Realm of Dragons

For Brother Odd, the hour of silence was always the hardest part of life on the Isle of Leveros. For that hour, the sounds of the great monastery faded away, and none were permitted to speak. Even those who normally meditated by reciting the hidden names of the gods had to do so silently, not a sound permitted to mar the tranquility there.

It was a moment designed to leave the inhabitants alone with their thoughts, free to delve inward to seek the divine connection, to look for peace. Brother Odd hated it.

Brother Odd; that hadn’t always been his name. He suspected it might have been a joke on the part of the abbot. After all, he made such an odd monk. Oh, the shaving of his head had taken away the long mane of shaggy dark locks that had been there, and he deliberately extended that hairlessness to the beard he had once forked and dyed to intimidate his enemies, but he was still larger than most of them, still had to hunch in so that he didn’t show his brothers the frame of the knight he had been.

No, he told himself as he sat in his cell, do not think of that. Clear your mind. Think of nothing.

Thinking of nothing should have been easy in a space like this. His monastic cell was bare save for a simple cot to sleep on, with nothing but empty gray stone to fill his mind. It was such a contrast to the chambers he’d once enjoyed. Even on campaign, his tent had featured a feather mattress, and there had always been a golden wine jug close to hand…

Stop it, Brother Odd ordered himself.

These memories were the seductive ones, the ones that seemed innocuous until he started to think about them. Yet if he sat with them, he knew that the others would follow. Knowing that he couldn’t keep sitting in his cell, he rose and padded from it, feeling the itch of his rough habit as he walked.

He did even that in silence, because the hour was absolute. Even the abbot made no sound during it. Those who broke the rule were punished through extra work in the scriptorium or even expulsion. Maybe, Brother Odd thought, it would be better to be punished like that. All the gods knew he deserved it.

He couldn’t risk leaving, though. Here he was safe, from the man he was, and from the things he’d done. Out in the world, who knew what evil he would visit on it?

Brother Odd wove his way through the monastery in silence, out into the gardens where he would normally work with the others, the backbreaking labor easy to a man with muscles honed through years of warfare. He went past that garden, to a garden of contemplation where stones carved with gods and demons and more stood, and the floor was a tiled thing, worn by so many feet that there were grooves in it.

He sat there among the statues for a moment or two, but could already feel the memories rising, blood and death sitting on the edge of his thoughts as if waiting for the merest slip. A fragment of memory seeped through: a child’s body, broken by fallen masonry. Brother Odd shuddered at that image, but the worst part of it was that he couldn’t even remember exactly when it had been.

Has there been so much violence that I can’t even place it? he wondered.

The answer to that came as more thoughts of his past life flooded in, past the barriers he had so carefully built on the island. He saw a foe swinging a sword, felt the crunch of impact as he stepped to the side and struck back. He saw the brightness of the tournament field, soon giving way to the fire pits used to get rid of the bodies in the aftermath of a battle. Was it Landshane, or Merivel? Not one of the skirmishes, nor even the last foray into the Southern Kingdom, but Brother Odd still couldn’t place it all.

He felt his disgust rising with the memories, and his hatred. Not of anything else, for he had sworn to love all things as a monk, but of himself. Of the man he had been. To wipe away that hatred, he stood and started to move his body through the stretches and movements some monks used to try to meditate in motion, forcing his body to twist and turn and even wheel upside down.

He felt the moment when something switched in his movements. A stretch became a lunge at an opponent, a twist turned into a kick that would have knocked a man flat. He turned as if he had a blade in his hand, moving through the movements of the twelve plays of the sword in two hands. By the time that he was done, Brother Odd was sweating, and he hated himself even more.

This can’t continue, he told himself. I can’t be that man.

He set out in search of the abbot, finding him where he always was in the silent hour: kneeling on a ramp that came out from the monastery’s walls, looking out over the island in his meditations. Brother Odd approached, and with the silent hour still continuing, could only stand there while the abbot continued to kneel. He stood and waited, knowing that he should be meditating himself, but now all he could see in his mind’s eye was death.

It didn’t matter that the cause had been noble, that he’d been a knight who had fought on the king’s behalf. Brother Odd knew better than anyone that he hadn’t cared about that at the time, only about the violence, about the chance to prove he was the greatest, about the thrill of it.

