The Priest Page 2

  Swallowing his bitterness, Tas gave him a bland look. “I certainly appreciate any guidance you would like to give, Brother. I have merely deferred to your experience until now. I will of course take the lead in Comun, if that is your wish.”

  Saldus compressed his lips and cast Tas a sideways glance before turning his attention to the road ahead again. “This is Brother Lijen’s flock. Both of us will defer to her in village matters. But, the villagers are expecting to see a member of the Thirty-Six come to save them from utter ruin and death… and not just any member, but the great and powerful Brother Tasnerek. Perhaps you should show them that.”

  “You know it is not our way to elevate one brother above the rest,” Tas murmured piously.

  Brother Saldus snorted. “As if that ever stopped any of you.”

  Tas gaped at him. They’d been on the road together for two weeks. Brother Saldus had been snide, suspicious, and generally unpleasant, but this was the first time he’d actually come right out and admitted to the bitterness and jealousy everyone knew existed within the Brotherhood but never acknowledged.

  After a quick glance in Tas’s direction, Brother Saldus scowled and urged his horse a few paces ahead. That was fine. The man’s company wasn’t enjoyable even at the best of times, and as brittle as Tas was now, he couldn’t handle any more probing questions or censure. They were less than a day’s ride away from the village of Comun, where he had a job to do. People’s lives depended on him. His life as he knew it depended on his performance. He needed every spare second he could get to calm and prepare himself, and even then, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach told him he might not be able to do it.

  Chapter Two

  GIRIK JERKED awake and nearly fell off the tiny, hard wooden chair.

  “Sorry,” Elderwoman Shaum whispered from the doorway.

  They both glanced at the frail, sleeping figure in the bed, but she didn’t stir. After blowing out a relieved breath, he returned his attention to the small round elderwoman poking her head around the door.

  She gave him a sad smile as she stepped into the room, wiping her hands on her coarse gray apron. “I thought you might like t’ know the brothers have been spotted on the road. My Fen ran all the way from Tellok’s fields to tell us. They’ll be here soon.”

  Girik grimaced and nodded. “Thank you, Elderwoman.”

  She nodded in return and started to close the door behind her, but stopped and whispered, “We’ll take good care o’ her. Don’t you worry.”

  He ducked his head. “I know.”

  After she’d closed the door again, Girik stared at his mother’s prone form. In the weak gray light coming from the one small window high in the wall, she looked ethereal, almost ghostly. Her long, prematurely white hair fanned across the pillow in thin wisps, and her skin was as pale as milk.

  Clenching his jaw against a flood of emotion, he closed his eyes, rested his forehead on the edge of the mattress, and exhaled a long breath through his nose.

  “Giri?”

  Thin fingers threaded through his coarse, unruly blond hair. He lifted his head and captured the tiny hand in his clumsy paw. Her skin was so cold all the time now—he didn’t understand how she wasn’t constantly shivering. “Mama.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “You know your mama is always happiest when your face is the first thing she sees, but you look so tired, my love. You must rest too. You work too hard.”

  “I rest.”

  She frowned. “Did you sleep in this chair?”

  He ducked his head and gave the hand he held a gentle kiss. Her thin fingers clasped his with more strength than he thought her capable of. “Giri, do not do this thing… not for me. I am old. I have lived my life.”

  He clenched his jaw again and shook his head, too choked with emotion to form a verbal denial.

  “You have given this village too much already. They cannot ask more of you,” she continued before a spate of coughing cut her short.

  He dropped her hand and slid his arm beneath her shoulders to prop her up. “Don’t, Mama. It is done. I promised to take care of you, and I keep my promises, like you taught me.”

  “I cannot bear to think of you suffering that again,” she wheezed between gasping breaths.

  “Shhhhh. Shhhhh. I’m strong, Mama. I’ll be fine. Don’t make yourself sick.”

  This was the reason he’d put off telling her until the night he’d planned to move her to her new home. But he should have known better. Even bedridden, living in their tiny cabin on the very edge of the village lands, the news had reached her long before he’d had a chance to prepare her.

