The Highwayman sotfk-1 Read online

  They were welcomed without question and admitted without formal introduction, for visits to Laird Pryd of the two presiding holy men of his holding were not uncommon and of late had become a more-than-weekly matter.

  As usual, Laird Pryd was sitting on his huge oaken throne, its arm rests gilded, its high back bejeweled. He was the same age as Father Jerak, and, indeed, the two had known each other for more than forty years, since the then-young Jerak had been assigned to Pryd Holding after his training in the mother chapel of Abelle, along the coast to the north. Unlike Father Jerak, though, the laird didn't so obviously show his age. He sat straight and tall; and while his hair was now more salt than pepper, and perhaps his blue eyes did not hold their previous luster, he kept his shoulders squared, his jaw high, and his beard and hair meticulously trimmed.

  Behind him and to the side stood another aged man, with hawkish features and a scowl that only intensified whenever the monks of Abelle entered the room. Jerak paid Rennarq, Laird Pryd's close adviser, no heed, but Bathelais always took note of that scowl. Rennarq was rumored to be a staunch Samhaist, though not openly, of course.

  The two monks moved up before the throne and bowed to their laird. Jerak was glad that Bathelais held his arm, for without that support, he feared that he would have tumbled at Laird Pryd's feet.

  "You seem rather tired today, old priest," Laird Pryd remarked, and at his side, his sentry snickered.

  "Our work has been long, Laird," Brother Bathelais answered.

  "That is the way of things."

  Jerak forced his eyes up to meet those of the laird. Whenever Pryd made that particular remark-"That is the way of things"-his tone became dismissive. "That is the way of things," Jerak understood, meant that there was nothing Laird Pryd meant to do to remedy it.

  "We have come to discuss the matter of your son," Father Jerak said.

  "The matter? Whatever matter my son might have is hardly a concern of yours."

  Father Jerak bowed in deference at the not so subtle reminder that he and all the brothers of Abelle were allowed and recognized in Pryd Holding at the sufferance of the laird. Again, the old monk was glad of the physical support of Brother Bathelais.

  "He drives the peasants hard, Laird," Jerak said.

  "Their work is important."

  "We spend all the night with the soul stones, Laird, alleviating their aches and trying to mend fingers cracked from digging and hammering and carrying those huge flagstones."

  "I am grateful for your efforts, I assure you. But that is your duty, is it not?"

  "Their maladies outpace our abilities to heal them," Father Jerak began to explain, trying to keep his voice steady in the face of Pryd's continuing dismissive tone.

  "Winter will come soon enough, we all know, and they will have the quiet months in which to recover."

  "My laird-"

  "This business only aids your Church, as well, can you not agree?" Pryd interrupted. "My son, serving as my voice, shows the peasants the way to a better life through their toil. That toil begets suffering, of course, and so you serve a heroic and healing role, one that no doubt enamors the peasants of your Blessed Abelle. I believe that my son's tactics serve you well in your continuing duel with the Samhaists for the souls of the people." He offered a smile that sent a shiver coursing along Jerak's spine, and Jerak glanced past him to note the scowl of Rennarq.

  "Ah, those marvelous and sacred gemstones," Pryd went on. "So much more convincing must they be when you put them to use in such a practical and helpful manner as healing the injuries and maladies of dim-witted peasants!"

  It was a joke, of course, and one that had Laird Pryd and all his guards laughing, but only with great effort was Father Jerak tactfully able to join in.

  "Perhaps there is a compromise to be found," the old monk suggested.

  The smile disappeared in a blink from Pryd's face. "All the lairds have agreed on the construction of these roads, and for good reason."

  Before he could go on, a side door of the audience chamber banged open and Prydae strode into the room, still wearing his battle gear and still with the stains of powrie blood and of his own, where dried blood had crusted on his beard.

  "Powries," he explained. "A band on the road."

  Father Jerak gasped.

  "Our healing skills will be needed at the chapel," Brother Bathelais said.

