Chapter 25 - Join a Sect
We rode through the night, the wagon wheels, the clacking of hooves, and the clicks and chirrups of the multitude of insects keeping us company. Jassin didn’t have much else to say after we got back into the car, which was fine by me. The guards, however, seemed to liven up slightly after we’d been in the glade for a while, laughing at little personal jokes or occasionally singing some tune or another.
I could see why their spirits were up.
This place was so open. Skyglade was more of a wet grassland than a mere gap in the tree cover. After the murky claustrophobia of the swamp where something nasty, like ,say, a goblin with an electric ax, might jump out at you from behind the next tree, I imagined the guards thought the wide open spaces of the clearing were downright relaxing. There were still unknowns such as the occasional naturally forming pond or clump of thick shrubbery, but ambushers would largely have a much harder time getting close enough to do damage here.
Jassin spent much of his time writing in his notebook or staring thoughtfully out of the window. Once in a while, we would pass clusters of moonlit wooden buildings that had the look of homesteads or maybe stables. None of their windows were lit, and nothing moved in their vicinity except for the grass. The homesteads themselves were more than just still. They looked abandoned or at least buttoned up to such a degree that I couldn’t imagine anyone living there.
We never lingered at any of these places, and the guards seemed to dislike them as well, growing silent when we passed and keeping their fingers on their triggers until we were well down the road.
After a couple more hours of travel, I was back to dreaming again, this time about my workshop, but I didn’t get too far into it before Garret called for a halt then leaned down to poke his head into the window. He looked troubled.
“We’ve arrived at the gate, my lord,”
“Is there a problem?” Jassin asked.
Garret sniffed and waggled his mustache. “It’s closed. We haven’t been challenged yet, but I’m about to knock.”
Jassin groaned softly. “I knew I should have slept during the ride. Feel free to mention my name to get us through quickly. Tell them it’s imperative I get to the university as soon as possible.”
The old soldier grinned at that and gave us a wink that pulled one side of his mustache up to nearly cover his eye. Then he rode away from the window and shouted something short and multi-toned up at the gate. It didn’t sound like a word, otherwise the System would have helped me understand, but Garret had vocalized something. Maybe they were using some kind of code.
“Yes? State your name and your business!” Someone challenged from a distance.
“Lord Trayalo Jassin and his men at arms here to report to the Black University for a period of tenure!” Garret answered.
There was a brief pause, but then the challenging voice came back. “Alright then. Get off your mounts and get everyone out of the carriage for inspection.”
Jassin sat up suddenly, his expression dark, eyes darting around the carriage almost like he was assembling an invisible puzzle with his eyes. I mirrored his posture, not knowing exactly why, but I could intuit that something was wrong.
“Is that strictly necessary?” Garret asked hesitantly. “My lord must get to his post with haste.”
“‘Fraid so,” the gate guard replied. His voice sounded weary, like a man that had been through this routine countless times, and he’d answered this very question ad nauseam.
“By whose authority?!” Jassin leaned out of the window and shouted his question to the gate guard. “I hope you know who you are detaining here and what my standing is.”
There was a slight pause before the man replied, and when he did so, it was apparent that he didn’t appreciate Jassin’s tone. “We are all very impressed, my lord, but I have orders from the Prefect herself that everyone must be inspected before they enter the city. In this city, the Prefect has perfect authority to do as she requires, and, right now, she requires we do this. Now, if it pleases your lordship, get everyone out in the open so we can do this and get on with our lives,” the gate guard shouted. “With all due respect, of course, m’lord,” he added at the end.
When Jassin brought his head back into the car, he didn’t look angry like he’d sounded. Instead, he did that thing where he looked through me as if the answer to his unspoken question was written on my bones, and it was mildly inconvenient he couldn’t just crack me open to put the mystery to bed.
Wanting out of the carriage anyway, I put my hand on the latch to do as the gate guard said, but Jassin put a hand on my wrist. His grip was strong, cold.
