The Demon Awakens (6 page)

Only the call to vespers, the ceremony heralding eventide, had interrupted Avelyn’s frantic pace. He went quietly to the service, then skipped his evening meal altogether and went right to his chamber, a five-foot-square cubicle with a single stool, which doubled as a table for Avelyn’s candle, and a cot—little more than a flat board and a blanket—that folded down from one wall.

The work was ended now, and the ache settled in. Despite his weariness, Avelyn Desbris could hardly sleep. Images of his mother flooded his thoughts; he wondered if he might see a vision of her now, a visitation of her spirit before it went to its place in heaven. Would Annalisa come to say good-bye to her youngest child, or had she already said her farewells to Avelyn in the courtyard outside of St.-Mere-Abelle?

Avelyn rolled off the cot and fumbled with his flint and steel, finally getting the candle lit. He glanced around in the shadowy light, as if expecting Annalisa to be standing in a corner waiting for him.

She wasn’t, to Avelyn’s ultimate disappointment.

The young man settled on the edge of his cot, head bowed, hands resting on his sore thighs. He felt the first tears leaking from his eyes and tried to deny them. To cry would be a weakness, Avelyn reasoned, a lack of faith. If what he believed, what he truly held in his heart, could not sustain him in a time of death, then of what value was it? The Abellican Church, the ancient scriptures, promised heaven to those deserving, and who could be more deserving than gentle and generous Annalisa Desbris?

A tear rolled down Avelyn’s cheek, then another. He dropped his head lower, brought his hands up to cover his eyes, his wet eyes.

A sob lifted Avelyn’s bowed shoulders. He tried to deny it, tried to fight back. He recited the Prayer of the Dead, the Prayer of the Faithful, the Prayer of Eternal Promise, all in a row, forcing his voice to hold steady.

Still the tears came; every so often his even tone was broken by a sniffle or a sob.

He went through the recitals again, and again. He prayed with all his heart, wrapping the words around images of his mother, often intoning her name between lines of verse. He was on the floor then, but did not know how he had gotten there. On the floor and curled up like a baby, wanting his mother, praying for his mother.

Finally, after more than an hour, Avelyn composed himself and sat back on the cot, taking several deep breaths to fight away the last of the sobs. He thought long and hard then, considering his grief, searching his soul for the weakness that had come into his faith.

Soon enough, he had his answer, and Avelyn was glad. He was not crying, he realized, for Annalisa, for he did indeed hold faith that she had passed on to a deserved better existence. He was crying for himself, for his brothers and sisters, for his father, for all who knew Annalisa Desbris and would not be graced by her presence in this life again.

Avelyn could accept that. His faith was intact and solid, and so he was not desecrating the memory of his mother. He moved to blow out the candle, then changed his mind and settled back on the cot. Still his eyes searched the corners of the shadowy room for his mother’s spirit.

Perhaps he would find her in his dreams.

Two men walked quietly away from Brother Avelyn’s closed door. “Are you satisfied?” Master Jojonah asked Master Siherton when they were far away.

Indeed Siherton had been pleased to hear Avelyn crying, to know that the too-dedicated young man was possessed of human emotions, but the sound of Avelyn’s sobs had not changed the stern master’s general attitude toward Avelyn. He gave a slight nod to Jojonah and started away.

“I have been given the blessings of Father Abbot Markwart to show young Brother Avelyn the stones,” Jojonah called after him.

Siherton stopped dead in his tracks, fought down the angry protest that rose in his throat, and then nodded again, only slightly, and continued on his way.

It was settled then. Brother Avelyn Desbris would be one of the Preparers.

Avelyn tried to keep his head bowed, his eyes to the floor, as befitted his lowly station, but he couldn’t help notice some of the splendors that surrounded him as he followed Master Jojonah through the winding corridors of the Abbot’s Maze, the most private and revered place in all of St.-Mere-Abelle, and one that a first-year novice would certainly not expect to visit.

Jojonah’s explanation for the tour had been weak, some remark about an area that needed cleaning. After only a few weeks in the abbey, Avelyn knew enough about the routine to understand that students much older and more experienced than he were the normal choice for any tasks, however menial, in the Abbot’s Maze. He also knew that nothing special was going on, that many of the older students would have been available to Master Jojonah.

