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A PERFECT CRUST IS useless if what’s inside is unappealing.
—Gilly Bastwick, baker
* * *
FROM TIME TO TIME DURING their journey to Ohmahold, Brother Vaughn shared stories about the Cathuran monks—their history, their beliefs, and some of their practices—although he stressed some specifics would not be revealed until Gwen took her final vows. The order closely guarded its most sacred rituals, and only those deemed ready to participate in them were privy to their details.
“Are you allowed to speak when you’re in the monastery?” she asked to distract him from the arduous walk up a steep trail leading over the lowest ridge of a mountain, where the air had become thinner, and Gwen had wrapped Mignon’s shawl around her to ward off the chillier air.
Brother Vaughn let out a snort. “Yes. Not during some of the rituals, though. Talking saps energy, and the rites often require more energy than you can yet imagine. Every pulse must be conserved.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say ‘energy,’” she admitted.
“You’ll learn.” He offered no more information or explanation, and Gwen didn’t push for more than he’d given.
Thereafter, she gave the bulk of her attention to their surroundings, ever seeking opportunities to pluck a tender shoot or collect wild berries for their meals. Remembering the warning Brother Jacques had given her in the courtyard when she’d almost touched the mother’s root, she covered her hands and was careful not to touch anything bare-handed when collecting samples she didn’t recognize. In the evenings, she added notes to her plant journal and pressed the samples between pages in the back so she could learn more about the unfamiliar plants after she gained access to the library at the monastery, which Brother Jacques had told her contained a substantial number of manuscripts and scrolls related to herb lore. She felt happy and excited at the prospect of being able to study plants, which she’d figured out was possible after the monk had explained specialization.
“An area of interest not directly related to spiritual practices, specialization is an allowance for continued study. Each Cathuran monk declares an area of specialization before taking final vows, and Mother Seema then sponsors one last trip to gather study materials outside Ohmahold. After that, any external documents or artifacts come only as a result of good fortune—either by a traveler bringing them to Ohmahold or by obtaining them while on a mission of a different kind, such as delivering supplies to another Cathuran outpost.”
Herb lore would be her choice, as it always had been, Gwen had immediately decided.
As the mule and Brother Vaughn took step after labored step along a steep path, Gwen thought to ask him about what he’d chosen as his specialization.
“Creatures of flight.”
“Birds?” she asked.
“Not exactly. Most are birds, yes. Others . . . I am not quite certain they would be called birds but most assuredly a distant relative of them.”
“What flies but is not a bird?”
His eyes lit up with excitement. “Dragons.”
Gwen almost giggled, but at the thought of it, she saw the monk’s expression fall into embarrassment. His answer had sounded so sincere Gwen felt guilty for hurting his feelings. “Dragons aren’t just stories to frighten children into not wandering away?” Her question rekindled the flame of inspiration in Brother Vaughn’s eyes even though Gwen suspected he realized she was indulging him out of guilt rather than curiosity.
He shook his head. “I do not believe so. Only a few scrolls exist with any stories at all about them, but those that do tell of magnificent, terrifying creatures with skin like snakes and enormous, powerful wings. Some of the scrolls mention other scrolls with more information, but I have yet to find those. Perhaps someday . . . if ever I visit a library outside of Ohmahold again.”
She didn’t know how to respond to him. That a man who seemed so knowledgeable believed in dragons unnerved her and made her wonder just what kind of place this monastery might be if it harbored those who appeared common, if not slightly more intelligent than average, on the surface, but who unashamedly spoke such nonsense. “Doesn’t the thought of being stuck within Ohmahold forever bother you?” Her stomach knotted at the idea of being forced to remain within the walls of a refuge for the touched.
He shook his head again. “No. I am ready to take my final vows. Wherever Mother Seema sees fit for me to be, there shall I serve at peace and with joy, whether in the confines of the monastery or somewhere else.”
“Just one person decides what everyone else must do?” She wondered if life in the monastery would be any different from the life she’d left behind in Vasterberg. At home, she’d had no choice either.
He smiled. “Decides? No. She guides our paths.”
“And if you disagree with her?”
“Mother Seema seeks counsel from all.”
“But does she listen to it?”
Brother Vaughn stopped walking, looked forward and nodded toward something ahead of him. “You’ll have to determine that for yourself.”
Gwen looked forward too. They were at the edge of a bluff overlooking a valley surrounded on three sides by steeply rising mountains like the one they had just climbed. On its southern side, where the lowest ends of the eastern and western mountain ranges curved toward each other, a winding crevice between the mountains dead-ended at a wall.
“We are standing on the cliffs of Ohmahold, and just over there,” he said, pointing down into the valley, “lies the city. Below us is a plateau of pastures where we keep goats and sheep. And there,” he said, pointing toward the extreme other end of the valley, “lies the Inner Sanctuary of the Cathuran monastery. Home.”
