Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [51]
Stripped naked to the waist, their bare feet slipping on the ice-rimed ground in the winter or the mud in the summer, the monks spent long hours training both body and mind in disciplined combat. They were not permitted to use blades or arrows or any other type of steel weapon, for Majere commanded that his monks must not take life unless innocent lives were in peril and then only when all other options had been tried and failed.
Rhys’s favored weapon was the emmide—a staff that was much like a quarter staff, only longer and narrower. The word, emmide, was elven in derivation; the elves used such a staff to knock fruit from the trees. He had become a master of the art of fighting with the emmide, so much so that he now taught others.
Rhys was content with his ordered life, deeply content, now that Majere had returned to them. He could see himself at eighty years of age—the same age as the Master—looking much the same as the Master: grizzled hair, weather-beaten skin stretched taunt over muscles and sinew and bone, face deeply lined, eyes dark and placid with the wisdom of the god. Rhys never planned to leave this place where he had come to know himself and make peace with himself. He never wanted to go back into the world.
The world was inside him.
Rhys arrived at the sheep pen. The sheep trotted docilely past him and into the fold, with Atta right behind them.
“That’ll do,” said Rhys to the dog.
This was the command that freed her of her charge. Atta wriggled all over in pleasure and came trotting up to him, her tongue lolling, eyes bright. He gave her reward—a pat on her head and a playful fondling of her ears.
Rhys shut the sheep in the pen for the night. Atta joined the other herding dogs, brothers and sisters and cousins, who greeted her with sniffs and wagging tails. She settled down near the sheep fold to gnaw bones and doze, all the while keeping watch on the flock. Resting or sleeping, the dogs served as the guards through the night. Wolves and wildcats were not much of a problem during the summer months, when food was plentiful in the wild. The winter time was the most dangerous. Often the monks were roused from their sleep by the furious barking of the dogs. The monks would rush from their beds to drive the predators away with flaming torches.
Lingering by the sheep pen, watching a mother dog hold down a squealing pup firmly with her paw while she licked him all over, Rhys gradually became aware that something was different. Something had changed. The tranquility of the monastery had been disturbed. Rhys could not have said how he knew this, except that he had lived here so long that he could sense even the most subtle differences in the feel of the place. He left the sheep fold, circled around the outbuildings: the forge, the baker’s large oven, the privies, and storage sheds, and walked within sight of the monastery proper.
The monastery had been built by the monks of Majere hundreds of years ago, and it had changed little during all that time. Simple in design, more like a fortress than a temple, the two story building had been raised by the hands of the monks themselves, constructed of stone they had dug from a nearby quarry. The main building contained the sleeping quarters for the monks on the top story, with a communal dining hall, warming room, infirmary, and kitchen on the bottom level. Each monk had his own cell, furnished only with a straw mattress. Each cell had a window that was open to the air