Thinking of nothing should have been easy in a space like this. His monastic cell was bare save for a simple cot to sleep on, with nothing but empty gray stone to fill his mind. It was such a contrast to the chambers hed once enjoyed. Even on campaign, his tent had featured a feather mattress, and there had always been a golden wine jug close to hand…

Stop it, Brother Odd ordered himself.

These memories were the seductive ones, the ones that seemed innocuous until he started to think about them. Yet if he sat with them, he knew that the others would follow. Knowing that he couldnt keep sitting in his cell, he rose and padded from it, feeling the itch of his rough habit as he walked.

He did even that in silence, because the hour was absolute. Even the abbot made no sound during it. Those who broke the rule were punished through extra work in the scriptorium or even expulsion. Maybe, Brother Odd thought, it would be better to be punished like that. All the gods knew he deserved it.

He couldnt risk leaving, though. Here he was safe, from the man he was, and from the things hed done. Out in the world, who knew what evil he would visit on it?

Brother Odd wove his way through the monastery in silence, out into the gardens where he would normally work with the others, the backbreaking labor easy to a man with muscles honed through years of warfare. He went past that garden, to a garden of contemplation where stones carved with gods and demons and more stood, and the floor was a tiled thing, worn by so many feet that there were grooves in it.

He sat there among the statues for a moment or two, but could already feel the memories rising, blood and death sitting on the edge of his thoughts as if waiting for the merest slip. A fragment of memory seeped through: a childs body, broken by fallen masonry. Brother Odd shuddered at that image, but the worst part of it was that he couldnt even remember exactly when it had been.

Has there been so much violence that I cant even place it? he wondered.

The answer to that came as more thoughts of his past life flooded in, past the barriers he had so carefully built on the island. He saw a foe swinging a sword, felt the crunch of impact as he stepped to the side and struck back. He saw the brightness of the tournament field, soon giving way to the fire pits used to get rid of the bodies in the aftermath of a battle. Was it Landshane, or Merivel? Not one of the skirmishes, nor even the last foray into the Southern Kingdom, but Brother Odd still couldnt place it all.