8: In Honor of the Gods

It took most of the day for Tad to realize that Mr. Brightstar and his friends were killing time. They managed to find so much to do that they seemed purposeful, but all their activity was just keeping impatience at bay. After breakfast the entire party rode into town on their horses except for Tad and Mr. Brightstar, who borrowed a two-wheeled cart from Lady Calanth. Tad got to drive the cart all the way to town while his master sat silently on the bench next to him, uncommonly still except for the bumps in the road.

Before he even entered Walter’s Bailey, Tad understood that it was a horse town. The expansive fields of oats and alfalfa, plus the numerous stables with round pens beside them, indicated a thriving economy based on the noble beasts. Within the town, it seemed like every business had a horse-related name, every sign featured some kind of horse, and there were more horses in evidence on the streets than people. What surprised Tad most about the town was the scarcity of horse manure, but this riddle was quickly solved. Within the first hour of his visit he saw three different crews cleaning the streets, shoveling the manure into uncovered wagons and carting it away for compost. It was a nearly round-the-clock operation, operated at public expense but to great effect.

The Sisters didn’t get far into town before their princely mounts made them the center of attention. Dozens of people had questions about the Arducians, or simply wanted a closer look. One foolish young man ventured too close to Nadia’s Nightbow, and got bitten and knocked down for his poor judgement. Most of the curious knew better than to do the same: Warhorses were fiercely loyal to their riders, but were otherwise dangerously temperamental. Tad could usually handle them because the Sisters had “introduced” him properly and over time, but strangers were best advised to keep their distance. Aidan and Nadia each had to take turns watching the animals while the other did her shopping, just to to make sure nobody strayed too close accidentally.

Like any thriving town of a few thousand people, the public life of Walter’s Bailey took place in the town square. One side of the square was bordered by the main street, and on the opposite side was a fine stone building where the Baroness kept her offices and, above them, her residence. The Throne’s law and the safekeeping of every citizen within twenty-five miles was her special concern. The baronal seat was a large enough building that the town’s Mayor and a large meeting hall took up part of the left-hand side. The other two sides of the square were occupied by the town’s temple on one side, and a row of businesses on the other.

The square itself was busy with the morning market when they arrived: purveyors of this and that, mostly foodstuffs, sold goods out of stalls or the backs of wagons. Some arrangements were made quickly, with a friendly greeting and a swift exchange of goods and coin. Other sales took more time, and a lot more noise. Tad watched an old gnome with dyed black hair argue loudly and with a full palate of verbal color with a gray-haired human man twice his size. The item at stake was a pretty blue shirt, suitable for a young woman of gnomish proportions, and the disagreement was over a quarter-copper. After a few minutes watching the masterful display, Tad decided that neither party cared aught for the money: they knew each other and enjoyed the conversation.

There were forty-one sellers, and at least three hundred potential buyers that Tad could see. From the prices he could hear and and a survey of the goods leaving the market, plus a guess at how many people would visit on that day, Tad tried to guess how much silver would trade hands in the four hours the market was open. He wondered if he should count the exchanges that took place between sellers, like the butcher buying bread from the baker, and the baker buying shoes from the cobbler. After deciding that such events should be counted, he figured what a 1/8th tax would be on everything he was seeing, and came up with about three hundred silver for the morning. It sounded like a huge amount of money to him, enough to feed a tradesman and his family for half the year. Maybe his figures were wrong, he thought, and resolved to ask Mr. Brightstar about it later.

Earkey was purchasing provisions, from a variety of sellers, enough to last the party for two weeks. Tad hauled the supplies to the cart, where Avra loaded them and kept watch. The sisters went off looking for a blacksmith to mend some tack and a few other minor items, and the Bishop was doing something with the local priest. Mr. Brightstar had managed to disappear, most likely into the large tavern adjacent to the square, to gather news. Minzerek was probably shut up somewhere with the local arcanist. Thaddius had to move all the supplies alone from the sellers Earkey bought them from, to the wagon.

