The Church of the Wood: A Faerie Story

  Part 2

  The Skeptical Priest

  Father Jared had always wanted to go east. He perused the letter again, and then set it down thoughtfully on the cluttered desk in front of him. It was a peculiar letter to receive, and it contained an even more peculiar request. No one would understand if he did what it asked of him; of all the churches in the land he could choose from, this Church of the Wood was so obscure that it must be the least. Father Jared had already been offered the place of High Priest at the Palace, which would make him one of the many advisors to the king. The king expected him to take the offer and would, no doubt, be very vexed should he refuse.

  King Lukas had already mocked him for becoming a priest—this was not unusual, the king had mocked him for just about everything he’d ever done—and Father Jared could just imagine what he would say to a letter such as this. Father Jared himself had expected to do what the king wanted: take the title of High Priest, and use his influence wisely for the good of Calundra. After all, it was a position befitting his status, a position of luxury and wealth.

  Father Jared did not like luxury and wealth. If he had liked them, he would not have become a priest. And he was rather pleased at the idea of spiting the king, who did not like priests, and who would then have to find himself another candidate from amongst the rival factions of the upper classes of Calundra. Which would be like walking a narrow ledge between two precipices. Father Jared piously suppressed a feeling of satisfaction at this image, and returned to the contents of the letter.

  It was clear that the author was in the last stages of dementia, and much to be pitied for it. Though the church was called the Church of the Wood, he was certain that whatever was near it was no more than a paltry handful of ordinary trees. Everyone knew that the woods in the land of Calundra were all gone; any school child could recite when the Wood of the Palace, the last one, had been destroyed. That was over twenty years ago now, and it was the official date to the end of the Faerie Wars.

  Father Jared did not like trees. They were pathetic things, diminutive and uninteresting. Of course, he did not like rolling hills or perfect farmlands either; he wasn’t much for natural beauty, for all that the poets gushed about the wonders of Calundra. He could not be unhappy that the last of the woods were gone, nor with them the last of the faeries. Although there were tales—Father Jared pushed back from his desk and stretched his young, cramped body.

  He stalked morosely over to the window that looked out onto the Palace gardens. It was a meticulously manicured stretch of sandstone paths and emerald green bushes, with beds of flowers that grew all to the same height. The sight gave him so little pleasure that he hardly ever saw it. What he saw instead was in his mind’s eye—the Great Hall and the Palace bard. The bard he was thinking of had told one particular tale many times, so that it could be said to be his most popular. The bard was not marked, of course; if he had been, he would never have been able to do his job.

  It was a tale of a Wood at the edge of Calundra, the last of all of its many woods, the heart of the land itself. Over centuries of intense effort, humans had razed every other wood, fueled by their outrage, yet at a gut-wrenching cost. The woods had always been difficult to cut, but the more the humans cut them, the harder it became and the more men had to be sacrificed to the vengeful beasts and the wicked faeries in the process. The removal of the Wood of the Palace had been considered impossible; many kings had tried and failed to destroy it; some had unleashed horrors in the process.

  The last king, King Pattrik, had finally succeeded. That was what gave rise to this tale—stirrings of unwanted guilt; guilt that they had finally won. People perversely wanted to believe that Calundra had somehow hidden something away for itself, so that they could feel absolved of their destructive anger, while at the same time fearing that it might be so, and hoping it was not.

  As the tale went, there would always be one Wood in Calundra, a Wood that no human hand could ever touch. That Wood had inherited all of the strength of every wood that had ever perished, gathering up their magic when they were cut down. It was a Wood so deep and so dark and so evil that in it no human foot could ever fall.

  It could not be found except by those who lived near it, in the Village of the Wood, for it turned back all casual visitors. It appeared on no map, no human map at least, and a faerie would never make a map because a faerie would never need one. To speak of faeries, if there was one wood left, then there was at least one faerie in it, for there could not be one without the other. Some people debated this, but Father Jared thought if all of the rest of it was lies, this part was true.

  Yet Father Jared wasn’t a dreamer. He did not like tales. He considered that the bard only favored this one because it made the royal guests shiver and because it displeased King Lukas, which might be why the man was out of favor at the Palace. To think that there was still a faerie out there was to believe in things that went bump in the night, and Father Jared had never been afraid of such sounds. It was said that a faerie could make valorous men fall on their own swords with two words, and would do so willingly to protect its wood. That was why the Faerie Wars had been so very bloody and so very long.

  A faerie could spell a human to do its bidding, and so they had sought to make slaves of the humans, to force them to live in the dark woods where no human being could thrive. But these were stories that parents used to keep their children in bed at night. Father Jared knew that no creature could ever have power over him; he felt it in the marrow of his bones. No, he thought with a sigh, as he turned away from the window, there was no hidden evil in the land of Calundra; it was all boringly laid out gardens and profitable green fields and quaint little towns.

  But he must answer the letter anyway, and so he must decide. Father Jared sat back down at the desk, pulled out a blank sheet of paper, and then dipped his pen into the ink. He didn’t know what to write, and it hardly mattered. The letter had appeared on his desk, accompanied by a strange black feather, and the servants disclaimed all knowledge of it. Father Jared scrawled in an elegant ink-blotted hand, “I will come.”

