The Education of Brother Thaddius and other tales of DemonWars (The DemonWars Saga) (4 page)

“Look deeper.”

Sadye rolled the lute in her hands, feeling its weight and balance, running her fingers about the carved and delicate neck and the meticulously crafted pick-ups and ties. She saw the small gray stones set into the instrument, edging the circular hole beneath the strings. They didn’t sparkle like rubies or diamonds, and hardly added to the beauty of the lute.

“Now you see the truth,” said Orrin, and Sadye looked up at him curiously.

“Gemstones,” Orrin explained. “Hematite, which the monks name the soul stone.”

Sadye looked back at the gray edging of the hole, her fingers gently feeling the smoothness.

“They are enchanted, of course,” said Orrin. “Abellican stones, brought from an island in the south Mirianic.”

“The lute is magical?” Sadye asked, looking up at him once again.

Orrin paused and looked at her hard, then looked all around as if he was torn. Sadye, ever perceptive, sensed that he was trying to decide whether or not to let her in on his secret, and judging from the intensity of his expression, she figured that secret to be no minor thing!

“You looked through the crates, though I told you not to?” Orrin said at length.

Sadye didn’t answer, figuring the question to be rhetorical.

“Of course you did, for the lute was near to the bottom, I believe,” Orrin went on. “Most of the goods are what they appear to be: instruments and tools, trinkets and the like. But did you not notice that several were set with gemstones?”

“Ornamental.”

“Magical,” Orrin corrected. “Every one. The Abellicans are tight with their sacred stones, so it’s said, but in truth, they’ve sold many of them over the years. Merchants pay quite well for them, you see, especially for the ones set in that lute. Soul stones can heal various maladies; it is no accident that many of the wealthy folk of Honce-the-Bear live longer than the peasants.”

“They use Abellican magic?” Sadye looked back down at the lute, at the soul stones, with even more curiosity.

“They try to,” said Orrin. “Using the stones is no easy trick, even for those so trained. And few are trained, for the Abellicans guard those secrets even more tightly than they control the stones. That is where we come in.”

“We? You and I?”

Orrin laughed again. “No, no, of course not!” he said. “Not you, at least.”

“You said ‘we’.”

“We, yes, we of the brotherhood,” Orrin explained. He laughed again and again looked all around, shaking his head. “What spell have you put over me, pretty young thing, to get me to divulge this to you? Ah, perhaps it is merely my own loneliness — keeping such secrets weighs on the heart, you know.

“And so yes, Sadye, I will tell you. But before I do, you must agree to stay with me when your indenture is ended.”

Sadye’s striking brown eyes popped open wide, and she reflexively shook her head so forcefully that her long black hair whipped about her angular features.

“Do you have a better life awaiting you among the children of Ursal’s streets?” Orrin asked.

The question steadied her, and reminded her that the last few weeks with Orrin hadn’t been so bad.

“Do you agree?”

“How long?”

“Three years.”

“No!”

“Then a single year,” Orrin replied. “Yes, one year will suffice, for I am certain that if you stay that long, you will be more than willing to remain. I could use a hand now in my business. A protégé — yes, you will be my protégé!”

“For what, old Orrin?” she bluntly asked. “What business?”

Orrin gave her a smirk.

“You’re a smuggler,” Sadye stated.

“Of course, though few understand the true value of that which I purvey.”

“And yet, the court of law, the ruling authority, grants you a servant.” Sadye looked away and blew a sigh, somehow not even surprised.

“It is a wonderful system. And you did not come cheaply, I assure you. Many of the bidders were eager to purchase your pretty face and that young body.”

Sadye found herself recoiling, moving deeper within the crevice between the two crates.

“I was more interested in your clever mind,” Orrin went on, and that calmed her a bit. “I heard of your confidence games and deceptive exploits and was quite impressed. One does not succeed at such a craft without being observant and perceptive, two traits I greatly admire and desire.”

“And you trust me enough to tell me all of this? Are you not afraid that I will betray your secret?”

Orrin’s face went suddenly grim and he sat up straighter and glared down at her. “No, because you are smart enough to understand that if you betray us, we will utterly destroy you. There are weapons more deadly than a sword, dear Sadye, and evils that make strong men beg for death.”

