Vera said he thought too much, and while she did not intend her words to be mean-spirited, there was more than a hint of truth to them. Raphael would not deny that he thought a great deal about an endless panoply of ideas; it was his boundless curiosity about God’s creation, about his role within it, and how he was supposed to understand his purpose. Many never gave much thought to their ultimate purpose on the earth, and he knew that it was by God’s grace that he was able to even conceive of having a purpose, but that self-knowledge only inflamed his desire.
Yasper and his alchemical recipes had not helped either. The scrawny Dutchman had his own codex, though the alchemist’s was not nearly as well constructed as Raphael’s, being an olio of parchment, cloth, hide, and a few scraps of what looked suspiciously like tattooed skin. Yasper kept the loose collection in an oilskin satchel, and he referenced it, annotated it, and fussed with it on a daily basis. Raphael’s curiosity had led him to inquire about the alchemist’s notes, and he had been intrigued by some of the Arabic passages Yasper had in his collection. Written by a Persian named Jabir ibn Hayyan, the material was not—as he had anticipated—a babble of mystical nonsense disguised as a treatise on philosophical medicine, but a well-reasoned discourse on the immutable nature of the soul. Jabir sought answers to the same questions as Augustine; it was only his rhetoric and his practical methods that were different.
What is my purpose? How may I best serve God?
“It is a beautiful view, isn’t it?” Eleázar spread his arms to encompass the vista of snow-capped mountains. “Almost worth the trip for this alone, yes?”
Yasper shook his head, and nudged his shivering horse back onto the path.
“You must not take umbrage with Yasper,” R?dwulf explained to Cnán. The pair of them were riding behind Yasper and Eleázar. “He was born in a place that has nothing but dikes and low hills that barely come up to here.” He held his hand out, level with his horse’s shoulder. “The first time he saw the Alps, he fell off his horse. He claimed he was struck dumb in awe and terror at the majesty of God’s work. The other riders he was with thought otherwise and, on many subsequent occasions, performed entertaining pantomimes of what came to be known as the Low-Lander’s Abasement before God.”
“Does it happen often when he is talking to you?” Cnán asked, squinting up at R?dwulf. The tall Englishman smiled wolfishly. Glancing around, Cnán saw smiles on the faces of a few of the others who had paused at the scenic overlook.
There had been few opportunities for jovial camaraderie since they had left Benjamin at the rock. The trader had argued strenuously about joining the company, even after his detailed account of why such a decision was financially disastrous for him. Cnán had not understood the merchant’s interest in the hard ride that the Shield-Brethren had before them, but as she listened to the trader’s cogent argument, she grew to see that Benjamin thought he was in the company’s debt.
A debt that, ultimately, Feronantus refused.
The route through the Zuungar Gap was not well traveled, Benjamin argued, and the villages and clans that dotted the route were not as open to strangers as many who lived more closely to the Silk Road. The company would need a guide and an interpreter if they were going to reach the far side of the gap.
It was Benjamin’s informed guess that Alchiq would be keeping to the trade routes, where he could readily acquire fresh horses. Benjamin’s proposed route along the Tien Shan and through the gap would be rigorous and more dangerous, but it would be quicker.
Rigorous, dangerous, and quicker: those had been the magic words that had betrayed Benjamin. Feronantus had nodded with a gravid finality that the others knew well when Benjamin stressed them. Three reasons why you cannot come with us, Feronantus had said. You place too little value on your life.
What of you and yours? Benjamin had retorted.
Each of our lives have no meaning, except that which we give them by our deeds, Feronantus had replied, and Cnán knew he was quoting some old dictum of the Shield-Brethren.
In the weeks since, Cnán had noticed how the weight of that saying—the burden of their journey—was starting to show on the old veteran from Tyrshammar. He may have traveled to the far edges of Christendom, but the steppe was much broader than he could have imagined, and occasionally Cnán could read a crumbling despair in Feronantus’s eyes when he stared at the distant horizon. What had, in the beginning, seemed like a simple plan—ride east, passing over the Land of the Skulls and into the heartland of the Mongol Empire, and kill the Great Khan—was becoming such an extended odyssey that he was beginning to doubt they would reach their goal in time to save the West.