The Ancient

TWENTY-SEVEN

Three Perspectives

On pain of death!” Brother Giavno said again, becoming dangerously animated. Out on rock-collection detail, Giavno and his two companions had been the first to note the approach of Cormack and the strange-looking man in the black suit of some exotic material-Giavno thought it was called “silk,” but as he had seen the stuff only once in his life, and many years before, he couldn’t be certain. The stranger wore a typical farmer’s hat, but Giavno noted some black fabric under that as well.

“Greetings to you, too,” Cormack replied.

“How can you be alive?” one of the other brothers asked, and Cormack tapped his beret.

“God’s will and good luck, I would say,” the fallen monk replied.

“You know nothing of God,” Giavno growled.

“Says the man who whipped him nearly to death,” Bransen, at Cormack’s side, quipped. “A godly act, indeed-at least, according to the mores of many Abellicans I have known. It is strange to me how much like Samhaists they seem.”

Giavno trembled and seemed about to explode. Behind him, over the rocky ridge, some other monks called out and soon a swarm of brothers was fast running toward the rocky beach.

“Why did you come here, Cormack?” Giavno asked, seeming as much concerned as outraged-a poignant reminder to Cormack that he and this man had once been friends. “You know the consequences.”

“You thought me already dead.”

“A death you earned with your treachery.”

“Your definition, not mine. I followed that which was in my heart, and many of the brothers here, I would wager, were glad of it. I find it difficult to comprehend that I was alone in my distaste for our imprisoning of the Alpinadorans.”

“What you find difficult to comprehend is that you make no rules here, or anywhere in the Church. If Father De Guilbe wished for your opinion on the matter, he would have asked. And he did not.”

“Ever the dutiful one, aren’t you?” Cormack replied, and Giavno narrowed his eyes.

“Alive?” came a shout from behind, and Father De Guilbe, surrounded by an armed entourage, appeared over the crest of the hill. “Are you mad to come back here?”

“How would I know differently?” Cormack asked. “I remember little beyond the sting of your mercy.”

“Play not coy with me, traitor,” said De Guilbe, and unlike Giavno, there wasn’t a hint of compassion or mercy in his tone. He turned to the nearest guards and said, “Take him.”

“I would not,” said the man standing beside Cormack.

Father De Guilbe dropped a withering gaze over him-except he did not shrink back in the least. “And who are you?”

“My name is Bransen, though that is of no consequence to you,” Bransen replied. “I am a man here not of my will, but of misfortune, and I come to you only to repay the debt that I owe to this man, and to the people of some of the other islands.”

De Guilbe shook his head as if not comprehending any of it, and Bransen let it go, for it was of no consequence.

“I bring a grave warning that your world is about to be washed away,” Bransen said. “It is my duty to tell you that, I suppose, but whether you choose to act upon it or not is of little consequence to me.”

A couple of the monks bristled, obviously focusing on the last part of his quip and not the more important announcement. Of the group, now twenty brothers, only a few raised their eyebrows in alarm, and even that became a past thought almost immediately, as one of Father De Guilbe’s entourage announced, pointing at Bransen, “He has a gemstone!”

Cormack glanced at Bransen in alarm, but the man from Pryd Town seemed bothered not at all.

“Is this true?” asked Father De Guilbe.

“If it is, it is none of your affair.”

“You walk a dangerous-”

“I walk where I choose to walk and how I choose to walk,” Bransen interrupted. “Feign no dominion over me, disingenuous old fool. My father was of your order, a brother of great accomplishment. No, not any accomplishment that you would understand or appreciate,” he answered De Guilbe’s curious look. “And more to your pity.”

“From Entel?” Father De Guilbe asked. “Your swarthy appearance bespeaks a Southern heritage.”

Bransen grinned knowingly at the obvious ploy.

“It matters not,” De Guilbe said. “You are here with a criminal and carrying contraband.”

“Contraband?” Bransen said with a mocking chuckle. “You presume to know how I came about this gemstone. You presume that I have a gemstone. You do not understand Jhesta Tu philosophy, yet pretend that you have any understanding of me, or of what I will do to your guards if you send them forth, or of how I will come back in the dark of night and easily defeat any defenses you construct, that you and I will speak more directly at your own bedside.”

