Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

ZOLE, JOELI AND Nona entered Path Tower by three different doors. Nona had found the east held a sense of rightness about it that the others lacked. Joeli came through the west in opposition. Zole came through the north, perhaps remembering her origins out on the ice.

In the classroom at the top of the tower they found themselves seats amid the play of light from the stained glass windows. The classroom was freezing as usual and the novices’ breath misted before them. The tower had been built without fireplaces, relying on the shipheart warming the oil pipes that ran the length of the structure. Sigils on the pipes closest to the shipheart had converted its power into heat. Many of the convent’s buildings had been adapted since the loss and the wind now stripped the smoke from a score of chimneys, but Sister Pan had resisted change.

“Welcome Mystic Class girls, welcome.” The ancient woman sat on her treasure chest, wrapped in a fox-fur robe for which the abbess had sought special dispensation from the high priest on account of Sister Pan being close on a hundred with nobody left alive who could say whether each year was now taking her closer to that century mark or further past it. “Zole and Nona have joined us! It’s a rare class that boasts three quantals.”

Two days earlier Joeli had been the only quantal in the class and the sole recipient of Sister Pan’s attentions. Joeli scowled and wrapped the illegal shawl tighter around the faked bruising on her neck. She didn’t look well pleased at having to share.

“Clarity today, girls.” Sister Pan rubbed her hand over her stump and huddled deeper into her furs. “I’ve put the etching of the Holothian labyrinth against the wall.” She nodded for Darla to uncover it. “There is a second path from door to tomb. First find your clarity, then find that route. Eyes only.” She glanced at Darla as she sat down: the gerant had been known to leave her chair and try tracing paths with her finger. “Zole, Nona, and Joeli will accompany me.”

The three novices fell in behind Mistress Path. At least the practice rooms were warmer, lacking windows. And if they were lucky Sister Pan would let them use any Path-energy they managed to channel to heat the room first before trying anything more complex.

Nona allowed her vision to defocus and summoned the Path’s image out of the blurred confusion. She let the flickers of light from Pan’s lantern fuse into a single burning line and followed it, her feet somehow losing contact with the reality of stone steps.

“Follow close.” Sister Pan’s voice, disembodied in a space both vast beyond measure and small beyond imagining. “A different room today.”

Nona stumbled out of the void into a narrow curving chamber very similar to the one in which she had practised her Path-work for the years since her gift showed. It stood between the spiral of the central stair and the circle of the tower’s outer wall, occupying another third of the space. The only difference lay in the nature of the sigils inlaid in silver upon the ceiling, floor, and every wall. These ones were smaller, more complex, less tightly bound. In places loops and trails from one overwrote the next, and no two looked the same.

“The thread-room.” She hadn’t meant to speak. Hessa had told her about the chamber.

“It’s time you and Zole got to grips with thread-work,” Sister Pan said. “Walking the Path arms a Mystic Sister with forces that are very hard to use for anything but destruction. Here we focus on the more subtle Path-arts, but although they are gentle one must never underestimate them. I believe our own dear abbess has some hint of quantal blood and a rare unconscious talent for the most ephemeral thread-work. Done right, a gentle pull here, a touch there, a breath just sufficient to set a thread vibrating . . . and kings may be toppled, wars turned, the weak raised up.” She gave the lantern to Joeli who moved to light three others. “Thread-work is a delicate art, which is why you two have never been any good at it. It rewards patience, observation, and empathy. There is no violence to it, though that does not preclude its use for malice. Hate can be a cold thing.” She pushed Nona aside and stood between her and Zole. Nona heard the creak of Pan’s bones as she moved. When the nun stood hunched at her side Nona realized with sudden surprise that she was taller than the old woman, and more solid. A single blow would shatter Sister Pan. A sense of unease came over Nona. It felt wrong somehow that so much knowledge and experience could be so fragile.

“I will show you.” Sister Pan raised her hand and stared into the space beyond it.

Nona waited, watching. When Nona had arrived at the convent Sister Pan had loomed over her as all the other nuns did. There were still more secrets locked in her head than Nona could ever learn, the keys to powers untold . . . and yet she looked so small, so frail, waiting to cross the Path, so close that the devils must be licking their lips.

She is old, but I would not dare her.

Nona looked again. Keot was never one to miss a chance to boast. It gave her comfort to know he feared Mistress Path.

“Watch!” The air before Sister Pan filled with the bright complexity of the Path, a moving, living thing, twisting through more dimensions than the eye could fathom. “When wool is spun on the wheel a single length of yarn is wound around the spindle. But all around that strand of yarn there is a halo of loose pieces, fibres of wool not quite twisted in, wandering out from the main body.”

As Sister Pan spoke the Path dimmed and in the air all around it threads appeared, like stars when the sun has fled the sky. “The threads are not the Path but they are of the Path. And because the Path goes everywhere and runs through all things, so do the threads.”

Nona wondered if Sister Pan had chosen to speak of yarn to explain the matter because she knew Nona was a peasant and might not understand a different analogy so well. She was still wondering about it when she became aware that her mouth was open. She closed her jaw with a snap and wiped her lips. The image Sister Pan had made was mesmerizing. With an effort she tore her gaze from it.

“It’s fascinating is it not?” Sister Pan’s smile was a narrow white crescent in the darkness of her face. “I could watch it forever.”

The slow motion of the threads reflected in Zole’s and Joeli’s eyes.

“There’s a danger there,” Sister Pan said. “The Path will throw you, sooner or later, but the threads will hold you. If you lack the will to free yourself they will keep you until your years have run from you and all that remains is to cross the Path into darkness.” She waved at the pattern and it faded, releasing the others.

Joeli blinked and focused on Nona. “Mistress Path, you said that these two novices have no talent for thread-work because they’re so predisposed to violence. But do you think they might just be violent because they know they lack the talent for deeper work?” A small smile played on her lips, as if the humiliation at the convent table had never happened.

Sister Pan waggled her hand. “We shall see. Path-work is closer to the brute force approach of the Red Sister, and thread-work more subtle, like the arts of the Grey Sister, all stealth and guile. Mystic Sisters shade either towards the Red or Grey.”

“I would rather be open. Straightforward. Honest.” Nona wrinkled her nose. “Manipulating people, using them, feels wrong. It feels like . . . lies. People should be allowed free will . . .”