Midst Toil and Tribulation: Chapter Six

.VI.
The Siddar River,
Shiloh Province,
Republic of Siddarmark

    “Will you please go back inside, Your Eminence?”

    Archbishop Zhasyn Cahnyr looked over his shoulder at the much younger man who stood in the inn courtyard, hands on hips, glaring at him. The younger man’s breath flowed out in a cloud of steam as he sighed in exasperation at his superior’s deliberately blank expression. The icy wind whipping across the flat, gray ice of the Siddar River snatched the cloud into fragments almost instantly, something else of which Cahnyr deliberately took no notice.

    “I simply wanted a breath of fresh air, Gharth,” he said mildly.

    “‘Fresh air,’ is it?” Father Gharth Gorjah, Cahnyr’s personal Secretary and aide, took his hands from his hips so that he could throw them up in the air properly. “If this air were any fresher, it’d turn you into an icicle the instant you inhaled, Your Eminence! And don’t think I’m the one who’s going to go home and discuss your foolishness with Madam Pahrsahn when it happens, either. She told me to take care of you, and standing around out here until you catch your death of cold isn’t exactly what she had in mind!”

    Cahnyr smiled faintly, wondering exactly when the last vestiges of control over his own household had slipped from his fingers. It was kind of all of them to pretend (to others, at least) they still deferred to him over such minor matters as whether or not he had the wit to come in out of the rain — or the cold — but they weren’t really fooling anyone.

    “I’m not going to ‘catch my death of cold,’ Gharth,” he said patiently. “And even if I were, Madam Pahrsahn’s a fair-minded woman. She could hardly hold my stubbornness against you. Especially with so many witnesses prepared to testify you nagged me absolutely unremittingly to behave better.”

    “I do not ‘nag,’ Your Eminence.” Father Gharth crunched through the crusty snow of the inn yard towards him, trying not to grin. “I simply reason with you. Sometimes forcefully, I’ll admit, but always with the utmost respect. Now, would you please get your venerable, highly respected, consecrated and ordained arse inside where it’s warm?”

    “Can I at least walk as far as the stable first?” Cahnyr cocked his head. “I want to see how they’re coming on the repair of that runner.”

    “I just talked to them myself, Your Eminence. They say it should be done by suppertime. Which means we’ll be able to get back on the trail after breakfast tomorrow. I have to admit it doesn’t break my heart to think we’re going to be able to sit you down by a fire this afternoon, keep you under a roof tonight, and wrap you around a hot meal in the morning before we set back out.” He stepped up onto the veranda with the archbishop and folded his arms. “And now that you’ve had that reassurance, please — I’m serious — go back inside where it’s warm, Your Eminence. Sahmantha isn’t happy about the way you were coughing yesterday, and you know you promised to listen to her before Madam Pahrsahn, the Lord Protector, and Archbishop Dahnyld gave you permission to come along.”

    Cahnyr cocked his head quizzically at that particularly underhanded blow. Sahmantha Gorjah had left her infant son Zhasyn in Siddar City to accompany her husband — and Cahnyr — back to Glacierheart. True, Zhasyn was in the personal care of Aivah Pahrsahn, one of the wealthiest women on all of Safehold, who could be trusted to guard him like a catamount with a single cub, but she’d still left him behind. And she’d done that because she and her husband regarded themselves as the children Cahnyr had never had. They’d flatly refused to let him make the journey without them . . . and especially without Sahmantha’s training as a healer. She’d never taken vows as a Pasqualate sister, but she’d been intensively trained by the order, and she had every intention of using that training to keep the undeniably frail archbishop she loved alive.

    Of course, under the circumstances, she was only too likely to find other uses for those skills. Ugly ones he would not for the world have exposed her to, and his expression darkened at the thought. Not that it had been his idea, or even Gharth’s in this case. No, it had been Sahmantha’s, and there’d been no dissuading her. She’d always been stubborn as the day was long, even when her sainted mother had been plain old Father Zhasyn’s housekeeper. He’d never been able to make her do anything she didn’t choose to do, and this time she’d had help. Lots of help, given the way the Lord Protector and Aivah Pahrsahn — and that young whippersnapper Fardhyn! — had made the inclusion of a personal healer a nonnegotiable condition of their agreement to allow him to make the trip.

    If the truth be known, he was considerably senior to Archbishop Dahnyld Fardhym, the newly created Archbishop of Siddarmark. The previous archbishop — the only legitimate archbishop, as far as the official hierarchy of the Church of God Awaiting was concerned — was Praidwyn Laicharn, but Laicharn had enjoyed the misfortune of being trapped inside Siddar City when Clyntahn’s “Sword of Schueler” failed to take the capital. He was a polished, distinguished-looking, silver-haired man, every inch the perfect archbishop, but he was an absolutely fanatic Temple Loyalist — less, in Cahnyr’s opinion, because of the strength of his belief than because of his terror of Zhaspahr Clyntahn. Had refused to have anything to do with Stohnar’s “apostate and traitorous government” following his capture, and he’d denounced any member of the clergy who did as a faithless, treacherous servant of Shan-wei.

