Tess of the Road

  “Go!” cried Pathka. “Get out! It’s falling!”

  Only Tess understood the words. She grabbed Moldi’s arm and hauled him toward the spiral stair. The ground bucked so hard they could barely keep their feet. They climbed endlessly while stone crumbled around them. Their lantern was dashed on the rocks, but they kept moving through darkness until they burst out into another fine autumnal evening.

  Only the stars stood still.

  The plain undulated. Apples fell in the wobbling orchard. The bell tower flapped, clanging, as if seized by an invisible hand, and then the library of Santi Prudia seemed to melt as Anathuthia’s chamber collapsed beneath it. A cloud of dust rolled out of the chasm.

  Frai Moldi paused, swaying on his feet. “Sweet Heavenly home,” he murmured. “So many times I prayed this place would disappear, Jacomo. But not like this.”

  Tess followed him into the dust cloud, coughing and choking, calling Pathka’s name when she had enough breath. The little quigutl didn’t answer.

  When she caught up, Moldi was already directing his brethren hither and thither, organizing stunned monks into gangs to move roof beams and free their trapped brothers. He was the lone pole of calm in a blizzard of panic, touching his brothers’ wet, grime-streaked cheeks and whispering in their ears.

  Only when he looked into the chasm did she see him falter. At first she thought it was the shock of seeing Anathuthia again, not as the sign revealing his vocation but as the monster that had destroyed his home—and surely he struggled with this terrible paradox. However, Tess followed his gaze and saw that the surface of the serpent, its glow discernible in the deepening twilight, was littered with stones, broken shelving, thousands of books, and the wrecked bodies of everyone who’d been in the library.

  The head archivist, recognizable by his iron hair and lanky limbs, lay splayed within view. Frai Moldi sank to his knees. Tess was at his side in an instant.

  She didn’t know what to say, so she sat with him in silence. He sighed heavily and ran his hand over his face.

  “Are you all right?” she finally whispered.

  “Absolutely not.” His mouth quivered. “But I’m used to it, Jacomo. They’re not. I think I can show them the path out. I understand now that it’s not a question of faith or hope; it exists, and we can find it. It’s going to take some time, though.”

  He took a last, lingering look at Frai Lorenzi’s broken body and pressed his hand to his heart, as if he could keep it whole by squeezing.

  Then he stood shakily, holding Tess’s arm, and walked back to where he was needed.

  * * *

  Frai Moldi was up all night, soothing his shocked brethren and aiming them in useful directions. He gently pointed out to a group of wailing librarians that the refectory still stood; they stopped crying and got the injured indoors. Moldi had learned to bandage a wound and wrap a sprain as a soldier but couldn’t manage either one-handed; he calmly instructed a novice, who taught others. Pater Livian had hit his head and seemed confused; Moldi brought him to the dazed priors, who snapped out of it and organized a sort of nest for him at the head of the room.

  Soon every surviving monk was either caring for the injured, being cared for, or salvaging what supplies and furnishings could be safely reached. Tess had joined the bandagers, and by dawn they were out of wounds to tend, to her relief. Her ribs ached terribly. She caught some sleep under one of the refectory tables, and when she woke she went looking for Moldi again, to see what else was needed.

  She found him at the periphery of a meeting of senior monks, sitting alert as a collie; he’d herded them together and was ensuring they didn’t wander. When he saw her, he quietly slipped away and led her out to the remains of the orchard.

  “Did your friend survive?” he asked. “I presume it was he who shoved us up the stairs.”

  Tess looked away; she’d been avoiding thinking about Pathka’s fate. “It was. And I don’t know.”

  “Go down and look for him,” said Frai Moldi, watching her steadily. “And then you should travel on to Segosh, if you ever mean to go.”

  “You still need help here,” Tess began, but the little monk held up his hand.

  “You’ve helped, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “But you never meant to join our order, and if you’re going to leave, it would be easier on me if you left now.”

  Tess swayed on her feet, buffeted by a sudden surge of love. Her mind raced through futile scenarios, trying to devise a way to stay, but it was impossible. She didn’t belong here. She couldn’t have joined this order even if she felt called to it.

