Hiatus.

Next post will be on October 1.

Thank you to all who are following this story. I hope you'll look forward to Chapter Two!

Twenty-one. (The close of Chapter One.)

Rian ran the short distance back to his home. The master and the student who accompanied him had already arrived, which was an embarrassment for Rian's father but, for his mother, a chance to entertain and search for gossip from the cities to the south. Even his father asked after the King’s interests. Rian’s older brother was away to the coast, somewhere too far away for much news. He served as a scout of sorts, a horse always waiting to help him spread word if the barbarians invaded his stretch of shore.

The boy charged through the door and came to a quick halt in front of Selden.

“Rian,” his father announced, with some amount of censure.

“I’m sorry, Father. And I apologize to you, Pater.”

He made no excuses for himself. It was clear where he had been, and why. The heavy emotion ringed him still.

“You’ve tracked mud in the room, Rian,” Selden told him. Geoffrey turned to the priest, surprised that he corrected the boy when it was really the parents’ place. Reading the master was always difficult, impossible now while he addressed the boy.

“Yes, Pater.” Rian was humble enough. “May I step out and clean them?”

“We’ll both step out,” and he stood. “Will you show me where you harvest the asparagus?”

Rian smiled, getting an understanding of the man.

Selden added, “Your mother’s promised a feast for us after we’ve talked.”

God, but he’s testing me, Rian thought. It was rude to ask where people collected food. At least it wasn’t mushrooms he hunted; asking after mushrooms would be the height of ill-mannered requests. It was bad enough asking after asparagus.

“Will the Pater share its truename? That should lead us to stalks and stalks. There’ll be no fasting when we’re flush with them.”

Well played, Selden thought. The boy’s lively.

Rian’s father was standing now and told his son, “Along with the pater, son. Show him the ways you take.”

Out of doors, the boy told Selden, “I am sorry for being late. Our village priest is ill.”

“He’s dying." Selden announced. "But you know that, don’t you?”

Rian sighed. The words were gentle really. Well, that’s not true, Rian thought. The words were plain-faced, but Rian felt the respect the priest held for the bishop.

The boy steeled himself. “He feels he’s failed me. He has been my only teacher, when it comes to words and arguments.”

“He’s a wise man, not unlettered, as you know.” He looked at the boy, as they headed across the fields. “Shall we see if you’ve failed him?”

“Pater, you seem harsh with me.” Rian thought it best to get it in the open.

Selden wouldn’t apologize. At least not now. He was testing the boy, pushing him to feel uncomfortable and tense. But he remembered what the Archmage had asked: Just concentrate on the surface, will you?

In a kind of answer, Selden said, “I’m told that I am sometimes blunt. I only meant to ask if you learned what you’ve been taught.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I see, Pater. And yes, I’ve learned a small portion of it.”

Was this false modesty? Selden asked himself. No, the boy is sincere in everything he says. Could there be even a grain of deceit in the boy?

“Perhaps you should refer to me as hlaford.”

“Are you to be my master? You’ve decided so quickly?”

“So you do know the old speech?”

“I learned it more from my mother than anyone else. My bishop taught me Latin. And he recited Greek, though it’s just a gabble of noise to me.”

"Gabbelen.”

“Like a duck!” Rian laughed.

“It’s good to hear you laugh, Rian.”

“I laughed even when my brother went to scout for the King. I told him I would follow in his footsteps. It was ridiculous, you see, I’m accident prone and I couldn’t kill a bug.” Rian’s eyes shined, remembering. “My mother and father nearly cried with their sadness. My brother did. He bawled and bawled. And then came my tears.”

“Tears ought not be thwarted,” Selden said, though he hadn’t cried in years. Instead, he felt the welling of them and ... then? Then came the emptiness that sometimes overcame him. He was past tears, he realized, swallowed up in the hopelessness that tried to crush him.

“I cried all this morning,” Rian admitted.

There wasn’t any shame found in the boy either. Nature’s son, Selden thought.

“Your eyes are red with it.”

Rian nodded. He was beginning to feel comfortable with this man.

So Selden began his quizzing, the fencing with the boy put aside.

“How few points define a plane?”

“Three.”

“Verdigris?”

“Vert-de-Gris.”

“Choleric?”

“One of the four humours.”

“Yes?”

“It was Galen who wrote about the humours, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And the gift?”

“Yes, though it’s something...”

“Beyond words, isn’t it?” Rian was enthused, though he moderated his excitement, “From what I can understand, I mean.”

“What can you tell me about the gift?”

“Very little,” the boy told him, truthfully enough. For Rian, it was something beyond words.

“Do you think it might be like poetry?”

“Naming must be like poetry,” the boy answered.

“What can I know about naming?” Selden said. “But poetry, let’s try.”

“The heart in the breast of Hlorrithi laughed
When the hard-souled one his hammer beheld;
First Thrym, the king of the giants, he killed,
Then all the folk of the giants he felled.