    Cahnyr had known Laicharn for over twenty years. That was one reason he was convinced it was terror, not personal faith, which made the other archbishop such an ardent Temple Loyalist. And another reason for that ardency was that Laicharn understood perfectly that unlike Zhaspahr Clyntahn, Stohnar and the Reformists were unlikely to torture their opponents or burn them alive over doctrinal disagreements, which made it much safer to defy them.

    Nor was Laicharn’s attitude unique. The entire Siddarmarkian ecclesiastic hierarchy was in what could only be called acute disorder. Personally, Cahnyr thought “utter chaos” probably hit closer to the mark.

    At least a third — and quite possibly closer to half — of the Church’s clerics had fled to the Temple Loyalists. Losses were substantially higher among the more senior clergy, with a far higher percentage of younger priests, upper-priests, and very junior bishops openly embracing the Reformist position. That left all too many holes in very senior positions, which accounted for much of the disarray. Stohnar, Fardhym, and other prelates and senior priests in the provinces which had remained loyal to the Republic were laboring ferociously to restore at least some order; unfortunately, they had quite a few other pressing concerns at the same time. Even more unfortunately, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to just how far toward Reformism the Siddarmarkian church as a whole was prepared to go. There’d been a lot of Reformist sentiment in the Republic even before the Sword of Schueler, and the excesses of the Temple Loyalists who’d planned and executed Clyntahn’s attack had hardened attitudes and strengthened that Reformist sentiment quite remarkably. Atrocities did tend to have a . . . clarifying effect when it came to choosing sides. Yet even some of the most enthusiastic Reformists hesitated to actively embrace the schismatic Church of Charis. That was going a step too far for many, even now, and they were trying desperately to find some halfway house between the Temple and Tellesberg Cathedral.

    Lots of luck with that, Cahnyr thought dryly. It was a matter to which he’d given quite a lot of thought — and devoted much of his effort — during his own exile in Siddar City. Whatever they may want, in the end they’re going to have to choose between finding a way home to Zion or accepting the unavoidable conclusion of the steps they’ve already taken. And the truth is that the Charisians’ve been right from the very beginning. The Group of Four may be the ones twisting and perverting Mother Church at this particular moment, but if she isn’t reformed — reformed in a way that prevents any future Group of Four from hijacking her — they’ll only be replaced by someone else altogether too soon. More to the point, if the hesitaters don’t make up their mind to embrace Charis, they’ll inevitably fall to the Temple, and there won’t be any way “home” for any of them as long as Zhaspahr Clyntahn is alive.

    He’d reached that conclusion long ago, even before Clyntahn butchered all of his friends and fellow members of Samyl Wylsynn’s circle of Reformist-minded vicars and bishops. Nothing he’d seen since had shaken it, and he’d spent much of his time during his exile from Glacierheart working to bolster the pro-Charis wing of the Reformist communities in and around Old Province and the capital. Fardhym had been one of the churchmen who’d very cautiously worked with him in that endeavor, which was a big part of his acceptability in Stohnar’s eyes.

    And it doesn’t hurt that he had “Aivah’s” recommendation, as well,

    Cahnyr thought, smiling faintly at the thought of the redoubtable woman who’d once been known as Ahnzhelyk Phonda . . . among other things. At the moment, she probably has more influence with Stohnar than virtually any nativeborn Siddarmarkian. After all, without her he’d be dead!

    “You know, Gharth,” he said out loud, “technically, Archbishop Dahnyld has no authority over me whatsoever without the confirmation of his elevation to Primate of all Siddarmark by the Council of Vicars, which I don’t think, somehow, he’s going to be receiving anytime soon. Even if, by some miracle, that should happen, though, no one short of the Grand Vicar himself has the authority needed to strip an archbishop of his see or order him not to return to his archbishopric. And with all due respect to the Lord Protector, no layman, regardless of his civil office, has that authority, either.”

    “Well, unless memory fails me, Your Eminence, the Grand Vicar named your replacement in Glacierheart quite some time ago,” his undutiful secretary shot back. “So if we’re going to concern ourselves about deferring to his authority rather than Archbishop Dahnyld’s, we should probably turn around and head home right now.”

    “I was simply pointing out that what we confront here is something in the nature of a power vacuum,” Cahnyr said with the utmost dignity. “A situation in which the lines of authority have become . . . confused and blurred, requiring me to proceed as my own faith and understanding direct me.”

    “Oh, of course it does, Your Eminence.” Gorjah frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then slowly and deliberately removed one glove so he could properly snap his thumb and second finger. “I know! We can ask Madam Pahrsahn’s opinion!”

