The trail from the secret door led north up into the mountains, but the Acolyte did not wish to go that way. For a moment he considered seeking out the Recluse, thinking he might speak more freely than the unhappy Masters. But no, he thought, nothing the Recluse could say would matter to my choice. Looking around him, he judged that turning west would more easily bring him down to the road below the College. So he went that way, scrambling over rocks. It was not an easy route, but then, there was not much point in having a secret door that was easy to reach. He had to climb over boulders taller than his head and ease himself down through a narrow crack in a cliff 25 feet tall, then fight his way through a dense copse of small, gnarled junipers. But after nearly an hour of hiking he reached the road and turned south through a cool pine forest toward the fields and villages in the valley far below.

  There is a point on that road where, walking upward, one catches the first glimpse of the Oculus tower high above. Finding it, the Acolyte looked behind him, seeing the glistening white tower thin against the blue sky. When his eyes found it a surge of feeling ran through him, impelling him backward to his home, to his friends, to the place where he had learned to love learning. Ignoring it, he turned his feet down to road toward the south.

  In another hour he saw the first low, fieldstone wall ahead of him. Beyond it was an orchard of apricot trees, already harvested. Growing beneath them he saw the small purple flowers called shepherd’s tears. Hornets buzzed over them, seeking fruit left rotting on the ground.

  Now stone walls lined both sides of the road, with neatly kept orchards behind them. He passed the first small house, with stone walls and red tiles on the roof, beside it a nearly barren vegetable garden, and beyond that were the first fields. In some fields wheat had already sprouted and shone brilliant green against the reddish-brown earth, but he also saw men out plowing, for the early rains had delayed the Autumn planting and they were struggling to get seed in the ground before winter. He waved to all he saw and they waved in return, for here folk were used to seeing men of the College passing by.

  He spent his first night in an olive grove, wrapped in his cloak against the chill, then rose and was on his way before sunrise. Around midday he reached the little Currascuro River and the Valley Road that ran beside it. There was a house by the road junction where, he knew, an old woman took in travelers, but he had someplace to go so he did not linger. He turned west up the Valley and kept on. Here he saw pigs rooting in the little oak woods for early acorns, and more fields, some planted and some being plowed. It was late in the afternoon when he reached Pulloreno.

  It was a tiny town like all the others in this valley, just a dozen houses arrayed along the road, surrounded by orchards and gardens, by pigs and chickens and goats. The mill sat at the far end of the village. Its stout stone walls stood more than two stories tall, but its tall wheel sat idle. He walked up to the door and called “Hello!”

  There was no answer, so he turned and walked back to the closest house. A stout, gray-haired woman was sitting by the door, vaguely keeping her eye on young pig and a dozen chickens while she spun wool with a spindle. “Greetings, grandmother,” he said, “I seek the miller.”

  “Oh, Vito’s out helping with the plowing. You know the mill’s broken?”

  “Yes. I heard that and came to see if I could help repair it.”

  She nodded. “I guess he’ll be back around sundown. They’ll be out all day, since it’s so fine and there’s so much more plowing to do.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. If he comes by, could you tell him that an Acolyte from the College went to look at his mill?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “And can you tell me his whole name?”

  “Vito Campo.”

  The Acolyte walked back to the mill.

  He had never so much as touched a mill, but he had committed to memory a diagram of how a mill was supposed to work. He began by surveying the property. The mill dam was still in order, and the pond was full of water, but the wooden gate at the top of the mill race was shut and only a trickle of water ran along it. He assumed the miller knew how to open and close the water gate, so he made his way back to the mill.

  The door was not locked or latched, so he pushed it open. The mill smelled of flour and dust. As soon as his eyes had adjusted to the gloom he spotted the problem. The great wooden shaft that led from the waterwheel to the grinding stones was split. Looking at the mechanism, he thought, this is simple. It cannot be that nobody knows how to fix it; a child could see how. The mill remains derelict because the miller cannot afford a new shaft, or the men to haul it. And that is a solvable problem.

  Walking back into Pulloreno he waved to the old woman, then thought of something else. “Grandmother,” he said to her, “was there an old man here last month, a strange fellow with a fading memory? The one who was brought up to the College?”

  She thought for a moment, then said. “Not here, but I heard about him. They brought him up from Orollo and spent the night at the tavern before they took him to the College. He left people right spooked.”

