Flesh and Spirit (51 page)

Summoning a smile, I clapped him on the shoulder in thanks.

Once left alone, the sad emptiness of the abbey gripped my spirit sorely. Despite the cold, I lingered in the familiar paths and courts. To rush toward fire and food seemed somehow lacking in respect. So, rather than taking the straighter way to the guesthouse, I wandered past the church into the north cloister walk and looked out on the cloister garth—the abbey's heart.

Rubble littered the square, the angular bulk of fallen cornices and corbels bulging awkwardly beneath the snow, alongside the birdcage shape of Saint Gillare's shrine. Though every building showed damage, the primary target of the raid was obvious. The walls of the abbey library and scriptorium had collapsed completely, crushing the eastern cloister walk. Naught was left but heaps of scorched stones and charred beams. The chapter house on one side and the monks' dorter on the other gaped open on the sides that had adjoined the library. Both structures were gutted shells. Of the jewel-like chapter-house windows, depicting Eodward and Caedmon, only one soot-marked pane remained, bearing the outline of an upraised hand.

So what had become of the magical lighthouse and its tools and books and seeds, gathered to sustain humankind past these dark times? Its creators had surely built it to endure through end-times chaos and destruction. Was this raid Bayard's vengeance for the abbey's sheltering Perryn? Or was this Sila Diaglou's handiwork? The lighthouse would be anathema to her, a promise to undo the chaos she worked for. I thought back to her savage attack on Gildas…a ploy to “draw out” her enemies…and Luviar and Stearc and Gram running for the gate. Yes, she knew of the lighthouse and its creators.

Firelight flickered in the far corner of the cloister, where the great hearth of the calefactory was required to remain lit until Saint Mathilde's Day. As I rested my back on a slender column, a handbell broke the oppressive silence, ten measured rings calling the monks to the Hours, a thin, strident summoning compared to the sonorous richness of the bronze bells fallen from the belltower. The pattern of two, three, and one, followed—Vespers, the Hour of peace. But I felt no peace and could not shake the sense that more than bodies and buildings had been shattered here.

I believed in the gods and their creatures—whether they were named Kemen or Iero, angels or Danae or gatzi. Even a dolt could see that the universe was no soulless clockwork, but infused with life beyond human understanding—wondrous and mysterious, perilous and exquisite. But as to whether the deities truly listened to our prayers or desired our votive gifts or libations or blood sacrifices, I'd been content to leave that study to wiser heads. And never had I given literal credence to the god stories and myths I'd been told—of Deunor's stolen fire that lit the stars or of the Danae whose dancing nourished the world and held it together. Not until I looked on the ruins of Gillarine and knew in flesh and spirit, breath and bone, that the Canon, the pattern of the world, was truly broken.

Curious, apprehensive, I knelt at the edge of the cloister walk and brushed away a patch of snow. The grass of the garth, so thick and green but a month ago, lay yellow and slimy. I pressed my hands to the earth.

Nothing. No slamming darkness. No piercing light. No music of grief or longing to wrench my soul as it had every time I'd tested this particular patch of earth. I felt only the sickness of the outer world that had intruded here. Plague into the sheepfold. Rot into the orchard. Fire and death into the cloisters.

Wiping my hands on the hem of my cloak, I sat back on my heels. Stories nagged at me. King Eodward had built this abbey on “holy ground.” I had almost forgotten the first death. Young Brother Horach had been brutally murdered inside Saint Gillare's shrine, where the holy spring bubbled up into the font. Harrowers poisoned the land's guardians with violated corpses. That was what Sila Diaglou and her cohorts had tried to do with Boreas. I recalled Graver's Meadow, the lush grass and shimmering pond that swelled my spirit as if the angel choirs sang in the abbey's soaring vaults. Easy to believe a guardian had lived there.

