The coast of Galemoor was comprised of jagged black rock worn smooth by the constant crash of icy waves. Further inland, the dark soil was hard but, when churned properly, rich and nourishing enough to grow an abundance of crops, particularly the barley and hops the Vinchen monks used to brew the brown ale that was prized all through the empire.
Most of the island was given over to agriculture, but in the center was the Vinchen monastery, hewn centuries ago from the black rock of the island by the disciples of Manay the True, one of the wisest grandteachers in the history of the empire. The long, rectangular buildings formed a large closed square around a courtyard, and in the center was the temple. The south side of the monastery contained the communal living quarters for the monks, and a separate—but still humble—dwelling for the grandteacher. The north side contained the kitchens, and the west side contained the brewery.
Grandteacher Hurlo had seen many boys arrive at the black iron gates of the monastery with looks of horror in their eyes. Most of them were rich, spoiled, and likely sent to become Vinchen because their parents found them difficult to manage at home. Hurlo remembered a time when being a Vinchen had been desirable. Fashionable, even. But those brought to him now took years to appreciate what he and the other sworn monks were trying to give them. Still, he had grown to accept that it was the way of things now.
He didn’t know what to expect of the girl, though. She was something completely new, both for him and for the order. Captain Toa brought her to the gates dressed in filthy rags. Her dark blue eyes took in everything around her, yet gave nothing away.
“Hello, child,” Hurlo said to her. “I am Grandteacher Hurlo. Welcome to the Vinchen monastery.”
“Thank you,” she said in a barely audible voice.
“Good luck, then, Hurlo.” Sin Toa offered his thick, hairy hand.
“Good travels,” said Hurlo, taking it warmly.
Once Toa had left, Hurlo gathered all the monks and students in the courtyard. They eyed the little girl beside Hurlo with varying mixtures of surprise, confusion, and distaste.
“This is Bleak Hope, a child left orphaned and homeless because of the actions of a biomancer,” he said. “She will be staying with us, helping with chores and other menial tasks until she is old enough and strong enough to depart.”
None of the monks were disrespectful enough to speak out, but Hurlo heard several gasp audibly. This didn’t surprise him. No female of any age had ever stepped inside the monastery. Now they would be living with one every day, possibly for years.
“You may return to your duties,” he said calmly. As he watched them slowly disperse, casting frequent glances at him and Hope, he decided it would be interesting to observe how they handled this adjustment.
The Book of Storms said that there was only one Heaven, but many hells. Each hell was unique, but just as cruel as the next. This, the book said, was because there was no limit to human suffering, and no end to the number of ways the world could inflict it.
Grandteacher Hurlo thought often of that passage. He suspected that to the young boys who had recently joined the Vinchen order, Galemoor itself might be a hell. Far from the large cities and luxurious northern estates of their childhoods, it was located in the center of the Southern Isles, as far from the warm, sunny capital of Stonepeak as one could get.
For many of the older brothers, change alone was a kind of hell. Adding one unexpected element to a routine that had become rigid from years of repetition sent these men into something like panic. They seemed not to mind the girl as long as she didn’t affect their day in any way. But if she cleaned their rooms, they complained to Hurlo, sometimes even that their rooms were too clean. If she spooned food onto their trays at mealtime, they complained to Hurlo, even if it was that she had put too much on their plates.
For other brothers, hell was the sudden presence of a female in their midst. When she drifted past in the baggy, hemmed old black monk robe that hung down to her ankles, silent and pale as a wraith, her eyes lost in the shadow of her hood, Hurlo could not have even said that she was female. Yet, somehow, these brothers seemed unable to focus on even the simplest tasks when she was in the room.
The Book of Storms said that a man’s hell told a great deal about him. So, too, did his reaction to that suffering. Hurlo found it interesting that while some complained about Hope, and others ignored her, still others tried to befriend the tiny blond agent of their suffering. But after a few attempts at flattery or gifts of sweets, those well-meaning brothers faltered under her unfathomable blue gaze, and slunk away.
After a few days of observation, Hurlo’s attention drifted back to his studies and meditation. So he didn’t notice at first when yet another reaction began to surface among his brothers. Cruelty.
* * *
It had been a week since Bleak Hope had entered the Vinchen monastery. She would not say she was happy. She was not sure she would ever be able to say that again. But she was comfortable. She had a warm place to sleep and three meals a day.
She didn’t really understand what the Vinchen brothers did. They meditated, they read, and they exercised. Every evening just before dinner, they gathered in the temple for prayer. None of those activities had been popular in her village. In many ways, this life among the quiet monks was even more unfamiliar to her than those raucous few days aboard Captain Toa’s ship.
She understood her work, though. Small rooms that needed to be kept neat, plain food that needed to be served, simple clothes that needed to be washed and mended. She took no pleasure in the work, but there was a certain peace to getting lost in the monotony of it. She treasured that peace, because the rest of the time, her thoughts were weighted with death and a dark hunger for revenge. Night was the worst time. She lay on her straw mat in the kitchen, and the thoughts pressed down on her until she could barely breathe. When sleep finally came, it was restless and full of nightmares.
