Schism

For most of his life, Godric had spent the better part of every day out of doors, either riding out to hunt or flying over wood and field. These days, he was cooped up in the castle more often than not, with an endless stream of documents to sign and trades to arrange and disputes to resolve. When it all grew to be too much, he would slip away to the hippogriff stables to spend a few moments stroking the beautiful creatures and fantasizing about escaping on one of them. He wondered if they felt as imprisoned in their stalls as he did in his chamber.

Today his thoughts had begun drifting toward the stables long before noon, but he had never found an opportunity to go there, and now darkness was already beginning to fall. Sighing, he pushed away the ink jar and rubbed his forehead. Perhaps if he did not sit up talking with Salazar this evening, he could wake early enough to fit in a ride before tomorrow's work began. It would be a good start to the morning ... it would ...

"Falling asleep already, my friend?"

Godric jerked upright, startled to find Salazar right there at his elbow. "Certainly not."

The corners of Salazar's mouth twitched with suppressed humor, and he draped a black-clad arm around Godric's shoulders. "Certainly so. Look, they are coming in to lay the tables." With his free hand, he gestured toward the other end of the hall, where several of the servants were busy floating benches and trestles into place while others brought in stacks of white cloths for covering.

"Perhaps I did close my eyes for a minute," Godric admitted.

"I shouldn't make myself too comfortable if I were you," said Salazar. "Erik has just told me that there are two new boys at the gate, asking for admittance. They have been travelling for some weeks and have only just reached the castle."

"Well, tell Erik to bring them in and warm them up at the fire," said Godric, shuffling all his scribbled-over parchment into a large, untidy heap and banishing it to his own chamber with a sharp tap of his wand. "We shall all have a look at them later and decide who should take them on."

"I have not finished," said Salazar in frosty tones. He removed his arm from its place around Godric. "They are Muggle children. A wizard in their village detected some magical ability within them and sent them here, without asking us first."

Godric saw the hard, unyielding expression on Salazar's face and felt a knot of tension begin to form deep in his chest. They had been down this road many times before, and he knew all too well that it was a harsh and rocky one. He had hoped that no more Muggle-born children would arrive this year so they could avoid the issue for a time. Clearly it had been a foolish hope.

"And?" he asked.

Salazar made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat. "And? Have we not got enough Muggles in the castle already, or are you starting a collection?"

"If they have magic, they are not Muggles," said Godric wearily. "They are wizards, and they belong here, with their own kind."

"I am not their kind," said Salazar. Several of the servants glanced around at the sound of his raised voice, but quickly turned back to their work when they saw an argument brewing between their masters. The knot in Godric's chest grew tighter. He was not certain whether he wanted to run Salazar through with his sword or fall on his knees and beg him to stop this now, before they wounded each other with ugly words again.

"Please, "he said, holding up a hand. "I know your feelings well, and I do respect them, but I have no choice in this matter. The children are already here, and it is too late in the season to send them back to where they came from, especially alone. They would surely die on the journey. I know you would not want your own sons to be treated so."

Salazar's jaw clenched, but he gave a curt nod. "Very well. I will send word to Erik to bring them in. But I will not have them in my House, Godric, do you hear me?"

"You need not," said Godric. "I am sure Helga will be able to find a place for them, even if Rowena and I cannot."

"Indeed, my lady Helga would take in a troll if it came to the gate and said it wanted to learn magic," said Salazar, and spun on his heel to go.

"Wait!" Godric called before he had taken more than a few steps.

Salazar stopped.

"Was that a command, Godric?"

"No," Godric said. "It was a request." He closed the short distance between them and turned Salazar to face him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"I do not wish to quarrel with you again," he said. "We have only just made our peace. Will you not let this go?"

He was certain Salazar would refuse; would knock his hand aside and storm off; but after a moment's pause, Salazar brought his own hand up to cover Godric's.

"This time," he said. "For you."

"Good," said Godric. The knot loosened a bit, and he began to breathe more easily. Perhaps everything would be all right after all.

"I shall see you this evening, then," said Salazar, "as usual."

Godric thought of his plans for an early-morning ride and sighed inwardly, but dismissed the thought before it could begin to anger him.

"Yes," he said, and making sure none of the servants were looking, leaned forward and put a swift, hard kiss on Salazar's closed mouth. Salazar's lips were chilly, and he did not kiss back, but neither did he draw away. For that much, Godric was grateful.

-----------------------

Halfway up the third staircase, Rowena began to wonder if she was going to reach her destination after all. She'd felt so energetic earlier that an unscheduled trip to Hogsmeade had seemed like a grand idea, but now she was paying the price. There were stairs in the castle that could carry a rider from bottom to top, like an angel ascending Jacob's ladder, but these were not among them. If she could not climb, she would have to turn back.

"Relevo," she murmured, and put a steadying hand on the stone wall as the spell made her temporarily lighter. When she had her balance again, she took another step, then another -- yes, it was much better this way, with less weight on her bad hip. The relief was so sweet it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Other people might turn to drink and fornication for their pleasures, but for Rowena, the greatest pleasure lay in the easing of pain, and she knew a hundred ways to achieve it.

Not that there isn't something to be said for drink and fornication, she thought, smiling to herself as she climbed. Her hip still ached vaguely, but she was used to that. She'd been barely eight years old when she'd broken it, sitting in her father's hall and watching her brothers play blind man's bluff. They had been running in circles, shrieking, trying to get away from Drustan, the youngest, who was the blind man.The fire had been hot on her back; the boys' yells hurting her ears. She had closed her eyes for a moment to shut them out, and that was when Drustan had stumbled and fallen over her, smashing her brittle bones like a glass beaker.

