"As near as I can tell, the entrance is under the infirmary," Melcart rolled the map and pointed uphill. "That's right in the center of the monastery." He made no allowance for stealth. If they proceeded north along the watercourse they'd be seen many villagers and the craftsfeigors in the construction site and by all the archers on the walls. But that was okay thought Lon, if this scoundrel leaves me underground at least there'll be lots of witnesses who saw us together.
The sun had set and their long shadows faded into darkness. Lamps and lanterns were lit all over the settlement. The two youths eyed each other warily as they strolled the cow path beside the mountain stream. In his heart, Lon didn't trust his counterpart.
"The temple is older than the town." Melcart said.
"I know." Lon replied. He said it quick just to prove he wasn't entirely clueless, but he regretted the tone. He didn't want to restart the rivalry, so he continued. "The holy brotherhood built here because of the waterfall I imagine, and now I'm guessing maybe because of catacombs too?" He pointed as they walked. "The north battlements up here, these are the original walls of the settlement; you can see the inner wall is missing."
"How do you know all this?" Mel asked.
"Look how far down the cows have to come. The byres are so far from the gate. If the Calbians had their way they'd have have put the dairy atop the hill, or brought the gate lower." Lon waved all around.
"Hah. Your logic is flawed."
"How so?"
"The dairy used to be at the bottom of the hill by main gate. It became their army barracks. We stood on the foundation when we watched the cocosta."
"How do you know that?"
"Been here for almost four months."
"How come you don't speak the language?'
'I do. You heard me." Melcart faced him and waved hello. "Dass hass bone isuss,"
Lon chuckled. The Calbian tongue really was an impossible mixture of ess sounds mixed with vowels. All the same he practiced the local greeting in his head as they walked.
The young masters paced along until they were opposite the busy construction site; the stonework on the other side of the river looked about ready for the waterwheel. It was sunset and some craftsfeigors cleaned their tools by the creek. The lads looked and listened for Atar but they couldn't see him or hear his laugh.
Up ahead the riverbanks were shaded by weeping-willows. Lon watched the lamplighters refill and then ignite the lanterns over the bridge. Moments later the freshly lit lamps twinkled through long willow fronds.
Atar's Falls chuffed on the cliff side and caught the moonlight and mesmerized Lon. Through a break in the trees he watched the water cascade. The spectacle never failed to impress the lad who reckoned it was just about the prettiest mountainside he'd ever seen in his life. Melcart paused under the last droopy shade tree and studied their surroundings.
The willows made it easy to enter the monastery grounds in a clandestine manner. Lon reckoned there were no monks-on-patrol, but of course they all had eyes, and so did the sentries on the walls. The white-haired lad was still wary of Melcart and so he let the cocky accomplice lead the infiltration. The thought occurred many times that this could all just be a ruse, an elaborate set-up to expose him, embarrass him, or worst yet abandon him deep underground. All these thoughts crossed through his clever brain as he followed the untrustworthy knave deeper into the temple's denizens.
The rogue signaled that the coast was clear, and the pair made a dash. They bisected bushy herb gardens to hide in the darkness behind the second largest building on site. They both pressed-up against the wall and caught their breath. From here Lon could see the inner courtyard and he saw how one structure on the square was fashioned from white stone with marble columns in a portico entrance.
A hefty gong tolled behind them. It frightened Lon before he realized it was prayer bell. Its sonorous tones called the Po of Kluth into the chapel. Forty feet away, the church doors creaked open. The cavernous interior was empty but a preacher could be seen at the altar and the sanctuary glowed with candles. Nervous, the lad peered to the left and saw how close they were to the concourse. Lon could see parishioners approach from all directions. They were right on the path of the incoming flock. Both youths ducked and crawled to hide behind empty washtubs. Footsteps echoed all around them. For two minutes they sat in silence and watched four dozen pairs of sandals shuffled past their hiding place.
"Are you religious Lon?" Melcart asked.
"I keep Amon's Code."
"Huh. I don't know much about Amon," Melcart replied.
"You're?" Lon asked. "A devout Kluthian?"
"Sure, sure," he waved dismissively. "Lots of clues in the book. The real book you understand."
"I'd like to read it someday."