“You there. Peasant girl.”
Hope stopped. She had been walking back to the kitchen from cleaning the outhouse. She turned and saw Crunta leaning in the doorway of the building where the brothers slept. Crunta was one of the younger brothers, about thirteen, and still in training. When Hurlo had first given her the list of tasks, he had mentioned that most of her chores would be for the older brothers. That the younger ones must perform chores for themselves. So she was surprised that Crunta was calling to her.
“Me?” she asked.
“Yes, you, stupid,” he said, and waved her over.
Not sure how to handle the situation, she went over to him.
“Come in.” He turned and went inside.
Hope followed him. The inside of the building was all one room. The smooth wooden floors were lined with neatly spaced straw sleeping mats and small, cylindrical pillows. Hope watched as Crunta pulled his black monk robe off. Underneath he wore a small undergarment that left his upper body and most of his legs bare. His body was lean and tightly muscled with almost no hair on his chest.
He balled up his robe and shoved it into her arms. “Wash this and bring it back to me right away.”
Hope was sure the younger brothers were supposed to do their own washing, but she was afraid to say so. “Yes, brother.”
His hand flew out and smacked the side of her face. “I’m not your brother. Call me master.”
Bleak Hope stared up at him, a dark rage spreading through her body. She imagined him screaming in agony as worms ripped through his skin. But she knew she could do nothing. She was just a weak little girl. So she swallowed her anger and said, “Yes, master.”
He sauntered over to his mat and lay down. Then he picked up a book. “Hurry back.”
Hope carried the robe, which stank of sweat and stale beer, over to the washtub outside the kitchen. As she scrubbed the cloth hard against the ridges of the washboard, she imagined that it was Crunta’s face. As she stretched the robe across the smoldering coals in the kitchen to dry, she imagined the coals searing into Crunta’s bare chest. She knew these thoughts were wrong, but they gave her some relief. Even so, the feeling of helpless rage ate at her as she walked back across the courtyard with the robe neatly folded in her arms.
She found him still lounging on his mat in his undergarments. She laid the robe at his feet. “Is there anything else, master?”
He looked at her over the top of his book for a moment, then stood. Ignoring the robe, he walked over to her. He stood several feet taller than her so that her face was level with his chest. She stared at it now because she liked the look in his eye even less. She didn’t understand his gaze, but something about it made her skin crawl.
He pushed her hood back. She watched the rise and fall of his chest quicken as she felt his hand close on a lock of her hair. Her entire body shook, though from fear or loathing, she couldn’t say.
“Brother Crunta!”
Hope turned her head, pulling her hair loose from Crunta’s fingers. One of the older brothers, Wentu, stood in the doorway, a frown on his lined face. “Do not stand before the girl in your undergarments! It’s indecent!”
Crunta took a slow, leisurely step back, a smirk on his face. “Yes, brother.” He leaned over and picked up his robe, then pulled it over his head.
His brow knit together and he pressed the cloth to his nose. “Ugh, this stinks of the kitchens! Do you want me to smell like a servant?”
“S-s-s-sorry, master,” stammered Hope. “You wanted me to be quick, so I dried it over the coals. I didn’t—”
He slapped her across the face again.
“Young brother…,” said Wentu disapprovingly.
“You’re lucky I don’t beat you senseless!” Crunta said to Hope, his fist raised. “Get out of my sight, you filthy peasant.”
Hope ran to her straw mat in the back of the kitchen and curled up into a ball. She felt like crying, but no tears came. Only black thoughts of violence and revenge. She thought Crunta must be the cruelest brother in the monastery.
But she hadn’t yet encountered Racklock.
* * *
Bleak Hope’s favorite job was to care for the temple. The floor, walls, and altar were all made of the smooth black rock on the island, but in this place, it had been polished to a shine that made it feel at once solemn and bright. She loved the smell of the prayer candles, which gave a hint of jasmine as they burned. Most of all, she loved the tall stained glass windows at the top of the temple. She didn’t understand the pictures they showed, strange creatures and black-armored warriors, but the colors reminded her of the necklace she had made for her father. She had supposed that she could never enjoy such things again. But there was a tiny ember that remained, and grew slightly warmer at the sight of sunlight streaming in through those colored windows.
“So here is where you shirk your duties,” came a deep voice.
Hope tore her gaze from the windows and looked at the short, powerfully built brother known as Racklock. He stood with his arms folded, his face hard. Hope knew Racklock was second in the order only to Hurlo, and all the other brothers feared him.
“It’s my duty to clean the temple every day, master,” said Hope.
“I saw no cleaning.” Racklock took a step toward her. “Only idling. We feed you, clothe you, give you a place when the world surely would have been rid of you. And this is how you repay us?”
Hope had learned from Crunta that defending oneself could be dangerous. So she only bowed her head and said, “Sorry, master.”