  Anyway, it wasn’t that flavor of love. She could leave and carry it with her. Time would not put a dent in it, nor distance snuff it out.

  She threw her arms around him, hurting all over. She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “Give Segosh my apologies, but I have my own cack-hole to attend to here.”

  Tess gave him one last look. Frai Moldi seemed more tired than despairing now; his decisive nose was finally coming into its own. She turned to go before she lost the will to do so.

  * * *

  With great trepidation, she returned to Santi Prudia’s shrine. Frai Lorenzi’s key lay on the floor among rubble. The spiral stair looked surprisingly intact, so she picked her way down.

  Pathka had been right behind them when the cavern collapsed. She saw it over and over in her mind. But had he been crushed, or had he dodged and wriggled free?

  She was afraid to find out.

  The bottom of the stairs was clogged with debris, but she squeezed through a cranny near the ceiling, her ribs screaming agony. The other side, the cavern that was now a pit, was bright and airy, with noonday sun shining down; loose pages fluttered, caught by a breeze. She climbed mountains of books and rocks, which slid, shifted, crumbled underfoot.

  “Pathkaaaaa!” Tess cried. There was no answer but her echo.

  The bowl of Anathuthia’s nest had filled with fallen debris; the serpent herself was half-submerged, coated in dust and stone. Her glow was barely discernible, but she still radiated warmth. Tess, numb with exhaustion and worry, felt herself drawn forward across the wreckage, over one last heap of ruined books. The serpent—the coils that weren’t buried, anyway—loomed like a living wall, aquiver with breath and expectation. A glowing stream of blood trickled from a high-up wound, almost dried now.

  Tess approached, mesmerized, and pressed her palm to the serpent’s side, into the rivulet of sticky blood. Blue fire ran up her arm. Literal or figurative, she couldn’t tell. Tess screamed, but the pain was already gone, only a flickering afterimage now, a gentler warmth suffusing her body. Her ribs stopped aching, her mind stopped aching, and she was filled with unexpected reassurance: I am Pathka.

  She yanked her hand away. She’d heard the voice in her head. Impossible.

  Anathuthia glowed in front of her, inscrutably.

  I am Pathka? He wasn’t dead—she felt certain—but he might have been…subsumed? Absorbed or eaten? The voice had been so reassuring that she couldn’t fear for him.

  This was what he’d wanted. The end of the singular-utl, whatever that meant. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that no matter how she’d tried to define his journey—quest, ritual, pilgrimage, religion—Pathka had always slipped the traces and eluded her. He had truly been on a path she couldn’t follow or understand.

  It was all right. It had to be.

  “Take care of him,” she told the serpent, as if her admonishment could carry any weight. One might as reasonably command a mountain.

  Tess wiped her hand on the pages of a ruined book and then picked her way—less gingerly than before—back to the stairs.

  She’d almost reached the stairs when a torn page blew against her ankle and clung there. She picked it up and saw, beside an account of ancient warfare, a scribbled
drawing of a monk playing what could only be called arse-bagpipes. Tess laughed and cried, both at once, and then she stuck the drawing in her pack and walked on.

  The monastery had collapsed so suddenly that Tess had had no time to dwell upon her own experience of Anathuthia. She wanted nothing more than to recapture that feeling—the comfort and joy of nothingness. She stared at the sky while she walked; it was not quite the same shade of blue that lingered behind her eyelids. Thinking about Anathuthia was like almost remembering a perfect snatch of song that had made the world stand still.

  It was right on the tip of her tongue. It flitted around her like a swift.

  She wanted to talk about it, to tell the peasants in the fields and the nobles in their palashos—the cows in the pastures, the very birds in the air—that everything was nothing. It was a delightful thought because it meant (to Tess) that one was free to choose, or decline to choose, without shame or coercion.

  For someone who was nothing, anything was possible. The pressure was off.

  “What would you say if I told you we’re all very, very small?” Tess asked an aged farmer as she helped him pack his barn with straw against the coming cold weather.