Between the city, which rested at the lowest spot in the valley, and the green area Brother Vaughn had identified as the Inner Sanctuary, which sat at a sharply higher elevation but still far below the three mountain ranges surrounding it, lay a walled-in massive stone building with a maze of narrow wings and a tower rising high enough to make the Inner Sanctuary accessible only by climbing the tower.
Gwen squinted at the vegetation covering the Inner Sanctuary. At first she thought it might be a forest canopy. On closer inspection, however, she realized there were no breaks between the clusters of leaves, which didn’t seem possible, so she climbed down off the mule and walked to the edge of the cliff, where she scrambled down over boulders and ledges until she was as far as she could safely go. “It’s one tree and it spreads over the whole valley,” she whispered, awed by the sight of leaf-laden branches thicker than a cottage.
“Almost,” said Brother Vaughn from behind her. Gwen could hear the reverence in his tone, and she felt the same way about the tree though she couldn’t explain why.
“If you do not mind, Sister Gwendolin, I’d like to spend the rest of today and tonight here on the cliffs. It is my last unbound day, and I would like to end it with the memories I must set aside. Ohmahold will still be there on the morrow.”
Gwen nodded. She could understand his desire to have one last night of freedom, even if he hadn’t explained it just that way. She’d spotted some plants growing in between the rocky ledges on her way to the edge of the cliff, so she decided to spend the remaining daylight hours collecting them while Brother Vaughn made camp and did whatever it was he planned to do with his last hours of nondedication. She would give him the privacy he needed to be alone with his thoughts.
After retrieving her clipping shears, she traveled from crevice to crevice and snipped off stems and leaves and scraggly flowers, those open and those still in protective buds, just in case one form or another had special qualities. When dusk fell into evening, she watched as yellow specks of light flared and flickered on in the city below until it looked like a starry night twinkling below her. Sitting near a low fire Brother Vaughn had kindled for her before tromping off to a rocky ledge, where he sat with crossed legs and his back to her, Gwen felt surrounded by sky, and she couldn’t remember having ever felt so tiny and insignificant.
Sometime well into the night, Gwen fell asleep and began to dream. Although she knew she was dreaming, her surroundings felt real. On a rocky ledge of the cliff, a man in monk’s clothing sat with legs folded in front of him and one hand resting on something Gwen couldn’t quite make out. As she walked closer to the man, he stood and pulled back the hood of his robe. Slowly he began to turn around, but before he’d rotated enough for her to make out his face, her gaze fixed on the object in his hand—an arrow, on the shaft of which was crudely painted in blood red the words Bonita’s freedom. She stopped abruptly. Unable to move, she watched the man complete his turn. By the time he’d finished, the robe had disappeared. Facing her in a Zjhon uniform was Rolf mouthing the words, “Forgive me.”
Gwen bolted upright, her forehead drenched in sweat, her hair plastered to her head and neck, her breath uneven and raspy.
Someone was calling her name in the distance, and she flinched when Brother Vaughn reached out to touch her arm. “Are you ill?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she said as she struggled to widen the distance between dream and reality. Across the valley, dawn glowed beyond the eastern mountain range. “Can we leave now?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Yes, of course. Let’s get you to the monastery, where Sister Brunhilda can attend to you. You really do not look well, Sister.”
The trip down the mountain was as precarious as the climb up had been, and their descent ended at the winding crevice. Gwen rode atop the mule in a half-sleepy stupor, the dream insistent on replaying in her head. Even more surreal was the ritual Brother Vaughn enacted once they were well into the narrow passageway in the crevice. He stopped to strike a metal sheet three times, its tones reverberating and echoing until they filled the narrow space around them. A guard appeared, and after the two spoke, Brother Vaughn led the mule forward.
By the time they reached a heavily guarded gate, Gwen teetered on the mule, distracted by the still-replaying dream and too upset to pay attention to anything around her, except to notice how foreboding the gate to Ohmahold looked as she passed through it—significantly more foreboding than the gate to Sutherhold and considerably more ancient. On the other side of the gate, the city was awakening slowly, and only a few people roamed, mostly young shepherds driving their flocks out to pasture. When they reached the entrance to the monastery, three monks came out to greet them.
“This is Sister Gwendolin. Sister Brunhilda will need to see her at once,” Brother Vaughn said after each gave him a welcoming hug. One hurried back into the monastery, leaving behind a trail of dust. The others helped Gwen down from the mule and assisted her into the halls behind him. Inside, the flustered monk and a tiny, wrinkled old woman hurried toward them.
“Bring her to the first purification chamber and have my bag retrieved from my apartment. It’s hanging on the wall beside the door,” the old woman said, “and tell Mother Seema she has arrived.”
That was all Gwen remembered about reaching the monastery when she awoke in a basin filled with pebbles.