SURDSTUM
A science fiction novel by
Jeff Provine
CHAPTER 3
Loustor awoke with a start, a fierce tremor running down his body with every muscle tensing in shock. He made a loud gasp and tried to sit up, but his body seemed stiff and frozen. His eyes were wide, but all he could see was a light brown blur hovering before him like a mist. Panting a few deep breaths, he squeezed his eyes shut again, forcing them to focus. Slowly, steadily, he opened them and looked up.
He was laying in a bed, one he had never seen before. Its coarse blankets were tucked tightly around him, holding his body in place. The brown blur he had seen before was the ceiling above, an ancient ceiling made of paneled wood now knotted and specked with vermin holes. Loustor rolled his head to his side gingerly, each movement sending a throbbing pain through his throat.
There was a rustle in the far end of the room. Loustor’s skin rippled fearfully at the noise. He stiffly moved his neck again, trying to find what was near him.
At the foot of the bed, an Asperian was sitting, watching him. He was dressed in a long black robe, its hood up over his head. Only his face, partially disguised in shadow, could be seen. The Asperian was old, his green face covered in wrinkles and signs of weariness. His soft eyes stared out at Loustor.
“Who are you?” Loustor said, his voice croaking wearily as the words struggled out of his painful throat.
The old Asperian blinked at the words without understanding. Loustor sighed slowly and bitterly. If only more Asperians spoke instead of depending on their telepathy.
Without a sound, the robed Asperian stood and walked away from the bed. His footsteps were light, barely making the archaic floor creak as he went. Waddling a bit on aged legs, he came to the door and paused to glance back at Loustor. Then, with a robe-covered hand, he reached for the door handle and left the room.
“Wait. Don’t just leave me here,” Loustor called hoarsely. His cry was too late. The only response was the click of the door handle snapping back into place.
Silence flooded the room. Loustor lay motionless in the bed, unsure where he might be or what he might do. As he pondered, soft sounds began to slip through the cracks in the wooden walls. It was a low moaning, musical, like a chant of some long forgotten ritual.
Loustor swallowed nervously at the eerie sounds. Horrid visions of Asperian-sacrifice filled his mind. He shivered at the image of himself hung over a pit of flames with dozens of robed cultists chanting around him. Shifting painfully, he struggled against the blankets that held him in place. The rough fabric scratched against his skin, burning against places where the punks had hit him.
After shifting his right leg, a harsh sting rang through his body, and Loustor hissed painfully. He must have been hurt more during the tangle with the villains than he had thought. Steadily growing aware of his soreness and wounds, Loustor slid further and further toward freedom. After a minute or more, he wriggled enough against the tightly tucked blankets to liberate his shoulder. He slid his right arm up along his body, at last placing it onto the top of the blankets in the cool air. Panting with exertion and the tingle of aching from his wounds, Loustor smiled at the tiny victory.
The door to the little room suddenly made a click. Loustor stopped his breathing with a hissing gasp, and his eyes went wide at the sound. The chanting seemed to have grown louder and more vicious around him. As he watched helplessly, the door opened wide.
Loustor quickly began breathing again, fearfully making quick, shallow breaths. A figure walked into the room, wrapped nearly completely in dark robes. A long hood hung over his face, and sleeves extended far beyond where his hands must have been. Loustor watched with wide eyes as the robed man closed the door behind him and moved stiffly toward Loustor’s bed. He leaned over the bed, gazing down at Loustor from the shadows under his hood.
Loustor swallowed and peered up at the hidden face. He could see outlines of a normal face, but scars and harsh wrinkles showed years of mysterious evil.
“Hello,” the robed figure said. His voice was deep and ancient, sounding at once gruff yet attached.
Loustor blinked at the figure. “You speak?”
The Asperian’s shadowed face nodded. “I do.”
Loustor let out an uncomfortable chuckle. “You… your grammar’s good.”
“Thank you.”
“I…,” Loustor began, but stopped, unsure of what he was trying to say. He shifted painfully into a bit higher of a position, pulling his pain-ridden body out from the blankets. He hissed as the coarseness of the cloth scratched against his wounds.
The hooded Asperian held up a sleeve-covered hand. “Careful. You’ve been rather beaten up.”
“I noticed,” Loustor said, clenching his teeth against the burning. He looked up at the Asperian’s shadowy face. “Who are you?”
