Carol Berg - Flesh and Spirit

“‘For Navronne’? ‘For our children’s children’?” Bitterness at this man welled up in me and erased every other consideration, as if the slaughtered Ardrans’ blood rose from the ground beneath my sandals and their empty eye sockets glared at me.

Luviar did not flinch. His face and shaven head gleamed pale in the enveloping night. “Indeed, yes. Now, ask me the one question whose truthful answer might most influence your trust. I’ll answer you—truthfully—and then we shall see if we’re to proceed.”

“Only one, holy father?” Again and always, my imprudent tongue.

He remained cool and sober. “For now, one question. If I cannot satisfy you enough to gain your promise of forbearance, then I must think of some other way.”

So many possibilities…I was almost drunk with the thought of answers. Yet some of Gillarine’s mysteries were but simple secrets, and simple facts would explain them. I could ask about Jullian—but a negative answer would leave me more confused than ever, and an affirmative one was so dangerous, I was not sure I wanted to know it. No, the greater challenge to trust was this man’s character—which took me right back to the beginning.

“Why did you abandon Ardran soldiers to die—encourage them to die—for a prince you surely know is unworthy?”

He nodded, as if my question were exactly the one he expected. “We live in harsh times, Brother Valen, and as a man newly arrived here from the wide world, you know this as well as any. The lack of a righteous king speeds the ruin of our land. I speak not merely of war’s grief and devastation, but of the deepest mysteries of earth and heaven, for this conflict is but one piece of a grand and terrible mosaic, with some of the other pieces named Famine, Pestilence, and Storm.”

Why was it Luviar could set the hairs on my neck rising with words that would sound pretentious spoken even by a pureblood diviner? His gray eyes warmed with sympathy, as if he understood the unnerving nature of his converse and sought to soothe it even as he made it worse.

“In another age of the world, I would step not one quat in any direction to serve Perryn of Ardra’s cause. But as matters stand, neither could I allow Bayard of Morian to take the final step that would assure his ascension to Eodward’s throne. Not only because of his own faults, but for this: If Prince Bayard’s eye is no longer fixed on his hated rival, and his hammer no longer aimed at valiant Ardra, then his attention—and that of his new allies—will turn to any who dare assert that we must deal with matters more important than the succession. Their hammer will fall on those few who fight to assure Navronne’s future beyond one sovereign’s reign.”

“Assuring the future beyond one…” My mind raced, knotting and unknotting the strange events of the past weeks. “You’re speaking of this end-times teaching.” The long night, Jullian had said. The dark times. What the hierarch called deviance.

He propped his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to rest his chin on his folded hands, staring at the well-trodden path. “Those Ardran soldiers had pledged their loyalty and service to their prince,” he continued. “I, in an arrogance of intellect and conviction, stole that devotion and transferred it to a worthier cause. To Ardra, Morian, and Evanore—to Navronne and to the mysteries that bind our land to the future of Iero’s creation. Not to despair, but to hope.”

He had shaped his answer with an artist’s hand that took bits of colored glass and fit them together to create a portrait of kings and saints. I wondered again if Luviar had the bent—for persuasion, perhaps. For truth-telling, I hoped, for my curiosity was so inflamed, I could not have walked away had he sprouted a gatzé’s barbed tail in front of me. I could not say I trusted him, but, gods preserve me, I believed him. “Father Abbot, are you the pureblood at Gillarine?”

His head popped up from his meditative posture, and he laughed, a full-throated burst of cheer, as robust as Ardran mead and as unexpected as an honest tinker. “Is that your measure of trust, Valen? You think I am ensorceling you? Not at all what I had hoped to accomplish. But I granted you only one answer, if you remember. More will come only if you vow your silence. If you choose not, then no burden will be held against you, nor will I look further into your past. Now tell me if I should proceed or not. Lives may depend on your declaration.”

I scratched my head and tried to bury my qualms about holy men. Who was I to gainsay the abbot, after all? He had all but confessed to me that he supported what his superiors called deviance—high treason in the world of practors and hierarchs. I felt great kinship with all rebellious souls, even if they wore golden solicales. “What is it you want of me, holy father? Not a sevenday since I did swear to obey you in all things. And if you command I trust you and keep secrets, well then, who am I to say it is not holy?”

He sighed and spread his hands in acceptance. “I suppose that will have to do. Your task is simple. I wish you to meet with several others who recognize the enormity of the world’s troubles. They need you to demonstrate how to use the Cartamandua maps.”

My spirits, tickled with growing excitement, plunged. Of course it would be the book. Though, indeed, he had asked my aid, not for copying, but for use, which raised all manner of questions, such as where his friends wished to travel that no ordinary book of maps could take them. But this book—I was trying to avoid lies. “Father Abbot, I must tell you—”

No. I couldn’t tell him I’d never used it. Once I began changing my story, the perceptive abbot would surely unravel the rest of my talespinning. Then he would be forced to choose between his life and my freedom. I trusted no one but myself with that choice. Blood rushed to my skin with the misstep so narrowly avoided.

“The book is certainly magical, holy father, and thus appears differently to any eye that looks upon it. Its usage is likely different for any who attempt it also. I’ll share what I can, but in truth, as you’ve clearly surmised, I’ve had meager success at anything in my life, thus you’d best not expect too much.”

Luviar watched me silently. Waiting for me to confess more lies, I thought. I kept breathing and did not squirm.

At last he nodded. “Very well, then. All we ask is your best effort. At the opening of tonight’s Compline I will assign you to keep vigil in the church through the night. When the day’s-end bell rings, leave the church and return here. You’ll be met. And you will not reveal this plan or what occurs to anyone, on pain of your immortal soul.”

“As you say, holy father.” I bowed my head, placing a clenched fist upon my breast in their sign of obedience. Then, gritting my teeth, I broached the direst topic. “I am assigned to read at Compline tonight.”

“I’ll have Nemesio postpone that until tomorrow.” He stood and lifted his black hood, so that his body lost definition in the dusk. “Iero’s grace be with you, Valen. Teneamus.”

“Wait! What does that—?” As he turned his back to my rising question and hurried away, I would have sworn I glimpsed a flicker of teeth that might have been a smile.

The abbot had failed to mention that the “vigil” he planned to assign me was a penance for dozing in chapter. Because he announced this judgment at the opening of Compline, I was required to prostrate myself throughout the entire service, which left me in no great patience for meeting his friends. Perhaps he thought I would be grateful that he was permitting me to abandon the punishment at the day’s end bell, rather than staying in place until Matins. But as the cold, unyielding granite bruised my too-prominent bones, gratitude came nowhere to mind. I could not even rejoice in the postponement of my reading.