  After all, the priest was dying. At the very least, he could stay with him until he passed, and then bring his pendant back to the Palace chapel, locking it safely in the box. But he would tell the king that he had decided to take the post—Father Jared’s mouth quirked as he envisioned the king’s response—it was true enough, in its way. If there was a Church of the Wood, he would stay there and be its priest. He could find a substitute easily enough, should it not suit him. And there would be no lack of other offers, even a renewed one from the king himself.

  He might be a priest, but he was a prince of Calundra, after all.

  “Brother, what is the meaning of this?” King Lukas snapped, moving up a step on the royal dais to appear taller than Father Jared, who was very tall. The king held the same letter that Father Jared had been holding himself several days ago, and the king had already read it, so this sentence was directed at Father Jared’s decision and not at the rambling contents of the letter, some of which they had already discussed.

  “It bears investigation,” Father Jared replied coolly, twitching back his priestly robes, which always annoyed him, as though the fabric was wrong. This was not because he missed the furs and velvets of his youth, the ones that King Lukas so prominently displayed. It was because he had never found a piece of clothing that did not irritate him. Father Jared did not like clothing any more than he liked luxury and wealth, or trees, or fancy gardens, or tales of the bard. “And I think I might be quite happy in a simple country church, serving the needs of the common people.”

  “You’re never quite happy doing anything,” King Lukas retorted, with a slight cough. “You’re the most difficult man that I know. Nothing pleases you, but this will please you even less than you think, as well as putting me out of temper with you.” The king had found his throne, and thrown himself petulantly onto it, sending several servants anxiously scurrying to his s
ide, to offer him soft silken pillows, trays of bite-size delicacies, and goblets of pear-scented wine.

  “Well, since you are never in temper with me, I can hardly fear that.” Father Jared’s tone was dry, but a very observant man might have noticed the speck of hurt in it, and known that the priest was not entirely indifferent to the feelings of his older brother the king, whatever his private thoughts. King Lukas did not appear to be a very observant man, as he chided a serving girl for bringing the wrong pillow, and berated the serving men for bringing him a lady’s sweets and wine. But it was foolish to underestimate King Lukas. All of the servants fled, and the fair-haired king’s handsome face focused sharply on his brother, as though he might wish to ask for a replacement for him as well.

  “You know who this man is, of course, this doddering old fool who wrote you the letter?” the king asked him caustically. Father Jared’s spine stiffened. He had thought the same thing about the author himself, but the man was a priest of the god, and he deserved respect. “The man no doubt sees woods and faeries everywhere. Father said he was completely incoherent when he left the Palace. And lucky for him that he was; it saved his hide.” The king waved the crumpled letter in his hand and, predictably, found a way to mock. “The Mad Priest has written you a mad letter, and you believed it.”

  Father Jared was undeterred by this. Indeed, he would do very little with his life if he worried about what his brother would say to him. “I believe not a word of it. There is no Wood, and there is no Church of the Wood and there is no Village of the Wood outside it.”

  It was a shame, for the Mad Priest had not always been mad. Father Brion had once been a man of influence and was previously well-respected at the Palace. In their father’s day, in the reign of King Pattrik and at the time of Prince Jared’s infancy, Father Brion had himself served as High Priest. He had only become deranged and fled after the Silent Queen’s execution, around the same time as when the last wood was destroyed. The aging priest, who was rumored to be complicit in the Queen’s crime, had not been pursued or brought to justice.

  When a ten year-old Prince Jared had heard this story, he’d questioned his father about it heatedly. King Pattrik had said very briefly that Father Brion was not responsible for losing his mind, and then told his son never to ask about it again. His father did not speak of the Silent Queen. None did, who wished to remain at the Palace, and now that King Pattrik was dead, buried in pomp and splendor, no one knew what had driven the Mad Priest mad or how mad he had actually become.

  The tale of the Silent Queen was also the tale of the last wood, a largely untold tale that made the young prince uncomfortable and sad. These feelings were what had driven him to question King Pattrik about the Mad Priest. He’d heard about Father Brion from the bard, of course, and King Pattrik was so furious with the bard for this that the man had thought it prudent to disappear until after the king’s recent funeral, when he’d turned up on the Palace doorstep like a bad coin. There was no saying that the bard’s tale was true—even though it was about real people and definite events—because the bard was a notorious liar, a man who knew how to mold and knead his audience like warm taffy.

  As the bard had told of the Silent Queen, he’d spoken of how Father Brion had taken pity on a mute peasant girl and given her a job at the Palace. It was the lowest of jobs, that of cleaning the Palace floors. It was also how his father had met her, slipping across a wet parquet and slamming into a nearby wall. When the young peasant girl ran to help him, he’d discovered her to be unfathomably beautiful. Within a month, they were married, against all of his many advisors’ good advice.

  And if her servants murmured that the Silent Queen’s hair—which fell to her waist in a rich, dark, red—was only red because she dyed it that color, and if her ladies-in-waiting muttered that her eyes—which were long-lashed and blue as a robin’s eggs—were only blue because of the strange stones that she wore around her neck, no doubt they were all just jealous. King Pattrik was happy, and that was all that mattered. As a widower with a small son he had been very unhappy, and he valued the difference. Also, the Silent Queen bore him a child, a perfect brown-haired baby that never seemed to cry, and it was good to have another prince of the blood.

