Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1) (40 page)

The Cathedral of Saint Llewellyn the Valiant was the largest stone building in Vasloria. Its massive spires towered over the other buildings in Celkirk, a statement about the power and influence of the Church of Cavall the Righteous and his most popular saint. The only other building like it was the Cathedral of St. Bróccan the Stout, the primary saint of Adun, now a ruin in Ǽndrim’s former high city of Exeter.

The sun was not yet up and the sky was grey. Heden walked down cobbled roads to the church, reminded of a similar walk at this same time of day, but to the jail to deal with Vanora. Before he knew she was Vanora. Only a few days ago. A lifetime ago.

Heden was relieved to discover the cathedral was empty save for a few acolytes observing the dawn rituals, keeping the place clean.

The abbot waddled around replacing the ceremonial candles. In an hour the place would be packed with supplicants. Heden hated that. He hated the place in general, had hated it the moment he saw it long ago.

Even at the height of his passion for the church, his worship of Cavall, he saw the cathedral of Saint Llewellyn as a massive piece of propaganda. It was a monument to power. The power of the church, its influence. It loomed over everything, deliberately. It was, Heden knew, a challenge to the king and while this upset him, most of all it bothered Heden that everyone in Celkirk should be reminded that Cavall was Corwell’s patron deity. The average person, Heden felt, should be allowed to get on with their lives. What did it say about the church he served that somewhere there were people in it who felt the need to remind the citizens who they owed their spiritual allegiance to? The king’s castle was large, but still a purely military building. There was nothing military about the cathedral. You could march a whole army right in and no one could stop them.

In most ways, the church was the priory writ large, except you could fit three priories in the huge empty space inside the cathedral. It could fit over two thousand people in the main room and the walk down the long nave to the altar took quite a while. Especially when yours were the only boots that rang out on the cold stone floor.

Everyone in the church heard him, and all turned to look. Many of the acolytes knew him and so did not give him a second glance. The rest looked to the abbot, who used a long brass candle lighter to light the candles. The light outside was grey and so did not project the brilliant, multi-colored light of the massive stained glass windows, each as high as the priory’s spire, into the room as they usually did. It gave the place a larger, more cavernous feel.

The abbot turned, saw Heden, watched him as he methodically tramped down the main aisle past dozens of prayer benches, then went back to lighting the candles. The acolytes watched Heden, but no longer monitored him.

Every time Heden saw him, he was reminded that the abbot was now an old man. He wasn’t old in Heden’s memory, just…older. Older than Heden. Now, of course, that meant the man was in his sixties. twenty years used to seem like an eternity, but now Heden felt they were almost the same age. Heden felt like he was catching up.

The abbot had a short crop of grey and white hair on top of his head like a small raincloud had nested on his pate. His pale square face was now well-jowled though it had not always been. He had thin blue eyes and a wide smile from thin red lips. Taller than Heden, he had once been fit, but service to the church in the same building for fifty years and many heavy meals had thickened the man. He also had a stiffness in his legs that gave him a comical waddle, which he deliberately exaggerated for the sake of his students, who needed to learn early that wisdom could play the buffoon.

When Heden stopped a few feet away, the abbot was stretching and making elaborate noises to let everyone know how much his body complained about this duty.

“I thought of you, yesterday,” the abbot said. His voice that of a comic character in a play. Unbidden came the thought of a Riojan troubadour and how much he and the abbot would like each other. “A student was asking about Adan the Rector. My first thought was of digging up…enh…your old papers.”

Heden said nothing.

“’Human beings are not mathematical formulae, we cannot expect mathematical solutions.’ I thought you wrote that, how’s that for a compliment? I’d forgotten it was Adan. I tend to do that with you. You were so good at restating his work.”

More stretching and grunting from the abbot. Silence from Heden.

“Did you know,” the abbot continued, ignoring Heden, “that there was a fifteen year old whore staying at your inn yesterday? Before you ask, Gwiddon told me. Not sure why I was surprised. Seems the least surprising thing in the world to me now.”

He put a hand on his back and lowered the candle lighter. He grunted theatrically and turned to smile at Heden, a twinkle in his eye.

Then he saw Heden’s visage, and stopped smiling.

“Ah, well. It’s that then. Come on!” the abbot declared. “Let’s get out of the nave. We don’t want to scare the acolytes.”

The abbot led the way to his quarters in one of the dozens of rooms that fit into the niches and hidden away places in the Cathedral. It was a trail well-known to Heden.

Inside his quarters—piled with books and scrolls, several busts, an astrolabe, a working model of Orden with special disks for the World Below, the Land of Faerie, and the Dawn and Dusk moons as well as a stuffed owl, all collecting dust—Heden slumped down onto a threadbare divan against the wall by the door. One he had spent hundreds of hours on, man and boy.

The abbot waddled his way around his heavy rosewood desk, making a show of how difficult it was. Possibly to hide how difficult it actually was. He carefully sat down and then let out a sigh as though preparing for heavy thinking, which he was.

He raised his thick, bushy white eyebrows once, signaling Heden.

“I need,” Heden had a hard time beginning. Was afraid to start. It was taking all his willpower to keep himself together. He was forty-three years old. He didn’t want to cry in front of the abbot like some bawling babe. “I need help.”

The abbot knew to keep silent. Let Heden find his own way.

“I don’t understand…” Heden said, and looked around the room. Looked at anything except the abbot.

“I don’t know…what the point of…” he found it hard to breathe. He reached up, under his collar, and fished for the talisman of Lynwen. The icon of a woman’s smiling eye. He wrestled it out from under his clothes and breastplate, and pulled it violently up over his head.

