Beneath Ceaseless Skies #24 Read online

  Issue #24 - Aug. 27, 2009

  “Sorrow’s Blade,” by Rita Oakes

  “Father’s Kill,” by Christopher Green

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  SORROW’S BLADE

  by Rita Oakes

  1.

  The winds buffeted Meurig, tore him away from his father’s court, banished him to the realm of men. His bloodied hands would pass unnoticed there. Here. Sickly gray light oppressed his eyes. Heaviness dragged at his limbs. Pain. Pain to the very bone and teeth.

  Was this what it was like to die? Had Selwyn, poor, murdered Selwyn, felt such agony as he crossed Beyond?

  An unfamiliar reek crawled inside Meurig’s nose, choked him.

  Stand up. Rhiannon’s voice in his head. She was lost to him forever now, even if she shared his banishment.

  Stand up. Draw your sword.

  Sword. Rhiannon. Lost.

  Draw me, Meurig. Now!

  Sunk upon his knees, Meurig drew Rhiannon, blocked a downward slice. Metal clanged, shattered. Iron. Small wonder he felt so sick.

  A metal giant stood over him, gripping the pommel of a broken sword. “Sweet Jesu.” The voice rumbled from within a black helm.

  Not a giant. A man clad in iron.

  Get up.

  Meurig stumbled away, fighting nausea. A horse, heavy, metal-clad, slammed against him, sending him spinning. He stumbled over a corpse. Meurig’s hand touched something wet, red.

  To what nightmare realm had his father sent him?

  Get up. By the Great Oak, collect yourself.

  He pushed himself once again to his feet. A horse reared, flailed with iron-shod hooves. A blade whistled near his head. Meurig ran.

  Ran until the grunts of men and the screams of horses faded. Something spewed from his mouth onto the grass, something vile and bitter-tasting. His flesh felt heavy, unfamiliar.

  We’re not safe here. It’s too open. Go to that grove of trees.

  Trees. At least the hateful realm of men possessed trees. He lurched toward the copse. Blessed trees. He clutched the trunk of a slender rowan with one hand, gripping Rhiannon in the other so hard his hand ached.

  Slowly he regained his breath. Cool green soothed him a little, now that he had left battle behind.

  “Was that by design or misadventure, do you think?”

  She did not answer.

  “Rhiannon?”

  Her face on the pommel wore a hauteur she had never worn when flesh, but her delicate features were the same he had known all his life, in spite of the silver sheen.

  She had spoken to him earlier, he was certain. Or had his wits betrayed him and she’d never spoken at all?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “By the Oak, you know I am.”

  Carefully, he wiped the blade clean and sheathed her.

  Again he put his hand to the rowan bark. He felt so lost and the tree was a solid, soothing presence. A shower of leaves fell upon him, brown and sere, where before they had shown a healthy green. Alarmed, he sprang back. This world was not the same as his, and now he had unwittingly harmed the tree.

  “I am fit for nothing but destruction.” First he was Kinslayer, now Blight.

  “Redeem yourself, if you can,” his father had said before calling the icy winds.

  Huddled in misery, thirst finally prompted him to rise. A small brook bubbled a few paces away. He knelt, rinsed his mouth, and drank. Then he fingered his face in disbelief as he studied his reflection. The familiar ferryshen features had vanished, replaced by the blunt and unlovely contours of a human face. His ears were round and flat.

  The water he had drunk threatened to come up again, but he managed to keep it down. The taste was nothing like the water of home. Nothing would be like home in this terrible place.

  * * *

  A narrow track eventually widened to a rough, rock-strewn road. The day grew hot and dust settled over Meurig’s cloak and skin. Overwhelmed by shock and an oppressive sense of loss, he ignored the heat, the dryness of his mouth.

  Selwyn, dead at his hand. Rhiannon, childhood friend and potential lover, enchanted within a deadly weapon. Exiled into a world of iron, the bane of his kind. How was he to bear it? And how was he to redeem himself in such a perilous demesne?

  From time to time he left the road to rest a few moments, but never for long, lest he repeat the incident with the rowan.

