A Task is Begun
That declaration was met with a profound and extended silence that was finally broken by Torvul. “There are five of us, and more than twice that many Barons and their hosts, unless you people have misplaced one. Or more. And we’re to put an end to all their fighting? How d’ya propose we do that, exactly?”
Allystaire shrugged. “I do not know. I cannot know how, not yet. But think, Torvul—think of what the lives of these people have become. They look old and die young, but probably outlive their sons. If their farms or homes are not destroyed in any given season of campaign, they are more than likely to face starvation in the form of taxes to pay for the next season. It has become the dominant fact of life in the baronies. A whole generation has grown up never knowing peace. It must end.”
“That’s a noble goal,” Idgen Marte said. “But—”
“What were we brought together for, if not noble ends?” Allystaire asked, more fiercely than he meant to. “What greater service could we render our people than to give them peace? Make no mistake,” he went on, seizing the moment, as the rest seemed a bit stunned by his sudden intensity, “this is not something we can do in a day, or even a year. It may be our undoing. Yet how can we not try? How could I not try, and call myself a paladin?”
Torvul groaned, and Idgen Marte sighed—yet Mol was beaming her smile at him, and Gideon was as thoughtful as always.
“Tell me it is impossible,” Allystaire said. “Fine. So is the altar we stand at, raised out of a pile of small stones into this.” He ended with a flourish at the red and gold, five-pillared oval before them.
“We start where we can,” he said, turning towards the doors, and the large, round window above them. “Here. From this day, these wars, the Succession Strife, are over for the people of Thornhurst, and any that seek honest refuge here. If anyone carries the war to us, I will hurl it back at them till they lose their taste for it.”
“It’s just a farming village, Ally,” Idgen Marte started.
“And Londray was just a fishing village once, and Wind’s Jaw was just a wooden bailey. There is a warband outside, a Cold-damned good one, who will do anything I ask. With them, forty men who know how to work a shovel, and you,” he added, pointing to Torvul, “in a month, I can erect defenses that will turn any hireling band away. In three, I can give a small army pause. A year? I could find a way to break all Delondeur’s gathered strength.”
“You know you won’t get a year, boy,” Torvul rumbled, though his hand was thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Never. Word is out. Ya’ve seen t’that.”
“We do not need to make it a year. We need only repel an attacker once. And then when word spreads that there is a haven, and that those who are done with war will be protected?”
“They will flock,” Mol said. “To Thornhurst, and to the Mother.”
“They’re going to be flockin’ outside the doors soon,” Idgen Marte replied. “You said they’d come with petitions, questions?”
“Aye,” Mol said. “I have done the best I can in that regard, and the folk generally abide my authority. Yet there are some matters that need Allystaire’s attention. Or Torvul and Gideon’s.”
“What kind of matters?”
Mol raised her hands, palms up. “Folk accused of theft, a stolen beehive, a dispute over land—”
“A beehive? Can a man steal a beehive?” Allystaire’s eyes narrowed in dismayed confusion.
“And they want him judgin’ them,” Torvul chuckled. “Course you can, if you know what you’re after. With proper plannin’ a man, or more likely a dwarf, can steal just about anything.” Then, he suddenly turned to the altar and gave a polite cough. “Theoretically, I mean, of course.”
“Fine. Where do I see to this?”
“Renard is arranging it even now,” Mol said. “Out front of the Temple.” Allystaire nodded and started off, boot heels loud against the wood.
“What about us?” Gideon asked. “We are not, I assume, set to judge cases of theft or robbery?”
“No,” Mol said. “I have felt, and so have some of the wiser farm folk, that the weather has been…wrong.”
Allystaire stopped dead and turned around. “Wrong how?”
“It should have rained more than it has in late summer and into fall. We’ve still some crops in the ground for late fall harvest and all our winter roots need—”
“What can any of us do about rain?” Allystaire replied. “It could simply be a dry year.”
Mol frowned. “It has rained to the north and the south of us, and to the east and the west. Clouds have simply passed us by,” the girl said. “It has not been natural.”
“Braech,” Idgen Marte snapped. “You know his priests could do such a thing.”
“Are folk likely to go hungry because of this?” Allystaire asked Mol.
“This year, no,” Mol said. “Visitors have brought stores and much is laid by. Yet if this keeps up…”
“No one is goin’ hungry, this year or another,” Torvul said, his face slightly flushed, his words a little sharper than Allystaire had expected. “And that salt god can go hang,” he added. He clapped a hand against Gideon’s shoulder. “Come on boy, we’ve work to do.”
As he passed Allystaire, the boy swept up in his wake, Torvul muttered, “What can we do about rain? What can’t we do, that’s the only question that matters.” His voice kept on rumbling but the words were lost under the thumping of his boots, swung in the longest strides his stature would allow, as he dragged Gideon out of the Temple.
Allystaire followed after them, his steps more measured. He heard Idgen Marte and Mol talking quietly behind him, tried not to listen or overhear, and was soon out of earshot, out of the Temple. Not sure how I feel being a judge or holding an assize, he thought, but just as quickly, he silently rebuked himself. What was the Goddess’s Gift of Truth given to you for then? he asked himself and then, with a solid nod and an impassive face, approached Renard and a small crowd at the edge of the Temple steps.
A sturdy chair had been set out, for him, he supposed, and Renard was trying, and mostly succeeding, to keep the crowd—about a dozen or so—paired off in some way that appeared to matter. Probably the claimant and the accused, Allystaire thought. With a quiet but deep breath, he set his shoulders and stepped up behind the chair.
“You may take this away or set it aside, Renard,” he said, patting the thick, smoothly polished wooden back with one hand. “If the folk who have come to see me must stand, then so will I.” He lifted the chair and set it a few feet away, then spread his feet and laced his hands behind his back. “Who will be first?”
Renard pointed first at one man, then at another, and said, “You,” to both of them, and they came forward, clutching their caps.
To Allystaire both looked older than he, but, he realized, were probably his age or younger. They weren’t tall, and neither of them could match him for breadth, but their bodies had a wiry strength to them all the same. One was as bald as a stone, and the other had raggedly trimmed brown hair that he kept pushing out of his eyes.
