Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1) (34 page)

“I do!” Heden shouted. “Trust me!”

“Look!” Taethan said, pointing behind him and down.

Heden turned the carpet to get a better look.

Far below them, but not far enough, the Yllindyr was still in its rearing position. It shuddered again, and another volley of thorns erupted from all over its body. Thousands of them, all speeding toward the carpet.

“It’s just one damned thing after another,” Heden muttered.

“What?”

“Hang on to something!” Heden said, and lay as flat on the carpet as he could with another man on here.

“On to what?!” Taethan asked.

Like a thousand massive thrushes speeding past, the wave of thorns clouded the sky around them, thrumming the air. As soon as Heden saw how many and how thick was the volley, he knew there was no way the carpet could avoid getting hit.

A thorn ruptured straight through the carpet between Heden and Taethan, and they began to drop.

Then another tore the edge off behind Heden. They were now almost in free fall.

Heden’s stomach rose, his whole body seized up in one massive convulsion of terror, and as though in a nightmare he dropped out of the sky. Wind whistling past, he thought of a prayer that would save him. Taethan too.

Eyes blinded with tears from the biting air, he tried to find Taethan, but could not. He couldn’t see. He was still holding on to what was left the carpet. He couldn’t tell if it was one piece with a hole in it, or two pieces and he couldn’t see Taethan.

He started to speak the prayer as he saw what he thought was the ground rushing up to meet him. There was no time. He was going to smash into the ground below and be killed.

There was no danger of hitting the ground, however. The Yllindyr swung one massive foreleg and batted them both out of the sky like gnats.

The light of consciousness went out of both of them, as their bodies sailed out inscribing a beautiful geometric arc over the forest.

Heden came to. The experience was very different from waking up. His eyes opened to a blurred landscape, he couldn’t focus. His head hurt, his chest hurt. His whole body tingled in that unique way that spoke of broken or shattered bones cured by a priest.

His head swam, he couldn’t control it. He tried to sit up. He was slumped against a large tree. Like many in the forest, its trunk was maybe thirty feet across.

He managed to sit up under his own power and twist around to unbuckle his breastplate. The buckles were unusually tight and pulling at them caused a sharp pain in his chest. He’d felt that pain before and knew what caused it. The indentation in the metal made by the Yllindyr when it smashed into him. It caved in his breastplate, so the metal was pressing into his chest.

The buckles came undone, the second harder than the first, and he threw his breastplate away. He didn’t have much strength; it landed just out of arm’s reach. Blood flowed back to his bruised muscles.

Breastplate off, half turned in his sitting position, he saw the tree behind him. He’d done a lot of damage to it when he hit it. He turned and slumped back against it. Looking up, he saw the path he’d taken as he’d fallen through the branches. A hole in the forest stretching up and away at a sharp angle. For some reason this made him laugh.

“You’re delirious,” a voice said. Reacting to his laughter. He looked around, still having trouble seeing.

Then he smelled something wonderful. Broth and bread and meat. Someone was cooking something? Out here in the forest?

Head lolling, he finally narrowed in on the speaker.

She was about forty feet away from him, near another tree. There was no real clearing here, just dead leaves and ferns. She was crouched on her haunches, cooking something over an open flame. She wore a heavy brown and green dress and had long brown hair. As he watched, a squirrel scampered up to her and held out a tiny nut. She plucked it from the small animal’s hands and said; “Thank you,” with a small bow. The squirrel dashed off.

“Hello,” Heden said. He must be dreaming.

“Give it a few minutes,” she said. “You’re not as young as you used to be. Once you’ve had one concussion” she seemed to be talking to herself now. “It gets easier and easier to rattle your braincase.”

Heden lay back. “Dreaming,” he said. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Sleep didn’t last long, he woke to deep hunger and the delicious smell from before. The woman was crouching in front of him now, waving a bowl under his nose.

She looked about Heden’s age, and was beautiful. It was her eyes. They were golden brown and danced with wit and intelligence. She had dark red hair, almost brown.

“You should know better,” she said, curling a lip. “Can’t sleep after a blow like that. Might never wake up.”

He tried to take the bowl of soup. It took him a moment to coordinate his hands, but he managed it. He held the stone bowl and smelled it, taking a deep breath.

