What Was Forgotten (6 page)

His lieutenants, Daruthin and Tascell, approached him, followed by the other scouts; they would need all of them, as many vigilant eyes as possible to protect the column as it made its rapid march down the narrow, rock-walled road. Zayd alone would stay on the road a distance ahead of the column, while Daruthin and Tascell took their men and fanned out on each of the flanks.

The road slanted slowly upward as it stretched out before him. Behind him, he heard Barrett Stern bellow out the order to start the double march, and it spurred Zayd into motion. He did not anticipate any sort of ambush. If there had been enemies nearby, they could have struck the column as it rested. Even so, Zayd equipped himself with a light wooden shield for the march, enough to protect him from an arrow or two, if there were indeed attackers lying in wait.

For the sound of the marching hundreds behind him and the din of jangling armour echoing across the stone, Zayd could not hear the sound of sliding rocks, nor could he feel the vibrations of their impact, barely half a mile behind the column, as they collapsed onto the road where the column had been stopped only a few minutes before.

Chapter 4

In the days following his trial, Osmun slept fitfully when he slept at all. At first it was the doubt which troubled him; Egus and Andrican had not seen the entity as he had, and it made him wonder if
he
had seen it at all. But then there would be times when, from the corner of his eye, he saw the silhouette of it moving fluidly…… menacingly. The first time was the day of the trial in the late evening as he walked the outskirts of the monastery. The shadow was there one moment, standing beside a stone altar, but when Osmun blinked, he only saw one of the devout, the sect of Xidian worshippers as silent as they were pious.

That night he lay awake in his bed for hours, physically and mentally drained, yet he could do nothing to stop himself from hearing the thing speak to him. Over and over he heard the alien words reverberate in his mind until he doubted he was even alone in his room. Morning came after long, excruciating hours, and Osmun walked his usual route through the city. His feet dragged, his arms hung lifeless at his sides, and he stared at the ground just a few feet in front of him. As he drifted through the long alleys and lanes of the marketplace he barely noticed the stares of the vendors, farmers, merchants, and artisans, all so accustomed to seeing him stroll through with vigor, pride, and purpose. He did not look up as he walked for fear that he would see the lurking shadow again.

He entered the Cathedral with no real purpose. He went to one of the cloisters, lit all the candles that he could, and prayed. Osmun felt as though he was safe there, in the silent holiness of that place, distant enough from the reach of whatever plagued him, even though he was only a few hundred yards away from the iron room where the trial took place.

Footsteps approached from behind, and Osmun bumped into one of the tall, brass candle-holders as he lurched to his feet. Cleric Andrican was there to steady it before it fell over. He tilted his head at Osmun.

“Careful, Brother Osmun.”

Osmun flushed red, straightened himself, and gave a slight bow. “Cleric Andrican.”

“You look unwell.” Andrican gave him a troubled look. He stood perfectly straight, both hands clasped behind his back.

“My night was restless.”

“Why was it so?” Andrican asked flatly.

It was hardly a question at all, Osmun thought.

“You know very well why.” He surprised himself with the terse reply.

Andrican made no reaction.

“How can you remain so skeptical?” Osmun pressed, his voice just above a whisper.

“Because there is simply no reason to believe you. What you’ve described appears nowhere in the Recounting or any of the annals.”

“Phantoms exerting influence over the living is commonplace,” Osmun shot back.

“None where it was able to exert the kind of control you are describing over a skilled cleric, and you think it happened here to
two
clerics! What would you believe, if you were me? That this young, arrogant priest has discovered something wholly unheard of? Or would you believe the more likely explanation that he is simply mistaken?”

“I am not imagining this…”

“I did not say that.”

It took Osmun a moment to grasp the implication through the fog of his exhaustion. “You think that I am lying? Why would I lie about this?”

“I would certainly like to know that as well. Perhaps because you want us to believe that we need you. That the Xidian Church needs you. You have become taken with your own reputation, and you’re afraid we are not.” Andrican turned and walked away. “Our deliberation continues,” he said over his shoulder. Osmun stood agape. He was uncertain, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile when Andrican spoke over his shoulder as he walked out of the candlelit cloister.

He sat outside the Cathedral on the steps of the monument, trying for hours to fully understand the reality of the present. All of his instincts told him that what he thought he had witnessed was real, not a delusion as Andrican thought. A delusion would not plague him so. A delusion could not stalk him. He felt it, as he had felt spirits every time he had communed with the Beyond, every time he had banished them.

But what it meant to him if he were right was nearly too dreadful to contemplate. Malign spirits were beholden to a focal point of some kind, usually a relic or a place of religious significance. He had also read that in some places, the natural barrier between the two worlds was especially thin, and rifts could appear. Yet he was certain he had seen the shadow far from the Cathedral and the relics used to summon the spirits through the rift that Egus and Andrican had created.

A realization came to him like water over a broken dam: the trial had not ended. The clerics had created the rift, a feat Osmun did not know was possible. What other unknown abilities did they possess? Andrican had even said that their deliberation was incomplete, that they were, in essence, still judging him. He laughed to himself and felt a twinge of embarrassment that he had been taken by such an obvious trick. Banishing the spirits and closing the rift had been too easy. He should have expected some trick.

Osmun scratched his chin and looked from his feet up to the top of the Xidian monument. The morning sun was obscured by grey clouds which it struggled to penetrate. He was closer to the truth, but what were the clerics expecting him to do? Did they want him to pursue the truth of the shadow against the grain of their skepticism? He could not imagine that all they wanted was deference to their judgment, that he would agree with them unchallenged and admit that he had seen nothing.

