“If it is an evil thing, perhaps it is calling to Alicia?” the girl murmured. “And from the story you tell, it is an evil thing.”
“Why do you think so?” asked the abbot.
“If Ghastain wielded it, slaughtering all those people, it must have been . . .”
The abbot leaned forward to take her hand and she looked deep into his eyes, blue eyes: kindly, clear, and guileless. “If it existed at all, it may have been completely neutral, Xulai. It may be merely a source of power like the one that underlies us here at the abbey. You have seen the great pit in which the abbey is built? It is the result of something huge, some enormous sky stone that fell long, long ago at the end of the Before Time. Some say that this sky stone and its companions is what put an end to the Big Kill, for there were great earthquakes then. Mountains were heaved about, some made higher, some leveled. The enormous tableland we now call the Highlands of Ghastain was thrust up. Norland was created anew, half of it shorn away to the west. Some remnants of that great stone lie beneath us. Our forefathers drilled down to it and hot water came up! It takes heat from the stone, even after all this time, and we use the heat for cooking and keeping warm and bathing. We try to use that power for good. If we were ever overrun by an army of evil, however, no doubt they would use it for ill. Power is power as the sun is the sun, the wind is the wind. The villager blesses the rain as it falls on his crops; the pillager uses it to cover his approach. It is the wielder who determines the good or evil.”
Xulai would have asked for more information about the power that underlay the abbey, but the abbot had already risen and crossed to the door, where he called for Brother Aalon. Though it did not seem enough time had passed, they heard the heavy stroke of the single bell, dong! Dong! Dong!
“Lunch bells,” said Bear. “We’ll collect the others at the meal and decide what to do next.” He set off down the hall.
Xulai, lingering while the others departed, turned to the abbot and took his hand. “Eldest Brother. For my sake, please do not tell anyone what we have talked of here. Not anyone, even your close associates.”
He nodded, a crease between his eyebrows. “It would be better not, I think.”
“Not even your very close associates,” she said again.
He nodded, looking slightly puzzled. “Not . . . ?”
“Do you remember Justinian sending a large amount of treasure to the abbey to be kept for two of his loyal servants?”
“Oh, heavens, Daughter, I don’t handle things like that. You’d have to ask the prior.”
She stood for a moment, transfixed, before murmuring, “Please, sir. Do not mention to the prior that I asked. Promise me you won’t.”
His puzzlement was plain, but he whispered, “I won’t, if you ask it, but—”
“I promise to explain, later.” She pressed his hand and left him greatly troubled.
“Sister Tomea wanted to take you to the school this afternoon,” said Precious Wind as they finished their lunch. “She said she would come to fetch you at midafternoon. In the meantime, she’s suggested we go have a look at the house we’re to occupy.”
“I’ve already been there,” said Bear in an offhand tone. “I can guide us.”
“When did you go?” Precious Wind asked. He merely shrugged and set about assembling the rest of their group, who then followed him on a winding way through corridors and plazas and more corridors and cloisters, and at last into a tunnel through the eastern shield wall. They stood with the abbey behind them looking across wide parkland scattered with groves and shrubberies and grassy stretches, occupied by a scatter of young people playing a ball game and a clutter of grazing sheep watched by a few indolent dogs. Graveled paths led here and there.
Bear gestured at the expanse. “This is a protected park for the abbey’s children, a place where people can walk or play at sports. The Wilderbrook begins over on the south side, and they’ve brought a bit of it under the wall to make a swimming place. They’ve built a ball field and playground on the north side, and there, east”—Bear pointed—“that’s the back wall.”
The gray outer wall curved in from either side behind a cluster of dwellings that varied in size from small to quite large. At one of the largest—built of gray stone much like the wall, the roof covered with curved tiles of rosy clay—a crew of workers was busy replacing broken roof tiles while another crew dumped carts of gravel in the area outside the front door.
“That is supposed to be ours,” said Bear as he went down the path that led the considerable distance toward it.
“We’d get plenty of exercise going back and forth,” remarked Oldwife in a grumpy voice.
Bear said, “Well, if we live here, we can eat here . . .”
“If we do the cooking,” grouched Oldwife.
“Which means we don’t have to go back and forth much,” Bear continued, “except for Xulai getting to and from school. She can ride if she likes. There’s a paddock outside the school.”
“Actually, the walk would be good for all of us,” remarked Precious Wind.
Inside, the place smelled of damp plaster and the sour-milk odor of new paint. A spacious sitting room was on the left of the entry hall and an equally large dining room on the right. Behind these were several small offices, a kitchen, several pantries, and a rear door opening out toward the wall. From the dining room a corridor led to men’s quarters on the right, including a bathtub room. From the sitting room, similar quarters extended to the
