-year novices, thin young men with shaved heads, shouted the new monks awake. Javor followed the others to wash at long troughs, careful to hide his amulet. They trooped out to a courtyard for chores: collecting eggs, sweeping out the stable, milking cows, feeding pigs, weeding the garden. Then they filed into a large hall for a meagre bowl of thin porridge, as bad as the Inn of the Four Winds’.

Then the monks went to the chapel for a prayer service. Javor, however, needed basic instruction before taking of oaths of fidelity to the Christian Church, obedience to the Abbot Austinus and the Emperor Maurice, celibacy and poverty. That duty fell to a short, rotund priest with a snub nose.  “I’m Father Peter,” he said. He thought his sarcastic smile made him seem friendlier to the young men of the abbey.

“
You want me to call you ‘father’?”

“
That is the proper form of address, yes.”

It was still hard for Javor to say: “My father … is dead.”

The priest put has hand on Javor’s shoulder. “I am sorry for your loss, my boy. You can take comfort in the family of the Church.”

“
But you are not my father!”

“
I am your spiritual father.”

Javor surrendered that argument. So much was new, alien to him. “Why do you promise poverty?”

“‘
It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’” the priest quoted.

“
What’s a camel?” wondered Javor. “And what is ‘celibacy’?”

“
Thou must not touch a woman,” said Father Peter, with a distinct look of distaste.

“
Why not?”

“
Because thou must remain pure!” the priest answered with a mixture of shock and disgust.

“
Girls are impure?”

“
If you touch them, yes!”

Making love with Danisa was a sin? What about with Elli—we did that to the priestess’s command. Was I sinning when I thought I was doing good?

“
And being rich is a sin?”

“
Just swear to poverty and celibacy and stop asking so many questions!”

I’ll swear, but I’m not telling them about the gold coins I have.
Javor repeated after Father Peter, with his hand on another thing he had never seen before: a book. “It is the Word of the Lord,” said Father Peter. “Tomorrow, we will begin your instruction, and soon you will be baptized and receive Communion.”

Between chores and prayers, Javor met some of the novices. Most were two or three years older than Javor, but some were 15 like him, mostly thin and small. Javor thought they looked strange with their hair cropped so short—just fuzz over their skulls.

He forgot most names as quickly as he heard them: Agapetos, Ioannes, Didius, Iulius, Laelius, Vibius. One name stayed with him: Flaccus, a sickly-looking boy with a bulbous nose and oversized ears. Their home cities sounded exotic: Sirmium, Paphlagonia, Lemnos, Thessalonika, Tarsus. Almost none of them had come from Constantinople itself.

The second morning, an older monk arrived with more novelties: a pair of scissors and a razor. “Time to cut those long, blonde locks of yours, boy,” he said. Javor shook his head. The monk came closer; Javor stood as tall as he could and glared down at the monk, whose eyes were at the level of Javor’s throat.

“
No.”

The monk gulped. “It’s the Rule.”

“
Maybe later.” The monk backed away. Javor didn’t see him again for a long time.

That evening, Nikos beckoned Javor without a word and led him down a corridor without looking back.

Javor followed, annoyed at the young man’s presumption that he would follow.
Why do I keep thinking of him as the “young man”? He’s older than I am!

Nikos led him up a spiral staircase, and went up and up, showing no fatigue or worry on his smooth, perfect face. Javor was soon out of breath. When they at last reached the top, Javor stepped onto a balcony high above the abbey. Standing near the  railing was Austinus in a dark cloak, his silver chain glittering around his neck. Behind him, the setting sun lit the city on fire. Constantinople was impossibly huge, with rows of buildings fading into the twilight.

“
Good evening, my son,” the older man said. “I hope you are settling into our humble abbey?”

“
Thank you, sir. It does seem like a lot of work,” Javor answered.

Austinus chuckled. “I hope you are not too tired!”

“
Oh, no sir,” Javor said quickly. “It’s less work than I had in my village.”

“
Good, good.” Austinus gazed out over the city, to the darker horizon in the east. “Javor, I hope that you realize that the method of the Abbey of St. Mary is designed to set young souls like yours on the true path to God. We do not simply work our young initiates for our own sake.”

“
I appreciate the education, sir.” Javor was surprised at his own courtesy, and painfully aware of the inadequacy of his Greek, compared with Austinus’.

Austinus put on hand on Javor’s shoulder and looked out over the city to the west. The last rays of the sun licked the city walls and the walls of the great cathedrals and palaces. “It’s important that you learn as much as possible, as quickly as you can, about the Word of God, about the Gospel as defined by the Church. But—and I do not say this to many—as soon as you are capable, I intend to initiate you into a deeper knowledge.

“
The Gospels approved by the Council of Nicea (don’t worry, you’ll learn all about that in due course) are fine for the masses. But there is a deeper truth beneath that, a truth that few people are ready to accept, a truth that our very civilization needs to be kept secret, known only to a select few—an elite, if you will.”

