Sword of the Bright Lady (19 page)

To heal a scratch, or even a severed limb, was one thing. To learn a language in a day, or ignore a few blows to the body, was one thing. To see the dead returned to life was something else entirely: a beacon of light undreamed of, unimagined, unimaginable, a brightness so blinding that his eyes began to water. This was not merely the amazing or the inexplicable, it was the miraculous, in the old sense of the word: the upheaval of despair, the victory of hope, the defeat of the invincible. Faren grappled with Death itself, and in a stony voice of command threw the devil down and pronounced his triumph.

“Come back, Charles Aleson,” he cried in the common tongue. “Your place is still in this world. There are still girls to kiss, still battles to win. Your mother still reaches out for you. Your father still looks for your hand. Come back, Charles Aleson, to where you belong. Your time is not done. Your deeds are not written. Come back,” he beseeched, weeping freely. “Come back, son of man, to the flesh.” The words rang in Christopher's head like church bells, deafening in their significance. “Come back,” Faren ordered, the command rendered gentle but no less potent in Celestial. “Come back!”

And Charles came, in a blinding rush of light that wasn't really there, like afterimages on the retina of something never seen. The invisible light poured down from the heavens, passing through the roof like glass, filling the body with an invisible glow.

Charles coughed.

The room exploded in bedlam, weeping, laughing, crying, cheering. Faren sagged in relief. Svengusta wiped his eyes with a handkerchief, then silently offered it to Christopher. The parents were stricken dumb with release, wordlessly accepting congratulations while holding the boy in their arms, tears flowing down their faces.

“Let him sleep,” Faren prescribed. “Let him rest tonight and all of tomorrow, but then put his lazy bones back to work.”

Aunts and sisters shepherded the boy and his mother upstairs, and the wake turned into a wild party. No small blame for this lay on the tavern keeper himself. Made unsteady by the rocket-ride from grief to joy, Big Bob opened his kegs to all for free.

Christopher finally escaped the riot after only two mugs had been pressed on him. Priests were suddenly very popular. He could see why, and he felt reduced by the comparison. Merely chopping people up with a sword was the province of any thug.

Faren had extracted himself as well and was basking in the cold sunlight.

“Can I do that?” Christopher asked. “I mean, as a priest of War. Ever?”

“Yes, of course, though for you it will not come until you are a Prophet. Which, you must accept, seems unlikely, given your age. Do not be jealous, Brother. I remember the first time I saved a man, a woodcutter who'd slipped with his ax and was bleeding out. To save a life always feels like this.”

“The only person I've ever healed,” Christopher said sadly, “is myself.” That wasn't strictly true. He'd healed Svengusta during the fight. But he didn't count that. He hadn't had time to enjoy it, or even see it.

“Your time will come, soon enough,” Faren soothed. “Although it will be small balm to patch a man up, only to send him out again into the thresher. For that part, soon enough I'll watch young Charles march to war. It is the way of it, Brother. You are no idealistic sapling. You know the truth. Life and death are two sides of a coin, so spend it well.”

Faren was in an unusually pious mood, noted Christopher.

“I know,” the old man laughed, “it will be gone again tomorrow. As for that—have you any thoughts to why the Invisible Guild has chosen to favor you?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I doubt it is Hobilar's influence. It's true he spurned the Saint and now roams the streets of Kingsrock, crying for revenge; but he has no money and less sympathy. Possibly the motive was simple murder and robbery. It's not that unheard of, and you are known to have recently become wealthy. The best I can offer you is more guards.”

“No, thanks. These soldiers are eating us out of house and home. I'd rather depend on the villagers.”

Faren shook his head. “They already have full-time jobs. But evil prefers to strike during the dark. Perhaps just stuffing the chapel with young men at night will be sufficient.”

Dinner was a more comfortable affair without the soldiers, who returned to Knockford in Faren's carriage. Svengusta was drunk to the point of silliness. “Never so much commotion in all my life,” he laughed. “What will you do next? Summon a dragon and teach it to play dead?” They had to put the old man to bed early.

As they were about to retire themselves, there was a knock on the door. Christopher found himself immediately reaching for his sword, but it was Kennet and three other young men, come for night duty armed with heavy cudgels. All of them were destined for the winter draft, and they found it hugely exciting to be considered man enough to fight for their soon-to-be comrade-in-arms. Several of them hinted they could share the bed by the fire. Helga would have none of it. They didn't have beards to speak of, and she was in a higher class now. Instead they wound up double-bunking with each other in Svengusta and Christopher's room.

The boys fell asleep quickly enough, no doubt due to hard labor and clean consciences. Christopher lay awake for a while, listening to the breathing of the young men he had conned into sharing his danger, for no more reward than the thrill of it.

Unfortunately, all the boys shared was the danger. The work was his own. He had never thought of chemistry as a physically challenging endeavor, but the amount of energy it consumed was phenomenal. Most of his time was spent at the woodpile, and it would need replenishing soon. Splitting wood with an ax was exhausting; cutting down a whole tree with one seemed improbable. Nonetheless he found himself eyeing a particularly large fir at the edge of the woods.

He was taking a breather to consider the problem when a one-horse wagon ambled up, with Tom Fool on the bench seat next to the driver.

“Actually swinging that ax would cut more wood than praying for a miracle,” Tom suggested.

“Except my prayers have just been answered.” Christopher stuck the ax in the chopping stump and waved Tom an invitation.

“Or you could just burn coal,” Tom said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at a well-laden wheelbarrow in the back of the wagon.