  But the Silent Queen didn’t take to his firstborn, Prince Lukas, as the king had hoped, even though he was a winning child. She gave him no motherly caresses and kisses. That was not remarkable at first; the new Queen did not seem to be affectionate with anyone; perhaps she didn’t even like children. But people whispered behind her back when she had her own little baby and was seen to dote on him, never wanting him out of her sight.

  No one, however, would have imagined that the Silent Queen would try to murder Prince Lukas, until the attempt failed and the Queen was brought to trial. It was then that the Mad Priest went mad. He stood up in front of the entire Court and swore to the Queen’s innocence, when he had no proof to back it up. He claimed that the god had told him, and he wept when the judgment of the Queen’s treason was pronounced.

  It was cruel of the bard to begin this tale to ten-year-old Prince Jared, because the Silent Queen was also Prince Jared’s mother. The young prince had known that his mother was an evil woman, and that she had tried to harm his father and his older brother, but he hadn’t known it in detail because it was never talked about. Prince Jared loved his father, who was gray and loud and amusing, and looked up to his older brother, whose presence was witty and commanding.

  That was why he’d refused to listen to any more of it. And why he’d announced to his father that the Mad Priest should have been brought to justice, for everyone said he had fallen under the Queen’s influence. When his father had declared that this was impossible, due to the nature of the mark, Prince Jared had insisted his father explain to him about it. The young prince had never paid attention to the god before this, but he was determined to verify things for himself. Which was how it came about that one day he charged up to the threshold of the Palace chapel and demanded that the current High Priest, a timid old man who was overawed by his royal blood and his brashness, should come out and mark him so that he could see how it felt.

  Father Jared shook his head at the memory. He’d thought to take the god’s mark lightly, as a test of what his father had told him, and discovered himself bound by it instead. Father Brion may have been the worst High Priest in the history of all Calundra, but he still bore the mark. That meant that his father had been right; Father Brion’s failings could not be his fault. He had believed the Queen to be innocent, because he was deluded, but he could not have helped her plot against someone’s life. Of course the entire letter could be just another example of the Mad Priest’s madness; he probably didn’t live in a church at all. He would find the poor man—if he found him at all—markless and living as a vagrant under a bridge or squatting in an abandoned shed.

  But there was a specific set of instructions to the letter—which presumed that he would travel there in order to give his answer—which intrigued him. It said to ride in one direction and only that direction, until there was no more farmland, no hills, no ordinary trees, no cities and no villages. The letter stated that he must do this even when he knew there was nowhere left to go, when he found himself riding in circles, and when he was told by everyone he asked that he was going absolutely wrong. He could not rely on a compass, for it would become more and more inaccurate the closer to the Wood he got. Of course, these instructions made no sense, and indicated that the entire letter was nonsense and not worth Father Jared’s trouble.

  But it was the direction that had decided him. He had always wanted to go east, as though there was something to the east that he remembered, or wanted, or possible even liked. He knew that this was not so, because as a prince of Calundra he had traversed all of the land at one time or another. He knew that there was nothing to the east that was even remotely special. It was all depressingly alike.

  The king—who didn’t like to leave the comforts of his p
alace—used this as an excuse to teasingly send Father Jared away on diplomatic trips, telling his brother that he needed to learn to appreciate the beauties of Calundra. Another reason the king would be sorry to lose him; he would have to make his royal peace missions for himself. Since the completion of his training, Father Jared had been serving as High Priest in all but name, and that only because he was stubborn and resisted taking it.

  King Lukas was hearty and blond, the opposite of Father Jared—whose brown hair was unfashionably dark and whose complexion was conspicuously wan—but he thought that his brother had paled some during their conversation. Father Jared knew that they both found the letter far more troubling than either of them would ever discuss.

  “Well, I hope you enjoy mucking around in Baron Malkine’s holding, because you realize that’s all you’ll be doing. When you get tired of it and you’ve seen this sad lunatic to his eternal rest, come back to me and do your duty to the kingdom.” This was pronounced with a finality that was not lost on Father Jared, nor was the fact that the servants had returned with new pillows, new food, and new wine. One did not overstay one’s welcome with his brother the king. Father Jared nodded, and left the way that he had come.

  As he readied his bags in his room, the sun set over the Palace gardens and shadows crept around its massive walls, but they were only friendly shadows, utterly benign. Father Jared stared out the window and tried to imagine where the last wood, the Wood of the Palace, would actually have been. For the tale of the Silent Queen was also the tale of the last wood.

  After her execution, King Pattrik had needed to take out his rage and his anger on something, and the wood had been his target. He assembled an army of wood cutters and foresters and unemployed peasants. He had chopped down every tree; there was nothing left of it now, not even a stump. King Pattrik succeeded in doing what no other king in a century had done, but he found no faerie in it. The bard liked to say that the faerie had fled because the wood had grown mysteriously weak and she could no longer protect it.

  Father Jared didn’t think there ever had been a faerie. He doubted very much that the wood around the Palace had been anything more than an ordinary collection of trees, which his father had decided to cut down. People blew things out of proportion. He stood by what he had said. There was no Wood, and there was no Church of the Wood, and there was no Village of the Wood.

  But if there was something to the east, he would find it.

 

  The Journey

  Baron Malkine’s holding was ten days ride from the Palace, but Father Jared’s horse could make it in nine. Father Jared liked his horse. It was huge and black and vicious, though not to Father Jared. When it was stabled in the Palace, the grooms used the stalls on either side of it for storage, because it made the other horses frantic. The horse’s name was Night.