The door to the chapel closed with a thud and Lon heard the choral music inside change to more guttural chanting. He looked up and saw the gardens were empty again.
"Come on." Melcart said, "the infirmary is that mass of marble over there."
The hospital was only one story tall, but really long. It glowed in the moonlight and looked as though it was made in the First Age. The stonework all over the building was impressive but the lintel above the front door was impossibly large and Lon couldn't imagine how it could ever be set into place except by Kluth's own children.
The horseshoe-shaped building faced the waterfall and so the young lad expected the rooms in the back would feature an exquisite view of the falls which could occupy the eyes and minds of convalescents. He aimed for the front entrance and the huge door behind the marble columns. Melcart stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"If we go in that way it'll be written in the log," the rogue said, and he steered them around to the back. "Templekin wait on duty in there."
"On duty?"
"It is the infirmary."
They hopped a short fence and found themselves in another laundry beside the gurgling stream and very close to the north bridge wall. Here were huge washtubs and wooden paddles and buckets for drawing water direct from Atar's Creek. This might also be where the nurses bathed patients for one oaken tub was big enough to lay down inside.
The backdoor was wide open on this hot summer night, and a single wall sconce glowed just beyond the threshold and invited them to enter. The interior had white stone floors and bare walls and seemed to amplify every sound they made against steady chuffing of the waterfall. Lon tiptoed but even his breathing sounded loud in his ears. The central hallway was just what you'd expect in a clean hospital and he saw that he was right about how the biggest rooms in the back were set to face the majestic attraction. The facility was empty; there were no patients in any of the beds, nor any medicos. But just as Melcart had predicted there was someone at the front entrance and they could see the bottom half of his body; his hairy legs and feet in wooden sandals were at rest under the Admissions desk at the far end of the main corridor.
They heard the unhappy moans of someone in pain. The audible anguish came from the exact center of the building and Lon recognized the voice. It sounded like Clyde. The noble's whimpered convulsions repulsed him and yet he crept closer.
The lad cracked a door and cringed when it creaked loud on dry hinges. He waited a moment and then risked a look and saw a large hospital room twenty feet wide and forty feet long. The walls were alabaster and long white curtains glowed silver in the moonlight. A stone fountain on the far wall had a water nymph pour an unending stream from a stone pitcher into a gurgling pool. There were only three 'beds' in the whole room and they were rectangular white stone blocks, long enough for anyone to lay flat on top. All of these platforms were six inches taller than his mattress back in Winterhouse. This was an operating room where surgery was performed. The closest two slabs were empty but the third stone bed was occupied by a patient dressed in a brown smock, now red with blood. He was surrounded by five senior templekin who also wore brown robes. A sixth figure lead them and this was Hamlin Adewoulsin the templemaster. His mossy grey beard and ridiculous beanie cap looked sinister in the moonlight. The patient was Clyde.
"Ooooh it burns," the noble said.
Lon knew it was Clyde. He'd heard the noblekin in so many different emotional states he could recognize the feigor's voice anywhere. Now he heard his friend suffer great pain.
Melcart reached out and motioned for Lon to stay silent.
"That's Clyde." Lon whispered.
"He's okay."
"It's because he stole the map." Lon said
'No, it isn't." Melcart shook his head. Clyde moaned in the background.
"Oh, we have to save him." Lon sprang up, but Melcart pulled him down.
"No! It's..." the rogue didn't know how to explain, "...normal."
"How's that?"
"He's becoming a healer."
"Oh, how can that be the way?" Lon winced. "Such a thing..."
"He'll be fine. He must learn to heal himself first. You'll see. Soon he'll feel joy twice his pain." Mel explained, "that's how they learn."
"That can't be the way."
"It's exactly the way," Mel said. "Never doubt it when they lay hands on you and say, I know how you feel."
Lon listened to the torment and was unable to believe that such inexcusable treatment could somehow be instructive. "It's so... Barbaric."
"It's hard work for the templekin too. They don't enjoy it."
"No, I reckon not."
"Your friend will be an entirely different person. If he's pure enough to undergo the transformation."
"So, the pain prepares him..." Lon thought back to how hard he'd rowed on the slave ship with the wound on his shoulder. Neither spoke until Melcart mumbled under his breath.
