Is this the means by which the sorcerers hoped to bring peace? Did they really know what they were doing? Can it be possible they understood what would happen?
“Adica can’t have known. She’d never have agreed to lend herself to so much destruction if she’d known.”
He has to believe it is true.
But he will always wonder if she knew and, knowing, acted with the others anyway, knowing the cost. Did they really hate the Cursed Ones so much?
“It was all for nothing. They’re still here. I’ve seen them.”
Ghost shapes, more shadow than substance, walk the interstices between Earth and the Other Side, caught forever betwixt and between. Those Cursed Ones who did not stand in their homeland when it was torn out of the earth were pulled outward with it; they exist not entirely on Earth and yet not severed from it, as all that comes of earth is bound to earth.
Yet isn’t it true that no full-blooded Cursed One walks the same soil as humankind now? Didn’t the human sorcerers get what they wanted? Isn’t Earth free of the Cursed Ones?
“We can never know peace,” he cries, turning to the men who have flocked around him. He has to make them understand. “What is bound to earth will return to earth. The suffering isn’t over. The cataclysm will happen again when that which was torn asunder returns to its original place.”
“Thank the Lady, Father,” says the infirmarian as the gathered brothers let a new figure through. “You’ve come.”
The abbot is a young man, vigorous and handsome, son of a noble house. He has a sarcastic eye and a gleam of humor in his expression, but he sobers quickly as he examines Alain and the placid but menacing hounds. The portly infirmarian keeps a light touch on Alain’s wrist, nothing harsh, ready to grab him if he bolts.
“It’s a wanderer, Father Ortulfus,” says the infirmarian. His fingers flutter along Alain’s skin. Like the bee, he seems to be probing, but he hasn’t stung yet.
“Another one?” The abbot has wildly blue eyes and pale hair, northern coloring. Adica’s people were darker, stockier, black-haired. “I’ve never seen so many wanderers on the roads as this summer. Is he a heretic?”
“Not so we’ve noticed, Father,” says one of the monks nervously “He’s babbling about the end times. He’s right out of his mind.”
“Hush, Adso,” scolds the infirmarian before he addresses the abbot. The calm words slip from his mouth smoothly. “He’s not violent, just troubled.” He turns to regard Alain with compassion. “Here, now, son. You’ll not be running away, will you? Don’t think you’ll come to any harm among us. We’ve a bed you can sleep in, and porridge, and work to keep your hands busy. That will ease your mind out of these fancies. You’ll find healing here.”
The hot poison strikes deep. These words hurt far worse than any bee’s sting.
No one will believe him.
And Adica is dead. No one will mourn her with him, because they cannot. They do not even know, nor can they believe, that she exists. He has come home as a stranger, having lost everything that mattered. Having, in the end, not even kept his promise to die with her.
What point is there in living?
Stronghand’s foot hit, jolting him into awareness. One step he had taken, only one. The sky lightened, and the river’s silver band glinted as sunlight drove the mist off the waters, dazzling his eyes. A torrent of images washed over him. All of the colors of Alain’s being had overflowed in that vision to drown him.
Joy ran like a deluge. Yet joy had spoken in a terrible voice.
So many dead. No more death, please God. No more killing.
“No more killing.” Hearing his own voice, he shook himself free of the trance. The girl turned to throw the youngest child over the battlements.
He leaped forward and wrenched the child out of her grasp, knocking the kneeling sorcerer aside. The girl scrambled onto the battlements herself, making ready to jump.
“Stop her!”
Quickly all seven of the Albans were taken into custody. The child he held squirmed and began to sob outright in fear.
“Hush!”
It ceased its weeping.
“No more killing.” His voice seemed unrecognizable to him, yet it sounded no different than it ever had. Was it wisdom that made him speak? For better or worse, he was scarred by the strength of the contact between him and Alain, bound by a weaving that even the WiseMothers did not comprehend.
Where had Alain gone? He had vanished from Stronghand’s dreams and apparently from Earth itself for over three years. What was the meaning of this vision of destruction on such a scale that it dwarfed even the slow deliberations of the WiseMothers?
In those years when Alain had been gone, the span of months between the battle at Kjalmarsfjord and this day’s rejoining, he had thought and planned and acted the same as ever, but something had been missing. It was as if the world had gone gray and only now did he see its colors. For truly the world was a beautiful place, worn down by suffering, painted by light, never at rest.