Amber and Ashes Read online

  “Thank you, Mina,” he said fervently.

  He wanted to make love to her again. He tried to kiss her. Laying down the comb, she turned to face him and put aside his seeking hands.

  “Not me, Lleu,” she said. “Others.”

  She looked into his eyes that were bright and alert, no longer wondering, no longer restless. She traced a finger over the kiss burned into his skin. “Do you understand?”

  “I understand. And I thank you for this gift.”

  Lleu caught hold of her hand, kissed it. His skin felt cool to the touch. Not deathly chill, but cooler than usual, as if he’d come from some chill place such as a shaded grove or a cavern. In all other respects, he appeared normal.

  “ ”Will I see you again, Mina?” he asked eagerly, as he dressed himself in the robes of a cleric of Kiri-Jolith.

  “Perhaps,” Mina answered, shrugging. “Do not count upon it. I have my duty to Chemosh, as do you.”

  He frowned, disappointed. “Mina …”

  She kept her back to him. Her fingernails tapped impatiently.

  “Praise Chemosh,” he said, after a moment, and went on his way.

  She heard his boots clatter on the stairs, heard him give the innkeeper a boisterous greeting.

  Mina picked up the comb and began to patiently ease the tangles from her auburn hair. Chemosh’s words lingered with her, as did his kiss.

  He had promised her power over life and death and he had fulfilled his promise. He had kept faith with her.

  “Praise Chemosh,” she said softly.

  hys sat amid the tall grass at the bottom of the hill, his staff cradled loosely in his arms, his thoughts drifting skyward, up where the white clouds scudded across the clear blue sky. Spread out on the hill above him, the sheep placidly grazed. Grasshoppers buzzed in the grass around him. Butterflies fluttered from buttercup to buttercup. Rhys sat so still that occasionally the butterflies landed on him, fooled by the burnt-orange color of his home-spun robes.

  Rhys was mindful of the sheep, for he was their shepherd, but he did not keep close watch on them. There was no need. His dog, Atta, lay on her belly some distance from him. Her head on her paws, she watched the sheep intently, noting every move each made. Atta saw three starting to stray from the flock, wandering off on a course that would soon take them over the hill, out of her sight. Her head raised. Her ears lifted. Her body tensed. She cocked an eye at her master, to see if Rhys had noticed.

  Rhys had seen the errant sheep, but he pretended he didn’t. He continued to sit at his ease, listening to the song of sparrow and goldfinch, watching a caterpillar crawl up a blade of grass, his thoughts with his god.

  Atta’s body quivered. She gave a low, warning growl. The sheep were almost at the top of the hill. Rhys relented.

  Rhys rose easily, effortlessly to his feet. He was thirty years old. His years showed on his face, which was dark-skinned and weathered, but not on his body. Daily exercise, his rigorous outdoor life, and his simple diet made him strong, lean, supple. He wore his dark hair long, in a single braid down his back. Extending his arm in a sweeping gesture, he gave the command, “Go bye.”

  Atta sped up the hillside, her black and white body a blur against the green. She did not head straight for the sheep or even look directly at them. Such a move from an animal that sheep equate with a wolf would have panicked them. Facing away from the sheep, watching them out of the corner of her eyes, Atta flanked the sheep on the right, causing them to veer left, back toward the herd.

  Rhys put his fingers to his mouth, gave a piercing whistle. The dog was too far away to hear his voice, but the shrill whistle carried clearly. Atta flopped onto her belly, keeping her eyes on the sheep, waiting for the next command.

  Rhys made a fist of his hand, held it between the sun and the horizon line. One fist for every hour between now and sunset. Time to think about returning his flock to the pens in order to be back for supper and the ritual training exercises. He gave another shrill whistle—long, short. This was “away,” the command that sent her to her left.

  Atta herded the sheep down the hill, back toward where Rhys stood with his staff. She kept her body in a straight line with the shepherd, balancing his movements with her own, the sheep between the two of them. If Rhys moved left, she moved right. If he moved right, she moved left. Her duty was to keep the sheep in motion, facing the correct direction, making certain they stayed together, and do all this without sending them into a panic-stricken run.