  Father Jared had named him when he was very little, and he had been Father Jared’s horse since before he was big enough to ride him. Night had jumped the fence of the corral one day and chased out all of the other horses, even though he was only just a colt. The grooms had no idea where he came from, and they all thought he must be rabid. They wanted to put the wild colt down, after they had rounded up all of the other horses, but young Prince Jared wouldn’t let them.

  Night was happy to be going east too, the priest was sure of it. The horse was older now, but still strong; in fact, he hardly seemed to feel his years at all. Father Jared approved of most animals, though maybe not sheep or cows, and he could read their moods with precision. Riding on the eagerly galloping Night, he could have made it to the Baron’s manor by the eighth day, but he chose to stop at a nearby tavern.

  Father Jared had slept on the ground for seven nights and eaten cold meals for all of them, not that he minded cold meals or sleeping on the ground. But he did not wish to arrive at the Baron’s house looking as though he had done so, so he reined up his great black charger at a quaint-looking inn with gray stone walls and lush cascades of ivy. There were picnic tables lined up out front of it, a main door with a gabled roof, and a small stable to the side.

  Father Jared waved away the boy who naively offered to take Night, and tended to the horse himself. When Night was settled, snuffling emphatically into his feed, Father Jared dusted the dirt from the forest green of his priestly robes and went in search of food himself. He caught the scent of a hearty meat pie the moment he stepped through the door of the tavern. The priest chose a seat at a small round table, clearly meant for just one, and relaxed into the chair, crossing his legs and stretching his muddy boots out in front of him.

  The inn was prosperous; there were wooden surfaces everywhere—in the exposed beams of the ceiling, in the well-polished bar, in the rough planks of the flooring. There were plenty of other customers, local folk by their dress, wearing blue and light green striped sashes, ribbons, and belts—Count Olcay’s colors. Not the Baron’s people—he had stopped just outside of the Baron’s land—but chatty and likely to have heard the latest news about him. They should have no qualms about spreading it along to a priest, to judge by the easy, uninhibited sound of their conversation. From amongst the crowded tables, a beaming pot-bellied man, who was clearly the barkeep, hurried over to him with a gesture of welcome.

  The priest ordered a slice of the meat pie and a glass of ale. When the barkeep came back with them, Father Jared tucked into the meal appreciatively. He would take a room as well, and he should make some effort to converse with the other customers, of whom there were many, in order to hear the latest gossip.

  Baron Malkine was always in some kind of trouble, usually over a woman, so it would be good to know what he was walking into when he got there. As Father Jared pushed around the last chunk of mutton on his flat tin plate, he noticed that the barkeep was hovering nearby, wiping a neighboring table that a serving girl had already cleaned off. Father Jared pushed his plate away and made eye contact.

  The pot-bellied man came over to him at once.

  “How’dye like that pie, Father?” the man asked. His fair hair straggled to his shoulders, and he wore a voluminous stained apron, which he wiped his hands on, excitably.

  “Not bad,” Father Jared replied. This was high praise, coming from him. The priest was not an epicure. He preferred foods in their simplest, most natural state—though not meat, of course.

  “Traveling far?” the barkeep asked.

  “Possibly,” Father Jared replied. “I’ll take a room for the night, if you have one.”

  “Oh, aye, got several of those.” The barkeep nodded, and then kept on nodding, and then blinked. Father Jared had no doubt that the man had something else on his mind other than which room to put the priest in. He was staring at the priest’s silver pendant, which rested on his chest just below the decorative yellow braiding of his yoke.

  The barkeep’s round face grew wistful. “I had the mark once...” he told the priest, suddenly. “Never forget how comforting it was. Haven’t rightly felt at peace since...” His voice trailed off.

  It wasn’t the first time Father Jared had met someone who lost the mark. He braced himself for a story. It would be a tale of violence, licentiousness, or terrible deceit. If he was very unlucky, it would involve all three of them.

  The barkeep held out his left palm to the priest, which was quite bare, except for a few calluses. The man’s longish yellow hair fell forward as he gazed ruefully at it.

  “Closing up late one night, I got in a fight with the last lonely drunk—there’s always one, you know. Turned out the man hadn’t been drinking; only pretending. Was waiting to get me on my own. Fellow attacked me and meant to take my lockbox. ’Course I fought him off, and that was that.” The barkeep’s left hand closed compulsively into a fist.

  “Didn’t mean to kill him, though.”

  Father Jared gave the man a level look and told him reprovingly, “The god is good, but just.”

  The barkeep loosened the fist and tucked his hand away into his soiled apron
, abashed.

  “Ah, well, mebbe I did mean to kill him. I was mighty ticked off when he jumped me like that.” The barkeep cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Can I get you anything else?”

  The priest shook his head. He had ridden hard for eight days, and he was suddenly very, very tired. Part of him wanted to ask the barkeep to show him to his room, but the other part knew he needed information. So he took his glass of ale, which was only half-empty, and brought it over to the bar. A thin fair-haired man got up and left, making room for Father Jared on one of the stools. His neighbor, a stocky sandy-blond fellow in his late forties looked the priest over between gulps of ale. By the muscles on his arms, the fellow looked like a man who used them daily. “Evenin’, Father,” he said.