“I smelled bread,” Heden said.

“Yup.” She said, reaching behind her. She dropped a fresh loaf in his lap. It was still warm.

“I made it,” she said.

“How?” Heden asked frowning. His head ached. The bowl of soup reminded him that his hands were cold.

“Wasn’t hard,” she said. She got up and walked back to her little camp. “You learned the prayer when you were fifteen. The soup I made the hard way. Comes out better.”

Heden sipped the soup. He put the bowl in his lap and broke off some bread.

“How long have I been out?” he asked, dipping the bread in the soup.

“Few hours,” the woman said, crouching to tend the fire and stir the soup. “You were a mess,” she said. “You would have gotten through it on your own,” she sampled the soup, concluded it was good, and kept stirring. “But you wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”

Heden breathed deeply. His body was recovering. His mind was centering. The woods around him seemed real enough now. He blinked a few times and his eyes seemed to be back to normal.

Where was Taethan?

What happened to the Yllindyr?

Who was this woman?

He took a sip of the soup and forwarded a hypothesis.

“You’re a witch,” he said.

She smiled widely to herself. “Good guess,” she said, her voice like a bell. “But no. I’m, ah, the cause of witchcraft in others.” She looked at him slyly from the corner of her eye

He thought for a moment.

“Fallara,” he guessed.

The woman frowned and shook her head at his guess. “That crone? She couldn’t cook to save her life.”

He put his head back against the tree. It hurt to think. Once he stopped trying, it came to him.

“Halcyon,” he said.

She didn’t react in any way Heden could see.

“Before you ask,” she said, “Sir Taethan is fine. You’ll meet up with him once I’m through with you.”

That sounded ominous.

Before Heden could stop himself, he asked “What have I done?”

He regretted asking it. It made him sound like a child, but it seemed to impress the woman. She nodded to herself.

“Well for one thing, three of my knights have died while you stood by gawping.”

“Three?” he asked.

“I’m counting Kavalen,” she said, and there was low menace in her voice. But it was casual, it didn’t appear directed at Heden. “With Idris and Perren that’s three.”

Heden didn’t say anything, he was reeling from the concussion and the fact that he was talking to a saint again. This one seemed bafflingly normal.

She stood up and kicked dirt on the small fire quenching it.

Looking down at the dying fire she put her hands on her hips and, obviously talking to herself said; “And I don’t hold out much hope for the other six.”

“What happened to Aderyn?” Heden asked.

She turned and looked at him lying against the tree. His body had been shattered before she repaired it.

“You won’t see her again,” Halcyon said, crossing her arms. Heden couldn’t tell if this was good or bad. “None of the knights will. That’s a wager I’ve made with myself.” Heden didn’t know what she meant.

“Perren and Kavalen weren’t my fault,” he tried to defend himself.

She sighed and walked over to him. She made a gesture as she walked and a small toadstool near him grew enormously, allowing her to sit comfortably on it and talk to him.

“We didn’t pick you for this because we wanted you to stand idly by and gasp while the knights…” she stopped, and then said something else. “…died.”

“We?” he asked, frowning. The act made his head hurt again. “How did you pick me?”

“Suggestions,” she said. “Nudges. Coincidences. I mean I could just appear before the hierarch and tell him what to do, but that’s not a good idea. No rules against it, but it sets a bad precedent. And that’s pretty much all we have.”

“Why don’t you speak like them?” he asked. When it seemed like she didn’t understand he went on. “Like Isobel.”

“The cant?” she asked. She lay back against the toadstool and crossed her legs.
Nice legs
, he thought. Heden wondered if there was any situation so bad that he wouldn’t notice a woman’s legs. Probably not.

“The cant is their tradition, not mine. They created it.”

“Created?”

She nodded. “One of the knight-commanders came up with the idea a few hundred years ago. When the order was even smaller than it is now. She thought that’s how the original knights talked. Back when life was…I don’t know…simpler? She imagined the order was more respected then. ’Course these knights don’t know that. They think the cant is three thousand years old. Have no idea that no one spoke like that even then. Probably wouldn’t matter if they did know.”

“It’s fake,” Heden said, reeling at the idea that the knights were acting out a kind of theater and didn’t even know it.