    “Oh, a low blow, Gharth. A low blow!” Cahnyr laughed, and Gorjah smiled. He hadn’t heard that infectious laugh out of his archbishop very often in the last year or so. Now Cahnyr shook a finger under his nose. “A dutiful, respectful secretary would not bring up the one human being in the entire world of whom his archbishop is terrified.”

    “‘Terrified’ isn’t the word I’d choose, Your Eminence. I have observed, however, a distinct tendency on your part to . . . accept Madam Pahrsahn’s firmly urged advice, shall we say.”

    “Diplomatically put,” Cahnyr said , then sighed. “You really are going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?”

    “Yes, Your Eminence, I am,” Gorjah said in a softer, much more serious tone. He reached out and laid his bare hand affectionately on his superior’s shoulder. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you truly aren’t as young as you used to be. You’ve got to start taking at least some cognizance of that fact, because there are so many things you have to do. So many things only you can do. And because there are so many people who love you. You owe them a willingness to at least try to take care of yourself, especially when so many of their hopes are riding on your shoulders.”

    Cahnyr gazed across into the taller, younger man’s eyes. Then he reached up and patted the hand on his shoulder.

    “All right, Gharth. You win. This time, at least!”

    “I’ll settle for any victories I can get, Your Eminence,” Gorjah assured him. Then he opened the inn’s front door and ushered the archbishop through it with a flourishing bow. Cahnyr chuckled, shook his head, and stepped back inside resignedly.

    “Sent you to the right about, didn’t he just, Your Eminence?” Fraidmyn Tohmys, Cahnyr’s valet for over forty years, since his seminary days, remarked dryly from where he’d been waiting just inside that door. “Told you he would.”

    “Did I ever mention to you that that ‘I told you so’ attitude of yours is very unbecoming?”

    “Now that I think about it, you may have — once or twice, Your Eminence.”

    Thomys followed the archbishop into the small, rustic, simply furnished side parlor which had been reserved for his personal use. The fire crackled and hissed, and the valet divested Cahnyr of his coat, gloves, scarf, and fur hat with the ease of long practice. Somehow, Cahnyr found himself seated in a comfortable chair, stocking feet towards the fire while his boots sat on a corner of the hearth and he sipped a cup of hot, strong tea.

    The tea filtered down into him, filling him with a welcome heat, yet even as he sipped, he was aware of the flaws in the picture of warmth and comfort. The fire, for example, had been fed with lengths of split nearoak and logs of mountain pine, not coal, and under other circumstances, the cup of tea would have been a cup of hot chocolate or (more likely, in such a humble inn) thick, rich soup. But the coal that would normally have been shipped down the river from Glacierheart hadn’t been shipped this year, chocolate had become an only half-remembered dream of better times, and with so little food in anyone’s larder, the innkeeper was reserving all he had for formal meals.

    And even the formal meals are altogether too skimpy,

    Cahnyr thought grimly as he sipped his tea. He’d always practiced a degree of personal austerity rare among the Church’s senior clergy — one reason so many of that senior clergy had persistently underestimated him as they played the Temple’s power games — yet he’d also always had a weakness for a savory, well-prepared meal. He preferred simple dishes, without the course after course extravaganzas in which a sensualist like Zhaspahr Clyntahn routinely indulged, but he had had that appreciation for food.

    Now his stomach growled as if to punctuate his thoughts, and his face tightened as he thought about all the other people — the thousands upon thousands in his own archbishopric — whose stomachs were far emptier than his. Even as he sat here sipping tea — as Clyntahn was undoubtedly gorging himself once more upon the finest delicacies and wines — somewhere in Glacierheart, a child was slipping away into the stillness of death because her parents simply couldn’t feed her. He closed his eyes, clasping the teacup in both hands, whispering a prayer for that child he would never meet, never know, and wondered how many others would join her before this bitter winter ended.

    “You’re doing what you can, Your Eminence,” a voice said very quietly from behind him, and he opened his eyes and turned his head to meet Thomys’ gaze. The valet’s smile was lopsided, and he shook his own head. “We’ve been together a while now, Your Eminence. I can usually tell what you’re thinking.”

    “I know you can. They say the shepherd and his dog grow alike, so why shouldn’t my keeper be able to read my mind?” Cahnyr smiled. “And I know we’re doing what we can. It isn’t making me feel any better about what we can’t do, though, Fraid.”

    “‘Course ’tisn’t,” Thomys agreed. “Could hardly be any other way, now could it? It’s true enough, though. And you’d best be concentrating on what it is we can do, not brooding over what we can’t. There’s a mortal lot of folk in Tairys — aye, and in a lot of other places in Glacierheart — as are waiting for you, and they’ll be looking to you once we’re there, too. You’re not so very wrong calling yourself a shepherd, Your Eminence, and there’s sheep depending on you. So just you see to it you’ve the strength and the health to be there when they need you, because if you don’t, you’ll fail them. In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve not seen you do that a single time, and Father Gharth, and Mistress Sahmantha and I — we’re not about to let you do it this time, either.”