  “Are we,” said the old man, eyeing her suspiciously.

  “Did you ever see something so beautiful, so awe-inspiring, that it made you look at the world through different eyes?” said Tess. “Well, it happened to me recently.”

  “Did it.” The farmer scratched his rough red chin.

  “There’s a giant serpent underground,” said Tess, launching into the story, but it was like pushing a boulder uphill; his silence made the slope steeper. The story felt dead in her mouth.

  She didn’t hear what he whispered to his wife when they’d finished work. The old woman gave Tess a whole loaf and a warm blanket and said gently, “St. Loola’s runs a hospice down in the village. Take care of yourself, m’dear.”

  Thus ended Tess’s short career in herpevangelism. If nobody believed her about the serpent, she wasn’t going to enlighten anybody by babbling on about transcendent nothingness.

  It wasn’t true that nobody would believe her, though. The masters of the Ninysh Academy in Segosh had heard of the World Serpents; Nicolas had said so. She walked along, thinking of her favorite lectures on exotic animals at St. Bert’s, how she’d hung on the explorers’ every word and dreamed of such adventure herself (or of accompanying Will, who would find her indispensable). This was an important discovery; the masters would be interested, if she could find the right way to talk about it.

  They’d think of Anathuthia as merely an animal—but maybe that would be easier. One could describe an animal; it had measurable qualities, like size and strength and feeding habits, and that was knowledge she could share. In fact, she had a mandate to do so, she felt, from Frai Lorenzi, who had said the world deserved to know.

  She tried remembering as many concrete details as she could, reducing Anathuthia to facts. She missed the soaring feeling, but it was less frustrating not to have a snatch of song eluding her, or a bird darting just out of view.

  Still, she saw pale blue behind her eyelids sometimes when she blinked. It was never really gone.

  * * *

  The nights were getting longer and the mornings nippier, making Tess grateful for her second blanket. The equinox had passed without her noting it; winter fell quickly this far south, by all reports. In Goredd the first frost usually hit right around the feast of St. Prue, but here it would be at least two weeks earlier, and if she kept walking south, that date would keep creeping toward her until the pair of them met for a nice kiss.

  She didn’t fancy waking up with frost on her lips. She needed to find a way to sleep indoors sometimes. One evening she stopped at the tavern in the village of Anshouie and asked the tapmaster, “How much for a room?”

  He was drying a glass on his apron. “Two and a quarter for the night, ten per week.”

  She cringed. The dregs of her road-building wages weren’t going to last, and the farms wouldn’t offer much once the harvest was in. She needed to hurry to Segosh.

  The tapmaster eyed her from under shaggy brows. “You drinking?”

  “Bitter Branca,” said Tess, absently ordering Felix’s favorite. That rascal. She missed everyone. While the tapmaster mixed ale and pine brandy, Tess looked around at the patrons of the pub. Most were old or idle, folks who’d likely been here all day. The evening crowd was just beginning to trickle in.

  The village priest arrived, a phlegmatic young man in the rust-red habit of St. Munn, his fair hair already thinning and his shoulders stooped. His parishioners clapped him on the back and brought him a drink. When he spotted Tess, a stranger, he shook her hand and said, “Welcome, traveler. I’m Father Erique.”

  “Brother Jacomo,” said Tess.

  “Not a monk?” said the priest, giving her an unsubtle look of doubt. She was wearing Florian’s striped jacket against the cooler weather.

  “A seminarian,” said Tess, affecting a humble mien. She told her usual tale, lost her vocation, looking for it, blah blah.

  The priest got a funny look when she said vocation. She wondered what his story was, and whether he’d be appalled to hear about a giant serpent.

  He forced a smile. “Let me know if you have questions about the Order of St. Munn.”

  Father Erique glad-handed his way to the end of the room, stood on a chair, and called, “Heaven keep all here. Ready for the news?”