“I am Brother Vasper,” the Asperian said in his deep, ancient voice, “monk of the Alerian Order. And now I’ll ask you the same. Who are you?”
“Loustor Taikees,” Loustor replied softly. “Of nothing.”
The monk chuckled. “At least you’re rather clever. It’s more than I can say for most.”
Loustor forced a smile. Following it with a sigh through his nostril, Loustor narrowed his eyes curiously. “How did I get here?”
“I would ask much the same of you,” Vasper said. He limped to the foot of Loustor’s bed, grabbing hold of the feeble wooden chair where the first monk had sat. Pulling it to Loustor’s bedside, Vasper sat down. The chair creaked as the hooded monk pressed his weight onto it.
“Brothers Mittels and Gavin found you in the courtyard late last night, screaming and holding the gate shut against some rather rough figures,” Vasper explained. “They chased the ruffians away, but by the time they got to you, you had already gone black. What would a lad like you be doing out in the middle of the night?”
Loustor grunted and shifted again. His other arm was free now, and he hissed at the bandages along his forearm. “Why did they attack me?”
“Who knows what evil goes through the minds of these street gangs,” Vasper said with a shrug. “It’s rather sad, really. You could’ve said one wrong word, and it would have slipped them into a violent frenzy.”
“I didn’t say anything to them,” Loustor said seriously.
Vasper’s hood nodded. “They take silence as an insult, sometimes.”
“I ran, too,” Loustor said, playing the events back in his mind.
Vasper made a guttural sound in the shadow under his hood. “Maybe that was it. There’s always the urge to chase something that’s running in terror.”
Loustor grimaced miserably. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“I believe you,” Vasper said, nodding again.
There was a pause, and Vasper let out a slow, thoughtful sigh.
“We looked for any identification,” he said, changing their conversation, “but we couldn’t find any. Is there anyone you’d like us to call?”
Loustor closed his eyelids and rolled his eyes under them. His money, his identification card, his books, everything had been in his satchel. For all he knew, those punks were busy pawning his most precious belongings or, worse yet, keeping them for themselves.
Putting the loss of his things out of his mind for the time, Loustor looked up again. “No, no one. I’m on my own.”
“Are you sure?” Vasper asked. “We have a dialogsis machine, and you’re welcome to it, if you like.”
“I can’t use a dial,” Loustor snapped. He frowned and pushed himself back into the coarse pillow. Such machines were marvels of technology, capable of picking up the electrical signals of telepathy and transmitting them over long distances to another machine. They were useless to nontelepathic Loustor.
“Ah,” the monk said simply. “I thought as much, but I wished to offer.”
“Yeah, well,” Loustor said, sighing, “I doubt there’s much of anything you can do to help me.”
Vasper made a sigh and settled back into his chair, mimicking Loustor’s movement. His chair creaked loudly behind him. “Are you really that alone in the world?”
“Yes,” Loustor said, folding his brow angrily. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Surdstums like me tend to stick out.”
“You shouldn’t use that word,” Vasper said, his crinkled face frowning in the shadows.
“What word?”
“The ‘surdstum’ word,” Vasper told him. “It’s offensive.”
“It’s meant to be offensive,” Loustor replied. “I’ve heard it enough to know every connotation is true.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Loustor said harshly. “It means I’m less
than Asperian. Without thought communication, I’m nothing more than a well
trained animal.”
“I hardly think so.”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Loustor repeated.
Vasper’s robed shoulders shrugged casually. “I thought perhaps you were just quiet. Not everyone goes around blabbing their thoughts all of the time.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh?”
Loustor pointed angrily at his stunted stalk, sitting weakly at the back of his skull. “No, of course, I wouldn’t. I’ve never heard anyone’s thoughts. I’ve been like this since birth, and I’ll be this way till I die.”
“Everyone has their hardships,” Vasper told him coolly.
“Like you know how hard it’s been for me,” Loustor said with a sneer.
The monk stood up, slowly and methodically. From his hard, short breaths, Loustor could tell he was angry and struggling to control the rage. Loustor bit his tongue, cursing his teenage ineptitude.
“You think I know nothing of hardship?” the monk asked, his voice low and hard.
