The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (128 page)

With this thought in mind, Prosper managed to make a moderately sincere apology to the dagger owner. Though it took a moment's struggle with his anger demon, he even offered an apology to the spear-owner when the youth demanded one. This provoked another shout of laughter. Prosper departed as quickly as possible, clutching the empty stew bowl.
He was forced to make his way back through the rest of the tribe, enduring the glances of amusement or scorn at his dripping figure. Passing the table, he saw that several bowls of stew lay upon it, but these had ferns placed over their rims, the tribal manner of indicating that the owner had placed the bowl down temporarily and would be returning to reclaim it.
The cooking pot was considerably less full than it had been before. Prosper began to wonder whether he would be able to eat anything at all before the feast ended. Deciding that he needed stronger sustenance than the stew in his refilled bowl, he began to walk toward the wine caskets.
A woman refilling one of the platters with a basket full of sweet-buns blocked his path. She was the woman he had seen earlier at the service, Prosper noted as he came closer, while he mentally counted his heartbeats up to five. He was barely aware that he did so; it was an old discipline, taught to him when he had been a priest-pupil under the High Priest, to prevent him from allowing his idle gaze to linger too long on any woman, lest lustful desires arise. None ever had, but the discipline was so ingrained in him by now that not even his new discipline as a temporal man could make him fully aware of the counting.
The woman, alas, noticed his glance at the fourth heartbeat. He was on the point of passing behind her, and she jerked around, startled. The basket in her hand fell, causing the sweet-buns to roll to the ground.
Prosper felt joy surge through him. Here, at least, he had a clear excuse to be of assistance to another living spirit. Quickly placing his bowl aside and covering the rim with a fern, he rushed over to where the woman was trying to gather some sweet-buns that had rolled away.
"Allow me to assist you," said Prosper, kneeling down beside her.
The woman rose rapidly to her feet and said breathlessly, "Please, there's no need—"
"It is a pleasure," said Prosper, trying to sound as cheerful as Huard as he reached over for a sweet-bun that was nudging the woman's foot. "I'm used to picking objects off the ground; I was quite clumsy as a boy. Once I dropped a purification lamp during the middle of service, and the worshippers were so frightened that they—"
He stopped. It is difficult to speak when a blade-tip is pressed against your throat.
Prosper was on his haunches, leaning forward; he resisted the impulse to jerk back and cry out to Huard for help. The priest could not help him in this. Though none of the tribal folk had yet dared to displease their priest by killing Prosper, it remained their right under the God's Law to do so. Feeling very much like an ant that has a boot-heel hovering over it, Prosper raised his eyes.
Above him, standing a foot ahead of the woman, was the honey-skinned soldier whom Prosper faintly remembered seeing on his first day's return to the territory. The man's battle-scarred hand was holding the sword hilt with a looseness that betokened experience. His dark eyes were as cold as the Black River. Prosper, feeling sweat begin to trickle between his throat and the blade, resisted the impulse to swallow.
The dark-eyed soldier said, in a voice as low as distant thunder, "Stay away from my wife, demon-man."
Prosper felt the rumble of his own distant thunder; he quickly closed his eyes. He must not think of his own pain, he remembered as he tried to chase back the demons of anger and fear. He must think of the pain of others. He opened his eyes again. Behind the man, the woman was clutching at her basket; the lines of her face were drawn taut. He had frightened her, Prosper realized. The man had every reason to be angry.
"I apologize for my ill behavior, madam," he said, trying not to move his throat overly much as he spoke. "I ought not to have come upon you so abruptly. I hope that you and your husband will accept my—"
He closed his mouth. Blood trickled down his throat from where the blade had pressed in. The dark-eyed soldier said, in a voice more rumbling than before, "One word more, and you die."
Prosper closed his eyes again and wondered whether his discipline permitted him a prayer to the God at a juncture like this. He suspected that such a prayer would receive no answer.
