Sword of the Bright Lady (18 page)

It was closer to an hour later that they set off for the village, accompanied by four guards on horseback and a wagon with four more soldiers. The guards in the wagon had crossbows, which interested Christopher considerably. Here was the first sign of complex machinery he'd seen.

The column made a good first impression, but Christopher had become astute enough to recognize that their horses were not warhorses. Even the saddles were only for riding, lacking the high front and back of his war tack. Nor did the soldiers have Karl's whipcord build; some of them were suspiciously close to fat. Royal was equally unimpressed, forcibly taking his place at the head of the column, next to but a few inches ahead of Rana's mount. Improbably the lady had emerged from the church dressed in full chain mail, with a round wooden shield and sickle like Svengusta's strapped to her side.

“Please accept my apologies, my Lady,” Christopher said. “My equestrian skills are not yet up to the level of my mount.”

The woman chuckled, nudged her horse close, and patted Royal on the shoulder. “It's alright, Pater. If we are attacked—which I sincerely doubt—I'll be happy to have another target up here with me.” She adjusted the shield so it wouldn't bang her knees. “I think I might have made a mistake,” she confessed. “I only meant to reassure the villagers with a show of force, but the townsfolk will be buzzing to see me off in armor. They'll think we're being invaded or some such nonsense.”

“Well, then, when you come home with your prisoners, they'll think you won,” he offered.

“Is sophistry now a domain of war?” she inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“I think it is,” he laughed. “Rhetoric, and above all demagoguery, are the warmonger's stock in trade. At least, where I come from. Isn't it the same here?”

“Not particularly. The pursuit of tael is all the motivation warriors normally require.”

Christopher was going to explain that there wasn't any tael where he came from and only caught himself in the nick of time. Rana noticed.

“No,” she said quietly, “don't tell me. Whatever it is Krellyan conceals, I don't want to know. Don't bother to protest your innocence, just let it pass.”

10.

OLD-TIME REVIVAL

The village turned out to greet them, watching from the side of the road. Christopher could sense the wisdom of Rana's cavalcade; the bulk of men and armor was a reassuring counterweight to the violence that had been done in the night.

Soldiers carried the unconscious man, wrapped in a blanket but still barefoot and bound, into the main hall and laid him at Rana's feet. She healed him with a word, while men with drawn weapons encircled him. The mummer looked around warily, his eyes sagging in ill-concealed defeat.

“What have you to say for yourself, villain?” she asked.

“What should I say? Your people have beaten me, stripped me, and in general behaved like boors. Have you come to chastise them for their inhospitality?”

“Do you deny attacking the Pater?” she replied, ignoring his banter.

“Only in self-defense. We had innocently wandered into the chapel to pay our respects to the god. A simple wrong turn, a mistaken door, and suddenly we were fighting for our lives.” The mummer tried for outrage, but it rang hollow.

“And the boy, Charles? The one who lies there under that sheet?”

The mummer shrugged. “I know nothing of this. We had left the inn, in the middle of the night, for we were quite dissatisfied with the pathetic level of service and the rudeness of the tavern-master. The cooking was none too good, either.” He glanced at the boy sadly. “Probably some peasant's squabble over a girl. They're like animals, nothing but rutting and violence on their stunted minds.”

“You'll have to lie better than that to fool the Cardinal,” Rana said, dismissing the mummer with a sad shake of the head. The soldiers carted him out the double doors to the wagon. “Have the bodies been harvested yet?” she asked Svengusta.

“No, Lady, I thought it best not to disturb anything.”

“Well, let's do it. Nothing gained by waiting now.” She looked at the three corpses. “We can each do one.”

Christopher's mouth went dry, unwilling to speculate on what she meant.

“Ah,” Svengusta said delicately. “Our Brother is very new.”

Rana snorted. “Time to learn then. He should have done this as a novice. Come to think of it, he should have
been
a novice. In any case, he'll have no shortage of harvesting at war.”

“You do have an orison available, Brother?” asked Svengusta. Christopher nodded reluctantly. “Then watch, and listen.” The old man bent over the first corpse and chanted a phrase in Celestial. He put his hand on the dead man's head and concentrated, his fingers arched so that his palm did not touch the forehead. As Christopher watched in fascination, a small purple dot grew out of nothing on the pallid flesh under Svengusta's hand, like a tiny lilac blossoming. After a brief moment it stopped growing, the size of a grain of rice, and Svengusta opened his eyes. He plucked the pellet up and weighed it in his hand, his face falling in dismay.

“No ordinary commoner, but an Apprentice rank,” Svengusta announced, and gave it to Rana. “Perhaps the mummer's craft—”

“According to your description, they fought remarkably well for thespians,” she said sourly. “Perhaps the Guild, after all.” She moved over to the next body, but Svengusta cleared his throat.

“Yes, Pater?” she asked mildly.

“That's the thug that Brother Christopher killed. I was thinking, it seemed appropriate and all. And he might feel more comfortable with that than doing the boy.”

“I don't want to do the boy,” Christopher instantly agreed. “You're going to do the boy?”

Rana frowned. “Of course. His tael won't help him now. And what's wrong with harvesting one of our own? He's giving back to the community. He'd be dishonored if you didn't want his contribution.”

“I don't want to do the boy,” Christopher said, embarrassed.

She sighed, annoyed. “It's your chapel, and your prerogative. But I'll not have you thinking ill of our sacred ways. Start with the kill you've made, if you must, but abandon any idea that it's somehow more respectable. Quite the opposite, I would argue.”

He nodded, tacitly conceding the strength of her argument. He decided not to explain that part of his squeamishness came from the fact that he'd never seen this many dead bodies before. He was tired of being the greenhorn.