  Father Jared gave a polite greeting in return and placed his glass on the bar, taking time to survey it for the most likely customer. There was a woman to his left, and past her a group of old men who looked like they sat in the same stools every night having just about the same conversation. To his right, past his neighbor with the big arms, sat a mixed group of younger men and women, flirting with each other and showing off.

  And then there was always the barkeep himself, although he was wary that the man might take further conversation as an encouragement to beg the priest to give him back the mark. People always believed, no matter how many times they’d been told otherwise, that they could get a second chance.

  The stocky man was as good as any, and he’d already spoken to him. “Been having good weather, I see,” the priest addressed to him. The stocky man looked at him incredulously. “It’s been raining hard for over a day. The roads must be a mess.” He knew the priest wasn’t from around here then, which meant he must be a local himself.

  “Aye, I like the rain,” Father Jared said. “Good for the crops.” Yesterday’s deluge was another reason he’d stopped at the tavern, despite the fact that it had let up by morning. Clearly the man was not a farmer, but the priest had thought that already.

  “Suppose so,” the other man said dubiously.

  “Do you live in the village?” he asked the man.

  “I have a small smithy, run it myself. If you need anything sharpened, or a horse shoed, or a blade—aye, well, you wouldn’t need that, but mebbe a chopping knife or some such—you can come to me. Best smithy in the Three Villages,” the man continued. Father Jared looked at him curiously; it was a fairly modest boast.

  The smithy grinned self-consciously, and held out his hand. The priest shook it appreciatively, left hand to left hand, mark to mark. The priest didn’t normally like to touch people, but this was a ritual, and it was nice to know that there were good people around, so close to the Baron’s land.

  “What news of your neighbor, the Baron?”

  “Nothing since the duel with the Count. I’m sure you’ve heard of that?” Father Jared nodded; it was old news, but in Olcay’s holding it was no doubt a wound that festered. “We’re none too fond of the Baron in these parts,” the smithy continued, confirming his suspicion. “The Countess was a real lady, before she fell prey to the likes of him. And now she’s gone into mourning, and the new Count is only but a lad.” The smithy shook his head, and drank his ale, brooding. “The Baron’s not welcome around here, if you know what I mean,” he said at last. “Folk might not take kindly to you for bringing his name up.”

  “Aye, understood. Don’t worry; he’s not my purpose in being here. Being a priest, I don’t take kindly to him myself.” The smith nodded his approval of this. “Actually, I’m looking for something,” the young priest continued. “Something a bit out of the way.” The priest shifted on his stool, and told himself he’d best get on with it. “Have you heard of a place called the Church of the Wood?” he asked, bracing himself for the Look.

  The smith gave it to him.

  He knew he would encounter the Look often enough as he made his way east, the look that wondered why a grown man, and a priest at that, was asking about a bedtime story.

  “I suppose every boy’s heard about the Wood, and the Village of the Wood, and the Church of the Wood. Faerie stories, if you know what I mean,” the smithy said with a grin. He was laughing at him, ordering another drink from the barkeep, thinking the priest was a bit soft in the head. It wasn’t that none believed the stories—there were plenty of timid and gullible people in the land of Calundra—but a man like this was not likely to be one of them. Sadly, the more reliable-looking the source of information, the more of the Look he got.

  “I’d have to agree with you,” the priest said, running his fingers through his dark brown hair. He hadn’t even reached the Baron’s land, and already he was feeling that his excursion was pointless. The smith had become involved in another conversation, though, and the priest was happy to be let off being questioned on why he’d asked.

  A serving girl walked past with a tray, precariously over-flowing with glasses, held up high in her hand. She moved with an ease which drew his attention, as did the tower-like arrangement of what she conveyed, which seemed likely to tumble down at every step. It did not, though. She disappeared through a swinging door, came out empty-handed, cleared several more tables, and then did it all over again. The evening was busy; customers came and went, glasses piled and re-piled, but nothing ever got dropped. The girl was a master.

  Father Jared had never found women very attractive. If he had, he wouldn’t have become a priest. As a prince of the blood he’d eventually have been expected to marry and have royal children. His calling absolved him—to his great relief—of this unappealing task. Still, the girl was eye-catching. She had a certain charm; the light brown hair that swished around her shoulders, the hazel eyes that took in everything quietly, the graceful manner of her walk. He found himself uncharacteristically pleased by her, so much so that when she passed by him again he found himself paying her a compliment.

  “You’ve a talent there,” he said, indicating the well-balanced tray. “Not even a Palace servant could do better.”

  This surprised her; he had surprised himself. There were a dozen noblewomen at the Palace who had tried and failed to get a compliment out of the young prince. The serving girl blushed and stammered a quick “thank you” that was more terrified than thankful. The serving tray wobbled, and Father Jared held up his hand in case the unthinkable happened. The girl’s hazel eyes noticed the mark, then flashed to the priest’s robes, and the tray suddenly steadied. Unexpectedly, she curtsied, the tray still steady, a feat that left the priest slightly agog, and then quickly walked away to disappear behind the swinging door again.

  The priest waited for her to come out—she looked as though she might have something interesting to tell—but she didn’t. He found himself involved instead in the smith’s new conversation, being appealed to for news beyond the Three Villages. This the priest gave energetically enough, and then felt his tiredness coming back again.

