The Highwayman by R. A. Salvatore
His justifications held his conscience in check until one blustery, cold autumn night, the coldest by far since Stork had come to stay with them. Late that night, Reandu checked on the window hangings along the lower chambers of the chapel, making sure they were secured against the wind, while other brothers brought in wood to keep the hearth fires burning.
As he passed along the northeast corner of the building Reandu unconsciously glanced at the trapdoor leading to the substructure and to Stork’s room.
How cold was it down there on a night such as this?
Brother Reandu took a torch from one of the nearby wall brackets and moved to the trapdoor, pulling it open gently and as quietly as he could so that he did not disturb the boy’s sleep. He lay flat on the floor and poked his head through the opening, and was relieved to find that the room, though a little chilly, wasn’t really uncomfortable and certainly wasn’t dangerously cold. Hearing the boy’s sleeping wheeze, Reandu brought the torch closer to the opening.
There lay Stork on his small cot, sleeping contentedly. The image warmed Brother Reandu’s heart. Perhaps in sleep, at least, the tortured boy knew some peace.
He brought the torch back and began pulling himself up, but as he did the torch moved. Brother Reandu froze in place, his attention grabbed by the scratches, a hundred scratches, a thousand scratches, ten thousand scratches on the wall!
The monk blinked many times as the writing—it had to be writing!—became more clear, as the staggering scope of it began to be apparent. Now too curious to consider the boy’s slumber, Brother Reandu climbed down into the underground chamber. He moved to the end of the wall nearest the boy’s cot and found what had to be the beginning of this work: a large scratch, a squiggle, and nothing that made any sense to Reandu. Brother Reandu was no expert on linguistics; in fact, he had been among the worst of the scribes during his work at Chapel Abelle, but he instantly recognized patterns here, with words repeated.
“Amazing,” Reandu said, and he was quite amused. Had Bransen, in his frustration, written his own book? Had he concocted a series of squiggles, a gibberish all his own?
Reandu’s smile disappeared and he turned to consider the sleeping boy. Then he looked back at the wall, then back at the boy.
Then back at the wall again.
Even the first letter of the work was larger than all the others, a definitive beginning point. How had Stork possibly known to do that?
Shaking his head, Reandu slipped out of the room and went right to the door of Brother Bathelais.
He knew at once, as soon as Bathelais had squeezed into the cramped chamber beside him, that the older brother wasn’t nearly as delighted. Bathelais stood there, staring at the markings, squinting and chewing his lip. He motioned for Reandu to follow, and they went back out of the hole.
“We will return in the morning, when we can study this without fear of disturbing the boy,” Bathelais said.
“We should ask him about it.”
“In time. I have little patience for listening to Stork stutter through some incomprehensible and ridiculous response.”
Even though sympathetic Reandu always thought of Bransen as “Stork,” hearing the name spoken by Brother Bathelais made him wince.
After more than an hour in the hole the next day, Bathelais’s mood seemed to sour even more. He had brought with him some paper and charcoal and had done a rubbing of the work.
Reandu kept remarking that perhaps this was a miracle, but Bathelais just brushed him off over and over, muttering, “The boy has obviously seen a book.”
“But to do such intricate work reveals an intelligence—”
“There are birds in Behr that can mimic human speech, brother. Should we kneel before them?”
Brother Reandu quickly realized that he would be better off remaining quiet as Brother Bathelais took over the investigation. He had little choice, in any event. He wasn’t even invited to go along with Bathelais when he took the paper to Father Jerak later that day, and he only began to comprehend the level of Bathelais’s disdain when the brother walked out of Father Jerak’s room muttering, “Damnable Dynard, there were two.”
Garibond was feeling particularly uncomfortable this day. He sat on the rocks beside the lower cottage, absently casting his line. He thought about Bransen; he was always thinking about Bransen, and he could hardly believe how lonely and empty his days had become since the boy had gone off with the monks.
