TAG | Chapter 8
This is another one of those chapters that, you do the work here, and it pays off for the next several books. If you’re going to do this kind of infodump I feel like the best way to do it is one in which you learn about the characters, their nature, while you get the info.
A recent revision to his chapter addressed the issue of why Heden agrees to investigate the Green Order. I don’t remember any of the Beta Readers asking about that. I think there’s a momentum; the reader wants the main character to go on an adventure, and so accepts it when he does so, even if it’s not in character.
Again, I don’t make it explicit, at least not to my way of thinking, but I believe a reader who’s looking for it will come to the correct conclusion. Why does Heden accept the mission? Agree to go into the Iron Forest?
I do not have a very clear image of Heden in my head. I know what he looks like, but there is no actor who is him. That’s true of most of the characters, and part of the fun, for me, is my readers telling me who they see in the roles. Sometimes very surprising, and equally insightful!
But like Gwiddon, this is one of those roles I cast. John Wood is, no surprise, the bishop. Playing essentially the same character he played in Ladyhawke. Arguably a cop out, but Ladyhawke wasn’t a huge hit and it was almost 30 years ago, so I don’t fret over it.
Though there’s also a strong element of Peter Eyre, the guy who played the King in Dragonslayer. I sometimes confuse them. 
“Knights must die all the time.”
It was a small room and the bishop’s writing desk took up most of it. The ornate wood paneling on the walls had at some point been covered over with expensive tapestries. They absorbed sound and Heden felt like he was packed in cotton every time he came in here. It was dark, lit with the steady golden light of 4 candles in sconces on the walls. Heden was dressed in his ill-fitting plain wool, but the bishop was wearing nearly his full regalia. All in blue and silver and black, the ceremonial colors of the largest church of Cavall.
“Are you sure you…” the bishop indicated an untouched tray of biscuits.
Heden raised a hand. “Please, your Grace, no. I’ve been eating or drinking or watching people eat or drink all day.
The bishop smiled. His thin, angular face was, to Heden’s way of thinking, the iconic bishop’s face. The bishop of the church of Adun was, of course, a big man, healthy, strong. Bishop Conmonoc was tall, thin, gaunt with a hawkish face. His rheumy eyes betrayed his age. Conmonoc had ascended to the hierarch’s position when Heden was a boy and though he remembered his father talking about the previous bishop, and he knew there would be one after, Conmonoc would always be ‘the’ bishop to Heden. The archetype. Heden found it difficult to judge the man as a result.
“Gwiddon didn’t think you’d come,” the bishop said, his lips curling at one corner .
“He’s known me a long time,” Heden said. Giving a non-answer to a non-question.
“But you’re here,” the bishop said. Heden wondered if he was going to congratulate himself on being right. “I’ve asked Gwiddon for your service perhaps three times in the last year and in each instance you refused.”
Heden squirmed a little in his chair.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
The bishop made a discreet flourish with one hand, encouraging Heden to elaborate.
“I just didn’t think I’d be any use to you.”
“That may be,” bishop Conmonoc conceded. “But don’t you think that’s for me to decide?”
“If you believed that,” Heden said, looking straight at him, “you wouldn’t have let me say no.”
The bishop seemed to find that answer amusing. “We both know that’s not true. What made you change your mind?”
Heden shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. He said the first thing that came into his mind. “I didn’t want to disappoint…” he wasn’t sure how that sentence was going to end and for some reason didn’t want to follow the thought. “Anyone,” he said.
The bishop studied him for a moment. Heden was obviously not talking about disappointing the bishop, or Cavall.
He picked up one of the sweet biscuits off the silver tray and took a bite no larger than a bird’s, careful to cup his other hand under it to catch any crumbs. After he’d eaten three tiny bites, he threw the rest away, picking a damp cloth out of a small brass bowl to clean his fingers. Heden watched this without comment.
“As you say, knights die all the time,” the bishop flashed a brief, humorless smile, tossing the cloth back into the bowl. “The question is how the knight died, you see. Normally a dead knight is replaced by a squire trained up for the purpose but if the death is unrighteous, well then. The order’s patron reduces the size of the order by one. It’s a form of judgment. The order shrinks for every such death. Until the unrighteous death is atoned for.”
