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  “Then what?” demanded the first speaker. He shrugged impatiently. Candlelight glinted off his white hair.

  “Just as the Enemy turns the faithful from the Path of Light toward the Abyss, so can unbelievers be turned away from their error to see the promise of the Chamber of Light. We must counter the power given into the hands of this unwitting child with power of our own.”

  “There is this difference,” said the second speaker, “that while we know our opponents exist, they do not know of us.”

  “Or so we believe,” said the first man. He sat stiffly, a man of action unaccustomed to long stillnesses.

  “We must trust to Our Lord and Lady,” said the woman, and the rest nodded and murmured agreement.

  The only light given to their circle was that flickering from the candles, bright flames throwing sharp glints on the surface of the obsidian altar, and that from the stars above and the round, still globe of the moon. Great blocks of shadow surrounded them, an entourage of giants.

  Beyond, wind muttered through the open shells of buildings, unseen but felt, the last relics of a great empire lost long ago to fire and sword and blood and magic. The ruins ended at a shoreline as abruptly as if a knife had sheared them off. Surf hissed and swelled at the verge. Sand got caught up on the wind and swirled up from the shore into the circle, catching on tongues and in the folds of cloaks.

  One of the watchers shivered and tugged a hood hard down over her hair. “It’s a fool’s errand,” this one said. “They are stronger than we are, here and in their own country.”

  “Then we must reach for powers that are greater still,” said she who sat first among them.

  They responded to her words with expectant silence.

  “I will make the sacrifice,” she continued. “I alone. They wish to sunder the world while we desire only to bring it closer to the Chamber of Light toward which all our souls strive. If they bring one agent into the world, then we must bring another. Of ourselves we cannot defeat them.”

  One by one they bowed their heads, acquiescing to her judgment, until only one man remained, head unbowed. He rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder and spoke. “You will not be alone.”

  In this way they considered in silence. The great ruins lay around them, echoing their silence, the skeleton of a city unattended by ghost walls or visions of past grandeur. Sand skirled up the streets, spattering against stone, grain by grain erasing the vast murals that adorned the long walls. But where the walls marched out to the sea, where the knife-edge cut them clean, the shadow form of the old city mingled with the waves, the memory of what once had been—not drowned by the sea but utterly gone.

  Stars wheeled above on their endless round.

  The candles illuminated the gleaming surface of the obsidian altar. In its black depths an image of the distant ring of stones, far to the north, still stood, and the last torches borne by the prince’s retinue flickered and faded into nothing as they passed beyond view.

  PART ONE

  THE

  MOTHERLESS

  CHILD

  I

  A STORM FROM

  THE SEA

  1

  WHEN winter turned to spring and the village deacon sang the mass in honor of St. Thecla’s witnessing of the Ekstasis of the blessed Daisan, it came time to prepare the boats for the sailing season and the summer’s journeying to other ports.

  Alain had tarred his father’s boat in the autumn; now he examined the hull, crawling beneath the boat where it had wintered on the beach on a bed of logs. The old boat had weathered the winter well, but one plank was loose. He fastened the plank with a willow treenail, stuffing sheep’s wool greased with tar into the gap and driving the nail home onto a grommet also made of wool. Otherwise the boat was sound. After Holy Week his father would load the boat with casks of oil and with quern-stones brought in from nearby quarries and finished in workshops in the village.

  But Alain would not be going with him, though he had begged to be given the chance, just this one season.

  He turned, hearing laughter from up the strand where the road ran in to the village. He wiped his hands on a rag and waited for his father to finish speaking with the other Osna merchants who had come down to examine their boats, to make ready for the voyage out now that Holy Week had ended.

  “Come, son,” said Henri after he had looked over the boat. “Your aunt has prepared a fine feast and then we’ll pray for good weather at the midnight bell.”

  They walked back to Osna village in silence. Henri was a broad-shouldered man, not very tall, his brown hair shot through with silver. Henri spent most of the year away, visiting ports all up and down the coast, and during the winter he sat in his quiet way in his sister Bel’s workshop and built chairs and benches and tables. He spoke little, and when he did speak did so in a soft voice quite unlike his sister’s, who, everyone joked, could intimidate a wolf with her sharp tongue.

  Alain had darker hair and was certainly taller, lanky enough that he was likely to grow more just as certain spring days are likely to bring squalls and sudden bursts of rain. As usual, Alain did not quite know what to say to his father, but this day as they walked along the sandy path he tried, one more time, to change his father’s mind.

  “Julien sailed with you the year he turned sixteen, even before he spent his year in the count’s service! Why can’t I go this year?”

  “It can’t be. I swore to the deacon at Lavas Holding when you were just a new babe come into the world that I would give you to the church. That is the only reason she let me foster you.”

  “If I must take vows and spend the rest of my life within the monastery walls, then why can’t I have just one season with you to see the world? I don’t want to be like Brother Gilles—”

  “Brother Gilles is a good man,” said Henri sharply.

  “Yes, he is, but he hasn’t set foot off monastery lands since the day he entered as a child of seven! It isn’t right you condemn me to that. At least one season with you would give me something to remember.”

