Читать книгу The Raven's Warrior - Vincent Pratchett - Страница 14

Renewal

Selah never questioned why or where they were going. This was not the time for talking; it was the time for her unwavering faith in her father’s judgment. Dawn was breaking as they reached the base of the temple’s mountain, and by mid-morning they had arrived at its blackened summit. She followed him closely with horse and cart, just as she had done with her mother many years before. Now, however, she was no longer a child, but a woman grown rich in both wisdom and beauty.

The brick and mortar that was this place lay scattered and moss covered, like the bones and armor of its dead. She held her trepidation in check and wondered if this is the only peace that war can bring. Their obedient mare had soon found water. It grazed happily in the over grass, content for now with the chance to rest. Both monk and soldier lay where they had fallen. Selah watched her father solemnly go about the business of gathering and piling the skeletal remains of his monastic brothers. Quietly she began to help him with his task.

From a respectable distance she saw her father kneel in silence beside the ragged robed bones of his abbot. To these he summoned life. With closed eyes he recalled time spent and lessons learned. Reaching into the mottled robes of the master, he removed the treasured relic he knew the abbot would have died defending. The metal shone brightly in the sunlight.

Placing the object safely beneath the folds of his tunic the priest said calmly, “The vajra, from the hands of Bodhidharma to the earliest monks of our order.” This was the connection of past with present, the object that linked steel to scroll. Seeing the unspoken question in his daughter’s eyes he offered more. “The vajra, the library, and the sword – The spirit, the mind, and the body.” His role and responsibility within the temple had not ended with the destruction of its mighty walls, it had merely been transformed.

Together on this holy ground they built a crypt of blackened stone like a monument within a monument, and when they had finished Mah Lin began the prayers for the dead. The father and husband that she had known was a good and formidable man, but here at this destroyed temple she saw his strength gather to unearthly proportions. She remembered the monk that mother and child had found broken and lifeless, and now witnessed him emerging from the ashes of these sacred ruins like the phoenix of ancient tales.

Mah Lin continued his search of the mountaintop looking for something other than bone or fragment. He chose carefully from the armor parts and weapons strewn about, some still protecting a long perished body part and some still held tightly in the grip of the dead, as the load of humble cart steadily increased. On the eve of the third day, Mah Lin found what he had been seeking. It lay underneath a fallen shield, undisturbed by the passage of time. The monk picked it up and cleaned it off with the sleeve of his tunic.

He called to Selah to show her what he held in the palm of his outstretched hand. She gazed in wonder at the beautiful artifact, small but substantial, lovingly crafted, and timeless. On the dull bronze pentagon lay the raised metallic image of the imperial dragon. A round hollow lay clutched in its five-clawed talon, and within this circular well a delicate needle lay suspended and precisely balanced. As her father offered this dragon to the four corners of the world, the needle moved quickly around to keep its original place.

“Selah, we have new purpose, and now direction,” were the words of the powerful monk, the action of a loving father was an embrace. Only then, within the safety of his protective arms, did her tears fall freely upon his dusty shirt. When the storm of her grief had passed, he stroked her shimmering hair and gently whispered as only a father could, “Selah, we will go now, it is complete.”

So it was that they traveled on, their cart carrying the relics of this consecrated place, and their hearts carrying the remnants of their former peaceful lives. As they descended the path with the well-loaded carriage, the sharp-eyed raven took flight and followed, calling out their progress and championing their renewal. Mah Lin knew that the second pair of eyes that had been watching them secretly would also give voice to their actions.

He understood that information would flow upward from hidden sentry to high commander just as surely as the mountain stream flows down from savage peak to gentle lowland.