Songs of the Earth (19 page)

Alderan clapped Gair on the shoulder, then strode up the steps to the door and disappeared inside.

The Belisthan eyed Gair uncertainly. ‘Did you say you were from a monastery?’ he asked, his voice freighted with dread.

‘The Suvaeon Motherhouse, in Dremen.’ Gair shouldered his bundle.

Darin’s eyes flicked to the sword. ‘Does that mean you’re a Knight?’

‘No, I never made it past novice. I was sent there in the hope that a monastic education might make me turn out normal.’

The boy is shadowkin
. Such hateful words had been said – on both sides, to be scrupulously fair. Words that couldn’t be taken back, that still stung. Gair slammed a lid on them. This was a fresh start, in a new place. He had to let old bones lie.

‘So you’re
gaeden
, like the rest of us?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘Then you don’t go around praying all the time?’

Gair laughed. ‘Oh, no – I just can’t seem to shake the habit of waking up early for morning service. So, what now?’

‘How about I show you your room, then give you a tour? We should have time before supper.’

Darin led the way up the steps. Inside the vestibule, bright rag rugs that would not have been out of place in a farm kitchen softened the tiled floor. Passageways led off to left and right; the wider main corridor led straight ahead for the full depth of the building. Darin pointed out lecture halls, the whitewashed cloister
of the infirmary, and at the far end of the hallway, the twinned staircases leading up to the dormitories. They’d take the left-hand one Darin said; right led to the girls’ rooms.

‘They teach girls here too?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Darin grinned and rolled his eyes. ‘I suppose you’ll not be used to it, after the monastery and all, but don’t worry. There’re easily as many girls here as there are boys. You’ll soon find someone.’

Finding someone was the last thing Gair wanted to think about. From the moment he had arrived at the Motherhouse he had been expected to serve the Order chastely, obediently, humbly, exactly as if he had already sworn the vows of a Suvaeon Knight. Obedience was drilled into him in the practice yards and waiting at table. For humility he’d shovelled dung in the stables, though for that he had at least had the company of the horses, whom he liked better than most people. The value of service was made plain in the fields of the tied farms, where he had earned as many blisters hoeing turnips as he had fighting with sword or lance. Chastity, in a cloistered order, had taken care of itself.

Girl after pretty girl called out good afternoon to Darin – boys and elderfolk too, but mostly girls, and some of them bid Gair welcome. They cooed over how tall he was, and swished their bright skirts and glossy hair, chattering away like so many briar-finches on a bough. He managed to talk to them without swallowing his own tongue, but Darin was as easy with them as if they were all his sisters and cousins, even the women with grey in their hair. With just a few words he had them sparkling with laughter and more than one looked back over her shoulder to smile them out of sight.

‘You’re popular,’ Gair said as they climbed the stairs.

‘It’s the dimples, girls can’t resist them.’ Darin grinned to demonstrate. ‘But I have to be good now. Renna threatened to put my eyes out with a poker if she caught me looking at another girl.’

‘She’s your sweetheart?’

‘We’ve been walking out since last summer. She’s one of the housemaids.’ Then Darin stopped, lips pursed thoughtfully.

Gair followed his gaze across the hall. A long-legged Syfrian girl descended the other staircase, a book open in one hand as the other trailed down the polished banister. Thick, corn-gold braids hung down well past her waist.

‘Oh, I’d like to get tangled up in that,’ Darin murmured. He watched her until the turning to the library took her out of sight, then with a shake of his head, flashed a smile back at Gair. ‘Promise you won’t tell?’

‘Word of honour.’

‘Good man.’ Darin started taking the steps two at a time. ‘You don’t play chess by any chance, do you?’

‘A little.’

‘Would you care for a game sometime? No one on our floor will play with me any more.’

‘Why’s that? Do you cheat?’

Darin laughed. ‘No, I just don’t lose very often.’

They turned the corner into a long gallery overlooking a garden. Flowering vines clambered up the pillars as far as the third floor and a fish-pond glinted at the far end. Darin stopped at the first of the plain wooden doors on the right.