  “Brother Gilles and his fellow monks are content enough.”

  “I’m not Brother Gilles!”

  “We have spoken of this before, Alain. You are of age now and promised to the church. All will pass as Our Lord and Lady have decreed. It is not for you or me to question their judgment.”

  By the way Henri set his mouth, Alain knew that his father would not reply to any further argument. Furious, he strode ahead, his longer strides taking him out in front of his father, though it was rude. Just one season! One season to see something of the world, to see distant ports and unfamiliar coastlines, to speak with men from other towns, from other lands, to see something of the strange lands the deacon spoke of when she read the lessons and saints’ lives of fraters—the wandering priests—who brought the Holy Word of the Unities to barbarous lands. Why was that so much to ask? He crossed through the livestock palisade and by the time he reached Aunt Bel’s longhouse, his mood was thoroughly foul.

  Aunt Bel stood in the garden examining her newly planted parsley and horseradish. She straightened, measuring him, and shook her head. “There’s water to fetch before feasting,” she said.

  “That’s Julien’s job today.”

  “Julien is mending sail, and I’ll ask you not to question me, child. Do as you’re told. Don’t argue with your father, Alain. You know he’s the stubbornest man in the village.”

  “He’s not my father!” shouted Alain.

  For that he got a sharp slap in the face, delivered with all the force of thirty years of kneading bread and chopping wood behind it. It brought a red stain to his cheek and silence to his lips.

  “Never speak so again of the man who raised you. Now, go on.”

  He went, because no one dared argue with Bel, elder sister of Henri the merchant and mother of eight children, of whom five still lived.

  He sat at the evening’s feast in silence and went in silence to the church. The moon was full, and its p
ale light filtered in through the new glass window which the merchants and householders of Osna had bought for the village church. But with moonlight and candlelight there was illumination enough to see the walls, whitewashing over timber, painted with the huge murals depicting the life of the blessed Daisan and the deeds of the glorious saints and martyrs.

  The deacon raised her hands in the blessing and began to sing the liturgy.

  “Blessed is the Country of the Mother and Father of Life, and of the Holy Word revealed within the Circle of Unity, now and ever and unto ages of ages.”

  “Amen,” he murmured with the congregation.

  “In peace let us pray to Our Lord and Lady.”

  “Kyrie eleison.” Lord have mercy. He clasped his hands and tried to pay attention as the deacon circled the church, pacing out the stations marking the blessed Daisan’s life and ministry, bringing to the faithful the Holy Word granted him by the grace of the Lord and Lady. “Kyria eleison.” Lady have mercy.

  On the walls stark pictures stood out brightly in the light cast by torches. There, the blessed Daisan at the fire where first he encountered the vision of the Circle of Unity. And again, the blessed Daisan with his followers refusing to kneel and worship before the Dariyan Empress Thaissania, she of the mask. The seven miracles, each one depicted with loving detail. And last, the blessed Daisan dead at the Hearth from which his spirit was lifted up through the seven spheres to the Chamber of Light, while his great disciple St. Thecla wept below, her tears feeding the sanctified cup.

  But to Alain’s eyes, there in the midnight church, other more shadowy forms lay as if hidden beneath the bright murals, their outlines embellished with fine gold, their eyes like jewels, their presence like fire on his soul.

  The fall of the ancient city of Dariya to savage horsemen, its last defenders clothed in gleaming bronze armor, spears and shields raised as they fought a hopeless fight but with the honor of men who will not bow down before an honorless enemy.

  Not images from the church at all, but the stories of brilliant lives of old warriors. They haunted him.

  The fateful Battle of Auxelles, where Taillefer’s nephew and his men lost their lives but saved Taillefer’s fledgling empire from invasion by heathens.

  “For healthful seasons, for the abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful times, let us pray.”

  The glorious victory of the first King Henry of Wendar against Quman invaders along the River Eldar, where his bastard grandson Conrad the Dragon charged his troop of cavalry straight into the midst of the terrible host of Quman riders, breaking their line and sending them scattering back to their own lands, hunting them down like animals as they fled.

  “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall speak with the Holy Word upon their tongues.”

  The last ride of King Louis of Varre, just fifteen years old but undaunted by the approach of raider ships on the northern coast of his kingdom, killed at the Battle of the Nysa though no man knew whose hand had struck the final blow. Had it been that of a raider prince, or that of a traitor serving the schemes of the new king of Wendar who would, because of Louis’ death, become king of Varre as well?

  Instead of the voice of the deacon, reading the lesson, Alain heard the ring of harness, the clash of swords, the snap of banners in the wind, the sweet strength of the gathered warriors singing a Kyrie eleison as they rode into battle.

  “For Thou art our sanctification, and unto Thee we ascribe glory, to the Mother, to the Father, and to the Holy Word spoken in the heavens, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages.”

  “Amen,” he said, stumbling into the response as the congregation raised its voice as one in the final exclamation. “Let us depart in peace, in the Name of Our Lord and Lady. Have mercy upon us.”

  “Have mercy upon us,” echoed his father, his voice as soft as the whisper of leaves on the roof.

  He put an arm around Alain as they left the church and made their way by torchlight back to the longhouse.

