The Warlock Heretical (30 page)

finished the word. She gasped, then ran in.

Gregory lay stiffly, his whole body trembling with silent sobs.

"Nay, my jo, nay!" Gwen gathered him up in her arms. "Oh, my poor babe! Whatever 'twas, lad, 'twill not hurt

thee; lo, 'tis gone!"

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Rod stroked the boy's back and bit his tongue, also his panic. Gwen was better able to maintain her composure in

this kind of situation; the best he could do was give moral support. He could see the boy go limp as she stroked his head, crooning, and the sobs suddenly became huge and racking.

Geoffrey lifted his head from the next bed, awake and wondering, and Gwen picked up her youngest and took

him out of the room, to spare him embarrassment, and his brother wakefulness. Rod stayed just long enough to

assure Geoffrey, "He's all right, son. Back to sleep now, hm?" Geoffrey collapsed back into his bedclothes, and

Rod stepped out the door, hoping he wasn't a liar.

Gwen sat in the mellow light of the tallow lamps, in the big chair McGee had just vacated, rocking Gregory and

crooning till the sobs passed. The Father-General gazed down at her, then looked a question at Rod, who

hesitated a moment, then shook his head, motioning for McGee to stay in the room. The sobs eased, almost ceased, and Gwen murmured, "Now, lad. What frighted thee?" And when the boy only

wept, she pressed, "Was it a foul dream?" Gregory nodded, and she urged, "Tell it me."

"I ... was old, Mama," Gregory mumbled, and Rod breathed a sigh of relief. "Old, and . . . alone."

"Alone?" Gwen sighed. "Well, some old folk are. What had made thee so?"

"I . . . had gone to become a monk, and . . . as I aged, I forsook even their company, for an hermitage in the

wood." Anger blazed. Rod snapped, "Who's been telling this boy about—"

Gwen glared a dagger at him, and he bit off the rest of the sentence. She was right; the boy needed sympathy

now. Any anger, he would construe as being aimed at him.

"There are holy hermits," Gwen admitted. "Yet they are not truly alone, lad, for their lives are filled with the

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company of God."

Foul! Rod wanted to scream. They go crazy with loneliness! But he held his peace, and managed to keep the

thoughts unvocalized; Gregory would certainly have picked them up if he had. Rod wondered if he should leave,

get as far away as he could; certainly his own emotions must be agitating the boy even more. But Gwen caught

the thought, looked up, and shook her head as she said, "They go apart for study of holy books and contemplation of the Word of God, my son."

"Aye, so I dreamt," the boy sniffled, "and so I had. But ... oh, Mama! Thou wert not there, nor was Papa! Nor

Magnus, nor Geoff, nor Cordelia, nor even Diarmid! And life seemed so . . ."he groped for the word.

"Empty?"

"Aye, empty. Without purpose. Oh, Mama! How could such a life be holy, without any folk to be good for?"

What could Rod say? That Gregory wasn't the first one to ask that question, nor would be the last? At least for

him it was only a dream—so far.

But the boy had calmed enough to catch the thought. He looked up at his father, eyes wide. "Is that truly what my

life must be?" There was terror just under the words, and Rod hastened to assure him, "No. It doesn't have to.

You have the choice, son."

"Yet I do wish to study!" Gregory protested. "Not just Holy Writ, though—the plants, and the animals, and the

stars . . . Oh, Papa! There is so much to learn!"

Well, there spoke the born scholar. "But you can have other people around, and still find time to study, son."

"I cannot possibly, Papa! So much study as I wish, must needs leave small time for converse!" His eyes widened

in horror. "Yet without folk to study for, what is the purpose of knowledge?"
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"To bring one closer to God," McGee murmured. Gregory whirled to stare at him, almost shocked. Before he

could protest, Rod stepped into the breach. "Son,

we have a guest tonight. He is the Reverend Morris McGee, Father-General of the Cathodeans." Gregory stared.