“Wait,” he hissed. Then he reached under his seat and knocked on the delicately carved wood, once, twice, then several more, a single knuckle at a time in some kind of pattern. A vertically hinged door I hadn’t noticed yet popped open forcefully as if it were spring loaded to reveal a hidden compartment about the size of a dresser drawer.
I couldn’t see the contents properly in the dim light, but Jassin apparently knew what he was looking for. He bent down and rifled through the little cubby, pulling out various objects, jewelry chains, fabric, bound stacks of paper, a cane, holding them up in the light to check them then shaking his head as he discarded them. After a minute he found what he was looking for, and he handed it to me.
It was a folded length of long orange cloth, soft to the touch like some of the nicer clothes I had back on Proxis.
“Put that on,” Jassin whispered.
I raised a curious eyebrow. “Put it on what?”
“Your head. Tie it in the back.”
“Why?” I asked.
“In case they have the wrong type of practitioner on gate duty tonight,” he said as he stuffed everything back into the compartment and snapped the door shut again.
Outside there was a deep, loud groan accompanied by a reverberating clatter of metal on wood. I pictured an enormous gate with half-ton hinges being pulled open by chains big enough to moore a cargo ship.
“Gate’s opening, my lord,” Garret reported from outside.
Yeah. No kidding, Garret.
“Hurry!” Jassin commanded, but when he saw the blank look on my face, he blew out an angry sigh and reached up to drape the cloth over my head. “Here. Hold still. Listen to me carefully.” He tugged on the fabric, tightening it until it felt like a snug cap. Then he wrenched the back to force me to look into his eyes and see how serious he was.
“Listen. You are a monk of the Order of Dawn. You’ve been imbued with a sacred duty that brought you to Eclipse. Brothers of your order are not a loquacious bunch, so no one will expect you to speak more than one or two words. Use that.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. I would have shaken my head, but Jassin was currently ratcheting the cloth tight around my skull. “Why do I need to hide?”
“I know you don’t understand,” he replied, “but you need to do this if you don’t want to draw suspicion. Take off your shirt and try to look dangerous. They’ll be put off and less suspicious if they see your dominion sign out in the open. Your aura will help sell it.”
With a boom, the racket outside subsided.
“Half a platoon coming outside, lord,” Garret said quietly from behind the curtain.
With a grunt, Jassin cinched the knot on the cloth tight enough to make it feel uncomfortable. He’d covered my entire head with it like a skull cap. “Take off your shirt, and let’s go.”
“Why am I hiding?” I asked. I didn’t like this. Yes, there was plenty I didn’t want out in the open, but Jassin didn’t necessarily know that. What interest did he have in keeping my secrets all of a sudden?
“Because of what you are,” Jassin hissed, pleading, forceful, almost desperate. I held my breath.
“Getting closer, Lord Jassin,” Garret mumbled from outside the window.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and weighed my possible replies. “Because I’m a wildling,” was the one I went with.
Jassin just glared at me, his mouth moving around like he was chewing on the inside of his lip. There was a long, pregnant pause where the air froze between us.
“Yes. Exactly,” he replied tersely. “Now go. You need to leave before I do. Be forceful. Confident.”
My mind flashed back to my cell under the mountain.
I frowned at him, but the man didn’t budge, silently pleading for me to go along with it.
Hesitatingly, I slipped the shirt over my head, feeling the chill in the air prickle my skin as Jassin flung the carriage door open, committing us to this plan.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped out into the night, jumping down from the car to land on the smooth cobblestones of the road.
We were parked in a wide semi-circular plaza overlooked by an imposing black wall made of stone and reinforced with thick strips of banded metal that ran along the bottom ten feet, interwoven with one another like wicker. The gate had to have been thirty feet high, thick as my entire body, and operated via pulleys and chains whose links probably weighed more than one of our furry mounts.
