How long ago?
How many seasons had it taken to pile stone on stone to make that place, that People place that now stood in the middle of the island where four tall stones had watched alone over the Singer’s bones? He’d once seen the Brothers at the Abbey lay just one course of stone in a week of summer days. One single course. The courses of stone that made this building—uncountable. Moss grew on the slabs of its roof.
He wasn’t an old Crow. No Crow could be that old. Afraid and sinking, he turned away from the island and into the wind from shore.
I asked him: Was it then that you knew? Knew what had happened, how you had gone down into the Other Lands with Fox Cap and stolen life and lost it and yet in the stealing of it had earned this odd undying? And he said no, he didn’t know all of that then and isn’t sure of it even now; but yes, he had remembered Fox Cap, and how he had gone down with her into the Other Lands; and he thought that if he could go down again into those lands, again he would seek her there, and if he found her he would tell her that he persisted still on earth, and that however long he now lived he would not forget her again.
Bells tolled across the water like huge, slow heartbeats that displaced Dar Oakley’s own quick ones. Boats had come from the island, manned by black-clothed Brothers, who with the help of shore dwellers hauled the boats in and tied them. The People groaned and pressed forward to get places on them. The Brothers went among the People, listening, touching; those farther back in the crowd lifted hands to draw the black Brothers’ eyes toward them. A number were chosen to go onto the boats; Dar Oakley’s Brother was one chosen. Seen from above, the bowed heads of the People in the laden boat were a clutch of mottled brown eggs, with who knew what inside them. The long oars raised white blooms where they struck the gray water. Those left behind unchosen waded into the water as though to walk out to the island, following the boats.
The island the boat pulled toward was becoming for Dar Oakley the only island: not one of two—the island of then, the island of now—but just one. He lowered his wings, dove toward it.
First comes a Saint, the Brother had once told him, to where nothing is but earth and stone. In time that Saint’s bones are laid where God determines. Around them is put the altar; around the altar, the church, around the church, the Abbey. The Abbey draws in those who come to seek aid from the Saint; many stay to build houses and plant fields, and these spread farther. The whole land around is given the name of the Saint at its center.
This, he said, is how the world grows larger.
The long hide boat full of pilgrims reached the island. Brothers from the Abbey came out from their dwelling and made further choices among them, some to go on inside, others not. Dar Oakley, perched on a slab of the roof, saw one of the black-robes bend over the Brother, who clasped his arms and whispered in his ear. He was taken inside.
Dar Oakley overflew the buildings, some unfinished and unroofed, and looked in wide windows. Black-robes came and went. The Brother wasn’t in the public places of the church amid the kneeling People seeking aid, nor behind the curtain in the special place where on their behalf the Brothers did their hidden holy things. Nor in the cloister, where perhaps their Saint, like the Brother’s Saint, lived in a box.
You will never die.
But between the church and the cloister—in a small place accessible to Dar Oakley only through a high window narrow as a crack—yes, there he was, though Dar Oakley didn’t at first know it was he, for he lay facedown on the floor between two rows of standing Brothers. Before them a thing sat in the middle of the floor: a sort of dome, like the lid of a People’s cauldron, but larger than the lid of any cauldron Dar Oakley had ever seen. The Brothers ceased singing and helped the Brother to his feet—and he saw Dar Oakley above in the window. He lifted his arms to him.
“Corve,” he said. “Discipule. Venite.”
The Brothers all looked up.
“You can’t bring a Crow here,” one whispered.
“It’s the Crow who has brought me,” the Brother said.
They looked from him to Dar Oakley, displeased or alarmed; one waved a black sleeve at him; he lifted wings but didn’t go away. They decided to ignore him. Each of them in turn embraced the Brother, and two of them went to the black dome in the middle of the floor. With some effort they lifted it away. There was nothing beneath it. Less than nothing: a great hole, going down into darkness, its bottom unseeable.
“Domine me adjuvate,” the Brother whispered, kneeling again as though unable to stand. “Lord God help me now.”
The Brothers went away, casting a last doubtful look at the bird of ill omen, all but two who stood apart, hooded. When they were gone, Dar Oakley came down to where the Brother knelt, three wing beats loud in the enclosed space.
The Brother sighed, and sat back on his heels, which (Dar Oakley knew) kneeling Brothers were never to do. He clasped his hands together lightly in his lap. “Corve,” he said. “Two Saints lie together here, and have for centuries. One was lame all his life, and those who are crippled or lame now come to ask his help, either to cure their affliction or teach them how to bear it. The other Saint was she I told you of, the Saint of the Foxes.”
Saints? Saints were dead People separated from their bones but somehow still residing in them or with them, whose voices and faces the People who came near the bones could sometimes hear and see. The one whose voice Dar Oakley had heard. The naked boy climbing his golden ladder to the place Up, whose command had brought him and the Brother here. They were Saints. If the Singer and Fox Cap were Saints too now, and were anywhere but in their bones, they were—they had to be—Down.
“Those Saints, Corve, they watch together at this portal, which is the way to the place of sorrow and cleansing. It’s where I must go, and remain a day and a night. If I can endure that, and whatever befalls me there, I can be forgiven.”
His body, forever restless and unquiet, was entirely still, more still than Dar Oakley had ever seen it.
“I have been granted this,” he said. “It’s not for everyone. I have been examined, and I have made my offering, and I am permitted.” His eyes had not left the circle of dark downwardness before him. “I’m afraid, Corve.”
So was he, Dar Oakley, afraid and repelled, and yet he stepped a step sidewise to be nearer the Brother.
“After a day and a night,” the Brother said, “if I haven’t returned, the Brothers will know I never will. I will be damned, and will remain there forever.”
Dar Oakley thought, You don’t return from there. That land returns you here, when you have done there whatever you do. He wanted to tell the Brother that his one-day-and-a-night might take many seasons to pass. He had known all that once and knew it now again, but he couldn’t say it.
“We’ll go,” he only said in his own words of Ka. “Let’s go.”
The Brother seemed to understand that, and stood. He went to the hole. Grasses and weeds starred with white flowers had grown thick around the rocks the time long ago when Dar Oakley had gone down into it. The Brother sat on its lip, and weeping now, and groaning through gritted teeth, he let himself down within. When his shaved head had almost disappeared, he held out a shaking hand, palm up, for Dar Oakley to step onto. Time went away, then was now, Dar Oakley stepped onto the hand and was lowered into darkness. Above them the two black-robes lowered the iron cover over them.