  The flock was about half-way down the hillside when Rhys spotted a sheep left behind. It had wandered into a stand of tall grass and he hadn’t noticed it. Rhys whistled again, a different command, one that meant “Lie down.”

  Atta slowed her pace. The command was not meant to be taken literally, although sometimes the dog would actually lie down on her belly. In this instance, she came to a halt. The flock slowed their pace. Atta fixed them with her mesmeric brown eyes, holding them, and they stopped.

  Rhys whistled again, another different signal. “Turn back,” he commanded.

  Certain that the flock would remain where she left them, Atta turned and sped up the hill. She spotted the lone sheep and got it moving, heading back to the flock. Once it was apparent that the sheep would rejoin the herd, Atta urged her flock on toward Rhys.

  All was going well until a ram took it into his woolly head to defy Atta. The ram, which was far heavier and several times larger than the small dog, turned around, stamped his hoof, and refused to budge.

  Atta crouched, froze in place. She stared at the sheep, her eyes intent. If the ram remained stubborn, she might rush in to give him a nip on the nose, but that rarely happened. The ram lowered his head. Atta began to creep forward at a moving crouch, her eyes fixed on the ram. After a moment’s tense confrontation, the ram suddenly gave way before the dog’s mesmerizing stare and whipped around to join the herd. Atta started them off once again.

  Rhys felt the blessings of the god swell within him. The green hillside, the blue sky, the white clouds, white sheep, the black and white dog flying over the grass, the darting swallows, a spiraling hawk, grasshoppers jumping up on his robes; the bright, hot, sinking sun; the feel of grass beneath his calloused bare feet: all was Rhys and he was all. All was Majere’s and the god was all.

  The blood flowing warm through his body, his staff lightly thumping the ground, Rhys moved without haste. He enjoyed the day, enjoyed the view, enjoyed his time alone in the hills. He enjoyed going back to his home again in the evening. The granite walls of the monastery stood on a hilltop opposite him and inside those walls was brotherhood, order, quiet contentment.

  His routine this day had been exactly the same as that of countless days previous. Majere willing, tomorrow would be no different. Rhys and the other monks of the Order of Majere rose in the dark hour before dawn. They spent an hour in meditation and prayer to Majere, then went out into the stone courtyard to perform the ritual exercises that warmed and stretched the body. After this, they ate a breakfast of meat or fish, served with bread and goat’s milk cheese, with goat’s milk to drink. Lunch—cheese and bread—was eaten in the fields or wherever they happened to be. Supper was onion soup, hot and nourishing, served with meat or fish, bread, and a mix of garden greens and fresh vegetables in the summer, apples and dried fruit and nuts in the winter.

  After breakfast, the monks went to their daily tasks. These varied by season. In the summer, they worked in the fields, tended to the sheep, pigs, and chickens, and made repairs to the buildings. Fall was harvest and laying in stores, salting down meat so that it would keep through the long months of cold and snow ahead, packing apples in wooden barrels. Winter was a time for indoor work: carding and combing wool, weaving cloth, cutting and sewing clothes; doing leather work; concocting potions for the sick. Winter was also a time for the mind: writing, teaching, learning, discoursing, discussing, speculating. Majere taught that the mind of the monk must be as quick and supple as the body.

  Evenings,
no matter what the time of year, were spent in the ritual practice of unarmed combat known as “merciful discipline.” The monks of Majere recognized that the world is a dangerous place and although they practiced and followed Majere’s precepts of peace and brotherhood for all mankind, they understood that peace must sometimes be maintained with force, and that to protect their own lives and those of others, they must be as ready to fight as to pray. Every night—rain or shine, snow or blazing sun—the monks gathered in their outdoor courtyard for training. They fought by waning sunlight in the summer, in darkness or by torchlight in the winter. All were required to attend practice, from the eldest—the Master, who had seen eighty years—to the youngest. The only excuse for missing nightly training was illness.

