"Both," Bou-raiy answered, his expression grim. He softened it, though, and gave a sigh. "Will you not join us in the mass of celebration for the new year? " he asked.
"For what will we pray?" Francis asked sincerely. "That the plague stays outside our walls? "
"I've not the heart nor the time for your unending sarcasm, brother," Bou-raiy replied. "Father Abbot Agronguerre asked me to come and tell you that we are soon to begin. Will you join us? "
Francis turned and looked back out the window. In the field beyond, he saw the fires-meager fires, for they had little to burn. He saw the dark, huddled silhouettes of the miserable victims moving about the encampment, the many makeshift tents set up in the mud and snow.
"No," he answered.
"This is a required mass," Master Bou-raiy reminded him. "I ask once more, will you not join us? "
"No," Francis answered without hesitation, not bothering to turn to face the man.
"Then you will answer to Father Abbot Agronguerre in the morning," Bou-raiy said, and he left the room.
"No," Francis said again. He considered the night, the last of God's Year 829. He knew that the turn of the year was mostly a symbolic thing, the imposition of a human calendar on God's universal clock. But he understood, too, the need for such symbols, the inspiration that a man might draw from them. The strength and resolve that a man might draw from them.
Brother Francis Dellacourt, an Abellican master, walked out ofSt.-MereAbelle that night, while the rest of the monastery sang in the mass in celebration of the New Year. He pulled a donkey behind him, the beast laden with mounds of blankets.
Across the frozen and long-dead tussie-mussie bed he went, into the muddy field, into the cold wind blowing back off All Saints Bay.
Many curious gazes settled upon him, and then a woman came out of the darkness to stand before him. Her face was half torn away, a mask of scars, and she tilted her head, regarding him with her one remaining eye.
"Do ye reek o' the plague then? " Merry Cowsenfed asked.
Brother Francis came forward a step and fell to his knees before the woman, taking her hand in his own and pressing it to his lips.
He had found his church.
She talked and chatted with him easily, bouncing her ideas off him, and her fears; and though he never answered, Pony knew beyond doubt that he was truly with her again, that there was a sentient, conscious spirit of Elbryan out there, ready to help her sort out her feelings and her fears.
This was no trick of magic, she believed, no trick of imagination, and no imparting of false hopes. This was Elbryan, her Elbryan, within the mirror, looking at her, knowing her, and she him.
She found her strength there, though the world about her continued to darken, because there, in that hollow beneath the elm, in that mirror, Jilseponie Wyndon had found her church. How easy it is for a person to overwhelm herself merely by considering too big a picture. I have spent many, many months despairing over my inability to find a balance between community and self, fearing selfishness while becoming paralyzed by a world I know to be too far beyond my, or anyone's, control.
What point was fighting the battle if the war could not, could never, be won?
And in that confusion, compounded by the purest grief, I became lost, a wandering, aimless person, searching for nothing more than peace. That peace I found in Fellowship Way, with Bolster beside me, and with Bradwarden's tunes and the ultimate serenity of the starry sky to calm my nights.
But those are frozen moments, I have come to know, little pieces of serenity in a storm of chaos. The world does not stop for the stars; the errors of mankind continue, and the dangers of nature are ever present. There is no end of turmoil, but far from a terrible thing, I have come to see that turmoil-change-is what adds meaning.
My lament was that perfection of society was not attainable, and I still hold by my words: There is no paradise in this existence for creatures as complex as human beings. There is no perfect human world bereft of strife and battle of one sort or another. I have not come to see a different truth than that. I have not found some magical remedy, some honest hope for paradise within the swirl of chaos.
Or perhaps 1 have.
In considering only the desired destination, I blinded myself to the road; and there lies the truth, there lies the hope, there lies the meaning. Since the end seemed unattainable, I believed the journey futile, and there was my error-and one I will forgive myself because of my fog of grief.
No one can make the world perfect. Not Nightbird. Not King Danube. Not Father Abbot Agronguerre, nor father Abbot Markwart-and I do believe that Markwart, in his misguided way, tried to do just that-before him. No one, nor any one group, be it Church or Crown. Perhaps the perfect king could bring about paradise across the land-but for only a few short blinks in the rolling span of time. Even the great heroes, Terranen Dinoniel, Avelyn Desbris, and my own dear Nightbird, will fade in the fog of the ages, or their memories will be perverted and warped to suit the needs of current historians. Their message and their way will shine brightly, but briefly, in the context of history, because we are fallible creatures, doomed to forget and doomed to err.
Yet there is a point to it all. There is a meaning and a joy and a hope. For while perfection is not attainable, the glory and the satisfaction lie along the road.
And now I know, and perhaps this is the end of grief, that such a journey is worth taking. If all that I can accomplish is the betterment of a single day in the life of a single individual, then so be it. It is the attempt to do what is right-the attempt to move myself and those around me toward a better place-that is worth the sacrifice, however great that sacrifice must be.
Yes, I have lost my innocence. I have lost so many dear to me. Every day, I see the cairn ofElbryan. He was a ranger. He walked the road toward paradise with his eyes wide open and his heart full of hope and joy. He gave everything, his very life, trying to make the world a better place. futile?
Not to the people he saved. Not to the mothers and fathers who still have their children because of him. Not to the people ofCaer Tinella, who would have died in the forest at the hands of the goblins and powries had it not been for Nightbird. And hadAvelyn not given his life in destroying the physical manifestation of Bestesbulybar, then all the world would be a darker place by far.
Perhaps this is the end of my grief, for now when I look upon the grave ofElbryan, I know only calm. He is with me, every step of my own road.
That road is out ofDundalis, I know, out of the hiding place called Fellowship Way, to those places where I am needed most, whatever the personal price.
Yes, I see the world clearly, with all its soiled corners, with all of its cairns for buried heroes.
There is work yet to be done.
— Jilseponie Wyndon
Chapter 30
Nothing but sickness and death," Belster O'Comely said with disgust, waving his hands and his bar rag about dramatically. He wasn't playing to any grand audience, though, for he and Pony were the only two in Fellowship Way at this early hour. "What's in yer head, then?" Pony looked at him, her face masked in the perfect expression of calm. "It is my place now," she replied.
"Yer place?" Belster echoed. "Didn't ye spend all yer breath in pullin' me up here? "
"And I did need to come up here," Pony tried to explain, though she knew that the journey she had walked to get to this point was something quite beyond her pragmatic friend. "And we have carved a good life out of Dundalis."
"Then why leave?" Belster asked simply.
"I am needed in the south," Pony said, for about the tenth time that morning.