Trying to keep any hint of a question mark out of his tone, Arkos droned: “Just an old man. Nothing more.
We’re sure of that now.”
“I think it was just an old man, too.”
Father Arkos reached wearily for the hickory ruler.
WHACK!”
“Deo . . .”
As Francis returned to his cell, the abbot called after him down the corridor: “By the way, I intended to
mention…”
“Yes, Reverend Father?”
“No vows this year,silkroad online gold,” he said absently, and vanished into his study.
7
Brother Francis spent seven years in the novitiate, seven Lenten vigils in the desert, and became highly
proficient in the imitation of wolf calls. For the amusement of his brethren, he summoned the pack to the vicinity
of the abbey by howling from the walls after dark. By day, he served in the kitchen, scrubbed the stone floors,
and continued his classroom study of antiquity.
Then one day a messenger from a seminary in New Rome came riding to the abbey on an ass. After a long
conference with the abbot, the messenger sought out Brother Francis. He seemed surprised to find that youth,
now fully a man, still wearing the habit of a novice and scrubbing the kitchen floor.
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“We have been studying the documents you discovered, for some years now,” he told the novice. “Quite a
few of us are convinced they’re authentic.”
Francis lowered his head. “I’m not permitted to mention the matter, Father,” he said.
“Oh, that.” The messenger smiled and handed him a scrap of paper bearing the abbot’s seal,daoc plat, and written in
the ruler’s hand: Ecce Inquisitor Curiae. Ausculta et obsequere. Arkos,silkroad gold, AOL, Abbas.
“It’s all right,world of warcraft gold,” he added hastily, noticing the novice’s sudden tension. “I’m not speaking to you officially.
Someone else from the court will take your statements later. You know, don’t you, that your papers have been in
New Rome for some time now? I just brought some of them back.”
Brother Francis shook his head. He knew less, perhaps, than anyone, concerning high-level reactions to his
discovery of the relies. He noticed that the messenger wore the white habit of the Dominicans, and he wondered
with a certain uneasiness about the nature of the “court” whereof the Black Friar had spoken. There was an
inquisition against Catharism in the Pacific Coast region, but he could not imagine how that court could be
concerned with relics of the Beatus. Ecce Inquisitor Curiae, the note said. Probably the abbot meant
“Benedicamus Domine.”
“Deo? gratias?” asked Francis.
“Come in, my boy, come in!” called an affable voice, which,cheap sto credits, after some seconds of puzzling, he recognized
with amazement to have been that of his sovereign abbot.
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“You twist the little knob, my son,” said the same friendly voice after Brother Francis had stood frozen on
the spot for some seconds, with his knuckles still in position for knocking.
“Y-y-yes-” Francis scarcely touched the knob,maple mesos, but it seemed that the accursed door opened anyway; he had
hoped that it would he tightly stuck.
“The Lord Abbot s-s-sent for?ame?” squawked the novice.
Abbot Arkos pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Mmmm?ayes, the Lord Abbot sent for?ayou. Do come in
and shut the door.”
Brother Francis got the door closed and stood shivering In the center of the room. The abbot was toying
with some of the wire-whiskered things from the old toolbox.
“Or perhaps it would be more fitting,” said Abbot Arkos, “If the Reverend Father Abbot were sent for by
you. Now that you have been so favored by Providence and have become so famous, eh?” He smiled soothingly.
“Heh heh?” Brother Francis laughed inquiringly. “Oh n-n-no, m’Lord.”
“You do not dispute that you have won overnight fame? That Providence elected you to discover THIS?a”
he gestured sweepingly at the relics on the desk “?athis ]UNK box, as its previous owner no doubt rightly called
it?”
The novice stammered helplessly, and somehow managed to wind up wearing a grin.
“You are seventeen and plainly an idiot, are you not?”
“That is undoubtedly true, m’Lord Abbot.”
“What excuse do you propose for believing yourself called to Religion?”
“No excuse, Magister meus.”
“Ah? So? Then you feel that you have no vocation to the Order?”
“Oh, I do!” the novice gasped.
“But you propose no excuse?”
“None.”
“You little cretin, I am asking your reason. Since you state none,silkroad online gold, I take it you are prepared to deny that you
met anyone in the desert the other day, that you stumbled on this-this JUNK box with no help, and that what I
have been hearing from others is only-feverish raving?”
“Oh, no, Dom Arkos!”
“Oh, no,star trek power leveling, what?”
“I cannot deny what I saw with my own eyes, Reverend Father.”
“So, you did meet an angel?aor was it a saint??aor perhaps not yet a saint??aand he showed you where to