She shrugged again, pleasingly. “Not if they’re serious about it. Which they are. Or were,” she said resignedly. Heden felt ashamed, though he didn’t know why. “Doesn’t matter either way. As long as they keep the pact, I don’t care what else they get up to.”

“You mean chastity and purity and all that,” Heden said wearily. The subject exhausted him more than physically.

“No, the
pact
. Not the oaths, they made those up too. I can’t imagine any better way to take the fun out of life. Chastity? They can keep it.” She smiled at him and he smiled back.

She stopped smiling suddenly.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said severely.

“What?” He was confused.

“Lynwen told me all about you. You know what I mean.”

He was afraid she did. She smoothed her robes over her bare legs.

“All those things, the vows the cant. Chivalry,” she said. “They’re just there to remind them of things they feel people take for granted. They think people speak too quickly, too often and with too little thought. The cant makes them think before they open their mouths. But they don’t need the cant to be knights. They only have to honor the pact.”

“What’s the pact,” Heden asked.

She looked around at the forest. “This,” she said. “The forest and everything in it. And men. It’s all that really matters. I know it’s hard to imagine now, but for thousands of years before my knights the border of the forest would shift, north, south. Wiping out whole cities over centuries, or being cut back to almost nothing. It was a war. As much as the one you fought in. But it happened so slowly, men couldn’t see it. The tide of centuries is meaningless to us. So I invented the order to keep the peace and since then,” she spread her hands. “Things have been nice. The forest and the men all get along.”

Heden nodded. He understood.

“I’m sorry about Idris,” he said. She nodded, accepting his apology.

“At the river,” she said, “you kept your promise to Elzpeth. That counts for something.”

He frowned, alarmed.

“Heden I’m a saint, I can use her real name.”

He relaxed. “Not on my own I didn’t,” he said. “I had a vision of Lynwen.”

Halcyon smiled.

“I know, but that doesn’t count.”

“It doesn’t? Felt like it counted to me.”

“You did enough,” she said. “The two of you needed and wanted each other as much as two people can. Lynwen didn’t force you to do anything, it was still your will. Your choice. We just gave you a nudge, you did the rest.”

“We?”

“Aderyn is my servant, Heden, of course I was watching. I have little else to do these days.”

Heden remembered his time with Aderyn. He had a vision of her standing before him at the river. “I’m not sure she chose the right vow,” he said, grimacing. He wanted to keep talking about Aderyn because he felt like he was in trouble and this helped avoid it.

“The chastity vow is perfect for her. For the same reason it’s meaningless to Isobel and Taethan.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Aderyn is a passionate woman. In every sense, and in every sense that is good and right. Denying that, bottling it up…gives her power.”

“You’re saying Taethan and Isobel don’t get power from their oaths?”

She shook her head. “Isobel gets her power from dedication. She was never a creature of lust. Nor Taethan.”

“What does he get his power from?”

She looked at him. “Heden, I can inspire you. But I can’t tell you anything you wouldn’t be able to figure out on your own. There is a rule against that.”

He thought for a minute. “He’s pure,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“They all think he is.”

“What do you think?”

He shook his head. “I do not know,” he said. It frustrated him.

“Well, you better figure it out,” she said. “It’s the only thing that’s important in all of this and if you of all people can’t see it,” she sighed and stood up. “Then that’s it and we’re back to the beginning.”

He sat up, felt better and attempted to stand. Though uneasy on his feet, he mastered himself. “What do you mean: me of all people?” he asked, standing before her.

She looked at him with naked pity. “Heden, I’m sorry.” She seemed moved by some great sadness. “I’m sorry for everything that led you here. And I’m sorry for everything that’s going to happen. If it’s any consolation, everyone agrees,” he had no idea what she meant by ‘everyone.’ “If you can’t do it, no one alive can.”

“It’s because I’m an Arrogate,” he said.

She nodded as though it should have been obvious to him earlier. “Yes.”

“You want me,” he felt like he was wading through molasses, trying to push through solid fog. “to take Taethan’s burden on…”

“No, Heden, not that,” she said sadly. “But you’re right next to it. And by Cavall I hope you crack it.” She smoothed out her dress and the toadstool went back to its original size.

“That’s it?” he asked. She seemed to be saying their meeting was over.

“I will tell you one more thing,” she said.