Hart's Hope

8

The House of God

Here is the tale of the only true miracle of Orem's childhood, and how he came to be a clerk.

The Seventh Son of Avonap

Because Avonap loved his seventh son, he tried to get him away from the farm as soon as he could. It was no good for a lateborn son to stay long on the farm, for the older he got, the more he ate, and the more he ate, the more the elder sons saw their inheritance being wasted, perhaps being threatened by a child their father loved more. Such lateborn sons had a way of dying in strange accidents. Avonap had no reason to think that Orem would be safe.

Orem took the news well. He could see that his father grieved that he must go, which comforted him. He could also see that his mother was relieved that he'd be gone, and this hurt him enough that he did not want to stay.

So it was that at the age of six Orem was carried on donkeyback to the town of Banningside and delivered into the hands of the clerics in the House of God.

"You will learn to read and write," said Avonap, though he had no notion of what reading and writing were.

"I don't want to learn to read and write," whispered the child.

"You will learn to count money," said Avonap, though never in his life had he held a coin in his hand.

"You will learn to serve God," said Halfpriest Dobbick, taking the boy into the door of the house. And at that Avonap touched his forehead and bent his knees a bit, for God was treated with respect in all the lands of King Palicrovol.

Orem wept when the great wooden door closed, but not for long. Children are resilient. No matter how they are battered, they have a way of thriving.

Friends and Enemies

The House of God was dark and dead, filled with the white figures of dour-faced men and frightened boys. There was never a great booming of laughter echoing through the corridors and cells of the House of God, as there had been in the tavern of the village or through the great colonnades of the wood. The children sneaked their laughter as subtly as they sneaked the oblatory wine. Yet Orem soon found himself at home there. Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.

His enemies were the older boys, the stronger boys, who were used to wielding power in the darkened rooms at night. Orem had somehow grown up with a belief that unfairness was to be, not endured, but corrected. So when he saw injustice being done, he corrected it. Not by telling the halfpriests—he knew adults never take seriously the wars and struggles of children. Instead, he taught the younger boys to organize in the darkness. It took only two times that Orem out-generaled the bullies in the dark before the younger boys began to find themselves safe and more free than they had ever been before. The older boys did not forget. Orem had undone them when they thought that they were strong, and with the directness of children they plotted Orem's death.

Orem's friends were not the younger children, however. Once they had their safety, they stayed as far from Orem as they could. They were content to let the hatred of the older boys fall upon him, and stay clear of it themselves. Orem bore their treachery calmly. He did not expect them to be any better than they were. He was his father's son.

"Don't you see what you have done?" asked Halfpriest Dobbick. "Here, where you do the sum of the suns of winter, you also spell out 'warm snow.' "

"I'm sorry," said Orem, thinking he had been caught in a secret vice. But he soon saw that Halfpriest Dobbick was pleased with him, and several times Orem noticed that when priests came in to observe the class as they studied, they would look over his shoulder the whole time, never particularly observing anyone else at all.

Once Orem discovered that the teachers were his friends, he turned to them gratefully, and escaped the dangerous solitude of the playyard by spending the free hours indoors, reading and talking with his teachers. Only one of Orem's teachers understood what was happening. Halfpriest Dobbick. "You don't know yet the cost of your power," said Dobbick.

"Power?" asked Orem, for he did not think he had any.

"You acted bravely and wisely when you first came. You must act bravely and wisely among the other children now, if you are ever to do well with them."

"They aren't my friends," said Orem.

"Will they love you better if you ally yourself with us, the teachers, the oppressors, the foes of every child here?"

"What do I care who they love or why? I'm happier here in the dark with the books than there in the light with them. If you don't want to teach me, leave me alone with the library."