"This is the Ordeal. That's what it's called. It changes his diet too." Melcart said, "A true mystic doesn't eat food or doesn't enjoy it. Instead they feed on your emotions, good or bad, depending on their own alignment." The rogue looked to Lon. "Can you imagine living, feeding off people's happiness?"
"Yeah. Actually. I can imagine that."
"That's Menche in the Book of Kluth." The rogue waited to see if he knew the story, "Menche could heal with a touch and he fed on happiness..."
"Will Clyde be able to heal with a touch?"
"I'll believe it when I see it. Nobody today can do that today... "
"Clyde can already stop bleeding and take away pain. He tended to Jarl after we killed the roc."
"The roc?"
"We had quite a time getting here."
The two explorers sat and listened in silence as the unseen sufferer in the next room continued to moan. Lon was not going to enter the room or attempt to get any closer, but he couldn't leave either. So he merely listened. Clyde blubbered responses to unheard questions and then began to clack like the officers on The Annabelle.
"What tongue is that?" Melcart asked.
"Crolean."
"Crolean..." Melcart listened to the harsh consonants of the unpleasant language.
"Clyde was the valet to Minister Horne," Lon said.
"That priest who comes? The one you spoke of..?" Melcart confirmed, "Are you certain he was a valet?"
"Yes." Lon lied. He wasn't sure of much when it came to Clyde. "He's many things."
Lon listened to what sounded like a long-winded confession from his companion. In the jumble of words, he heard the name Annabelle and he knew they discussed the Prince's vessel.
"We came here on Prince of Havista's cog," Lon put context to the only word he understood.
"You came on Annabelle?" Melcart asked. He'd also heard the word. "The one with three masts?"
"Bah." Lon waved his hand dismissively, "three, four, six masts, it doesn't help if the wind doesn't blow. We rowed a tow boat while Clyde chanted with the Crols below deck."
"The doldrums are deadly." Melcart said.
The two sat in silence. Lon reflected on the voyage.
"We rowed for four days and then used a relic to make wind."
"How does that work?"
"Like a Toll Stone. But it's a huge circle. The Altar of the Aquatic. One life for a day's wind. Is the bargain." Lon explained in the briefest possible terms.
"A sacrifice was required?" Melcart raised an eyebrow, "Did he die well? The victim. Did you know him?"
"I did know him yes," Lon said solemnly, "And no. He did not die well."
Melcart gazed at him to try and glean more insights but the sea drover remained silent.
A gentle breeze blew the sheer fabric drapes in the room and Clyde moaned as his body was shifted and more hideous clamps attached. A brown robed templekin left the cluster with large bowl of blood. He carried the full container very slowly and carefully towards the side door. Where was he going with that?
Lon saw the passage they'd skulked along met another hallway ahead and so he crept forward and risked a glance around the corner. He saw the brown-robed figure pass through the hall and enter the room opposite. The chamber he entered could have a similar opening on this same corridor and so Lon crept onward another twenty paces. This was risky as there were no easy hiding place ahead. But there was a closed door. He pulled it open a crack and they peeked inside. Sure enough, this room was the full-sized twin of the former space, but without the drapes and moonlight. This bone-white chamber also had stone beds and a lantern lit the far end. Lony watched the brown robed figure at the back pour the blood bowl down a bright red drain hole. Both lads could hear the liquid gurgle down into the pipes below. The monk set the empty bowl on a nearby countertop and picked up a brass object that looked like a wind instrument of some description. Lon watched as he lit the wick with a nearby candle added then added a pinch of powder to the top and and puffed; it was an incense infuser. This was likely to perfume the air around that ugly red hole.
Voices in the corridor caused the pair to scramble away and enter a dimly lit pantry a little further along the passage. The room was stuffed with dry goods and sacks of oats and here was a roller press for making oatmeal. A single unlit wax candle lingered on the counter and Lon picked it up. Melcart pulled him into a snug hiding spot along the wall when the footsteps were right outside the door. They waited in silence until the unseen templekin passed.
Melcart stepped out of the shadows first to check the hallway. When he was sure the coast was clear he retrieved the map from inside his vest pocket. He unfurled the vellum and placed his finger on the scroll's cartography while casting his eyes about the room to confirm their approximate location.
"Do you know where we are?" Lon stood where he could see the scroll over the rogue's shoulder.