‘Well, this is your room. Try not to get too excited.’

‘It won’t take much to improve on the Motherhouse, believe me.’

Gair lifted the latch and opened the door. The room was twice the size of his cell in the novices’ dortoir. A desk and chair stood underneath one window and a bed and washstand under the other. The blue pitcher was chipped, and it didn’t match the green basin, but both were clean, and the soap smelled pleasantly of herbs. He prodded the mattress experimentally. Softer than a novice’s pallet, too.

‘It’s bigger than I was expecting,’ he said, laying his belongings on the bed. ‘Are all the students’ rooms this size?’

‘On this level, yes. They’re supposed to be adepts’ rooms, but we have more apprentices than adepts at the moment, so this gallery is a mixture. My room’s right next door.’

The fourth wall held a tall closet, empty, but for some spare blankets and a cedar block to keep down moths. Gair closed the door and turned round to find Darin eyeing his sword.

‘May I?’ he asked, pointing.

‘Be my guest.’

Darin drew the sword, struggling a little with the scabbard.

‘Never held a sword before?’

‘Nothing bigger than a carving knife. How on earth do you swing it?’

‘Bring the point up further, so it’s higher than your hands. It sits easier that way. You get used to the weight with practise.’

Darin did what he suggested. He swung the sword tentatively, watching the light run down the blade. ‘It’s pretty fearsome. Have you ever used it?’

‘I’ve done little else the last ten years.’

‘I meant
used it
, you know, in earnest – fought someone when it wasn’t just for practice?’

‘I’ve not drawn blood with it, if that’s what you mean.’
I’ve broken a man’s arm, but not shed blood
. Gair took the sword back and sheathed it.

‘So you’ve had it since you were what, ten?’

‘Eleven.’

‘It looks old. Did you inherit it?’

‘In a way.’ His foster-father might as well be dead to him now. ‘Look, why don’t we go and get something to eat? My belly thinks my throat’s stopped up.’

On the walk to the refectory, Darin pointed out the way to other useful places, like the practice yards, bath-house, Masters’ studies and the library. Gair was looking forward to exploring that. He had loved books as a boy, read and re-read his favourites until he knew the stories by heart and hardly needed to turn the worn
pages to know that Prince Corum would defeat the sea-serpent by answering its riddle, or how Jaichin Three-feathers rescued the elf-maid from the pit. Of all the things he had left behind when he rode for Dremen, he’d missed his books the most.

The refectory itself was a long, well-windowed room with rows of tables and benches, and an open serving hatch at the far end. The space was full of people, queuing with trays, sitting eating, standing talking in groups, reading alone over their plates. Many wore unbleached linen tunics with bands of green or blue around the neck and hems, or a short mantle like Darin’s over ordinary clothes. Fewer still, maybe no more than nine or ten in the whole room, wore floor-length mantles; it looked to Gair as if they were being accorded a little more respect by everyone.

‘What do the colours mean?’ he asked as they found some space at one of the tables and sat down with their loaded trays.

‘Grades and disciplines.’ Darin speared a potato with his fork and gestured with it as he explained, ‘Once you can do a few basic things, you’re graded as a novice, and that means a tunic with a band – green for Healers, blue for the rest of us, the ordinary
gaeden
. From there you move up to apprentice, which means a coloured tunic, then adept, which gets you a mantle.’ The potato vanished in a single huge bite.

‘So you’re an adept?’ Gair started to eat. The pork stew was good, with thick cider gravy and plenty of meat.

The Belisthan tugged his mantle straight and grinned. ‘Newly graded. Took me almost a year to get this far.’

‘And the long mantles?’

‘They’re for Masters, what you get to be if you’re really good. The Masters do most of the teaching, but adepts take some novice classes if there’re lots of students.’

‘It sounds very formal.’

‘Not really. It just keeps the hierarchy straight. Apart from the grades, there’re very few rules. Turn up on time, try your hardest, and no extra-curricular activity between teachers and students.’

