The donkey made Joren's journey faster and his conscience heavier.
Alone, he had stopped every few days to pray with villagers, mend their houses, and earn enough food and money for the next stretch. Oliver had no intention of waiting. They were going to Winterfell, and except at night, villages were things to ride through.
At night, however, Oliver wanted a bed. If there was a tavern, he ate a large supper and took a room. If there wasn't, he sent Joren to find a prosperous farmer willing to rent one. He seemed determined never to be uncomfortable again.
Worse, he paid for Joren too.
“I'm not sitting over a plate of meat while you watch me,” he said whenever the brother protested. “What's unfair is worse than what's scarce. Come and eat.”
Once or twice could be accepted. After five or six such evenings, Joren began to wonder what had become of his pilgrimage. He was supposed to be embracing hardship, not settling into a life of warm beds and rich dinners. When they parted, would he still be able to live as he had before? Or would he become one of those fat creatures the nobles kept comfortably fed in the septs of King's Landing?
One evening, after wiping the grease from his mouth, he suggested that they might do better to travel separately.
Oliver had been listening to a singer's cheerful account of a serving man, his mistress, and the fortune acquired between her sheets. He lowered his wine.
“That's all? You're too comfortable?”
“I undertook a life of hardship.”
“Hardship's a test. Why shouldn't comfort be one? Can't you stand being tested?”
Joren frowned.
“The Seven set my trials. You're a foreign swordsman. What do you know about them?”
Oliver grinned. He had learned that Joren was only a year older than himself, which said a great deal about what pilgrimage did to a man's face. It had also made the brother easier to talk to. Here, at last, was someone near his own age whom he knew well enough to tease.
Since the fever, other things had changed too. He could live here, and he could die here. Whatever distance he had imagined between himself and this world hadn't survived that discovery. The people talking and drinking around him were no longer on the other side of a pane of glass.
The singer took a break. Voices filled the room, warm and untidy, and Oliver found himself wanting to join them.
“A test, then. I know a story about those.”
He borrowed Kellan's cup, took a drink, and began.
“There's a monk in a story I knew at home. Tripitaka. Before he could remember it, bandits killed his father. His mother put him into a cradle and sent it downriver to save him. For three days it drifted, watched over by the gods, until an old abbot found him.”
He told them of the questions the child asked as he grew, questions neither the abbot nor any brother could answer, and the journey he eventually undertook to find the holy scriptures. Three powerful fighters became his guards and pupils. Together they crossed mountains and came at last to a great river, where an old woman waited with a boat.
Beyond it lay a kingdom of women. Its queen was twenty-three, beautiful, wealthy, and entirely willing to make the monk a king. There was a Scorpion Woman too, as beautiful as the queen and considerably less restrained. Oliver carried the story through temptation and danger to the moment when the pilgrim gathered his belongings and left with his three companions.
“He didn't look back. All the wealth and glory she offered him meant less than his faith.” Oliver paused. “And that was one of the less dangerous trials. He had eighty-one.”
Joren said nothing.
“If supper and a decent mattress frighten you, how would you manage in that queen's country?”
“I'd manage splendidly,” said a bearded man at the next table. “Beautiful queen, all that gold, and she wants him? Bugger the scriptures.”
His companion leaned back.
“Perhaps the poor fellow had a bean sprout in his breeches.”
Laughter went around the tavern. Only then did Oliver realize how many people had been listening. The minstrel had brought a high stool over and was sitting beside him, harp in his lap.
He played a short, graceful phrase and bowed his head.
“A fine tale, ser. Might we speak later?”
“Of course.”
The singer returned to his place. He didn't try to resume the story he had been telling before; the room was still somewhere in the women's kingdom. Instead he sang a few indecent little songs and was rewarded with enthusiastic applause.
Joren had been thinking.
“Your question proves nothing,” he said at last. “There's value in the tale, but it remains a tale. Do you believe in a river that makes men pregnant if they drink from it?”
“No. But the monk behind the story was real. Xuanzang. He left his monastery and went west, across deserts, mountains, great rivers. Dozens of kingdoms. Kings gave him attendants, and men died on the journey. Seventeen years before he brought the scriptures home, cartloads of them. He became a great religious teacher, trusted by his ruler.”
That silenced Joren more effectively than the queen had. Seventeen years wasn't a marvel he could dismiss with a laugh. He had spent four years on the road himself. He could imagine something of what the other thirteen meant.
Oliver left him to think.