He slid his hands out from the long sleeves, rolling the dark cloth back until his green fingers were exposed. At least, what were left of his fingers. Halves were cut off each hand, leaving only a thumb and two fingers next to an awkward and enormous scar where the rest of his hand should have been. Loustor’s eyes widened in horror.
Vasper raised his twisted hands to his hood, catching the edge of the covering with his unwieldy four fingers. Pulling it back, the shadows that masked him disappeared, revealing his scarred face. Loustor had only seen hints of them before, but now he could see the deep furrows of scars and fleshless wrinkles that marred the monk’s face. Vasper’s right eye was missing, replaced by a cover made of shining black ceramic. His left eye was whole, and its soft blue pupil shined out like a diamond in raw sand.
“I’m sorry,” Loustor said, his voice cracking as the words escaped. He raised his hands to his mouth, shaking at the sight. “I didn’t know.”
“At least you assumed the best,” Vasper said calmly. “I’d rather hide myself and have someone think I’m whole than give them impressions of what’s really there.”
The scarred monk sat down calmly. Loustor said nothing and struggled to turn his staring eyes away.
“And I know a bit about what you mean about being nontelepathic,” Vasper said, turning his head so that the back faced Loustor. He raised a three-stubbed hand and pointed to the back of his skull, which was smooth and pale. He had no stalk, just a small stump covered in scabby scar tissue. Even Loustor’s own withered stalk seemed substantial in comparison.
“What, what happened to you?” Loustor asked, stammering.
“The Ditch War,” Vasper said calmly. “Ever hear of it?”
Loustor furrowed his brow and nodded. “I’ve read about it, yes. It was against the Galkan Confederation about thirty years ago, right?”
“That’s right,” Vasper said. “Rather hard to imagine it’d be in history books now, but I guess I am getting older. I was young then, probably only a few years older than you are. When the war started, I volunteered for service, and the next thing I knew, I was stuck in some trench being shelled by the Galkans day and night.” He paused, swallowing. “That wasn’t the worst part, though.”
Loustor swallowed too, and his eyes went wide again.
“During the battle of… I don’t even know. I think we were trying to take a river fortress or something. My squad was pinned down near some bluffs, and we fought till they finally forced us to surrender. Not that we made it easy for them. I imagine we took out as many of them as they did of us.”
“So you were injured in the battle?” Loustor asked.
“No,” Vasper said quickly. He pointed to his hands and to his scars. “These all came in the internment camp. The guards liked to rough us up whenever they got the chance.”
“That’s sick.”
Vasper nodded. “War is sick, but it’s necessary sometimes. I’d do it again.”
“You would?” Loustor exclaimed.
“Of course I would,” Vasper told him, his remaining eye wide and serious. “If people hadn’t fought them, the Galkans would’ve made us into slaves to their regime. I’d rather be a mutilated freeman than a whole peon.”
“But,” Loustor said, stammering. He dropped his voice low, biting his lip before he talked. “But they took your node.”
Vasper sighed. “That they did, lad. And mine are the only thoughts I’ve heard since. So, I guess you think I rather know some of what you’ve gone through by now.”
Loustor winced, unable to say anything. His mind was clouded with horror, pity, and a strange feeling of reverence. This man had been stripped of everything, even his sense of telepathy, and yet he would do it all again. It made no sense to Loustor.
“How do you stand it?” Loustor asked, shaking his head. “I’m miserable enough just being nontelepathic, but to be cut and scarred, too?”
“Misery is what you make of it,” Vasper replied coolly.
Loustor squinted in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Vasper told him, reaching up to pat his shoulder with a three-stubbed hand. “You’re young yet. All you need is some experience and a good long time of thinking. I’m certain you’ll figure it all out.”
Vasper stood and slowly brought his hood back into its place over his head. He tugged at it with his fingers, pulling it until his face was once again concealed in shadows. He then rolled his sleeves out long again, hiding his grotesque hands.
“You should probably get some more rest,” the monk said to Loustor. “They’re just bruises and scrapes. You’ll heal up good as new in a day or two.”
“Um, right,” Loustor said, nodding as his mind purred with thoughts.
Vasper limped to the door. Pausing, he turned his shadowed face and said, “I’ll send Brother Bartolem with some soup soon.”
“Okay.” Loustor’s head continued to nod slowly.