Finally, sonorously, the great bell in the monastery’s tower tolled, bringing an end to the hour of silence. Brother Odd made to approach the abbot, but the old man raised a hand to make him pause. It was a good minute later before Abbot Verle rose, turning to face Brother Odd, his face curiously unwrinkled in spite of his advancing age. They said that the old man had possessed the skill to heal wounds as a younger monk, and to see visions of the gods.

“You have come to me because you are troubled, Brother,” the abbot said.

“Yes, Father Abbot. I have had… the thoughts and dreams still trouble me in meditation and prayer.”

It was such a simple way to put such a wealth of horror; horror that he had inflicted on the world. How many were dead now because of him? What might they have done with their lives?

“The same thoughts?” the abbot asked. “Thoughts of the man you were?”

Brother Odd nodded, hanging his head in shame. “I cannot seem to push them from my mind. It is like the man I was is waiting beneath the surface of me, waiting to fight his way back. How can I put that man away for good?”

“I think you are asking the wrong question,” the abbot said. He gestured for Brother Odd to follow as he walked down from the walls, heading back to the body of the monastery.

“Then what question should I be asking?” Brother Odd asked.

The old monk shook his head. “We do not give answers here; we are not fanatics of one of the gods. We are only here to seek them.”

“I have sought answers,” Brother Odd insisted as he followed. He hunched over so that he would not tower over the old man. “I have meditated, and prayed, and thought for so long. None of it has freed me from the evil of who I was.”

“And none of it will,” Abbot Verle said. “As I said, it is the wrong thing to seek. The past has happened, Brother; you cannot be rid of it, or of who you are.”

“Then what is the point of being here?” Brother Odd snapped, and immediately felt shame coursing through him.

“It is not about who you were, Brother,” the abbot said. “It’s about who you are, and who you could be. Perhaps you should meditate on that. Now, I believe you are needed in the gardens.”

Brother Odd knew that the abbot was right, but even so, it wasn’t the answer he had been hoping for.

“Yes, Father Abbot.”

“Oh, and Brother Odd? Remember that we are a peaceful order. Practicing old things is no way to become something new.”

That caught Brother Odd by surprise. How had the old man known? Just the thought of it added to his shame, but also to his resolve. He would try. He would seek to be the best monk that he could be, try to be the perfect brother, embrace their ways of peace.

Even so, he could feel the violence of his old life bubbling within him, and it scared him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Devin watched as Rodry checked the saddle on his horse, tying in place the last of his equipment for the journey. He couldn’t believe that he was being included in a journey like this; couldn’t believe that he was out of the dungeon.

“You need to cinch your saddle tighter,” Sir Twell said, showing Devin how it should be done. Devin nodded, even though he’d only rarely had a chance to ride a horse before. He was too busy trying to decide what he would do, now that both the king and Prince Rodry wanted him to make the sword for them. He didn’t know what he was going to do. For now, maybe it was better to focus on the act of simply getting the metal.

Three Knights of the Spur were going with them: Lars of the two swords, Twell the planner, Halfin the swift. Given the stories about them, they were probably worth about fifty normal soldiers.

A couple of Rodry’s siblings had come down to see them off, and Devin hung back at the sight of Vars. The prince looked disheveled and hung over. Princess Lenore stood tall and almost impossibly beautiful, coming over and hugging Rodry.

“What is so important that you have to leave like this, Rodry?” she asked. “You’re not going to miss my wedding, are you?”

Devin saw Rodry flinch. “There shouldn’t be a wedding, Lenore. You must have heard what people are saying about Finnal.”

“Don’t,” Lenore said, and there was a hardness to her voice as she said it. Her tone softened then, and Devin felt bad for listening. “Please don’t, Rodry. I’ve heard the things that people are saying, but they aren’t true, they can’t be. I love Finnal, and I’m going to marry him, and that’s an end of it.”

“I just want to be sure that when you’re marrying for love, he is too,” Rodry said.

“He is,” Lenore insisted. “I’m sure of it. He is pure, and noble, and good.”

Rodry started to reply to that, but Lenore held up a hand.

“Please, Rodry,” she said.

“In that case,” he said, “I will go and find you a wedding present no one else could get you.” He glanced over to Devin, and Devin felt the weight of the prince’s expectation on him. “Something for you.”

“Thank you,” Lenore said.