* * *
By the time the minstrel finished, the tavern was emptying. He packed his harp, came to their table, and addressed Joren with elaborate courtesy.
“Would you object to a devout servant of the Seven sitting beside you, brother?”
Joren smiled. “Please do.”
The singer removed his pointed blue hat, traced a complicated blessing over his chest, and took a chair.
“Your story, ser. Does it have a name?”
“Journey to the West. That was the kingdom of women. One part of a much longer journey.”
“Journey to the West,” the man repeated. “Forgive me. Lerran Venn, of the westerlands. I travel the Seven Kingdoms, bringing beauty and pleasure wherever I can.”
“I'd gathered.”
Lerran shrugged and came to the point.
“Eighty-one trials, you said. So there are eighty more?”
“Nobody said fetching scriptures was easy.”
“A work that large must have been written down. You've read it somewhere. Would you sell it to me?”
He had heard enough to recognize an accomplished story: a clear purpose, distinctive characters, adventures held together by something larger than their individual attractions. An epic, and a foreign one nobody here knew. With a few changes to make it familiar, it could make his reputation. Generations of singers might use his version. When maesters wrote about this age, they would have to write about Lerran Venn.
Oliver looked embarrassed.
“I haven't got the book.”
“Then write it for me. I'll pay well.”
“You might want to save your money. Even if I wrote it, you couldn't read it. I don't know your letters.”
Joren stared.
“You can't read? But the way you speak, the things you know—”
“I read perfectly well at home. Different letters. It's possible to know one without the other.”
“Then I'll teach you.” Joren put his hand flat on the table. “Starting tomorrow. We've a month before Winterfell. By the time we arrive, you'll understand the first chapter of The Seven-Pointed Star.”
Oliver accepted gladly. He had wanted to learn for months, but there had always been something more pressing. Here was a teacher offering.
“Winterfell?” Lerran brightened. “What luck. That's where I'm going.”
“Were you going there before I mentioned it?”
“Certainly. Why are you going?”
“Oliver Evans. Swordsman for hire. This is my pupil, Kellan Turner. We're looking for work.”
Kellan nodded. Since Joren joined them, Oliver had stopped introducing himself as a knight. Pretending to be a sworn servant of the Seven was rather more awkward with a genuine one beside him.
“And so am I,” Lerran said. “The Father has arranged this beautifully.”
Oliver smiled without agreeing. A singer and a sellsword did have something in common. Both followed their work from place to place, and success didn't necessarily end the traveling. A man could command a company or own a troupe and still live on the road.
“But consider your position,” Lerran continued. “A stranger. Not even a knight. Why should anyone hire you? Hire a bad singer and you suffer an unpleasant evening. Hire a bad swordsman and you might not live through it.”
Oliver hadn't considered that. Roderic Colbert had paid him to fight raiders and escort a caravan, but he had seen the pirate heads first. Who would vouch for him in Winterfell?
“What are you proposing?”
“We travel together. You tell me about your monk, and I put an ancestor of yours into the story. Your name spreads with the songs. Provided your sword matches your reputation, work should follow.” He leaned back. “Even if it doesn't quite match, how many famous captains can really fight a thousand men? We can be useful to one another.”
Publicity. Oliver knew the value of that. Excellent wares did a man little good if nobody knew where to find his shop.
Before he could answer, Kellan spoke.
“Could you make a story out of what my master has actually done?”
Lerran's interest sharpened.
“Tell me.”
“Three months ago, we came into Lord Hornwood's lands...”
Kellan gave a brief account of the fighting in Colbert territory. By the time he finished, both listeners were looking at Oliver differently.
“If you can do all that,” Joren asked, “how did you get so badly hurt the other day?”
“Another story.” Oliver turned to the singer. “I like your offer. Travel with us. I'll tell you stories, and I'll do what I can to keep you safe, provided you don't go looking for trouble. You work my name into them. How is up to you.”
Lerran listened very closely now.
“And if a job comes my way because of your songs, I'll give you a share of the pay.”
The account of the pirates had nearly ruined Lerran's confidence. A man who could kill more than ten Skagosi in a fight hardly needed a singer to promise him fame. One successful job would advertise him well enough. Lerran had been offering a splendid future in exchange for stories he wanted immediately; he hadn't expected the bargain to survive what Kellan had told them.
Now he held out his hand before Oliver could reconsider.
“Agreed.”
Oliver shook it.
“Agreed.”