Rana pulled up the sheet from Charles's head and repeated the performance, saying the words with extra emphasis for Christopher's benefit. Charles yielded merely a speck.

“Hardly worth the effort,” she said. “He was still under the age. No doubt that explains why they didn't take his head.”

Steeling himself to the task, Christopher bent over the last corpse and chanted the words. It was easier than he expected, requiring concentration but no particular skill. He drew the tael from the dead man until he felt nothing left, and then he opened his eyes.

He picked up the purple sphere. Like the one Svengusta had harvested, it was as small as a lentil. Weightless, yet he could feel its substance, resting in the palm of his hand. He instinctively knew how much it contained. Unfortunately, he didn't know what that meant, so he handed it to Svengusta.

“Also the fourth Novice rank,” Svengusta said unhappily. “What an unlikely group to contain two Master mummers.”

“But not unusual for an Invisible Guild gang.” Rana dropped the pebble into a small silver vial that hung on a chain around her neck. Then she shrugged, dismissing what they could do nothing about. “At least it is good news for Charles. His fee is covered, and the Saint will revive him.” She went to the door and summoned a guard. “Bring the parents,” she ordered.

When Big Bob arrived, with his wife and a number of other relatives in tow, the Vicar spoke commandingly.

“Be at ease, Goodman. I have already dispatched a message to summon Faren. I do not know how long he will be, but I can tell you this. Charles will not have the door closed on him. I will now enspell him and jam that door. Within the week either the Cardinal will arrive, or I will return and renew the spell until Faren can come. Keep the body safe and you have nothing to fear.”

“He is loved,” Svengusta added. “He will come back.”

Christopher watched in fascination as Rana worked her spell. The body seemed to acquire a light radiance for a moment, as if it had been embalmed with glowing fluid. The mother sobbed her gratitude while Big Bob held her, his eyes wet and shining.

“Does that matter?” Christopher quietly asked Svengusta. “I mean, that he was loved?”

“Considerably,” was the equally quiet reply. “The young are lightly bound to this world and often hard to call back. It is reckoned futile to even try with a child under three. But Charles was a happy lad, and well interested in girls already.

“You understand,” Svengusta added with a sudden alarm at Christopher's possible depth of ignorance, “that it is voluntary? They cannot be compelled to return.”

“Return from where?” Christopher asked helplessly. If there was a Heaven, who would want to return? If it was Hell, or even just Limbo, who wouldn't? And if there was neither, then where were you returning from?

“The other side. The world of the dead.” The old man sighed. “Those answers are sufficient for most, but you have a theological mind. So I will tell you what ages of priestly research has definitively concluded to be the answer: we don't know.”

Rana had final words for him, as well.

“If this is the work of the Invisibles, you are still in danger. I'm leaving two of my men with you, for the time being. You're to conduct yourself with appropriate caution. Don't go about alone, or unarmed, or unspelled. And for the Lady's sake, try not to kill, maim, or dismember any more people.”

“I'd be happy to stop,” he said somewhat ungraciously, “if they'd stop sticking bits of metal into me.”

“You're a barrel of trouble, Pater,” she replied testily. “Just because you're in the right doesn't make it any less troublesome.”

He had thought he was motivated before; now he worked like a demon bit at his heels. The guards sleeping in the next bunk spent their days in ordinary pursuits, flirting with the village girls and arguing with the farmers in the tavern, but the clink of their armor was a constant reminder of the danger that lurked in the silent, snowy woods. Christopher alternated his time between the chapel, learning chemical engineering from brute experience, and the woodpile, learning the art of wood-splitting the same way. Of the two, he found the wood less galling.

Nonetheless, progress was made, and he was on the final stage of producing a few pounds of clean white crystal when he was interrupted by Cardinal Faren, disembarking from his carriage in a clangor of metal and a foul mood.

“Look at this,” Faren said with disgust, pointing to the detachment of soldiers that had accompanied him. “I haven't seen so much armor in our lands in decades. It's almost as bad as a March. And you seem to be at the center of every storm.”

“I'm sorry,” was all Christopher could say as the Cardinal marched on into the main hall.

“Gods, boy, clean this place up,” he sputtered upon seeing the clutter of Christopher's industrial operations, “I've got a ceremony to perform.”

Once again Svengusta charged to the rescue. “He died in the tavern, Cardinal. Where his family lives,” the old man hinted broadly.

“All right, we'll do it there. Good thinking, Pater.” Faren went off to examine the tavern, and Svengusta winked at Christopher.

“No, technically it doesn't matter,” Svengusta explained, anticipating the inevitable question, “but if you're superstitious enough to come all the way out to the village, you might as well get the right house.”

Several village men carried Charles's body over to the tavern in an atmosphere turned solemn, their hopefulness guarded. The villagers were still awed that the event was even taking place. They did not dare hope for more, like a happy conclusion. It didn't help that Faren's bad mood seemed to stem from his own uncertainty.

The body lay on benches stacked two high in front of the bar, the biggest room in the tavern, packed tight with villagers—all of Charles's family and friends come to invite him back. Faren stood in the center, resplendent in his white cloaks and casual in his absolute authority.

Solemnly he led the villagers in a prayer. Christopher knew it was meaningless because it was delivered in the common tongue instead of Celestial. But Faren was here for the villagers as much as he was for Charles. When he had them prepared to accept any outcome, yet still hopeful for the best, he began.

He put a bead of tael on the boy's forehead and began to pray in earnest, in Celestial. The palpable presence of power filled the room, sending shivers down Christopher's spine. Faren boomed out, his voice shaking the heavens even if the solid timbers of the inn refused to show it. Some of the girls started to cry, quietly, trembling from the intensity. Christopher was not immune.