Seeklight

Before he came upon the foot of the trail leading to the house, he overtook the group of priests. They ignored him as they trudged slowly through the mud, heading for their monastery a long ways off in the hills. He stepped into the middle of the silent procession and walked close to the ones carrying the body of the bad priest. A few feet away, the old bishop walked, the point of its staff dragging unnoticed on the wet ground.

“There is no time,” said the bishop suddenlyTlt halted and turned around, transfixing Daenek with its expressionless gaze.

“Or there has been too much of it.”

“Sir?” said Daenek. He had never talked much with priests, having only seen them in the village.

“I recognize you.” The bishop held its hand before it, as if trying to clear away the drizzling rain. “The thane. But you’re so young—you’ve changed. It won’t help. It’s too late, there’s no time now, you must know that by now.”

“I don’t understand,” said Daenek. He suddenly felt very cold, uneasy in the midst of the priests.

The bishop turned away, the angle of its head somehow exuding an air of infinite sadness and regret.

It started its slow walk again and the priests followed, passing on either side of Daenek.

The last one stopped for a moment and laid its cold hand on Daenek’s shoulder. “The bishop is old,” it spoke softly. “Soon it’ll rest. Like your father.”

“What do you mean?” Daenek reached for the coarse brown cloth of its robe, but it was already too far away. He somehow knew that it would do no good to run after them, that no answers would come to his questions. He stood in the road long after the priests had finally disappeared.

Chapter V

The Lady Marche was becoming old. Time, the last two years especially, seemed to diminish her, leaving a smaller, grey figure in her place. Daenek went to the village market-place each week, to spare his mother the long walk down the hillside. The villagers still glared in hatred at the sixteen-year-old youth, but accepted the coins from his hand readily enough.

Sometimes, on his way back from the village, he would stop in the middle of the fields and watch the silent white cylinder of the house. She’ll die soon, he knew. And then I’ll leave.

A month before his seventeenth birthday, he began to think the end was very near for the old woman. He did no more overnight wandering out in the hill range, but stayed in the house and listened to her moving restlessly about through the long, dark hours. Something seemed to be haunting her, consuming her grey, stooped figure from the bones outward.

Once, Daenek came down in the first light of dawn and found the trunk she usually kept locked sitting with its lid flung back in the middle of the floor. One of the shimmering veils, dull and lusterless now, was ripped hi two. He found the Lady Marche in an exhausted sleep with her head buried in her arms upon the kitchen table. Her face was fever-hot and damp with perspiration. Daenek carried her up to her bed—he was dismayed at how light she seemed—and brought her soup when she was awake. She refused it, but beckoned for him to bend down closer to her. “Forgive me,” she whispered into his ear. Her mind’s going, thought Daenek as he slowly went down the steps with the bowl of soup that had finally grown cold. He passed the night, and the next, sitting in a chair beside her bed. Sometimes he would fall asleep for a few moments, but would awake to see the old woman’s eyes gazing up at the dim ceiling. His eyes closed before hers did, and his head sank to his chest without waking him.

Noises outside the house. Voices. Daenek opened his eyes to a thick shaft of late morning sunlight sliding into the room. He glanced at the bed. The Lady Marche seemed to be asleep, her eyelashes motionless above her hollowed cheeks. Pressing the heels of his palms into the sleep-stiffened muscles of his face, he arched his back, cramped from sitting all night in the hard wooden chair, then stepped to the wall’s transparent panel. His heart tensed as he saw, gathered in front of the house, a score of the sub-thane’s black-uniformed militia, mounted on their nervously moving equines. The men were laughing and calling to each other, throwing a leather-covered bottle back and forth among themselves.

They’re waiting for something, thought Daenek. But what?

Suddenly, the men below fell silent and the bottle was flung into the weeds with a spray of brown liquid. The subthane’s grossly-fleshed figure, looking almost wide enough for two equines rather than just one, was ascending the narrow trail up to the house. His militia captain rode to one side of him.