His questions were kept private though, for it was not his place to ask anything of the masters. Only to obey, and so he was, walking as quietly as he could beside the plump man, keeping his head bowed but still stealing an occasional glance at the splendor: the gold leaf bordering every side door, the wondrous and intricate carvings on every beam of wood, the mosaic tile patterns on the floors, the tapestries, so rich in detail that Avelyn figured he could spend hours and hours lingering over but one of them. Master Jojonah talked constantly, though he said nothing of interest—slight remarks about the weather, a storm that had hit twenty years before, the passing of his favorite baker in the town of St.-Mere-Abelle, a surprisingly off-color remark about the man’s “lusty” wife. None of it diverted Avelyn’ s attention from the wonders of the place, though he did listen somewhat, fearing to miss any questions directed his way.

They stopped before a heavy door—and what a door! Avelyn could not help but lift his eyes at the sight of the thing, at the layers and layers of painted carvings, scenes of battles, of Saint Abelle being burned at the stake, of the healing hands of Mother Bastibule. Scenes of angels conquering demons, of the mighty demon dactyl screaming in agony as its own lava poured over it, consuming it. Scenes of the Halo, the heavenly gift, enwrapping all the others, an oval because of the angle at which it was portrayed. It started, if such a complete thing could be said to start, at the bottom left corner of the door, and led the observer’s eye upward across the portal to the top right. And on the way, as Avelyn’s eyes scanned, it seemed to him as if the history of the world, of the faith, unfolded to him, the images packed so that one led to another easily, with enough distinction so that each made an impact, however brief, like the flowing of time.

He wanted to kneel and pray; he wanted to ask who the artist—or artists, for certainly no one man could have created all of this—might be, but realized before the words left his mouth that any name would be inconsequential for certainly the carvers and illuminators who had done this had done so at the explicit intervention of God. He alone, who called all the men and women of the world His children, might have done this.

“You know of the Ring Stones?” Master Jojonah asked abruptly, and the words sounded sharp and out of place to Avelyn. He nearly jumped, and turned with a start, surprised that a master would be so foolish as to speak in the presence of such beauty.

Then the impact of the question hit him fully.

“You know?” Jojonah asked again.

Avelyn swallowed hard, trying to discern his best response. Of course he knew of the Ring Stones, the heavenly gifts to St.-Mere-Abelle, the source of all the magic in the world. Avelyn didn’t know much, though, just the common rumors about how the stones would fall from the heavens into the hands of waiting monks, to be blessed by the Father Abbot that their special powers be realized.

“We are the Keepers of the Stones,” Master Jojonah said after a moment, Avelyn still making no move to respond.

The young monk nodded slightly.

“It is our most holy duty,” Jojonah said, moving to the door and lifting the heavy latch that held it. Avelyn blinked; amid the wonders of the door, he hadn’t even noticed the huge latch!

“The stones are the proof of our faith,” Jojonah remarked, pushing wide the door.

Avelyn stood as if turned to stone. “The proof of our faith,” he whispered under his breath, hardly believing that a master of St.-Mere-Abelle had uttered those borderline blasphemous words. Faith needed no proof—indeed the very value of faith was loyalty to beliefs without proof!

Of course Avelyn would not protest aloud, and even his silent musings were washed away as the heavy door opened silently, on balanced and oiled hinges, to reveal the greatest splendor of all.

The room inside was well lit, though Avelyn saw no torches and didn’t smell the usual odor of burning wood. They were far below ground in one of the abbey’s interior chambers, so there could be no window. But there was indeed light inside that room, such a light as to make Avelyn think of a cloudless midsummer day. It filled every corner, every crack in every stone, and reflected brilliantly off the glass covers of the many cases set about the room, and off their contents, as well, hundreds and hundreds of polished stones.

The Ring Stones!

Jojonah moved into the room, Avelyn practically stumbling behind him. The young monk made no pretense of keeping his gaze low now, looking left and right as they passed each case, marveling at the gems, the reds and blues, amber-colored stones and violet crystals. One case of a dozen or so smooth stones, a dark gray in hue but somehow seeming even blacker than night, caught Avelyn’s attention and made him shudder, though he did not know why. In another case he saw clear stones—he recognized them as diamonds—and he paused again, and noted that Jojonah, too, had paused, allowing him to linger.

Avelyn studied the way the light worked off the many facets of the diamonds, how it seemed to delve within the stone itself, swirling down to crystalline depths. Then he realized the truth.