Once released, he held the talisman, silver chain dangling, and stared at it.

The abbot watched and said nothing. Let Heden fill the space up. Heden tossed the amulet down on the divan. He looked like someone had stabbed him.

“Things went bad in the wode?” the abbot prompted.

Heden was both surprised and concerned. “You know about it?”

“Gwiddon told me.”

“Oh,” Heden said without feeling.

More silence.

“Things went bad,” he said finally, his eyes looking out into nothing.

More silence.

“I should have stayed at the inn,” Heden said.

“Tell me what happened in the wode,” the abbot said, trying to keep Heden on one subject.

It took Heden a while to say anything. Time seemed to slow for the two men, no one was eager to talk.

Then Heden started, and the whole thing came out. The abbot didn’t ask any questions, he concentrated on what Heden said. Heden skipped one thing, something he didn’t feel the abbot needed to know.

“At the river with the young squire,” the abbot asked, twirling a quill pen in his fingers. He didn’t look at Heden, he leaned back in his chair looking at a piece of art on the wall Heden had never paid much attention to.

Heden grunted his understanding.

“What that the only episode you had?”

“I don’t…” Heden was struggling. “I need to talk about the knights,” he said. This wasn’t about him. He desperately needed the abbot’s insight. “I need to know why I was there. What was I supposed to do?” He was yearning, desperate.

The abbot held up one finger. “The river,” he said, and then bit his lower lip in thought.

Heden sighed.

“No.”

The abbot nodded as though he’d suspected that.

“When I first went into the forest,” Heden said. “I got…disorientated. Confused.”

“No clear direction, no path to follow,” the abbot filled in.

Heden stretched out a little and seemed to relax.

“I panicked,” Heden said. “I almost turned around.” Talking about it was difficult.

The abbot hummed to himself. He thought in silence a moment then turned and faced Heden, leaned forward in his chair and put his arms on his desk.

“The death of the giant bothered you,” the abbot said.

“I didn’t come here for our normal…” Heden began, but the abbot cut him off.

“You know the rules,” he said.

Heden tried to calm down.

“Talk to me about the thyrs,” the abbot said.

In the state he was in, remembering the death of the hills thyrs was difficult. His eyes started to get red.

“It was awful.”

The abbot nodded, saying nothing. Allowing Heden to find his own way.

“Aderyn had the problem under control. I don’t know why Nudd did what he did.”

Heden was avoiding the issue, and they both knew it. The abbot didn’t say anything, confident Heden would get there.

“I should have done something,” he said.

The abbot knew that wasn’t the point.

“How did you feel when you saw him die?” he asked, trying to help Heden focus.

Heden, eyes red, trying not to show emotion, confessed: “I felt like I was dying.”

“Were you aware you felt that way at the time?”

“Yeah,” Heden said.

“And how did
that
make you feel?”

“I don’t know,” Heden evaded.

The abbot smiled. “You didn’t feel ashamed at all? After everything you’ve seen? You’ve killed giants.”

“Alright,” Heden said, now ashamed that he’d bothered to avoid the issue. “I felt like there was something wrong with me. I wanted to cry, to…to weep. Why? I wasn’t in control of myself. Like another attack. Yeah. I felt ashamed.”

“Because you felt so strongly about the death of a marauding thyrswight.”

“Yeah,” Heden said. “When I was younger, I’d have helped Nudd. Why wasn’t I on his side?”

“So,” the abbot said sitting back in his chair, trying not to look too pleased with himself, “first you felt ashamed that being in the forest could cause you to lose control of yourself, and then you felt ashamed when you found yourself caring about a dying giant.”

Heden found himself drawn into his own rehabilitation by his fascination with the abbot’s process.

“You think they’re related?” he asked.

The abbot’s head nodded in big swoops, causing his chair to rock back and forth. “I do.”

“You think if I were better,” Heden said, “neither would have bothered me.”

“You’re half right,” the abbot said, smiling at something.

Heden shook his head sharply. He didn’t understand what the abbot meant and was replaying it in his mind.

The abbot knew Heden had taken it as far as he could, and so gave him the rest.

“I think the attacks leave you feeling vulnerable,” he said.

Heden agreed. He had felt vulnerable.

“That’s good for you; it’s something you’re not used to.”

Heden’s face fell as realization dawned.

“Not like at the inn,” Heden said, feeling stupid for not having seen it himself. The inn was his sanctuary.

The abbot grinned, pleased that Heden saw it.

“And that vulnerability leaves you open to feel other things.”

Heden looked at the abbot. In an instant, like remembering someone’s name after you’d forgotten it, Heden realized this was truth. He could see the death of the giant now, and his own reaction, without shame. Though the memory of the giant’s eyes still brought pain, he wasn’t afraid of it.

“That giant didn’t need to die,” Heden said with certainty.

The abbot shook his head. “Probably not,” he said.

“That was Nudd, and his pain. The order collapsing.”

“The Squire told you as much,” the abbot said. “I think your reaction to the death of the giant was perfectly healthy. You experienced grief at the death of another life. That’s something Sir Nudd could not do,” he said.

Heden saw the truth. “I think Aderyn was upset too.”

“Well, I haven’t seen her, but she’d been affected by what was happening. Maybe sheltered from it too. There’s hope for her yet.”

Heden looked at him, and the image of Isobel and Brys wreathed in fire came unbidden to his mind. He felt nauseous.

“Let’s talk about the knights,” he said. The abbot agreed, taking a deep breath.

“The knight you met when you entered the forest was Sir Mór,” he leaned back in his chair, assuming the role of teacher once again.