But it was for Bransen’s own good, he had to continually remind himself. That, or he would simply sit and cry.
He heard the horses, but was so entangled in his thoughts of his lost boy that the sound didn’t register for several moments. When he finally glanced to the side, the riders—three monks and a pair of soldiers—were almost to the stones leading to his front door.
Garibond hurried to set his pole down and meet them. He recognized two of the monks and one large soldier that he knew to be Bannagran, the close friend of Laird Prydae. His presence more than anything warned Garibond that something was amiss, and he immediately thought of the Samhaists. Had they gotten to Bransen?
“Greetings to you, Brother Bathelais,” he said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
“Where is it?”
“It?”
“Apparently, Brother Dynard kept another secret, did he not?” Brother Bathelais said.
Garibond rocked back on his heels, his mind spinning.
“You would be wise to speak openly and truthfully,” Bathelais added. “For your sake and the sake of the boy.”
“He is Bran Dynard’s son,” Garibond blurted, and he was surprised at the shock that came over Bathelais, as if he had caught the man completely off guard with the admission he believed the man to be anticipating.
“Bran Dynard,” Brother Reandu said. “And SenWi.” With both names, he emphasized the first syllables. “Bran and Sen,” he clarified to those astride the horses about him.
“Bransen,” said the third monk, whom Garibond did not know.
“When was the boy born?” Bathelais demanded. “Soon after Dynard departed?”
“Or soon before,” Garibond admitted.
“And so the mother was here, all the while,” reasoned the monk. “When all the holding was searching for the outlaw SenWi, she was kept safe through her pregnancy in the home of Garibond Womak.” As he spoke, Bathelais looked at the soldiers, particularly at Bannagran, whose lips went very tight and whose dark eyes bored holes in old Garibond.
“She was no outlaw,” Garibond managed to whisper, and his voice grew even weaker as all the riders began to dismount.
“Save yourself more trouble, and more for the boy, do not doubt,” Brother Bathelais said to him. “Tell us where it is.”
“SenWi is dead.”
“Not the creature of Behr. The heretical book that Brother Dynard scribed. We know that there were two.”
Garibond shook his head. “Two? No, there was only the one.”
“Destroyed in the hearth in Father Jerak’s room?” asked Bathelais.
“So I have heard.”
Bathelais’s smile became that of a predator that had finally cornered its meal. “And pray tell me how you heard of such a thing?” he asked. “Certainly few even in Chapel Pryd knew of the destruction, for few even knew of the work. How could Garibond Womak, who lives out here on the edge of the wilderness, know of such a thing as that?”
Garibond swallowed hard. “Word spreads quickly.”
“Not that word!” Bathelais snapped. To the others, he said, “Tear out every stone of the walls if you must. I will have that book.”
He looked back at Garibond, his scowl increasing. “Make it easy, master Womak. Your trouble has only just begun, and it will soon end, I assure you, but if you make it easy, then I will make your passing easy.”
There it was. Bathelais had just branded him a heretic, and from that, there could be no appeal. He felt his knees go weak beneath him, but he stubbornly held himself up.<
“For the sake of the boy, then?” Bathelais added.
The weakness was gone, replaced by a wall of anger. Garibond tried to respond with a barrage of insult and accusation, tried to scream out that this Church of Blessed Abelle was a sham under the leadership of Father Jerak, that Bran Dynard was the finest man he had ever known, and SenWi the finest woman, that all of the monks’ pretense could not hide the awful truth.
He wanted to say all that, but all that came out was a wad of spit, aimed at Brother Bathelais’s face.
The monk didn’t flinch, and he slowly brought his arm up to wipe his face. He stared at Garibond hatefully all the while, and that was the last image he knew before a sudden burst of pain erupted on the side of his head and he fell away into blackness.
He awoke much later—he knew not how much time had passed—to the sound of voices and the crackle of wood. Immediately he was assaulted by a wave of smoke, stinging his eyes and throat.