  Stripped naked to the waist, their bare feet slipping on the ice-rimed ground in the winter or the mud in the summer, the monks spent long hours training both body and mind in disciplined combat. They were not permitted to use blades or arrows or any other type of steel weapon, for Majere commanded that his monks must not take life unless innocent lives were in peril and then only when all other options had been tried and failed.

  Rhys’s favored weapon was the emmide—a staff that was much like a quarter staff, only longer and narrower. The word, emmide, was elven in derivation; the elves used such a staff to knock fruit from the trees. He had become a master of the art of fighting with the emmide, so much so that he now taught others.

  Rhys was content with his ordered life, deeply content, now that Majere had returned to them. He could see himself at eighty years of age—the same age as the Master—looking much the same as the Master: grizzled hair, weather-beaten skin stretched taunt over muscles and sinew and bone, face deeply lined, eyes dark and placid with the wisdom of the god. Rhys never planned to leave this place where he had come to know himself and make peace with himself. He never wanted to go back into the world.

  The world was inside him.

  Rhys arrived at the sheep pen. The sheep trotted docilely past him and into the fold, with Atta right behind them.

  “That’ll do,” said Rhys to the dog.

  This was the command that freed her of her charge. Atta wriggled all over in pleasure and came trotting up to him, her tongue lolling, eyes bright. He gave her reward—a pat on her head and a playful fondling of her ears.

  Rhys shut the sheep in the pen for the night. Atta joined the other herding dogs, brothers and sisters and cousins, who greeted her with sniffs and wagging tails. She settled down near the sheep fold to gnaw bones and doze, all the while keeping watch on the flock. Resting or sleeping, the dogs served as the guards through the night. Wolves and wildcats were not much of a problem during the summer months, when food was plentiful in the wild. The winter time was the most dangerous. Often the monks were roused from their sleep by the furious barking of the dogs. The monks would rush from their beds to drive the predators away with flaming torches.

  Lingering by the sheep pen, watching a mother dog hold down a squealing pup firmly with her paw while she licked him all over, Rhys gradually became aware that something was different. Something had changed. The tranquility of the monastery had been disturbed. Rhys could not have said how he knew this, except that he had lived here so long that he could sense even the most subtle differences in the feel of the place. He left the sheep fold, circled around the outbuildings: the forge, the baker’s large oven, the privies, and storage sheds, and walked within sight of the monastery proper.

  The monastery had been built by the monks of Majere hundreds of years ago, and it had changed little during all that time. Simple in design, more like a fortress than a temple, the two story building had been raised by the hands of the monks themselves, constructed of stone they had dug from a nearby quarry. The main building contained the sleeping quarters for the monks on the top story, with a communal dining hall, warming room, infirmary, and kitchen on the bottom level. Each monk had his own cell, furnished only with a straw mattress. Each cell had a window that was open to the air year-round. There were no doors on the cells or any of the rooms. The main building did have a door at the entrance, though Rhys often wondered why they bothered, for it was never locked.

  The monks had no fear of being robbed. Even kender would pass the monastery by with a shrug and a yawn. Everyone knew that the monks of Majere had no treasure vaults—not so much as a single pfennig, for they were not permitted to handle money. They had no possessions, nothing worth stealing unless you were a wolf with a taste for mutton.

  Walking around the building to the entrance door, Rhys came upon a strange wagon parked outside. It had just arrived, apparently, for its team of draft horses were being unhitched and led off for food and rest and a rub-down by two of the younger monks.

  Unhitching the horses was a bad sign, Rhys thought, for that meant the intruders would be staying. He turned on his heel and left, heading back to the monastery. He had no desire to meet these visitors. He was not in the least curious about them. He had no reason to think that these folk had anything to do with him and thus he was startled when he heard a voice call out to him.

  “Brother Rhys! Stay a moment. You are summoned to the Master.”