Tad was sweating under thirty pounds of oats when he noticed the gathering of people. Instead of leaving the square when their shopping was finished, people were lingering by the temple. By the time the market closed, Tad had heard the news a hundred times over: Bishop Ambrose would be gracing their local temple with a sermon and with a working of miracles. All of a sudden, Tad got impatient with Earkey’s haggling, and wished he would just forego the few extra silver: it wasn’t as if the party was short of coin.

Someone breathing noisily came up from behind Thaddius, just as he was handing off coils of silken rope to Avra, and tried to touch him near his money belt. It wasn’t something Tad saw coming, or that he had time to think about. He just knew someone was touching him without a good reason, and acted as he would on the streets of Corak: he swung around on one heel and grabbed the offending wrist, then turned it hard until its owner gasped in pain and fell to his knees to prevent his arm from breaking.

“Ow,” she cried, “let go!” Her arm, Tad corrected himself. The person before him was a girl, a hair taller than himself if she had been standing, in a shapeless blue temple robe. Her long brown hair was bunched up at the back of her neck, and her brown eyes made him think of a hurt puppy. She was very thin, like she had just grown a lot and parts of her hadn’t caught up yet. Tad figured she wasn’t likely to take anything from him while he was watching her, so he let go. “Brothers’ anger,” she said hotly, “what’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you, trying to grab people like that from behind?” Tad countered, “I thought you were trying to steal from me.”

“I was trying to get your attention,” she said, like it was obvious he was being stupid. “You didn’t need to break my arm off. Or are you going to stab me now?” The last remarkable statement was emphasized with a look at his right hand, which rested on his dagger. (Always carry a weapon, boy, especially when you don’t think you need one. That’s what Mr. Brightstar had told him just that morning.)

In spite of her thinness, she showed signs of being well cared for: she was clean, and the clothes that peeked out from under the temple robe were of good material and weren’t very worn. Her shoes were low boots with inch-high heels, nearly new. She had family who loved her, and the smell of clean leather and lavender marked her as someone who spent time around horses but didn’t sleep in the stables. “I might,” he declared Thaddius, “if you keep sneaking up on me.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I was trying to get your attention.” Her inflections were subtle, layered, and numerous. All at once she managed to convey the idea that she never snuck up on people, that sneaking was far beneath her, that he was stupid for thinking that she was sneaking, and it should have been obvious to anybody that coming up behind someone and grabbing them was a perfectly normal activity and didn’t deserve to be met with violence.

Something about this girl was really annoying Tad. “Well, you have it. What do you want?”

“I want an apology,” the girl declared, “for trying to break my arm and stab me to death.” She had stepped back, as if there was a chance he really would stab her, and she was standing her ground bravely. It was just silly, and it made him want to laugh.

“You should announce yourself before grabbing people from behind, or else you deserve what you get.”

“I want an apology,” the girl insisted.

“And I want out of this sun,” said Earkey, tossing the final parcel into Avra’s waiting hands, “so maybe you should apologize. Then the young lady can deliver her message, and we can all get inside.”

If it had been up to him, Tad would not have given in. But Earkey seemed serious about it, and Avra was watching him with those merry elfin eyes. For whatever reason, they seemed to think he should apologize, so he would. “I’m sorry I thought you were a thief,” was the best he could bring himself to say under the circumstances.

His adversary either didn’t like his apology, or else she was hiding the fact she was very pleased with it. But Tad wasn’t going to get a clarification because the girl said, “Bishop Ambrose wants you, in the temple,” then turned and tromped off towards the big stone building, her hands balled up into fists.

“Looks like you made a friend,” said the gnome bracingly. Tad followed after the girl, trying hard to look like he knew where he was going and wasn’t following her.

----

What the Bishop wanted from Tad was someone to stand next to him in acolyte’s robes and pretend to pay attention during the service. Tad didn’t understand why Ambrose didn’t use one of the locals, someone who knew what to do. Instead, Tad had to be directed where to stand and what to hold, and felt very out of place. His vestment was black, to more closely match the Bishop’s dark brown, while the dozen other acolytes wore blue. Tad resigned himself to following along and pretending he belonged there.