  “Thank you, Grandmother.”

  Orollo was where the Acolyte was headed anyway. He walked until dark and slept rough again, then rose with the dawn and made his way down the road to Orollo. This was a slightly bigger place than Pulloreno, nestled between the river and a wooded hill. Before he entered the town he took his Vermilion sash from his bag and slung it across his chest, pinning it in place with the silver owl pin. He found a group of men gathering to head out for plowing and called out, “Hello! Which one of you fellows is the bailiff?”

  The first answer came from a large dog that ran at him growling, but seeing that he was not the least impressed it turned back to its own people. “I am the bailiff,” said a rather rough-looking man with a large mustache like the ones worn by soldiers in the hills. And bandits.

  “I am the Vermilion Acolyte. I need you to cut a tree to repair the mill in Pulloreno.”

  “Sir, we have strict orders not to cut any trees in the College Wood.”

  “That’s why I came in person to give the order. There is no special rush. It can wait until the plowing is done. But as I am passing through now I came to leave the instructions.”

  “I’ll need a writing. The Ward doesn’t like it when we use College property without a writing.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Of course. If you’ll give me your name I’ll write this out right now.”

  “Luigi Colla.”

  The Acolyte sat down and wrote out,

  By these presents I, the Vermilion Acolyte of the College Arcane, do order Luigi Colla bailiff of Orollo and Forester of the College Wood in the said town to cut one tree of sufficient size to replace the shaft of the mill at Pulloreno and to deliver a piece of wood sufficient to replace the shaft to Vito Campo the miller before December 1 of the current year. Bailiff Colla may retain the remainder of the tree, including any remaining trunk, branches, leaves, and nuts as recompense for his labors.

  Given this day etc.

  The Vermilion Acolyte.

  He read it out loud to the assembled men, who all nodded. The rest of a large oak tree was good wages for the work involved. Satisfied, the Acolyte returned to the road and continued down the valley. He could do no more without waiting for the plowing to finish and overseeing the work himself, and he did not want to wait.

  He slept that night in a shepherd’s hut, at a place where the river dove into a bit of a canyon and the road rose over a high hill overlooking it. This was the divide between the upper valley, where the College was the lord, and the lower valley that belonged to the Barony of Arandia. Many people avoided such boundaries at night, on the theory that evil things congregated where the power of lordship was weakest, but the Acolyte did not share this superstition, and he was also fairly certain that there was nothing in this valley more dangerous than an Acolyte of the College.

  He awoke to the sound of a lone voice chanting. As his mind cleared itself of sleep he thought, that is a strange thing to hear on this hilltop that is, on the one hand, rather lonely and empty of houses, but on the other in the middle of a valley that is as densely farmed as any place in the County of the Western Shore.

  Moving quietly, he eased out from under his cloak, pulled on his shoes, strapped on his knife, checked that his bag was carefully stowed, picked up his staff and stepped out into the night.

  He saw a bright fire about a hundred yards away. The hilltop was nearly bare. On the other hand, the people around the fire were probably looking at it, ruining their night vision. Concentrating on his feet to make sure they made no noise, he crept to within about fifty yards, then lowered himself and began to crawl. He found a boulder about ten yards from the fire where he could lie almost completely hidden and still hear the people around it. There were ten of them, all sitting in a circle on the ground.

  The voice stopped chanting and began to speak. It took the Acolyte a moment to identify the speaker as a woman, because her voice was rather deep and gruff. She was saying, “You are not simple bandits. So long as you rob the rich, so long as you defy the power of the Viscount and the Baron, you are doing the work of the Dark God. He commands us all to be ready for the Day of Doom. Great terror is coming. We, the soldiers of the Dark God, will rise up on that day and fight in his mighty army. We will destroy the cities of men and seize their palaces, where we will live as princes and eat beef and bacon while we drink the lords’ cellars dry of wine. The wives of princes will be given unto our men as their slaves, and our women will wear their clothes and jewels. That will begin the Rule of the Downtrodden, which will last eleven years. Then the God will come and call us to him, and we will enter his realm and know true happiness under his blissful reign.”

