The Warlock Heretical Read Online Free Page A

Whoa!" Rod held up a flat, open hand. "Whan orders could your Abbot be giving that were so bad some
    of his own monks couldn't obey them?" Then he paused, remember-' ing his new assignment and its cause. "It
    wouldn't have anything to do with his wanting to declare the Church off Gramarye separate from the Church of
    Rome, would it?"
    Father Boquilva met his eyes with a long, steady gaze. "Thou has most excellent minstrels, to bring such news so
    quickly."
    Rod waved the remark away. "I have inside sources." "Aye." A shadow crossed Boquilva's face. "Thou art the
    High Warlock, art thou not?"
    Rod gave Gwen a quick glance of exasperation. "I keep telling the kids not to brag. But yes, Father, I am—and I
    spoke with His Majesty this morning, about exactly this matter." Boquilva nodded, not taking his gaze from
    Rod's. "Then events have proceeded more quickly than I had thought." "Oh. It was still only talk when you left?"
    Boquilva nodded. "Yet that was a week agone—small enough time, when our Lord Abbot hath brooded six
    years over the matter."
    "Six years? Let's see ... of course, that was when the Abbot squared off against Tuan, and only backed down
    because Father Al handed him a letter from the Pope telling him to do whatever Father Al said." Rod Page 19
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    clasped his
    head as a brief dizzy spell swept him. "My lord! Has it been that long already?"
    "Nay, my lord." Gwen covered his hand with hers. " 'Tis simply that our children have grown so quickly."
    "Thanks for the reassurance, dear." Rod let his other hand rest on hers and looked up at Father Boquilva. "And it
    still bothers the Abbot?"
    Father Boquilva nodded again. "He hath some strain of worldly vanity, I fear, and was greatly ashamed to be so
    set

    down, there before all of two armies. Yet 'tis only these last three months that he hath begun to speak of separation."
    "Rather persuasively, too, I suspect." Rod frowned. "I heard the man preach once. He's almost as powerful an
    orator as King Tuan."
    Boquilva nodded. "Thou dost not undervalue him. In truth, some of the reasons he doth advance do hold merit,
    great merit—that what authority the Pope may once have had over the Church here on this Isle of Gramarye, he
    hath defaulted, through having so long ignored us. In truth, for all we heard from Rome, one might have thought
    that His Holiness knew not of our existence."
    "Well, be fair, though—Gramarye never sent any messages to Rome, either."
    "How could we? For that is milord Abbot's next point—that the Pope is so far distant from Gramarye that he
    cannot possibly know what doth occur here. Even doth he hear report, he can have no sense of the tensions of
    power, as milord Abbot hath. Then beyond this, there is such a maze of matters theological, of hairsplitting over
    the authority of Peter and his passing on of that power—and of the tightness of the Church of Rome today—that
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    we cannot know what it doth or doth not I hold to be a sin."
    "Sounds a little weak."
    Father Boquilva agreed. "It doth in truth. For look you, milord Abbot's whole upbringing hath instilled in him the
    belief that the Pope is the heir of Peter, the rightful head of the Church, and that he doth hold from God Himself
    the power to declare what is right and wrong. Yet an upbringing alone were not enough, there is all of milord's
    schooling for the priesthood, and his priestly vows themselves, to tell him to obey the Holy See." Rod said, "But it's hard to accept religious authority greater than his own when, all his life, he has thought that if
    he could rise to Abbot, he'd be the supreme spiritual power in Gramarye, second only to the King."
    "Aye, yet that 'second' doth gall him."
    "Oh, yes! That's what the whole fight was about six years ago—whether the King should take orders from the
    Abbot, or the other way