“The giant's sister old he slew,
She who had begged the bridal fee;
A stroke she got in the shilling's stead,
And for many rings the might of the hammer.”

And Rian finished the verse, “And so his hammer got Odin's son.”

“Not Othin?”

“If you will, Pater.”

The quizzing seemed to last forever, though the boy never faltered. Selden was impressed. The boy was remarkably prepared for the school, even if he was a child of the near pagan reaches. The other boys will make fun of his accent. But he’s likely to win them over, Selden thought.

Selden was quiet.

“So is it asparagus now, Pater?”

“Your mother means to feed us.”

“Is it not an ember day?”

“It’s love’s bread she’ll serve.”

“Love’s bread,” Rian laughed. “Your student will be pleased. Didn’t his stomach rumble?!”

Selden joined in the laughing and, then, when the laughter came to chuckling, then silence, he couldn’t help himself. The boy’s charm was too much, his own curiosity too great.

So he opened his mind to him, in a guarded fashion.

He felt immediately foolish. What does a sixteen-year-old boy know? How could he understand how I feel after all that I’ve seen, after all I’ve done, things that have no real meaning, even to me.

The boy stared into Selden’s eyes ... and came to know him. For the master, it was uncanny. So many of his private thoughts were laid out like one’s morning clothes. Taken by surprise, Selden closed his mind with a ferociousness that must have alarmed the boy, but he remained seemingly undisturbed, now watching the master instead of reading him. Selden was taken aback. So complete was the boy’s knowing, it was frightening. Even the Archmage stumbled a bit when making sense of others. Primus had admitted as much. This boy seemed to absorb thoughts and feelings like a sponge. And with a curiosity that was unnerving.

“I’m sorry,” Rian told him. “I was...”

“No, no,” the master told him.

“I was indiscreet.”

“Quite all right.” And Selden changed the subject. He told the boy, “Come, let’s have our meal. You’re a good candidate for us. You’re bright. A little undisciplined, I would venture, but you’ll learn, if you join us.”

“My parents would like that.”

“And not you? You would waste my time?”

“I have doubts, too.”

So the boy had seen. Selden turned red with embarrassment, though the boy hadn’t judged him, had he? Instead, the master could feel that Rian was gentle, understanding, patient. He was a remarkably large-hearted boy.

“We always pray for a stronger faith,” Selden said. He might as well admit it out loud. He would make no excuses for himself.

He lifted himself from the boulder where they were seated, as did Rian. The master headed a short way up the path that had brought them to the river's edge.

And then he turned, “Just how completely do you see?” Selden could have just as well asked, “Who are you?”

The boy smiled, pleased with himself for his knowing, confused by his knowing so much, and ashamed for being so different than others.

A silence filled the air between the two.

“Your truename is Kinderring,” Rian told the master.

And Selden could not have been more shocked.

Twenty.

Rian stayed the night with his catechist. The widow who cared for the bishop, her name was Nuala, made a shake-down for the boy on the porch off the cottage. The boy lay under a bison skin, his eyes staring heavenward, the stars distant and moving so slowly across the sky. His emotions were unlike the heavens’ predictable course. He cursed the end to his bishop’s life and lamented him, mourned him, though he lay not far away, dreaming, Rian knew, and piecing together memories from a lifetime.

Where there is life, there is hope. So we're told.

There is life, and will, and acceptance. The bishop had already decided, had surrendered almost joyfully to what the Lord had planned for him. And me? Rian wondered. Can I do the same?

When I was named, I saw the same star-filled sky and then the daystar and the climbing dawn, Rose-fingered, the Poet wrote, and I was spun. Past mountains and dales, ice flows and a green horizon of turf, the waving symphony of prairie, the parched expanse of a red-rock desert that sang with hope. And came the rains. And flowers. They cascaded out from bough and hollow, seemingly blossomed from air. And I took it in, so solitary my breathing was another life pressing against me and my shouts came crowding back in echoes.

But where were the ones I loved?

Was I here alone? Here in the center of a garden–I could smell the roses. I heard fountains. And then the light failed. Crushed rosemary, geraniums, mint...

And I was named.

“Rian,” the bishop called. His mind had cleared, had returned to the proper day and hour. “You’ll be late. Take leave of me now. I feel fine.”

“I know the truth,” Rian answered. “You would not have sent me.”

“I’m a fool, Rian. You have to go. See the wide world, while you can and while your life shines before you.”

“And the rooks?”

“I don’t know. Wives' tales.” The bishop stirred, his eyes now opened and he looked at the boy who now hovered above, his head crowned by the midday sun. “One remains. He’s met the master from your new school.”

“A bird?”

“A mystery.”

The bishop reached for Rian’s hand and told him, “You should know my truename,” and the tears welled up in Rian’s eyes and poured like rain.

“No one remains who knows me so well, failings and all.”

Still Rian cried.

“Search me, Rian; I have no fear of dying. Face your doubts and you’ll erase them.”