It took a while for all of that to digest, and Giavno at last broke the uncomfortable silence by berating Cormack, “What have you brought to us?”

“A man to deliver a message, and then we are gone from here.”

“The glacier north of your lake is home to a Samhaist,” Bransen announced. “The Ancient himself. Ancient Badden, who wars with Dame Gwydre of Vanguard.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I was there, just yesterday,” Bransen answered. “Badden claims dominion over this lake and works to ensure that all here, yourselves included-and especially, if he should ever learn that Abellicans reside on this most holy of Samhaist places-will be washed away on a great wave of his murderous wrath. If he executes his plan there is for you no escape. If he is not stopped this place you name as Chapel Isle will become a washed stone on an uninhabited hot lake.”

“Preposterous!” said Giavno, while the monks around him whispered and shuffled nervously, and looked all around for someone to settle their fears from the sudden shock.

Bransen shrugged, as if unconcerned.

“We are to believe you?” Father De Guilbe asked skeptically. “You come to us beside a traitor…”

“A man I hardly know, but one possessed of more sense than you it would seem. I have come to deliver a message as repayment to this man you name as traitor and yet who feels obligated to you still. Whether you act upon that message or not is not my concern. I hold no love for your Church. Indeed, from what I have seen you are more than deserving of my contempt. But I am Jhesta Tu, and so such feelings as contempt have no place in my world.”

He turned to Cormack, but before he could address the man, Giavno assailed him, “Jhesta Tu? What is Jhesta Tu?”

Bransen eyed the fiery man out of the corner of his eye. “Something you could never begin to comprehend.”

“Take them!” Giavno yelled, and immediately a pair of guards, brandishing short swords, leaped at Bransen and Cormack.

They never got close. Bransen, expecting it, even coaxing it, leaped at the first, kicking his right foot out to the man’s right side, then sweeping it across. It posed no real threat to the monk, but had him distracted so that that the real attack, a snap-kick from Bransen’s left foot, caught him right in the chest, blasting out his breath in a great gasp. Bransen landed lightly back on his right foot and propelled himself forward and left, beside the staggering monk’s awkward thrust. He snatched the man by the wrist with his right hand, drove his left hand brutally against the monk’s straightened elbow, then quickly covered the man’s sword hand with his own, bending the monk’s wrist over painfully and stealing his strength-and his grip on the sword.

The blade didn’t fall an inch before Bransen snapped it out of the air, and he spun away, back-kicking the wounded monk in the side to ensure that there would be no pursuit, and also to shift his own momentum, driving him to intercept the second approaching guard.

The short swords collided repeatedly in a series of arm-numbing parries that ended with Bransen looping his blade over that of the confused monk. A twist and jerk sent the short sword to the ground, and left the tip of Bransen’s sword at the stunned monk’s throat. And it all happened in the space of a few heartbeats.

Bransen laughed and straightened, moving his blade back from the terrified man. He hooked the fallen sword with his own and deftly flipped it into his left hand, then turned to Giavno and flung both swords, spinning end over end, to stick into the ground right before the monk.

“You have been warned,” Bransen announced. “Ancient Badden will destroy you.”

He turned and walked away.

Cormack lingered a short while longer, looking mostly to Father De Guilbe. His expression was one of apology, perhaps, but mostly it was filled with pleading. But there was no more to say, so he followed Bransen back to the boat.

Both Cormack and Milkeila accompanied Bransen onto the forested island of Yossunfier. Many more people came out to greet them before they even got their boat ashore. The whole of Milkeila’s tribe, it seemed, came down to the waterfront, shielding their eyes from the morning glare, whispering among themselves at this surprising group approaching their island home.

Many scowls focused on Cormack and his obvious Abellican attire, but Androosis was there, along with Toniquay and Canrak, instructing his kin that this particular monk was no enemy of Yossunfier.

As the trio glided in near the beach, strong hands grabbed the craft and ushered it up onto the beach. Toniquay stepped front and center before Milkeila as she exited the boat, the higher-ranking shamans deferring to him because of his intimate knowledge of this situation and these participants.

He stared at Milkeila for just a few moments, then scrutinized Cormack, his expression giving the man no indication of how much his actions had ingratiated him to the barbarians. Then Toniquay’s gaze fell over Bransen, but only for a moment.

