R. Salvatore - The Ancient

“Not somehow, ye dolt,” said Mcwigik. “Was the cap on yer head.” Cormack reached up to adjust his beret in acknowledgment.

“So ye’re not wanting to go back there, and ye’re saying ye can’t stay here…”

“Yossunfier,” said Cormack.

“The barbarians?”

“Yes,” the monk replied. “I would have you drop me there.”

“They’ll kill ye.”

Cormack pursed his lips. “Nevertheless, that is where I would like to go.”

“Well, ye ain’t for going there with us,” said the dwarf. “Not a place we go near. Those folk ain’t like yer monk friends. They know the water and know when anything’s near their island. They been there a hundred years, ye know. And more, lots more. They’re not using stones to throw lightning like yer own. Nah, their magic’s quieter but worse for us if we venture near.”

“Then give me a boat so I can go there alone.”

Mcwigik spat again, this time hitting Cormack in the foot. “Ye’re daft. Boats’re worth more than yerself.”

“I will return it in short order.”

“Then how’re ye getting back to their island after ye drop it back here?”

“I’m not going back to that island or any island,” Cormack said, half under his breath, and it surprised him to see Mcwigik stiffen at that remark, a look of intrigue suddenly upon his face.

“This has never been my place.”

“What’re ye saying, boy? Say it plain.”

“I have a friend-several, perhaps-on Yossunfier who wishes to be gone from this lake. Lend me a boat so I can retrieve her.”

“Her? Haha, but that’s telling me a lot.”

“We’ll come right back with the boat. Then, with your agreement, you can take us to the shore and never think of us again.”

Mcwigik started to respond in several different directions. Cormack gathered this by the way the dwarf’s mouth worked in weird circles with no real sounds coming out.

“Yach, just catch the durned fish!” he finally blurted, waving a hand at Cormack dismissively as he stormed away.

Cormack had no idea what all that might be about, so he took up the net and waded into the warm lake waters.

You keep looking out to the south,” Androosis remarked, walking up beside Milkeila. “You fear that something has happened to him.”

It was a statement, not a question, and an observation that Milkeila could not dispute.

“We took care to make it appear as if our escape had been of our doing,” Androosis tried to assure her. “I doubt that our friend’s complicity is known to the monks.”

“And yet he does not signal… in any way,” said Milkeila.

Androosis put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. Barely had his hand touched her when Toniquay yelled, “Your duties!” They broke away from each other and turned as one to regard the shaman, who was striding their way. “You spend far too much time seeking an Abellican,” Toniquay scolded.

“An Abellican who saved us,” said Androosis. He shrank back as soon as he uttered the words, surprised by his own outburst at this powerful figure.

“It is true then, what they say,” Toniquay said to Milkeila. “You have fallen for this Abellican named Cormack.” He snapped a glare at Androosis, too, daring the young man to say again that Cormack had saved their lives.

“He is a friend,” Milkeila replied coolly. “A loyal one.”

“Friend,” Toniquay spat derisively. “A mere friend does not betray his own brethren. Nay, there is more at work here than friendship. His betrayal bespeaks fires in his loins.”

Milkeila didn’t respond at all, didn’t blink or sneer or speak.

“Your duties await,” Toniquay reminded her, adding as she walked by, “You would do well to prove yourself.”

“I am shaman-”

“For now.”

The warning did indeed shake the woman, visibly so, and she turned and hurried away.

Toniquay turned his withering gaze back to Androosis. “And you,” the shaman said, “would do well to learn and accept your place. My patience nears its end for Androosis. I took you to dangerous waters. Men of honor paid with their lives!” Androosis’s stunned expression spoke volumes, clearly arguing that the disaster on the boat was hardly his fault.

But Toniquay wasn’t hearing any of it. “We went out of our way to try to save you, young and spirited one. But no more. Prove yourself or you will be banished-if you are fortunate and the elders are feeling generous.”

“Yes, Toniquay,” Androosis replied obediently, hanging his head in humility.

The shaman walked away, eyeing the young man’s every step sternly.

A somber mood accompanied Brother Giavno and the rest as they went to work collecting the larger stones from the area of the island they had come to regard as their quarry. Giavno winced and couldn’t help but recall the last time he had been down here, when powries had arrived and Cormack had battled them so magnificently, so bravely.

The loss of Cormack was no small thing to the brothers of Chapel Isle. The manner in which it had occurred had left them all, particularly Giavno, tasked with delivering the very likely fatal beating, feeling empty and desolate. No one had spoken the fallen brother’s name since he had been pushed out adrift in the small boat. No one had to.

It was written on all of their faces, Giavno clearly saw. To a one they had been shaken. To a one Cormack’s betrayal had asked primary and devastating questions about their purpose and place in this foreign land and among these foreign societies.

Why had Cormack done it? Why had the man betrayed them, betrayed the very tenets of their mission, according to Father De Guilbe’s interpretation?

Giavno thought he had the answer to that, echoed in the sounds of Cormack’s lovemaking to the barbarian woman. Love was the strongest of human emotions, Blessed Abelle had taught, and more people had been brought down by love than by hate. While there was no specific prohibition of marriage in the Order of Blessed Abelle, such relationships were scorned among the brotherhood. If you gave yourself to the Church, it was to be wholly so. Worse still, to foster a love affair with a heathen, with a barbarian shaman, was far beyond the bounds of acceptability.

Cormack had earned his beating, Giavno believed, and had told himself a million times since that awful day. He could still feel the tug of the whip as its barbed ends dug into and hooked on the flesh of Cormack’s back.

He shuddered, and only then realized that one of the brothers had been asking him a question, and probably for some time.

“Yes, Brother?” he replied.

“The stone?” the younger man inquired.

“Stone?”

The monk offered a curious stare at Giavno for just a moment, then nodded as if he completely understood (which he likely did, for the cause of distraction was quite common at that time) and motioned toward one large rock that had been set off to the side.

“Is it too large, do you think?” the monk asked.

Giavno looked at him curiously. “No, of course not.”

“I cannot carry it alone,” the monk replied.

“Then get someone to help you.”

“They are all busy, Brother Giavno. I thought that perhaps you could help, either with your arms or through use of the malachite stone in lessening the weight.”

Giavno was about to reprimand the brother for being so foolish; Giavno was overseeing the work detail and not participating. But then he caught something in the young brother’s eye, a look of both hopefulness and sympathy, and when he glanced out at the wider scene, he realized that more than one of the other workers had taken a subtle, covert interest in this distant conversation.

Brother Giavno smiled as it hit him fully: They were trying to distract him. As the work was keeping their minds off of the tragedy of Brother Cormack, so they had thought to include Brother Giavno in that blessed busyness.