Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 1 - The Fort at River's Bend

"Now, at this moment? I had thought to move inside and watch young Mark at work, but if you have something other than that in mind, I'll gladly go with you."

"Would you enjoy a stroll around the walls?"

He eyed me shrewdly. "With you? Of course I would. Help me down, would you? I hoisted myself up, but it looks to be a long way down there for bones like mine."

I grasped one hand and helped him down from his barrel and we made our way directly to the nearest wall, the northern one that fronted the chasm behind the fort. When we reached it we turned to our right and began to walk briskly around the intervallum, the circuit road that followed the interior of the walls. I plunged directly into what I wanted to say to him, the excitement in me brimming over uncontrollably.

"Luke, I have something to ask you."

"Ask away," he replied, but then he stopped again and turned to face me, alerted perhaps by something in my tone, and his face underwent a sudden change to dismay. "Oh, Aesculapius," he said, almost groaning. "There's that look that reeks of celibacy. Not today, Merlyn, I beg you. I would rather run and try to jump over these walls than talk of celibacy on such a wondrous afternoon."

"No, please listen to me, Luke. You might actually enjoy what I have to say."

One eyebrow climbed high on his forehead. "Oh, you think so, do you?"

"Aye, I do. I have decided, conclusively, that celibacy is not for me."

Lucanus threw back his head and raised both hands outward to shoulder height, then revolved slowly in a complete turn, his eyes closed and a look of ecstasy upon his thin, ascetic features. I heard a strange, thin sound issue from his nostrils and increase in volume until it was a ringing, high-pitched hum. Then, as I watched in amazement, never having seen him do anything remotely like this in all the years I had known him, he opened his lips and sang the note, unaltered, holding it high and pure in pitch until the breath in his lungs ran out, after which he took another breath and sang in a monotone, holding the last syllable until his breath ran out again, "Thanks be to all the gods of medicine and all their ideas of enlightenment ... "

I had not moved throughout this strange performance, not knowing whether to laugh or help him to lie down, and I saw amazement mirroring my own on the faces of the four workmen close enough to hear and see what was going on. Now Luke gazed at me fiercely.

"How did you come to this wondrous decision, and why? Who is she?"

"Tressa," I replied, keeping my voice low, for his ears alone. Until the moment the word passed my lips, I would not have believed I'd ever say it.

"Then blessed be the bounteous Tressa, and I shall rejoice to see you smug and smiling, sated and uxorious in future."

"Uxorious? I am not speaking here of marriage, Luke."

"Nor should you be, my boy, at this stage, but you are speaking of sanity and freshening gale winds of sound good sense. Come, let us walk, for I find the thought of speech on celibacy has suddenly become much less oppressive. I have words to say to you, now that you appear disposed to hear them."

And so we walked, back and forth beneath the stone walls of the ancient fort, and my old friend held me close, my arm tucked firmly beneath his as he spoke of his own agonizing over the requests I had made of him in the recent and not-so-recent past. He had felt all along, he said, that I was in error with my wishes on the matter of celibacy. I had been fleeing towards it, he believed, and he knew well that flight from life was no way to achieve the condition which I thought I desired so profoundly. He had come to believe, to be convinced, that I was determined to launch myself along a road that must surely lead me to failure and frustration, and so he had avoided the topic to the best of his ability. .

Now that I had decided to abandon my unrealistic wishes, he informed me, he could hope that I might find far more satisfaction in the little he could teach me of the celibate way of life, for he was prepared, much more so than before, to teach me what he knew of the philosophy that underlay the discipline.

I was surprised to hear him say these things, and I asked him to explain. He reminded me that my original thought had been to learn self-mastery in celibacy, hoping to use that same self-mastery to aid me in my teaching of Arthur. There was nothing arcane in self-mastery, per se, Lucanus said. That was a matter of pure discipline, and I was already close to being adept in the skill, simply by virtue of the life that I had led. Gaining the arcane lore of the magi who had mastered asceticism and self-denial was an exercise in a further discipline that lay beyond mere sexual self-denial, and that lore, he declared, was superfluous, something of which I had no need at all. My gifts, he swore, my own abilities, already lay in my possession; all I required to make the best and finest use of them was equanimity and peace of mind, both of which lay securely rooted in self-confidence. When I had once decided who and what I was, and had accepted and embraced my role in life, he was convinced all those gifts and abilities would be unleashed and would flourish.

Just beyond the half-way point of our circuit of the walls, ahead of us and rushing towards us, a group of noisy children approached, milling around like fallen leaves in a high wind. We stopped to allow them to swirl by us in a babble of high, excited voices, parting around us and ignoring us as though we were invisible. Lucanus turned to watch them recede into the distance and then walked for a long time in a silence I had no desire or need to break.

"Do you know, Caius," he eventually said, "I can't remember ever having run like that, although I suppose I must have. I was a child once, you know."

"So long ago, my friend, that you cannot recall being one?"

"Oh, I remember well enough ... Some parts of it at least. The happy parts, mainly, but those seemed very few. Do you remember your boyhood?"

"Aye, vividly, and with pleasure. Uther and I enjoyed a childhood shared by few, filled with the joy of being who we were. We spent every autumn and winter in Roman Camulod, and every spring and summer in Celtic Cambria, although the bruises that we gathered were the same in both places."

"Aye, and they were plentiful, I'll warrant. But speaking of bruises, what is happening with that blemish on your chest? Have you been exposing it to healing air, as I suggested?"

"Aye, I have, but not apurpose, now that I think of it. Since the arrival of your scroll and your assurance that the mark is not what I once feared it was, I've lost awareness of it. But I have been going bare-chested recently, thanks to the clement weather."

Lucanus stopped and turned to face me. "Let's have a look at it. Undo your tyings."

I was wearing only a simple tunic, slashed at the neck and tied with a decorative cord, and I undid it, pushing the material aside to bare my right breast. Lucanus peered at it and sniffed. "Aye, as I thought, it seems to be receding. I remember it as being larger. It will be gone within the month, I'd wager."

He moved on and I walked beside him, adjusting my tunic as he murmured something about the pleasantness of the day.

At that point, seeing that we had completed our circuit of the walls and come close to our living quarters, where a throng of people were milling about, he stopped and turned to face me squarely, reaching out to grasp me by the shoulder and demonstrating that his grip was younger and stronger than his thin face might suggest. In perfect seriousness, he told me that my decision was absolutely the right one to make, and then he went on to embarrass me by saying that he considered me to be the finest man that he had ever known, including my own father, and that he could think Of no one better equipped than me to face the task I had set myself.