The temple itself was impressive for a mere barony. The building was a big stone box three stories tall. The exterior walls were stone arches with semi-circular tops, filled in alternately with removable hardwood panels and stained glass windows. The center of the building was topped by a modest dome, covered in bright blue tile. Inside, the temple was one big room, large enough to hold a few hundred people. Statues of the gods were arranged throughout the temple, each with His or Her own altar for offerings. They were facing outward from the center, where the mother goddess Te was depicted in white marble veined in blue, with waves of water erupting around her feet: the moment of creation of the Yeron River and all the lands of the West.

Emerging from the waters beside her were her sons Avegar and Lochus, defenders of Aspera, also known as the Brothers. Avegar was the patron god of Valor and Mercy, and a favorite of Riders. Offerings of silver and braids of horse hair covered his alter. Lochus was colder and more foreboding, the god of Law and Strength and, said some, Tyrany. Although few would admit to favoring him, candles and incense and silver were on his altar. The Brothers competed against each other over everything, except when Aspera itself was at stake. Only then did they work together, and together they always prevailed.

The highest-ranking gods ringed Te and her progeny, on tall plinths. The creator of the Dwarves, whose name was a secret but who was openly called the Eldest Beard, was depicted with his hammer upraised over an altar shaped like an anvil. The elf-god Shihabba stood facing East, his bow in one hand and the other raised in benediction. The gnome god, whose name Tad couldn’t remember at the moment, stood facing south with his all-revealing lantern upraised in one hand. Beyond these gods were several lesser deities, patrons of this and that, all of them worshipped almost exclusively by humans.

Today the focus was on Saint Engel, who had a small niche near the north wall where he leaned on his great club and kept watch out a stained glass window. Thaddius thought the statue looked like a gardener he knew in Corak, but he kept that opinion to himself. He was the patron of Hard Work and Zeal, a defender of Faith, and he looked like someone who would begrudge a man a day of rest if it was used for anything but paying proper homage to his fellow deities. The huge wood panels on that side of the building had been removed, to enlarge the potential audience to include people outside the temple.

They needed all the space they could get. The temple was filled with the citizens of Walter’s Bailey, hundreds of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder, spilling outside and all the way into the street, and more were still arriving as the service began. A wooden dias, shorter than the god’s pedestal, had been moved next to Saint Engel’s statue. It was here that Bishop Ambrose held forth speaking eloquently of the need to guard one’s Faith, to do one’s utmost with the life he was given by the Gods, and to not fear death. It must have been a speech he made often because he was quite good, Tad thought. Not at all his usual stiff self.

Even Ambrose’s strong voice could not reach all of the people outside, so he spoke in fragments to let his words be picked up and passed on by the crowd. Like water, his sentences rippled and flowed out, and in time a smaller wave of them came back to him in the murmurs of the most distant worshipers. It took time, but not a word was lost.

The sermon closed with a prayer, in which the Bishop sang a versicle and the thousand voices chanted an enthusiastic response. This exchange went on for a few minutes, the several hundred voices filling the temple’s heights. Tad, who had never experienced a full service before, pretended to mouth words when the audience did and hoped that somebody out there was fooled.

After the prayer, the local priest spoke for the first time since turning the service over to Amrose. “Your Grace, we have a woman in our congregation who broke her leg a year ago, and it healed crooked. Will the Gods make her whole again?” People had come to see miracles, and miracles they would have.

“They may, Father. Bring her forward.” And the crowd produced the woman in question, Mrs. Marsten, for there was no doubt in their minds just whom the priest had meant: she was a sturdy woman of about thirty years who looked like she had spent her life washing other people’s clothes, and who put copper onto the Gods’ altars instead of silver. But the crowd pushed her forward eagerly, and before she could fully realize what was happening she had been lifted (on account of her bad leg and cane) by the crowd onto the dias. Whispers of her name rose and spread and echoed: the good washerwoman Mrs. Marsten would be blessed. She was a widow, had children to feed, worked hard and was humble. People knew her.