Vasper opened the door with a click and the sound of low chanting slipped through the doorway. Just before he left, Loustor called his name.
“Vasper?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for… everything, I guess.”
The monk bowed. “You’re welcome.” With another click of the door’s handle, he was gone.
Loustor awoke to the eerie ringing of the monk’s chants. The sound was low and soft. It seemed to be coming from every direction at the same time. The sound was of many voices acting singularly, doubling and redoubling each other’s sounds till they were omnipresent. As he listened in the darkness, the music seemed to call to him, and his curiosity refused to let him drift back to sleep.
He got out of his bed, careful not to scrape his tender cuts and bruises against the harsh coarseness of the blankets. Fumbling around on the old, smooth wood of the walls, he at last found an electrical switch. With a flip, the room flooded with light, and Loustor blinked against the bright onslaught. His clothes were nearby the bed, folded neatly with his watch and boots set nearby. He dressed quickly and slid toward the wooden door.
As soon as Loustor opened the heavy door, the sound of chanting spilled into the room, much louder than before. The ancient hinges that held up the door squeaked with want of oil, but even that sound was almost inaudible over the rhythmic roar. Loustor stopped to listen to the drone for a second or two, then stepped into the shadowy hallway. The corridor was long and dim, the lights turned low for the evening. He must have slept the entire day away.
Turning his head left and right, Loustor at last determined that the loudest chanting was coming from far down the hallway to his left. It looked a bit like a cavern as he peered down its dim length. Doors were all along the corridor, almost uniform in their pairings between sagging wooden arches. There were paintings or statues every so often, but hardly enough to call the hallway furnished. He furrowed his brow curiously and stepped away from the door leading to his room. Something buzzed in his mind, and he paused.
How am I going to get back? Loustor thought, scratching just below his withered stalk.
Biting his lip, he sank his hand into one of his pockets, digging till he found a loose string. He pulled it out, licked it straight, and then pasted it onto the door, just below the knob. After a quick examination to make certain it would stick, Loustor nodded and followed the enchanting sound of the music.
He walked for what seemed like miles, marching past door after door, taking soft steps on the loose floor. The boards creaked loudly twice, but the chanting easily drowned out the sound from any suspicious ears. Loustor’s mind raced, thinking thoughts about everything and nothing as he went. He built up theories on what the chanting might be, disbelieved them, and made new ones. A nagging, cold thought in the back of his mind constantly reminded him that he would soon find out, for better or worse.
Loustor came upon a second hallway where a door should have been and paused at it. Having walked through the same scenery so many times, the newness startled him. It was a shorter hallway, its end visible and bright. The chanting seemed loudest here, resounding across the archaic wooden molding and unpainted walls. He raised his foot to step into it, then stopped, wondering if he had not already gone too far. The monks might have something secret, and if he blundered into it, there was no way to tell what they could do to him. Memories of the books and stories he had read of strange and malicious cults wormed their way into his mind.
With a shake of his head and a soft sigh, he cleared his mind of the thoughts. Snorting to himself, he rebuked the dark notions, and set his hovering foot down into the hallway. Another footstep followed, and he soon sneaked into the light at the end of the corridor.
The hallway opened up into a huge, circular room, several stories in height and dozens of yards long around the walls. The chanting was quite loud now, the roar of a hundred voices filling the air. Loustor’s nose burned against the strange smell of sweet incense and sour ancient wood from the walls. He was on an deserted balcony filled with benches, the whole area made with the same rough, ancient, unpainted wood that he had seen all along. The balcony ringed the whole room, and he stepped forward cautiously to the edge, staying low and away from the brightness that shone up from the floor of the room.
Peering down, Loustor’s eyes were filled with a scene he had never before imagined. Dozens of monks, each dressed in the same drab, heavy robes he had seen on Vasper and the other monk, paraded around the room in a slow circle, stepping and clapping their sandals against the floor with the beat of the chant. The lower part of the room was made with shining stone, a magnificent juxtaposition against the unkempt wood that was all Loustor had seen. Iron and gold intertwined like ivy along the walls, forming words and figures amongst the purely aesthetic twists and turns. Most impressive of all was a trio of monks in the center of the room standing on a raised platform covered in red cloth. They were dressed in white and seemed to be wearing helmets and breastplates made of iron and gold, intertwining like the ivy on the walls. The trio did not seem to be chanting, but instead swung small lanterns that puffed out white clouds of incense.