  The volume of the tavern had increased, and it was hurting his head. At the farther end of the bar, the group of young people was growing more and more boisterous. Father Jared was hardly older than the oldest of them—he had only just entered his third decade himself—but he felt that they should be less free in their behavior. One in particular, a bold, tough-looking lad of eighteen or so was drunk enough to be throwing knives at the wall, and some of them were flying off with dangerous inaccuracy. The priest frowned at the barkeep, who gave a helpless sort of shrug.

  “A good lad, if a bit wild. He’ll tire of it soon enough,” the pot-bellied man apologized. He moved over to answer a summons for a glass, and then along to the rowdy boy, who was calling for another drink himself.

  Father Jared wanted a peaceful night. He did not want to spend his only night indoors in eight days at a place where he might get roused by a sudden commotion or be disturbed by an unfortunate accident. He got up very deliberately and walked over to the drunken boy, coming between him and the barkeep, who was about to refill the lad’s glass. “You don’t need ano
ther,” the priest said authoritatively.

  The tough boy’s head reared back in astonishment. He glared at the priest and opened his mouth to protest, balling his hands into fists. The barkeep said quickly, “William, lad, the priest is probably right. I’ll not refuse you one more drink—aye, I know you can handle it—but mebbe better not.”

  William’s slightly unfocused eyes traveled from the barkeep’s face to the priest’s robes, and then he slowly released his hands. The barkeep considered the lad’s tough physique and tilted the bottle, as if still ready to pour. The priest could imagine William would do some damage in a brawl, and the barkeep didn’t seem to be willing to antagonize him. The priest’s dark eyes bore into the boy’s bleary ones. “I don’t need another,” the boy said weakly, covering his glass. Father Jared hid a smile.

  When a certain tone came into the priest’s voice, people rarely failed to listen.

  At his request, the barkeep had a serving girl show him to his room, though not the pretty one who had never reappeared, and the priest slept a deep, peaceful sleep, waking in the morning to feel quite refreshed.

  Setting out at a good pace, it didn’t take long for Night to reach the Baron’s holding. Father Jared passed the main city, several towns, and then a cluster of sleepy villages. Then there were only fields upon fields of wheat and corn and vegetables with farmhouses dotted around them. The Baron’s manor house was in the country, and the priest had sent a message on ahead. Father Jared hadn’t waited for a response, but he’d been told in Forthaven that the Baron was there; the Baron had a house in the city as well.

  On his way, the priest stopped whenever he saw a peasant man hoeing or a peasant woman hanging out the wash, to inquire about the Church of the Wood. By late morning, he’d had as much useless blathering from the superstitious and pointed Looks from the skeptical as he could take for one day. He rode steadily onward to the manor house itself.

  Night was in rare form today, nipping whenever anyone got close to him, rearing and dashing his hooves at the barking dogs. It would be better to question people when the horse was in a better temper, if that was possible. He’d turn him loose as much as possible at the Baron’s manor and then again after they left it, in the largely uninhabited bit of land beyond. Night didn’t like being ridden this much, even by him.

  The manor was fronted by a decorative garden, with four apple trees equally spaced around a statue of a naked woman. Several flowerbeds made a diamond shape around the trees, and the drive to the manor split around it and then joined back up again at the manor’s front steps. Flat-trimmed dark green bushes lined the front of the house, which was built of a fawn-colored stone and set with numerous arched white-shuttered windows. The dark slate roof slanted up to a flattened top, with a lacy iron cresting surrounding it.

  The priest waited for a servant to come out and offer to help with Night, but the house remained silent. He let Night into the corral at the left side of the house himself—he didn’t need anyone to do it anyway, although he would have expected an offer—and then he came back to the front door and knocked. When no one answered, he knocked again, wondering if the person who’d told him the Baron was in the country had been misinformed. Still, the servants should be here, even if the Baron had made a last minute trip.

  Eventually, the door was opened by a nervous-looking man, who seemed relieved to see the forest green robe and the yellow yoke. “Yes, Father?” the man asked. The priest didn’t know him from any of his other visits, and clearly the man didn’t recognize him either. “Is the Baron at home?” Father Jared asked, breezing past him. It was a strange enough reception to be almost insulting; this was too much, even for the Baron.

  “Yes, Father. I think he’s upstairs somewhere.” The man didn’t offer to either find the Baron or take the priest to him, but instead stood nervously, wringing a dishcloth in his hands. Father Jared frowned. “I’ll show myself up, then?” Father Jared asked pointedly. The servant nodded gratefully, the sarcasm lost on him.

  “If you would, I’m needed back in the kitchen. There’s only me to get the luncheon ready and do everything else.”

  Father Jared blinked in surprise, suddenly noticing the stale, empty feel of the house. “Where are all the other servants?” he asked.

  “There’s been a turnover of staff,” the man replied worriedly. “I’m new here myself. The Baron seems to be having a hard time filling the other positions.”

  Father Jared wasn’t interested in the Baron’s domestic problems. The man compulsively terrorized people; there must have been some sort of household incident. The priest let the anxious servant go and made his way upstairs. He had braced himself to be shocked and outraged, yet again, by the Baron’s dirty jokes and brash manner.

  This eerie lack of welcome was almost a let-down. And why hadn’t the new servant wanted to alert his master that he had a guest? He couldn’t be that ill-trained, could he? The priest was mystified. He called the Baron’s name as he came to the second floor landing, and heard a distant shout in return. The upstairs of the manor house was large, but not so large that the Baron couldn’t be found.

