Chapter 4

By the afternoon of the next day, both Gregor and Stefan were feeling a bit more of their old selves. Their clothes and boots had been returned, clean and fresh smelling, even if the colors were a touch faded from the harsh chemicals used to purge any pests. The ointment was akin to an overnight miracle, and both men were able to move freely in their clothes without raw, exposed nerves crying out with every awkward movement.

True to form, Gregor had already located the best brothel in the town, with a fairly precise description of the most enticing wenches. He was momentarily disappointed when Stefan explained his plans for the evening at the home of the healer. However, Gregor's fleeting displeasure was replaced by a target of opportunity - Stefan's new infatuation with an older woman.

"You can't resist a woman who orders your near emasculation!" Gregor mused aloud. "I guess that she has taken a hold of your balls and not let go since the front gate."

Gregor continued to speculate, "You must really enjoy those mammaries that hang down to the knees. Something to hang onto, I imagine." And so on.

Stefan blithely ignored the jabs as they wandered the streets trying to entertain themselves. Between the taunts, Gregor latched onto a simple plan of walking into the best tavern in town and letting the townsfolk buy them tankards of ale in exchange for their tales of the kingdom under the heavy hand of the plague.

The local ale was dark and bitter, a far different brew than the pale ale of the central plains of the capitol. It was stronger too and Stefan had to push back from the table sooner than he expected. He didn't want to so snockered as to endanger the anticipated pleasures of the evening. From past escapades, he knew that Gregor wouldn't stop until he had fallen into a naked stupor in some whore's bed; preferably one with blond tresses. Even if he had desired the same, Gregor drank as if he had a hollow leg and had put many a professional tavern man to shame. Next to him Stefan was a novice.

When Gregor began to embellish some of their sightings, Stefan quietly brought his companion back to the reality of their adventures. He had a niggling fear that if they scared the populace too thoroughly, the governor might not let them out of the gate to return. Besides, what they had seen was enough to provoke nightmares, and protests of disbelief. With his need for drunken companionship eminently fulfilled by mid afternoon, Stefan abandoned the warm confines of the tavern for the streets.

Market day was tomorrow, and Stefan had no use for established shops or their wares. He had been placed in the King's Guard with the usual parsimonious nature of the priests, and lived off of a soldier's salary. Gregor always had more crowns than him, while Stefan had more pennies. Stefan wasn't jealous, but there was certainly a hint of envy in the easy ways of his companion in the city.

An antiquarian shop drew his attention anyways, and inside he found a genial man whose thin frame was offset by a huge grey beard that burst around his face. Stefan gazed at the hundred or so books that lined the shop at the back of thick tables. The existence of the shop was a curiosity in and of itself, but the collection of so many books only deepened his curiosity.

One of the many whips the masters held over the novitiates was the unique skill of reading, writing and arithmetic that priests mastered, and used for the sake of their gods and land. As they calculated the mysterious right hand side of the decimal, they learned that only two percent of the population was literate. Even of that two percent, many were copyists who knew not what they were copying, but treated words as if they were pictures to be replicated.

If Esala had 50,000 inhabitants, which could easily be high, then maybe a thousand people could read. If half were copyists, then only 500 would dare to approach a book. Yet this shop had near 100 books! Who had the money and the wherewithal to purchase such luxuries?

The merchant gave him a once over, determining his ability to purchase based on his clothes and bearing. Stefan had no illusions that his purse would be surreptitiously judged as more than lacking.

"One does not expect a King's Guard to be perusing books for purchase," the shopkeeper opened.

"This King's Guard is surprised to see a shop full of books in Esala," Stefan countered with a lightness in his voice.

The merchant chuckled, "The Governor's College makes such an establishment possible and perhaps necessary."

Stefan was taken aback, "I've never heard of this institution. I thought that only the Holy University and Kings College were the only sanctioned institutions of higher learning in the kingdom."

The old man chuckled, "You are standing in one of the furthest corners of the kingdom, young guardsman. The priests have no reach here and Gringolas's hand is barely felt. Whatever benefits of civilization that Esala needs, she must forge for herself. The garrison is little better a night watchman's brigade and as you learned from your own journey, the trip to Fortress Sardaford is two weeks by horseback. If we were attacked, it would take a month for troops to arrive at best. That is, if troops were sent. Just as with soldiers, we must also supply our own learned men"

Stefan was stumped, "If Esala is so far removed, from where do these books come?"

The thin man grabbed a black leather tome and cracked it open to the frontispiece in order to explain, "Some of our texts come from the Holy, but just as many come from eastern kingdoms beyond our borders, which have their own colleges and scholars. Many of our roads lead out of the kingdom. This alchemy text was written at the Uzabekar."

"How is it that I have never heard of these colleges?" the curious young man asked.

"Can you read?"

Stefan nodded, "I was a novitiate."

