Melanthrix the Mage Read Free

husks during the winter doldrums, so to speak, and dry them out completely, oh, very completely, and then I fashioned a few of the larger ones into musical instruments.”
    â€œ You did what?” asked the traveler, eying his friend most curiously.
    â€œYes, yes, well! ” Brother Phil smiled, clearly pleased with his inventiveness. “You know that we don’t have all that much to do during the long winter months, the days being so short and all, and the visitations, well, they’re just so utterly lacking, and so we have to do our very, very best to keep ourselves entertained, in addition to our constantly puissant purification and prayerfulness, of course....”
    â€œOf course,” his friend said, shaking his head in wonderment.
    â€œ...‘Idleness being the devil’s woodbin,’ as Brother Mendevíll is very fond of saying. So, we pluck the harps and blow the gourds, and make some music without dischords.”
    â€œReally?” the priest said.
    â€œ Really and truly , Father Arik. And, and, mirabile dictu , why, it’s like a miracle, it’s God’s own hand at work, if I ever saw it, for I must tell you that several of our group of idle songsters and I are actually getting together later on this evening to practice our newest composition, a truly truly inspiring ode or hymn or paean to Saint Bogolén the Brewmeister, and I wanted to be the first of our com­pany to invite you to join our soirée petite while you’re still a resident here. Of course, many, many, many toasts will be offered in his memory, in addition to our celebratory music-making.”
    â€œOf course, Brother Phil. But alas, my dear old friend,” Arik said, “oh, alas, that I have to see Abbot Jován urgently on business, and then just as quickly depart. If it weren’t for that, well, you know that I’d join in.”
    â€œOh, I do, I do, I do! ” Brother Phil said, eyes perfectly downcast. “Oh my, oh my, oh my gourds and swords. Well, well, well , then, I guess we’ll just have to get along without you, as hard as that may be. Oh my prayers and hairs! Let’s get you taken care of, then, eh, father?”
    He led his companion into the main compound, where Arik was meticulously groomed and broomed in preparation for his presentation to the head of the Monastery of the Transubstantiation of the Psychai Siôpêlai Agiou Sbiatoslabou , which is to say, the Silent Souls of Saint Svyatosláv. The order had been founded nearly two hundred years earlier by a starving Saint Ézzard à Hagyma, who, having stumbled upon a sacred onion patch growing where none should have been found, just by the shore of the Työmny Lake, had acclaimed it a miracle of God Almighty that he should have been thus rescued from per­ishing at a time when all had seemed lost. Now, a dozen establishments of the order were scattered across northern Kórynthia, mostly in Zándrich, Trapézhia, Kúrskaya Kósa, Pustáya Boltoviyá, and Isaúria, with more planned for con­struction over the next two or three centuries—God willing!
    Three hours after his arrival, Father Arik was fetched by Brother Milorád to the abbot’s cozily appointed chamber overlooking the pebbly vistas of the great lake.
    The Archimandrite Jován Csigály had been chosen abbot by the community some sixteen years earlier. A man of six-and-fifty years, he was thin and small, with neatly combed gray hair and a closely-cropped beard. Around his neck hung a pectoral cross studded with gems, and two gold-framed icons of Saint Gamaliêl and Iêsys the Christos. On the middle finger of his left hand he wore a curious ring of gold, cunningly wrought from five separate bands into a single intertwining unity, so that one could not tell how or why the pieces had been put together, or how they might be taken apart. His white woolen robe was fringed in red and emblazoned over