"The Abbot?"

"No, the Abbot's abbot." McGee smiled. "I am leader of all the chapters of the Order of St. Vidicon, lad."

Gregory forgot his nightmare in awe. "All the monks, on all the planets that circle all the stars?"

"Only the fifty that have Terran humans on them." McGee glanced at Rod. "I thought your people were innocent

of the rest of the Terran Sphere, Lord Warlock."

"Well, of course, my own children are going to have to suffer through a modern education, Father. But don't

worry, they all know better than to let anyone else know."

" 'Twould fash them unduly," Gregory explained, his eyes still wide. "Nay, thou knowest all about the life of a

monk, then, dost thou not?"

"All," McGee confirmed, poker-faced. "And I assure you, lad, that you don't have to be a monk in order to try to

learn all you can about everything."

"Yet thou dost think such learning would lead one toward God."

"If one really studies everything, and pursues it far enough, yes—or so I believe." McGee turned his gaze toward

Rod. "Perceptive little chap, isn't he?"

"Only three leaps ahead of me, most of the time." Rod turned to Gregory. "You heard it from the Order's mouth,

son."

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"Yet surely one must go off alone to study so much!"

"Hermitage is not necessary," Father McGee said firmly, "though you might want to think seriously before you

married. If you wish to have a family, they must be more important to you than your studies."

"So that if study is to be more important to me, I should not wed?"

"So I believe." McGee nodded. "That is why many scholars become monks—so that they may still have human

companionship, but be able to devote their lives primarily to study. Still, that is only true of a few Orders; ours is

one of them. Many others are primarily concerned with praying." Gregory nodded slowly. "Thus could a man have solitude to concentrate all his thoughts on study, yet still have

times when he is in company."

It was positively weird, hearing statements like that coming

out of the mouth of a seven-year-old, and Rod always had to

fight to remember that, emotionally, he was still a very small

boy. But it didn't seem to faze Father McGee. He simply

nodded, very seriously, and came over to the boy. "All true,

lad—if the man's studies are directed toward learning as much

as he can about God, through His creations. Yet if you wish to

study the universe by itself, without the need to find a

connection between God and every slightest phenomenon, you

might wish to be a scholar, but not a monk."

Rod breathed a sigh of relief; he had just heard an intellectual Emancipation Proclamation. But Gregory frowned. "I do not understand." "Why, it's simply this." McGee pulled up a straight chair and sat down.

"A

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vocation to study does not, by itself, mean that you have a vocation to the priesthood." Rod could see the little boy relax, a little outside, hugely inside. "I may be a scholar, yet not a monk?" McGee nodded. "That is the way of it. The two can be quite separate, you see."

"Yet where can I find companionship, if I do not become a monk?"

"Why, wherever you may. Hindu holy men sometimes built their hermitages near villages, so that they could be

there if they were needed. Ancient Taoists were supposed to build their villages near a hermit's mountain, so that

they could follow his example." McGee smiled. "You might even consider gathering other scholars about you,

founding the first university on Gramarye."

He gazed at the boy, smiling, and after a few minutes Gregory began to smile, too. And from that moment, in his parents' eyes, Father McGee could do no wrong.

17

The trestles had been folded and laid against the wall, and the tabletops had been stacked. The refectory in the

Runnymede chapter house had been converted into a dormitory, each monk rolling out a pallet that wasn't much

harder than the cot he'd been sleeping on in the monastery. It was midnight, and the • friars slept the deep,

dreamless sleep of men exhausted by physical labor. Only the moonbeams through the windows lent a touch of

life to the great room.

In the center of the room a ghost appeared, a smokelike form of a man. The smoke thickened, growing more and

more substantial, until it began to gain the brown of a monk's robe with the pink of a tonsure atop a lean, lantern jawed face. The fiery eyes finally became clear, and the monk dropped the few inches to the hard-packed dirt

floor with a soft thud. He looked around at the sleeping forms, and a tear rolled from his eye as he lifted
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a

dagger. He stepped up to the nearest monk, gasping, "Fools, poor weak fools, to be so led astray! Yet thou art

nonetheless apostates, and must needs die! Eh, Brother Alfonso is right in this!" The knife stabbed down in a short, vicious arc.