  Late afternoon he came to a great wall. The gate stood open. Men passed through without challenge. Distant music drifted from within, very faint. Voices without instruments and words he could not understand, yet soothing.

  His heart hammered as he approached the gate. He did not know how these folk might welcome strangers. The strains of music gave him courage. Surely a people who could produce such beauty would not be complete barbarians.

  The buildings were plain, sturdy dwellings of gray rock. Their ugliness was relieved by a series of gardens and small, tidily pruned trees. Meurig smelled tilled earth, manure, roses and peonies. Further on, the scents of flowers changed to a less sweet but still pleasant tangle of rosemary, mullein, pennyroyal, rue, and others he could not identify.

  The music lingered, and he followed it, until finally his steps took him to a large building of carven stone. Still expecting to be challenged at every turn, he entered through massive doors of wood and bronze.

  He kept to the back in case he needed to flee. Voices filled the spacious hall. Colored panels of brilliant reds and blues took in the late afternoon sun and transmuted it to a light of liquid jewels. Hundreds of candles flickered, giving off a scent of beeswax. There was another scent, heavier but not unpleasant.

  The singing continued.

  Meurig watched men make orderly passage toward the source of the music. He had always believed men indifferent artisans, but no part of this building remained unadorned. Statues of marble and ivory and gold stood in niches. Traceries of wrought stone decorated galleries like a heavy lace. More crude than ferryshen work but undeniably beautiful.

  Meurig closed his eyes.

  A gentle breeze tugged at his long hair. Sun sparkled upon grass. Gloom lifted as blood raced in his veins to the sweet music of ferryshen blade to ferryshen blade. A friendly bout with his brother for Rhiannon’s amusement. Meurig’s boot slipped in dew-dampened grass. Instinctively, he shifted his thrust to compensate. His blade slid past Selwyn’s defense and met resistant flesh. Selwyn sank, pierced to the heart.

  “Sir?” A tentative touch upon his shoulder startled Meurig awake. He gasped.

  “I am sorry, sir,” the man said.

  At least, Meurig thought it was a man. The creature was so bent and misshapen he looked more like a turtle. Yet the face had the pure lines of one of the statues, somewhat round, but with a gentle gaze.

  “I did not mean to startle you, sir. Did you wish to see Father Ambrose?”

  “Father?”

  “He has finished hearing confessions for the day, but if you are in need?”

  “Need?” He knew he should stop repeating words like a fool, but the dream and exhaustion fogged his wits.

  Meurig swayed and the twisted man put out a steadying hand. No taller than the middle of Meurig’s chest, his head swiveled in what must be a painful position. He gazed at Meurig with sympathetic eyes. “Are you unwell, sir?”

  “I am a stranger here,” Meurig said. “The music drew me. Have I done wrong?”

  “All are welcome in God’s House.”

  “Which god?”

  The man blinked. “There is only one. I see you are weary with travel. Come. Let me show you to a place where you may rest and refresh yourse
lf. I am Brother Caedmon.”

  “I am Meurig.”

  “Come, Friend Meurig. I’ve found the world always makes more sense with a little bread and wine inside you.”

  Caedmon led him outside and down a narrow path. “This is the guest house,” he said, pausing at a squat stone building. They passed inside.

  Meurig followed Caedmon to a small room. A narrow window let in a meager spill of light. A cot hugged one wall, and a table and single stool stood in the corner. The only ornament in the whitewashed room was a wooden cross upon the wall.

  Caedmon poured water into a bowl. “Wash the dust of travel from you. I will return with food and drink.”

  “You are very kind,” Meurig said, ignoring the thud of his heart.

  The water felt agreeably cool on his face and hands. Nor did he think he had anything to fear from the amiable hunchback. In spite of deep weariness, he paced the small room, wishing for even a sprig of green to relieve the weight of so much stone.

  Caedmon returned with a basket containing bread, wine, cheese, a few small strawberries. “Our fare is plain here,” he said.

  “To share it with strangers enriches it,” said Meurig.

  Caedmon smiled, and said some words Meurig did not understand. Then he tore the brown bread in half and offered it to Meurig.

