“ If she were still alive,” Aspect Elera’s voice snapped him back to the present. “Would she let you give your life to the Order?”
The temptation to lie was almost overwhelming. He knew what his mother would have said, how she would have felt to see him in this robe, his hands and face bruised and raw from practice, how it would have hurt her. But if he said it, it became real, he couldn’t hide from it any longer. But he knew it was a trap. They want me to lie, he realised. They want me to fail.
“ No,” he said. “She hated war.” So it was out. He was living a life his mother would never have wanted, he was dishonouring her memory.
“ She told you that?”
“ No, she told my father. She didn’t want him to leave for the war against the Meldeneans. She said the stench of blood sickened her. She wouldn’t have wanted this life for me.”
“ How does that make you feel?” Elera persisted.
He found himself speaking without thinking, “Guilty.”
“ And yet you stayed, when you had the chance to leave.”
“ I felt that I needed to be here. I needed to stay with my brothers. I needed to learn what the Order could teach me.”
“ Why?”
“ I… think it’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s what the Faith requires of me. I know the sword and the staff as a blacksmith knows his hammer and anvil. I have strength and speed and cunning and…” He hesitated, knowing he had to force the words out, hating them even so. “And I can kill,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I can kill without hesitating. I was meant to be a warrior.”
There was silence in the room save for the soft wet sound of Dendrish Hendril chewing another cherry. Vaelin stared at each of them in turn, appalled by the fact that none of them wanted to return his gaze. Elera Al Mendah’s reaction was almost shocking, looking down at her hands clasped in front her, she looked as if she was about to cry.
Finally, Dendrish Hendril broke the silence, “That’ll do, boy. You can go. Don’t talk to your friends on the way out.”
Vaelin rose uncertainly. “The test is over, Aspect?”
“ Yes. You passed. Congratulations. I am sure you’ll be credit to the Sixth Order.” His acid tone spoke clearly that he did not consider this a compliment.
Vaelin moved to the door, glad for the release; the atmosphere in the room was oppressive, the scrutiny of the Aspects difficult to bear.
“ Brother Vaelin,” Corlin Al Sentis’ cold rasp stopped him as he reached for the door handle.
Vaelin swallowed a sigh of exasperation and forced himself to turn. Corlin Al Sentis was giving him the full benefit of his fanatical gaze. Aspect Elera didn’t look up and Dendrish Al Hendril gave him a brief, disinterested glance.
“ Yes, Aspect?”
“ Did she touch you?”
Vaelin knew who he meant, of course. It was foolish of him to think he could escape without facing this question. “You mean Sella, Aspect?”
“ Yes, Sella the murderer, Denier and student of the Dark. You helped her and the traitor in the wild did you not?”
“ I didn’t know who they were until later, Aspect.” The truth, hiding a lie. He felt himself start to sweat and prayed it didn’t show on his face. “They were strangers lost in a storm. The Catechism of Charity tells us to treat a stranger as a brother.”
Corlin Al Sentis raised his head slightly, his unwavering glare taking on a calculating cast. “I didn’t know the Catechism of Charity was taught here.”
“ It isn’t, Aspect. My… mother taught me all the catechisms.”
“ Yes. She was a lady of considerable charity. You haven’t answered my question.”
He didn’t have to lie. “She didn’t touch me, Aspect.”
“ You know the power of her touch? What it does to men’s souls?”
“ Brother Makril told me. Truly I was fortunate to escape such a fate.”
“ Truly.” The Aspect’s gaze softened, but only slightly. “You may feel that this Test has been harsh but you realise what awaits you will be harder still. Life in your Order is never easy. Many of your brothers will succumb to madness or maiming before they are called to the Departed. You know this?”
Vaelin nodded. “I do, Aspect.”
“ It does you credit that you decided to stay, when you could have left with no stain on your character. Your devotion to the Faith will be remembered.”
For no apparent reason Vaelin felt these words to be a threat, a threat the Aspect didn’t even know he was making. But he forced himself to say, “Thank you, Aspect.”
Outside he closed the door softly behind him, resting his back to it, exhaling explosively in relief. He didn’t notice the others staring for a few seconds. They looked worried, especially Dentos.
“ Faith help me,” Dentos breathed softly, clearly appalled at Vaelin’s countenance.
Vaelin straightened, fixed what he knew to be a weak smile on his face and walked away, trying not to hurry.
With the exception of Dentos, the Test of Knowledge left a cloud of depression over them all. Caenis was silent, Barkus monosyllabic, Nortah aggressively truculent and Vaelin so preoccupied with memories of his mother that he found himself wandering through the rest of the day in a miserable daze, tossing scraps to Scratch and fending off his attempts at play, before joining the others for a desultory game of knives on the practice field.
“ What a piece of piss that was,” Dentos said, the only one of them to retain any semblance of good humour, sending a knife skyward to connect with the board Barkus had tossed into the air. His cheerfulness was made more annoying by his apparent ignorance of the mood of his companions. “I mean they didn’t ask me anything about the Order, just kept going on about my mum and where I grew up. The lady Aspect, Elera whatsername, asked if I was homesick. Homesick? Like I’d want to go back to that shit pit.”
He retrieved the board, working his knife loose and casting it upwards for Nortah’s throw. The knife went wide, in fact it went so wide it nearly caught Dentos on the head.
“ Watch it!”
“ Stop talking about the test,” Nortah said in a tone heavy with dark promise.
“ What’s the problem?” Dentos laughed, genuinely puzzled. “I mean we all passed didn’t we? We’re all still here, and we get to go to the Summertide Fair.”
Vaelin wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before that they had all passed the test. Because it doesn’t feel like a success, he realised.
“ We just don’t want to talk about it, Dentos,” he said. “We didn’t find it as easy as you did. Best if we don’t mention it again.”
Altogether six boys from other groups failed the test and had to leave. They watched them go the next morning, dark huddled shapes in the mist, walking silently through the gate bearing their meagre possessions in the packs they had been allowed to keep. Sobbing could be heard echoing through the courtyard. It was impossible to tell which of the boys was crying, whether it was one or all. It seems to go on for a long time, even after they had faded from view.
“ I wouldn’t be shedding any tears, that’s for sure,” Nortah said. They were on the wall, wrapped tightly in their cloaks, waiting for the sun to burn the mist away and breakfast to appear in the dining hall.
“ Wonder where they’ll go,” Barkus said. “Wonder if they’ve got anywhere to go.”
“ The Realm Guard,” Nortah replied. “It’s full of rejects from the Order. May be why they hate us so much.”
“ Sod that,” Dentos grunted. “I know where I’d be headed. Straight for the docks. Get me a berth on one of them big trader ships that go west. Uncle Fantis went to the far west on a ship, came back rich as stink. Silks and medicines. The only rich man in our village's history. Didn’t do him any good, dropped dead a year after coming back, a black pox he picked up from some harbour doxy.”