A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

The sky was quite clear enough to allow me to get my directions from stars and moon. I realized now that I must have awakened at a considerable distance from the battlefield. Everything in this new and strange reality seemed to confirm the truth of the experience that I still in some sense regarded as a dream.

      As I descended from the hill the lake vanished from sight behind trees, only to reappear as I drew near it. There, as plainly visible to me as in the noonday sun, was the island, with the main buildings of the monastery on it. One light only was visible, in the highest window of a low tower. The ice that sheathed the lake was too dull to offer any reflection of this spark.

      If what the dream-voices had told me was correct, Ronay was there, somewhere, sheltered in one of those dark buildings. With scarcely a pause for thought, I stepped out upon the ice. It was no colder beneath my soles than the frozen earth and snow had been.

      The weather, as I may perhaps have mentioned, had been somewhat unseasonably mild in recent days, and the ice was thin. When there came a sudden crack beneath my feet, I found that a new instinct took over, shaping my reaction. My body changed form almost instantly. Hearing and vision blurred; I sensed, somehow, that a human observer would have seen nothing but a cloud of mist where my form had been. Continuing to advance by the power of my will alone, I drifted wraithlike over the watery gap.

      The change to mist-form and back again was accomplished smoothly and almost unconsciously. I had almost ceased to be aware at all of my own condition, with the thought that Ronay, at least, was now nearly within my grasp.

      Arriving on the island in solid human shape, I stepped lightly up the snowy slope of its south shore and paused to listen carefully just outside the monastery walls. Inside approximately a hundred human beings were asleep, some fretfully, some peacefully. The wall was twice my height, too high for a man to leap and catch the top of it. But a moment later, obeying the prompting of another instinct, I had done just that.

      Then I was crouching atop the monastery’s outer wall, surveying the scene within.

      There was the tall church, there the cloister, and there a block of monastic cells, with barns and other outbuildings clustered beyond, all as clearly visible to me as if in broad daylight.

      I drifted rather than jumped down on the inside of the wall. No one, as far as I could tell, had observed my arrival. Next I tried to decide where my prey, if he was indeed within these walls, was most likely to be found. With increasing impatience I walked among the courtyards and cloisters, having no idea in which of them Ronay might be sheltered.

      Observing that a light burned in the church, and that the front door was partly open, I moved in that direction. I experienced no difficulty crossing the threshold onto consecrated ground. The sanctuary lamp burned on the altar, and close before it two hooded figures, their backs to me, knelt in prayer. I took the opportunity to launch a paternoster myself, but made no sound, and neither of the monks turned around. I could hear them breathing and mumbling, and I was sure, on hearing even that much of their voices, that neither was the man I sought.

      Outside the church again, I drifted once more, almost at random, in the form of mist. On my right hand were the stables, and some of the animals sensed my presence, but it did not alarm them. On my left hand were the latrines. Since Ronay was wounded, I thought, he would most likely be in the infirmary, wherever that might be.

      Again I took my search indoors. At some doorways, leading to the actual cells, I experienced a mystifying inability to enter, as if invisible glass of immense strength were there to hold me back. I growled, and prowled on, perforce exploring only where I was permitted.

      Eventually, exhausting the possibilities, I managed to locate the right building. It was not a proper habitation, but only a temporary shelter, and I experienced no barrier to my uninvited presence.

      The interior consisted mainly of one large room, containing four simple beds set moderately close together against one wall. Three of the beds were empty. In the fourth lay the man I had come seeking.

      In those days of deadly ignorance regarding matters medical, fever after a wound was as common as not, and Ronay’s had set in on him already. His face was bathed in sweat, and I observed that in his restless tossing he had kicked back the blanket with which some tender monk had covered him. I could also see that bandages, now bloody and past due to be changed, had been skillfully bound to his right side. Those bandages, along with the clusters of dried herbs and jars of salve upon his bedside table, showed that some considerable amount of time and care had been devoted to the traitor’s treatment. Well, it had all been in vain.

      No attendant was currently on duty. An empty chair stood close beside Ronay’s bed, and another chair, with his clothing, armor, and weapons piled on it, was placed against the wall a few paces distant, under a carven wooden crucifix, about half life-size.

      My old associate’s eyes were closed at the moment of my entry into the room, but his febrile tossing showed that he was not asleep. Despite my silence as I came in, he promptly opened his eyes, raised his head, and stared at me. The small light of a wall icon and that of a single additional candle on a table near the middle of the room sufficed to show him my figure. I took on solid human shape once more as I came walking toward him—gaunt, horribly scarred with sword cuts, corpse-pale,