Chapter 4

"The Compact of Raphael," McAllister mused aloud, as the Horse and Rider cantered down the road from Nanterey. "What is it, and why were we commanded to break it?"

"It's a shame the priest wasn't more help."

"I suspect the Mother would have said more had we asked in private."

"She did seem vexed with us," the horse said in a considering tone.

"When we get to the library at the port of Crest, we'll look for a description and a guess at its location."

"You shall look."

The pursuit set a better ambush this time. Stone walls the height of a man's waist lined the road for a distance now, while McAllister and Sable cantered at night, having left Nanterey earlier.

The horse slowed. "Look."

"I see nothing."

Sable turned her head and gave McAllister an irritated glint of one green eye. "McAllister, you made your body. Can't you shift your vision into the dark light given off from all things warmer than the coldest ice?"

"Until now, I didn't know it was possible."

"It is," answered the horse.

Together they waited, until McAllister spoke again. "I see it now. Many men lurk behind the walls with tall boards they will raise to both sides of us, to hem us in. They don't yet know we approach."

"What, do you think, they will use to stop us?"

"A wagon or similar, perhaps. Maybe more than one, to try to keep us from jumping, maybe to entangle us in wreckage should we try."

"Yes," said the horse.

"I'll trot around these men, and meet you down the road a mile," McAllister proposed. "Allow me fifty minutes."

Fifty minutes later, Sable walked down the road from Nanterey, and the attack sprung. Arrows bounced from the horse, answered with twin jets of superheated air which cooled and expanded enough as it crossed the road to merely set clothing and hair on fire. Sable took more time with the wagons, now abandoned by the men who brought them, and severed the reins and tethers on the horses tethered to them with a swipe from a razor-sharp forehoof.

The horse walked away from the ruin which was the ambush on the road from Nanterey, the flames from the wagons lighting the road ahead for a long way. Soon, McAllister rejoined her. He mounted, and the two, Horse and Rider, cantered on into the night.

There was no trouble entering the port of Crest, McAllister found a stable, and Sable pronounced it adequate. A few pennies to the stable boy, and the man learned the location of the library. After a wordless exchange with the horse, McAllister set off to find the building.

Finding it was easy enough, though entry proved harder. "Only members or accompanied guests of the guild of Scholars, royalty, or priests or priestesses of known Churches and Sects may enter," the prissy functionary told him.

"I wear the sigil of the Mother," McAllister countered.

"But you are not a priest," the other retorted. McAllister could not argue.

Gauging the mettle of the guards on either side of the functionary, McAllister reasoned that fighting one's way into a library was not conducive to long, peaceful and uninterrupted study.

"I can take you in," a slender girl of young age and raven tresses falling like silk over one eye offered. McAllister adjudged her beautiful.

"Why would you do this?" McAllister asked.

"Because you are an oddity. My patron order would love to interact with you, and perhaps learn of the news of the country. You have the aspect of one who has come on an overland journey, and not of one who has arrived from sea."

"What order are you in?" McAllister asked politely.

A cloud of uncertainty passed over the young priestess' face. "Arianne," she said quietly, studying McAllister from behind hooded eyes. When he showed no reaction, she seemed to take cheer. "They'll love interacting with you, you'll see. You're a fairly handsome man," she told him in some earnestness. "Perhaps you'll take the fancy of one or more of them."

McAllister weighed the options before him, and nodded. "Very well, though my research may take some days."

Her eyes oddly alight, the slip of a girl smiled. "Should we find you of interest, we'd keep you one day for each day or part of a day we work in the library. Do we have a bargain?"

"We do," McAllister said, warily.

Sable cautioned McAllister when he related the events of the day. "Do not trust of strangers overmuch. Still, if it gained you access to the library, I suppose it's for the best. I wouldn't have judged you priest of the Mother either."

McAllister agreed. "I didn't find much. I did find a number of histories of Raphael, some written by acolytes and members of the Mother's Church, but there are more references to him in other histories of the battles of the time. Those," he said, "were less flattering."

"Read those, then, and see what clues we may have, to search out and ferret the secrets from other tomes," the Horse said.

"That was my plan," the Man answered.

"I'm Aela," she said. McAllister found the soft combination of vowels pleasant. She quickly finished her work on the second day, and watched McAllister. He shared his meal with her, sending a young librarian's apprentice out for spiced meat pies and loaves of bread. When she asked if there could be water or wine, he'd added both to the request.

McAllister quickly learned the reemergence of stolen symbols caused a war nearly twelve hundred years before in a lost empire spread around the coast of the Middle Sea. Frustrated, unable to discover just what those symbols were, he sat back and blew air through pursed lips.

"Why sigh, McAllister?"

"I don't understand who Raphael was or what power he had, how he ended the last of the Empire's civil wars." Her light brown eyes under the silky raven bangs held a serious expression as she listened. "I don't even know what this world looks like beyond the Middle Sea kingdoms."

"Raphael had the assistance of a Goddess, McAllister," Aela pointed out.

This seemed familiar to him, as if it echoed something in the history of his own world. "There was more," and he showed her what he had read about the objects.

"Hmmm," she responded. "I can help with the lay of the world, I think," and went in search of a book while he read more.

