Chapter 366 — What He Saw on the Spirit Plains

Stonehold Fortress. Priest Wright's memory of it was vivid, and not because of its singular position or its history, but because he had spent his childhood in a town not far north of its walls.

In those days he was only an orphan with no parents, a little drudge taken in by the abbot, and the few years he passed in that small monastery north of the fortress were the calmest and most comfortable of his life. True, he had not yet awakened the holy light, was not yet one of the "transcendents" ordinary folk looked on in awe, but the old abbot had still been alive.

Stonehold Fortress was itself a vast city, yet it could not feed itself; much of what it consumed came from the towns and villages around it, and the monastery where Wright sheltered then supplied the fortress's knights with holy water, holy oil, and talismans. At the end of every month he would ride with the old abbot in a creaking old cart from the town all the way to the fortress, to place the new relics in the commandant's hands.

The huge military installation was full of fierce knights and quarrelsome soldiers, but they were courteous enough to those who came from the monastery. On delivery days Wright would dart about under the soldiers' very noses, weaving between the battlements of the lower fortress; the pitch-black walls inlaid with gleaming copper strips, and the catapults mounted along them, were the things that fascinated him most in those years.

But such days lasted only a few years. The old abbot was reassigned to the central reaches of the Spirit Plains, and Wright went with him; a few years after that the old abbot passed away, a new abbot took charge of the monastery, Wright became a priest and was enrolled in the clergy of the central diocese... and in the blink of an eye, more than a decade had gone.

He saw Stonehold Fortress again two years ago, when the bishop of the central diocese booted him out of the church to serve as a preaching priest. He had gone south along the banks of the Dorgon River, and the little drudge who had once left this place came back to it a missionary, in a priest's robe.

That time Wright did not linger long. Though Xuanyao City held many places worth remembering, nearly every familiar face in the fortress was gone; even the strong, savage, fearsome commandant of those years had left his post a few years back on account of old wounds. So he stopped only briefly, restocked dry rations and water, and departed, stepping onto the bleak and savage land of the Southern Marches.

He had not expected that after only two short years of missionary work he would be back here again.

At the checkpoint that every traveler had to pass, he saw two long queues of commoners: one leading into the city, waiting its turn for inspection, the other coming out. Most were merchants driving wagons; others were mercenaries and adventurers in armor with swords at their belts; only a few ordinary folk were mixed in, and those were mostly commoners from nearby towns. In this age a commoner could hardly get hold of a pass signed by a noble, and apart from the vast, ceaseless stream of emigrants into Cecil Territory, few ordinary people undertook "long journeys" at all.

Wright queued obediently and waited a long while for his turn. He stopped at the table where names were registered and papers checked, and while fishing the documents from his breast he said to the soldier lounging behind it, "May the holy light shelter you."

Feeling a shadow of rather imposing size fall over him, the soldier who had been dozing behind the table snapped his eyes open; then he heard that low "May the holy light shelter you," looked up, and saw a man standing before him who was sturdier than his own officer. The man wore a worn priest's robe, and from it he drew two documents: one bearing the mark of the Yaochen Church, plainly proof of clerical rank, the other presumably a travel permit issued by a noble.

The drowsy soldier came wide awake at once. He took the papers briskly and greeted him with a good deal of zeal: "The holy light shelter you, Reverend. You needn't have queued, you know."

It was a little odd that the priest's robe should look so worn, but a priest was a priest: a transcendent, a man of standing, and one of the Mingyao Church, which stood in the ascendant these days. He certainly did not dare be negligent.

"Everyone's queuing," Wright said with a mild smile, adding casually, "So many people. In my memory this place was never this crowded on an ordinary day."

"Ha, that was last year. This year's different," the soldier said, shaking his head. "A whole crowd of merchants have got into the potion trade between the Spirit Plains and the Southern Marches, and then there's plenty of ruined farmers who've heard some fool's tale or other and are running south to make a living. Lots of merchants carry passes signed by the Grand Duke and do nothing but haul these people south. See those covered wagons with three bundles of straw hanging off them? Those are the ones. They're bound for the Whitewater River wharf..."

Wright blinked, stirred a little inside: even here, what the lord was doing had such reach?

As they talked, the soldier finished checking Wright's clerical certificate and caught sight of the seal on the travel permit beneath it. He broke off mid-sentence, his expression turning odd: "Another certificate from Duke Cecil..."

Wright asked curiously, "Why? Is something wrong?"

"...Oh, no, of course not, it's the Duke's seal, there can't be anything wrong," the soldier said hurriedly, then added with some awkwardness, "It's just that lately half the permits I see every day carry the Cecil emblem..."

"A frontier territory always needs hands and supplies," Wright said unhurriedly. "It's only that no new frontier has been opened in so many years that people have likely forgotten such things."

"Doesn't matter to us anyway," the soldier muttered, handing the checked documents back to Wright. "You can go in, Reverend."

Wright took the papers, tucked them close to his body, turned, and walked toward that heavy gate he remembered so well, sheathed in black steel and banded with copper.

Through the deep gate, through the fortress's stout first and second walls, lay the inner city of Stonehold.

As a vast bastion, Stonehold was not merely a military structure; it was the most important barrier and customs point between the Southern Marches and the Spirit Plains, and a place where traveling merchants stopped, gathered, and dispersed. To serve those functions, and to keep nearly ten thousand soldiers, knights, and mages provisioned, the fortress's interior was in truth a fully equipped, bustling city.

Xuanyao City had not changed at all.

Wright walked the streets of Stonehold, and the pictures in his memory that had grown a little blurred sharpened again before these familiar sights. He saw the pastry shop he had loved best as a child; on the days each month when he came to make his "deliveries" he had eight coppers of pocket money, just enough for a cheap cake or a sweet biscuit. He saw the greasy "butcher's square," and the tall wooden frame standing at its edge. He remembered that the frame was meant for flogging thieves and deserters, though since the Southern Marches had known no war for so long and soldiering in the fortress was a thoroughly comfortable post, its chief use was flogging thieves.

Nearly every month some thief would be strung up on the frame with his hands bound and whipped till his flesh split open, and the greatest amusement of the townsfolk and many of the soldiers was to come to the "butcher's square" and watch. Wright also remembered that on the second rest day of the Fire Month each year the fortress city held a celebration of its founding, and the centerpiece of it was to bind the first thief caught in the Fire Month to that frame and whip him for an hour.

If no thief had been caught that month, a slave chosen by lot took his place.