Perhaps I should beg the Seer to pray for me that the God will tell her what my future holds. Stirring up such deep waters in me can only lead to tumult — as it did once before.
“No,” she says, meeting my eyes defiantly. “I will bathe them here. I do not require the riches of your gift.”
“Are you forsworn to healing then, too?” I press.
I don’t know why I’m pushing her like this. Were she Sir Sorken or the High Saint, I’d gladly let the matter drop.
Annoyed, I fiddle with the pillar. Whatever was carved so thickly into the rock before is now worn down to only faint relief. The top portion narrows to a point and lichen grows in the grooves between the letters.
I frown. It looks very much like Ancient Indul, but that makes no sense. This monastery must be far more ancient than the Indul language.
“I’m not forsworn to healing. I just don’t want it from you.”
There’s probably some deeper meaning to how she has emphasized “you” but I’m not paying attention anymore. I am tracing the lettering with my finger.
What’s this one? The “au” sound? I think so. But it’s been a very long time since I read Ancient Indul. I could use a priest right now. A scribing priest by preference. While we paladins are well educated in the holy scrolls, we also have to reach physical attainments for battle and war, and that prevents scholarly specialization.
A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking there is no war when the church rules all the world and installs and pulls down her kings. They’d be wrong. Wars abound as priest fights priest and paladin fights paladin. It’s enough to make the heart weep.
I trace the letters and try to make the sounds in my mind. Pinnacle. Or mountain. Or rock? That’s this first one. I think I was right guessing pinnacle.
“Are you listening to me, Poisoned Saint?” Her voice is faint in the background, but I’m trying to concentrate and she doesn’t need me.
I hear her huff something and it almost sounds like a curse.
I turn back to the script. Pinnacle of something. Pain, perhaps?
“Look, you were warned. I’m not going to wait out whatever this is.”
Yes, pain. Or aching? Pinnacle of Aching … I know this one. Souls. Pinnacle of Aching Souls.
I think this next part is a date. And now, in smaller lettering, a note of some kind.
Woe to you, supplicant. Five woes. For the attainment of … something. I can’t decipher it. With a curse, I turn away and my eyes fall on her.
Blood rushes to my cheeks so that they sting.
Oh. That’s what she was trying to tell me. That she was going to bathe here. I feel my cheeks go hot. She isn’t indecent, but still, I am seeing feminine skin, a thing I’ve been avoiding since I joined the Poisoned Saints fifteen years ago and gave my squire vows.
Her skin is ripped and rent with slices, as if she recently fought a sword battle. They are inexpertly stitched. She prods at one with a finger while standing in the creek in just a pair of leather trousers and a corset-type garment that keeps her decent while letting her inspect her wounds. Already, she has washed off enough clay that I see the woman that was hidden beneath the grime. She is young. Twenty, perhaps? Twenty-one? And her small mouth frowns over her wounds as her long hair hangs in a sheet down her back, ready to be re-braided. She is both severe and terribly vulnerable.
My face is instantly hot. I go to great lengths to avoid situations such as this. Two weeks ago I waited a full six hours to refill my flasks because it was washing day for the nearby village and all the maidens would be … well, just like this, I suppose. I’d spent the time healing an elderly man and then in prayer.
All of that effort, only to find myself here.
When she looks up and catches my gaze, I steel my jaw and gaze steadily back. I am annoyed that she’s caught me failing, but I won’t make it worse by pretending it’s not happening.
“I tried to warn you,” she says. “Celibate order, yes?”
“Yes,” I grit out. “How long have you been a paladin?”
It’s the first question that comes to mind. I ask because I don’t want to talk about celibacy — or my very non-celibate thoughts — with a dripping woman standing in front of me. She is not a great beauty, but she is well-looking enough, and she radiates health and cleverness. Her sharp eyes seem to catch all the things I’m trying to keep wrapped inside.
“Ten days.”
Her answer is like a wave crashing over me from a sudden swell of the sea. I am instantly sober again.
“Ten days? You must have been halfway here before you even said vows!”