And he felt the pain suddenly in his feet and shins. He squirmed and realized that he was lashed tightly, his hands behind his back and around a stake.
“I had hoped you would not awaken,” came a sympathetic voice. Garibond managed to open his eyes enough to see Brother Reandu, with Brother Bathelais lurking right behind.
The waves of heat and smoke engulfed him. He heard himself screaming as the fires of Church justice curled the skin of his legs, as his woolen tunic ignited, and a million points of pain screamed out in protest.
He thrashed and he cried. And he choked and gagged, and couldn’t find any air at all to draw into his burning lungs.
Just beyond the pyre, the soldiers, the monks, and a few curious neighbors watched the man pass from life.
“You could have made a grand spectacle and example of him,” Bannagran said to Brother Bathelais.
“That is what Bernivvigar would do,” Bathelais replied, and his voice was subdued and full of regret.
“It teaches proper respect.”
“Respect?” Bathelais said, turning to regard the soldier. “This is an unpleasant necessity. This”—he held up the book the soldiers had found in a secret cubby in Garibond’s tunnel complex—“is not an issue for public discourse.” He looked down at the book for a long moment, then tossed it into the fire.
“This all ends here,” Bathelais instructed. “All of it. Garibond is gone and the pagan tome is finally destroyed. We will speak of it no more.”
And he went to his horse, and the others followed.
And the neighbors were left to watch the flames roar against the late afternoon sky and to bury the husk of Garibond’s body the next day.
Part III
God’s Year 74
23
Walking—Awkwardly—in Place
Bransen stood in the growing darkness outside Chapel Pryd. At just under five and a half feet he was smaller than most men, and since he could not stand straight, he seemed even shorter. His battered, bony frame barely topped a hundred and twenty pounds, making him closer in weight to the average woman than man. His hair hung long and black and his beard was scraggly, unkempt whiskers dotting his chin and cheeks, along with splotches of angry-looking hives. The unique and purplish birthmark on his right arm had not diminished, yet another mar on a body so full of imperfection.
His teeth were straight and white, his best feature, but they were rarely seen, for Bransen didn’t smile often. Every day of every week led him on the same journey through Chapel Pryd to the river. Every night found him in his underground chamber, whose walls were smooth and unmarked—as the monks had moved him to another room and regularly inspected his walls.
Only three things sustained Bransen: his memories of the Book of Jhest, whose words he recited in his mind every day as he went about his chores; the conversations and lessons of the brothers in the room above him, particularly when they used the formal speech of ancient times as they read stories of legendary heroism and valiant deeds; and finally, the few scraps of mostly illegible parchments that Brother Reandu had generously obtained for him, pages ripped from old and decrepit tomes and errant works produced by tired brothers. Reandu hadn’t been able to teach Bransen any more than the basics of this form of writing, but playing with those pages and trying to make sense of the words had greatly benefitted the curious young man, at least in relieving the boredom of his life.
It was the Book of Jhest, transcribed in his mind, that truly sustained him.
Especially at moments like this. These few minutes each day, after his last trip to the river, afforded Bransen the privacy and opportunity to further explore those words of wisdom implanted in his mind.
Very slowly, Bransen visualized his chi, starting at his forehead. He moved his internal eye down the line, collecting all the scattered flashes of life energy as he went. His lips stopped quivering, the drool held back. His head stopped lolling and settled in balance. His shoulders straightened and his arms stopped twitching and flailing. He couldn’t see it, but the red splotches that so marred his face disappeared, although the birthmark on his right upper arm did not.
He took a deep and calming breath as his inner eye moved down the line between his lungs and to his belly.
Bransen stood perfectly straight.
Bransen stood perfectly steady.
Slowly, he lifted his arms before him, then above his head. He brought them down to his sides as he rooted his feet into the ground. In that moment, Bransen, the boy they called Stork, was so strong, and he believed that he could hold his ground and footing even if Laird Prydae charged into him!