Then, with a swiftness akin to that of the God, Huard appeared at the side of the woman. Ignoring Prosper and the soldier as though they were not there, he said to the woman, "Is it true what I've heard, Charity, that you cooked today's sugar balls? I cannot tell you how many compliments I have heard on them! Is the secret in the honey, or do you perhaps boil the pastries for a minute longer than is usual—"
The soldier, seemingly unwilling to shed blood in a priest's presence, silently withdrew his blade from Prosper's windpipe and carefully wiped off the small amount of blood at the tip before sheathing his sword. Prosper, who was beginning to shake, waited until the soldier had joined the debate as to whether bumblebee honey or flower-bee honey was best used on sugar balls; then he arose and shakily returned to the table.
Given the events of the meal so far, he was almost surprised to find the bowl just as he had left it, rather than overturned in the dirt. He put the fern aside and then, feeling that he could not make it as far as the wine without bodily renewal, lifted the bowl to his lips.
His mouth stopped at the rim of the bowl. He had filled the bowl halfway, but now it was brimming over the rim. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward to sniff the stew.
A short time later he knelt in the wet grass of the riverbank, watching under moonlight as the urine-soaked stew disappeared into the black waters. Pain was washing over him in unending waves.
It had been like this every night for three months. He told himself that the torment he was enduring was small in comparison to the destruction he had inflicted upon those under his priestly care for the past forty-four years, but he seemed unable to clear his spirit tonight, as he had succeeded on all previous nights. He reached down to wash the bowl, feeling the chill water tug at his hand.
It took a great deal of courage for him to return to the cooking pot for a fourth bowl. He managed it only by remembering an old discipline, not used since priest-pupil days, of watching his footsteps and thinking of nothing except the next step he was going to take. Thus he was in front of the cooking pot and already reaching out with his bowl before he noticed the boy crouched behind the enormous pot.
The boy was hidden in shadow from the moonlight and the torches. Prosper was only able to see the outline of his upturned face from the glowing embers beneath the cooking pot. The boy whispered, "Don't tell him I'm here."
Prosper frowned, saying, "Don't tell who?" Then, too late, he recognized who the boy was.
He turned his head swiftly. Marching toward the pot, his sword unsheathed, was the dark-eyed soldier. Prosper's hand shook, and the bowl fell irretrievably into the pot. The soldier had threatened to kill him if Prosper spoke to his wife. What would the soldier do when he discovered this God-cursed man talking to his eldest son? Prosper began to think that the High Priest had not been so merciful when he declined to send Prosper to the fire of purification.
Fortunately, Prosper was not forced to decide whether his temporal duties required him to report the boy's location. Sighting Prosper next to the pot, the soldier frowned and veered his path away, in the direction of the military yard. "Orel!" the man shouted. "Orel, where are you?"
The boy, peering round the side of the pot, waited until the soldier had disappeared behind the hut that served as an armory before he rose to his feet. Seen in torchlight, he proved to be honey-colored like his father, with blue eyes like his mother. Wine juice was drying in the corner of his grimy face, and his hair remained as dishevelled as it had been during the service. He emitted a long sigh.
Amused, Prosper fought to retain his stern expression. "Your punishment won't be any lighter if you delay it, you know," he warned the boy.
"Oh, I haven't done anything wrong, truly," said the boy Orel. "It's just that Father wants me to show off the dagger skills I learned at the yard today."
"And you don't care for weapon-play?" Prosper felt immediate empathy. He could remember avoiding hunting lessons with his own father.
Orel seemed surprised by the question. "Of course I like it. I'm going to be a soldier, like Father is." Then, seeing Prosper's brow crease with puzzlement, he explained, "It's just that I don't like to do soldiering
all
the time. I want to talk to Huard so that I can ask him questions about the God's Law."
"Well," said Prosper, looking over the boy again and deciding that his original estimate of Orel's age had been correct, "you could ask Huard about that at your next catechism lesson."
Orel shook his head. "Huard lets all of us boys learn at our own pace, and I learned the catechism twice as quickly as the other boys did. I asked my father if I could continue taking lessons in the God's Language, because I enjoyed learning that."
"And he said no." It was a struggle at this point for Prosper to keep judgment of the father's actions out of his voice, but he succeeded.
"He said that if I wanted to become a priest, he'd be glad to send me to your training school, but that a temporal boy doesn't need any more scribe-learning than is necessary to master the catechism."