Both of them started to talk at once, and all Allystaire could hear was babble about land rights and families and planting. He raised a hand even as his eyes narrowed in a mix of anger and confusion. “Stop.”
They mumbled “Sorry, m’lord,” and took half a step back when Allystaire sighed.
“First and foremost, I am not anyone’s lord. Call me Allystaire. If you must have a title for me, Arm will do. Now. I am going to ask one of you to speak, and while he does, the other will remain silent. Then I will do the same to the second. Then I will offer a decision. Will you abide it, no matter what it is?”
One of them swallowed, but both nodded, with the bald one muttering, “So long as it’s fair.”
Allystaire cleared his throat and fixed his eyes, unblinking, on the muttering one. “What is your name?”
He cleared his throat. “Hugues, m…ah, Allystaire.”
“Well, Hugues, will you abide by the,” Allystaire paused with the word judgment on the tip of his tongue and carefully replaced it with “decision that I think is fair? If you will only abide by your own sense of fairness, coming to me was a waste of time, aye?”
The man bobbed his head and shrugged all at once, a gesture Allystaire found disconcerting, and not a little annoying. He worked hard to keep his face impassive.
“Good. Now, Hugues. The other man is going to speak to me and tell me his side of the story. Aye?”
Hugues made that same odd nod-shrug, his lips clamped tight over crooked teeth.
Allystaire turned to the other. “And your name, goodman?”
“Denys, Arm,” the man said, and Allystaire uttered a small, pleased “hrm” at the use of his real title.
“Denys. What is the problem?”
“Well, since we resettled our farms, he’s been tryin’ t’claim one o’m’fallow fields fer his own,” the man began, still tugging stray locks of hair from his face. “I was plannin’ t’ put cabbages fer the winter harvest in it, and he’s been after fencin’ i’off—”
Allystaire lifted a hand. “How long had this field been yours?”
“Well, always was,” Denys said, slowly.
“How long is always?”
“I’ve lived in Thornhurst o’er five winters now,” the man said.
Allystaire nodded, and turned to Hugues. “And you? Why do you think you have a claim to this field?”
“I been here longer,” Hugues said, his voice scratchy and low. “And tha’ field were ne’r part o’the land he bought.”
“How do you know that?”
“’Cause I knew the man what sold it t’him. And I knew how much he sold to the rod and span. This field has lain fallow now all the years he’s been here, he’s ne’er worked it, but now he thinks he can spread out a bit, right? But if he’s ne’er worked it, ne’er made impro’ments t’it, then e’s—”
“And what were you planning to do with the field?”
“I was gonna put in cabbage as a winter crop now the field’s ready t’be planted,” he said, defiantly.
Allystaire’s head swam, for a moment, with a vision of him shaking both men by the collars and giving them a good toss, but he willed the vision away. Unworthy of me, he thought. Or at least unworthy of my role here.
“So the question as I see it is who gets to plant the cabbages?”
“Aye,” they replied.
“And what do you plan to do with the cabbages?”
“Well, go t’feed the village, aye, after we take our own share, and for a fair price” Denys said.
“I’d do the same,” Hugues said. “Though usually ya get bet’r prices at market fair days and not local.”
Allystaire tried to keep his face neutral; a smile and a scowl were competing for space and so, he hoped, neither one revealed itself completely. “Fine. Work the field together. Divide it in half if you must, lengthways or side by side, I care not. You will each have a third of the crop to do with as you please. The remaining third, by weight,” Allystaire said, emphasizing that point with an extended finger, “will be donated to the common stores.”
“What are common stores?” Denys asked. Hugues kept quiet but looked likely to ask the same question, given the puzzlement on his broad, sun-browned face.
“Food that will be kept here at the Temple of the Mother, available to all in need of it.”
The men frowned and seemed likely to protest, glancing warily at each other and then back at Allystaire, who cut them off. “You agreed to accept my decision, and there it is. Protest, or short the common supply, and the field and all its output for the next year becomes part of the common supply. And if it sounds as though I mean to punish the both of you, I do. This is the sort of squabble that should have been solved amicably, between the two of you, as neighbors,” he said, irritation threatening to rise into anger as he spoke. “We are done. Make such arrangements as you can for the working of the field. I will come by and check the planting myself when it is time.”
The two men stood there for a moment, equally confused, equally disappointed, which, Allystaire reflected, probably meant he had made the right decision. Finally, they walked off. To Renard, he said, “Remind me that we have got to build something to store these cabbages. And anything else the folk decide to donate.”
The old soldier nodded, and scratched his bearded cheek. “Will do,” he rumbled, and Allystaire considered that as good as it being written down. “Next,” Renard called out then, pointing to another pair of men. “Stolen beehive, Arm,” he said to Allystaire, indicating the pair.
“Fine,” Allystaire replied. “I have not the patience to listen to a lot of talking and blame. Which one of you is accused of thieving?” Both men stared at him, one tall, the other shorter and broader.
Finally the tall one said, “He’s accusin’ me but I never—”
Allystaire walked over to him and carefully but implacably placed a hand on the man’s arm. “Did you steal the other fellow’s beehive? Do not attempt to lie to me.”
“I…I did,” the man admitted, his eyes widening in shock as the words squeaked out of his mouth.
“And why did you do this?”
“I wanted t’try mixin’ honey into some o’the malt mash I had in my cellar.”
Allystaire sagged a bit, letting go of the man’s arm. “You make spirits, then? Strong drink?”
The tall man nodded sheepishly, his eyes downcast, his face scrunched up. “Please m’lord, I’ll beg ya not t’imprison me, or ‘ang me, I’ve a daughter, and my wife was killed by the reavers.”
“Cold, man!” Allystaire exclaimed, startled. “I am not about to hang or imprison a man for simple petty theft. Give him the beehive back. And a small barrel of your best malt spirits.” He turned to the other man. “Does that suffice?”
The other farmer seemed taken aback at the speed with which his claim had been judged. “I s’spose it would, Arm,” he said.
“Good. Then go. Do it. And for the Mother’s sake, be kind to each other. If you want honey, ask him for it. Trade for it.” Allystaire turned away from them, trying not to roll his eyes.
“Next,” he called out, even as Renard was waving another pair of village folk forward.
