Chapter 48: Absolutely Unthinkable

The next morning, Olyrrwd got up at the same time Herrwn did, put on one of his least stained robes, picked up his walking sticks, and announced that he was inspired to attend the Sacred Sunrise Ritual. It was Herrwn’s guess that what inspired his cousin to attend the ceremony he hadn’t been inspired to attend for the past six months was his impatience to reclaim Caelym and override any plan Herrwn had of getting him back to the classroom before he was ensconced in the healing chamber.

Not willing to forgo his own sorely overdue instruction, Herrwn responded with studied mildness that he, too, was looking forward to seeing Caelym again and also to discussing at breakfast how best to divide his day between his always valuable studies in healing and the equally necessary, and perhaps more pressing, need for him to be prepared to take his part in that evening’s recitations.

“Just so long as we see him!” There was a startlingly grim—almost threatening—note to Olyrrwd’s retort, and he started for the door as Herrwn was still in the middle of saying that when Ossiam had promised Caelym would be finished in the morning, he’d naturally assumed it meant he would be at the sunrise ritual, but Ossiam had not actually said so.

Joining the other priests and priestesses in a predawn gloom that was darker than usual because of a dense layer of low-lying clouds, they wouldn’t have seen Caelym even if he was there and standing close enough to trip over. Herrwn’s trained hearing, however, was even sharper without his eyesight to interfere. He could easily name those around him by the tread of their sandals and knew with certainty that neither Ossiam nor Caelym was among them.

Whether Olyrrwd could tell or not didn’t matter at that point since, even as cavalier as he was about the norms of their society, he would not walk out of a sacred ritual once it had begun. Knowing that (and hoping this irregular and mysterious rite of Ossiam’s would be over by breakfast), Herrwn raised his staff and followed the sound of the women’s footsteps as they started up the steep stone stairway to the uppermost of the shrine’s courtyards.

As they were ascending, the clouds were dropping down to lie in wait for them when they reached the top.

Haze, especially during the transition from night to day, was usual at this time of year, but there was something eerie about the suffocating mist that engulfed them now, a mist so dense that it muffled their chants and reduced the rising sun to a faintly glowing red disk beyond an otherwise impenetrable wall of fog.

A bout of coughing illness the previous winter had left Olyrrwd with a faint but continuous wheeze, and it was by that—along with the tapping of his two walking staffs and the uneven sound of his limping gait—that Herrwn could tell his cousin was close on his heels as they made their way back into the shrine after the ritual was over.

In keeping with the custom that each one passing through the inner doorway would turn and greet the one behind, Herrwn started to say good morning to Olyrrwd but seeing his grim, accusatory glare, he instead found himself saying somewhat defensively, “I’m sure he’ll be at breakfast.”

“If he’s not—”

“If he’s not, it’s because the rite he was conducting took longer than expected”—Herrwn hurried to finish before Olyrrwd got wound up again—“in which case I will go and make certain that Ossiam sends him to you the moment it is done.”

Before Rhedwyn’s defeat, the upper ranks of the priests and priestesses had enjoyed the luxury of having their breakfast brought to them in their private quarters. Since then, except for Feywn, they all ate together in the main hall in order to ease the burden on the servants, whose duties continued to include helping the surviving villagers with their work in the fields. While breakfast was somewhat more informal than either the midday or the evening meals, they still took their usual seats, and Herrwn could see on his way in that both Ossiam and Caelym’s chairs were empty.

Unwilling to display any concern of his own over their absent apprentice, Herrwn set about resolutely filling his bowl from the communal pot of porridge and carrying it to his place.

In fact, he had no concerns—or at least no concerns that Olyrrwd’s suspicions about Ossiam hatching some nefarious plot against Caelym could be true. It was simply unthinkable that the shrine’s chief oracle—or any high priest—would set out to intentionally harm an initiate in their order, and especially not Caelym, who was, after all, not just an exceptionally gifted priest-in-training but also the son of the Goddess incarnate.

Absolutely unthinkable! Herrwn told himself, resolutely dipping his spoon into his steaming bowl of oatmeal. Unless. While the faint tendrils of vapor rising from the porridge had little in common with the dense mist outside, seeing the wispy swirls somehow set off an alarming question in Herrwn’s mind. Could there be a connection between that really quite otherworldly fog and the streams of acrid vapors that escaped when Ossiam cracked open the door to the tower room last night?

There had been something furtive about the oracle’s manner, something evasive in his response. At the time, Herrwn had assumed it was no more than Ossiam’s habitual secretiveness, but now he recalled how as a boy Ossiam had been fascinated by the forces of nature and how he’d boasted that one day he would not just predict the weather but actually command it. None of his youthful attempts had been successful, and he’d stopped trying (or at least stopped trying openly) after his own father had admonished him in front of Olyrrwd and Herrwn—leaning over him and shaking a finger in his face as he delivered the warning that “the forces of nature are the province of the Goddess and the highest of her divine consorts and are not to be trifled with.”

But had Ossiam truly given up? Or was he still driven to achieve this perilous goal? Could it be that he’d decided to try again, this time through the intermediary of a pupil who was not only extraordinarily talented but was, at least symbolically, the son of the Earth-Goddess and the Sun-God? Might Ossiam’s obsession, combined with Caelym’s always intense fervor for whatever his current pursuit might be, have come together to call forth that morning’s uncanny fog?

Suddenly aware his hand had stopped and his spoon was hovering halfway between the bowl and his mouth—and that Olyrrwd was staring at him—Herrwn made a show of blowing on his porridge to cool it and began to eat.

He could, of course, be needlessly concerned—making a causal connection based on the temporal association between otherwise unrelated events. But if he was right, then the worst possible thing would be for Olyrrwd to go charging into the Sacred Grove, breaking into the intricate oracular spells being woven there, and wreaking who knew what havoc.

Knowing the one way to divert Olyrrwd’s uncomfortably keen attention was to ask him about some patient, Herrwn took a swallow of elderberry tea to wash down the glutinous mush and asked, “How is Iddwrna’s toe?” The cook’s gouty foot could be counted on to be a problem at almost any time, and he was relieved that Olyrrwd took the bait.

Only half-listening while the physician described the cook’s current symptoms, along with the ingredients of his most recent medicinal unguent, Herrwn continued to wonder whether Caelym’s exceptional parentage might have tempted Ossiam to delve into rites that were not just perilous but actually forbidden. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What if Ossiam had forgotten his father’s warning, along with the moral of the saga Herrwn himself had recited not more than three months ago—its very name, “The Wizard’s Ill-Fated Apprentice,” a dire warning?