"Ah," exclaimed the older man as if that explained everything. "You were raised in the temple schools. You must have been bored out of your skull."

"In fact I was," Stefan readily confirmed, and then drew back with suspicion. "How did you know?"

"I know that the priests teach you a very narrow set of facts and concepts to keep you far from 'heresy'," the old man encapsulated the word by wiggling both index fingers. "Heresy is anything that that challenges their so-called divine right to power. You were shown only a very small selection of writings. Smart people are fine, but imaginative or creative people are dangerous in the priestly world. I guess you didn't quite toe the line, guardsman."

"I behaved," Stefan defended himself, "but I was so bored with the lessons that I hardly put any effort into my studies and that was not proper attitude for final vows."

The old man closed the book and patted Stefan's hand where it rested on the table, "Consider yourself one of the lucky ones, son. You got out from under their grip."

Stefan blanched slightly at the assumption that he had loosed the leash of his masters, but held his tongue. The old man walked back to his paneled desk and Stefan took the opportunity to examine the first page of the book again. The Rasaratanakaram was a weighty exploration of the manipulation of minerals to create metals of different characteristics. He flipped to an anonymous page and examined a picture of a tool made of laced strands of thin threads of metal, which the caption called "a sieve." Stefan swallowed with the realization that he had never considered that metals could be so thoroughly manipulated.

The owner interrupted his ruminations with a small scroll in his hand that he placed next to the book, "I suspect that a guardsman's salary cannot match the cost of this tome, but for five pennies I have a scroll that will spark your mind when you rest at night from your travels."

Stefan was so taken aback by the offer that he automatically dug the coins out of his purse and laid it in the man's hand.

"Keep it in your bags away from the wet," the shopkeeper advised with a dismissal of his hand.

He shooed the surprised young man out into the street, who stood in the street not knowing exactly what to do. The deepening shadows pierced Stefan's fog reminding him that he had an anticipated appointment to attend.

Since they hadn't set an hour of meeting, nor had he heard the call of the watchman with the hour, Stefan was at a loss. Rationalizing that he had nothing important left to do, Stefan made his way through the streets to the healer's door. He stepped into the doorway only to be greeted with an old woman's sharp retort, "We're closed!"

"That is a good thing," Stefan called back to the figure stooping over a dustpan in the corner.

"Oh look Esmie," the woman called to another part of the long room, "it's the young man who stole a kiss from our mistress last eve."

As his eyes adjusted, he saw a lascivious grin devouring him with its brown and crooked teeth. He was amused and repulsed at the same time, but kept his face deliberately neutral lest she see that he was reacting to her verbal baiting.

"Where is your dear mistress?" He politely asked.

The old woman tilted her head and waggled her eyebrows, "She's in back brewing some evil formula that renders men malleable and susceptible to the wiles of women, while fortifying their virility."

Both women cackled long and loud at their joke upon the young man. Stefan made his way through the maze of goods with a pasted face of annoyance on his face that only made the ladies laugh louder. He held back a rebuke for fear that he might anger their mistress; overweening pride was not one of his weaknesses. Still, no one enjoyed being the butt of a joke.

Their laughter followed him through the back doorway and down a short hall to another door. He knocked politely and stepped in without waiting for an answer. The smell of seasoned dishes and fresh bread filled his nostrils. The kitchen was warm and comfortable with a brick fireplace and a tiled floor instead of the more common field stone.

As he reached for the bowls of various vegetables and vegetable pastes to sample a taste, a voice rebuked him, "Touch it and you lose the finger!"

Stefan felt like a chastised little boy, and he didn't like the sensation, at all. He harrumphed his displeasure, but backed away from the table. Spotting a comfortable perch, he sought out the master's chair by the fireplace and withdrew his new acquisition from his belt. The scroll had been twined around a smoothed piece of wood, preventing the thick vellum from being creased or crushed. He read the title, "Perambulations of Planetary Bodies and their Calculus" and scratched his head with incomprehension.

His dismay grew as he unfurled the scroll and scanned the thick paragraphs interspersed with long mathematical equations. He stopped a moment to examine one equation a little closer and realized that the equation was an algebraic equation. Algebra frustrated him. He had told all of his friends in class that he hated the subject, knowing full well he was telling a lie. When he understood it, he loved the subject, but when he couldn't solve the problem, the aggravation sent his quill sailing like a dart onto the floor in front of his feet. When the ink soaked up all of the dirt on the floor, making a gooey mess on the tip of his quill, his anxiety only ratcheted up. Algebra — feh!

A soft hand caressed the side of Stefan's neck, running up to tickle the ridge of his ear. The light touch sent a shiver down his spine and through his toes.

"What are you reading," a soft, feminine voice whispered in his ear.

"The shopkeeper at the Antiquarian Store pushed his scroll on me after he learned that I studied in the priest schools," Stefan answered, wanting to feel more shivers down his back.