AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That is the heresy,” said Agius softly. “Here is a branch, Alain. Step over it carefully.”
Drops of rain spattered down from the trees onto his hands; only then did Alain realize he was still weeping.
“In the beginning were the four pure elements, light, wind, fire, and water. Above them resided the Chamber of Light, and beneath them their enemy, darkness. By chance, the elements transgressed the limits set on them and the darkness availed itself of this to mingle with them.” The delicate solemnity of the frater’s voice drifted over Alain like a eulogy for the dead, numbing him as he picked his way down the path, following the lantern. The hounds walked behind him, still whimpering, as meek as lambs.
“From this chaos God, the Mother of Life, ordered the world with the Divine Logos, the Holy Word, but there remains in this mixture a quantity of darkness. That is why there is evil in the world. Only the blessed Daisan of all things on this Earth is untainted by darkness. Only through His redemption can we be saved.”
Alain gulped down a sob. “I killed him,” he gasped, the enormity of what he had seen hitting him with fresh impact.
“Nay, child, you are not at fault. It is truly a terrible thing we witnessed here this night. May our Lady forgive us.” He signed the blessing over the boy. “Come now, let us hurry onward and get to our beds before the others discover us here.”
The hounds whined, responding to his urgent tone. Rage took Alain’s hand into one of her powerful jaws and tugged on him, away, down the path and farther into the forest. Still weeping, Alain went with them.
He dreamed:
A hand, clawed and scaly, dips into a fast-running stream. The water is so cold it stings, but he drinks.
Then, as an afterthought, he touches the wooden Circle that lies against his chest. It remains cold and silent. If there is a god inside, then that god cannot speak. Or at least, not in any language he understands.
He lifts his head, licks the air for a scent. Listens.
There! A fox pauses to sniff, then sidles away. Above! An owl glides overhead but sweeps on into the night.
Yet in the night air he scents the coming of morning. He searches for a copse in which to hide himself, to wait again for night, when it is safe to run. North, always north, toward the sea.
VI
THE CITY OF
MEMORY
1
ALTHOUGH the last snow still lay in thin patches in the north lee of trees and along the shaded verge of fields in Heart’s Rest, spring was well on its way when Holy Week arrived. Because Holy Week had to begin on Mansday—moon’s day—and end on Hefensday—the day the blessed Daisan was transported on the wings of angels up into heaven—the full moon by which the dates of Holy Week were reckoned usually fell before the first day of Penitire. But this year the full moon fell on the first day of Penitire, as it had in the year of the Translatus, making this year an auspicious one. So were these events recorded in the Holy Verses and the gospels of Matthias, Mark, Johanna, and Lucia.
When Liath rode out to visit outlying hamlets with Hugh—he on the bay gelding, she on the piebald mare— she saw green budding on the trees and delicate green shoots pressing up from the earth. The farmers had begun their tillage, and the sun was warm. She would remain outside, like a groom, holding the horses while Hugh ministered to the country folk who lived too far from a church to attend regular services. These brief hours, alone and outside, were balm to her, although Hugh by this means kept her further isolated from most human contact.
Still, spring brought a kind of infection with it. Dorit, who had treated Liath with indifference bordering on coldness all winter, now attempted at odd moments to exchange pleasantries with her. Lars whistled.
But Hugh was restless. No peddlers had yet come north on the old road that led to the duchy of Saony, the central region of the realm of Wendar; only when the first peddler arrived would Hugh know the roads were clear across the Iels Hills and that the ford at Hammelleft was passable.
On the morning of St. Perpetua’s Day, the twelfth day of the month of Yanu, which this year fell two days after the Feast of the Translatus, he rose and dressed early. Often, now, he rode out on his rounds alone so that he might make as much haste as possible. That way, when the road opened, they could ride south at once.
“Liath,” he said curtly, “I’m going now. You will inventory our belongings in preparation for our journey to Firsebarg. I will expect to see the list when I return.”
“Where are you going today?” she asked, not because she cared but because she could then judge how much blessed solitude she might have that day: a brief morning’s respite or a long, quiet, soothing day without him.
But he knew her too well; he knew the small ways she tried to hold herself free of him, and he cut away at them bit by bit. “I am going to minister to my flock,” he said with his beautiful smile. He ran a hand from her right shoulder to her left, his fingers tracing the slave’s necklace—invisible, insubstantial, but as heavy as any iron collar—his ownership and her capitulation had forged around her neck. “I will return when I return.”
So he left.
She decided not to write out the inventory. He might hit her for refusing or he might be amused by such a trivial, passive act of defiance; she never knew which it would be. Out of habit, however, she did go to the schoolroom and with stylus and tablet practiced the curving Jinna script left to right and right to left and back again. Then, more slowly, she copied the Arethousan letters and composed them into the simple words Hugh had taught her. But eventually her mind wandered, unhindered by Hugh’s stifling presence. Her thoughts strayed back to the mysteries of the heavens and the passing of days, for this above all else Da had taught to her—the knowledge of the mathematici.
With the first day of the month of Yanu and the passing of Mariansmass, which together marked the spring equinox, they had moved into a new year. It was now the seven hundred and twenty-eighth year since the Proclamation of the Holy Word, the Divine Logos, by the blessed Daisan. She was seventeen years old.
“Da,” she whispered, and wiped a tear from her cheek. Da was gone. And yet, was it not also true that everything that Da had taught her remained with her, so that in a way he remained with her, through her memory of him?
“By this ladder the mage ascends.” She stiffened suddenly, horrified. What came next? She had forgotten! She did not exercise her memory as she ought, not with Hugh around, watching everything she did. “What do you think of when you sit so still?” he would ask. Better not to sit still. Better not to have him pry. She hated the way he seemed always to be trying to open her up, to get inside, to break the lock both of them knew held the inner door fast against him. She had the book. He did not. It was all that kept her free.
