Read Count Scar - SA for Free Online

face in which lines indicating considerable wisdom had become coarsened, with keen eyes that now appeared bitter. He clutched a sack of money in one clawlike hand, and was surrounded by sculpted street urchins who pointed at him, jeering and laughing. Around on the opposite face of the capital a crowd of rapt listeners was ignoring him entirely as they gazed up toward a high place where the unseen Master had resumed his preaching. A cautionary tale for any in our Order who might chance to fall into the error of supposing even briefly that his modest command of mere earthly magical capacities could make him in any way close to being the equal of those whose powers came from a far higher source.
    As I stepped away from the carved scene a faint sound filtered to my ears through the rush of the fountain: a low tapping, which came in short bursts interrupted by periods of silence. It seemed to be coming from the opposite corner of the cloister. I walked quickly up the west arcade, past columns whose capitals mostly bore only symbols of the planets and the zodiac, or else twined acanthus leaves or simple faces, then along the north side of the cloister.
    Reaching the northeast corner of the arcade, the only unfinished section, I came upon old Brother Quercus chiseling away in the shadows, finishing the capital that one day soon would crown this corner of the cloister. He was seated with his back almost against the wall, working in nearly complete darkness, but that was unlikely to bother him: he was blind.
    Or at least blind as most of us account such things. Brother Quercus had been one of the first to join our dear and glorious Father back in the earliest days of the Order. Time had long since stripped his wavering old eyes of the power to detect light, just as it had stripped the untonsured parts of his head of every hair except for the dense eyebrows that hung down over his sightless eyes like old thatching on a ruined cottage. He had to be assisted in the morning to his carving bench by two novices these days, but his old arms and hands were still strong as oak when he deftly plied his hammer and chisels. He had carved every column and every capital in the main church building well before I'd joined the Order, then turned to the work of decorating this cloister at an age when most canons were content merely to sit in the sun by summer or near the fire by winter, until someone comes to lead them off for meals or prayers or bed. For Brother Quercus had turned his magical studies to mastering the second vision as his own sight had departed, and the undiminished vigor and power of his carving attested to his success. Indeed, it was he who taught the basics of second vision and hearing to the novices. Rumor among them whispered that he had now gone even beyond the second vision in his own studies, delving deep into the third vision that can see across time and space. As I drew close, he lay down his heavy hammer and turned his ancient head in my direction. "Good evening, Brother Melchior," he croaked with complete assurance as to who was before him.
    "Yes, it is I, elder Brother."
    "Have a look here, then; see what you think."
    I bent to peer at the nearly finished capital. It depicted a knight in armor—no, there was a crown on his mailed head: a king. He stood alone in a wild place among rocks, facing an ancient woman with a pinched face both cunning and fearful. The hag was crouched like a spider, all drawn up except for one long arm flung out with pointing finger to indicate something around the corner of the capital. I leaned over and saw a bearded figure with a wrathful face, who appeared to be rising up out of the earth amid billowing fog. Looking at the king again, I realized that despite his tall person and massive limbs he was cowering away from both the hag and the apparition. "Ah, it is Saul and the Witch of Endor, with the ghost of Samuel!"
    "Good, good! Just about done; it's nice to find that someone with decent