The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 7: The Cursewright's Failure, Part 1

Khozar El-Nalrah, Archdeacon of the Sacred Archive of Othillion in Munazyr, had held his position for over fifty years. Now, nearing his ninety-seventh Yearsend Festival, he felt quite comfortable in his duties, which he did not neglect from the highest rites to the meanest chores. Khozar El-Nalrah was grateful for his high position, but more grateful that he was permitted to serve Most Wise Othillion of the Book, even after the Sultan had chased him from Q'Sivaris at the points of his janissaries' blades. But the Sultan's moods were fickle, his ire toward the Deacons of the Book shifting from century to century, and had been almost agreeable of late, ever since his hunger for Munazyr and the Straits of Twilight had been quelled in the Archdeacon's sixty-sixth year by the Yellow Death and its jaundiced fever-fires, in which so many Munazyri burned. Khozar El-Nalrah, however, knew he would never again see the sun-blessed streets and cool oases of Q'Sivaris before he died, and so not only observed his duties but took pleasure in them. From the most intricate readings of the Scrolls of Wisdom conducted in the Western Auditorium every Graceday morn (more onerous since his eyesight had begun to fail) to rebinding well-loved tomes in the Central Library (almost beyond his abilities when the rheumatism swelled his fingers), Khozar El-Nalrah thanked His Wisdom and never complained.

Until, at least, he was forced to act as disciplinarian, and despite their reputation as meek and pleasant scholars, the Deacons of the Book could be as petty and vicious as any group of people forced to spend too much time together. So it was with no small sense of disagreeable agitation that he heard the tumult of voices, one young and one old, from beyond his office door, followed by a furious rapping. 

Khozar El-Nalrah sighed and extinguished his pipe of kossun smoke (which he had only lately lit, opening the windows onto the afternoon sun to air out his chamber, and which his aching joints would sorely miss). With a trembling slowness of the body that belied the power of the brain it hosted, the Archdeacon rose from his chair, glanced down at his habits to make sure he had not soiled them (sometimes he had accidents since his ninetieth year, and so he disdained the chore of laundering his own clothing least of all), and called out in a voice still remarkably strong for its age, "Come."

The door to the Archdeacon's office slammed open with a crash. Khozar El-Nalrah winced at the sound of the mellowly polished seretto wood chipping against the wall. In stormed Deacon Pell, his habits torn and his thinning brown hair half-askew (but then Khozar El-Nalrah had told him more than once he would benefit from a shaven pate like his own), a haphazard collection of scrolls and quills crushed under one arm. In his other hand he was dragging by the scruff of the neck a small and very angry boy in simple but well-cared for clothing. The boy's face was outraged but handsome, his skin darker even than the Archdeacon's, though he sported nothing so fine and long as the Archdeacon's thick white beard, and his eyes were an exotic blue to the Archdeacon's mild brown.

"Yes, Brother Pell?" Khozar El-Nalrah said in what he hoped, futilely, to be a polite tone.

"This little urchin," Pell snarled, glaring down at the boy, who stared back fearlessly into the deacon's eyes with equal fury, "was prowling the History Wing, Archdeacon. Again. I'm removing him from the Archive."

"Are you indeed?" Khozar El-Nalrah inquired, offering the boy a thin smile and a lift of his eyebrows, which were still as black as coal, though thicker and more wiry than in his youth.

"Yes, Archdeacon," replied Pell, still glowering. "I have removed him before. He was just here this morning, and he absconded with the woman Mari back to that fraud down on the Old Godsway. And he had the temerity to return here! I will return him to the streets where he belongs, Archdeacon, but before I do wanted your leave to flog him. Three lashes should teach him his lesson."

"Brother Pell, let go of that boy, if you would."

"Archdeacon?"

"If I was not clear, Brother, I would be obliged if you would remove your hand from that young man's neck and let him come into my office."

Brother Pell did as his superior asked, but the ugly look didn't leave his face, and as he stamped forward the boy never dropped his infuriated glare from the Deacon, either.

The Archdeacon smiled and invited the boy forward with one gnarled hand. "Come, boy, I won't flog you. Nor will Brother Pell."

"Archdeacon -- !"

"What is your name, boy?"

The boy looked up at the archdeacon with deepest suspicion (merited, Khozar El-Nalrah feared, for too many priests of the Ninefold Vow seemed to neglect certain of their vows when in the presence of handsome children), but the fury in his eyes seemed to have diminished a trice. "Casimir, sir."

"Boy, this man is Archdeacon of -- "

"Casimir. Did you know there was a King Casimir of Nythel? He is most revered, for the library he dedicated to His Wisdom is among the most beautiful in the world, even more than our own, which I should never think to call humble." Khozar El-Nalrah considered hunkering down to be on the boy's level, but his knees were in far too disagreeable a mood to oblige him.

The boy shook his head, the fire in his eyes dimming. "No, sir. My master said there were kings named Casimir, and angels too. But we haven't talked about any in my history lessons."

"'History lessons,' as if this little -- " sneered Pell.

The Archdeacon focused solely on Casimir. "And quite right he is, Casimir, quite right." Khozar El-Nalrah's eyes, their whites yellowed with age but no duller in intelligence for that, peered up from Casimir to Deacon Pell. "Young Casimir does indeed have a master, Brother Pell. He is apprenticed to the cursewright Ammas Mourthia. That 'fraud on the Old Godsway,' though I would be obliged if you did not refer to him as such in my presence." Again he smiled down at the boy, who returned the smile with a hesitant grin of his own.

Deacon Pell's jaw dropped in mingled astonishment and outrage. "Since when did the Doge decide to allow that?"

The Archdeacon shrugged. "He did not, so far as I am aware. But it seems agreeable to me that we should let the boy use our halls for his studies. It is what His Wisdom commands us to do, is it not? To facilitate the needs of those who would learn?" A whispery chuckle rattled from his narrow chest. "Cursewrights may be many things, and yes, Brother Pell, some are disagreeable things, but they respect knowledge like few others from the old fellowships."

Now Deacon Pell was as furious as he had ever been, all the more so because there was no way before all the gods, Ninefold or beyond the Vow, that he could express his anger before the Archdeacon. "Very well," he said stiffly. His face became suddenly crafty. "But even our most accommodating commandments don't permit theft."

The Archdeacon frowned. Casimir looked at Pell, bewildered. "Theft? What is this theft?"

"Parchment. Quills." Pell threw them onto a delicate tea-stand where the Archdeacon's favorite kettle rested. Casimir's jaw dropped open, bewilderment turning back to outrage. "And this." He slipped from his habit a careworn, chapbook-sized volume: D'Nel Teraz. The Archdeacon studied the little book with arthritic slowness, carefully turning the frail pages.