* * *
“That was more about farm implements and lands and fences than I ever wanted to know,” Allystaire told Idgen Marte. The swordswoman had been, along with Mol, meeting with a group of a dozen or so of the village’s women. As the sun climbed higher in the sky and noon approached, though, all the meetings and business the five Ordained had been about had ceased, with the villagers gathering in anticipation at the edge of the Temple field.
Gideon and Torvul came walking in unison down the road in animated conversation, if conversation could be said to include Torvul speaking and gesturing as he walked, and Gideon mostly nodding.
When they joined Mol, Allystaire, and Idgen Marte at the foot of the steps, Gideon was clearly deep in thought, but Torvul was grinning. In spite of himself, Allystaire felt the contagious pull of it.
“That look on your face can only mean you know something the rest of us do not, Torvul,” Allystaire said.
Torvul snorted playfully. “If that were true, I’d look this way all the damned time. Yet, there’s truth in your words—me and the bright boy here have put our heads together and have just about got this rain problem clubbed into submission. Only question remaining is whether we bring clouds here, or wait for some clouds to show up and give ‘em a thorough shaking so the rain falls out.” Pause. “Metaphorically speakin’, of course. No actual shaking.”
“Drawing clouds here would have widespread effects on the rest of the region’s weather,” Mol said. “The weather is like a loosely knitted muffler. You can’t just tug on one end without unraveling some of it.”
“Seems like the Sea Dragon’s priests have already done that,” Idgen Marte pointed out. “Keeping weather at bay could be just as dangerous as pullin’ it towards you, aye?”
Mol frowned. “Doing wrong in order to combat the wrong done to us is not the Path the Mother would see us walk, Shadow,” she said, her voice growing unmistakably grim as she spoke. “I would not see us create a drought on the Innadan border because we need the rain.”
Idgen Marte’s face stiffened at Mol’s rebuke, but she nodded. Mol, impulsively it seemed, reached up and clasped the woman’s hand.
“Heavy storm clouds should pass near enough within the next few days, or a week,” Mol said. “We need not worry over it now. Come,” she said, pointing to the Temple.
With Mol at their head, Allystaire and Idgen Marte to either side, and Torvul and Gideon behind them, the five Ordained ascended the short row of steps to the Mother’s Temple and the newly erected altar within.
In a reverent silence, they each moved to their pillars, and felt the stone-walled space begin to grow brighter as the sun moved towards its zenith. Allystaire put his hand on the hammer carved into the Pillar of the Arm.
The stone quickly grew warmer, but not uncomfortably so. He felt, rather than saw, the other four place their hands on the altar, and the light inside the Temple grew.
The same sound as the night before began to fill his ears, the harmony of five notes—or was it one note shaped out of five sounds? He could not tell. And truly, it did not matter, for it was the Music and the Light of the Goddess, and the entire Temple began to fill with both, with a brightness so intense he shut his eyes against it.
The music rose and blended till Allystaire could not pick individual strains from it; he thought he heard the clear ringing of a trumpet such as Idgen Marte had described, but it slipped away from him, and then he simply heard the Goddess’s own voice.
“Open your eyes, My servants, and look upon each other.”
Allystaire opened his eyes slowly. The light was not painful, now, but lent a clarity to the world, burned away all that was fleeting. They were no longer standing in a Temple, but in a well of pure, streaming brightness. He looked to his right. Mol did not appear any longer to be a child of ten or so summers; she was tall, slim, clad in a simply cut blue robe, with a hood that deeply shadowed her face, leaving only her mouth visible. From her belt hung a sickle, and in her cupped right hand, a ball of green light.
His eyes flitted to Idgen Marte—and almost past her. When he could force them to focus upon her, she was still indistinct, but what he saw was much like the tall, long-limbed warrior he knew —only more so. Her skin was even darker and flawless, without the scars that trailed from lip to collar. The curved sword in her hand blazed with light—but only along its razor-sharp edge, so faint that most would miss it. She was nearly impossible to see unless she turned to face him fully. When she turned away, she winked out of his sight—yet he could still feel her there, at his side, like a limb or a weapon no one else could see that he held.
Torvul still had the proportions of his race, but he had grown in stature, and would have stood equal to Allystaire in height. His eyes were deep, wide pools of solid, liquid blue—and they were set in a face that had the texture of stone, and the mottled grey and brown of granite. He raised his hands, spreading them before his eyes in wonder, and Allystaire saw a familiar grin spread across the dwarf’s mountainous face.
Gideon was a being of pure, gleaming fire. Almost featureless, still slim, and vaguely human-shaped, but as Allystaire watched, he changed, becoming more like the boy he knew, the fire shifting colors from blue, to white, to green, to deep orange.
Only then did Allystaire look at himself, and the reflection of light that came back to his eyes would have blinded him had he seen it with his mortal eyes. He was clad in armor straight out of a story. It was light against his skin, lighter than any steel could be. It was as bright as newly polished silver, and it clung to him from toe to chin, leaving only his face bare.
No, not only his face. Also his left palm, which pulsed with a deep golden glow in time with the pounding of his heart. His right arm, he now saw, gleamed even brighter than the rest of him—gone from silver to white flame, and at the merest thought, his hand held a hammer made of fire—fire of the sun. Though he could feel the heat radiating from it, it did not burn him.
The five Ordained Servants of the Mother stared at each other in wonder, speechless, till they heard their Goddess’s voice.
“What you have been, who you have been, you must leave behind—take only the parts of your lives that strengthen you for the trials ahead. The Arm, the Shadow, the Voice, the Wit, and the Will—what you see now in each other is who, and what, you must become. More than a woman, more than a man, more than a mere alchemist, or sorcerer, knight, warrior, or priestess.”
“Return now to the world of men, with my undying love. I will speak with each of you this night.”
Suddenly, the bright, unearthly world was gone, replaced with the world of stone and shadows —but a powerful glow still filled the Temple, streaming through its windows to the crowd beyond.
Allystaire blinked, the afterimage of the vision the Goddess had given them slowly fading against the back of his eyelids. By the time he had recovered enough, Torvul’s voice had begun to fill the Temple.