“The diamonds are the source of the light,” he said, and he bit his lip immediately when he realized that he had spoken out of turn.

“Well done,” Master Jojonah congratulated, and Avelyn relaxed somewhat. “What do you know of the Ring Stones?”

“They are the source of all the magic in the world,” Avelyn recited.

Jojonah nodded but said, “Not exactly true.”

Avelyn stared at him hard.

“The Ring Stones are the source of all goodly magic,” Master Jojonah explained.

“God-given magic,” Avelyn dared to put in.

Jojonah hesitated—a pause not consciously caught by Avelyn, but one that he would recall in years to come—then nodded. “But there are, too, the Earth Stones, the source of evil magic, the power of the dactyls,” said Jojonah. “They are not numerous, by God’s grace, and can only be used by those demons—who, by God’s grace, are even less numerous!” He ended with a chuckle, but Avelyn was hard-pressed to see any humor in a discussion of the demon dactyls.

Jojonah cleared his throat uncomfortably. “And there is magic in the Touel’alfar, as well,” he said. “In their melodious singing, so it is said, and in the metal their gardens ‘grow’ from the soil.”

“Grow?” Avelyn asked.

Master Jojonah shrugged; it was not important. “Tell me of the Ring Stones,” he prompted. “Who gathers them?”

“The brothers of St.-Mere-Abelle,” Avelyn answered immediately.

“From where?”

“They fall from the sky, from the Halo, into the waiting hands of—”

Jojonah’s chuckle stopped him short. “They fall with a speed greater than that of an arrow in flight,” the master explained. “And they are hot, my novice friend, so hot as to burn the flesh and the bone beneath it!” Jojonah chuckled again as he described to Avelyn an image of a young monk standing in a field, as holed as the cheese of Alpinador, an incredulous look on his face, a group of glowing rocks on the ground behind him.

Avelyn bit hard on his lip. He realized that Jojonah wasn’t mocking him, but could not understand why he was being told these things.

“Where do we get them?” Jojonah asked suddenly.

Avelyn started to say, “The Halo,” but stopped short, realizing that that ground had already been covered. His expression blank, he merely shrugged.

“Pimaninicuit,” Jojonah said.

Avelyn’s expression did not change.

“An island,” the master explained. “Pimaninicuit. That is the only place where the sacred stones may be collected.”

Avelyn had never heard such a thing.

“If you ever utter that name to any who do not know it, without the express permission—no, the express instruction—of the presiding father abbot of St.-Mere-Abelle, all of the powers of the abbey will be put into focus to bring about your execution.”

Avelyn knew why he had never heard the name before.

“When do we get them?” Jojonah asked, changing the subject so abruptly that he had Avelyn thoroughly flustered. Again the young monk could only shrug helplessly, wanting to know but afraid to know. There was something most sacred, yet particularly unmysterious, and thus unholy, in all of this, a tingling of ecstasy combined with a slightly foul taste that Avelyn Desbris could not ignore.

“The stones do not come to ground often,” Jojonah explained, sounding more like a scholar than a priest. “They do not fall frequently, but they do fall regularly.” He led the way to the left-hand wall of the large chamber, and as they neared, Avelyn could see that the murals carved there were, in fact, charts, astronomical charts. Avelyn, who had often spent hours at a time gazing at the wondrous night sky, recognized some of the points. He noted the four-starred girdle of Progos-Behemoth the Warrior, the most prominent constellation in the northern sky, and the arcing stars that marked the handle of the Farmer’s Bucket, the one he had to walk away from his parent’s back door in order to see, for it always lingered right above their roof. Corona, with its Halo, was certainly evident, and prominent, being the center of it all, as Corona was the center of the universe.

Looking closer, Avelyn noted grooves in the wall. At first he thought them the borders of the known spheres, for he had heard theories of the universe as a series of overlapping, interlocking heavenly spheres, the invisible bubbles that held the layers of stars in place. When he realized that most of the grooves were near Corona, connecting the sun and the moon, and the five planets, he came to understand the truth. Those grooves were of a practical and not aesthetic nature, serving the mechanics of the chart so that the heavenly bodies could be kept in motion. Avelyn carefully noted the position of Sheila, the moon, and stared at it long enough to realize that it was indeed moving, ever so slightly, along its path about Corona.