“The murderer punished,” Heden concluded.
The bishop raised a single finger of his right hand.
“It’s unclear that there is a murder. The order is so remote, we have no real idea what goes on up there. The idea that they could operate up there for centuries without anything like this happening means this is an extraordinary circumstance. Or they are extraordinary knights.”
“So murder or some kind of suicide.”
“You grasp these things so well,” the bishop said with a sigh. He knew Heden didn’t like it when he congratulated him on his insight, but he could never figure out why.
“So I figure out how he died and…do something about it.”
“You understand that if it’s a suicide or a sacrifice in an unjust cause, justice may be very hard to attain. The whole order may bear some burden.”
“Yeah,” Heden said, turning away to look at one of the tapestries. “I understand that.”
“My apologies,” the bishop said. “I don’t mean to sound patronizing.” He wanted Heden to like him, and he suspected he didn’t. But like so much about this man, he didn’t know why.
“I know,” Heden said. “You can’t help it.”
The bishop flashed a smile again, vaguely aware he’d been insulted, but unsure how to respond. An awkward silence settled between them.
Heden felt bad for his early jibe, and filled the silence.
“Who’s their patron?”
“Halcyon,” the bishop said, raising an eyebrow.
Heden searched his memory and sunk back in the plush red chair. “I’m not familiar with the name, your Grace.”
“There’s no reason you should be. She’s one of a handful of Saints who predate the Age of Saints. In her case, by almost a thousand years.”
Heden nodded.
“That’s how she has knights older than the Council.”
The bishop nodded once.
“There were some brotherhoods, fraternal traditions in existence when the Pactum was signed,” he explained. They were granted charters and made knights. The Green appears to be one of only a handful of orders to have survived since then.”
“What should I expect,” Heden asked.
The bishop spread his hands. “We dug up some books about them, not very helpful. They live in the forest, they fight all manner of creature, specializing in the kind of thing you used to do when you were younger,” he smiled in what he must have thought was a sign of camaraderie. “They are, ah, very good at what they do. It’s the environment, you see. Only the strong survive up there.
“We know precious little else. We’re trying to find someone in the city who’s come down from up there and can tell us more. They report to the local Barons, they have a priory. Apart from that, whatever’s happened must be…unusual. Deeply wrong, morally or perhaps spiritually. Otherwise we’d never have learned of it.”
“You could send the White Hart,” Heden said.
“I could,” the bishop agreed. “Especially if I wanted the Green Order hunted down and destroyed. The Hart are not that kind of tool, as well you know.”
“What are your wishes?” Heden asked.
“Only that you do what you think is right. You’re going to have to, ah, make a judgment on the spot, as it were.”
Heden shook his head, frustrated.
“Heden, if I could talk to Halcyon, I could tell you more. Cavall has yet to reveal to me more than a sense that the Order protects the people on the border of the forest, from the forest. From all the things within the forest. And that they are critical to our safety.”
“That covers a lot,” Heden said.
“You seem skeptical.”
Heden wouldn’t look at the bishop. “We went in through the border with Antrim both times, not Corwell. I don’t think Ǽndrim had any knights protecting their border. And the Wode is…it’s massive. I don’t think people have any real understanding of how big it is. And the things that live there, a lot of them were made by the Celestials, remember them. Carry their power. The place is a nightmare. Yeah, I’m skeptical. What could 9 knights do?”
“One of the reasons Gwiddon recommended you. I don’t think either of us know anyone who’s ever been inside the Wode. Of course, if my instincts are correct, you would have been the only choice in any event.” The bishop looked bemused.
“Because your instincts tell you….”
“That resolving this problem is going to require a great deal of personal judgment on your part. I believe that when this is done you’ll have had to do …things you may never be able to never reveal to me.
“I believe the Order must survive, Heden. They’ve been guarding the people of our country from the Iron Forest for three thousand years. They’re older than almost our entire civilization. But everything ends. The Order must end someday. I had never heard of them before a week ago, but I don’t want them to fail their mission, ah…on my watch, as the Castellan would say.”
Heden thought, and said nothing.
“You’ll learn more when you get to the Keep. The people there, they live with the threat of the Iron Forest. They know the Order. They know more about the Order than they do the church or the king. You’ll be able to speak on my behalf though obviously, not on my authority.”