  “It is as it must be,” he said, and Alain sensed that this was the last word Henri would ever speak on the matter. The choice had been made long ago, one to the sea, one to the heart of God.

  “What was my mother like?” Alain asked suddenly.

  “She was beautiful,” said Henri. Alain heard the raw scrape of grief in his father’s voice. He dared not ask more, for fear of breaking the wound wide open.

  So they went inside and drank a last cup of warmed mulled wine. At dawn, Alain went down to the strand and saw them off, rolling the boat down the logs and onto the beach, shoving it into the waves. They loaded it with the cargo. Cousin Julien was white with excitement; he had gone once before but only to a nearby Varren port. He had never gone south for an entire season.

  “Do honor to your kin,” said Henri to Alain. He kissed Aunt Bel and then got in the boat last of all. The oarsmen began to row, and Julien fussed with the square sail.

  Alain stood on the beach long after the others had gone back up the road to the village. He stood until he could no longer see any trace of sail on the gray-blue waters. At last he turned away from the sea, knowing Aunt Bel had work for him to do. With a heavy heart, he walked back to the village.

  2

  IN the distant haze where the sky met the sea, the islands that dotted Osna Sound rose as dark peaks of earth marking the horizon. When Alain stood, shading his eyes with a hand, and stared out across the bay toward the islands, the water gleamed like metal. It lay still and smooth, and from the height of the Dragonback Ridge the swells were lost under the glare of the sun. Up here, he could not feel a breath of wind. Out beyond the islands he saw a veil of low clouds pushing in toward land. Rain was coming.

  For an instant, caught by a trick of the light, a white sheet of sail stood out, the merest speck that vanished into the horizon of cloud and iron-gray water as he watched. Perhaps it was his father, making his way out through the islands.

  Alain sighed and turned away from the sea. He tugged on the rope, pulling the donkey away from a tuft of grass. It moved reluctantly, but it did move. Together they walked on, kicking sand up from the path that ran along the spine of the ridge, leading from the town to the monastery. The surf muttered far below.

  The path began to slope down toward the Dragon’s Tail, where the monastery lay. Soon Alain caught a glimpse of buildings spaced out around the church with its single tower. He lost sight of them again as the path cut down through tumbled boulders along the landward side of the ridge and, farther down still, turning to loam, wound through quiet forest.

  He came out of the forest into cleared fields and soon enough trudged through the open gates and into the monastery that, on St. Eusebē’s Day, would be his home for the rest of his life. Ai, Lord and Lady! Surely his guilt stained him red for all to see: The boy who loved the Father and Mother of Life and who yet rebelled in his heart against entering Their service. Ashamed, he stared at his feet as he skirted the outbuildings and arrived, finally, at the scriptorium.

  Brother Gilles was waiting for him, patient as always, leaning on a walking stick.

  “You have brought the tithe of candles from the village,” the old monk said approvingly. “Ah, and I see a jar of oil as well.”

  Alain carefully unloaded the baskets slung by a rope harness on either side of the donkey. He set the bundle of candles, rolled up in heavy cloth, down on the tile floor of the scriptorium. Brother Gilles propped the door open. The few small windows were open as well, shutters tied back against the wall, but even so at the central lecterns it was dim work for the monks copying missals and lectionaries.

  “The catch was poor last week,” Alain said as he lifted out the jar of oil. “Aunt Bel promises that she will send two more jars after Ladysday.”

  “She is truly generous. The Lord and Lady will reward her for her service to Them. You may take the oil to the sacristy.”

/>   “Yes, Brother.”

  “I will go with you.”

  They walked outside, circling the church, passing the walled enclosure of the novitiate where Alain would soon be spending his days and nights.

  “You are troubled, child,” said Brother Gilles gently as he hobbled along beside Alain.

  Alain flushed, fearing to tell him the truth, fearing to dishonor the covenant already agreed upon between the monastery and his father and aunt.

  Brother Gilles grunted softly. “You are destined for the church, child, whether you wish it or not. I suppose you have heard too many stories of the great deeds of the Emperor Taillefer’s warriors?”

  Alain flushed more deeply but did not reply. He could not bear to lie to Brother Gilles, who had always treated him as kindly as if they were kin. Was it too much to ask to go only one time to Medemelacha or to ports farther south, even into the kingdom of Salia? To see with his own eyes the strange and wonderful things told of by the merchants who sailed out of Osna Sound each season? Such stories were told by all the merchants, except his father, of course, who was as talkative as a rock.

  Imagine! He might pass men-at-arms bearing the standard of the Salian king. He might watch Hessi merchants, men from a foreign land so distant that none of the Osna merchants had ever visited their towns, men who had unusually dark skin and hair, who wore round pointed caps on their heads even when they were indoors, and who were said to pray to a god different than the Lord and Lady of Unities. He might speak with traders from the island of Alba, where, it was said, the Lost Ones still walked abroad in the deep forests, hidden to the sight of men. He might even hear the adventures of the fraters, wandering priests ready to venture out again to barbarous lands to bring the word of the blessed Daisan and the Church of Unities to people who lived outside the Light of the Holy Circle of Unity.