“Master Kael wasn’t a monster when he took Sel Oran’s chair,” Nara Soth said, and to Seyun’s ear on the stairwell, that quiet, measured beginning was more chilling than any curse.
“If Kael had come across the rope bridge the week after the funeral with twenty spearmen and tried to drive me off the western spur, it would have been a simple fight,” Nara continued. “Instead, he came across the bridge wearing sackcloth mourning cuffs, bowed three times to Sel Oran’s cairn, and brought the quarterly chest of winter silver right on time.”
“Then when did the rot start?” Ilyra asked, leaning on her ash spear shaft as she listened.
“The second spring after Sel Oran died,” Nara said. “When the snow melted on the gorge trail, I walked down to the abbey courtyard at dawn with my broadsword over my shoulder, the way I had done for thirty-one years, to test Kael’s new third-form foundation in front of the new students. When I reached the gate, the junior steward was waiting for me with a painted wooden signboard and a cup of tea. He told me that the founder’s seasonal disputation had been moved to the third Tuesday of next month at two in the afternoon. So the kitchen staff would have time to hang banners and the visiting patrons from Oran could sit on the shaded benches.”
