Ward of the Philosopher (3 page)

The old man stepped in close and put a finger to her lips. “Seven,” he said with an air of finality.

Deacon pressed himself into his mother’s hip, hugging Nub tight to his chest.

Gralia sucked in a breath through the gap in her teeth and gave a resigned nod.

“But,” Aristodeus said, “do bury the dog first.” He took a pipe from the folds of his robe and let it hang from his mouth while he patted around for something else. “Don’t suppose you have a light, my dear?”

Gralia narrowed her eyes and shook her head. She fetched a shovel from the shed and then led Deacon back down the garden and through the gate.
 

Clouds had rolled in from the coast, bringing the threat of rain, and so they hurriedly set about finding a good spot that would be Nub’s last, and Gralia dug while Deacon rocked his dog as if it were a sleeping baby, and ran through all the prayers he’d learned by heart.

THE PHILOSOPHER’S EYES

A
ristodeus was seated by the hearth when Deacon and Gralia came inside. He was using a smoking twig from the kindling to relight his pipe, sucking on the stem and puffing in quick succession. He had a package in his lap, something long and thin and wrapped in oilcloth, and there was a sword in its scabbard hanging from the back of his chair.

Gralia excused herself, saying she needed to go upstairs to wash her hands and change her clothes after the digging. Deacon made as if to follow her, but the old man coughed in the back of his throat, and Gralia nodded that it was all right.

“Remarkable restraint,” Aristodeus said.

Deacon stood dumbly for a moment.

“Sit.” Aristodeus indicated the chair on the other side of the hearth. “I meant you taking a beating. Self-regulation’s what it’s all about, eh?”

Deacon sat on his hands on the chair. He wasn’t sure what to say yet, if anything. He didn’t know what the rules were.

“You’re tall for your age,” Aristodeus said, “and there’s fight in your eyes, but you’ve got it under lock and key. I’m sure if you’d wanted to,”—he leaned over to fling the twig into the fire—“you could have given as good as you got. Probably even better.” He settled back in his chair and blew out a smoke ring.

Deacon felt his cheeks burn, and he caught himself on the verge of a smile. He pressed his lips tightly together and tried to look like he’d never given it a thought. Aristodeus was watching him, as if he already knew the truth.

“Last time I saw you, you were just a babe,” Aristodeus said. “And here you are almost up to you mother’s shoulders. Another blink of the eye, and you’ll be a man, bigger, stronger than your father, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

Deacon didn’t know how he felt about that. Jarl was a warrior, through and through. He was the epitome strength, and there weren’t too many who’d stand up to him in a quarrel.

“You have a good mother,” Aristodeus said. There was something smug in his tone, but he quickly moved on. “Pure and holy.”

“I am blessed,” Deacon said. It was the truth. Nous had been kind to him.

“Indeed.” Aristodeus popped the pipe from his mouth and used it for emphasis. “Couldn’t have picked better myself.” He grinned, but there was something unsettling about it, some hidden joke he wasn’t sharing. “A man is the sum of his parents, and a great man is the sum of all he learns and experiences without them. Most people are like iron.” He reached over his shoulder and tapped the pommel of the sword hanging from his chair. “The years weaken them, morally and physically. Rust sets in—flaws and decay. You, young Shader, must be like steel. First, the impurities must be removed from the iron—excess carbon, silicon, phosphorous. In your case, that shouldn’t be such an arduous task. Your mother’s done most of the work for you.”

Deacon scrunched his face up, trying to concentrate. He didn’t understand most the big words. For all he knew, Aristodeus could have been talking about magic, rather than steel making. The thought got his guard up.

“Then you need to add the alloying elements,” Aristodeus said. Catching Deacon’s blank look, he explained: “Manganese, chromium, nickel, and vanadium. Oh, I don’t expect you to understand yet; but I will do in time, and I’ll expect a whole lot more, too. You must be tempered, young Shader. Trained body and soul, so that you are hard as steel and pure as a dove. And your mind,” he added with a jab of his pipe to Deacon’s forehead, “must be a sword against the world.”