Another lecture. What is it with these Greeks?

“
Learn the Gospel. And remember that it is true. But we need you to know another, deeper truth.”

“
Why do you need me to know this?”

“
You bear a large piece of that deep truth, Javor: your great-grandfather’s ancient dagger. And you have faced dragons, beasts that many people believe never existed.”

“
Then you do believe me!”

“
Of course.” Austinus had a habit of closing his eyes when he said something he felt especially important. “Javor, these are very dangerous times. Civilization and the human race are in grave peril, in peril of dying out forever.

“
Look about you: you see the City of Constantinople, the glory of Rome, the Eternal Empire. We are beset by a rising tide that could drown us at any moment. A century and a half ago, half of the Empire of Rome was destroyed, smashed, drowned in a wave of barbarity. In the western Empire, civilization has crumbled, learning has been replaced by darkness. Fields lie fallow, food is not harvested, the human population wanes.

“
The East is scarcely better. Barbarians raid across the borders to steal food and to test our defences so that one day they may destroy us. Persia, too, struggles against internal enemies, as does far-off Cathay. The Avars, whose raids I understand your people have suffered,” Javor nodded, “were themselves pushed out of the eastern lands they once ruled by a force even more fierce than themselves.

“
There is more than barbarian ferocity behind this. New plagues sweep across the world, pestilences history has never seen. When the Black Death struck the capital, it killed over two hundred thousand people, including the Emperor Justinian! Earthquakes bring down cities. You can see signs of the damage here in Constantinople. Droughts erase entire rivers. The seas are rising. Whole villages on the Euxine Sea have drowned.”

Austinus walked along the balcony, and Javor realized that it circled a narrow tower. As he followed Austinus, he got a tour of the whole city: broad avenues stretching to the west; mighty walls; the Golden Horn crowded with ships, glistening in the last light of the sun, guarded by a huge chain that stretched from shore to shore; then the broad Sea of Marmara. By the time they had made their way completely around the tower, the sunset had vanished, leaving a velvety black sky dusted with stars—but not as many stars as Javor remembered seeing in the night sky of his home.

“
One year, the sun did not shine,” Austinus said. “There was no spring, no summer. The sun rose, but weak and dim. Its beams did not nourish the grain or other crops. Famine spread across the Empire, and in the other civilizations, even as far away as—according to our sources—Britannia, in the ultimate west. I believe the whole world was affected. Our wisest men ranged far abroad to gather intelligence. They told us that Hell opened a new portal in the far east of the world. From that gate pours all manner of evil: rivers of flame and new species of demons and monsters, spirits that spread across the world and take up residence where they can threaten human civilization. They corrupt petty kings and barbarian chieftains and incite them against their fellow men. There are new and evil dragons…”

“
Wait. Aren’t all dragons evil?”

Austinus smiled indulgently. “Dragons are the oldest, wisest and most powerful beings on earth. You need more education before you can grasp all this, and it’s getting late. Go to bed. We will talk more in the future, I promise.” At that, the door to the stairway opened, and Nikos beckoned Javor to follow.

“
Thank you,
domestikos
,” he said, head swimming with new information. He followed Nikos back to the novices’ quarters and lay down on the thin mat in his cell. But he didn’t sleep for a long time: he kept picturing Austinus against the dying fires of the sun, hearing his voice talking about Hell trying to wipe out the human race.

Why does Hell care?

Javor settled into a new pattern: waking before dawn, doing chores, eating an awful breakfast. Then it was time for prayers. Javor had no idea how to pray, but tried to imitate the other novices. He was curious to see the inside of a chapel for the first time, curious about the long rows of wooden benches (“They’re called ‘pews,’” said another novice), and about the large crucifix at the front. His Greek wasn’t yet good enough to understand the priest’s words, but he managed to pick up some of the ideas.
They worship a man who died, then rose from the dead. Strange. His punishment erased our sins? Stranger. But, somehow, comforting.

Back to work after that: menial labour all morning, grooming horses and feeding animals and sweeping and cleaning, interrupted by several calls to prayer either on the spot or requiring trooping back into the chapel. Midday meal—a measly snack of stale bread—was followed by more prayers and time for “contemplation.” All that Javor could think about was getting outside again, about the fascinating city beyond the abbey’s walls, about the green fields and the mysterious roads he had wandered, about blue skies, and about the monsters that pursued him.

The second half of the afternoon was devoted to instruction. The teachers, middle-aged monks whose tonsures fascinated and revolted Javor, were surprised, if not pleased, by the speed with which he learned his letters and numbers. In the first few weeks, Javor learned how to read fluently, how to write Greek letters, how to do basic arithmetic. He learned about the life of Jesus and began to believe.