Allystaire knew nothing of the dwarf’s native tongue, though he’d heard the dwarf sing in it many times. Still, he thought he recognized something in the words, though the tone of it harkened back to the day when the dwarf had saved Allystaire’s life by cleansing the poison from his body.
The dwarf’s voice was as low-pitched and potent as ever, and yet something—or someone, judging by the way Mol and Gideon were both staring intently at the dwarf—was amplifying the sound, for it filled the Temple and spilled to the field beyond.
Allystaire had nothing to offer the song and yet he felt it vibrating in his chest, as the unknown words rolled, lyrical and thunderous, from the dwarf’s barrel chest. Torvul’s eyes were closed and his hands upon the altar. Allystaire touched his own pillar and felt the oval of stone humming beneath his hand.
Torvul’s voice did not flag or quail, and it began to seem to Allystaire as if the stone beneath his hand was not humming so much as it was drawing the sound into itself through him—that the entire Temple was absorbing the deep rumblings of the dwarf’s voice.
Finally, Torvul broke off with a gasp, and the sound sank into the stones.
“It is done,” Mol said, giving the silence that followed in the song’s wake only a moment. “With the completion of the altar, and Torvul’s song, we have completed the consecration of this Temple.”
A warm glow still surrounded them, suffusing the air and spilling into the field. Mol gestured towards the doors. “It is time to go amongst our people and celebrate.”
“Not yet,” Allystaire said. He swallowed hard. “I have something I must say to them.” With the set shoulders and hardened walk of a man striding into battle, Allystaire walked to the doors and threw them open. The people of the village cheered. He raised his hands for quiet, and began to speak, reaching for the voice that had served him well in courtyards and on battlefields—a voice that rolled out over the assembled crowd and gathered all of them in.
“People of Thornhurst, people of the Mother, people who are unsure whether they are either one. Many of you have come to know who I am—the Arm of the Mother. You know my name, even if many of you still refuse to use it when I ask,” he said, his admittedly weak jest met with a smattering of muted chuckling.
“What most of you may not know,” he said, sliding his hands behind his back, “is who I was for most of my life, before the Goddess came to me. The name, and title I was born to, was Lord Coldbourne, of Coldbourne Moor and Coldbourne Hall.” He paused, and added, “We are not so good with names up north in Oyrwyn, I suppose.” That got a rather livelier bit of laughter—none more so, Allystaire saw, than from the Ravens, who were a leather-and-metal clad knot in the back of the crowd.
“The name might mean something to you. It might mean nothing. What it meant for me, all my life, was war. In that, we are not so different. Yet the role I was given to play, bred for, prepared for, was very different than yours. I was a leader of men, a captain, a maker of knights. Over the last score of years I rode in, and eventually led, hosts to every barony that borders Oyrwyn, and some that do not. Whatever village, town, hamlet, or city you call home—in that life, I probably raided, burned, or besieged it.”
He paused waiting for the reaction. There was only silence, wide eyes, slightly open mouths. He began to pace.
“To say I did those things is false, really. In the main, I ordered them done. I knew that there was always a terrible cost to men on every side of any battle. I knew that their families, widows, children, parents paid a price as well. I consoled myself that I was better than the men I fought against, because I had rules. I tried to take care of my own, I thought. I tried to minimize the harm they did, as if it were possible for one man to oversee the actions of hundreds, of thousands.
“And I tell you, I was skilled at it. I won more battles than I lost. I thought my men loved me. I gained honors, riches, acclaim. I never thought, not really, about the cost of what I did. I measured my success in battles won, lands taken, in the count of the enemy dead. I rarely questioned any of this—fighting, you see, is what Coldbournes did. My grandfather won the name and the Lordship for himself and his sons back in the beginning of the war that has plagued us now for more than two score years, and he did it with a sword, and a brutality that remains legendary among Oyrwyn’s knights and nobles.
“I walked away from that life, and that privilege. Yet I cannot say to you that I did it out of outrage, or sympathy, or to begin to atone for all the sins of my class, or even my own life. I did it out of anger, and arrogance, and only days ahead of being exiled. I walked away and into this village, where I found a girl whose father had saved her life by hiding her, probably just moments before he was murdered. In those moments, I would say he did more good for the world than I had done in all of my six-and-thirty summers.
“Why am I telling you all this? Why am I admitting to you that I may very well be the man who orphaned you, or widowed you, or destroyed your home? How can that man be standing before you, telling you he is a paladin, expecting you to take his word and stand at his back?
“I am telling you all of this, my people, because I must beg your forgiveness. When I call you my people, I do not mean what I once might have meant—that you must call me lord and knuckle your forehead and hop to my command. I mean that I am your servant now, not your master. I will never,” Allystaire paused, raising a fist with one finger extended, “expect any man to call me his master or his lord again. I rode into this village out of curiosity, and what I found, and what I did, beginning that day, was the start of something new. We are still at the start of that new thing. I do not know what to call it or where it will lead. Yet I will make a promise to all of you. The wars that have plagued your life, these squabbles between Barons who seek a crown none of them truly want—while there is breath in my body, those wars are over for you. That is how I will pay the cost of my sins. That is what the Goddess, who we call the Mother, has given me to do.
“I will not rest till you know peace. This is not to say you will not know hardship or labor. Yet no one must take up arms unless it is their choice and in defense of this place we will build together. And if Baron Delondeur, or Baron Oyrwyn, or any of their liege lords or knights would seek to bring that war to our doorstep, they will have to carry it through me, and through Idgen Marte, and Torvul and Gideon, and any who choose to stand with us. None of them could beat me at their game when I was just a man, just one of them, playing by the same rules. None of them will do so now that the Goddess has shown me how much more there is worth defending than the lines on a map.”
Allystaire let the final echo of his words roll over himself and the crowd. “I ask, today, for your forgiveness. Stand with me, and I will spend all the life that is left to me, and employ all the Goddess’s Gifts, to this one end: to peace.”
He was met with dead silence till Mol came to his side and squeezed his hand. She tugged on his arm till he looked down at her. Then she pointed at the steps beneath their feet. He knelt.
She placed her hands on his temples and leaned forward to dryly kiss his forehead. “That you of all people believe you need the Mother’s forgiveness is a sign that She chose well,” Mol said, her voice somber, resonant—not at all the voice of the simple village girl he’d saved. “Her forgiveness is yours, Arm, so long as you do Her work.”