Sadye didn’t blink or shrink, but the point had certainly been made.

“Consider the soul stones set in that lute,” Orrin went on, mellowing his tone only a small bit. “With it, any of my brethren could enter your dreams and turn them to haunting horror. With it, any of us could drive you mad and deceive you into tearing your own flesh from your bones.”

Something in his tone told Sadye not to even question, and not to doubt.

“But enough of these unpleasantries,” Orrin said with a wave of his hand. “I tell you because I believe I understand that which is in your heart. Sadye wants more than to survive on the street. Sadye wants wealth and power. Oh yes, that is the sparkle in your pretty eyes. That hope. That burning desire.”

“Tell me, then.”

“The monks have their gemstones, and sell many to wealthy merchants, because they believe that the merchants will never be able to utilize those stones in any manner which would threaten Abellican supremacy. But there is another facet of the gemstones which the monks do not even completely understand. If I handed you a soul stone and bade you to heal even a minor wound, you would surely fail. But if I took that stone and prepared it correctly and embedded it in a magically prepared item — a lute, perhaps, or a wand — then you would more likely succeed with that healing task. The items — and they are not easily prepared, I assure you! — bring the powers of the gemstone and the wielder into focus.”

Sadye looked down at the lute with even more admiration, her eyes glowing, her fingers trembling. “How can the Abellicans not know of this?”

“Preparing the items is no small task, my young protégé.”

“You will teach me how to do it?”

This brought the greatest laugh of all from Orrin. “I will teach you how to smuggle, and if you are clever, how to keep your mouth shut,” he explained. “There are two, perhaps three, in all the world who understand how to craft such an item as the one you hold in your hands. The man who made that very lute, centuries ago, spent a decade and more on that single piece! Fortunately, the process in creating such items also helps them survive the ages, and so there are quite a few secretly floating about Honce-the-Bear and even Behren in the south.

“Secretly,” Orrin emphasized. “The Abellicans would hunt us down and slaughter us….”

“Us?” Sadye pressed.

“The Brotherhood of Wise Men,” Orrin said. “We have existed for hundreds of years, each of us finding a single protégé to carry on our work. We keep our numbers steady and we keep them small. My last student met with an unfortunate end, and so I have been searching for his replacement.”

“Sadye.”

“Sadye.”

“And if I do not want this?”

“You already agreed. There can be no change of heart.”

He spoke the words casually, matter-of-factly, and without any overt malice. But Sadye felt the weight within the simple statement, the clear and uncompromising warning.

She looked down at the lute again as Orrin exited the cellar. She felt its balance and its workmanship, and for the first time, she felt its power. Yes, she had agreed.

Why would she not?

The young woman began to softly play the strings, feeling their vibrations deep within her heart, focusing her thoughts on the magical gemstones.

*****

“It will split the Brotherhood!”

Orrin’s shout wakened Sadye late one night a few weeks later. She sat up and heard voices in the adjacent main room of Orrin’s small house, but she couldn’t make out any words. Always curious, Sadye slid her legs over the side of the bed and let her bare feet touch down softly on the floor, then eased to her feet and moved slowly to the curtain that served as a door.

She mustered her courage and peeked out.

Orrin sat at the small table, hands crossed before him, staring into the three candles that burned in the table’s center. Across from him, another man, smallish and hunched, with curly red hair and a patchy, scraggly beard, paced back and forth.

“Bah, the Brotherhood,” he chortled and Sadye half-expected him to spit right on the floor. “Half the brothers are dead of the plague anyway! We can make more gold — and without drawing Church notice! — by selling the stones apart from the enchanted items.”

“Items centuries in making,” Orrin quietly protested.

The other man snorted again and stopped his pacing even with the table. He turned to face Orrin directly and leaned forward, planting his hands firmly on the wood and making the candles shiver. “Hiding in shadows. Fearing that some Abellican will discover us — like that damned Bishop who ruled in Palmaris some years back. You want a fight with the Church, do you now? You want some Brother Justice monk knocking at your door, Orrin, and kicking it down when you don’t answer quickly enough?”