  Damned gossips.

  When her coughing abated and she could breathe with as much ease as her sickly lungs were able, he lowered her to the mattress again and tugged her blankets up. The brazier in the corner of the room made the room hot and stuffy, but she needed it. She’d weighed next to nothing in his arms. She was wasting away before his eyes.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Her sweet face was pinched with worry, but she said nothing. She was too weak to argue anymore, and that made his stomach clench with anguish he couldn’t let her see.

  “Rest, Mama. Everything will be okay. I promise.”

  He stroked a thumb over the family mark on the inside of her wrist and tried not to notice how translucent her skin was beneath the triple fence post design, how black the faded ink looked in comparison to her pallor, and how vibrant the green vines appeared against the sallowness of her complexion.

  She was the only family he had. Without her, he had no purpose.

  Unable to face her quiet, reproachful regard any longer, he stood and headed for the door. “I’ll send someone up to take care of you. I must go. I love you.”

  “Giri,” his mother whispered plaintively, but he closed the door gently behind him and descended the stairs.

  Built for someone much closer to normal-sized than Girik’s great clumsy bulk, the ceilings and walls of Elderwoman Shaum’s family house closed in on him. He couldn’t breathe, nor could he move without bashing into something. He needed to get out in the open air, but first he made certain the elderwoman sent one of her half a dozen children or legion of grandchildren up to tend to his mother.

  In exchange for his sacrifice, the village elders had agreed to pay the Shaums handsomely to take care of his mother, and Girik fully intended to make sure they earned that coin.

  As soon as Girik stepped outside, Bayor let out a joyful bark and bounded toward him, his tongue lolling and broomstick tail wagging wildly. The enormous hunting hound’s shaggy head barely reached Girik’s waist, but he could easily rest his paws on Elderwoman Shaum’s shoulders… which was why he was now banned from entering the Shaum household. Bayor wasn’t used to being kept from his master’s side, and it left the hound clingy and anxious for hours after every night Girik spent with his mother, since the bargain was struck.

  “Come on. I need some air.”

  He broke into a jog as soon as he cleared the Shaum’s garden gate, and Bayor kept pace easily. Girik was too big to be much of a runner, but his long legs ate up the ground at a lope, and soon he stood in the quiet of the forest’s edge, the only place he’d ever felt at home. Breathing heavily, he strode to the nearest tree and punched it, hard enough to scrape and bruise his knuckles. He welcomed the pain as he pressed his forehead to the trunk and closed his eyes. Bayor let out a small whine beside him, but Girik barely heard it.

  For a long time, he stood like that, just listening to his breath heave in and out of his lungs. He wanted to scream and rail against the gods, but he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop once he started. He wanted to pound the tree until his fists were bloody, hoping some sort of peace might follow, but he needed his hands to work, and the brothers would likely be displeased if the village’s Offering came to them damaged.

  That was their job, after all.

  Blowing out a breath, he twisted and slid to the ground at the base of the
tree. Propping his back against it, he tried to calm himself as Bayor lay down beside him and rested his head on Girik’s lap. Girik threaded his fingers through Bayor’s coarse fur to comfort both of them.

  The brothers would be in the village soon, if they weren’t there already. As the Offering, Girik wouldn’t be expected to show himself until the ritual the next day. The brothers certainly didn’t want to sit down for a meal and pleasant conversation with the person they’d be beating bloody on the morrow. No one would expect him to be there for the official arrival and greetings, but he could admit to a little morbid curiosity.

  What would the brother be like this time? Would he be the kind of man who truly enjoyed his work, like the last one?

  He shivered and drew his knees to his chest. He was a grown man now at eight-and-twenty years. He wasn’t the fifteen-year-old boy he’d been the last time he’d stupidly chosen to become an Offering. He hadn’t any idea of what he was getting himself into back then.

  He knew now… and he was afraid.