“It is not Her forgiveness I seek,” Allystaire said. “Or not only. It is their forgiveness I need ask for.”
“Well,” Mol said, turning the crowd. “Do you forgive this man the sins of his life?”
The crowd remained silent and still. He scanned them, seeing mouths hanging agape, others tight-lipped. A few began muttering to themselves, or their neighbors.
One young woman—Leah’s age—stood up and stared hard at Mol and Allystaire. Her eyes were shining with anger, Allystaire thought, and her mouth quivered till she finally blurted, “My Raff was killed when he went for a soldier, killed ‘gainst Oyrwyn men. Your men,” she said, raising an accusatory finger at Allystaire. “We had just married. Now I’m s’sposed t’forgive him that?”
Allystaire offered her no reply. He glanced up at Mol who tilted her head to the side, her lips flattening a little. “Odette,” she called out. “You would be dead, or worse, if not for what Allystaire did for you in Bend. Mind that.”
“Oh I mind it well. I mind he walked in and killed a buncha men ‘cause it’s what he does, s’sall he’s done, is kill. And I’m sposed t’thank ‘im for it? And b’lieve that this Mother, this Goddess you prattle on about, is all mercy and love and forgiveness, and she chose a blaggard like ‘im to be her man? A killer, just like them reavers!”
“Yes, Allystaire has killed, and he will again. In your defense. Or mine. Or your mother and father’s. The Mother is not so simple as to believe that bad men who are also strong will simply stop thieving, raping, and murdering because we ask them.”
Mol’s shout was so loud, so shocking, that Allystaire recoiled; it was a physical thing, a force like a punch in the chest. The crowd fell into a shocked silence as her words echoed over the Temple Field. Birds exploded out of a tree in the middle distance, tearing madly for the sky. Odette paled and took half a step back. The crowd parted around her.
“My father had strength, of a kind,” Mol went on, much more quietly. “And he was a good man. But when bad men, rabid dogs of men, proved they were stronger, it was all he could do to save me from their depredations by hiding me. Yet he could not stop them from killing him, or anyone else. Compassion is not armor. Mercy is not a shield. Fatherly love is not a ward against evil.” As she spoke, Allystaire saw, in the shadows of the hooded robe she wore, the tracks of tears leaking from the corner of each eye.
“I wish, oh how I do, that it were otherwise, that bonds of love were proof against steel and flame. Yet they are not. We forgive what we can, endure what we must, but the Mother is no eye-blinding god, asking us to ignore the world and bear any hurt done to us in hushed and holy silence. There are hurts which cannot be borne, and more importantly, should not have to be. Forgiveness may be extended without mercy. Between us, and those who would do us unbearable harm, She has placed a good man to bring Her justice into a world that has forgotten it. She has made him strong. If you do not understand why, I cannot explain it.” Mol was weeping openly now, the tracks of her tears leaking down the side of her face. But she was smiling, if sadly.
“Even as I wish I could return your Raff to you, or ease your pain, I wish you could find forgiveness in your heart. Is it so hardened by grief that you cannot?”
The girl offered no reply, standing in a silence of grief and rage balanced in equal measure.
“Neither the Mother nor Her Ordained will compel or coerce the worship or forgiveness of anyone. So was the first law of our church spoken by its first paladin and prophet,” the girl went on. “I would not order you to forgive anyone. Go if you wish. Stay if you wish. We go on now.”
She turned back to Allystaire and placed her hands upon his head. “I cannot speak for all those who gather here, but I am the Voice of the Mother, and in Her name, I absolve you of the sins of your life. You, who were born Allystaire Coldbourne, are born again today in the boundlessness of Her Love and the warmth of Her Sun.” Even as she spoke, Allystaire felt those silver-strung harp notes of the Goddess’s music play along his nerves, felt some gathering of energy building in Mol’s palms and then flowing into him. It was like drinking the finest vintage, tasting it, feeling it with his entire body.
“Rise now, Allystaire, Arm of the Mother. Rise, paladin, and enter fully, at last, into your new life in Her service.”
Allystaire stood. His knee clicked in protest, as usual, and his back reminded him of too many long days in the saddle, too many nights of poor sleep, too many years of wearing armor. Yet he barely felt them. Something fell away from him as he stood up. Something that weighed upon him like steel upon the shoulders was lifted away.
He took a deep breath of air flavored with the chill of autumn frost; it felt like his first breath.
Meanwhile, Mol turned back to the crowd. Odette had stormed away in angry silence, and one or two in the crowd had followed her, though whether in sympathy or to calm her down, Allystaire couldn’t tell.
“Anyone who comes forward to me, whether in public or in private, in any place, at any time of the day or night, and confesses to me a sincere wish to be forgiven for any part of their past, will have that forgiveness. If this is to be a new way of life, a new place, then we must have new lives to live in it.”
“How do y’mean sincere, exactly,” Torvul asked, from the doorway of the Temple, his silhouette outlined in the glow emanating from within. “Ain’t the easiest to judge.”
Mol faced him, mirroring his own casual, knowing smile. “Do you doubt that the Mother has given me the capacity to judge the truth of your contrition, Mourmitnorthrukacshtorvul?”
“Far be it from me to doubt Her Ladyship or you in any capacity,” Torvul said.
As they’d spoken, some of the men and women of the crowd had begun to come forward. First among them was the farmer Henri, who approached Allystaire to shake his hand, and then went to Mol.
“You said in public or in private, right, ah…”
“My name is still Mol, Henri,” the girl said, with no trace of mockery. “Or y’could just call me girl, or you, or dammit get outta my field you little wretch like you used t’,” she added, her rough accent returning for a moment.
Henri laughed, though nervously. On a somewhat balky leg, he knelt before of the girl, and cleared his throat. “I got somethin’ that needs sayin’. When we first came back t’Thornhurst, and the lad o’er there, well, Cold, you all know ‘im. The first night he was among us, me and two o’thers who I’ll not name, they’ll do as their own mind says. Well, we wanted t’murder the boy. Hang him. Were ready t’fight Allystaire o’er it if need be.” He swallowed hard, almost grimacing in pain as he forced the words out. “I wanted t’do murder. I was ready t’kill a lad o’er harm he di’nt do, not really. That’s the worst thin’ I can e’er remember doin’, and that night, Allystaire told me t’ask fer Her fergivness, and I’ve tried, but I can’t. I don’t have the words fer it.”
