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Cheroki had always maintained a formally cordial relationship with the ring and the pectoral cross, with the
office, of his abbot, but permitted himself to see as little as possible of Arkos the man. This was rather difficult
under present circumstances, the Reverend Father Abbot being fresh out of his bath, and padding around his
study in his bare feet. He had apparently just trimmed a corn and cut too deep; one great toe was bloody. Cheroki
tried to avoid noticing it, but felt very ill at ease.
“You do know what I’m talking about?” Arkos growled impatiently.
Cheroki hesitated. “Would you mind, Father Abbot, being specific?ain case it’s connected with something I
might have heard about only in confession?”
“Hah? Oh! Well, I’m bedeviled! You did hear his confession. I clean forgot. Well, get him to tell you again,
so you can talk?athough Heaven knows, it’s all over the abbey anyhow. No, don’t go see him now. I’ll tell you,
and don’t answer on whatever’s sealed. You’ve seen that stuff?” Abbot Arkos waved toward his desk where the
contents of Brother Francis’ box had been emptied for examination.
Cheroki nodded slowly. “He dropped it beside the road when he fell. I helped gather it up,cheap runescape gold, but I didn’t look
at it carefully.”
“Well,cheap guild wars gold, you know what he claims it is?”
Father Cheroki glanced aside. He seemed not to hear the question.
“All right, all right,” the abbot growled, “never mind what he claims it is. Just go look it over carefully
yourself and decide what you think it is.”
Cheroki went to bend over the desk and scrutinize the papers carefully, one at a time, while the abbot paced
and kept talking, seemingly to the priest but half to himself.
“It’s impossible! You did the right thing to send him back before he uncovered more. But of course that’s not
the worst part. The worst part is the old man he babbles about. It’s getting too thick. I don’t know anything that
could damage the case worse than a whole flood of improbable ‘miracles.’ A few real incidents,wow power leveling, certainly! It has
to be established that the intercession of the Beatus has brought about the miraculous?abefore canonization can
occur. But there can be too much! Look at the Blessed Chang?abeatified two centuries ago, but never canonized
?aso far. And why? His Order got too eager, that’s why. Every time somebody got over a cough, it was a
miraculous cure by the Beatus. Visions in the basement, evocations in the belfry; It sounded more like a
collection of ghost stories than a list of miraculous incidents. Maybe two or three incidents were really valid, but
when there’s that much chaff?awell?”
Father Cheroki looked up. His knuckles had whitened on the edge of the desk and his face seemed strained.
He seemed not to have been listening. “I beg your pardon, Father Abbot?”
“Well, the same thing could happen here, that’s what,runescape power leveling,” said the abbot, and resumed his slow padding to and
fro.
“Last year there was Brother Noyon and his miraculous hangman’s noose. Ha! And the year before that,
Brother Smirnov gets mysteriously cured of the gout?ahow??aby touching a probable relic of our Blessed
Leibowitz, the young louts say. And now this Francis, he meets a pilgrim?awearing what??awearing for a kilt
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ceased to watch for his reappearance by the time he heard a distant bellow from the ruins far behind him. He
turned. He could make out the distant figure of the woodcarver standing atop one of the mounds. Fingo was
waving his arms and vigorously nodding his head in affirmation. Francis waved back, then hiked wearily on his
way.
Two weeks of near-starvation had exacted their tribute. After two or three miles he began to stagger. When
still nearly a mile from the abbey, he fainted beside the road. It was late afternoon before Cheroki, riding back
from his rounds, noticed him lying there, hastily dismounted, and bathed the youth’s face until he gradually
brought him around. Cheroki had encountered the supply donkeys on his way back and had paused to hear
Fingo’s account, confirming Brother Francis’ find. Although he was not prepared to believe that Francis had
discovered anything of real importance, the priest regretted his earlier impatience with the boy. Having noticed
the box lying nearby with its contents half-spilled in the road, and having glanced briefly at the note in the lid,
while Francis sat groggy and confused at the edge of the trail, Cheroki found himself willing to regard the boy’s
earlier babblings as the result of romantic imagination rather than of madness or delirium. He had neither visited
the crypt nor closely examined the contents of the box,guild wars power leveling, but it was obvious, at least, that the boy had been
misinterpreting real events rather than confessing hallucinations.
“You can finish your confession as soon as we get back,” he told the novice softly, helping him to climb up
behind the saddle on the mare. “I think I can absolve you if you don’t insist on personal messages from the saints.
Eh?”
Brother Francis was too weak at the moment to insist on anything.
4
“You did the right thing,” the abbot grunted at last. He had been slowly pacing the floor of his study for
perhaps five minutes, his wide peasant face wearing a thick-furrowed muscular glower, while Father Cheroki sat
nervously on the edge of his chair. Neither priest had spoken since Cheroki had entered the room in answer to his
ruler’s summons; Cheroki jumped slightly when Abbot Arkos finally grunted out the words.
“You did the right thing,” the abbot said again,gw gold, stopping in the center of the room and squinting at his prior,
who finally began to relax It was nearly midnight and Arkos had been preparing to retire for an hour or two of
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sleep before Matins and Lauds. Still damp and disheveled from a recent plunge in the bathing barrel, he
reminded Cheroki of a were-bear only incompletely changed into a man. He was wearing a coyote-skin robe, and
the only hint of his office was the pectoral cross that nestled in the black fur on his chest and flashed with
candlelight whenever he turned toward the desk. His wet hair hung over his forehead, and with his short jutting
beard and his coyote skins,cheap guild wars gold, he looked, at the moment, less like a priest than a military chieftain, full of restrained
battle-anger from a recent assault. Father Cheroki, who came of baronial stock from Denver, tended to react
formally to men’s official capacities,buy l2 adena, tended to speak courteously to the badge of office while not allowing
himself to see the man who wore it, in this respect following the Court customs of many ages. Thus Father