  He’d have to be a fool not to be. Some of the villagers might consider him a bit slow in the thinking department, but he wasn’t that slow. He knew full well what he’d gotten himself into… better than most. But he’d do it again a thousand times over if it meant his mother would be taken care of.

  With a gusty sigh, he nudged Bayor’s heavy head from his lap, stood, brushed the dirt off his coarse wool trousers, and wiped the sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve. Fall teetered on the edge of winter, and most of the villagers had already taken their cold-weather robes out of storage. Girik had always hated all those smothering layers of drab heavy cloth. Perhaps because of his size, he rarely felt the cold and preferred only his plain brown shirt and trousers, except in the harshest of winters—less wool to get weighed down with the constant damp that defined Rassa’s climate.

  The crack of a branch breaking and falling to the ground nearby made him jump and search the shadows around him. The coarse mottled gray-and-gold fur along Bayor’s spine bristled as he too searched their surroundings. With the Spawn still roaming the area, it was stupid for him to venture out on his own, particularly as preoccupied as he was. While he and Bayor might be a match for most natural predators coming down from the mountains, the thing haunting their forest was anything but natural, and it had ruined crops and killed livestock this close to the village before.

  He wouldn’t be much of an Offering if the Spawn got him first.

  What would happen to his mama then?

  Wary now, he hurried out of the woods. With Bayor at his heels, he circled around and climbed a small hill that overlooked the village, being sure to keep to the shadow of the few sparse trees that grew atop it. Someone had erected a shrine to Quanna on the spot, ages ago, before the village temple had been built, and Girik sent a prayer to her as he searched the square below. A crowd had already gathered, but the brothers were easy to spot in their traditional russet robes, like three great blots of dried blood on a Rassan weaver’s fine cloth of browns and grays.

  He shuddered and clenched his jaw again as Bayor pressed against his leg. Pushing up the rough, heavily patched linen of his sleeve, he traced the pattern inked into his wrist with his fingertips. Identical to his mama’s, the three fence posts linked by interwoven vines always gave him courage. She’d told him once that the posts signified strength, a bulwark, a barrier against harm. That was the blood he came from, farmers and protectors. Even if her family had turned their backs on her, she was still proud of the lineage she’d come from, and she’d instilled that pride in her son.

  He straightened his shoulders and set his jaw. He’d faced one of the pain priests before and survived, just for the privilege of bearing that mark… for selfish reasons. Bastards were rarely allowed family marks, especially without anyone else from the family to second. But apparently, such rules could be bent if a bastard proved himself useful and took on a task no one else would, like becoming an Offering. He was a full-grown man now. He could certainly take whatever the brother dealt this time too, and for a far greater cause. Those people gathered below him to fawn over the new arrivals had never been particularly kind to him or his mama, but they would be kind to her now. He could be strong enough for both of them this time to make sure of it.

  Chapter Three

  TAS FORCED his unease down as far as he could manage and slammed a heavy mental door on it. Plastering on a fake smile for the gathered flock, he nodded his greetings to the brother in charge of this temple and the assembled village elders while his stomach twisted sourly around the cold meat, bread, and cheese they’d eaten hours earlier.

  “Brother Lijen,” Brother Saldus murmured with a nod.

  Brother Lijen, a tall, lean woman with short-cropped mouse-brown hair, appeared to have some difficulty tearing her gaze from the crystal on Tas’s chest as she said, “Welcome, Brothers. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say how grateful and relieved we are that you arrived safely.”

  Not everyone, Tas thought as he glanced furtively around them, wondering which of the wary, strained faces belonged to the Offering or the Offering’s loved ones.

  Poor fools.

  His stomach twisted again, and he swallowed thickly as the official party finished their prepared greetings and led the way to the temple.

  “Unfortunately, with Comun being on the edge of the kingdom and rarely receiving visitors from Blagos Keep, the temple doesn’t have sleeping chambers beyond my small cell at the back,” Brother Lijen explained apologetically. “I would have gladly given up my bed, of course, but there isn’t room for two, so Elderman Servil has graciously offered more comfortable lodgings for you at his home. After we’ve made our prayers to the gods, we will adjourn there for refreshment and rest. I’m sure your journey from the keep has been long and tiring.”