  When he did locate Baron Malkine, he was in a fouler mood that Father Jared had ever seen him. Usually the virile, middle-aged man was an obnoxiously cheerful companion, with a pert maid on one knee, and a goblet of wine gripped in an unsteady hand, resting on the other. Instead, he found the Baron brooding in his study, a room he was almost certain he’d never seen him use before. He was sitting in a clawed armchair in front of a roaring fireplace. He got briefly to his feet and gave the priest a token bow, in recognition of his royal blood, before moodily sinking back into it.

  “Come to gloat?” the Baron asked unpleasantly, gesturing to a similar chair next to him, also in front of the fire. Father Jared took it reluctantly. The grate was heaped high with grass bundles, burning fiercely and giving off an intense heat that was rather uncomfortable.

  “Priests do not gloat.” He had no idea what the Baron was talking about; the only gossip he’d heard last night had been that the Baron was between lovers, a discovery which had filled the priest with relief. “But maybe you have a confession to make?” he countered.

  The Baron stared at him, and then snorted. “Haven’t heard the news then? How I’ve given up my wicked ways and turned over a new leaf?”

  “I heard you were temporarily behaving yourself,” Father Jared replied cautiously.

  The Baron roared with laughter, which quickly subsided to a groan. He picked up his goblet of wine from the spindly round table between them and drank it down in a huge gulp, then set the empty cup back down on it so hard that the table shuddered. “At least I can still do that!” the Baron exclaimed, and then the expression on his fair bearded face turned murderous. “If I ever get my hands on that faerie, I’ll wring her pretty little neck!”

  Father Jared’s mouth fell open. He clamped it shut again. “You’ve met a faerie?” he asked.

  Baron Malkine suddenly seemed to realize that he was speaking to the priest, and not just muttering to himself. A crafty look came over his face, and then a confused one.

  “Might as well have been, the way she bewitched me.” He glared into the fire as though it showed him something that only he could see, but his eyes strayed over to the priest, assessing.

  Father Jared lost interest immediately. He had no desire to hear about the Baron’s latest paramour. The man had probably been sitting in front of his fire and guzzling goblets of wine all morning, love-sick over some unwilling lady. He should at least wait until after lunch-time to begin his debaucheries.

  “So, what brings me the honor of a visit from the prince turned priest?” the Baron asked trenchantly. His brow furrowed. “And why the devil didn’t my man show you up?”

  “I’m looking for a particular church,” Father Jared answered, ignoring the question as well as the dig. No need to get a harried servant into trouble. “A dying priest wrote me a letter and asked me to come to his aid
. Unfortunately, he wasn’t well enough to write clear directions as to his location.”

  “There aren’t any churches on my land,” the Baron growled. “You ought to know that.”

  “Then you’ve never heard of the Church of the Wood?” Father Jared asked quickly.

  The Baron squinted at his tall, brown-haired guest. “You joking with me, priest?”

  “I never jest,” Father Jared replied calmly. It was true. It had to be—he had said it.

  The Baron laughed again, this time more quietly. “If there was ever a church on my holding, surely the priest would have pined away long ago, for lack of company. We’re not people of the mark here, Father. We prefer to enjoy ourselves.” The Baron said this as insultingly as possible.

  “Well, then,” Father Jared said tightly. “I’m sure you don’t mind if I look over your villages and farmlands, to see that everything is up to the King’s code?”

  The Baron made a shooing gesture with his hand, knocking over the empty cup in the process. It rolled off the table and onto the rug, which bore enough wine stains to indicate that this was not the first time this had happened. “Go—weasel around and report back to King Lukas. You’ll not find anything amiss here.”

  Father Jared stood up, and the Baron was forced to stand up with him. The big handsome blond man swayed dangerously on his feet. Father Jared nodded at him, and then left.

  There was no doubt about it; the man had been drinking all morning. He hadn’t even invited the priest to stay for luncheon, or offered him a bed for the night. Not that the priest would have accepted either, after the Baron’s odd behavior. Everything about the manor house seemed to be odd right now, but the Baron could more than take care of himself, and isolation was probably a good tonic.

  Father Jared reined up on Night, glad that the Baron’s inebriation and insulting manner had relieved him of the necessity of wasting time at the manor house on social niceties.

  Once again, the priest’s eyes scanned over the last farm to the east, before the valley and the mountains. He had ridden east until he knew there was nowhere else to go. He had come to the last remaining farm before the green valley that ran down to the edge of the mountains in a gradual descent. And of course, there was no Church.

  The farmer who ran the place waved cheerfully at Father Jared, leaning arthritically on his cane and watching him approach. This was the fifth time that the priest had ridden back and forth in front of his dilapidated and leaky-looking farmhouse, and the elderly man was obviously enjoying the spectacle. Father Jared stopped and slid off of Night’s back, taking stock of his failures.

  Calundra was shaped like a half moon, with the Wide Sea to the west in a straight line and the Impassable Mountains stretching away from its shores in a giant curve from the North to the South. There was no way into Calundra across this lofty horse-shoe shaped mountain range. Humans had come here from the Wide Sea by boat, many centuries ago, from a land so distant and forgotten that almost all of the information which survived about it was the name itself: Lundra. “Cal” meant “new” in a mostly abandoned tongue that was a sister to the one now dominantly spoken, and so the humans had named the land of the woods “Cal Lundra”, which over the decades had slurred together until it became simply, “Calundra”.