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Around us was a little ‘town’ of wooden structures that had the same abandoned feeling as the previous homesteads. Stalls sat empty in sloppy lines that formed a labyrinth of ramshackle wood, while the bigger buildings, inns, depots, shops, and the like, loomed darkly over the rest, some of their wooden signs creaking as they rocked in the breeze. Somewhere out of sight, a door slammed against its housings over and over in time with the wind.
“Hey.” An elbow nudged me in the side. Garret was there with his crossbow pointed downward and his finger off the trigger.
“Look alive,” he said, nodding to show me where to look. Two columns of six soldiers stood in front of us, well apart from Jassin’s guards who stood in a similar formation but more informally. The two parties were just close enough to speak without shouting.
Most of the soldiers wore heavy looking black breastplates of banded mail with sleeves of chain that came down to thick leather gloves with metal plates that ran up the backs of their fingers and hands. All but two of them stood at attention with long pikes. The odd ones out carried big crossbows that, judging by the soldiers’ postures, were particularly heavy. Steam rolled out of the fronts of their darkened helmets and rose in clouds from their shoulders.
Was it really that cold? I certainly felt the chill on my skin, but it only went as far as that.
Jassin was next to me then. “Stop gawking. Look more menacing,” he muttered from the side of his mouth.
I’d forgotten that part. It would certainly be helpful if I knew why I was playing a character here. I flexed my fingers into fists and put on a scowl, the kind I remember my dad wearing, though I was sure it would be more convincing if I still had eyebrows.
Garret stepped forward and addressed the soldier on the front left of the formation. “This seems pretty irregular, Sergeant.”
“Aye. It is, sir. Highly irregular indeed,” the Sergeant said with a yawn. “This has been protocol for two months now, and it’s got me and my boys stretched thin. If you don’t mind, I’d like my people to get started on the search, so we can all get back inside and safe.”
Garret looked at Jassin who, after a second’s hesitation, gave a slight nod.
The Sergeant didn’t waste any time. He waved his soldiers on, and each of them picked a place to search, having people turn out their packs and saddles. A couple others climbed into the carriage and poked around inside. If Jassin was worried they would find his hidden compartment with weird props, he didn’t look like it.
“What is this all about, Sergeant?” Jassin asked, his tone exaggeratedly imperious veering well into snobbish territory when he said the guard’s rank. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one playing a character tonight. The ruse was so obnoxiously effective that even I fought to not roll my eyes and dismiss the man as a spoiled child in an adult’s body, and I was in on the joke. “Please tell your men to be careful. Some of the tools I carry in my things are sensitive. If your men break anything, I will lodge a formal complaint.”
The Sergeant sighed, closing his eyes to gather his patience, bringing a gloved hand up to rub them. Then he stepped forward to stand a polite, conversational distance from Garret, Jassin, and myself. When he answered, it was easy to tell he was doing his best not to lose his temper, and he seemed to meet Garret’s and my eyes more often than Jassin’s. “It’s plague, my lord. A possible one at least.”
Jassin’s eyes shot over to me and back. “What is the nature of this plague?”
“So far, I’ve been told very little, my lord. I’m just doing my part. What we meager guardsmen are looking for are stowaways, artifacts, and suspicious characters. If you have questions about specifics you may want to ask the representative of the church when they get here. They’ll be performing the check for sickness.”
The guard Sergeant turned to me and bowed slightly, making some kind of finger gesture on his forehead, too fast for me to follow. “It’s good to see you’ve come, Rising Sun. Welcome from the faithful. The church will be happy for the help, if no one else.”
Not knowing what else to do, I nodded to him while I kept my scowl going.
Jassin wasn’t ready to give up his objections though. “Is getting the church involved strictly necessary, Sergeant? I’m sure the university has someone on staff that can examine us once we check in. Their medical department is top notch, and we’ve been delayed enough.”
“‘Fraid so, my lord,” the guard said again. “So far, the church are the only ones able to pick the sick from the rest. Normally, I’d have someone go get you a drink or food from the inn, but we’re a bit short on hospitality outside the walls as of late. Goblins and beasts are everywhere now. Have to bring everybody back in for the night a lot of the time. I have a cousin that runs one of the beer halls out here, and it’s been hell for business.”