  The Acolyte thought, this is the most third-rate, low-rent, street-corner-preacher death cult I ever heard of. We’re going to eat beef and bacon? Then the woman began chanting again, and it took him a moment to recognize the words as a bastardized, mispronounced version of a prayer to Scorceral, the Lord of Death, in ancient Quallesar. The Ungrask Prayer, he thought. Searching his memory, he found the correct words:

  Arkala lamia arkala lom,

  Nemesta argrola ungkan ridom

  Each word was something of a mystery, but it was more or less a plea to the Dark God to take away pain and fear. He almost laughed out loud wondering what the slurred version this peasant was reciting on a hilltop actually meant, and what Scorceral would think. But then gods were supposed to see into our hearts, so perhaps he would understand anyway.

  Rising, he walked calmly into the circle, stepped up to the preacher, and kicked her in the head. One of the men jumped up and moved toward him, but he faked a kick at him and then hit him in the head with his staff. The man stumbled away. The men were rising cautiously to their feet, reaching for their knives. The Acolyte said, “You are thinking that you can take me down, and you are probably right. But some of you would die. My guess would be four. And after you kill me, what then? You will have killed an Acolyte of the College, on the boundary between the College lands and those of the Baron, the perfect place to both enrage the College and make the Baron nervous. What will happen to you and your people then? I imagine your houses will be burned to ashes, and you will be shipped off to repopulate some dismal wave-cursed place like fell Occasus, where you will build reed huts in the mud and rue the day you lost your tempers and killed the wrong man.”

  His words sank in, and one by one they turned and slunk off into the night. But not before the Acolyte had recognized the bailiff of Orollo and one of his friends.

  Sighing, the Acolyte turned his attention back to the preacher of Doomsday, who was huddled on the ground. He said, “By my reckoning you have just broken one of our oldest laws and one of our newest. Something of an achievement, I think. The old law goes all the way back to the time of the Servants, 1500 years ago, when the cult of Scorceral was first admitted to our cities. It says that nobody can preach his teachings without a license. Which I am quite certain you do not have. The new law, well, it turns out that the Mage Lords never had a law against plotting rebellion against them, since rebels usually just died in some awful way before anybody could even bring them to trial. A few years ago the Viscount called a Grand Council and people from all over the Western Shore went to Calyxia to pass new laws to patch up some holes in what we inherited. One of which was against planning rebellion. So why don’t you tell me why I shouldn’t hit you over the head and drag you down to Arandia to stand trial?”

  She mumbled something he could not hear, so he knelt down next to her. She lunged at his face with both her hands. He grabbed them, pulled on them, and swung her whole unbalanced body over his, dropping it down hard on the rocky ground.

  “Assault, too,” he said.

  She began muttering like the wandering refugees he had seen up the valley, people who had lost their minds along with their homes. She even rocked back and forth like an actor trying to play a desolate madman. After about two minutes of this she finally recovered herself enough to say, “I see it in my dreams.”

  “What do you see?”

  “The Darkness. It is coming. I see it sometimes when I am awake, too. I see it around the edges of my vision. I see it all around me. I see it around you, now, looming over you, hemming you in, cutting you off from everything. I did not know what it was until I heard a man talking about it. I followed him for a while, hanging around the edges of his group, trying to hear him and learn from him. He said it was the Dark God coming back to reclaim the world, that it would drown all of us and we could either join it or be destroyed.”

  The Acolyte squatted on his heels and looked at her. He said, “I suggest two courses for you. First, keep going up the valley and go to the College. Walk up to the gate house and describe your visions to the man in the stone hut. I do not know, but they might be able to help you.

  “Second, come with me to Arandia and go to the Temple of the Mother. Because if you stay out here, wandering around preaching about darkness, you will be dead within a month.”

  She said nothing, so he said, “Now I’m going to ask you a question. Were you around here three weeks ago?”

  She nodded. He said, “Do you remember an old man who came through, losing his memory maybe, muttering strange stuff about the Mages?”

  “Yes. I saw him. They argued over him for a while and then put him on a wagon and took him to the college.”

  “Do you know where he came from?”

  “Down the valley. Somebody brought him up across the boundary and left him by the side of the road. Leaning against the boundary stone, so they said.”

  “Thank you. I am going back my bed in that hut over there and see if I can get a little more sleep. If you try to attack me or rob me, I will kill you. If you are here in the morning, I am taking you with me to Arandia.”

  When he woke, she was gone.