Heden didn’t seem impressed by this.
“You should expect the townspeople to be resentful of your arrival,” the bishop said after a moment.
Heden nodded. “An interloper.”
“The Order won’t be happy to see you either. I doubt they even know who the current bishop is, or that their order falls under my influence. Cavall probably doesn’t feature in their liturgy. I imagine they’re focused exclusively around Halcyon. We’ve seen this before. Saints worshipped as gods.”
“They sound like a bunch of druids.”
“I came to the same conclusion,” the bishop said smiling. “But Halcyon’s teaches a kind of militant naturalism, so…Cavall.
“We’ll give you the ritual. Once you’ve meted out justice to those who have transgressed, then the dead knight can be replaced and you can come home.”
Heden looked concerned. The bishop looked at him sympathetically.
“I can’t obligate you to go. Not anymore,” he smiled again.
Heden took out the holly at looked at it. Eight pale green berries, never ripening, and one milky white berry.
“What if the ritual can’t be performed?” Heden asked. Implying that there might be no absolution for the unrighteous death.
The bishop tilted his head to one side. “Then the order shrinks to eight members. If that’s what you decide,” he said, emphasizing ‘you.’
Heden took a deep breath and held the holly up to the bright candlelight in the bishop’s office. He twirled the branch. He let his breath out slowly and when he was done, he put the holly back in his vest.
He got up and offered his hand to the bishop. The two men shook hands. A special ceremony only Heden could observe. Saying nothing, Heden walked toward a bookcase behind and to the left of the bishop’s desk, pulled on an otherwise nondescript book, and the bookcase swung away revealing a lit passageway beyond. The same way he’d come in.
Heden exited. As soon as the false bookcase swung closed with a ‘click,’ the main door to the room opened and Gwiddon walked in. He flowed into position before the bishop, bowed, pulled his cloak into his right arm with a flourish and sat in the same chair Heden recently occupied.
He braced his hands together and smiled widely at the bishop.
“I was right,” the bishop said with some satisfaction as he wiped his hands with a damp white cloth.
Gwiddon bowed his head.
“Your instincts were correct,” Gwiddon betrayed a little amusement and chose his words carefully.
The bishop threw the damp cloth at the younger man and scowled without malice. Gwiddon snatched it out of the air.
“I was lucky,” the bishop said. “I see that now. Something’s different. I almost didn’t notice it, but our friend has changed somewhat.”
“He’s certainly changed,” Gwiddon said, remembering the girl back at Heden’s inn.
“He’s so humorless and dour.”
“He’s got a sense of humor. Or at least he did.”
“Ah?” the bishop prompted.
Gwiddon crossed and uncrossed his legs, delaying. He didn’t want to say what he was about to say.
“I mentioned this last time. AfterǼndrim….” Gwiddon left it. “You know their knight killed himself. Heden at the inn it’s…it’s the same thing. I don’t know why he said yes, I’m not sure he knows. And then into the Wode of all things. I have no idea what it will do to him. I was surprised he accepted.”
“Perhaps his own way of ending it. Going into the Wode to die.”
“Hah,” Gwiddon said. “No, your Grace. Heden would never do that. He’s too….” he was at a loss to explain. “He’d consider that dramatic,” Gwiddon said, putting special emphasis on the last word. “Self-important. He’s too stubborn for that, your Grace.”
The bishop nodded his understanding. Gwiddon leaned forward and took a biscuit from the bishop’s silver plate. A bee had ridden in on the back of his cloak and now took the opportunity to buzz into flight and land on the colorful biscuit. He brushed it off, annoyed.
“Should I be afraid for our friend,” the bishop asked, frowning. The bee flew away.
“Afraid? For Heden?” Gwiddon shook his head. “I know of no one in Celkirk less deserving of concern. Rather, be afraid for the Order.”
“He’ll be far from the city,” the bishop observed. “And he doesn’t know what the Green Order can do.”
“Well, as to that,” Gwiddon tilted his head in deference. “None of us do. A week ago we’d never heard of them.”
“Mmm,” the bishop said, turning to look at the bookshelf Heden had disappeared behind.