Loustor slowly tore his eyes away from the ritual below and looked up. The room’s ceiling was high above his head, higher than he was even above the floor. Colored windows made delicate designs and told tales of heroes and prophets. The metal ivy seemed to grow up the walls, making the windows to be their buds and flowers. Loustor gaped at the sight, feeling dizzy as he tried to look at all of the pictures at once.
He suddenly felt a peculiar grip on his shoulder, and he gasped again. Turning quickly, he found a monk with a shadowed face looking at him. Loustor immediately swallowed fearfully. Images of Asperian sacrifice and horrid rituals dashed into his mind. Wincing against the thoughts, he chased them away and looked again. Deep in the dark shadows beneath the hood, he found a soft blue eye looking out at him.
“Vasper?” Loustor whispered, his voice all but drowned out by the chanting emanating from the monks below.
The monk nodded once and motioned toward one of the benches. They sat down together and listened for a moment to the musical chanting.
Vasper leaned close to Loustor and said, “I came to check on you, but you were gone.” His voice was just loud enough to be heard over the chants. “I imagined you’d probably follow the sound of chanting.”
Loustor furrowed his brow. “What made you think that?”
Vasper shrugged, his hidden shoulders rising the dark cloth of his robes high. “You’re a rather bright lad, which means you’re most likely curious.”
Loustor felt his cheek rise in a half-smile.
“So?” Vasper asked, turning away and looking out over the balcony’s edge. “What do you think?”
“The music?” Loustor asked.
Vasper’s hood nodded.
“It’s pretty powerful,” Loustor told him. “I like the bass, very deep and mysterious sounding. It’s amazing to hear that many voices without instruments.”
Vasper’s shadowed face looked at him strangely. “That’s a rather scientific answer.”
“Well, I’m a rather smart lad,” Loustor replied.
Vasper nodded again. “As long as you’re not too smart for your own good.”
Loustor blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I knew a guy once,” Vasper said with a soft sigh. “He had plenty of book smarts and philosophy and so forth, but he never quite knew what it meant to feel. Too much learning kept him away from his troubles, but it also kept him from the good things. He’d rather spend all day reading a paper than with his daughter. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen.”
“Ah,” Loustor said, nodding and turning away.
The two sat there, together, yet very distant. The chanting below filled their ears, but soon the sound became commonplace so that Loustor no longer consciously heard it. Strangely, though, the rhythms and mumbled words warmed his stomach. It was almost as if the music moved something deep and forgotten inside him.
“So,” Vasper asked suddenly, leaning quickly so that his voice could pierce the short distance flooded with music, “what brought you to our doorstep?”
Loustor said nothing and looked out over the shining gold and dull, black iron that knitted over the polished stone walls.
Vasper waited for the response several moments. Looking up at Loustor, he watched him, and then turned away. “I suppose I’m rather curious myself.”
Loustor sighed and lowered his eyes to the floor. “I’m on my way someplace.”
“Interesting,” Vasper said. “Vague, though.”
“Come on, you want my life story?” Loustor asked, his voice grinding with contempt. He had thought Vasper to be a holder of wisdom, but prying into Loustor’s secrets hardly seemed wise.
Vasper simply said, “Why shouldn’t I?”
“It’s a little personal, don’t you think?”
“Afraid of becoming personal?”
“You’re not a psychiatrist,” Loustor said, shaking his head. Within his own mind, he wondered if the mysterious monk might actually be.
“No,” Vasper told him at last. “Just a fellow soul on the ship of life.”
“Well, if you must now,” Loustor said, giving into the questions, “I’m trying to get to Valysia. It’s a place for surd-- A place for nontelepathic people like us.”
“Ah, that explains at least some,” Vasper said with a flat voice.
“Don’t you ever want to be with people who are like you?” Loustor asked.
“I am,” Vasper said. “Not that they’re nontelepathic, but the brothers are very much like me in spirit.”
“So you just stay as a deaf-mute in the world of thinking people.”
“Some of the brothers do it willingly,” Vasper told him. “It’s a vow of telepathic silence, allowing one to muddle around in one’s own mind till he can set everything straight.”