But Halfpriest Dobbick would not be dissuaded, and he saw to it that Orem was forced to play outside, forced to take part in the games. When the other boys pitched stones and batted them with sticks. Orem learned to be adroit at dodging the stones thrown straight at his head. When the other boys swam in the waterhole, Orem learned to be long of breath and wriggly as a watersnake, so they could not hold him under water longer than his breath. When the other boys slept, Orem learned to move stealthily and surely in the darkness, and he slept every night in some different corner of the House of God, far from his bed, so they could not murder him in his sleep. He hated Halfpriest Dobbick for compelling him to live and play among the other boys, but against his will he became sure of hand and foot and eye, strong-gripped and quick-witted, and his body was hard and could endure much. No one in the House of God could run as fast or as long as Orem; no one could live on less sleep; and no one could read and write as Orem could. He thought that he was miserable, but he would look back on this as the happiest of times.

The boys who hated Orem most were Cressam and Morram and Hob. They had not ruled before Orem came, but because of their ruthless torture of the younger boys they had been valuable enforcers for the smarter boys who did rule. Now they had no role at all within the House of God: they were fools at their schoolwork and none of the boys' games rewarded cruelty and ruthlessness. So they plotted Orem's death, partly for lack of anything else to do, and when they had settled on a plan, they practiced until they were sure they could bring it off quickly and unnoticed.

It was the day the offerings of hay came in. Orem stood with the other boys watching the stack grow higher and broader as the farmers brought their gifts to the House of God. Orem hoped to see his father, though he knew the chance was small that his own family would draw the lot to bring the village tithe.

Suddenly Orem found himself gripped by many hands and thrust under the hay. He writhed and twisted, but he was not in water, and they had practiced well. Orem did turn enough to see that Cressam held a torch. Then the hay fell down to cover him. He saw the whole plan at once. Cressam would stumble. The torch would fall. They would count the boys when the fire was out and only then discover Orem wasn't there. If any of the other boys saw it, they would not dare to tell; if Cressam and Morram and Hob had murdered once, they would not fear to do it twice.

So he did not try to leap forward out of the hay, where the flames would first erupt. Instead he plunged backward, burrowed deep into the stack. Behind him he heard the sudden roar, the shout of Fire. He could not see the flame, but he could hear it, and the heat and smoke came quickly. He did not have to think. His arms knew to burrow deeper into the hay, his feet knew to kick down hay behind him so the smoke would not be funneled in to where he meant to hide.

It was black as a sow's womb inside the hay, and because his eyes could not see, his mind did: remembered vividly the haystack fires that he had seen before. It never took more than a few seconds for the fire to reach all the way around, and only a minute or two for the flames to die down. Within the haystack there was always an unburnt core, a place where the flames could not reach. That was his hope.

But he also remembered raking through such a fire once, and he found the corpse of a mouse in the unburnt portion. There was no mark upon it, not a hair was singed, but he was still dead, eyes staring wide. Fire or not, the heat or the smoke had killed to the center of the stack, and Orem wondered what form his death would take and how much it would hurt. Then came the only miracle of his childhood. The haystack had been built upon firm, dry ground, but now his hand reached forward for support and found none. He slid and splashed into a pool of water that could not have been there. He had presence of mind enough to take one sharp, deep breath as he went under; then he let himself drift downward, downward in the water, not moving, trying only to remember up and down, and to estimate how long till the fire was out.

The priests looked at him in awe, and Prester Enzinn said what they all thought. "We drained this marsh a century ago, and just for you the water came up again and made a spring under the stack. God must love you, Orem. You are not meant to die."

From then on the priests and the other boys knew that Orem was protected, and they raised no hand against him.

In his learning he excelled. His hand was so fine they took him from the scribal class and set him to making manuscripts at the age of twelve. They let him do a new transcription of the prophecies of Prester Cork, and when he finished it they commended him for discovering seven new and hidden meanings in the rhymes and the diagonals. But whenever their praise tempted Orem to be proud, to speak boldly with the other boys, or to presume a friendship with a priest, he felt himself slip helplessly forward into a pool of water, felt his lungs wrench at him in a desperate plea for air, and he could not speak.

So the years passed in the House of God in Banningside, until the day his true father found him.