  They ate in silence. Meurig had not realized how hungry he had become. The bread was heavier than he was accustomed to, but filling, and the soft cheese quite delicious.

  They shared wine from a single wooden cup. Meurig preferred the sweet berries to the sour wine, but did not say so.

  Meal done, Caedmon rose. “I will leave you to rest, for I feel certain you have traveled far. I will wake you for morning prayers.”

  Meurig rose, bowed slightly. “I will not soon forget your kindness.”

  “God give you good rest.”

  Alone, Meurig unbuckled his sword belt. He lay Rhiannon upon the cot, close to the stone wall. He wrapped himself in his cloak and stretched out alongside her, one hand curled about the scabbard.

  He wished she would speak again. “I do not blame you for being angry. You might have married Selwyn in the spring.”

  It had been an accident, truly. Or so he thought. Now he could no longer be certain if mischance or jealousy slipped blade into his brother’s flesh.

  “You saved my life today,” he told her, “when I have given you only grief in return.”

  Silence. Perhaps she only had the power to speak when his life was in danger? Had the touch of cold iron hurt her? He fretted about that until exhaustion claimed him, loneliness as heavy as the tomblike stone about them.

  Meurig dreamed again of Selwyn, his brother alive and laughing. Shifting sun-dapple spilled upon him between the leaves of trees. Meurig moved to embrace him, but at the moment of touch Selwyn blew apart like milkweed from a burst pod. Laughter lingered.

  He rubbed his eyes, confused as Caedmon shook him. Meurig blinked at the flicker of greasy torchlight.

  “What have you wrought?” Caedmon asked. His face looked pale even in the ruddy cast of light, and his eyes darted about.

  “What?” Meurig asked, still snagged in dream.

  “The walls.”

  Meurig sat up. The walls had been of rough-hewn stone, cool and unadorned. Now they echoed the landscape of his dream: a grove of trees sculpted with no trace of chisel or file. Trees of stone.

  He touched the wall in wonder: bark, lichen, many-veined leaves. Overarching branches intertwined across the stretch of ceiling above. So natural-looking it seemed a breeze would set the leaves a-tremble. He could almost hear birdsong and the distant call of a hunting horn, feel the run of sap beneath his fingers.

  “I dreamed of a wood,” he said. “I thought the realm of men devoid of magic.”

  Caedmon’s eyes were very wide. “I must inform Father Ambrose. He will know if this be devil’s work or a miracle.”

  When Caedmon had once again withdrawn, Meurig picked up Rhiannon. “Did you do this?” he whispered, but she did not reply.

  * * *

  Father Ambrose was an ungainly stick of a man, with a dry cough and gnarled fingers. His hollow cheeks were pitted with pockmarks, his hair white and sparse. He pursed his lips in an “O” of surprise when he saw the carven walls. He touched the stone gingerly. “You did this?”

  Meurig shook his head. He was uncertain how to address the man Caedmon seemed to revere. “No, Father Ambrose. I was asleep.”

  The old man traced a complicated gesture with his hands, a movement Meurig had seen Caedmon make several times. And there were more of those words in foreign tongue.

  “Come,” Father Ambrose said. “We shall talk after prime.”

  In the great hall Meurig remained standing quietly in the back while robed men knelt and rose, chanted, and sang.

  The ritual mystified him, but the sounds echoed pleasantly in the hall. No one took note, so he spent some time examining the statues. There was one of a man bound and pierced with numerous arrows. Another portrayed a woman about to be beheaded. The faces showed a placid expression out of keeping with the suffering of their bodies.

  He felt a little ill, was pleased when the ritual ended and Caedmon returned to take him to Father Ambrose.

  The father’s room was as sparsely furnished as the guest house, except for a tapestry upon the wall that showed a nearly naked man bent under a great burden.

  Father Ambrose smiled. “Now, Meurig. Caedmon tells me you are a traveler. Where are you bound?”

  “I do not know.”

  The smile faded, and though the tone remained gentle, there was an edge underneath. “You do not remember?”

  “I am a stranger here.”