“What do you presume?” Toniquay asked Milkeila. He waited just a short while of uncomfortable silence before adding, “Do you believe that your friend has earned the right to step onto our land simply because he, unlike so many of his kin, took a moral road? Do you think that all past wrongs will be simply forgotten?”

“It was at great personal cost!” Milkeila replied, instinctively defending her lover, who put a hand on her arm to calm her. “But that is not why we have come. Cormack signaled to me and I answered his call.”

“Signaled?” Toniquay said suspiciously. “And how did he know a way in which he might signal you, Milkeila? And how did you know to answ…” He stopped and waved his hand and shook his head. His point had been made that the woman would surely have to answer for her apparent secret relationship with this Abellican, but Toniquay was more interested in hearing Milkeila’s tale at that time.

“Why is he here?” the shaman asked.

“Cormack found this man, Bransen,” Milkeila replied, and she put her hand on Bransen’s shoulder. The man in the black suit nodded, though he obviously understood little of the conversation.

“Bransen fell from the glacier,” said Milkeila.

Toniquay looked at her skeptically, and doubting murmurs grew all about them. “Then he would be dead,” Toniquay said.

“But he is not,” said Milkeila. “Whether through simple luck and soft mud, or his extraordinary powers-and he is truly blessed-I know not. But he is here, and he was up there, and he comes to us with a dire warning. The Ancient of the Samhaists has taken the glacier as his home, and plots now to destroy all of us who dwell upon Mithranidoon.”

“Samhaists?” Toniquay echoed. He had heard the name before, in the private discussions among the shamans about people who lived beyond Mithranidoon’s warm waters. The Samhaists, so it was rumored, had given this place its name, though that had been centuries before. In the lore of Yan Ossum, shamans had gone south to teach their magic to the men of Honce, long before the many battles and wars between the two peoples. In Alpinadoran mythology, Samhaist magic was a direct offshoot of the Alpinadoran Ancient Gods, though in Samhaist lore, the order, and who taught whom, was of course reversed.

“This stranger is from outside of Mithranidoon?” Toniquay asked. “Strange then that he arrives just a few years after the Abellicans. Before them, none had come to us from the outside since the powries, before my father’s father was born.” Even as he denied the possibility, though, Toniquay had to admit that the man’s clothing was fairly convincing, and unlike anything he had ever seen.

“He is an Abellican spy,” someone from the side yelled, a sentiment that was echoed through the crowd.

“He is not of my former comrades,” Cormack answered. “He is no Abellican, and has only been to Chapel Isle on one occasion-yesterday-to deliver the same message there that we deliver here. This is no trick, Toniquay. On my word, for what that is worth to you. I found this man in the mud on the northern bank of Mithranidoon, injured. He came to us with a tale that you must hear, that my people must hear, that the powries must hear. For if he speaks truly, and I believe that he does, then all of us are in dire peril, and will soon be washed from our homes.”

Toniquay stared hard at Cormack for just a few moments and then motioned to some of his nearby tribesmen. Soon the trio found themselves surrounded by armed Alpinadoran warriors.

Cormack immediately turned to Bransen and grabbed the man by the arm. “They are honorable, but careful,” he said in the common language of Honce.

“I insist that you remain with us while we investigate your claims,” Toniquay explained.

“Be fast, for all our sakes,” Milkeila answered.

Toniquay nodded his agreement and motioned to the warriors, who escorted Bransen and Cormack to a nearby hut, while Milkeila stayed with Toniquay and the other shamans.

She knew what they would do, and was not surprised when several of the more powerful shamans called down high-flying birds. Weaving spells, they each bound their sight to that of an individual bird, then sent the winged creatures on their way, and for the next several minutes, the powerful elders saw through the eyes of their familiars. Unlike Ancient Badden’s heightened powers, though, these shamans couldn’t control their familiars, and so they were at the whims of the aerial creatures.

Still, it didn’t take very long for more than one of the birds to climb above the glacial rim, and the ice castle gleamed in the midday light.

To her surprise, a most pleasant one, Milkeila was allowed to leave Yossunfier with her two companions. She had not been forgiven, Toniquay assured her, and would ultimately have to answer the many questions her arrival with the men of Honce had raised, beyond the worries of some strange “Ancient” plotting atop the glacier.