  Father Jerak noted the dismissive look young Prydae turned on the holy men at that moment, a typical response from the prince, whom Jerak believed viewed the Church of Abelle as a rival to the power and wealth of his forthcoming inheritance. No doubt, Jerak supposed, that crafty old Rennarq often whispered disparaging remarks into Prydae's ear.

  "Yes, some of the peasants were injured," Prydae said, looking back at his father. "Unfortunate."

  "As they often have been injured since you began your work on the roads," Father Jerak dared to say, and Brother Bathelais gave his arm an insistent squeeze.

  "Truly, I should think that you would wish the roads completed," Prydae was quick to reply, "that you can spread the word of your God and bring more and more folk under your control."

  "They are not under our control, young prince," Father Jerak corrected. "They serve beside us because they, too, see the truth of the word of Blessed Abelle and the hopes of eternal life and redemption."

  Behind the throne, Rennarq snorted.

  "As you will," Prydae said with a bow.

  Father Jerak stared at the prince a moment longer, then turned back to Laird Pryd and gave a stiff bow. He and Brother Bathelais took their leave immediately, knowing that they had much work to do.

  "Step lightly with the brothers of Abelle," Laird Pryd warned his son as soon as the holy men had gone. "Their Church is displacing the Samhaists in the hearts of the commoners and is fast becoming a dominant force in all Honce. It would not do your aspirations well to turn them against you."

  "You overstate their hand, my laird," Rennarq dared to put in.

  "And you have stubbornly denied the obvious for more than a quarter of a century, my old friend," Pryd replied.

  "The lairds rule Honce, not the Church," Prydae remarked, and then pointedly added, "Not either Church."

  "And the wise lairds will see the Church of Abelle for what it is and use it to their best designs," Pryd went on, directing his words to his son. "There is talk of unity in the land, the likes of which I have not heard in my lifetime, the likes of which have not been known in Honce since the Samhaists ruled both body and soul." He looked back at Rennarq again, and teased, "The golden age of Honce?"

  Rennarq couldn't help but smile at that, and he didn't voice his belief that such an estimate might not be far from the truth.

  "That talk is fostered by the agreement to build the roads," Prydae observed. "What laird has refused his resources in this endeavor?"

  "None of the thirty," Pryd answered. "Because the driving force is that Delaval City, on the Masur Delaval, has proceeded with their road building, with or without our agreement."

  "I have heard the marvels of the Delaval roads," said Prydae. "Lined in iron, so say the traveling skalds."

  "Indeed, and in this endeavor, if we are behind, we risk irrelevance. The world is changing before our eyes and it is up to us to determine where we will fit into those changes. Think of the trade when the roads connect! And we will be better able to move our armies."

  "To drive the powries from the land."

  "And to exterminate the goblins," Laird Pryd said, his old eyes gleaming, for he still felt the pangs from a wound in his hip, an injury received in his youth from a goblin spear. "We may tame the land, at long last, but only if we are able to work in coordination with the other lairds of Honce and only if we can keep the peasants content through the years of trial they will no doubt face.

  "And that is where the brothers of Abelle will prove their usefulness. Their gemstones heal the wounds even as their promises of eternal life strengthen the spirit. The Samhaists ever ruled by f
ear, but the brothers of Abelle have found a greater means. They guide with promises that no man or woman could resist. See the light of Abelle and you will find eternal rest. Hear the words of Abelle and you will one day be reunited with your loved ones who have died. What mother could deny her desire to one day see again her lost child?"

  "These promises have been made before, many times," Rennarq reminded.

  "But the brothers of Abelle strengthen such promises with the gemstones," Laird Pryd explained. "They have the gifts of God to prove their words."

  Prydae looked at his father, studying the man from head to foot. "You believe them," he said at length. "You believe the way of Blessed Abelle."

  Pryd shrugged, but he wasn't quick to offer a denial.

  The prince looked back at Rennarq, whose expression clearly showed that Prydae's words had hit the mark.