  “Thank you, Brother Lijen,” Tas said with unfeigned relief.

  Moving past the silent gawking villagers, they climbed the stone steps of the temple and passed through large wooden double doors almost as wide as the building itself. The lamps had already been lit against the rapidly encroaching dark, so Tas and Brother Saldus had no difficulty navigating the crowded rows of empty benches as they followed Brother Lijen to the first row in front of the altar.

  Like all village temples, the building was square and squat. Inside, simple, plain sanded wood floors, walls, and benches filled the space. As dictated by tradition and propriety, the only ornament was the carved wooden reredos that stretched up to the ceiling beyond the altar, and Tas smiled for the first time in what felt like months at the familiar faces gazing down on them.

  As always, Quanna, Moc, and Chytel were depicted in the center, with the lesser gods carved in an arch around them. Blessed Harot, founder of their order, knelt at the feet of the gods, facing the room with the three greater gods’ hands on his shoulders and the top of his head, symbolizing his role as chosen servant and mouthpiece for all of them.

  But unlike at many of the poorer remote villages Tas had been to, the craftsman who had carved this scene had been surprisingly skilled. They had snuck in details Tas hadn’t seen before, even in the great hall of Blagos Keep itself. Quanna’s hair was as primly bound as always, but the artist had put a wave in the strands that seemed to almost dance as Tas watched. Hints of what might be considered flowers peeked out between them. Her face was as somber as the Brotherhood dictated, but if he glanced at her sideways, he could almost see the ghost of a smile at the corners of her lips, and her oiled and waxed wooden eyes seemed to sparkle in the flickering lamplight.

  Of course, the strain and exhaustion could be getting to him. He might be imagining things. Still, he’d made a hobby of studying the carvings in every village he’d ever visited, and delusion or not, this was a work the craftsman should be proud of.

  Who was the artist? Did he or she still live in the village?

  Tas itched to study the unique shapes hidden in Moc’s beard and the hint of mischief in Chytel’s traditionally
androgynous scholarly mien. If he only had the time, he’d lay odds he’d even find a depiction of Ryarth the Leveler hidden somewhere among the lesser gods or peeking out from the twisting vine border.

  Branded anathema by the other gods for his part in the creation of the Rift—unleashing the very Spawn Tas was tasked with hunting—there were still superstitious farmers and herders who feared Ryarth’s wrath if they failed to show their gratitude for all he had done to turn Rassa’s rocky, unusable landscape into something fit for cultivation and habitation. Many of these villages would never have existed, let alone thrived, without Ryarth’s intervention. Tas had always turned a blind eye whenever he found any proscribed carvings, paintings, or hidden shrines—though other brothers weren’t always so generous. It hurt Tas’s heart every time gorgeous works like this were irrevocably damaged removing such blasphemous depictions. He hoped this artist had hidden Ryarth well.

  Brother Lijen stood and took one of the sacred brass bowls from the altar, dragging Tas’s attention back to the present before Brother Saldus caught him woolgathering. She returned to the bench next to them, and without preamble, she began rotating the wooden mallet along its rim, filling the temple with a sweet, pure note. All three of them joined it, humming the tone before Brother Lijen nodded for them to begin the traditional evening hymn.

  As Tas had learned on their journey, Brother Saldus’s voice was a little rough and thready with age, but not terrible. Brother Lijen, on the other hand, could carry the tune, but just barely, which might have been one of the reasons she’d been relegated to a village at the base of the Great Barrier Mountains, on the very edge of the kingdom. Still, the woman didn’t seem particularly bitter with her lot—at least not from what Tas had seen so far—and she had that beautiful reredos to look at every day. Tas could think of worse places to live out his remaining years, even if only a few short weeks ago the thought would have appalled him.