Now, though, given the revelations, they all had more important issues before them, so Milkeila, Bransen, and Cormack paddled off for Red Cap Island, while Toniquay and the others plotted as to how they would best bring all the Alpinadoran tribes of the islands together again in an even more urgent cause.

Father De Guilbe rubbed his face and leaned back in his seat, breathing hard.

“It cannot be,” Brother Giavno said, shaking his head in denial.

“Exactly as the stranger said,” De Guilbe confirmed. He tossed a soul stone back onto his desk, the same stone that had just allowed him an out-of-body journey, where he had willed his spirit to fly up to the great glacier looming over Mithranidoon.

“They are boring a chasm that will collapse the front edge of the glacier into our lake,” he explained.

“Ancient Badden?”

“It can only be. The castle of ice has the Samhaist tree design.”

“Then Cormack was not lying, and the stranger is…?”

“Of no concern to us at this time,” Father De Guilbe answered. “We must be gone from this place posthaste. Our time here was not profitable-we claimed not a single soul-and so we will continue our mission elsewhere.”

“We will allow Ancient Badden to destroy the lake and all who live upon it?”

“What choice have we, Brother?”

Brother Giavno trembled and lifted his hands several times, as if about to divulge some plan. But alas, he had no answers.

“Prepare the brothers, prepare the boats,” Father De Guilbe instructed.

The differences between the reactions of the three peoples were not lost on the foursome of Bransen, Cormack, Milkeila, and Mcwigik. In fact, the reaction of the supposedly vile powries as compared to that of the humans proved startling to the two men and Milkeila-startling and embarrassing.

“Yach, but ye done good!” Kriminig the powrie leader congratulated Mcwigik after he had led Bransen and the others to his boss so that the stranger could tell his tale. “That beast up there’s thinking to be dumping on us when we’re not knowing, but now that we’re knowing, we’re the ones to be doing the dumping!”

“You know of Ancient Badden?” Cormack dared interject.

“Ye just telled me of him,” Kriminig replied, as if he didn’t understand the point of the question, and while the dwarf leader began barking commands at his charges, readying them for a fight, the three humans found a moment of quiet discussion.

“He believed us without reservation,” Cormack whispered, his tone clearly marking the distinction of that reaction to those of the monks and the Alpinadorans.

“Or maybe he is just happy for a fight,” Milkeila said, and she swung about to the wider commotion going on around them, the many excited discussions springing up among the powries.

“Bah, but I’m sad to hear this killer’s surrounded himself with trolls,” one said. “Their blood’s not much for shining me beret.”

“Aye, but he’s got a swarm o’ them, they’re saying,” another piped in. “We’ll get a glow out of it. The folks of the other islands won’t be needing their share, don’t ye know?”

“Yach, and there’ll be bunches o’ them folks about, too, won’t there?” the first replied with a wink. “More than a few’re going to be bleeding bright red.”

“And who’s to say they won’t be turning on us when this killer’s chopped down?” asked a third.

“A few hundred trolls and a few hundred men, and only two score of us,” the first said with a sigh. “It’ll take me all the day to collect the blood!”

“Ha ha!” the others laughed, and they swatted each other on sturdy shoulders and rolled along their way, as only powries could.

That last comment had brought a look of alarm to both Milkeila and Cormack, though-until Mcwigik and Bikelbrin shuffled over.

“Bah, but don’t ye be thinking me kin’re to start any trouble up there, other than the trouble that… what did ye call him? That Ancient?” said Mcwigik. “No trouble, I tell ye, other than finishing the trouble that one’s already started.”

“They are willing to fight beside the monks and the Alpinadorans, then?” asked Cormack.

“Ye heard Kriminig say just that,” said Bikelbrin.

“Sure, and a fine row it’ll be, we’re all for hoping,” Mcwigik added. “Though we’re not even knowing if yer monks’re coming along for the play. Did ye hear them say that?”

Cormack’s lips grew very tight, all the confirmation anyone there needed to understand that he was filled with doubts about whether his brethren would march alongside the rest or not.

“Yach, but it’s not to matter,” Mcwigik said generously, and he slapped Cormack on the back. “That Ancient up there’s made himself an angry swarm o’ powries, and we’re meaning to show him that doing so wasn’t the smartest thing he’s ever done!”

“Hope he’s not too old and withered,” said Bikelbrin. “Me beret’s needing a bit of a gloss.”