Darin waggled his eyebrows suggestively and Gair’s face warmed. There had been a few novices at the Motherhouse who lived for the weekly half-day’s liberty, returning to the dortoir sleepy-eyed and grinning, their afternoon more than worth the switching it earned them. They rarely stayed long. He’d never learned their trick of turning a shy exchange of smiles into something that might give him cause to dread his next confession.

‘I’ll try to remember that,’ he said, hiding the flush behind his cup.

‘So what’s your strongest talent?’

‘I’m not sure. Alderan gave me some lessons on the way here, but I think we only scratched the surface.’

Certainly none of the exercises he had been set had posed much of a problem, though he remained wary of the vastness of the Song he was now able to touch. Since the storm, calling the Song felt like picking up a teacup and pouring out the ocean.

‘You’ll probably find out tomorrow, when you’re tested. They might even grade you on the spot.’

‘So what’s the testing like? What will I have to do?’ He used the last of his bread to mop gravy from his plate and wondered whether it would be impolite to go back for a second helping.

Darin was already finished and starting on a plate of fruit and cheese, despite having done most of the talking. He swallowed and said, ‘It’s very straightforward. The Masters give you tasks to perform, to find out what you can do and how strong you are. I’m best with fire. That’s why I was sent here.’

‘Something tells me there’s a story there.’

The Belisthan looked sheepish, fiddling with an apple core on his plate. ‘I set my uncle’s hat alight.’

Gair choked on his wine.

‘Not really on fire; it was just an illusion. You know, smoke, flames, crackling. It was very realistic.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘My father was always saying it was past time he was brought
down a peg. One day I saw him with some other farmers, carrying on like the lord of the manor, and I suddenly thought he’d look a whole lot less self-important with his hat on fire. Next thing I knew he was running around squealing and beating out the flames.’

‘And your family sent you here?’

‘Oh no, not straight away – they didn’t know it was me. It wasn’t until I set fire to my bed that they started to suspect. I was cold!’ he defended himself, seeing Gair’s sceptical expression. ‘I was just trying to heat the warming pan and I got carried away.’

‘I take it you’ve learned how to control it now? I don’t fancy waking up one morning to find the whole dormitory alight.’

‘I’ll make sure I wake you up first,’ Darin promised. ‘How did you find out about your gifts?’

Pushing his plate away, Gair leaned back against the wall, beaker in hand. ‘Stealing marchpane,’ he said. ‘Small boy, high shelf.’

Darin made a beckoning gesture with his hands and Gair tipped his cup in salute. ‘I didn’t realise I was different until I told someone what I had done and got slippered for telling lies. After that, I kept it to myself.’

‘Let me guess – you don’t like marchpane any more?’

‘Even the smell makes me heave.’

After supper, Darin pleaded a promise to visit with Renna and left Gair to his own devices. He made only one wrong turn on the way to the bath-house and after a leisurely soak, returned to his room. With both windows opened wide to let in the smell of the sea, he unpacked his few things and stowed them away. Afterwards he sat on the edge of the desk and looked out at the pastures, painted in all the colours of the settling sun.

So this was where he was going to be living now. It bore no comparison at all to the Motherhouse. For one thing, the scar on his hand hadn’t turned a hair on anyone, and he was sure at least two or three people had seen it. Chapterhouse was also much less formal. Everyone talked and laughed as they went about the halls,
and the Masters did not appear to hold themselves aloof from the students. It felt very much like a large family. They
belonged
, and they had welcomed him into their house because of what he was, not in spite of it.

Snatches of singing reached him on the wind. Vespers. Even after nine weeks away, Gair felt the pull of a familiar routine. The pattern of the day in a house of the Goddess was deeply ingrained in him; he had only to close his eyes to see the burnished Oak behind the altar, brilliant in the reflection of a thousand candles. He heard Danilar’s resonant voice chanting the service, the susurrus of the response. What would the Chaplain make of this place?