  Rhys halted, looking back toward the wagon. The two novice monks, who were leading the horses to the shed, bowed as they passed him, for he was a weapons master, known as a Master of Discipline. He bowed in response then went on. He and the monk who had called to him—who was the Master of the House—bowed to each other simultaneously, to reflect their equal status.

  “The visitors are here to see you, Brother,” said the monk. “They are with the Master now. You are to join them.”

  Rhys nodded his understanding. He had questions, naturally, but the monks refrained from all unnecessary speech and, since his questions would soon be answered, there was no need to engage in conversation. The two monks bowed again, and Rhys entered the monastery, while the Master of the House, who was in charge of the daily household affairs of the monastery, went on about his duties.

  The head of the monastery was known simply as the Master. He had an office off the common area. The office was not private, for it also served as the monastery library and the school room. The windowless room was furnished with several wooden desks of simple, solid construction, and wooden stools. Shelves filled with books and scrolls lined the walls. The room smelled of leather and vellum and ink and the oil that the monks rubbed into the wood of the desks.

  The Master was the eldest of the monks. Eighty years of age, he had lived in the monastery for over sixty of those years, having joined at the age of sixteen. Although he answered to the Prophet of Majere, who was the head of all the monks of Majere throughout the continent of Ansalon, the Master had only met the Prophet once, twenty years ago, on the day he had been confirmed as Master.

  Twice a year, the Master made a written report on the affairs of the monastery, a letter that was carried to the Prophet by one of the monks. The Prophet sent back a letter acknowledging receipt of the report, and that was the only exchange the two would have until the next letter. There were no comings and goings between monasteries, no exchange of news between one monastery and the next. So isolated were the monasteries that monks in one often had little knowledge of where another was located. Traveling monks were permitted to stay at a monastery, but most chose not to, for when they went out into the world—usually on a personal, spiritual journey, they were commanded to walk among the people.

  The monks of Majere were not interested in news of their fellow monks. They had no interest in the politics of any nation, took no sides in any war or conflict. (Because of this, they were often asked to be peace negotiators or to sit in judgment on disputes.) The yearly reports made by the Master were often little more than a notation of deaths among the brethren, a record of those who had newly joined, and a record of those who had gone out into the world. There would also be a brief description of the weather and how it had affected the crops or the harvest, and any additions or chang
es made to the monastery’s buildings.

  Change and upheavals in the outside world had such small effect on the monastery that a letter written by a Master from a monastery in 4000 PC would read similar to one penned by a Master from the same monastery centuries later.

  Rhys arrived in the office to find three people in the room with the Master—a middle-aged man and woman, who looked distressed and uncomfortable; and a young man, wearing the robes of a cleric of Kiri-Jolith, who was smiling, at ease. Rhys paused in the doorway. He had the impression that there was something familiar about these people, that he knew them. Rhys waited in silence for the Master to notice him.

  The Master’s long gray hair fell over his shoulders. His face was wrinkled as a winter apple, with high cheek bones, strong jaw and prominent nose. His eyes were dark and penetrating. He was a Master of Discipline and there was not a monk in the monastery, including Rhys, who could best him in combat.

  The Master was listening patiently to the middle-aged man, who was talking so fast that Rhys could not make out the jumble of words. The woman stood silently by, nodding her head in agreement, and sometimes casting an anxious glance at the young man. The older man’s voice and way of speaking was also familiar to Rhys. Finally, the Master glanced his way and Rhys bowed. The Master’s eyes flickered in response. He continued to give his full attention to his visitors.

  At last the elder man paused for breath. The woman dabbed at her eyes. The young man yawned and looked bored. The Master turned to Rhys.

  “Honored One,” Rhys said, bowing deeply to the Master. He bowed again to the strangers. “Fellow travelers.”

  “These are your parents,” said the Master without preamble, answering the question Rhys had not asked. “And this is your younger brother, Lleu.”

  hys turned his calm gaze upon them. “Father, Mother,” he said politely. “Lleu.” He bowed again.

  His father’s name was Petar, his mother’s Brandwyn. His brother, Lleu, was a little child when he left home.