What if the legends of Eodward and the angels and Gillarine's holy, fertile ground had given someone to believe the abbey spring a Danae sianou? And what if that someone had tried to poison the guardian Dané with the murdered Horach? The plan would have failed, because the true sianou lay at the spring's source in the hills at Clyste's Well. Clyste would have lived on, locked away for her part in my grandfather's crime, yet still infusing the abbey fields and flocks with her own life and health, a balm to such horrors as Black Night. And then I had opened the way to her holy place…

Faces, events, information shifted, twisted, and settled into a new pattern like tiles into a fine mosaic. Gerard had disappeared on the night of my attempted escape, only days after I had led Gildas to Clyste's Well. And only days later, pestilence had come to Gillarine.

I jumped to my feet, horror and certainty wrenching mind and heart. I knew what had happened to Gerard. Tears that had naught to do with the cold blurred my vision. Murdered. Great gods in all heavens, they had murdered the boy to kill the Danae guardian of the abbey lands. I knew it as I knew my own name. And now I understood what crime had been committed, it became clear who had committed it.

I stepped into the cloister garth and spun as I yelled, violating the holy silence and the land's grieving. “Where are you, monk? Gildas, come out here and tell me what you've done!”

Blind and stupid, Valen. Self-absorbed wretch.
From the moment I had stepped into this abbey he had played me like a vielle. How had I not seen? Great Iero, he had all but told me outright.
I belong with the cabalists little more than you,
he'd said. And,
If the cities die, if learning dies, we are sent back to the land, to nights in the wild forest with spirits we can no longer tame with words, to awe of these Gehoum—the Powers who make the sky grow light or dark, whose righteous wrath is fire and storm. Righteous
wrath.
Everyone should be pure like you and Gerard,
he had told Jullian. Horach had been his student…and an innocent, too.

The part of me that believed I was unworthy of this place, that bore gratitude and affection for Gildas, who had welcomed me with good humor and allowed me to imagine I could be friends with scholars and men of substance, cried out that I was wrong. But I was not. Not this time. Clyste was dead. And so was Gerard.

“God-cursed child murderer!”

Brother Cantor intoned the opening note of Vesper plainsong as if to correct the abrasive timbre of my shouts, and then the voices—so terribly few—joined in the chant. Perfection, continuity, clarity…the music swelled as their procession approached the ruined cloisters.

Sila Diaglou's spy had told her of the lighthouse. But he couldn't tell her how to get into it and destroy its contents, because he was not privy to that secret. And a runaway novice had disrupted their ruse to lure Luviar and Stearc into her clutches with a bloody Gildas as bait. No wonder his hands had been left loose that night; he had
offered
himself to his Gehoum—
a noble sacrifice
. So he had waited until Palinur and given her Luviar and Victor. No wonder Gildas had looked dismayed when I told him Brother Victor had survived the gallows—not only because the chancellor was in Osriel's custody, but because the little monk could reveal who had betrayed him and his abbot.

Where are you, betrayer?
I tugged at my hair. Gildas would not be at prayers. The worm would lurk in the heart of the cabal—with Gram and Stearc and Elene. I ran for the guesthouse, forced by shattered walls and rubble to circle south of the lay brothers' reach and past the ruined kitchen. Across the yard. Up the stoop.

“Come face me, gatzé! Tell me how clever you are to fool an ignorant pureblood!”

I slammed through doors and kicked aside the toppled furnishings and soot-grimed couches littering the dark rooms of the ground floor. A single rushlight burned in a tripod holder near the stair. I sped up the narrow, winding ascent. Yelling. Heedless.

The middle floor was dark. I raced upward and burst into a firelit chamber that smelled of scorched plaster and spiced cider.

Stocky, pale-skulled Prior Nemesio knelt by the meager fire, a sooty poker in his hand. He was alone. His startled expression quickly smoothed into satisfaction. “Brother Valen! It's Iero's own blessing to see you safe here again.”

“Where is Gildas?” I snapped.

“At Vespers, I would think.” Worry carved a mask on his big-boned cheeks. “What's wrong? Brother Anselm said you'd had quite an ordeal. I offered to bring his posset so I could tell you—”

“Where are the Evanori—Thane Stearc, his secretary?” I said. Jullian had vouched that Nemesio was one of us. “I must speak with them outside Mardane Voushanti's hearing.”

“That's what I've come to tell you. Thane Stearc and his party moved on to Fortress Groult with the rest of the Evanori. When they saw what's happened here, they dared not stay.”

