Count Scar - SA Read Online Free PDF Page B

aid your own, your spiritual welfare. And also your progress as a member of the Order. You know, younger Brother, one may master the technical knowledge necessary to do powerful magic far younger than one can acquire the wisdom needed to decide when and how to use that power.
    The latter comes with time and experience, experience that can only be gained by taking what you have learned out into the world of the men and women we serve. And remember, though you leave our walls and our company, you are never alone while you have the disciplines of self-examination and prayer you have learned among us to guide you. I suggest that once you've collected your things, you go pray in one of the chapels. Or better yet, take a walk in the cloister until it's time for vespers. Listen to the stones, let them remind you what is the purpose of our Order and why you became one of us. It will do you good, believe me. Even today, our Revered and Glorious Master never fails to go and walk there whenever he comes on one of his visits."
    It might have been only illusion, but his expression looked almost kindly as I shut the door behind me.
    By the time I'd stood through the singing of nones, then gone to my cell and packed up my few personal items and the books and tools of such magic arts as I had managed to master in some fifteen years of diligent study, the brief February afternoon was already moving swiftly on towards nightfall. Feeling low and also obstinant, I slipped away for a walk outside the walls instead of going to the cloister. The air was still and warm for the season, with even a trace of the scent of spring. I walked from the gates as far as the little porter's lodge and stood for a while, looking down the steep, narrow road up which I and everything else that had ever come to our Order's house—including its very stones—had traveled. And down which I'd be going come morning. The lodge and the road itself, at least as far as my vision reached along its winding course down the mountain, were deserted and still.
    I turned and looked back toward the spire, walls and buildings of the Order's house outlined against the fading sky, and a sense of deep woe swept over me. Within the House's calm daily round of prayer and magical studies, I had felt I was making real progress at last. Despite the provost's words, I didn't see how I could continue to move ahead amid all the distractions and demands that would come in serving as spiritual counsellor and Magian in a great castle under a steel-hearted northern count—for such the man must be, or our hard Duke Argave would never have decided to set him there.
    And yet, it suddenly struck me, these very thoughts might themselves be temptations, born of hidden pride. After all, how much better this was than the true banishment I had so often dreaded!
    What good was my oath of faithfulness and obedience to the Order if it brought only an outward concurrence that concealed a rebellious heart? I bowed my head and prayed earnestly, trying to bring myself to accept and embrace this new charge.
    After a while a chill wind began to rise out of the deep valley. I shivered and turned back inside the walls. As I passed the corridor leading to the cloister, my footsteps lagged, then turned. A moment later I had covered the dozen paces to the low archway and stepped through, fully obedient now.
    I walked slowly along, gazing out between the columns of the arcade to where the central fountain of the cloister sent its peaceful sound echoing through the little garden. The air was calm and almost warm in this sheltered place, and I began to feel its peace stealing into my heart.
    At the southwest corner of the arcade, I paused to study our finest carved capital, which depicted Simon the Magician slinking shamefacedly away after having been denied in his attempt to augment his own magical powers by purchasing a share of the immeasurably greater spiritual powers of Our Lord. The magician had been carved with a