“Men gave their lives to craft these pieces of….of art, by St. Abelle!”

“Oh, but there’s a rightly proclamation if ever I heard one,” the red-haired man remarked. “By St. Abelle. Aye, that one would approve of our work.”

“We carry on a tradition,” Orrin argued.

“What’s tradition against the likes of the rosy plague? In plague’s wake come opportunities that wise men seize, Orrin. Surely you can see that! The gold will come easily, if we’re smart.”

Sadye could see Orrin’s fists tightening into balls, and the old man slammed them on the table suddenly and rose up so forcefully that his chair went skidding out and toppling behind him. Sadye wisely ducked back behind the shade, figuring correctly that the sudden noise of the falling chair would make Orrin look toward her room.

“This is not about gold coins, you fool!” Orrin said in a voice that seemed to Sadye to be a controlled screech, words spat out with conscious muting behind teeth clenched so tightly that Sadye could almost hear them grinding.

“No? Then what’s it about? Are you looking for higher purpose, then?”

With no answer forthcoming, Sadye dared peek out again, to see Orrin and the other man leaning over the table at each other, practically nose to nose, with neither blinking.

“If you’re looking for a higher purpose with those gemstones, Orrin, then it seems to me that you’re in the wrong brotherhood. Might that the Abellicans will welcome you into one of their abbeys. Perhaps St.-Mere-Abelle herself. Aye, wouldn’t you cut a fine figure in one of those brown robes.”

The two stared at each other for a long while, and then the redhead spun about and snorted again. He didn’t look back as he went to the door and out into the night.

Sadye watched Orrin’s shoulders slump, his head drooping.

“Well, you might as well come out and ask the questions I know you’re going to ask in the morning,” the old man remarked.

Sadye caught herself and put aside her surprise, and pushed through the curtain as if she had meant to do that all along. “Not about gold coins?” she asked. “Never did I imagine hearing those words come from your mouth.”

Orrin swiveled his head to consider her, and more than that, to show her the angry look in his old eyes, to warn her in no uncertain terms that this was a road of questioning she should not travel.

“Who was that?” Sadye asked when she managed to clear the lump out of her throat.

“An idiot.”

“Of the Brotherhood?”

Orrin’s snort sounded much like the one’s the redhead had just thrown his way. “He is a facilitator, and nothing more,” Orrin explained.

“A smuggler? Like yourself.”

“Yes and no.”

Orrin paused, his gaze drifting past Sadye until he was focusing on nothing at all. “There is more to this than money, dear Sadye,” he said after a lengthy pause. “You say the word, ‘smuggler,’ with such contempt, but in this connotation, it is not such an ignoble pursuit. At least, I tell myself that. We of the Brotherhood are the keepers of ancient secrets and important knowledge and more important ideals.”

Sadye found herself drifting over to the table, taking a seat to the side of Orrin.

“There is no alternative to the Abellican Church in Honce-the-Bear, of course,” Orrin went on. “And events of recent years have shown us that the Church is not as stable as many believe. They covet their gemstones as proof of their god, and as their source of power.”

“The Brotherhood does not seek power from the stones?”

“Always there is the sarcasm of young and pretty Sadye.”

That statement put the woman back in her seat, and she felt a flush come to her cheeks.

“Power and wealth, yes,” Orrin explained. “Of course, there is always that, and to some, it is the ultimate goal.”

“Like your red-haired friend.”

“Indeed. But to others, the luxury afforded by the items is the penultimate goal. Behind the understanding, you see, and the craftsmanship, and the delving into the secrets of magic itself. That is the real purpose of our little network of wizards. The rest of it, moving items, selling items, is all to provide the environment we need. Most of us aspire to comfort only because in that wealth we can find the time we need to try to craft an item of our own: our legacy, and our gift to those who will come after us.”

Sadye didn’t quite understand everything Orrin was talking about, but the man’s demeanor struck her profoundly. She had never seen him this intense, and the weight of his words and his involvement with them pressed in on her.

“Worry not about my redheaded comrade,” Orrin assured her, and that alone clued Sadye into her own slack-jawed expression. She straightened and composed herself.