A cold sun hung in a sky the colour of ice, shining through a chilly fog that penetrated to the very bone. The boot-tilled mud of the track, normally only slightly more solid than the river, was frozen hard. The birds were silent. Only the wind blew and brought the whispering rush of leaves, or else it would have been quiet as death.
Out of the fog there came a body, limping along the old path. Wrapped in a travelling cloak, it moved with purpose towards destination unknown. It’s purpose: survival. The cloak was black. Underneath it was a riveted leather garment, simple armour that might turn aside a clumsy bandit’s sword. At the belt of the body’s green hose hung a sword in a plain scabbard; the hilt was in the shape of a wolf’s head, lip curled in a snarl. The hose was split on the thigh of the left leg where a crude bandage was tied, crimson blood staining through.
Blonde hair in streaks over a drawn, white face like a knife’s edge. Eyes the colour of cold water. Her name was Tiren. She went on, into the fog which seemed to recede in front of her.
Then a shape began to resolve itself out of the white: A wall, high and wide, a shadow in the air. It was black as night. A bell rang within, somewhere. Tiren trudged closer, ignoring the ache of her left leg. A door, or the suggestion of a door, no less black than the wall that surrounded it, seemed to rise from the shadow in front of her. This was the home and resting place of the Silent God and his attendants, bound by honour and duty to care for the weary and the wounded whenever they sought aid.

Tiren brought a white hand up and hammered on the door three times, and then it disappeared again inside the black cloak. There was a pause, and she wondered if the brothers of the order had followed their ancient deity into the realms of impossibility and immateriality. Then she heard shuffling behind the door, and it opened into a torchlit room. Inside was a monk in pale robes, a hood and metal death-mask obscuring his head. The mask, which was cast from the face of one of the original twenty of the attendants who had taken on their role when the God Incarnate had retreated into an insubstantial silence four hundred years ago, shone like silver and depicted a round, pleasant face made uncanny by the twin stillness of death and steel. His back was bent almost double. A voice came from behind the mask:
“Welcome, friend. Please enter, aha, and enjoy our hospitality. I am Brother-Speaker Varus.”
Tiren stepped over the threshold and felt a wave of warmth wash over her from the torches. The monk lifted one from a sconce and beckoned, and she followed as he began to glide towards another door in the back of the chamber. As she followed, she heard the heavy black door close behind her.

The door in the back led to the courtyard, which was surrounded by the ancient cloisters made of a black stone that held fragments of some glittering mineral, so that the walls and ceilings appeared to be pointed with stars. Tiren followed the bent figure through the cold, glancing at the frost that crisped the grass either side of the well-trodden flat stones that they paced along.
“I see you had, aha, a little run in on the road, yes?” said the monk. His voice was young, lightly accented from the southern delta. Tiren wondered if the stories about the punishing upbringing that the children who were sent to the Attendants faced were true.
“Aha, only partly true,” said Varus, turning over his crooked shoulder. Did she imagine it, or was there a twinkle in that hollow socket eye? “Was it the deserter bands?” Tiren answered in the affirmative, and Varus gave a rueful chuckle.
“My companions were not as lucky as I,” said Tiren. This silenced the monk’s mirth.
“Oh, I am sorry, aha,” said Varus. “I shall say a prayer for them tonight.”
“Thank you,” said Tiren, keeping her misgivings silenced. Prayers to a dead God.
“First, however, you must see Brother Elsun about that wound.”

The heavy door to Elsun’s ‘surgery’ of sorts opened noiselessly. The man within, clad in a severe, wide-mouthed mask, said nothing as he looked up and down Tiren.
“She requires your ministration,” said Varus. “Nothing, aha, too complex.” Elsun nodded.
Varus turned to face Tiren and murmured: “All of my brothers have taken a vow of silence. Hence my title of Speaker, you know.” He patted her on the shoulder, pushing her towards the tall, forbidding figure of Elsun.
“You promise not to touch anything you’re not supposed to?” said Tiren, and Elsun inclined his head forward in a bow, she supposed, or a stately nod. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll trust him.”

The bench was hard, covered though it was by plain sheets the colour of dry mud. Her hose stripped off to uncover the wound, she laid down and waited. Elsun hmmm’ed, then she gasped as she felt his ice-cold hand touch her thigh. He inspected the wound, which had been dealt by an arrow from the first devastating volley.
As suddenly as she had felt the pressure of his hand, it relinquished, and he turned away. She could hear the grinding of a mortar and pestle, and saw him tear off a strip of a blue roll of fine cloth – far too fine for a bandage. This he filled with the ground herbs and wrapped up in a tight bundle. He turned back to her and for a moment seemed distracted, looking up and down in a way that reminded her of butchers at markets. Then that moment passed and he quickly, expertly bandaged her leg again, slipping the herbs into the soft fabric wrapping.
He went to the door and knocked once, and Varus was outside.
“A simple operation, then, aha?” said the other monk. Elsun essayed a self-depracating shrug, and Varus beckoned. “That leg will be better in no time. However, you must stay here to allow Elsun to observe you. Therefore, you will lodge in the travelling-house tonight.”
“I have to go,” said Tiren. “I have reports to make.”
“Aha, they will wait,” Varus said, hushing her. “Now come, I’ll introduce you to your bunkmates. I think you’ll find them more exciting conversationalists than old Elsun,” he laughed.
Tiren followed him across the courtyard to the travelling-house and wondered what she was going to say to the guildmaster in Jarn.

The other residents in the dimly-lit dining hall of the travelling-house were not particularly exciting conversationalists. There was a taciturn forester, crossing the woods in search of a lost daughter of his village. He had a long, wild beard and little hope, but remained in the woods partly out of fear of what people would say once he returned alone. He drank ale and gave brief responses to questions, and never spoke except when spoken to.
The other man was a student at the university of Jarn. He too had a beard, though it was the short, fussy kind that comes to a sharp point and requires continuous oiling. He was more talkative, in a halting fashion.
“Ah, look!” he said when Varus led Tiren into the hall. “Hello! Hello there!”
At one end of the room a white-faced monk leaned over a pot of some steaming stew, bubbling a stale meaty smell into the air that made Tiren struggle not to wrinkle her nose in repulsion.
Suddenly she realised that the monk at the fire wore no mask, and glanced over to Varus.
“Silent brother Ordin has been with us many years, but all the masks are in use.”
“So he’s waiting for one of you to die before he can get promoted?” whispered Tiren.
“When one of the true brothers makes his peace with this world and moves on to follow our lord into the ultimate silence, one of the unmasked will take his place in the Abbey,” said Varus. That seemed to be all the explanation he thought the situation needed, because he patted her on the arm and left silently. Tiren looked at the men, and as the door closed the stale smell of meat seemed to grow tenfold. There was no way she could stomach this food, this place.
Still, against her better judgement she sat down, and allowed her thirst to overcome her repulsion. She took none of the strange stew which the men devoured, sipping cautiously at her ale; something told her that the monks were not to be trusted. The ale tasted normal, if dry, and she felt her head begin to spin while the scholar explained the finer points of chemical distillation to an unhearing or uncaring forester.
After some time, she got up and drifted upstairs, where she quickly fell asleep.