Everyone had said she would die, or at best end up bedridden for life, but by a miracle -- which the older Rowena had identified as the early stirrings of her magic -- she had lived to walk again. Never as well or as easily as before, but she had walked. And was still walking, albeit with pain, almost thirty years later.

At the last step, she waited, catching her breath, until the staircase detached from its moorings and made a slow, graceful arc through the air, carrying her with it. It reached the far wall and settled seamlessly into place, and Rowena stepped off, frowning now. That had not been right; the staircase should have moved just as she reached the top. She would have to check the alignment again. After all the work she had put into developing a system of moving parts that made it easier for her to navigate the castle, she was not going to have the thing break down on her. If you knew the system, you could get from the Great Hall to the top of the stargazing tower in only a few minutes, with almost no effort. If you did not know it, you would find yourself in the kitchens when you had meant to go to the sleeping chambers. She enjoyed seeing the children try to work it out.

She limped down the third-floor corridor as quickly as she could, wanting to get to Helga's heating room before she had to cast another lightening spell. When she finally reached the room, the heavy plank door was ajar. Helga's voice drifted out through the gap, so low and honeyed that anyone would have thought she was addressing a lover. Rowena, who knew better, nudged the door open a bit farther and slipped inside.

The heating room lived up to its name: each corner held a smooth stone, large enough to sit on, which was enchanted to give off steady, gentle warmth. A long table stood in the center of the room, and there Helga was working, bent over a row of clay pots.

"Warm as toast, that's how you'll be," she was saying, apparently to the pots themselves. "Enjoy the rest, and I will see you in the spring."

"Are you talking to the mandrakes again?" Rowena asked.

Helga glanced up and smiled, not at all startled by Rowena's sudden appearance.

"They like it," she said, brushing loose soil off her hands and rolling down her sleeves, which had been turned back to keep them clean. "So would you if you spent most of your life buried up to your chin in the dirt."

"Let us hope I never come to that," said Rowena. She pointed her wand at a three-legged stool and shortened its legs until she could perch on its seat without having to clamber up, then grew it to full size again. "A wizard called Irminric the Irritable once spent twenty years that way. He had to rely upon his friends to feed him by hand. It ended badly."

"With such a name, I am surprised he had any friends at all," said Helga. Leaving her work, she sat on the stool beside Rowena's and regarded her intently, as if trying to read what she had been up to in her eyes.

Rowena returned the scrutiny. Even after fifteen years among witches and wizards, she was still amazed at their aging process. Helga was past forty - an age at which Muggle women were already old, if indeed they were still alive - but she had only a few lines around eyes and mouth to show for it. Nor was there so much as a streak of grey in the fair hair she had got from her Northern forebears. In all, Rowena thought, Helga had not changed a whit since the first moment she had seen her, standing at the abbey gates and asking politely for a night's lodging.

Rowena did not look at her own reflection very often, but she knew that the same magic was at work in her as well; she had still the face she had worn at twenty-five, even though she, too, was approaching her fortieth year. It was strange to think that she would remain this way long after everyone she had known in her childhood was gone, but she did not mind. It would give her all the more time to learn everything there was to know.

"Well?" Helga asked. "I am waiting. You promised to tell me everything about your afternoon."

"I did, didn't I?" said Rowena, grinning. "But you will have to wait. I want to talk about Salazar first."

"I am perishing of curiosity, and you want to talk about Salazar? You are a wicked woman, Rowena." Helga pretended to pout, then laughed. "All right. You said you had had an idea. What is it?" As she spoke, she stood up again and returned to her pots.

"Well, after you told me about the stone dust on Salazar's robes, I cast a few spells to see if anything had gone wrong with the architecture," Rowena said. "I found nothing, but if he were building something he did not want anyone to know about, I am certain he would attempt to cover it up. So I wondered -- what do you think about dowsing for it, whatever it is? That's an earth magic, just your sort of thing."

Helga scooped a handful of dried, powdered dragon dung from a sack and distributed it deftly around the roots of the first mandrake in line. "We could try. But do you not think Salazar would notice us traipsing round the corridors with a pair of hazel rods?" She handed the pot to Rowena and dusted her hands off on her skirt.

"We wouldn't have to," said Rowena, reaching up to stow the pot on a shelf within reach of her stool. "I mapped out every wall and door in the castle when it was built. If we use the maps --"

"I see what you are getting at," said Helga. "I will still need a rod, though. And I ought to cut it myself, if I am to work the spell."

"Have we any hazel trees on the grounds?"

Helga shook her head. "No, I would have to go into the forest. Not too far, though. There are a few hazels near the outskirts; I found them when we went after nuts not long ago."

"You cannot go alone," Rowena pointed out. "You could stun a beast if you saw it coming, but not if it crept up on you while you were busy cutting wood."

"Are you offering to go with me?"

"I suppose I am," said Rowena with a grimace. "I cannot say I care for the forest, but I couldn't bear for you to become a werewolf's supper, either. You may rely upon me."

"I always do," said Helga. She wiped her forehead with the back of one hand. "Truly, Rowena, I am not certain that we need to do this. I have been watching Salazar ever since you and I spoke, and I have seen nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps the stone dust did not mean what I thought it meant. I would hate to endanger either of us for no reason, or to upset Salazar if he were to realize that we had suspected him of wrongdoing."

"We are better off knowing than not knowing," said Rowena firmly. "And I would not give two Knuts for Salazar's feelings."

"What a charming sentiment, my lady," said a voice from the open door.