Chapter 32: Vrail

Their fourth year in the seminary saw them prepared for the test of speech under the tutelage of Father Ulaka. They rose at the fourth hour and attended mass. The fifth hour would see them swimming and climbing as they had done in preparation of the test of self with Father Antuas. In the room they would sit in decency, a posture that made them look the part of civilized boys, forced upon them by Father Ulaka.

All their years they always wondered how Father Antuas always sat awaiting their arrival in the room. It was obvious that the priest climbed but they had never beheld it. Father Ulaka proved a priest that, if not anything, was perpetual in his tardiness for their lesson, never arriving on time, or later than thirty minutes. What annoyed them most was in the way he carried himself, walking the room as he taught them in superiority as though he had not climbed up the edge of the room before their very eyes. Late.

Having only worn his cassock on their first day, Ulaka never wore it when he taught them, which was the only time they ever saw him. His cassock bore a hood, something the priests in the seminary never wore. It had fit him snug, and with each step he took that day, Sethlzaar had found himself waiting for the ripping sound that would tell the priest the cassock was not sewn for him.

Suffice it to say, it never came.

There had been little surprise when the next day Ulaka had climbed before them in a simple black vest and trousers fastened with a leather belt, and a cloak of exact design as theirs but doused in black. He was a huge man, his skin brown as olive, as if the sun had scorched him. And while one eye was brown, the other was a pale blue placed in a face on a head that bore no hair upon it. His voice also reminded Sethlzaar of Father Nurudin; a sweet soprano.

"Tomorrow, you will begin a new lesson," Father Ordan had told them after one of their grueling practice of the sword with him. "Father Karnamis has already taught you the language of the seminary but from tomorrow you will begin learning it in earnest."

He had taken them below the keep after their evening meals into Father Nurudin's territory. As they walked Sethlzaar made a conscious effort of keeping his mind from the dark corners of the hallways. Keeping his eyes forward, he remained with his brothers as they made their way to the vaults.

Nurudin awaited them at the entrance with a welcoming smile that did good at hiding the dangers they were more than certain he was capable of. As was always the case in the presence of Nurudin, Ordan had spent the entire event with a scowl on his face.

Nurudin vanished into the vaults, and while they wondered at what kind of weapon they were required to wield to learn a language, Nurudin returned with stacks of books encased in leather which he proceeded to offer each of them. In the same manner he produced a small glass of black liquid and quills for each of them.

"Father Ulaka might seem a bit eccentric," he'd told them before they left, "but I assure you he is as much a priest of the church as any other. Maybe more dangerous."

His voice had born good humor, but they had stayed long enough in the seminary to know not to trust Nurudin's tone.

They carried their books, each with their own glass of liquid and quill, as they attended their lessons with Father Ulaka. They had learned the basic of the oral language from their time with Father Karnamis in the wild but had never known it by name.

Father Ulaka called it Vrail.

"Some of you can read and write," Ulaka told them. "Those of you that can, will continue to write, while those of you who cannot, will learn."

Ulaka began with the language of the realm and, when he was convinced they were capable of writing it fluently, only then did he begin vrail. Vrail proved a confusing language and even Soartin showed difficulty in its mastery.

In their second month the priests had reason to whip them even more than they did during their first year in the seminary. Save their practice of the bow under Priestess Emeril, all the priests instructed them in vrail, dishing out punishments in no small measure not only for their usual failures but also for any lack of understanding the boys displayed. Father Ordan employed the cane with a fervor that took none of them by surprise, and even Narvi was not spared.

By their fifth month they escaped the punishments for misunderstanding as they developed a fluency in the language.

While Soartin proved quicker than them at an understanding of it, to everyone's amazement, Cenam grew adept in reading and writing, often speaking with much fluency that they sometimes required him to talk slowly to comprehend whatever he was saying. Though, as remained the case, he rarely spoke to them.

