R. Salvatore - The Dame

Cormack fell back as if slapped.

The powries laughed again.

“How am I to know when you’re speaking true and when you’re speaking in jest?” the former monk protested.

“Ye’re not,” Mcwigik answered. “Not now, and not ever.”

“Are you friends, Mcwigik and Bikelbrin?” Cormack asked.

“Been friends for a hunnerd years,” Mcwigik assured him.

“To me!”

The dwarves looked at each other. “If we’re ever in the forest or on a boat and we see Cormack or Milkeila in trouble, then know we’ll help ye,” Mcwigik said for both, for Bikelbrin nodded his assent through every word of it.

“And we’ll be thinking many times o’ the one human wearing a powrie cap and glad how he came by it,” Bilkelbrin added. “Kicking Prag’s ugly face!”

Cormack patted each on the shoulder appreciatively as he left with Milkeila to go to their room across the hall. “I will miss those two,” he said to his wife.

Milkeila nodded, hand on the knob. “The world seems less… colorful already.” As she finished, she led Cormack’s gaze down the hall, where several grim-faced guards stood ready with long halberds and armored all in bronze.

“Dame Gwydre did not err in granting them passage,” Cormack said.

“You speak to convince yourself, not me.”

Cormack looked at his wife carefully and glanced over his shoulder at the closed door of the powries’ room. He wondered if he was a fool, for had he been in charge he would have trusted that pair of dwarves, would have given them a Writ of Passage.

“No other laird would have honored that writ,” Milkeila said as if reading his mind.

“You know nothing of Honce,” Cormack replied.

“I saw the looks on the faces of those here in Pellinor,” Milkeila said. “Mcwigik and Bikelbrin would not have much of a life in the lands of your people. What life, I wonder, might Milkeila find there?”

Cormack put his arm about her shoulder and pulled her close as he guided her into their room. “A fine one,” he promised, but he glanced back over his shoulder again as he closed the door. He would indeed miss his powrie companions, his powrie friends.

I have little desire to be caught up in the endless drama that so marks your church,” Bransen said to Brother Jond.

“You know little-”

“I know much!” Bransen interrupted. “I spent years as a slave in service to the Brothers of Chapel Pryd.”

“A slave? Surely you exaggerate!”

“I lived in a hole in the floor and spent my days emptying chamber pots. True, in exchange, they gave me bits of miserable, cold food, and my dungeon wasn’t open to the snow and the rain.” Bransen gave a little snicker, his eyes looking past Jond and, indeed, into the past, as he remembered those many days he had spent with Father Jerak and Brother Bathelais and Brother Reandu… ah, Brother Reandu! Blind Brother Jond couldn’t see the confusion on Bransen’s face at that moment, of course, but he did tilt his chin in apparent curiosity at the man’s pause.

Bransen’s mind whirled back to his days as the Stork, living in a tiny, one-room cellar at Chapel Pryd. He almost felt ashamed at the way he had described his time there to Jond. For all the discomfort and for all his outrage at the brothers for what they had done to Garibond, the brothers at Chapel Pryd had not been cruel to the young and wounded Bransen, who, because of his affliction, was known then as Stork. Brother Reandu in particular had often shown him affection and sympathy and, indeed, had aided him in his last desperate fight with Laird Prydae, at the cost of Master Bathelais’s life.

“They let me go,” he said finally.

“The brothers of Chapel Pryd?”

“Chapel Abelle,” Bransen corrected. “They let Dawson McKeege take me here to serve Dame Gwydre, though they knew that Delaval and that pathetic excuse of a man, Yeslnik, would have rewarded them greatly had they turned me over for execution.”

“But instead, you were pressed into service you did not desire.”

Bransen shrugged. “Aren’t we all? I do not think Dame Gwydre wanted this war. Nor did Crait and Olconna and Vaughna. Nor Brother Jond.”

The blind monk smiled widely at that, as if he saw something Bransen could not.

“What is it?” the young warrior asked.

“It does my heart good to hear you speak like that, my friend,” he explained.

The door swung open to the room, and Father De Guilbe and Brother Giavno entered.

“What are you doing here?” De Guilbe asked Bransen.

“He is here at my invitation,” Brother Jond answered. “I have known this fine young warrior for many weeks now. We have shared the road of adventure.”

“You speak for him?” De Guilbe asked rather sharply.

“I do.”

“He befriends Cormack,” De Guilbe warned.

“Cormack who saved the folk of Mithranidoon from certain doom, your chapel and clergy among them,” Brother Jond reminded.

Bransen noted the big man tense up at that, and so he smiled widely, just to make De Guilbe even more uncomfortable.

“Beware your actions,” De Guilbe warned him.

“Cormack helped kill Ancient Badden,” said Bransen. “While you ran away, he battled the greatest foe of your order and of Dame Gwydre’s holding. Perhaps it is Father De Guilbe and his fleeing monks who should beware their actions.”

“Leave this place,” De Guilbe commanded.

Bransen looked to Brother Jond, who needed no prompting. “Stay!” the monk from Chapel Pellinor argued.

“Brother!” De Guilbe fumed.

“Good Father, I serve Father Premujon of Chapel Pellinor,” Brother Jond answered, remaining very calm. “I name this man as a friend, for he has stood beside me in my trials.”

“As you helped me after our capture,” Bransen replied.

“I’d no more abandon him than I would abandon my beloved Abelle, Father De Guilbe,” said Jond. “He is a man of good heart and great courage, a man we should coax to the ways of Abelle, not a man to be shunned.”

Father De Guilbe wore a strange, wicked smile as he replied, “And Cormack? Have you made an assessment of the former Brother Cormack?”

Jond shook his head. “Should he appeal to Father Premujon for reinstatement in the order, I will speak honestly of that which I know regarding the man.”

“And you believe that I was wrong in excommunicating him?”

Again Jond shook his head. “I make no judgments of that which I do not know, Father,” he said. “I know little of this man, Cormack, but I will speak honestly to that which I have seen… heard. His work against Ancient Badden was no small thing, but whether that absolves him of his actions on Mithranidoon is not for me to decide.”

“Those actions should absolve him,” Bransen insisted. “Particularly since he did nothing wrong on the island on the lake.”

“Be gone from this place!” Father De Guilbe insisted, and again Brother Jond started to argue. But this time, Bransen put his hand on Jond’s shoulder to quiet him, more than happy to be out of the company of the irascible De Guilbe.

De Guilbe didn’t even look at him as he walked past, but Brother Giavno gave him a look that seemed regretful, almost heartbroken, almost apologetic.

Bransen chuckled as he walked from the room, thinking of how much that reaction by the younger brother reminded him of the same sort of conflicts he had seen in Chapel Pryd regarding the young man known as the Stork.

He got into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him, and heard De Guilbe explode at Brother Jond. Bransen just shook his head. He certainly had needed no further confirmation of the many reasons he was no fan or friend of the brothers of Abelle.

Exhausted from the squabbling in her audience chamber, from the incessant complaining of the unlikable De Guilbe, from having to deal diplomatically with powries-with bloody-cap dwarves!-exhausted from her own excitement and anticipation of the possibilities now that Ancient Badden was dead, Dame Gwydre wanted nothing more that night than to fall into the arms of Alandrais, the brother of Chapel Pellinor who had become more than a friend to her.