Mol nodded, then placed her hands on his head and leaned over him. She murmured words that Allystaire could only hear as a quiet rush of sound, but he felt, distantly, a gathering and discharge of energy like what he’d felt moments ago when Mol had absolved him.
When Henri stood, his face held the relief of a suddenly vanished pain. He threw his strong, wiry arms around Mol’s shoulders and hugged her. The solemn little priestess whose imposing shout had frightened them just moments before surprised them all now by laughing and wrapping her arms around Henri in return. The man stepped back, wiped a rough hand against the corner of an eye, and said, “Thanks. To all o’you.”
He melted back into the crowd, even as a line of village folk was forming in front of Mol. Allystaire looked to his fellow Ordained, and saw Idgen Marte and Torvul both eyeing that line, and smiled inwardly.
“Well, confessing is all well and good, and I encourage everyone to do so if they have a mind,” Allystaire suddenly said aloud, pitching his voice to the carry to the back of the throng. “Yet this day is a celebration, too. And I cannot be the only one here who is thirsty!”
That got a great cheer, and jugs, bottles, and skins were suddenly produced in greater profusion than Allystaire had counted on.
“Talkin’ sense again,” Torvul rumbled at Allystaire, as he strolled to his side and grinned up at the paladin. “Gettin’ to be a habit. Hardly know you anymore.”
Allystaire snorted lightly. “Cold, in a lot of ways we hardly know each other at all.”
“Nonsense,” Torvul protested. “Just learned quite a lot about you.”
“And yet I still know almost nothing of you, or Idgen Marte.”
“Well, could be that’s the point. New place. New life.”
Allystaire nodded in the direction of the line forming in front of Mol. “Going to go confess, then?”
The dwarf’s eyes narrowed and he rubbed a hand across his bald pate. “I don’t think so,” he replied, after a long pause. Then, he added, “Not today.”
“I remember you asking me about it only a little while ago. When we found the god of the cave. Why the reluctance?”
“I’ve my fair share o’sins and dark deeds. I’m not with a caravan, and I’m guessin’ you folk know enough of dwarfs to know that means nothin’ good. I’ve lied and swindled, never really thought of it like thievin’, but that’s,” he shrugged as he searched for a word, finally settled on “just fake weight, trying t’make scales balance when they shouldn’t. Still, that amounts to pretty small beer. I don’t think that’s what the girl and Her Ladyship have in mind.”
“You have lost me, Torvul.”
“Well, boy, what I mean is—the worst things I’ve done, the things got me out here on my own? Not ready to repent o’ them. Not sorry I did them. Not gonna try and lie to the girl and Her Ladyship and say I am.”
Allystaire was silent a moment, letting his eyes wander the crowd. People had started breaking into baskets and jars, spreading out blankets on the ground, and passing skins and flagons among themselves. “No act of Faith will be compelled,” he said, choosing his words, and his somber intonation, carefully. “Whatever it was, Torvul—if the Goddess called you, she knows of it, and she has either forgiven you, or seen past it. I will trust Her judgment, and I will not press you. I will say only this: not very long ago, I would have said the idea of asking forgiveness for the life I have led was absurd. Now it feels as though someone else did those things, someone I knew, once, and have grown distant from.”
He smiled at the dwarf. “It is a good feeling.”
Torvul snorted and gave his head a quick shake. “A couple drinks’d be a better feeling.”
“I think we can just manage that,” Allystaire replied, and the two began their way down the steps and out towards the crowd. “Yet none of your unnameable dwarfish spirits. We have a vigil tonight, after all.”
“Ikthaumanavit is a boon to the soldier on watch till dawn, or the knight at vigil, as it were,” Torvul said, suddenly spreading one arm, as if pointing to the horizon of possibilities, his voice smooth and soothing. “It warms the extremities and sharpens the mind. It—”
“Will put two old men to sleep when they try to stay up all through the night, which is a foolish goal even for the young,” put in another voice, and the both of them turned, confused, to find Gideon smirking at them. “And no spirit that strong sharpens the mind. It makes you feel that it does, and only briefly.”
Torvul gave a loud harumph. “As if you know anything about drinkin’, boy. What say we teach him?”
“Not today,” Allystaire said. “Soon, perhaps.”
“I do not wish to imbibe fermented or distilled beverages of any kind,” Gideon protested stiffly.
“Never let Idgen Marte hear you say that. Or Mol, for that matter,” Allystaire warned.
“Stones above,” Torvul said, “enough nattering. There’s celebrating to be done. And I’ve got to get t’know the folk here.” The dwarf cleared his throat, and called out, “Who among you thinks he knows how to work metal or stone and has a jar to put in my hand?”
There was a smattering of laughs at the dwarf’s words, but Giraud—the tall, gentle stonemason who Allystaire knew had directed most of the building of the Temple—stepped out of the crowd, a bulging wineskin in his hand.
“I’m a stonecutter,” the man had barely begun to say, in his soft and patient voice, when Torvul had sidled up and assaulted him with talk of stone and tools.
“You don’t cut stone, my friend, not if you know what you’re about,” the dwarf said. “Better to find the shape within it, eh?” Allystaire could read the confusion, but also the curiosity, on Giraud’s face as the dwarf steered him away.
Allystaire laughed and placed a hand on Gideon’s shoulder, steering him into the crowd, and accepting a wineskin that was offered him. “How do you want to celebrate, lad?” He tilted his head back then and took a long drink of wine, squeezing the sides of the bag. Then he offered it to the boy.
“I said I don’t—”
Allystaire frowned, and Gideon fell silent. “And you would insult the folk here if you do not accept some of their hospitality,” he murmured. “Trust me. You need not get sodden.” Not yet, he thought, trying hard not to laugh at the prospect. He handed the skin over and watched as Gideon squeezed a thin, brief trickle into his mouth.
“So, as I asked, how do you want to celebrate?”