Sethlzaar, like most of his brothers, enjoyed conversing in it as it came with a sense of achievement. But he detested putting it in writing. The language of the realm presented itself in writing in the form of letters and words. Vrail, however, proved an annoyance for him as it presented itself in the form of mixtures of shapes, dots and lines, as if he were making an attempt at drawing, the inscriptions always seeming to jump at him when he looked upon them. But what he disliked the most was how terrible it looked in his handwriting, often drawing laughs from his brothers whenever they caught glimpses of it.

"There is no point in writing if the reader cannot read it," Ulaka told him.

Omage, however, suffered it most.

Where his mastery of the oral language proved mediocre, his mastery of it in writing was abhorring at best. The boy seemed to bear the scorn of Father Ulaka the most. And most of the time Ulaka seemed not to care whether the students mastered it or not.

"Some of you might be wondering why we have chosen to teach you something to be taught early on so late into your stay here," Ulaka announced in vrail into the third hour of the noon a day before the test. "This is because not just anyone should be taught the language, and you will be required to go to places where the language spoken is foreign to you. The seminary deems it best that you acquire the conscious skill of understanding."

He then taught them into the night, not releasing them for their trainings as was the norm at the fourth hour passed high noon. They put quill to paper, scribbling away with each sentence he made in his narration of Father Orumik, the first evangelist of the seminary, in vrail.

On normal days they left their materials in the room when they left, but tonight Ulaka instructed they take them, requiring they write down the tale of their favorite part of the seminary's history in both languages for the sake of their test.

"Are they really going to send us away if we fail tomorrow's test?" Alsipin asked while they ate, "over a stupid language?"

Tonight they ate alone. Having returned late from their lesson, the hall was empty and they enjoyed their meal along with their solitude.

Since the events of the kennel Sethlzaar had found his natural zeal to talk with Alsipin waning faster than it took for the pain of a flame's heat to pierce the skin from a distance. So gone was it from him that he found a certain proximity with the brother disturbing, a sensation he struggled to overlook even during training.

Not much attention was afforded him at first till Omage spoke between bites. "If you want to stay, you best stay up all night reading, brother."

"You will be missed, brother," Soartin joked, "but I'm sure if you beg nicely, brother mistborn over here could teach you."

Sethlzaar was certain his brothers knew he was not mistborn but, since his arrival at the seminary, the nickname had lingered, and they often, though very rarely, addressed him by it.

"Why would I do that?" Alsipin protested. "Haven't you seen his writing? It looks like he's scratching his parchments."

Sethlzaar ignored the obvious jab at him, picked another piece of meat and tore it into smaller pieces. He watched Omage eat his meal as though taking stock of each bite.

When they came to the seminary the boy had been the biggest of them and, even now, he retained his place, his shoulders growing larger than the rest of the brothers, and his chest broader.

Sethlzaar wondered just how big the boy was going to grow.

"It is better than yours though," Cenam answered Alsipin in vrail. By the expression on Alsipin's face Sethlzaar judged the boy had either used complex words or had spoken too fast.

In the end, Alsipin's response was simple.

"Huh?"

Alsipin displayed his knowledge of the language in the expression, laughing along with them as their laughter filled the hall amidst their banter.

After their run in with the Finil guild Omage had been destitute of any form of happiness. Only when Father Ordan had informed them of the Monsignor's decision to offer the girl to the convent for work purposes had he slowly regained his usual self. But sometimes Sethlzaar wondered if the boy feared his sister would come to one day become a nun. Or perhaps worse, a priestess.

They retired to their room after their meal, where the lantern burned into the age of the night and no priest came to put it out and mete out due punishment, perhaps knowing the purpose of their action. As the flame burned its life away they scribbled, quill on parchment weaving in confused jumbles of shapes and dots, drawing to life in the signs of vrail tales of priests long gone. Tales of evangelists and their adventures. Exorcists and their encounters. Monsignors and their reign. All heroic and tragic. And as the flames burned out, sleep took them each, one after the other. Sethlzaar's eyes closed last as he put a finish to the tragic tale of Father Forn, the priest devoted to a nun.