Ambrose prayed over the woman and anointed her with blessed water, as Tad and the girl he had mistaken for a thief moved to flank her. The congregation was dead silent: the Bishop’s voice could be heard, with uncontested clarity, throughout the temple. Tad and the other helper grasped the woman’s hands to support her, like they had been instructed. Her hand was sweaty, and trembled in his. It occurred to Thaddius then that nobody had asked Mrs. Marsten if she wanted to be healed, but the woman was caught and couldn’t get away without making herself out to be ungrateful. Ambrose finished his prayer, and touched the woman lightly on her shoulder.

Thaddius hadn’t known what to expect, or else he might have held on harder. There was a surge of warmth, which passed over the dias and down into the onlookers, and then Mrs. Marsten writhed so violently that she completely escaped the acolytes’ grasp and went flopping onto the dias like a landed fish. They went down on their knees to try and help her stand up, but the best they could do was hold her down until her convulsions stopped.

When Mrs. Marsten finally rose, with only a little help, she was almost a different woman. Not only had her bad leg become straight, but twenty years of hunching over buckets of dirty water were erased from her shoulders. Her step was graceful and lively. Her movements were free of pain and stiffness, maybe for the first time in a decade. Even if the whole town hadn’t witnessed it, people would have known something profound had happened to her. A cry of praise shot like lightning from the assembly. The Gods were present! Praise them! Thaddius was caught in the rapture, and he yelled out with the rest of them without thinking. We are blessed! Praise them!

The exultation ended as suddenly as it had began, leaving only a ringing noise high in the dome where something was vibrating in sympathy with all the clamor. Tad spied Aidan and Nadia in the crowd, near the center of the temple. They had said their parts of the prayers along with the townsfolk, and appeared properly respectful, but they were not awed as everyone around them. They had seen this before, Tad realized, and perhaps much more. But that knowledge didn’t quell the huge feeling in his chest.

After Mrs. Marsten, there were other miracles. Ambrose and Earkey both created divine food in great quantities (which manifested as flaky and slightly sweet wafers) onto giant silver trays. The mounds of sacred food seemed to float among the people as they handed the trays to each other overhead. Everyone took small pieces from the piles and placed them reverently in their mouths, passing the remainder to their neighbors. As the trays worked their ways around the temple and towards the crowd outside, Earkey created a flame that did not consume fuel or burn, but which shed light like a normal fire. He put the fire into the gnome god’s lantern, and declared that it would never go out. Then Ambrose cured two men of a deadly sickness that paralyzied the lungs, and would have killed them in a few weeks if not sooner.

It was while the Bishop was curing the lung disease that the messenger arrived, dressed in a tabard of Duke Frederick’s colors. The man was in the street, at the very back of the crowd, covered in the dirt of a long ride hastily made, bobbing up and down on tiptoes looking for someone. Tad used the Rider hand-cant to signal the Sisters, but in small gestures to avoid much attention: “I see a messenger. That way. Far.” The sisters, a head taller than nearly everyone, shifted about until they could see the man. “I see one, will engage,” signaled Nadia, and the two women shouldered their way toward the messenger.

After the second man was cured and Tad could let go of him, he looked for the Sisters. Nadia was reading a scroll, and Aidan was trying to get his attention. “All of us move forward,” she motioned, which Tad took to mean it was time to leave. He passed this on to Ambrose and Earkey verbally. After some searching, Tad spotted Avra and Mr. Brightstar standing next to Shihabba, whose sole offering was a boquet of rare herbs. “All of us move on, that way,” Tad canted at them.

Within minutes, the service was wrapped up and the party was mounted. “We have orders,” was all Nadia had to say, and the party quit town without a second thought. Only Tad looked back. Trusted lay people were taking away the heavy boxes used for offering money to the temple: they had overflowed, and were being replaced with empty ones.

It was a nice town, Tad decided, but he was unlikely to ever visit it again.