“How do folk here celebrate?”
“I have not the faintest idea,” Allystaire replied. “If I had to guess? There will be singing, dances, perhaps some wrestling.”
“Wrestling?”
“Aye, it is a common enough pastime at festivals and feast days in this part of the world.” Allystaire took the wineskin back and squeezed another long stream of the stuff into his mouth. “Nothing serious, just wrestle your man to a fall.”
“Hmph. What point to it?”
“A man who finds himself in a fight, or, for that matter, behind a cart stuck in the mud, is happy to know something about leverage and force.”
“I suppose you’ll be wrestling then?”
“No,” Allystaire said quickly.
“Why not? You’d be good at it, surely.”
Allystaire drew the boy away from the crowd, passing him the skin. “Think of this as a quick lesson in leadership. Let us say that I am good at wrestling, at boxing—at leverage and force, and that I know how to apply the strength I have spent a lifetime building. How well do you think most of the folk around here are going to fare against me?”
“A lifetime of farm labor can be just as rigorous as a lifetime of fighting,” Gideon said, thoughtfully. He lifted a finger and tapped the tip of his chin once or twice. “I suppose, though, it’s unlikely any of the men here have the kind of experience you do. So you would probably win.”
“Aye, I probably would. Let us say that I do so quite handily. How do the people feel about it?”
Gideon thought for only a moment. “You seem a bully.”
Allystaire smiled. “Indeed. Let us say, then, that in order to forestall resentment, I let their best wrestler throw me in the final match. What then?”
“Unless you’re a fine mummer, they will probably know. And some will suspect no matter how well you act.”
“Good,” Allystaire said, smiling again for just a moment. “Now, what if I were to simply lose early, against the first man I was pitted against?”
“You’d look weak.”
“Exactly. So, the lesson: if you want folk to follow you, you should share in their hardships and miseries; if they go hungry, you go hungry. If they are in danger, you are in danger. If they are wet, cold, marching or riding on no sleep—you must be those things as well. However, you cannot always share in their celebrations. If you get wine-sodden with them, sing bawdy songs with them, wrestle with them—you have too much to lose that way.”
“You must be at a little remove,” Gideon said, grasping the concept. “I see.”
“Aye. It does not mean you must think yourself better than them, and you certainly cannot say you are, or make them believe that you think you are, but you have to be able to maintain a distance. Not a large one, mayhap, but a distance nonetheless.” Makes it easier to ask them to die for you, too, Allystaire thought.
“I suppose that makes it more possible to give unpleasant orders,” Gideon said.
“Aye, lad, it does that, too.” Allystaire took another pull at the wineskin to hide his surprise at the way Gideon had echoed his thought. Then he handed it back to Gideon and surveyed the crowd. Folk were still lining up for Mol’s blessing, but the line had diminished. Some instruments had been produced: a drum, a flute, a set of pipes, and joyful music began to skirl and thrum outward. Hands clapped, feet stamped.
“It is fitting, though,” Gideon said. “While they sing, and dance, while they labor and work, while they marry and raise children—this, this is what we will do, yes?” The boy lifted his eyes up to Allystaire. “Watch over them. So that those things—the working and the singing and all of it—may go on.”
Allystaire smiled and felt a flush of pride—something he’d not felt in a long time. “Aye, Gideon. Out there, somewhere,” he said, flinging a hand vaguely in the air, “is war and darkness and sorcery. Here, today, is music and light, feasting and song.”
“I like music,” Gideon said. “I always wanted to learn to play something. My master discouraged it.”
Allystaire clapped the boy on the shoulder. He felt, suddenly, an impulse to embrace him, to wrap his arm around the thin shoulders and pull the boy against his side in avuncular affection. It surprised him, and he resisted it, settling instead for another clap and a gentle shove of the boy towards the crowd.
“Go, Gideon. Join the music. Find a girl to dance with, if you like.”
The boy nodded and started tentatively off. He didn’t get far before a gaggle of children, younger than him in the main, enveloped him. They were all shouted questions, Gideon’s careful, thoughtful answers being quickly overwhelmed.
“And what about you? Going t’find a girl t’dance with?” Idgen Marte’s voice came from just a pace or so behind Allystaire’s ear, and he laughed.
“I knew you were there, you know.”
“Didn’t.” Idgen Marte protested, poking his shoulder with one finger. “Decent little speech, though. Good lesson for the boy to learn, even if you did just tell him to do the opposite of what you taught him.”
“Let him be a boy for a day. It may be the only such day he has. We do not all need to stand a watch all at once.”
“True. What’ll you do, then?”
“Drink a little wine. Eat something.”
“And watch.”
“Aye, that too,” Allystaire admitted. Meanwhile, Gideon and the children who’d surrounded him had made their way to the flutist and the piper. The village children began a mad, foot-stomping dance. Only tentatively did Gideon try to imitate them, till two girls—both about his age—each seized one of his hands and began jumping with him in time, practically forcing him to keep up.
They laughed, then, the Arm and the Shadow, and turned towards each other smiling, if only for a moment.
“This can’t last forever, Ally. We’ll be in for a hard winter, I think. Bandits, the Baron, refugees—who knows what’ll come with the snows?”
“Let winter do its worst,” he replied. “I will be waiting for it.”
“We will be waiting for it,” she corrected.
“Still behind me, no matter where that path leads?”
“Always, no matter where. To the bitterest end, or the cruelest Cold,” she replied, her voice suddenly solemn and formal despite its rasp.
He tilted his head, pursed his lips. “I think I have heard that before…”
“Damn,” she cursed. “Was hopin’ you’d not notice. It’s from the cycles of Parthalian, part of the oath of his companions.” Idgen Marte turned away and coughed into her fist. “Awful, though, isn’t it?”
Allystaire shrugged. “I would not know. I always liked hearing a story or a song, but I was never too well educated on the subject of music itself.”
“You mean to tell me the lords here don’t bother learning music?”
Allystaire shrugged. “We gesture at it. I recall a few lessons. In Oyrwyn, though, we have enemies on all sides. The tundra, and all its attendant horrors, to the north, Harlach to our east, Delondeur to the south. They do not leave much time for music.”
“Attendant horrors?”