The test took place in the same room where they had stood before three elders in attendance of the test of self. The room, however, was devoid of the mist Sethlzaar remembered so vividly on his last visit. But somewhere in his mind he could see it swirling upon the expanse of the ground beneath them, free and ominous.

Father Ordan was the only priest of the seminary present. He took the single parchments upon which they had written their desired tales. The same elders that had administered the test of the mist sat upon their elevated seats with the addition of Monsignor Shrowl, and Sethlzaar found himself wondering at the sight how they would be tested.

After the submission of their parchments they were presented fresh ones where they were required to rewrite the tales already present on those they had submitted. No doubt, trust for the children was not something the seminary possessed in great quantity. The new parchments were reclaimed at the close of an hour and they sat in silence under the watchful gaze of those who would decide the outcome of the test.

"You have told your tales," the Abbess told them. "And I'm sure you remember them as surely as you have told them."

"You will all present your tales to your brothers, and us as well," the monsignor added. "Choose your words wisely. Vrail is the language of the seminary, but the church holds it in significant regard as well."

What followed was a nerve racking event where a brother was called by name to narrate the tale told in his parchment in the language.

Narvi being the first of the brothers told a tale of the holy martyrs of Vazerik. The priests upon whom the seminary was named. He spun their tale with a display of adequate knowledge of the language using basic vocabulary, adding more complex words only to give color to the tale where basic words proved insufficient.

The tale of the holy martyrs of Vazerick was one of tragic heroism. A few years after Ingrad Ner Shalhaar was committed to the fire, Dregor Ner Nurel led wars against the neighboring cities around Maeldun which was, at the time, a small kingdom under the reign of King Alusesh Vinar, the second to ascend the throne. His expenditure had his brothers—as there were neither priests nor seminaries at the time—waging war in the Kooliga forest, a land the church deemed important enough to declare a crusade upon.

They conquered the Kooligas, driving them from their forest and the king stationed some of his soldiers, two hundred strong, within the forest under the command of five of Dregor Ner Nurel's brothers. They had underestimated the strength of the Kooliga tribes and the power of the mist. An attack coming in the dark of night slaughtered all the king's men. Their allies felled in one night, the brothers defended the encampment for four days before the arrival of reinforcements.

When the men arrived, they were met with what was left of the bodies of the Kooligas, numbering over three hundred strong. Signs of pyres where the soldiers of the realm had been committed burned dark in the ground and the priests scattered across the battle fields, dead at the hands of the tribe.

Dregor Ner Nurel later requested the land off the king, where he built the seminary. The seminary joined the church five years before the death of Dregor Ner Nurel, after the church had sought their submission to the credence. Dregor being a man of the credence accepted the seminary as part of the church but an entity that would not submit complete and utter control. It would obey the church's guidance in the credence, and in over ten centuries the church had played more active roles in the seminary.

When it came time for Cenam to speak, he rose with the confidence of a child in a new place.

Surprisingly, he chose to narrate the tale of Father Grude. The priest was known for his different achievements, but what he was famed for was the nickname his brutal display in battle earned him: The Berserker.

So great was his rage in battle that most men thought him blinded by it. He would slay down enemies and allies alike, and even his brothers did not venture near him in times of battles. Stories had it that during one of his wars he suffered capture at the hands of the Rhobos, where his brothers mounted a rescue. One that proved unneeded.

It is claimed that they witnessed him slaughter his captors, pulling the encampment to rubbles without their aid. Before his action he had looked into the eyes of his torturers where he gave his famed words of madness.

"My people say we kill our enemies so we do not kill our friends. But I say let's kill our enemies first then we can kill each other."

He died in his fifty first year at the hands of his brothers' veils when he attacked an Abbess of the convents. She had referred to him as an unsouled who brought nothing but shame to the credence after she had burned a woman the priest held dearly alive under the accusation that she was touched and a heathen unwilling to denounce her gods. The priest died as his brothers' veils protruded from his body, spewing bloodied curses upon the Abbess and the credence.

