Amber and Ashes - Margaret Weis [60]
Rhys looked swiftly about. Yellow light streamed from the windows of the dining hall where the monks took their meals. That in itself was all wrong. At this time of the night, the lights were doused, the tables scrubbed down, wooden trenchers and crockery, kettles and pans cleaned and ready for tomorrow’s breakfast. Rhys headed in that direction, hoping for some logical explanation. The thought came to him that the Master might be talking to his family and that he might have kept the other monks from their practice because he required their assistance. Such an occurrence was completely out of the norm, but not out of the realm of possibility.
The main door led to the monastery’s common room. Rhys saw through the windows that it was dark, as it would be this time of night. He shoved open the door and was about to enter when Atta made a strange sound—a kind of frightened whimper. Rhys looked down at her, concerned. The two had worked together for five years and he’d never heard her make that sound. She stared into the darkened room. Her body shivered and she whimpered again.
Something terrible lay ahead. Not outlaws or marauders or thieves. Not a bear bumbling into the building, as had once happened. The dog would know how to react to that. This was something she didn’t understand, and it was terrifying.
He took a slow and cautious step inside.
All was quiet. No voice rose and fell in wise counsel. No voices could be heard at all. A foul smell, as of a sick room, hung in the air.
Rhys’s instinct was to rush in to see what had happened. Discipline and training overrode this impulse. He had no way of knowing what lay ahead. He gestured to Atta to “walk up” and she slowed her pace, dropped into a crouch, and crept along at his side. Rhys gripped his emmide and moved stealthily into the common room, his bare feet making no sound.
The common room opened into the dining hall. Lights shone from within and, although he could see nothing except the end of a bench, he could hear a faint sound, an odd sound, a kind of muttering mumble. He could not make out words, if words there were.
He eased ahead cautiously, listening and keeping watch on the room ahead. Atta could be trusted to warn him if someone or some thing was about to leap at him from the darkness. He had no sense of anything lurking in this room, however. Danger lay in the light, it seemed, not in the shadows. The sickening smell grew stronger.
He reached the dining hall. The stench caused him to gag and he put his hand over his nose and mouth. The mumbling voice was louder now, but it was so low that he could still not make out what it was saying, nor could he identify the person speaking. Standing just inside the entryway, so that he could see without being seen, Rhys looked into the dining hall.
He stood, appalled.
Eighteen monks lived in the monastery. Their numbers had been greater in times past, upwards of forty in the years following the War of the Lance. The monastery’s population had dwindled during the Fifth Age, when there had been only five, and was only just now beginning to recover. The monks dined in brotherly companionship at a large rectangular table made of a long wooden plank arranged on wooden trestles. The monks sat on wooden benches, nine on either side.
This day, there were only seventeen monks, for Rhys had chosen to skip dinner. There had been the guests, however—Rhys’s parents and his brother. They would sit with the monks at the table, share their simple repast. Twenty people, all told.
Of those twenty, nineteen were lying dead.
Rhys stared at the terrible scene in shock, his discipline shattered all to pieces, his reason scattered like leaves in a gale. He looked about in bewilderment, unable to take in the horror, unable to comprehend what had happened.
Though he could tell after one despairing glance that all were dead, he ran to the Master and knelt