  The villagers stopped gossiping to listen. Tess nursed her piney beer. The priest brandished a ring on a chain around his neck and said, “The Bishop of St. Munn’s in Modera had a lot to say this week. First, there’s sheep pox in the Samsamese highlands, so be careful buying ewes.”

  He gave farm news from all over. The ring was a thnik, clearly. All the priests of St. Munn must have them and be sharing information through their bishop, who sat in the middle like a fat spider, passing messages along.

  Father Erique ended with world news: Samsam’s fleet, destroyed by Porphyry in the war, was finally restored to its former glory. An expedition to the Antarctic (Countess Margarethe’s? Tess wondered) had claimed two new islands for Ninys but come up empty-handed on sabanewt oil. Last but far from least, news from Goredd: “Queen Glisselda’s baby, Princess Zythia, was presented to the public for the first time at her psalter ceremony. Heaven ordained that her patron will be”—Father Erique checked his notes—“St. Polypous, like her royal mother. Heaven keep the Goreddi royal family. I think we’re all entitled to raise a glass to that!”

  So the baby had a name now; Zythia was surely Seraphina’s suggestion, named for her Porphyrian friend, St. Zythia Perdixis Camba. St. Polypous had been poor dear Julian/Dozerius’s patron, too. Tess sighed wistfully and downed her Branca without finding it too bitter, and she said a little prayer to her own St. Siucre that Seraphina wasn’t finding it miserable to pass off her baby as the Queen’s. As painful as it had been to lose a child, Tess suspected it took a core of steel to do what her sister was doing.

  Then Seraphina’s perfect for the job, was her knee-jerk reaction, but upon further consideration, she wondered about that assumption. She didn’t actually know what it took to hurt Seraphina. Having a baby changed everything.

  Tess decided not to take a room after all. It wasn’t so cold that she couldn’t stand it, and thinking about Seraphina and her baby had made her antsy. She felt a strong desire to get back on the road, where she belonged, and walk it off.

  She hefted her pack and was about to duck out when a hand tapped her shoulder.

  It was Father Erique. “Do you need a place to stay, Brother Jacomo?” he said, fingering his collar, which was lined with squirrel fur. “You’re welcome to sleep in the church, of course, or I’ve a spare room at the vicarage.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Tess that she might hop from church to church, i
mpersonating Jacomo and rooming for free. This was worth considering.

  “My Angelica is roasting a leg of lamb,” said Father Erique enticingly.

  Lamb was awfully tempting. Tess weighed it against the need to walk, and the prospect of a full belly won. She followed the priest through the village and past the church to a well-appointed house nearby.

  The vicarage was warm and cheerful, with a roaring fire, a little dog on a cushion, and a serving lass no older than Tess just bringing supper in from the kitchen. “Another place, if you please, Angelica,” said Father Erique, leaving his shoes near the door. “Brother Jacomo will be staying the night.”

  Tess followed suit and removed her boots. When she looked up, she caught Angelica staring. The girl averted her eyes almost at once, but Tess knew what she’d seen. Utter hatred. It lingered like an odor in the air.

  Tess’s presence made extra work, certainly, but the depth of venom in Angelica’s gaze seemed unwarranted. Had a previous guest left her with a terrible mess?

  Tess felt compelled to reassure her during dinner. When Angelica filled her wineglass, Tess said, “Thank you, Angelica,” and smiled warmly. The braised parsnips and bread pudding were remarkably delicious, so Tess made sure to say, “Angelica, you’re a wonderful cook.”

  The girl recoiled each time. By the end of dinner, Angelica was so furious she was shaking; Tess’s comments had unintentionally made things worse, and she couldn’t fathom how.

  Father Erique appeared to notice nothing amiss, which was not lost on Tess.

  The priest offered Tess a seat by the fire while Angelica washed up. “So tell me,” said Father Erique, extracting a bottle of cognac and two glasses from a cabinet near the hearth. “Are you Goreddi? Your vowels sound a little squirmy.”

  At Tess’s murmur of assent, the priest smiled knowingly. “What do you make of this Princess Zythia, then? Is she the Queen’s own, or have they adopted some half cousin’s bastard?”