“I assure you, we’ve had no contact with the plague, and we’ve not stopped long enough to be at great risk. I’m also obligated to begin work at the university immediately under the Queen’s orders, which supersede your authority. I demand passage to the head office where we may go through examination there.” Jassin was pulling rank on the poor guy now, using his title as a bludgeon. There was a strained edge to his voice I might not have been able to pick up on if I hadn’t ridden around with him for hours before. He was dialing up the ‘noble’ part of his personality, and it was already pretty prominent.
“Sorry, my lord. No one gets in without the church checking them over. You may file a grievance with the Prefect in the morning if you like, but for now, we have to wait.”
“Worry not, Sergeant Imar. Your wait is over,” a rich basso voice called from the direction of the open gates. A man in white robes was there, approaching the rest of us. In his hand he carried a staff whose head burned with bright yellow flame. He walked upright and lightly, like he didn’t need the staff to walk, leading me to suspect it was a totem of his office.
He was a large being, easily head and shoulders taller than me and overly thick in neck and belly, though his robes hid the latter well. He had slitted eyes, a wide, flat nose, and an enormous mouth that seemed to stretch from ear to ear, and his glossy black skin caught and distorted the firelight in interesting ways, creating little yellow ghosts that danced on his shiny, bald head.
Once the robed man got within thirty feet or so of us, the air warmed by at least ten degrees. The change was so sudden, it was shocking, like a switch being flipped. I could feel my blood flow returning to my skin and restoring the color that the cold had leached from it. Strangely, even as the man drew closer, the heat never got more intense. I was just suddenly warmer and more comfortable while, two seconds ago, I wasn’t.
“Bishop Kolash,” the Sergeant gasped, suddenly very present and eager to please. “I apologize. I hadn’t realized you would be coming yourself, your holiness. This is a routine check, and I wouldn’t have bothered your holiness with it if-”
“No need to apologize, Sergeant,” the bishop boomed with a smile that pulled the corners of his mouth back until I couldn’t see them anymore, and I had to assume they just kept going until they met at the back of his head. “It’s only fair I take the night shift from time to time just as I ask of our more junior members. Now, let’s get on with it so our guests may enter and rest. The road is dangerous of late, and I’m sure their bodies and minds could use the respite.”
The Sergeant, all sweetness and light now, hopped to, placing himself to the side so that he could present us to the bishop. “Your holiness, we hadn’t quite gotten to the introductions yet, but they seem like reasonable folk. Cooperative at least.”
Kolash tilted his head from side to side, his head seeming to rotate in place without having to bend his neck. He was holding his staff aloft now, lighting us all from above, so I was having a hard time making the man’s face out properly. However, I could see that he’d closed his eyes.
Then, without warning, his mouth opened wide, wide enough to swallow my head, and he let out a sound that was a cross between an engine backfire, an out of tune horn section, and a belch.
Something… odd… passed through me, a shockwave of sound and purpose that rattled my insides and threw off my equilibrium. The atoms in my body vibrated and shifted, rubbing together in sympathetic harmony with the discordant note. Yet, whatever this was, once it passed, left me feeling clear headed and refreshed. Aches and sore muscles I hadn’t realized I had loosened their grips on my already taxed nervous system, fading away. The sleepiness I’d been fighting was replaced with a calm restfulness I’d not felt in years.
Tears welled up in my eyes, though I didn’t know why.
It was like surviving a storm and seeing the sun again.
I turned to look at the others. Jassin had fared much much worse than I had. He staggered on his feet before he caught hold of Garret’s shoulder, and the guardsman steadied his master with a strong hand under the noble’s arm. The guards didn’t seem to be affected at all.
“I apologize for the discomfort you are feeling,” Kolash burped, a little bit of the multi-toned magic still echoing in his voice. My eyes tried to unfocus again, but the power wasn’t nearly as overwhelming this time.
