Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

Family. Not a topic to consider in a house devoted to the spirit’s health. It was a marvel any of my bodily wounds ever healed with such poison in my blood. Family was long over and done with. I kneaded my scalp and tried again to lose myself in the monks’ mournful music. Without result.

Max was the first member of the Cartamandua-Celestine household I’d glimpsed in twelve years. Contracted as Bayard of Morian’s hound. Walking straight into my refuge. Gods… My urge to run blazed like a new-stoked furnace, even as I argued how unlikely he was to return here.

Truly, Abbot Luviar’s role in this royal brawl ought to fright me more. Now there was a mystery worth the deciphering. If I, a man of thick skull and paltry skills, had come to see that the Duc of Ardra was an arrogant sham who would as soon sell the crown of Eodward as wear it, then why would the Abbot of Gillarine claim that prince’s rescue to be the salvation of Navronne? Had Luviar fallen into the same magical stupor as his monks and I had done, or had he watched as the Bastard of Evanore stole the eyes of the dead?

Gillarine’s safety seemed more ephemeral than I had hoped. Though not yet ready to abandon the place, I dared not relax the caution that had kept me free.

“Tell me, Brother Artur, do the Evanori warrior and his sickly secretary yet reside in the guesthouse?” I asked one of Brother Jerome’s assistants when he brought supper from the kitchen two days after Black Night. The unsavory thought had crossed my mind that the abbot was brokering some alliance between Perryn and Osriel through this Evanori “benefactor.”

“Nay, Thane Stearc and his party departed the day before Black Night,” said the grizzled lay brother, uncovering the bowl of carrot and leek chowder he’d brought me.

A thane! Not just some landed knight, but an Evanori warlord—descendant of a family who centuries past, along with the gravs of Morian, had bound their lives and fortunes to Caedmon, King of Ardra, thus creating the kingdom of Navronne. I dropped my voice to a confidential whisper. “It seems a scandal to find Evanori in a holy place. I was taught they served the Adversary in their heathenish fortresses.”

The monk’s broad brow crumpled. “No, no! The thane’s a scholarly man and Gillarine’s greatest benefactor since King Eodward passed to heaven. Thane Stearc studied here as a boy and has visited the abbey every month for all these years, bringing us new books and casks of wine, and donating generously to our sustenance.”

“But he serves the Bastard Prince…”

“Indeed not!” Brother Artur blanched at the suggestion. “Though he wears the wolf of Evanore while in Ardra to proclaim his neutral state, his house is Erasku, which straddles the border. The thane claims both provinces or neither as he chooses.”

Convenient, if one could get away with such juggling. The thane must be quite a diplomat or quite a warrior…or quite a liar. I hoped these monks were not so naive as to accept the lord’s word without solid proof.

The lay brother carried his soup to the other patients—monks wounded on Black Night. I ate slowly, so that when he brought his tray around to gather up my bowl and spoon, he had to wait for me. “So, Brother Artur,” I said quietly between bites, “I suppose you must carry a good lot of food to the guesthouse now.”

He shook his head, puzzled. “None at all. We’ve few visitors in the best times. I doubt we’ll see another till Lord Stearc returns.”

I dropped my bowl on his tray and slumped back in the bed, disappointed and mystified. No infirmary visitor had dropped the least hint of Prince Perryn’s presence.

The assault had left the abbey a dreary place. Brother Gildas did not show his face. Jullian spent a great deal of time in the infirmary, doing whatever small tasks the infirmarian assigned him, but scurried away whenever I so much as looked at him. Even genial Brother Badger wore a cloak of grief that lightened only slowly as the sun set and rose and set again, the life of the abbey taking up its plodding rhythm.

Though I had every reason to be satisfied with my prospects, Black Night and my odd experiences in the cloisters had left me on edge. I forever imagined dark shapes lurking in the shadowed corners of the infirmary. One night I broke into a nonsensical sweat when someone paused outside the horn windows with a blue-paned lamp and remained there for an hour.

To distract myself, I took to telling stories and reciting bardic rhymes in the hours between the monks’ prayers, though indeed I had to search through my store of experiences and fables for those that would not shock celibate ears. I also began taking regular exercise around the infirmary garth. My leg felt well healed, giving only a bit of soreness and stretching when I took long strides. Though happy to be up and about—activity suited me better than indolence now I’d made up for half a lifetime’s missed sleep—I was not yet ready to give up such a perfectly useful circumstance. I made sure to limp and grimace a great deal. I had a better chance of doing as I pleased if no one knew my true condition.

A tarnished silver medicine spoon I’d found in Brother Robierre’s chest of instruments and a blood-crusted gold button he’d gouged out of a soldier’s chest wound went into the packet under my palliasse—a pitiful lot of nothing. Memories of demon horses and gray-faced warriors left me chary of pilfering valuables from the church. Which meant, should I leave Gillarine, I’d surely need my book.

On one night in the quiet hours between Matins and Lauds, when my companions in the infirmary slept soundly, I tugged on boots and gown and crept through the darkened abbey. Three times I dodged around a corner and peered into the night behind me, imagining I’d catch someone following. But the only sign of life was a flare of light from the church. Someone’s lamp illuminated a sapphire outline from one of the colored windows. The wavering light set the blue-limned figure moving. I signed Iero’s seal upon my breast and took a long way around the cloister walk, offering a prayer for Brother Horach’s spirit.

The small, many-windowed library building nestled in between the domed chapter house and the long, blockish monks’ dorter in the east reach of the cloister garth. The scriptorium occupied the ground floor. One reached the actual library by way of an exterior stair.

A rushlight borrowed from the infirmary revealed the upper chamber to be unimposing. The white-plastered walls were unadorned, save for two tiers of deep window niches that overlooked the cloister garth. On the opposite wall, an arched doorway opened onto a passage linking the library with the adjoining chapter house and dorter. Backless stools of dark wood stood alongside five long tables, and deep, sturdy book presses with solid doors and sliding latches lined the side walls.

I opened the cupboard farthest from the door. A locked inner grate of scrolled brasswork revealed shelves crammed with scrolls and books. A careful examination through the grate indicated that the book of maps was not among them. I moved on to the next.

In the third book press, near the bottom of a stack of large volumes, I spied a leather binding of the correct color, quality, and thickness. No gryphon lurked amid the gold elaboration of grape leaves and indecipherable lettering on its spine, but then I’d never actually examined the thing edge on.

In hopes my search had ended, I assembled the spell components for manipulating locks: the feel of old brass tarnished by greasy fingers, the image of the bronze pins and levers that might be inside this type of lock, my intent in the rough shape of a key, ready to be filled with magic and applied to the lock. Then I began to step through the rules for binding these elements together to create an unlocking spell.