Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 3 (132 page)

Here in this valley where Kansi-a-lari had brought him, someone had wondered and dreamed about the vast cosmos and the workings of the heavens. Perhaps her son was the scholar, or perhaps it was the beautiful woman he had seen first in his vision at the palace of coils and then in a moment of shining glory before she was enveloped by the fiery daimones and transported by their wings up into the heavens. Possibly the clerical figures he had seen down by the tower were the scholars, but he could not trust them after they had tried to kill him. And anyway, why would they hide this scrap up here when they had been given a fine tower and hall below in which to write and contemplate in comfort?

No doubt he ought not to linger so long. He didn't know what those people down there intended now, in the face of such absolute ruin. He tucked the scrap into the pot, yanked the goats away from their feasting, and found a neat, clearly-marked path leading up through a field of boulders. It took him over the ridgetop and into the arms of three skittish monks.

They spoke Wendish poorly, and although he knew enough Dariyan to quote the liturgy fluently and at length, he had a hard time understanding their babbling explanation of mountains catching fire and portents seen in the sky. He tried to dissuade them from exploring down the path into the valley, but he failed. Apparently they had not until this day known the valley existed although the monastic hostel which they tended had been built over fifty years before by a previous generation of brothers.

They pointed out the hostel to him. Because by this time it was afternoon, and he hadn't eaten for three days, he made his way down a narrow path more suitable to the goats and onto a remarkably well-preserved old stone road that passed the monastery gates. The gatekeeper was either laconic or too stunned to speak after the events of the previous night. The man simply waved Zacharias through, and with some effort, because he was by now quite light-headed, he left his goats in the care of the flustered stablemaster and found his way to the hostel. There he gratefully collapsed while the brother guestmaster brought him a bowl of steaming hot pulse porridge topped by a pat of exquisite butter.

"These are strange times," said the guestmaster when Zacharias had finished his meal and washed down the porridge with a cup of very bold wine. He spoke a number of languages well enough, Wendish among them.

"Are there other guests here today?"

"Nay, none have asked shelter of us today, Brother, although I heard that a man and a woman were seen on the road an hour after dawn. But I think poor Brother Cunradus is seeing things again, for he said they weren't of human face though they were dressed in human clothing. The man was even armed, riding a warhorse, but he had a terrible hunched back, like a demon."

"Ah," said Zacharias carefully. "I'd hope not to meet such a pair, myself. Did they go south or north?"

"North, so he said. From where have you come, Brother?" He gestured, and his young assistant filled Zacharias' cup.

"From the east."

"Where did you lay up last night? Did you see the great fire along the mountains? Did you see the dragon.? As it says in the
Revelation
of St. Johanna, 'Woe to all who stand beside earth and sea, for when the dragon comes, there may
be
but little time.'"

At once, Zacharias realized his dilemma. What was he to tell this man? Ought he to be honest, or prudent? Might they not bundle him up and send him south to stand trial before the sko-pos as an accessory to foul sorcery if they knew everything he had done, and thought? Yet no longer could he justify the hypocrisy of pretending to agree. "Do you believe that the dragon is only a portent of some great disaster?"

The guestmaster gave him an odd look. "Truly, what else could these visions mean?"

"Did you not see how it left the air near us by flying up into the heavens and then vanishing? Surely this is not a portent. Surely we merely saw a living creature not accustomed to the confines of Earth who somehow yesterday made its way down through the spheres because of the great disturbances in the heavens. There are gateways through the spheres through which corporeal creatures can travel—

The guestmaster stood up so suddenly that his bench went flying over. "What manner of heresy is this? The church mothers teach that only our incorporeal souls can travel up and down the ladder of the spheres."

"It isn't so!" objected Zacharias. "They may have believed it was so, but they didn't know everything. If the old wisdom is incomplete or even wrong, why shouldn't we bury it with reverence and grant pride of place to what we discover to be true?" "Are you repudiating the wisdom of the church mothers? Do you claim to have been granted wisdom that they were denied?" "I have seen a vision of the cosmos! In it I saw many miraculous things, but I saw no Chamber of Light but rather a great creature so vast that it had neither beginning nor end. And I thought then that we are too small to encompass God. We cannot name God, or gods of any kind. Such a cosmos is ineffable, unknowable. But we are not helpless in the face of glory. Perhaps we can come to understand how a dragon can descend and ascend so that we can hope to do so in time. We can learn why the stars turn in a wheel as they do, or why—

"You are raving," said the guestmaster coldly. "I see that our good Father Lentfridus foretold rightly this morning at Prime when he said that these portents signaled disorder and disaster.

He will deal with you, because I cannot. Come, Wigo, you have been polluted."

He left the room without another word, and the poor young assistant, all goggly eyes and frightened "o" of a mouth, hurried after him.

Well. Some things didn't change after all. As among the Quman, it was his wretched and ready tongue that got him into trouble. But he could not regret his passionate words. They only confirmed the aim that had been taking shape in his mind since the first moment he saw the dragon.

He had lost his manhood and his honor, been humiliated and shamed. He had lost his simple faith in the Unities and because of that he had no desire to return to the home where he had first pledged fealty to that faith.

But he had gained something else: a new vision of the cosmos, not as a place where God in Unity reign in splendor from a fixed, static throne or where his grandmother's gods gather in the sacrifices and mete out gifts and punishments accordingly, but a cosmos where all these things are true and yet none of them are, a place altogether more magnificent, more numinous, and more mysterious than he had ever imagined.

And he wasn't the only person trying to come to grips with new things. At least one other person in this world was scribbling on parchment, and he recognized in those markings questions rather than answers. Although Kansi-a-lari had abandoned him, either because she thought he was dead or because she had no further use for him, he knew he had to go after her not for her sake, but because of her son. Her son would know who had written on the scrap of parchment.

He had a good idea that he ought not to wait for the guestmaster to return with the abbot, who would no doubt descend with all the wrath of an offended lord and the heavy weapons of orthodoxy at his right hand. His grandmother had always enjoined him to be practical. So he gathered his sparse belongings and departed by way of the stables. With the goats as his stubborn and rather truculent companions and a hearty meal in his stomach, he struck north along the old stone road, following the prince.