The bishop shook his head ruefully. “Secular practitioners are contrary creatures, so focused on shielding themselves from others to the point that you won’t readily allow the Light into your being. Yet you open yourself to the raw forces of creation. It is a contradiction that I have yet to understand fully.”
“Not raw,” Jassin coughed, shaking his head and waving Garret away. “I’m fine, Garret. I’m fine. The power we focus is not raw, Bishop. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, since we’ve built our dominions, sometimes over generations. The problem lies in our natural reluctance to trust just any old spell to sweep through our bodies and souls like it’s spring cleaning, but you probably already knew that.”
The bishop smiled and bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement.
Jassin straightened his robe and stood upright again, his lordly presence reasserted. “I assume you found no plague, and we may now be on our way?”
“None of you are carriers of the plague as far as I can tell,” Kolash declared. “Light clear your way.”
Then he turned to me, another one of those too-wide smiles on his face. He reached forward and placed a heavy, three-fingered hand on my bare shoulder. His palms were paler than the rest of him with the disturbing addition of being rough and slightly sticky.
“Brother, it is a welcome surprise to find you here. We did not expect our plea to be answered by one such as yourself, but you are most welcome in our city. It is an honor to have a Rising Sun grace us with his unique expertise,” he declared. “Come. Let us leave scholar business to scholars. We will prepare a room for you at the sanctuary. Food as well.”
Just then, I remembered I was supposed to be looking menacing, so I didn’t reply out loud. I set my mouth in a stoic frown and shook my head meaningfully.
Jassin spoke up. “Oh? Is this necessary, bishop? I promised to our monk friend I would take him as far as the university, and I am a man of my word.”
“The church thanks you for your service, sir,” Kolash replied, not turning to address the noble, instead keeping his gaze fixed solely upon me. His tone held unwavering authority, however, along with a little menace. “I suggest you leave us church folk to our business, and you go about yours. If you would like to show our brother your university, we can arrange that easily at a future date.”
I narrowed my eyes and shook my head again.
“No. No. I insist, Brother. I’m sure you are keen to begin your work, but you would benefit greatly from the church’s support. There is much you must know.”
I resisted the urge to look at Jassin for some kind of clue. What exactly did this guy want? What’s more, what would a monk of the… uh… Order of Dawn do in this situation?
“Need I pull rank?” The bishop asked, raising the ridge of one eye where you would normally find eyebrows. This close to him, he looked way less human than from afar. Not only was his skin midnight black, but its sheen wasn’t sweat. It was texture, smooth and damp. What’s more, his tiny eyes were bright yellow orbs with ameba shaped blotches for pupils.
Staring into those things, my mind raced, grasping for some kind of way to get out, but I found nothing but partial plans and probable failure.
Initially, I was hoping to get away from Jassin and his people as soon as possible once we got into the city. I had money from the bodies I’d looted on the road, and I could probably sell a few things to get a room somewhere. Then I could find a way to get provisions and get out there on my own again, away from people that asked too many questions… like Jassin.
What does he know? What does he suspect?
Could I do the same thing with this church? The bishop was promising a room, perhaps a private room. What’s more, they didn’t expect me to speak too much. Fewer words meant fewer opportunities to out myself as an alien. I also got the impression a Rising Sun was a position of some prestige, and I could assume they would watch me less closely than Jassin and his people.
That was what clinched it in the end. Jassin wasn’t what he seemed, and he was very concerned with keeping me close by. Going with the church would give me the option to slip away or to build good will with Jassin by undergoing his examination by choice as opposed to under threat as before.
Decision made, I nodded to Kolash and gestured with my hand to get him to lead the way.
Bishop Kolash started away immediately, his long legs eating up a deceptive amount of road and forcing me to hurry to keep up. With the big man’s back to me, I turned back to look apologetically at Jassin, whose eyes bulged with fury. Storm clouds roiled behind his eyes, and a thick vein throbbed just beneath the skin of his forehead.
I gave him a little shrug and broke out into a jog to catch up with my giant guide.