The young man took a few strides forward—not awkward and stiff-legged strides but real steps, powerful steps, balanced steps. “I am the son of SenWi and Bran Dynard,” he said, and he did not stutter. “I am the child of Garibond, the boy he loves, the boy who loves him.”
A wobble of Bransen’s hip belied his calm posture. The moment of clarity was quickly passing, and a wave of exhaustion was following.
In another few moments, he was just Stork again, stuttering and gangly, drooling all over himself. But beneath that slimy and shiny covering and those crooked and twitching jaw muscles, Bransen was smiling.
Every day, he escaped the bonds of his infirmities. Only for a moment, perhaps, but that moment was more than he had ever dared to hope.
One day, he mused, he might tell Brother Reandu of his secret, and tell him in a voice strong and stable.
Perhaps that fantasy would take place, but Bransen remembered all too well the monks’ reaction to his writing the Book of Jhest on his walls. He remembered the panic and the anger; and though he had not been punished, he saw the flash of hate and outrage in Bathelais’s eyes, the implication and threat all too clear.
But he wanted to tell someone, and Reandu was probably his best friend. Or maybe he would get stronger, and maybe he would learn to sustain the power offered by his forcefully composed chi for longer periods—forever perhaps—and then he could go to Garibond and show him.
That was Bransen’s deepest wish and hope: to return to his beloved Garibond, not as Stork but as a whole man. Wouldn’t Garibond be proud of him! And if he could become whole, even if he were to continue working for the monks, he should be able to find enough time each week to go back and visit his beloved Garibond!
The young man picked up the empty chamber pots and staggered toward the chapel’s back door, his simple dreams sustaining him through each labored step.
“Has he spoken at all today?” There was no missing the contempt in Master Bathelais’s tone, a simmering revulsion that seemed to be growing almost daily.
“No, master,” replied Brother Reandu. “Father Jerak sits, staring into emptiness. It is almost as if he is looking at the past.”
“He is, and seeing events as if they are only now unfolding. Last week, he demanded that I go to Laird Pryd to insist that he ease the burdens of those working on the road.”
“The road?” Brother Reandu echoed, and then he grew even more startled as
“It is an argument twenty years old,” Master Bathelais explained.
“It is good that the masters at Chapel Abelle saw fit to convey the powers and title of master upon you, dear brother,” said Reandu. “If we were at the discretion of Father Jerak now—”
“Father Jerak has no discretion,” said Bathelais, and when Reandu started to balk at the bold statement, he held up his hand. “I say that with great sadness, brother. Long have I considered Father Jerak my friend—more than my friend. He has been as a father to me in more than Church ways.”
Brother Reandu nodded. Father Jerak had ruled Chapel Pryd wisely and compassionately for many decades.
“You will need to formally announce your position as presiding father of Chapel Pryd very soon,” Brother Reandu advised. “Our superiors offered you this at your discretion.”
Bathelais rocked back on his heels. “You ask me to unseat my beloved friend.”
“Will Chapel Pryd survive the weeks, months, even years we may have to wait for him to go and sit with Blessed Abelle? Master, Rennarq whispers in Laird Prydae’s ear in favor of Bernivvigar even as the people shout the same, all the more loudly every day.”
Bathelais’s look turned icy.
“The Samhaists had more than a thousand people gathered at their bonfire last night.” Bathelais winced at that.
“The people are angry,” Reandu went on. “How many men are dying in the south? How little have they to eat, and less now that Laird Prydae has been forced to pay taxes to Laird Delaval.”
“We are not responsible for the policies of Laird Prydae.”
“But neither are we fulfilling our promises to the people of Pryd. We cannot heal their illnesses when so many of our resources are caught up in the greater issues of the holding. We cannot continue to tell them that our God is a benevolent God when their sons, husbands, and fathers die in the south. We cannot continue to tell them that our God is a bountiful God when their stomachs pinch with hunger.”