“You are not a woman yet, but already your forked tongue tries to aid you.” He said it with calm disdain as he walked over to a cabinet. He opened the cabinet, which was filled with an assortment of items, and pulled out a long, wooden cane. As he examined it, he said, “Others may be fooled, but I see what you truly are. A vile sickness that seeks to destroy this order from the inside. An evil to be purged.”
* * *
It was on that sun-dappled afternoon in early fall that Hurlo was shaken from a deep meditation by the sound of a little girl’s screams. He rushed from his tiny room, across the sunny courtyard, and into the temple. There he found Bleak Hope cowering on the ground, her face pressed against the cold stone floor, her black robe wet with blood. Racklock loomed over her. His thick shoulders surged as he brought the cane hard against her back and she screamed again.
That was the moment Hurlo understood that he had not rescued the girl. He had merely moved her from one hell to another. That was also when he discovered a new hell of his own. The hell of allowing an innocent to suffer. True, he did not wield the cane, nor did he ask that the girl be brought to him in the first place. But as he looked down at her ashen face, he knew he could not stay in this hell a moment longer.
Racklock brought the cane down again, but this time Hurlo was there, little more than a black blur as he took the cane from his brother’s grip, then knocked him forward so that he tripped over the prostrate girl. Racklock landed on his hands, then vaulted forward into a summersault so that he landed on his feet. But as he spun to face Hurlo, the grandteacher poked him in the throat with the tip of the cane just hard enough to leave him choking and temporarily unable to speak.
Hurlo watched him retch and wheeze for a moment, then said mildly, “Did you have something to say? No? Then allow me to inform you that henceforth you will not harm this girl. Her cries disturb my meditation, and the smell of her blood in the temple vexes me. Nod once if you understand, twice if you wish me to strike you again.”
Racklock’s face darkened with a reddish-purple color, but his lips pressed together in a hard line as he nodded once, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the temple.
Hurlo looked down at the shuddering little girl at his feet. He had a sudden urge to comfort her. To scoop her up in his arms and rock her to a sweet, dreamless sleep. But it was only a momentary flash. He was not, after all, some peace-loving, gentle old man. He was grandteacher of the Vinchen order, and one of the greatest warriors the empire had ever known. So instead, he walked quietly over to the meditation mat that lay before the black stone altar, and knelt down.
They stayed like that for some time, the girl prostrate on the floor, the old monk kneeling, silent, his back to her.
Finally she said in little more than a whisper, “Master…thank you for saving me.”
“I am no master, child. I am a teacher.”
She paused to consider that a moment. Then he heard her shuffle a little closer on hands and knees. “What do you teach?”
“Many things. Although I am not always successful. I tried to teach Racklock restraint, and it appears I failed in that.”
“He was punishing me.”
“A punishment should fit the crime. What did you do that warranted such a beating?”
“I…don’t know. He said I was evil.”
“I see. And do you feel evil?”
She did not answer.
“Come and kneel facing me,” he said.
She shuffled around him cautiously, still on hands and knees. He could see where her black robes stuck to her back from the drying blood, but she did not flinch or wince at the pain. She knelt as he did, facing him, but with her head bowed.
“Look at me, child,” he said.
She looked up at him and he allowed himself to look deeply into those haunting eyes in a way he had not done before.
“I do see darkness in you,” he said. “That is not surprising. Darkness begets darkness.”
Still she didn’t answer, but only continued to look at him.
“Does it frighten you? This darkness within yourself?”
Her expression remained fixed, but tears welled up in her eyes.
“What if I could teach you how to control that darkness? How to use it to become a great and powerful warrior?” The moment he said those words, his heart began to race. What he proposed was forbidden by both The Book of Storms and the codes of the Vinchen order. But as he said it, he saw the light that broke on the little girl’s face like the first dawn of a new world, and he knew that fulfilling such a promise was worth any risk. “Would you like me to teach you this?”
“Oh, yes, please!” she said, the tears now freely coursing down her cheeks.
“Yes, Grandteacher,” he corrected her.
“Yes, Grandteacher.”
“It will not be easy. In fact, you will suffer a great deal along the way. There may even be times when you hate me. When you think me nearly as cruel as Racklock. Do you still wish to learn?”
“Oh yes, Grandteacher!” she shouted, her face wet and flushed.
“Good. Then let us begin your first lesson.”
“I am ready, Grandteacher!” Her body tensed, as if she could barely restrain herself from leaping to her feet.
“Your first lesson is to breathe.”
She cocked her head slightly and paused. “Only to breathe, Grandteacher?”
“Breath is the most important thing. It is life itself. Until you master it, you can do nothing. A warrior can no more afford unrestrained joy than he can unbridled terror, and while it is true we cannot stop ourselves from having emotions, we can choose not to be swept away by them. We do this with the anchor of breath. So right now, you must breathe slow and deep until this tempest of emotion passes, and you return to calmness.”
“Yes, Grandteacher,” said Bleak Hope.
The old man and the little girl knelt facing each other, and the temple was silent except for their breath.