  "Would it be so bad a thing if Abelle were proven right?" Laird Pryd replied. "If his promises were true? You are a young man yet, my son, and do not concern yourself with questions of what might follow this life. Even in your battles, you do not believe that death will find you. But I am old-every day I awaken to feel the creeping of age in my bones and in my heart. Many are the nights that I close my eyes and wonder if I ever shall open them again."

  Prydae walked to the edge of the dais and sat down. He had never heard such words as this from the unshakable Laird of Pryd before. A frown creased his face as he considered the words of his father and mentor.

  "The peasants cheered you in your splendid armor?" Pryd asked.

  Prydae glanced back at him, and did manage a smile. "Four powries fell to my hand-my soldiers will claim that I killed six single-handedly. Of course the peasants were appreciative."

  "As they should be. We offer them protection. We give them their very lives, every day. And we ask little in return."

  Laird Pryd gave a chuckle as he considered his own words. "Nay," he corrected, "we ask nothing of them. We demand what we must, and they have no choice but to comply. That is the way of it."

  "They would be wandering sheep, fodder for the powries, without us," Prydae reminded, and his father nodded.

  "As it has always been and as it will always be," the laird remarked. "The young one is brash and headstrong," Bathelais observed, not for the first time, when he and old Jerak finally walked out of Castle Pryd's main gates.

  While Bathelais's words were spoken in a jesting and almost dismissive manner, Father Jerak didn't share his amusement. "And we both know that the wretch Rennarq whispers in his ear," he said. "Prince Prydae cares nothing for the suffering of the peasants. I wonder if he even hears their groans."

  "Like so many noblemen, he views the world beyond the concerns of the individual," reasoned Bathelais. "He sees the gains the roads might bring to all of us, beyond the pain some might suffer in creating them."

  "That is the place of the laird, it would seem," said Jerak. "What, then, might be the place of the Church of Blessed Abelle?"

  The seemingly simple question set Bathelais back on his heels, so much so that the old monk walked right past him and continued alone for many moments. For in that seemingly simple inquiry, Bathelais saw many deeper questions. Was Father Jerak insinuating that it was the place of the Church to work against the lairds, as the Samhaists had done, often and futilely, in their string of miserable failures? Though it had made great gains in its seventy years of existence-particularly in the fifty-four years since the death of Father Abelle and the creation of the new Honce calendar-the Church of Abelle was still in its infancy. Missionaries armed with gemstones had traveled far and wide, and every holding in Honce had a chapel of Abelle of one sort or another. And yet it was clear to Bathelais, as it had been earlier to Jerak, that their very existence was under the sufferance of the individual lairds.

  With a wave of his hand, Laird Pryd could order the Chapel Pryd dismantled, stone by stone, and all of the brothers expelled from his holding. Or worse.

  Bathelais hurried to catch up, and found Father Jerak talking away, as if he hadn't even been aware of his companion's absence.

  "The people will love us because we salve their wounds," Jerak remarked, and he picked up his pace, for he could hear the crying and groaning within the chapel now and knew that the wounded were waiting. "We must remain worthy of their trust, that they can trust, too, in the message we bring. But we cannot feed them, can we? We cannot protect them from the monsters of the world, can we?"

  "Then what are we to do?"

  Jerak stopped and slowly turned to face the younger brother, straining his stiff neck so that he could look Bathelais in the eye. "In serving the lairds, we serve the people of Honce," he said. "Never forget that."

  4

  Sailing to Civilization It was comforting to smell the salty air and to see the dark swells of the Mirianic again, and with good fortune on the road, Bran Dynard and SenWi made the city of Jacintha at just the right time of year, barely a week before the summer solstice, when the fearsome ocean could be well navigated. The spring storms were behind them and the dark waters had calmed somewhat.

  Even in the summer, it was not easy to find transport around the eastern spurs of the Belt-and-Buckle mountains and to the land of Honce. All of the boats sailing around Jacintha were coastal vessels, and the coastline to the north was rocky and treacherous. Still, for those daring enough to try the journey, there were fine profits to be had in Honce.