The minutes became hours as he sat outside the Cathedral. Thunder sounded the promise of rain in the distance, and it was not until the first drops began to fall that he knew exactly what he must do.

Osmun went back to the monastery for the night, and he drifted in and out of sleep, the echo of the dark voice troubling him still. When he did sleep he dreamt of the trial, and the many voices. And the one. He awoke hardly feeling rested at all.

“Finish this,” he whispered to himself as he slowly rose from bed. “Finish the trial and the voice will trouble you no more.”

He dressed in his robes and made his way from the dormitory to the monastery’s library. The few bookcases seemed so small and sparse to him after he had seen the library within the Cathedral, but it was a good enough place to start, and not so much for the books themselves but for the monastery’s curator, Brother Nestor.

Well into his sixtieth year of service to the church, Nestor spent much of his time – as much as he could – reading any old book he could, scribbling notes to himself as he went. He had been a historian in his younger years, and the habits he had formed in that time were still with him. In reality, he had never stopped doing their work, always looking for inconsistencies within the volumes of the annals in need of correction. Osmun hoped that Nestor could impart something useful, even if unintentionally. In his old age, Nestor loved to recount stories from his youth at any opportunity, so much so that it seemed to Osmun that it was just so he could prove to himself that he still remembered. Even so, Osmun knew he would need to navigate these waters carefully.

Nestor was, predictably, at a table, hunched over a stack of parchment. A quill in his right hand scribbled words on a separate sheet, almost on its own. The curator’s attention was undisturbed until Osmun cleared his throat. He looked up from the stack of parchment, his eyes nearly bloodshot from hours of reading. He squinted at Osmun and brushed his white, wispy hair from his eyes.

“Brother Osmun.” Nestor gave him a quick smile before turning back to his book. “Is there something I can help you find?” His face was mere inches from the page.

“There is something, though I doubt it will be in one of the books.”

“Ah, something important, by the tone of your voice.”

“Perhaps, though to be honest, I’m not sure. Perhaps, perhaps not.”

Nestor put down the quill, shook the stiffness from his hand and rubbed his eyes before turning in his chair to face Osmun. The priest continued: “It’s something of an afterthought, I’m afraid, from a few months ago when I was in Ellsland .”

Nestor nodded. “Yes, yes, lots of work to do there, I hear. I never went there myself, but I remember when they became part of the Empire. That was… how long… twenty years ago? I remember hearing from priests and clerics about the rifts there. Numerous and frequent. And we’re still sending priests there? Very unusual that we would need to after all this time, wouldn’t you say?”

“It is a troubled land.” Osmun nodded in agreement.

Nestor chuckled. “Troubled. Yes, that’s one way, a very kind way of saying it. Some say cursed. But no difference to the church, I suppose. If there’s work to be done, we’ll do our duty, won’t we?” Nestor reached for a cup on his table and eyed it disappointedly. “Would you be good enough to fetch me green tea from the store room? I’m all out and when I go myself I usually end up getting the wrong leaves.”

“Of course,” Osmun said. Nestor was not shy or embarrassed to tell others of his colour blindness.

“Wonderful,” he said. “We’ll call it a trade, then. So, what questions bring you to me?”

“It was from a few months ago, so please forgive me if I can’t recall everything with perfect clarity.” Osmun scratched his head as if he had trouble remembering. “Have you heard of any instance… or, perhaps you may have heard one of the historians mention something… of a spirit that acted as though it was…
aware?
”

Nestor pushed himself up from the chair. His limbs were as wispy as the hair on his head, and he leaned on Osmun as he stood. “Well, every spirit is aware, Brother Osmun, as you know. Only dimly aware of the living world, and therefore, likely dimly aware of us in it. But you know this, of course.”

“Of course,” Osmun agreed.

“So you must mean something different altogether.”

“It was not a vague awareness, Brother Nestor. It was very acute. Very specific. It had… deliberate focus.”

Nestor squinted at the young priest. “Is this something one of the other priests in Ellsland told you?” Nestor paused. “Or did you experience this yourself?” Osmun was hoping he would not need to answer this question, and his hesitation must have been obvious. Nestor nodded. “I see. What else happened, Brother Osmun? What else did you see? Tell me everything.”

Osmun told him as much as he could, nearly every detail, except he transposed the event to Ellsland. He did not want to mention the trial or the involvement of the two clerics should those facts taint Nestor’s answer.

“How certain are you of this?” Nestor asked after a long pause. “Is there any way you are ascribing traits or behaviours that perhaps were not being exhibited?”

“There was nothing ambiguous about what I saw. It spoke to me, as certainly and as plainly as I am speaking to you.”

Nestor turned and paced, unsteadily. He muttered to himself for a moment, waiving his hand in the air as if orating. “No,” he said, stopping suddenly. “I have not heard of such a thing. It kept you
in place
, you say… Quite troubling.”

“I told this to one of the other priests. He thought I was seeing things. Or lying.”

“It could certainly seem that way.
Quite
unusual that no one mentioned something similar. Quite troubling, I think. You’re not lying, are you?”

Osmun shook his head slowly. Nestor patted him on the arm.

“No, I know you aren’t. Do you know how I know?”

Osmun shrugged.

Nestor smiled. “Because I’m far too intimidating to be lied to.” The old historian chuckled to himself, and the laugh then became a cough. Osmun helped him back into his chair.

“So you believe me? You don’t think I’m seeing things?”

Nestor breathed deeply as he cleared his throat and gave Osmun a strange look.

“Seeing things? No, no. Not in the least. Had you thought that of yourself?”