So rapt was he that he nearly forgot his purpose, and he had gone quite a long way before remembering Cadayle and the possible danger. He slowed-how he hated doing that!-oriented himself, and realized that he had no idea where he was, for never in his life had he been west of Castle Pryd.
The farther he got from the castle, the more sparse lay the houses, scattered about small fields, clusters of simple houses separated by walls of piled rocks. All the structures looked the same, one- or two-room hovels of plain stone with thatched roofs. A few had small gardens under their windows, flowers and vegetables with colors dull in the pale moonlight. Some cows lowed and a few goats skittered past Bransen as he made his way along the winding roads. Some of the houses had candles burning inside; and whenever he noted the lights, Bransen slipped to the window and peeked in, hoping every time that he had at last found Cadayle's house.
He walked for hours, all the lights going down, even the moon setting in the west, so that he was alone in the quiet dark. He went farther out than he had intended, out to where the houses were even more widely spaced, out where fields and forests dominated, and cows and chickens and goats far outnumbered people. Bransen had no idea that Pryd Town was this big, for there were certainly more houses here in the west than in the east where he had grown up, where Garibond lived quietly with few and widespread neighbors around the small lake. Given the scope of the town, the young man only then realized the magnitude of the task before him in even finding Cadayle, let alone protecting her.
Frustrated, but with the eastern sky beginning to brighten with the first light of dawn, Bransen sprinted back along the roads toward Castle Pryd, whose massive dark outline could be clearly seen even from this distance. The light was growing by the minute, and Bransen realized that he might have erred. He understood clearly that he did not want to reveal his new secret, he did not want the monks or anyone else to know that there was another side to the Stork.
Each stride became more desperate as Bransen realized that he wouldn't make it back to the chapel before the brothers had begun to stir. How would he explain himself? He thought of running right by, of going all the way out to Garibond's house, but his place was Chapel Pryd, especially since he had one of their prized possessions, a magical gemstone, with him.
Bransen sprinted. He thought of the Book of Jhest, about its lessons concerning breathing and stamina. He loosened his fists and let all his muscles relax, save those pumping his legs.
He passed Castle Pryd and moved to the side of the chapel, sidling up to one window in the room above his chamber. He peeked in and saw a couple of brothers sweeping and dusting. "Come along, Stork," one of them called.
Bransen fell back against the wall and held his breath, trying to figure out some escape. He thought that perhaps he should just slip in and tell them the truth.
And then he thought of the Book of Jhest, the book that seemed to have the answers to everything buried in its graceful lines of script.
Barely making a sound, Bransen turned back and studied the two working brothers, soon discerning their patterns, soon predicting their turns and movements. He found his timing and slipped over the stone sill and in the window, sliding down to the floor and crawling along it like a snake. He reached the trapdoor and paused, silent and still, watching the two brothers moving in the dim light. As one brother lifted a candelabra from the desk, Bransen lifted the trapdoor, just enough so that he could slither through the opening. He touched on the floor below hands first, and held himself there, his feet slowly descending and quietly lowering the trapdoor closed as they did.
Bransen dropped to all fours and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Stork!" he heard one of the brothers call more insistently.
Now he moved fast, to his bed, where he stripped and pulled his woolen tunic on. Last, and with great remorse, he removed his mask and the gemstone it held. He worried about keeping the stone for just a moment, until he realized that there had been several of the soul stones in the pouch, after all, and the brothers didn't seem to keep close watch on them.
Bransen tucked everything out of sight, and not a moment too soon, for his trapdoor banged open. "Come along, Stork," said the monk. "Daylight is wasting."
Bransen rose from his bed, or tried to, and only then did he understand the toll his previous night's exploits had exacted upon his tortured body. A wave of such weariness came over him that he staggered forward and dropped hard to the floor, blackness engulfing him. Only distantly did he realize that he was being hoisted from the hole. Only distantly did he hear the calls of the monks.
He awoke much, much later, with darkness again settled on the land. He was on a blanket on the floor of the room above his own, a monk sitting in a chair above him, his head to one side, his breathing rhythmical in slumber.
Cadayle.
The thought stabbed at him. Had he failed her? Was it too late to go back and find her house?
Bransen tried to roll over and rise, but before he even really began to pull himself up, the monk grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Easy, Stork. It's almost dawn. Come on, now, go back to sleep. You had us all worried. We thought you had just decided to die!" The monk gave a chuckle, and Bransen hardly paid him any heed, but he did clearly hear the man's next words.
"I suppose that might be a good thing for you, though, eh, Stork? Poor wretched thing. Might be that we'd all be better off, yourself most of all, in just giving you to Bernivvigar. Ah, you poor thing."
Bransen wanted to scramble into his hole and gather up the soul stone, then come back in a rampage and teach this fool better!
But he didn't and he couldn't. He slumped back and hoped desperately that Cadayle was all right.
He went through his duties absently the next day, and was glad that the monks had reduced his workload since the incident with Tarkus Breen. When he finally managed to get back down into his hole, he was relieved to find that the monks had not found his hastily hidden black suit and the stolen soul stone. A crooked smile crossed Bransen's face as he considered that. Why would they find any of it, after all, since none of them ever came down to see him? On the one occasion when he had found visitors in his subterranean lair, they had been too consumed by the writing he had done on the wall even to notice the roll of black material that had so long served him as a pillow.
Realizing his limitations, Bransen dared to slip out earlier that night. He had to move more carefully, as there were people around, but the sky was heavily overcast, and the darkness gave him ample opportunity to hide.
And he used the lessons of the book, the deeper understanding it offered of how individuals perceived their surroundings. As he fell into those words, it almost seemed to Bransen as if he could see the world through the eyes of those from whom he wished to hide; and moving past them without being noticed presented very little challenge.
Bransen felt as if he were truly Jhesta Tu, as if the secrets of the mystics were more than simply known to him but actually were a part of him. How could he move so gracefully with his newfound freedom so fresh? How could he run, and fast, when he had never done anything like that before? And yet, he knew how, as if he saw every movement of his muscles, as if he understood every twist and its result, as if his thoughts, his chi, had so perfectly aligned that his body had become a perfect extension of that life energy, perfectly guided.
As he walked to the west end of Pryd, Bransen moved through the various routines of Jhesta Tu fighting, working his arms in a series of movements both defensive and offensive. He thrust his hand forward or sideways, precisely snapping at the end of each strike as if to crush a windpipe or stiffening his fingers as if jabbing them through flesh.