“There's a tree that owes you its life,” Christopher said, although the relief in his voice was more for his own sake.

“Perhaps it is the tree's prayer that was answered, then,” Tom said. “In either case I am happy to be the instrument of deliverance.”

The wagon driver jumped down to help unload, and Tom performed an introduction.

“Please meet Fingean the drayer,” Tom said with a little flourish. “He's in my guild, as it were, the guild of second sons. But he drew a horse and wagon out of the deal, so he makes a living hauling. I thought if you were wanting a lot of coal, you might be thinking of hiring a wagon.”

The other man bowed, not quite as comfortable with unpredictable priests as Tom.

“How much does it cost?” Christopher immediately thought of a better question. “I mean, how much did you pay?”

“Ah, about that,” Tom said with exaggerated dismay. “I'd talked the fellow into coming out here to meet you, and I just tagged along for the ride. I wouldn't know what his ordinary charges are.”

“You mean to tell me,” Christopher said, “that when I paid you to deliver a wheelbarrow of coal, you recruited a man to haul it out here and convinced him to do it for free?”

“Yes, Pater,” Tom answered, a little wary. “I hope that's acceptable.”

“Acceptable is not quite the word I'd use,” Christopher replied. There was an old adage about hiring the right person when you met him and figuring out what his job was afterward. “How much would I have to pay you to work for me full-time?”

“Doing what, Pater?”

“Manual labor,” Christopher answered honestly. “For now.”

“Then I am pleased to say I am qualified. An honest wage for a man with no skill or guild certificate is a silver a day,” Tom suggested.

“That's forty gold a year.” Christopher tried to decide if he could afford it. Were his finances sufficient to maintain a horse and a servant? But there was too much work to be done alone.

“Only thirty a year, if you provide room and board in your fine chapel,” Tom countered. “But I get a day off a week, to see my girl in Knockford.”

“Deal,” Christopher said, leaping at the bargain. “But you get two days off a week.” It wasn't as nice as it sounded. Around here a week was ten days long.

He turned to the drayer. “Let me pay for the service Tom tricked you out of, and come on in for lunch.

“Oh, damn,” he told Tom, as Helga sighed and got out the dishes she had just put away now that the soldiers were gone, “I forgot, I'm under some kind of death sentence by the Invisible Guild. You might not want to work with me after all.”

“I'll not let foxes chase me off from the golden goose.” Tom had an uncharacteristic look on his face, and Christopher finally recognized it as seriousness. “I swing a cudgel as well as the next, or even a sword if you've got one to spare.”

“Where is he going to sleep?” Helga asked with some interest. She hadn't paid the soldiers any mind, but Tom had a charm that accented his rough-hewn look.

“We'll just have to reduce the number of boys,” Svengusta said. “This lad's worth two of them, anyway, and surely half the commotion.”

After lunch Christopher paid the drayer with a heavy gold coin. Then he sighed and cornered Helga in the kitchen.

“Tom's going to be eating with us, and I can't expect Sven to pay for that. So how much do you need?”

“Pater gives me a gold a week for the three of us,” she said.

Christopher ate as much as the old man and the girl together. Not that he was putting on weight; if anything, he was losing it. Tom would eat at least as much, so that meant another twenty gold a year. Which was ten more than he'd saved by offering Tom a bed in the chapel.

There was no question about it. He'd hired the right man.

He counted over four precious coins. “That's for the next four weeks, then, for Tom and me.”

Tom made himself useful immediately, in a way that Christopher had once tried to do but failed. Helga would let him help with the chores she never allowed Christopher to touch. No doubt it had more to do with competence than rank; Tom actually knew what he was doing.

11.

FIRE IN THE SKY

Neither Svengusta nor Helga were willing to tolerate burning coal in the chapel's fireplace, so Christopher cooked his first batch of coke over an open fire. Tom's tongue, normally quick to prod an irony, seemed dumbfounded by the act of burning wood to heat coal. The process took several days to yield a sack of hard gray lumps.

“We'll need to build an oven,” Christopher said. “Do you know a bricklayer?”

“If you don't plan to live in it, I can probably manage,” Tom said, “though I hope you don't want me to make the bricks myself.”

“Not unless you can,” Christopher said, but not seriously. Making bricks required firewood.

Now it was time to go to town and burn through his fortune. Buying Fae's freedom would take half his capital; her and Tom's salary and food for the horse would take the other half. That left Christopher a beggar again, depending solely on whatever Karl brought back from Kingsrock. But whenever he found himself fretting over a life of poverty, he reminded himself that he would likely be murdered in his sleep before he starved.

Christopher offered Tom a ride into town, figuring the huge warhorse could easily carry them double. But the horse gave them such a withering glare when Tom put his foot in the stirrup that both men thought better of the idea, and poor Tom had to walk. In town they split up, Tom to find Fingean and bricks, and Christopher to see the wizard.

First he had a friendlier task, paying a visit to Dereth to order a steel tube, about two inches in diameter and a foot long. Before Dereth could complain about lack of resources, Christopher dumped the sack of coke into the charcoal bucket.

“I cannot smelt with coal,” the smith said. “Your tube will be useless, as brittle as glass.”

“It's not coal,” Christopher said. “Well, anymore.”

Dereth picked up a lump and examined it more closely.

“This will liquefy your iron. Use a bellows to blow clean air through the melt and watch the flames. When they come out the right color, you'll have steel.”

“And what color is that?” Dereth asked.

Christopher shrugged. “No idea. I trust you to figure it out.”