Loustor paused and thought of his own introspection. He had always thought of it as a quality forced upon him. But here perfectly normal Asperians did it out of their own free will. Loustor flinched against a bolt of confusion and furrowed his brow again.
“To each their own,” Loustor said at last. “For me, I just want to find a place where I can be normal.”
“Sounds a bit like a quest,” Vasper said coolly.
“I suppose so.”
“You know,” Vasper said, sitting up straighter and letting a little light into the shadows under his hood, “it used to be that lads about your age would all go out on quests. They would spend a few weeks, perhaps months or years, out in the world, exploring and surviving. When they found what they were looking for, they would come back as full men.”
Loustor snorted. “No one’s done that for hundreds of years, ever since we evolved beyond tiny agricultural villages.”
“You said ‘evolve’ like it was a good thing,” Vasper said, his blue eye shining. A hint of a smile showed out from the dimness over his face.
“So you think we should still have mandatory quests?” Loustor asked, raising a brow ridge.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
Loustor winced and looked away from the monk. “You’re crazy.”
“How so?”
“Stop asking questions.”
“Very well,” Vasper said, sitting lower again so that his face was again black under his long hood. “I was just trying to learn who you were. Then again, it sounds rather like you need to learn that yourself.”
Loustor looked up curiously. “What do you mean?”
“Back to questions?” Vasper asked. He chuckled and then continued. “I think this quest of yours will be very good for you. You’ll learn who you are, who the world is, who the Deity is, and how they all fit together.”
“Deity,” Loustor repeated.
Vasper looked at him from the darkness.
“My family’s never really been into the whole religious thing,” Loustor told him. “I mean, it’s great and all if it makes you happy, but it’s just not for me.”
Vasper made a soft sigh. “You have a lot to learn.”
Loustor rolled his eyes. “About some force that toys with mortals and makes you have to keep it appeased? Maybe I do.”
“Theology aside,” Vasper said, his tone dropping into a warning, “one ought to watch his arrogance.”
“Oh, yes, I don’t want to upset the king of the universe or whatever,” Loustor scoffed. Rolling his eyes upward, he said, “He might strike me down where I sit.”
Vasper sat forward quickly, grabbing Loustor’s hand through the coarse cloth of his sleeve. The three-fingered grip was strange, like a trio of wide tongs. Even above the resounding chanting, Loustor could hear the sharp, frightened breaths ringing out from under Vasper’s dark hood.
“Don’t ever say that,” Vasper told him, his words sharp and hard. “You owe the Deity every heartbeat.”
“I don’t owe Him anything,” Loustor told him.
“You owe Him everything,” Vasper replied.
“Look, He’s supposed to be all just and fair. Why would He do this to me?” Loustor asked sharply, pointing to his withered stalk.
“Why would He do this to me?” Vasper repeated, pointing a sleeve-covered hand to his own shadowed face. “Was it years worth of pain, agony at every breath through my crippled throat, just so I could show some arrogant kid the truth?”
Loustor felt his eyes grow wide. Something about the old monk seemed so sincere, more than Loustor had ever heard in his life. As Loustor stared at him, the monk watched back, his one eye glistening in the shadows. Slowly, Vasper released his grip and sat back calmly.
“Go on your quest,” Vasper told Loustor. “You need it.”
Loustor swallowed and studied the shrouded monk. “I need some money for a train ticket. The punks stole my bag.”
Vasper’s hood nodded. “Then you should think of a way of getting it.”
With a sigh, Loustor turned away from the monk and stared out at the metal ivy again. The chanters were beginning to grow silent, their voices lowering into whispers as the white-robed monks set their incense down. Schemes rolled through his mind, but the back of Loustor’s mind, his most private sanctuary, wondered if there really might be wisdom tucked into the mad monk’s words.
When the music went silent, Loustor stood. Vasper looked up as he did and then slowly rose next to him.
“I can find my way back,” Loustor assured him. “I hooked a string so I’d know which door was mine.”
Vasper’s hood nodded. “Rather clever. But, taking care of yourself like that, you’ll never learn to trust anyone.”
Loustor turned back toward the short hallway where he had entered. As he took the first steps, his mind continued to buzz. Just before leaving the great room, he glimpsed back to Vasper.
“You know, most adults would have just demanded to know who I was and sent me home,” Loustor said.
“I’m not most adults,” the monk replied simply.