The Abbess died a week after. She was murdered in her room. Some said it had been done by one of the priests. Others said the touched woman, in anger for what had befallen the priest, reached from the clutches of death to enact revenge for the Father Grude.

Cenam told the tale with such beauty, employing words that seemed to bring it to life. Sethlzaar noted even Alsipin for all his inability to comprehend what Cenam said was transfixed by his words. Their judges nodded their heads with each sentence he made and Sethlzaar almost expected a round of applause for the boy. One thing was certain, Sethlzaar knew the pride that came with speaking vrail. But Cenam in his tale had shown him the beauty of it.

Omage told the tale of Monsignor Trafarel, one of the only three Monsignors to actively participate at the fore front of a battle in his time as Monsignor in his seventieth year. Sethlzaar had no interest in the story and, while he spoke, Sethlzaar paid no heed, deeming it unimportant.

Tamael spoke of Brother Marnis. Although he had not lived long enough to be ordained into the priesthood of Truth and served in no wars, his achievement was of the realm, foiling the rise of a criminal guild into power within it.

The brother had been posted to a parish in a city to the far reaches of the realm where the then infamous Animus guild was rising to power in secret. A guild that employed only the blessed and the touched. He discovered the odd behaviors of the parishioners and took it upon himself to discover the root of it. He uncovered the guild and its members, and in time the seminary dispatched its exorcists to aid and bring the guild to naught.

Brother Marnis died at the hands of a touched after slaying countless members of the guild.

Alsipin spoke of Father Lenni. Unlike most priests, Lenni was not one known for his blade. He brought Naftali under the realm through the credence, converting over two thousand people. He was an evangelist and was known for his devout study of the scriptures.

Sethlzaar bore no interest in the priest.

Takaris told his tale and, though it began as one that would prove grand, Sethlzaar had no interest in it. His tale pulled for thirty minutes but to Sethlzaar it seemed like less.

Of all the tales told in vrail only one bore meaning to Sethlzaar.

Soartin proved a storyteller who stood above Narvi and, even in his mastery of the language below Cenam, he told a tale that weaved a world of threads, pulling his listeners into a world, like providence. He spun his tale of pain and tragedy, and in its solemnity, presented it in glory and honor.

He told a tale of two priests, under the reign of king Altas. Father Grimor and Father Friet. They were brothers of the same company and fought alongside their brothers. But as they grew in their service to the credence, Friet grew distant from it.

In time, his faith in the credence wavered. The church only came to know after his death, Father Grimor informing the Monsignor of his brother's fate. The priest had fallen for a dissident woman and it had torn him in two. Only Grimor knew of his dilemma and had kept it from their brothers.

The dissident woman fell into the hands of the exorcist and had been burned at the stake for the crime of being touched and the practice of the worship of the heathen god Berlak. Her death drowned Friet in sorrow and the priest, handling it poorly, turned his wrath towards the wars of the realm. In time, while they fought, the leader of their company ordered a retreat.

As they rode in retreat Grimor favored his brother with a look, and finally understanding what Friet sought in war, gave a command which had him defrocked.

"Friet," he said, "die here."

Friet had no compulsion to obey. But with a smile on his face and peace in his eyes he brought his horse to a stop while his brothers bellowed his continued retreat. He charged the enemy horde and died there. His body was later found amidst the dead dissident horde when the battle was won. But what had had Father Grimor defrocked were his words at the end of his hearing after revealing the secrets of Father Friet.

"I pray Truth give my brother release to be with her and her god, so he can find a peace we could not give him," he'd told them. "A peace he cannot find in Truth."

While they listened with awed expressions and a new emotion towards the tale of the heathen priest, the brothers with singular expression and the judges exchanging questionable glances, Sethlzaar saw a message in Soartin's story.

A message designed only for him.