  “You wear a sword. Have you been in battle? Have you suffered a blow to the head, perhaps? Such things may scramble one’s wits and even steal memory.”

  “I was in a battle,” Meurig said, “but I took no harm.”

  “Are you a Christian, Meurig? I could not help but notice you took no part in morning prayer.”

  “I do not think so.”

  Father Ambrose drew a sharp breath and some of the warmth left his eyes. “If you are a Jew or Mohammedan, you have trespassed the law by dressing as one of us.”

  Meurig felt increasingly confused. “I do not know these words.”

  Father Ambrose glanced at Caedmon. “Is the man mad, possessed, or a simpleton?”

  “I do not believe he is any of those things,” Caedmon said. “He has behaved strangely, but with courtesy.”

  “I am sorry about the room,” Meurig said, “though I confess I find it prettier now. I am grateful for the food and rest you have provided me. If you will present me to your Lord, I will thank him personally and take my leave.”

  Father Ambrose gaped. “You wish me to present you to the Redeemer?”

  “Redeemer?” Excitement stirred. Perhaps the fates had led him here and this Lord would tell him what he must do to win redemption. Then he and Rhiannon might return home. “Yes. I will wait, if he is busy.”

  Father Ambrose rose. “Come.”

  They returned to the great hall. At a large table Father Ambrose knelt and made that gesture again. “This is our Lord. Will you pretend never to have seen Him before?”

  Meurig examined the table. It was covered in cloth of gold and held precious objects encrusted with jewels. The largest item was a great gold cross. Stretched upon it was a man in apparent agony. Spikes impaled him at hands and feet, and a cut to his side showed red. The face was a rictus of pain, eyes fixed skyward.

  The nausea he had felt earlier returned in force. “Your Lord is a statue? I do not understand why you glorify pain.”

  “This is our Saviour. He suffered on the Cross so we might know Heaven. Is your homeland so far from here that you have no knowledge of the Word of Christ?”

  “It is far,” Meurig said, wishing he were home again.

  Father Ambrose placed a hand upon Meurig’s shoulder. “You are
lost, Meurig, are you not? And God has guided you to us for a reason.”

  “Lost. Yes.”

  “You will stay with us. We will teach you and bring you out of error.”

  “Redemption?”

  “Yes. There is no man so lost he is beyond Salvation.”

  2.

  In the Abbey of Saint-Sever Meurig spent hours studying Latin, and he could at last understand the words of the prayers the monks chanted. Rapt, he listened as Caedmon explained stories from the thick book they called a Bible. Prayers day and night segmented time like bits of an orange.

  Meurig chafed sometimes at so much time indoors but counseled himself to patience. If he could but redeem himself, perhaps he could send Rhiannon home, even if he could not return himself.

  What he enjoyed most was time spent at Caedmon’s side, working in the gardens. He liked the smell of rich soil, the heat of sun through his clothes. Caedmon was more patient with him than any of the other monks—far more patient than Father Ambrose.

  Today’s lesson had been the story of the first murder, the tale of two brothers, Cain and Abel.

  I am Cain, he thought, as he pulled weeds. Except I bear no Mark.

  “You are quiet today,” Caedmon said.

  “Did Adam and Eve miss Cain, do you think?” Meurig asked. “Or did they mourn only Abel?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine they mourned both their sons.”

  “Why do you think God despised Cain’s offering? And what did the Mark look like? And—”

  “Hold!” Caedmon said, chuckling. “I think I liked you better quiet. You must ask Father Ambrose those questions—they are beyond me.”

  “Father Ambrose does not like me.”

  “That is untrue. He is puzzled by you. And Father Ambrose becomes irritable with what he does not understand.”

  “And you do not?”

  “I find I understand little in this world, so puzzles trouble me less.”

  “I think you are wiser than Father Ambrose.”

  “Father Ambrose is a good man. He has been Abbot here for over twenty years. It was not so pleasant a place before.”

  “You have been here so long?”

  “Since boyhood.” Caedmon jabbed a trowel into dark earth, drew an unsteady breath. “My mother could not bear the sight of my twisted form.”