A thrill ran along Deacon’s spine. He thought he was starting to get the point at last. “Against the Demiurgos? Strong against his wiles?”

Aristodeus’s eyelids drooped shut, and he leaned back with a long sigh. “Yes, against the deceptions of the Abyss.”
 

“Why?” Deacon said. “Why do I need training? I thought only the grace of Nous could save us from the evil one.”

Aristodeus opened his eyes and focused them on the crackling hearth fire. A string of smoke coiled up from his pipe and glowed briefly in the light of the hanging lantern before it vanished. When he finally answered, his pipe had died.

“It is necessary.”

The creaking of the stairs broke the spell of the moment. Gralia walked to the back of Deacon’s chair and put her hands on his shoulders.

Aristodeus smiled at her and then abruptly stood, holding up the oilcloth-wrapped package. “Know what this is?”

Deacon shrugged.

“Your birthday present!” Aristodeus flung it at him.

Deacon caught the package in both hands, shocked at its weight.

“Happy birthday, Shader,” Aristodeus said, watching intently and raising his eyebrows.

Deacon struggled with the string binding the oilcloth and looked round at his mother. She took a knife from the drawer and cut it away.
 

Deacon unwrapped the cloth and gasped.

“A sword…” He looked from Gralia to Aristodeus, not knowing how he should feel.

Aristodeus winked. “Brought it back from the Eternal City, just for you.”

“Aeterna?” Gralia said. “You’ve been to Latia? Did you see the Ipsissimus?” There was awe in her voice.

“Briefly,” Aristodeus said, as if it were nothing to meet the supreme ruler of the Templum. “But the main reason for my trip was to speak with the Grand Master of the Elect.”

Gralia reeled away from the chair as if she’d been slapped. Deacon was up in a flash, letting the sword clank to the tiles as he clung to her skirt.

Aristodeus raised his palms, and for a moment, he looked genuinely sorry. “They will accept him as a knight, Gralia, but not until he’s turned thirteen, and not unless he’s proficient with a blade and fluent in Ancient Urddynoorian.”

Gralia’s breaths came in great heaves. She shut her eyes, lips working silently over a prayer. After a moment, she planted a kiss on Deacon’s head and sighed. “Six years, then.”

Aristodeus nodded. “Six more years. He’ll be well on his way to manhood by then, Gralia, and I’m sure the last thing you and Jarl will want is a teenager on your hands.”

Gralia blinked back tears, and she shuddered as she drew in another breath. Deacon knew what she was doing: offering it all up to Nous in reparation for her sins and those of all Urddynoor.

Aristodeus stooped to pick up the sword and hand it back to Deacon. “Come on,” he said, grabbing his own sword from the back of the chair and drawing it from its scabbard. “No time like the present. Let’s get started.”

With a hesitant look at Gralia, Deacon followed him outside.
 

It was still spitting, but there was a growing patch of blue sky coming from the north as the clouds blew out to sea. The sun shone through the passing haze, and a half-rainbow hung above the trees of the forest.
 

Gralia followed and lingered in the doorway.

“I’m to join the Elect?” Deacon asked. Was that Nous’s will for him—to fight demons?

“Few are chosen,” Aristodeus said, and then, with a smirk, he added, “and even fewer are squeezed in by men of wisdom and influence.” He gave a mock bow.

Deacon tested the balance of his sword, imagining he was a knight going to do battle with the unnatural monsters of the Lich Lord in Verusia.

Aristodeus put a hand on his wrist, forced the sword down. “It’s not just demons they fight, you know. It’s men you have to watch out for: changing allegiances, broken oaths. I may not share your faith, lad, but the Templum brings order out of chaos, and sometimes order comes at the tip of a sword.”

“But, Mother,”—Deacon turned to implore her with his eyes—“you can’t serve Nous and the sword. That’s what you told me.”

Gralia touched the Monas pendant around her neck, enclosed it in her fist. Deacon had always seen the Nousian symbol as a stick man with horns on his head, but whenever he said as much, his mother just smiled and said it was all right for a child to think such things, but as a man, he would come to see all that the Monas truly represented.