"We're in the infirmary building, which is this part," the dark-haired lad pointed at the top-most schematic sketched on the scroll and the stairway-symbol at the center. "It's just ahead."
The pair exited the pantry and edged further down the stone corridor. It was dark ahead; there were no lamps lit in this older section of the temple. Lon ignited his stolen candle on the last sconce in the hallway before they entered the dark corridor ahead. The floors here were covered in crud and there was no whitewash on the brown stone walls which drank in the candle's light and made it hard to see anything in the passage. Further along the musty smell of old linens and moldy lumber pervaded the air as the pair came to a decision point.
Wooden boxes had Atarskal's emblem, the ram's head inside the triangle stenciled on the sides. Faded tubs and chipped stoneware crocks were heaped up against the walls of this peripheral chamber. These were tithe pots, Lon knew, they'd be used in the harvest to contain the templekin's one tenth percentage of the total crop as per their custom. Lon just assumed that was the arrangement here as that's how it worked back in Dundae. He remembered how the forest folks loathed the Kluthians and the harvest tithe. Those monks were lazy sods. He wondered if these were any better. Would they help reap, sheaf, stook and thresh that enormous grain crop? Would they help dig the turnips and carrots? Would they..
"Lon, can you bring your candle over here?" Melcart asked.
"These empty bushels," Lon returned to his companion's side and handed him the candle, "they're likely from the cold cellar. I think we're close."
The rogue took the candle and held it over the map. He was in his element and Lon could see he was a natural adventurer and explorer, a real life deepcomber.
"According to the map the stairs should be here." Hot wax from the candle dripped down onto his fingers and he winced in pain. He adjusted his hand and the wax dripped on the map. He cursed. "Chase Kluth! You don't happen to know any illuminates, do you?"
"No." Lon admitted. He suspected that's what was hidden in the stables...
"Shame. Saeya is so good at it."
The candle flickered and flared up on the exposed wick.
"What are we looking for?" Lon asked.
"Stairs down."
The two young explorers gazed about the dead-end chamber. Was the map wrong?
"Should we get the girls and come back?" Lon asked, sincerely.
"No way." Melcart shook his head, "I mean there's no way Saeya'd ever do this. She'd snitch on anyone who did."
"What about Valari...?"
"Maybe," he thought about it. "Yeah, Val's scrappy." Melcart toured around with the candle. He poked his head in an adjoining room. "When she's not crying her eyes out."
"Val cries?"
"Uhuh..." Melcart pointed. "It' in here." He'd found the stairs down. The sea drover followed him into the last room closest to the exterior wall and saw it was stuffed full of empty wicker baskets and wooden boxes. There was an inch of dirt on the stone floor packed into a hard trail that led to a wooden staircase down. Melcart handed the candle back to Lon again.
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"Why does she cry?"
Melcart just shrugged. His boots thumped on the wooden planks to warn whatever critters lurked below of their arrival.
At the bottom of the stairs Lon saw a torch room. This is where the monks made their own illuminates for work deeper in the cellars. By all accounts the Calbians had lots of experience living underground and the way they made their torches reflected some of their skills. Lon spotted bundles of freshly cut stakes. These were green limbs, three feet long, sharpened to a point at one end. The sticks would be poked through rags and stuffed with birch bark and wrapped tight in cord. Everything required was right here in the room and there were several made up and ready for the monks' next sortie. Lon selected a sizable branch and noted with some interest how the constituents were bound. Each wad would burn for about fifteen minutes he reckoned.
Lon watched how the candle's flame traveled to the torch and it reminded him of how the glyph accepted the fiery smilk from his smulcrum. He smiled at the memory of making three sigils work and he relaxed in the space formerly filled by the anxiety of his failure. The process was so natural. He was a fool not to have recognized it earlier. He waved the candle to douse it and he put the wax nub away cold in his shirt pocket.
The young lad picked up a second unlit torch and realized he had to take more. They were bound for the bottom of the catacombs and that would take an hour. They'd likely need four torches for the trip. Five to be safe. He had an idea. Lon tore rags into strips and bundled four of the torches together and tied them in a sling around his neck to carry them on his back. Then he recovered the burning unit. Now he had five torches and looked for the rogue.