“Elves. Gravekmir, Islandmen who have gotten mixed up with them.”
“You’ve had elves in your borders, down off the tundra?”
Allystaire shook his head. “Not in my lifetime, no. Before the last Rhidalish king died, they still made raids. And they are still there, or so we are told; it is not as though we signed any treaties. But the giants? We had occasion to see them.”
“No wonder most northern song and poetry is dross. Everything is either a dirge or a call to arms.”
“Well, what are we supposed to sing about if not war and death? Mud? Snow? Mountains?”
“It’s not only what you sing about. It’s how you sing it,” Idgen Marte said. Allystaire pointed to the reeling dance on the Temple Field, to the mass of stamping feet, and the drummer, piper, and flutist at the edge of the whirling crowd, directing it all with a skirling melody and the increasingly fast strikes of wood on skin-drum. He said, “Which one is that, a dirge or a war-march?”
Idgen Marte scowled at him and furrowed her brow. “It’s just one instance,” she finally, grudgingly admitted, her teeth practically clenched around the words. “It proves nothing.”
“As you will,” Allystaire replied. “Why not go over there and show them how to turn it into a dirge, then?”
Idgen Marte darkened, the mirth of the past few moments melting completely out of her features. “I don’t sing, or play any instruments.”
“You seem to have a great deal to say about it,” Allystaire said, “for someone who does not engage in it herself.”
She was silent for longer than Allystaire expected, bristling as her chin clenched. Finally, she wet her lips, spoke low and carefully, “I did, once. I still know all the songs, the cycles, the great stories. I can’t sing, anymore—not properly. I won’t sing any other way.” Almost unconsciously, her hand strayed to her neck, and Allystaire saw her calloused fingertips briefly stroke the scars that trailed down from the left corner of her mouth.
She narrowed her eyes and put an edge to her voice. “If you tell anyone I said any of this, I’ll have your head.”
He raised his hands, palms out. “I will spread no secrets, Idgen Marte. You know me well enough to know that.”
She snorted, and some of her casual insouciance seemed to take over her features once more. “It’s the form of the thing. Threat has to be made.” She looked towards the Temple steps, where the last few petitioners were waiting for Mol’s attention. “Speaking of form, seems like we have a ritual, now.”
Allystaire sighed. “I suppose. I want—I wanted—to avoid all that. Forms, rituals, observances. That is where it all goes wrong.”
She nodded her assent. “Even so, can any church survive without a ritual, if there’s more than a dozen folk involved? There have t’be rules, Allystaire. There have to be forms, or it’ll never hold together.”
“And what happens when the form overtakes the meaning?”
“You think Mol will let that happen?”
“I think all of us will only be a part of this for so long,” he replied. “I want this to go on after us.”
“Cold, man—we’re having our first ever feast day and you’re thinking of a legacy.”
“Someone must,” he answered, “so that our first feast day is not also our last.”
She was quiet a moment, then said, “You’re a hard man. I don’t mean in the bad way, the wrong way, just—you never stop. You never pause, never rest.”
He shrugged. “I am who my father and the Old Baron made me. They did not much believe in rest.”
“How much of what they taught you d’ya believe in anymore?”
He considered a moment, crossing his arms over his chest. “Keep your weapons sharp. Scour any dirt off your armor the moment you see it. Plan as though your enemy is smarter than you and knows more. Sleep light. There is never a perfect course of action. Drink brandy when you can, wine when you cannot, and beer only at need. Only a fool claims to be fearless. In war, men will die, and nothing you can do will prevent that. Round towers are better to defend than square. It is better to force your enemy to react to you than to attempt to react to him.”
Idgen Marte cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand. “Oh, for Cold’s sake, stop. They just shaped you into some kind of blunt instrument, didn’t they? War and nothing else.”
“I learned politics, geography, history, hunting, riding—”
“Yet not music, philosophy, art, theology…”
“There are chapels to Fortune and Braech within Wind’s Jaw. There were priests. I dimly recall some lessons.”
“How dimly?”
“Well, the priest of Braech had fists of stone; I remember that. And the priestess of Fortune was shapely. And friendly,” he added, smiling at the memory. “That obscured any lasting theological insight she was trying to impart.”
Idgen Marte snorted. “They usually are. Have you noticed, for all their talk about how their goddess spreads wealth among men, an awful lot of it seems to stick to their fingers?”
“It was not her fingers I recall anything sticking to,” Allystaire admitted, then broke off in a curse as Idgen Marte’s fist landed solidly against his arm.
“Enough,” Allystaire said. “How would it look if two of the Goddess’s own servants fell to blows?”
“You’d never land one,” Idgen Marte sniffed.
Allystaire waved a hand absentmindedly and looked back out at the revelers. “We have an awful lot of work to do, and we have no way of knowing how long we will be left alone to do it. We will have to make a start of it tomorrow.”
“Fine. What d’ya need me to do?”
“I would like to see a weapon count.”
“And?”
“Not just what arms are available. What can be made? What is lost in the rafters and hidden in the root cellars. Is there seasoned wood that can do for a bow, or arrows?”
“Why me?”
“You are more likely to get the answers than I am. Imagine what happens if the Arm of the Mother knocks on the door and says, ‘Evening goodman. I was wondering if you have a rusty sword around the place, or a spear out back holding up some vines.’ “
“Someone’ll panic. Someone’ll lie, but it isn’t as though they can lie to you for long.”
“I do not wish to employ the Mother’s Gift against someone who has no need to fear the truth,” Allystaire replied. “Yet they will fear. And if I do not hesitate to use that Gift for simple questions now, I may not hesitate in future. And where does that end?”
Idgen Marte’s eyes widened. “The inquisition to end all inquisitions. How far ahead have you thought about these kinds of things?”
“Not far enough. So, tomorrow, a weapon count, and an idea of what materials we have. I will speak to the Ravens and we will begin to talk about constructing defenses. I will need to make arrangements for those common stores I spoke of.”
“You’ll have t’eat before you stand watch all night. Come on. Enough of planning and worrying and watching.” She stopped and peered at his face, squinting. “You’re never going to stop doing any of that, are you?”
Allystaire shook his head. “No.”
“Fine,” she murmured. “I’ll bring food.”