    Cahnyr’s eyes burned, and he nodded silently, then turned back the fire. He heard Thomys puttering about behind him for a few more moments. Then –

    “You bide by the fire, Your Eminence. I’ll fetch you when it’s suppertime.”

    The door closed behind the valet, and Cahnyr gazed deep into the fire, watching the slow, steady spill of coals, feeling the heat, thinking about the journey which still lay before him. At the moment, he and his companions were near the town of Sevryn, crossing through the northernmost rim of Shiloh, one of the provinces where neither the Republic nor Clyntahn’s Temple Loyalists held clear-cut control. The Loyalists had seized its southwestern portions in a grip of iron, but the northern — and especially northeastern portions — were just as firmly under the Republic’s control. The middle was a wasteland, dotted with the ruins of what had once been towns and farms where hating, embittered men hunted one another with savage intent and a cruelty no slash lizard could have equaled. This particular portion of Shiloh had missed — so far, at least — the wave of bloodshed sweeping through so much of the rest of the province, but the destruction of foodstuffs (and the interruption in their delivery) had made itself felt even here. As many Shilohans as could, especially women and children, had fled down the Siddar to Old Province and New Province, where the Army still promised security and there was at least some hope food would somehow make it up the river to them from the coast. They’d fled by barge, by boat, by canoe and even raft before the river froze; now, with the river ice four inches thick, they pulled sleds loaded with pitiful handfuls of household goods and their silent, wide-eyed children down its broad, steel-gray ribbon, trudging with gaunt, starvation-thinned faces towards what they hoped — prayed — might be salvation.

    Cahnyr was using that same icy road, but in the opposite direction, into the very heart of the savagery Zhasphar Clyntahn had loosed. The ice was thick enough already to support cavalry, even light wagons, far less dog sleds and snow lizard sleighs. They’d come as far west by barge as they could before the ice forced them to put ashore and shift to the sleds, with the loads carefully dispersed to spread the weight, and the river ice had allowed them to make far better time than they would have made by road, at least until they’d broken a runner. Unfortunately, they were still almost five hundred miles from Mountain Lake, and that assumed Glacierborn Lake had frozen over as well. It might well not have, but there would certainly be enough ice about to prevent them from crossing the lake by boat. That would increase the distance by a hundred and forty more miles by forcing them to circle around the lake’s north end, and it was another four hundred and thirty miles from Mountain Lake to Tairys. Nine hundred miles — possibly over a thousand — before he could reach his destination, and Langhorne only knew what he’d find when he finally got there.

    He thought about what was on those sleds, about the food he’d begged, pleaded for, even stolen in some cases. It wasn’t that Lord Protector Greyghor hadn’t wanted to give him all he could have asked for; it was simply that there’d been so little to give, especially with so many refugees pouring into the capital. The lord protector hadn’t been able to provide him with an army escort, either, because every soldier remaining to the Republic was desperately needed elsewhere, like in the Sylmahn Gap, with its direct threat to Old Province’s frontiers. Yet Stohnar also recognized the vital importance of succoring the people of Glacierheart who’d risen against their own archbishop, the man the Group of Four had named to replace Cahnyr, and beaten back the “Sword of Schueler.” It wasn’t just a matter of the province’s critical strategic location, although that would have been more than enough reason to support its citizens, either. Any people who’d paid the price Glacierheart’s had, in defiance not simply of rebels but of the Grand Inquisitor himself, had earned the support they desperately needed. And so Stohnar had given Cahnyr everything he possibly could, and Aivah Pahrsahn had collected still more in voluntary contributions from the capital’s Charisian Quarter and refugees who themselves couldn’t be certain where their next five-day’s meals were coming from. Aivah had provided medicines, bandages, and healer’s supplies of every description, as well.

    And, Cahnyr thought harshly, she’d provided the escort Stohnar couldn’t: two hundred trained riflemen, under the command of a grim, determined young man named Byrk Raimahn. There were another three hundred rifles distributed between the caravan’s sleds, and Stohnar — whose armories at the moment held more weapons than he had soldiers to wield — had offered a thousand pikes, as well. There were bullets and powder in plenty, and bullet molds, as well. Zhasyn Cahnyr was a man of peace, but men of peace were in scant demand just now, and those weapons might well — probably would — prove just as vital to Glacierheart’s survival as the food coming with them. But even more important was what they — and Cahnyr’s return — would represent to the men and women of his archbishopric.

    They had kept the faith. Now it was up to him to keep faith with them. To join them, be with them — to be their unifying force and, if necessary, to die with them. He owed them that, and he would see to it that they had it.