“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
Stephen looked down at the floor and tried not to squirm. His father didn’t like it when he squirmed. “I—I don’t think I want to be a priest,” he admitted. “I’d rather be the captain of a ship that sails everywhere, sees everything. Or a mapmaker, maybe.”
“Well,” Sacritor Burden said, “that’s something for later. Just now you made a keen observation; some of the names for the saints are just what other people call them in other languages. But it’s more complicated than that. The very true essence of a saint—the sahto—is without name or form. It is only the varying aspects of the sahto we experience and name, and each sahto possesses many aspects. To each of these many aspects we attribute the name of a saint, in the king’s tongue. In Hansa, they call them ansi, or gods, and in Vitellio they call them lords. The Herilanzers call the aspects angilu. That doesn’t matter; the church allows local custom to call aspects whatever they wish.”
“So, Saint Michael and Saint Nod are the same saint?”
“No. They are both aspects of the same sahto, but they are different saints.”
He chuckled at the confused look on Stephen’s face.
“Come here,” he said.
Then Sacritor Burden led Stephen to a small, rickety table, and from a small wooden coffer lying on it he withdrew a peculiar piece of crystal, cut to have three long sides of equal width and two triangular ends. It rested easily in the sacri-tor’s palm.
“This is a prism,” Burden said. “A simple piece of glass, hmm? And yet see what happens when I place it in the light.” He moved the prism into a shaft of sunlight coming through a small, paneless window and shining on the desk. At first Stephen didn’t notice anything unusual—but then he understood. It wasn’t the crystal that had changed but the desk. A small rainbow spread upon it.
“What’s doing that?” Stephen asked.
“The white light actually contains all of these colors,” the priest explained. “Passing through the crystal, they become divided so that we can see them individually. A sahto is like a light, and the saints like all of these colors. Distinct, and yet a part of the same thing. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure,” Stephen replied. But then he did, or thought he did, and felt a sudden giddy excitement seize him.
“Ordinarily,” Sacritor Burden went on, “we can never experience the truth of any sahto. We know only their aspects, their various names, and what their nature is in each form. But if we take care, and understand the colors, and put them back together, we can briefly experience the white light—the real sahto. And in so doing, we can become, in a way, a minor aspect of the holy force ourselves.”
“How? By reading these books?”
“We can understand them here, using the books,” Burden replied, tapping his wisp-locked skull. “But to understand them here—” He motioned toward his heart. “—to put on even the feeblest of their raiment, we must walk the fanes.”
“I’ve heard of that. It’s what priests do.”
“Yes. It is how we become sanctified. It is how we know them.”
“Where do the fanes come from?”
“There are places where the saints rested or dwelt, or where parts of them are buried. We call these places sedoi— sedos in the singular. Little hills, usually. The church is blessed with the knowledge to find these sedoi and identify the saint whose power lingers there. Then we build fanes, to identify them, so those who visit them know to whom they pray and offer.”
“And so if I go to a fane, I’ll be blessed?”
“In some small way, if the saint chooses. But walking a faneway is something different. To do that, one must walk many fanes, each left by a different aspect of the same sahto. They must be walked in a prescribed order, with certain ablutions made along the way.”
“And the saints—er, the sahto—gives you his powers?”
“They give us gifts, yes, to use in their service—if we are worthy.”
“Could I—could I walk a faneway? Could I learn from these books?”
“If you want,” Sacritor Burden said softly. “You have the potential. If you study, and devote yourself to the church, I believe you could do well, bring much good to the world.”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said.
“As I said, your father is in favor of it.”
“I know.”
And yet, for the first time, it didn’t sound so bad. The mystery of the words all around him pulled at his imagination. The prism and its patterns of colored light enthralled him. In a few words, Sacritor Burden had shown Stephen an unknown country, as strange and distant as rumored Hadam, and yet as near as any beam of light.
Burden must have seen something in his face. “It’s not the easiest path,” he murmured. “Few walk it of their own free will. But it can be a joyous one.”
And in that instant, Stephen had believed the old man. It was a relief, really. He didn’t know if he could have stood up to his father even if he wanted to. And now wonder had a grip on him, and he remembered how Sacritor Burden could bring light from the air, coax music from stones, summon fish from the shoals when the catch was poor. Little miracles, the sort that were so everyday no one even thought about them.
But there must be bigger miracles in such a wide, complex world. How many faneways were there? Had they all been discovered?
Maybe being a priest wouldn’t be so bad after all.
He bowed his head. “Reverend, I would like to try. I would like to learn.”
The sacritor nodded solemnly. “It’s a joy to an old man to hear that,” he said. “A joy. Would you like to begin now?”
“Now?”
“Yes. We start with the first gift of Saint Decmanus. With the alphabet.”
Stephen came back from remembrance to the sound of a jay chasing some other bird in the high reaches of the nave, complaining loudly. He managed a troubled smile. Sacritor Burden had been a man of faith and principle, a good man. Fratrex Pell seemed like a good man, too, if a bit severe at times. The fratrex knew exactly what Stephen had done, and still thought him fit to walk the faneway. If there was any lesson that the past few months had taught him, it was that taking his own thoughts too seriously led only to trouble. What was he, anyway? Only a novice. No—he had trusted Sacritor Burden, and he would trust Fratrex Pell.
That sounded good, but he wondered if Sacritor Burden could have imagined that, hidden in the bright colors of the rainbow, there was a streak of purest darkness. That wonder held in its embrace more than its share of terror.
Fratrex Pell knew. And if that wasn’t enough, the ineffable something that some called Saint Decmanus could judge whether Stephen was still worthy.
He pulled himself up by the door handle, tried once again to settle his thoughts, and opened the wooden portal. He hesitated briefly at the entrance, his hand on the weathered stone, then, murmuring a prayer, he stepped in and closed the door behind him. Darkness swallowed him.
Once inside, he produced his tinderbox and a single white candle. He struck fire to tinder and touched it to the wick, and watched the flame climb its ladder of smoke.
The fane was small enough that he could almost touch both walls by stretching his arms wide. It was spare, as well; a stone kneeling bench and the altar were its only furniture. Behind the altar, on the wall, was a small bas-relief of Saint Dec-manus, a weathered figure crouched over an open scroll, a lantern held up in one hand and pen in the other.
“Decmanus ezum aittis sahto faamo tangineis. Vos Dadom,” Stephen said. Decmanus, aspect of the Sahto of Commanding Knowledge. I surrender to you.
“You embody the power of the written word,” Stephen continued, in the liturgical language. “You gave us ink and paper and the letters we make from them. Yours is the mystery and the power and the revelation of recorded knowledge. You move us from past to future with the memories of our fathers. You keep our faith clean. I surrender to you.”