“Oh.”
“I shouldn’t worry about Brother Desmond too much,” Brother Alprin said. “He enjoys these trips he goes on. He can kill you anytime he wants.”
“Very comforting,” Stephen said.
Alprin smiled. “Besides, you must cultivate a meditative state to walk the fanes properly.”
“I’m trying,” Stephen said. “Can you tell me what to expect, what it feels like?”
“No,” Brother Ehan and Brother Alprin said together.
“But you’ll be different, after,” Brother Ehan added. “After, nothing will be the same.”
Ehan probably meant that to sound encouraging, but instead it opened another pit in Stephen’s belly. Since leaving home, he had received one surprise after another, each ruder than the last. His whole world had already been turned upside down, and he had a sinking feeling that whatever he had thought walking his first faneway would be like, the reality would be completely different. And if it followed suit with everything else he had experienced, unpleasant.
And so, though he tried his best to contemplate the saints and begin his first step toward priesthood in a meditative mood, it was with trepidation that he set his foot on the path and approached the first of the twelve fanes of Saint Decmanus.
To Stephen, his own footsteps somehow sounded like intruders in the great nave of the monastery. He had never seen it this empty and still. He wished for ordinary sounds, for another person to talk to. But from this moment until he finished his circuit of the fanes, he would be alone.
He stood for a moment, examining the great buttresses that supported the ceiling, amazed that frail and imperfect human beings could make such beauty. Was that what the saints saw in them, that potential? Was the creation of a few beautiful things worth the price of the evil men could do?
He wouldn’t get an answer to that question. Perhaps there wasn’t one.
Mouthing prayers, he stopped at the stations, twelve small alcoves that held statues and bas-reliefs of the various guises of holy Decmanus. There was no power in them beyond the power inherent in any image, but they reminded him of what he would soon undertake, for the faneway was akin to these small stations, written large.
When he had lit a candle in each, he finally turned to the first fane. It lay behind a small door, in the rear of the nave. The stone around the door looked much older than the stone of the rest of the monastery, and almost certainly it was. The saint had left his mark here before the church ever found its way to these lands, before even the dread Skasloi were defeated.
Once there had been nothing here but a hill. Having a fane or even a monastery did nothing to enhance the power of the sedos itself; it could serve only to prepare those who were about to walk the way, to partake of the saint, for what was to come.
When he reached for the handle of the door, he felt a sudden prickling in his belly and knew that if he hadn’t been fasting for three days he might have lost whatever was in it.
He stood, staring, unwilling to begin.
He wasn’t ready to begin; his mind wasn’t on his goal, on the sanctification of his flesh and soul. There was too much else in there that was decidedly unsacred.
So, sighing, he knelt on the stone before the door and tried to meditate.
Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, it was because the events of the day kept scurrying around in his skull, like rats chasing their tails. What he should have said, should have done, shouldn’t have said and done—playing over and over again. Trying to meditate now was like that. He tried to will the thoughts away, dissolve them like salt in boiling water, but each time they re-formed, more insistent than ever.
And chief among those thoughts was a simple question: After doing what he had done, how could he deserve the blessing of the saint?
After perhaps half a bell, Stephen knew the meditation of emptiness would never work, so he changed his tactics. Rather than trying to empty his head, he would try the meditation of memory. If in remembrance he could find a few moments of peace, he might achieve the state of calm acceptance needed for entering the fane.
So he closed his eyes and opened the gallery of memory, glanced down it at the images there, frozen like paintings.
There hung Brother Geffry in the oratory hall of Lord’s College, straight and tall in the murky light filtered through narrow windows. Brother Geffry, explaining the mysteries of sacarization in language so eloquent it sounded like song.
His father, Rothering Darige, kneeling on the bluff of Cape Chavel, white-toothed sea behind and blue sky above. His father, giving him his first instruction in how to behave in the temple. Stephen was eight, and in awe both of his father’s knowledge and the fact that he would soon see the altar chambers.
His sister Kay, holding his hand during the festival of Saint Temnos, where everyone wore masks like skulls and carried censers of smoking liquidamber. Watchfires in the shapes of burning men stood along the coast like immolated titans. Se-fry musicians and acrobats, painted like skeletons, capered madly through the crowd once the sun was down. The Sverrun priests, all in black, singing dirges and dragging chains behind them. Kay, telling him that the Sefry took little boys away and they were never seen again. It was one of the most powerful experiences in his life, for it was the first time he had ever really felt the presence of the saints and ghosts that walked among humanity, felt them as surely as flesh and bone.
Yet of all these paintings of his memory, it was old Sacritor Burden, the elder priest of Stephen’s attish, that brought him closest to what he needed. On that canvas, Stephen could see the old man’s sallow face, his quick but somehow sad smile, his brows, almost lizardlike with age—as if time were making of him something quite different from human.
But his voice was human, and it had been soft that day he had taken Stephen into the small scriftorium in the rooms behind the altar.
Stephen concentrated, then relaxed, until the frozen painting began to move, until he saw again through eyes twelve summers old, heard the voice of his past.
He was gazing around the room at the boxes and rolls of scrifti. He had seen his father write, seen the book of prayer his mother kept at her belt, but these he had trouble comprehending. What could all of this writing be about?
“The greatest gift of the saints is knowledge,” Sacritor Burden told him, pulling down a faded vellum scroll and unrolling it. “The most refined form of worship is in learning that knowledge, coaxing it like a little flame in the wind, keeping it alive for the next generation.”
“What does this say?” Stephen asked, pointing to the scroll.
“This? I chose it at random.” The priest gazed over the contents. “Aha. See, it’s a list of all of the names of Saint Michael.”
Stephen didn’t see at all.
“Saint Michael has more than one name?”
Burden nodded. “It would be better to say that Saint Michael is one of many names for a power that is actually nameless— the true essence of the saint, what we call the sahto.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How many saints are there, Stephen?”
“I don’t know. Hundreds.”
“If we go by their names,” the sacritor mused, “I should say thousands. Saint Michael, for instance—he is also known as Saint Tyw, Nod, Mamres, Tirving—and that names only four of forty. Likewise, Saint Thunder is also called Diuvo, Far-gun, Tarn, and so forth.”
“Oh!” Stephen replied. “You mean they’re called that in other languages, like Lierish or Crothanic.” He smiled and looked up at the priest. “I learned some Lierish from a sea captain. Would you like to hear?”
The priest grinned. “You’re a bright boy, Stephen. I’ve noticed your quickness with language. It recommends you to the priesthood.”
“That’s what Father said.”