You can’t serve Nous and the sword
…

Jarl said the same; said he knew what kind of man he was and accepted he couldn’t be anything else. He was respectful when Deacon and Gralia prayed, and he drank beer with the monks at Brinwood Priory, but he was clear about one thing: to be a Nousian, he’d have to give up fighting. Anyone who told you otherwise, he said, already had one foot in the Abyss.

“The Elect have been Nous’s warriors for centuries,” Aristodeus said. “Since the Templum rose from the ashes of the Reckoning.”

“But—”

Aristodeus clanked his blade against Deacon’s. “A little thing called malicide.” He chuckled, as if he’d make a joke. “Perhaps we’ll make it the subject of your first philosophy lesson.”

Deacon frowned at him dumbly.

“Yes,” Aristodeus said, raising his sword. “Uses and Abuses of Theology, I think we’ll call it. But that’s for another time. I’m sure I come across as somewhat long in the tooth, a pontificating ivory-tower philosopher, but the things I aim to teach you are by no means limited to the mind. Heads up!”

He lunged, but Deacon dropped his sword and scampered out of the way.
 

“Wait. I can’t. I mean, I thought the Elect battled against monsters, like they do in the stories. They can’t kill people. Mother, tell him. They can’t.”

Gralia shook her head.

Aristodeus rammed his sword into the ground and put his hands on his hips. “Erlstein does. I take it you’ve heard of him?”

Deacon had. Erlstein was one of the greatest heroes of the Elect. He was the one who’d knocked out the Demiurgos’s tooth and turned it into an arrowhead that never missed the mark. He’d also faced down a horde of dragon-riding devils with nothing more than a bone club.

Aristodeus seemed to read Deacon’s thoughts and laughed. “Remind me to lecture on legends and their embellishment. For now, you’ll just have to trust me: Erlstein is a great luminary, in his own way, but he’s indomitable and as ungiving as… well, as steel. Now, pick up your sword, and let’s gauge your reflexes.”

As Deacon bent to retrieve his sword, Aristodeus whipped his own from the earth and came at him, batting him on the shin. Deacon stumbled and fell, but Aristodeus was on him in an instant, blade raised high for the killing blow.

Gralia screamed, and Aristodeus whirled on her.
 

“No, Gralia, you will not interfere! Now, make yourself useful, and go cook us up a meal. I’m sure we’ll both be famished by the time this is over.”

The sight of his mother’s terrified face, then of her obediently doing as she was commanded, filled Deacon with rage. He kicked out at the old man’s knee. As Aristodeus staggered back, cursing, Deacon rolled across the grass, coming up with his sword. He swung it in a wild arc, but Aristodeus blocked it with casual disdain. Deacon hacked and stabbed and sliced and bludgeoned, but each attack was turned aside, as if the old man were out for a leisurely stroll.

“Good,” Aristodeus kept saying. “Good. Now all we need to do is channel the ire we’ve awoken. Who knows, if you’re everything I hope you are, a few years of this, and you’ll stand a chance.”

Deacon stopped, doubling over and panting heavily. “A chance of what?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

The old man’s eyes flared, and for a moment, Deacon thought they reflected the light of the sun, but already another bank of cloud had rolled overhead, and the day was swallowed up by a far too early dusk. When he looked again, flames swirled around Aristodeus’s pupils, and Deacon was drawn into their depths. Shadows flickered in the blaze, and a terrible keening filled his head.

And then he was running through burning streets. Torrents of lava flowed in great walls to either side of him, and geysers of fire spouted high into a sky of acrid smoke. His skin bubbled and blistered, and his lungs were filled with scorching fumes. Behind him, there was such screeching, as if all the souls of the damned were coming to tear him to pieces. He pushed himself faster and faster, screaming at the leering horrors shambling from every twist and turn of the fiery maze.
 

Must keep running
, he told himself.
Keep running!

“Shader?”

It was Aristodeus’s voice, muffled behind the roar of the flames.

“Deacon!”