Cold dread bound its fingers about my rage. “Did Gildas go with them? Or Jullian?”

“Brother Gildas thought they would do better to remain here. It's entirely unsuitable that an aspirant run about the countryside in the midst of—”

“Father Prior, Gildas murdered both Brother Horach and Gerard.” My hands trembled with scarcely held rage. “We must find him. Confine him.”

“What slander is this?” Nemesio surged to his feet, his thick neck scarlet. “Gildas is your vowed brother! The lighthouse Scholar!”

“I'd wager my life that Gildas is a Harrower. He took Gerard to Clyste's Well and bled him to death. You
must
send this news to Stearc right away. Don't you see? Gildas betrayed Victor and Luviar to Sila Diaglou. He knows your identities. I'd give much to be wrong, but to be certain, we must secure him tonight.”

“I cannot credit this.” Prior Nemesio chewed his full lips. “Gildas is a pious man. Holy and generous. Hours ago, when the Sinduria said she'd heard your call for help, both he and Jullian wished to set out with her at once to succor you. Your sister refused, unwilling to risk his safety. The two of them went straight off to the church to pray for your return.”

I glanced about the room, dread and helplessness threatening to undo me. “Father Prior, where is the Cartamandua book? Please tell me that Stearc took it to Fortress Groult.”

“No.” Nemesio looked up. Uncertain. “Gildas kept it. To study, he said—”

I bolted for the stair.

Plainsong floated on the bitter air, along with the mingled odors of charred wood, of broken sewage channels, of incense and peat fires. The monks stood in a circle about the high altar of the ruined church, under vaults now open to the sky, and sang of their god's joy and care. Depleted ranks of lay brothers stood in a small area of the nave that had been cleared of rubble and dirty snow. Only a few heads moved as I sped through the nave yelling Gildas's name and Jullian's.

The boy was nowhere to be seen, and, as always, the monks' hoods were drawn up, hiding their faces. Knowing the search was futile, I snatched a lit candle from the high altar and intruded on their circle, peering at the hands clutching tattered psalters. Gildas's hands, backed by their thatch of wiry brown hair, were not among them.

I replaced the candle and strode out of the church, cursing. Halfway across the trampled garden, hurried footsteps behind me spun me in my tracks.

“Brother Valen? Is that really you?” The hard-breathing monk lowered his hood. The round head and fringe of gray hair identified my novice mentor.

“Yes, Brother Sebastian.”

“The mask makes it difficult…and no tonsure anymore…” Uncertainty snagged his speech.

“I'm happy to see you alive, Brother. But I'm in a great hurry.”

“Well, of course, I knew it was you. Not so many purebloods come here, and none so tall. Brother Gildas said this pureblood life”—he fluttered his hand at my mask and my clothing, giving no impression of having heard me—“has changed you. Secular law forbids me to speak to you, but Saint Ophir's Rule says you are yet my charge.”

I stepped back, brittle with impatience. “Excuse me, Brother. Unless you can say where Gildas—”

“Brother Gildas is gone off to Elanus. Left something for you, he did. Said you would come looking for him…angry…saying terrible things. Said he wanted you to have this.” From his cowl Brother Sebastian pulled a thumb-sized wooden box, tied with a string. He laid it in my hand. “And he said to tell you that an archangel would be his shield when the last darkness falls. Brother Valen, what did he—?”

“How long?” I said, scarcely able to shape words. My shaking fist threatened to crush the little box. “When did he go?”

Sebastian hesitated, his unsteady gaze not daring to meet my own. He expelled a sharp breath, as if he knew how close he stood to the blood rage threatening to crack my skull. “Just after Sext I encountered him coming out of the chapter-house undercroft, where we've stored what supplies we've salvaged from the fires. Young Jullian was with him. I remarked that they had missed the service—understandable, as they had just ridden in this morning with the Sinduria. But I said that I would expect to see both of them at Vespers. Our vows must not founder on the shoals of trial and sorrow. That's when he told me they had borrowed a horse from the Evanori and would be off to Elanus right away on Father Prior's business. Then he gave me the box and the message for you. The two of them rode out well before Nones.”