  Dynard and SenWi wound up on a merchant vessel, a square, flat-bottomed, and high-sided craft set with a single square sail and rows of five oars on either side. Though he could use the extra hands at the oars, the merchant sailor, a man so leathery and wrinkled and hunched over that some questioned whether he was human or powrie, had been reluctant to take them on. Only after Dynard had used his soul stone on the sailor's blistered feet, alleviating the man's pain, had the deal been struck; and even with that, Dynard and SenWi found themselves laboring at the oars almost continually throughout the journey.

  "And if we see some sharks, you're sure to be the ones getting fed to them!" the sailor said every time he passed the couple, always offering a wide and ridiculous two-toothed smile.

  Given the sword SenWi had beside her, Brother Dynard rather doubted that.

  The small craft had to swing so wide of the coast to avoid the treacherous rocks that the journey from Jacintha to Ethelbert Town, a mere fifty miles as a bird might fly, took them nearly a week. But they got onto the sandy beach that lined the harbor without serious incident, and with just the cracked lips and sunburned skin that any extended stay on an uncovered boat guaranteed.

  "Lucky ones, aren't you, that we saw no sharks?" the wrinkled sailor cackled as he walked between the couple, and he gave SenWi an exaggerated wink. Then he stopped and turned, assuming a pensive posture.

  "Once more with that stone of yours?" he asked, lifting his bare foot up.

  Brother Dynard was in too fine a mood to resist, so he produced the hematite, the sacred soul stone, and brought it before his eyes, quietly reciting the prayers that would allow him entrance to the gray stone's depths. He continued to pray for some time, then pressed the stone against the sailor's battered, sea-soaked, and rotting appendage. Dynard felt the stone's magical energies reaching out even before the old sailor gave a moan of relief.

  The boat slid against the sand beneath the shallow waters then, and the sailor pitched backward, though with the extraordinary balance that only a seaman could ever achieve, he caught himself before he tumbled to the deck. He gave another cackle and stomped his healed foot hard on the deck, then even did a little dance of appreciation.

  Dynard and SenWi dropped off the side of the boat, into water that came halfway between Dynard's knee and waist. They hardly noticed and hardly cared, for they were on dry land in seconds, navigating through the crowd that was coming down to see the southern boat and its exotic wares.

  "It is one of the greatest cities of Honce," Dynard was explaining to SenWi as they moved up the
slope of the beach and more and more of Ethelbert came into view. Many cottages were spread about the lower reach of the community, which was built on several layers climbing into the foothills of the great mountains.

  Brother Dynard paused and spent a long while more fully surveying the scene, then closed his eyes and tried to compare it to the vision of Ethelbert he had known as he had sailed out of the place nearly ten years before.

  "The city has grown," he remarked, as much to himself as to SenWi. "When I last journeyed through here, most of the folk of Ethelbert lived in those caves up there." He pointed to the south, where the ground climbed sharply and where many cave openings could be seen at many different levels, connected by ladders, most with balconies carved in the stone before them.

  "It is not as primitive as it might seem," Dynard quickly added as he considered the view, and how the structures of Ethelbert paled beside the marvels of Walk of Clouds or the great man-made stone structures of Jacintha.

  SenWi offered him a comforting and nonjudgmental smile.

  To the southwest of their current position, Dynard pointed out Castle Ethelbert dos Entel, though he hardly needed his guiding finger to show SenWi the structure, which so dominated the landscape. It was built against the cliff wall; indeed, the bulk of the place was within the cliffs themselves, tying into the natural limestone caverns common at the lowest levels. But this castle, worked and expanded generation after generation, was much more external than internal, with huge round towers, sweeping walkways, and a magnificent gatehouse that seemed as if it alone could hold all the people of the town.

  "Come," Brother Dynard bade her, taking her delicate hand in his own. "Let us see if Laird Ethelbert will grant us audience."

  Focused on that thought, his mind spinning as he came to fully comprehend that he was back in his homeland, Brother Dynard hardly noticed that the farther he and SenWi got from the beach, the more curious grew the stares of the Honce folk.