Prosper wrestled to hold several emotions in check, the foremost of which was the one raised by the realization that this boy knew who he was. Turning his attention to the demon of judgment, he waited until he had battled it back to a sufficient distance before saying, in a carefully neutral voice, "That may be true of most temporal boys, but I have known some who benefitted from further instruction. When I was young, a chieftain's son came to stay at the training school for a year. He had planned to become a priest, but he soon realized that his true vocation was to take up the work of his father. Even so, he often told me in later years that his year at the training school was the most valuable of his life, partly because of the discipline he learned while studying the ancient tongue."
"Discipline?" said Orel, as though this were a word foreign to him.
"Yes, because the ancient form of the God's Language is considerably more difficult than the modern form. The spelling, grammar, and especially the pronunciation make it a great challenge to any pupil. The purpose of studying the ancient tongue, you see, is not to be able to read ancient manuscripts, though that is a side benefit. The main benefit is to discipline the mind, which in turn leads to discipline of spirit."
The boy looked as delighted as though Prosper had just offered him a bag full of sugar balls. "Do you think that Huard would teach me the ancient tongue if I asked?"
"Perhaps." Prosper had been trying to make up his mind about several matters, the main question being whether he was likely to live to the dawn if the dark-eyed soldier discovered that a God-cursed man had been talking to his son. Then it occurred to him that this risk might be part of his new discipline. He said firmly, "I have more time to spare than Huard does. I would be glad to teach you the ancient tongue. With your father's permission," he added as the boy's face lit up.
Orel's expression fell. After a moment he said, "My father has often said that I need more discipline."
"I can imagine," replied Prosper dryly, letting his gaze run over the boy's crumpled clothes. "Your leisure time is in the early evening, I take it? Then, if your father gives you permission to attend lessons with me, come to Huard's hut after tomorrow's evening service, and we will begin. Arrive punctually," he added, with as much sternness as he could manage with his suddenly buoyant spirit.
Orel, biting his lip as though his smile might spread too far if he failed to catch it back, began to dart away. Then he turned back suddenly, his gaze lowering to take in Prosper's stew-strewn clothing. After a moment, he reached out his hand and said hesitantly, "I have an extra sugar ball if you want it."
The sugar ball in Orel's hand was mashed, sticky, and grimy with dirt. Prosper took it from him with the same wonder and gratitude that he would have reserved for an offering of the sacred flame.
 
CHAPTER THREE
The following evening found Prosper kneeling by the bank of the river, contemplating the swift current.
The Black River, the tribal folk called it; it was named for the black rocks in the riverbed. On a day like this, when the river sparkled with sunshine, it was hard to think of it as black. The sun was still well above the horizon; the year was near midsummer, and dusk would not come until around the time of the evening meal.
He had forgotten to try the image of the river during the evening service, he realized. His thoughts had been wholly upon the boy scuffing his toes in the front row of the sanctuary. Prosper had been trying to read into the boy's movements knowledge of his new pupil. Only halfway through the silence did the demon of fear attack him, and now he was struggling to keep it at bay. The father would impress upon Orel what sort of man his prospective tutor was. Yet surely if the boy came, there could be no question of him turning from Prosper in horror.
He wondered why the prospect of these lessons had come to mean so much to him. It was easy enough to guess the answer, and he tried to focus his mind on ways to hide his eagerness from the boy. A pupil must never know whether his teacher enjoyed the teaching or hated it; a teacher's pleasure or pain was of no importance.
It came to Prosper that if he had been thinking in this manner upon his arrival at the camp, it would never have occurred to him to dwell upon his own pain at the chieftain's rejection. It was a new thought. He put the revelation aside in his mind to discuss it with Huard when he next asked the priest's advice on matters of discipline.
A soft step rustled through the grass nearby. Prosper rose and turned to see Orel standing next to Huard's doorway, looking hesitant. "It's all right," the boy said, before Prosper could ask. "I can take lessons from you."
Prosper tried to ignore the rush of relief that surged through him. Orel appeared more shy than before; there seemed no doubt he had received instructions from his father on what dangers might arise from a God-cursed man. Given the father's sentiments, the boy was probably now convinced that he was about to be murdered or ravished.