"Here," she said, and showed him a map in a large 'Encyclopedia'. If looked at from far enough away, and with one eye closed, one might imagine a resemblance to the world whose oceans he'd sailed in his prior life. Or, he concluded, one might not.

"This map is incomplete," McAllister told her, after some study. "See? The edges don't meet."

"Why should they?" Aela asked in a reasonable tone.

"The world is round," McAllister said, surprised.

Aela, though clearly skeptical, let the matter drop.

On the third day, McAllister found references to what the actual stolen objects were. "Aela," he called, and she looked up from her reading. "What do you know of a cornet Raphael carried?"

"In seminary they taught us that Raphael had a sword, a Rod, and a bone," she replied. "But it was never said what they were or what use he put them to."

With a little more research, McAllister found Raphael had restored the peace by withholding the stolen artifacts from the reach of any nation. From a position of strength, he had negotiated the end of hostilities.

"Imagine the great battle recorded in these books surrounding us," McAllister told her, with a sweep of the hand. "Hundreds of thousands of men from five separate armies lay dead on the battlefield. Raphael's division of ten thousand foot, having arrived late, carried the day and the battlefield. Generals dream of dictating terms from a position like that."

McAllister didn't miss the considering glances Aela sent his way when she thought he wasn't looking, though he felt no interest in the girl. She had been combing the histories of the period alongside him for the second day in a row now. She read aloud, "His position was such that he forced the creation of the city-state around the Basilica, and the right to place churches of the Mother in every land in Denaria."

An hour later, McAllister whistled. "The Church was allowed to have military orders, and authorized its orders to levy a tax from the surrounding countryside or county for its defense," he told Aela, who seemed unimpressed. Frowning at her, he explained, "If the land rises against their Count, Duke, or King, the Church can help them secede or revolt," and Aela blinked.

"That's ... Oh." Aela looked unsettled as she considered.

"Yes. 'Oh'," he said, and turned back to his book so she would not see him smile at her.

"Here, McAllister," she said on the afternoon of the fourth day. "Read here." He stood and crossed their nook to see what she pointed at. Her graceful finger and neatly-trimmed nail rested in a book of accounts, a book he might not have thought to search.

The long-dead scribe wrote bitter pages out of his desire to bind merchants and unreliable civil servants to his will, as Raphael had done, making them swear to his Compact on the "Rod of Irel". "When the cryptic lettering flashed golden, all must obey or die," McAllister read aloud, and shared a victorious glance with Aela.

Aela seemed to lose interest in the search now that McAllister knew what the Compact of Raphael had been and how it was made. Another day passed before McAllister found guesses at the fate of the Rod of Irel. Aela had been watching him, he knew, while he read. McAllister had the ability to ignore the outside world, and he ignored her as she watched. Occasionally, as he finished a section of interest, or determine he could glean no more from one book, he'd look for another. On those occasions, he'd catch a flash of movement from the girl. Red-faced and breathing quickly for some reason, she'd look away. McAllister simply shrugged.

The time came, on the fifth day, when McAllister looked up slowly from his work. Unable to say what broke his concentration — a soft sigh, he guessed — he looked up to find the young Aela cupping her breast through the cotton robe she wore, with her finger lazily caressing herself between her legs.

Intrigued and fascinated, McAllister watched. For a few moments, he wondered why he wasn't aroused. He realized he hadn't been aroused, or indeed had much passion even for a fight, since the day he stood before the Mother and she tested him with the raw urges she caused within him. Idly, he wondered if the aftereffect from her testing would dilute in time.

He became aware Aela looked directly at him now, defiantly continuing to move a hand under her robe. "Why?" he asked.

"I find you attractive," she said. "You show signs of requiring days to finish your research, days until you are ours to interact with. I plan to be first, but watching and waiting is difficult."

With her words, she began again in earnest, her hands moving almost violently, as she rubbed and pinched herself, her robe falling open. McAllister watched stunned, watching the young girl treat herself so roughly, her short, sharp cries sending small jolts through her body, her taut belly undulating and rippling, the muscles standing out in sharp definition as she drove herself down onto her fingers.

Glassy-eyed, she drove herself into more convulsions, unashamedly pleasuring herself before McAllister within the library cove they'd chosen for their research. Though no one else disturbed them, McAllister was sure her cries and moans of pleasure would bring any male within hearing distance as quickly as they could run.

Finally, she wound down, small tremors running though her body, causing ripples to move up her belly. Her breasts shook with small movements, her gown all but fully off her body, held only at the crook of her arms. Slowly, deliberately, looking McAllister in the eye, she licked her fingers clean, one at a time.

"Don't fear," the Mother spoke into his mind. "I'm why you didn't respond, though she is beautiful and her ecstasy comely. You need to store your energy, and she will only take it as a challenge."

Silently, McAllister returned to his work, wondering at the nature of his bargain with the girl Aela.

"Well, that's it," McAllister said.

Aela spoke with sudden excitement. "You've finished, then?"

"I think I have," McAllister said. "See, here's three different chandler's tax records of the provisions bought for a ship sailing to the Western continent, under a captain named either Croso or Caruso, the records vary..."

"Yes, that's unimportant. You must come with me now," Aela said, tugging on McAllister's sleeve.