Brother Lurgan convulsed into a ball, coming awake for one searing instant of agony. He made no sound, but his

mind let out a tearing shriek of pain and fear before it ceased utterly, and every monk sat bolt upright, staring and

crying out in panic as

they felt the insubstantial essence of the man lift away from them. The assassin yanked his knife free and spun, swinging it down at Father Boquilva. Boquilva shouted, blocking the attacker's forearm with his own and driving a fist into his belly. The lean monk

doubled over in breathless pain, and Father Boquilva caught the wrist, slamming the knife hand against his knee.

The blade clattered on the floor as Boquilva shouted, "Brother Somnel! Hasten!" A short, fat monk hurried up,

glaring at the lean attacker who was struggling for breath. His glare softened into a brooding gaze, and all at once

the assassin's body went slack. He crumpled to the floor. All the monks were silent for a moment of horror; then

the assassin's chest rose and fell, and they felt the surge of a sleeping mind. They relaxed with sighs of relief.

"Light!" Father Boquilva called, and the tallow lamps flickered into life. Then the monks saw who lay unconscious on the floor and cried out in horror. " Tis Brother Janos!" "Gentle Brother Janos!"

"How can this be?" Brother Axel knelt beside the assassin, tears in his eyes. "He is a true scholar! Twas he who

did come to know the means by which we appear and disappear!"

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"Aye, and did learn thereby to control it more shrewdly, so that he might appear as slowly as he wished, and

thereby with as little noise." Father Boquilva frowned. "Nay, certes he would be chosen as assassin!"

"And what hath he done?" moaned Brother Clyde. The monks all turned to stare at Brother Lurgan's dead body

curled up in the flickering glow, and caught their breath in sorrow. Father Boquilva fell on his knees beside the

unconscious assassin and caught up his head, holding it between his two hands and staring.

"Brother Janos! That he could do such a deed!" Brother Clyde cried. "He, who was ever a wise and gentle man!"

"Yet he burned with zeal, Brother," Father Hector reminded him, "and was intensely devoted to the Order."

"And therefore to the Abbot." Brother Clyde nodded heavily. "Aye, he might view us as traitors. Yet surely he

would not think to slay!"

"He did not." Father Boquilva's voice was weighted with grimness. "Another did put the thought into his mind,

nay, did harangue him and accuse him till he was convinced of our

wrongness and the need for our slaying—for he was ever great of mind, yet was ever simple of soul. As much as

he understood of the cosmos, so little did he understand of human nature. Nay, he was manipulated as surely as a

marionette in a Christmas play."

"And who pulled his strings, Father?" Brother Clyde demanded, his face somber.

"Why dost thou ask?" said Father Hector, with a grimace. "Who but Brother Alfonso?" Father Boquilva looked up and nodded.

Brother Clyde's face darkened, and his fists clenched into cannon balls. "I shall be revenged upon himl"

" Tis for God to revenge!" Father Boquilva snapped, coming to his feet. "Nay, Brother, be not misled by
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Satan!"

"Yet may I not be God's instrument in this?" Brother Clyde implored.

"Mayhap, yet I misdoubt me of it."

"Who shall be, then?"

"One who, praise Heaven, hath come!" Father Boquilva turned to Brother Somnel. "Do thou stay by Brother

Janos and keep his sleep deep, aye, and dreamless."

Brother Somnel only nodded, his gaze on the sleeping assassin.

"Come with me now, and call." Father Boquilva beckoned Brother Clyde and turned away to heft the bar out of

its staples and open the door. He stepped out into the night with the friar hot on his heels, crying, "Wee Folk,