A’Erth

The fourteenth began at the hearth. The party took breakfast at the Refectory with Alexei at their table and Roman beside him, quiet, waiting. Over porridge and the small pot of stewed apple Marta made for the first Sunday of waxing Umbra, they gave Alexei their answer: they would ride with Roman to the Baratok country and find Miklós Farkas. Alexei took the answer plainly. Then he agreed to the horses when the party asked, and said he would walk them down to Bosko himself when the time came.

At Saint Markovia’s, Anya cleared her morning for the two who had not yet been warded. Nyvoria went to the chapel at seven. Khamet followed. Both rites ran as Ali’s had the night before: the kneeling, the offering candle, the name chosen and spoken into the water. Each chose their own word; the chapel held both. By mid-morning the three Flames carried the ward, and the pack’s distant sight would not find them so easily.

Before the party left the precinct, Ivan called them to Elara’s office. Helena was there with him, and with her a book she had not opened in twelve years. She had gone up the ladder at three in the morning after Ivan had asked her a question he did not quite know how to ask. The question was about an absence. Ali’s writ had come with no companion paper. No see-assignment, no Chancery seal placing the three new Flames under a bishop’s hand. They had been bound for Vienna when the mists took them off the road, and the Chancery there had never received them. The phrase Helena read from Kalinen’s third volume named what they were. Ordinati sine sede. Ordained without a see. The one who does not sit, serves free. Elara named it without imperatives. The Church cannot act against Strahd on Barovian ground. The party can. Not should, not must. Can. Ivan would not tell them what to do with it. He asked them only to carry it.

Aldric was at his counter when they came through, ash staves ready in the sheaf by the north wall, Marta’s small crock of honey already added to the kit. He issued the standard road provisions without flourish and let the party ask for what else they wanted. Twelve silvered arrows left his drawer, a silvered spearhead, two Moondew tonics from Anya’s stock with the request that empty vials come back. Alexei was waiting at the stable when they got there. Bosko was already in the yard with the horses. Bosko walked each rider to their mount and gave each one line. Alexei named the conditions once at the hitching rail and did not repeat them: the horses stop at the last stone wall, they do not go into the woods, treat them like you borrowed them from your grandmother.

They rode out the Iron Gate just before eleven. Anya had come down from the chapel to see them off and took Ali’s warded palm in both her hands and said may your name go with you. Miriam logged the column at the gate and raised her small closed-fist salute to Roman. The Sun Road opened under them.

The ride north was working country at a working trot. A herd boy of nine raised his hand to Roman by name and roped his dog in daylight. A farmer’s son stared at the Cathedral stock from a southbound cart. A rural clergywoman asked after Alexei at the roadside and touched her sun-disk once as she turned away, not for the party. At the Vargas’, Bence took them to a place on the north wall where his dog had refused to cross two nights before. The tracks in the mud on the far side ran east, walking, not stalking. Roman looked at them for a long moment and did not add his read until he was asked. He had seen tracks like these before. Not many times.

Ivana was at her barn when they came up the ridge. The lantern on the north fence line had held another night.  She had been the one to tell Alexei that Miklós was missing, and she said again what she had told him: Miklós had stopped at her gate six days ago, bow strung and pack heavy, said he was following sign toward the foothills, said he would stop back on his way home, did not. She offered the loft for the night. The party rode on.

Miklós’s holding was in the shallow bowl under the ridge in the warm slanting afternoon. No smoke from the chimney. The goat pen gate stood open. Above the cottage door, hammered into the beam years ago and re-blackened by weather, a small iron sun-wheel.  

Inside, the cottage held days of no one being home. Cold hearth. Wood still dry and stacked in the basket. His worktable with the charcoal map. The peg by the front door was empty. Whatever had hung there, Miklós had taken with him.  Behind the goat pen, his boot prints went up the trail into the woods.

They stabled the horses in the byre, built a small fire in Miklós’s hearth, and set a watch. Supper was what Aldric had packed and what Ivana had added. The wolf that called once at dusk did not call again. The cottage was warm. From the loft rafters came the small scratch of a mouse. Somewhere far off, an owl. Then nothing.