  Father Jared wiped the sweat from off his face with his sleeve, and absently patted Night, who was now tearing up savage mouthfuls of the farmer’s clover. They had been wandering around in circles together for hours. The priest pulled out his compass, but the needle spun lazily clockwise. Father Jared had dropped it during their fruitless perambulations and Night had stepped on it. Now it was broken.

  A strange look came across the young priest’s face. He went over to the saddlebags and other tack, which he’d dropped on the ground in order to let Night graze, unencumbered, and pulled out the crumpled letter. His dark eyes skimmed over the shaky words. Then the priest frowned thoughtfully, and hefted a small pack from amongst the items on the ground. He slung it over his shoulder, and strode up to the farmer. The farmer’s creased face broke into an amused smile.

  “Am I going in the right direction?” the priest demanded. He was too hot and thirsty to bother with preliminaries.

  “Absolutely not,” the farmer replied, in a voice that was surprisingly hale and hearty. “Dunno where you’re headed, young fellow, but ye’ll not find it trampling my wheat.”

  Father Jared did not waste time protesting that he had meticulously avoided any patch of ground that looked even slightly cultivated, which was not much.

  “Might I trouble you for a drink of water?” he asked, instead.

  The old farmer looked Father Jared up and down, from his dark windblown hair to his dirt-caked boots, and said. “Oh, aye. You look like you could use a draught. Come with me, then.”

  The priest followed the farmer into the small farmhouse, through a cool entryway and into what was obviously its single main room, to judge by the collection of scarred furniture, which included a crowded table and a rumpled bed, an ancient stove, and shelves of dry goods. Strings of garlic and herbs hung from the low ceiling, and buckets were placed here and there, undoubtedly to catch drips.

  The farmer rattled around in the kitchen-like corner with the shelves and sink and barrel of flour, and then motioned the priest to sit at the table. He offered him a dented cup to drink from and a slice of brown, chewy bread. The priest ate neatly, but drank greedily.

  “Thank you.”

  “A pleasure,” the farmer replied, holding up his left palm. Father Jared smiled, the first real smile he’d given anyone since he’d come into the Baron’s land.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the Church of the Wood?” he asked.

  “I don’t suppose I have, unless you mean the one in the old faerie story,” the farmer said.

  The priest sighed. “May I ask, is there anything unusual on your land?” It was a shot in the dark, but Father Jared was willing to make it.

  The old farmer shook his silver and gray head. “Unusual? No, just the farmhouse and the land. Though there is the old tree stump,” he replied slowly.

  Father Jared was disappointed. He was not looking for tree stumps.

  “’Course there’s the tale about the stump,” the old man continued. “Nonsense if you ask me. Everyone knows if you cut down a faerie tree, the stump sinks into the ground within days of the cutting.” Father Jared hadn’t known that, actually. His pulse began to quicken.

  “You mean to say that people think the stump is from a faerie tree?”

  The old farmer chuckled. “Aye, but it’s all hogwash. That stump’s been there since before I was a babe.”

  Father Jared put down his dented cup. In his excitement, he almost forgot to thank the old farmer for his hospitality.

  Night, whom he had not bothered to tie up, followed him docilely around the back of the farmhouse, where the old man had said to look for the object in question. The stump was not so much a stump as it was the bottom half of an ancient rotted out tree.

  Near it lay a short stone that was clearly a grave marker, one so blackened by time that whatever words it once bore could no longer be read. The old farmer had not mentioned it; it must belong to some long-deceased family member.

  The priest did not ponder this for long; the tree itself dominated his attention. It was broken and black, and the priest didn’t know how he’d missed it. Although he’d not been looking for stumps, in particular. A feeling came over him when he saw it, an overwhelming longing to have seen it in its glory, for it would have been taller than the highest towers of the Palace, to judge by the size of its base. The bark on it was like no bark he had ever seen. The priest laid his hand against in reverently.

  Welcome, Lord Cal, it breathed.

  Two thoughts came to Father Jared’s mind at once. The first was that the tree had mistaken him for someone else. The second was that he must still be dehydrated, because he was hallucinating.

  The priest fe
lt his palm sink slightly into the bark and then he fell forward. The tree had disappeared from under his hand. He was left off-balance and disoriented.

  Father Jared shut and reopened his eyes several times. Where there had been only one farm and the valley and then the mountains, now there was a different farmland, and below it a Village in the valley, and beyond that a Wood. Behind the Wood rose the Impassable Mountains. There was a dirt path next to a small lake, leading out from the Wood and rising into the Village, where it became a large main road. This road rose up through the Village as the main street and then dwindled again as it hit the farmlands, becoming a small path again and then coming to an abrupt end, as though it had nowhere left to go.

  The priest’s head whipped around, looking for where he had been before he stumbled and lost his bearings. He discovered that the black stump was now unaccountably behind him. Beyond it he could see the old farmer’s weathered farmhouse, and his fields, and in them Night, still peacefully grazing. But the horse and the farm felt far away and they looked slightly fuzzy, as though he was seeing them through the smudged glass of a dirty window-pane.

  Father Jared turned back and looked at the Wood. He had no doubt now that if he were to take the main road through the Village and then continue onto that small dirt path and into the Wood, he would find his Church. He had done the impossible: he had found something that existed only in a tale.

  Now he could help the dying priest; now he could complete his quest.

  Father Jared seriously contemplated turning around, fetching Night, and never coming back.