Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [59]
The bell rang, announcing the supper hour. Rhys did not move. Monks were required to be present at breakfast, where any business relating to the monastery was discussed. The supper hour was informal and those who preferred to continue to meditate or work were permitted to do so. Rhys knew he should attend, but he was loathe to leave his peaceful solitude.
His brother and parents would be there and they would expect him to sit with them. The meeting would be an uncomfortable one. They would want to talk to him about his brother, but they would feel reluctant to discuss Lleu in the presence of the other monks. And so their conversation would be limited to family matters: his father’s business concerns, his mother’s news of the birth of her latest grandchild. Since Rhys knew nothing about any of this, and truthfully did not care, he would have nothing to contribute. They would not be particularly interested in his life. Talk would falter and eventually die off into strained silence.
“I am better employed here,” Rhys said to himself.
Rhys remained with his god, the two of them joined, the mind of the human freeing itself from the body to touch the mind of the deity, a touch the Master likened to the tiny, flailing hand of a newborn babe finding and tightly clutching at one finger of the enormous hand of his father. Rhys presented his concerns about Lleu to Majere, allowing his many questions to sift through his mind and that of the god, hoping to find answers, hoping to find some way to help.
He sank so deeply into his meditative state that he lost all track of time. Gradually, a nagging twinge, like the beginnings of a toothache, became annoying enough that he was forced to pay attention to it. Feeling true reluctance and sadness at being forced to return to the world of men, he parted from the god. He opened his eyes, sensing that something was wrong.
At first, he could not think what. Everything seemed right enough. The sun had set, darkness had fallen. Atta slept peacefully on the grass. No barking dogs, no alarm from sheep fold or barn, no smell of smoke that would have indicated a fire. Yet something was wrong.
Rhys jumped to his feet, his sudden movement startling Atta, who flopped over onto her belly, ears pricked, eyes wide.
Then Rhys knew. The bell for the weapons practice had not rung.
Rhys doubted himself a moment. His inner clock might well have been thrown off by his deep meditative state. Yet a glance at the position of the moon and the stars confirmed his reckoning. In all the fifteen years he’d lived at the monastery and in all the years the monastery had been in existence, the bell for practice had rung nightly at the same hour without fail.
Fear gripped Rhys. Routine was an important part of the discipline practiced by the monks. A break in routine might be commonplace anywhere else. A break in the monk’s routine was shattering, catastrophic. Rhys picked up his emmide and he and Atta returned to the monastery at a run. He had well-developed night vision from having to practice with his weapons in pitch darkness during the winter months, and he knew every inch of ground. He could have—and once did—find his way back home through a dense fog in the blackest night. This evening, Solinari’s silver light brightened the dark sky and the stars added their own pale radiance. He could see the way clearly.
He almost ordered Atta back to the sheep fold. He decided, as the command was on his lips, to keep her with him, at least until he knew what was wrong.
He arrived back at the monastery grounds to find all peaceful and quiet—a bad sign. The monks should have been in the compound, either listening to one of the masters as he demonstrated a technique or practicing with their partners. He should be hearing the sound