R. Salvatore - The Dame

Jameston snorted. “I love the hierarchy of learned men.”

“Spare me your incessant sarcasm, scout,” said Wisterwhig. “You come on behalf of Gwydre, I expect.”

“Indirectly,” Jameston admitted. “As much for my own curiosity as for her needs. There’s less activity now. I’ve seen no sign of goblins or trolls moving south.”

“Winter is on in full force in the northland,” said Wisterwhig dismissively.

“They fought through the winter last year,” Jameston reminded. “Ice trolls favor that season.”

The old Samhaist made no move to respond.

“Winter favors them in battle, but your folk aren’t sending them to Vanguard,” said Jameston.

“If you have all the answers, why do you bother me, scout?”

Jameston leaned back and grinned. “I have all the suspicions. I’m looking for the answers.”

“You ask that I would ease Gwydre’s mind?”

“Ease the minds of lots of folk,” Jameston replied.

“You presume that I have a responsibility to people who have turned their backs on the old gods.”

“No,” Jameston answered slowly, measuring his words. “I just think you’re a decent enough fellow despite those robes you wear.”

Wisterwhig laughed. “You’re quite wise for an idiot, yes?” he said, imitating Jameston’s even tone. Jameston laughed with him. “Or quite the decent murderer, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never hid my feelings for your church or th’other one.”

“You have never hidden your feelings on any matter,” said Wisterwhig. “Which is why I tolerate you.”

“Just tolerate? Should I be insulted?”

“We could banter like this all the day, I fear.”

“We have before.”

Wisterwhig surrendered with an upraised hand. “I am glad the war is over,” he admitted, a startling revelation to be sure.

“Is it?”

“You will not take my word to Dame Gwydre,” the Samhaist said.

“I can tell her enough without it,” Jameston agreed. “But I’m glad to hear it.”

Wisterwhig’s nod showed that they had a mutual understanding and agreement here.

“Who’ll be the next ancient?” Jameston asked, grinning widely, for he knew that he wouldn’t get much of an answer to that one. “Wisterwhig?”

“That is for the old gods to decide.”

“And will the one they name then start the war anew?”

“You speak of something a decade removed,” answered the Samhaist. “We are not as impatient as the brothers of Abelle. The successor will not be named this year, possibly not even next year, and, after that, he will have many months of work ahead of him in just informing the groves and calling in his disciples.”

“You surrender Vanguard to the monks?”

“Not so,” said Wisterwhig. “We know that the brothers of Abelle will fail in the end. Their baubles are impressive until the deathbed, and there they have no answers. Just empty promises. Those who follow them pass on unprepared for the judgment of the old gods.”

“And those dead ones will come back and discredit the monks?” was Jameston’s sarcastic response.

“The ghosts speak to us. To all. In the end, we Samhaists, not the monks, hold the answers most needed. If I did not have faith in that I would not wear these robes.”

Jameston conceded the point with a nod.

“Patience,” Wisterwhig added. “It is a necessary virtue and one, perhaps, that Badden lost in his last years. Events prompted change in Vanguard, and he wished that errant course corrected before his passing. We do not consider our ancient to be the sole proprietor of godly wisdom, scout. You know that much, at least.”

“So, many disagreed with Badden’s war?”

“Or thought it an unnecessary provocation. In the end we will win, and we’ll need not enlist goblins and trolls and powries and barbarians to achieve the victory. Because we are right, scout-because our gods are true-we will win.”

Jameston had been kidding earlier when he had asked if Wisterwhig, not a leading member of his religion by any means, might be named as the next ancient, but truly, Jameston wished that a possibility.

This Samhaist priest, at least, was reasonable and decent enough.

The scout’s step as he left Wisterwhig’s grove was much lighter than the footfalls that had brought him to this place. Jameston never feared a good fight and was always happy to kill a goblin or a troll, but he knew that the folk of Vanguard had suffered far too much already.

The weather here was trying enough without adding the burdens of a war.

Dawson McKeege tried to stay seated, but he couldn’t manage it. He kept getting up and pacing around the thick carpet, his eyes scanning the closed door at the side of the room. He knew what was going on in there. Gwydre had asked him to stay with her this evening because she had discerned the tone of Brother Alandrais when he had arrived earlier that day, and Dawson trusted her instincts implicitly.

“Come on, then,” he whispered, eyeing the door. He glanced across to a cabinet on the other side of the room where an hourglass drained away; he had upended it almost immediately after his friend had gone to meet privately with Brother Alandrais. She’d been in there nearly a full hour.

Dawson licked his lips. Perhaps things weren’t going quite so bad?

The man straightened as the door opened and Dame Gwydre came through. One look at her told McKeege that his hopes for some reconciliation had been in vain.

She stared into his eyes, her face very tight, and she nodded curtly, as if giving any further movement would cause her to dissolve.

Like telling someone when a loved one had passed, Dawson thought. “He’s a fool, then,” the crusty old sailor said.

Dame Gwydre walked past him and patted him on the shoulder as she moved to sit stiffly on the divan, eyes unseeing. Dawson was quick to her side.

“For the best,” he said, putting his arm about her. He was the only man in the world who might tell Gwydre that, he realized.

Gwydre was glad of it at that moment. She slumped at long last and put her head on his shoulder, turning to bury her face in his shirt, her shoulders bobbing with sobs. After just a few brief moments she composed herself and sat back up straight, sniffling away the tears. Then she gave a cleansing sigh and even managed a little laugh at herself as she wiped the moisture from her eyes.

“It’s for the best,” Dawson repeated without thought. As soon as the words left his mouth he heard them as incredibly inane.

But Gwydre just laughed and nodded. “I would have ended our love affair if he had not,” she said. “It was too much trouble now.”

“Now that the war’s looking to be over, and ain’t that the irony?”

Gwydre frowned. “With Ancient Badden looming, I had no time for quibbles with the brothers of Abelle. Now that Badden is gone, I expect that I and the church will face some trying moments of disagreement.”

“Alandrais wasn’t man enough to keep them separate,” Dawson accused. “He’d’ve kept jumping in at you whenever you took a stand against his masters. As with De Guilbe.”

Gwydre nodded. “All true.”

“If he loved you-” Dawson started, but Gwydre put her hand up to stop that line of thinking short.

“Once, he did love me,” she said. “And I loved him. It was not convenience that brought us together. Indeed, at the time we started this relationship I thought it the least convenient thing in all the world.”

“But did he?”

Gwydre eyed Dawson curiously.

“I mean, there’s no doubt the brothers of Abelle gained greatly through the relationship,” Dawson clarified. “Their fight with the Samhaists added a powerful ally because of Brother Alandrais’s loins.”