In the thirty-second year of the reign of King Mamonitis, there came upon the sovereign a familiar unease. It settled in his chest during the evening meal and did not lift. His ministers noticed. The court noticed. By morning, the realm of Cubicalis had begun to whisper.
The King required confidence.
And so, as his fathers before him, Mamonitis issued the ancient decree: the Proventus would be performed. Messengers rode forth before dawn.
The Bishop of Cubicalis received the summons while attending to correspondence. He read it twice, though he knew its contents before breaking the seal. He had received this summons many times. He would receive it many times more.
The Bishop summoned his scribe and dictated a letter to Father Aldric, priest of St. Varian’s, a church of minor consequence in the eastern reaches of the realm. The letter bore the Bishop’s seal and the weight of obligation. It said nothing of why. It did not need to.
Father Aldric received the letter three days hence. He read it in his study, beside a window overlooking the monastery that adjoined his church. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He called for a novice and dispatched instruction to the Balancian Order: the Proventus falls to them. Prepare Excelus.
The novice crossed the muddy ground between church and monastery. He delivered the message to the Prior. The Prior read it, nodded, and assigned the task to Brother Justinian.
This was always how it went.
Brother Justinian had served the Balancian Order for nineteen years. He had arrived with faith—faith in the Order, faith in Excelus, faith that the Proventus served some higher purpose visible only to those above him in the great chain.
That faith had not survived.
He could not say when it died. There was no single moment. It had simply worn away, like stone beneath water, until one day he reached for it and found nothing there.
Now he performed his duties as a man performs breathing. Without thought. Without belief. Without cessation.
He received the Prior’s instruction. He walked to his cell. He sat on his bed and looked out the narrow window toward the tree line of Vendoria, where the forest began its dark sprawl beyond the monastery walls.
He made his decision. The same decision he had made for eleven years.
The sorcerers of Vendoria arrived at dusk, as they always did. There were four of them. They did not use the main gate. Brother Justinian met them at the gap in the eastern wall where the stones had shifted and no one had requisitioned repair.
He led them to the chapter house, empty at this hour. Candles were lit. The sorcerers arranged themselves around the great table, each producing their instruments. One laid out a cloth of black silk and a pouch of bone fragments. Another carried runestones in a leather bag, worn soft by generations of hands. A third brought nothing but sat with his eyes closed, palms flat upon the wood. The fourth produced a small copper bowl and a vial of something Justinian did not wish to identify.
They did not greet each other. There was no need. They had done this many times.
“The King requires knowledge of what is to come,” Justinian said. “What gold shall flow. What works shall be completed. What provisions shall be necessary. From now until the year’s end.”
The sorcerers nodded. The one with the bones spoke first.
“The northern territories,” he said. “I shall cast for those.”
“The northern territories are mine,” said the one with the runestones. “I have cast for the north these past six years.”
“Your castings for the north predicted the bridge at Calford would be completed by harvest. The bridge at Calford has no stones yet laid.”
“The runes do not lie. The builders lie.”
“Then what use are the runes?”
“What use are your bones? You predicted the granary fire.”
“I predicted a fire. There was a fire.”
“In the southern reach. Eighteen months later.”
Justinian let them argue. This was also part of the ritual.
In time, the sorcerers cast. Bones fell upon silk. Runestones scattered and were interpreted. The silent one opened his eyes and spoke numbers in a low voice, as if reciting a dream before it faded. The fourth did something with the copper bowl that Justinian chose not to watch.
They offered their findings. Justinian transcribed them into Excelus, the great ledger of the Proventus. The pages were vellum, the binding ancient, the columns hand-ruled by monks now decades dead.
The numbers meant nothing to him. Perhaps they meant nothing at all. Perhaps they meant everything. He could not tell the difference anymore.
When the sorcerers finished, they departed as they had come. Justinian sat alone in the chapter house, Excelus open before him. The candles guttered. He did not move.
Excelus ascended.
Brother Justinian passed it to the Prior, who passed it to Father Aldric, who sent it by courier to the Bishop.
The Bishop reviewed it in his study by candlelight. He had done this many times. He would do it many times more. The sorcerers’ figures lay before him in neat columns—projections of grain yields and trade revenues, of construction timelines and military provisions. He read them with the practiced eye of a man who understood that accuracy was not the purpose.
He uncapped his inkwell.
The northern territories showed an optimistic projection for the silver mines. The Bishop reduced the figure by a fifth. Mamonitis did not respond well to optimism that later proved unfounded; he responded worse still to those who had provided it. Better to promise less and exceed than to promise much and fall short.
The construction estimates for the harbor works seemed reasonable. He left those untouched.
The grain projections from the eastern provinces he increased slightly. The sorcerers, he had observed, tended toward pessimism regarding agriculture. Mamonitis found pessimism unpleasant. The Bishop adjusted the figure upward, splitting the difference between what the bones had suggested and what the King would wish to hear.
He worked through the columns methodically. A reduction here. An increase there. A margin widened. A timeline extended. He made no notes explaining his changes. There was no need. No one would ever ask why the Proventus said what it said. They would only ask whether the King was confident.
When he finished, the ink had dried and the candle had burned low. Excelus now contained the future of Cubicalis—not as the sorcerers had divined it, but as the King could bear to receive it.
The Bishop sent Excelus to the King.
The Procession of Excelus through Cubicalis was a matter of great ceremony. The ledger traveled in a reliquary of oak and bronze, borne by four bearers in white vestments. Citizens lined the streets. Children were lifted to see. The King himself received the reliquary on the steps of the palace, and when he opened it and beheld Excelus within, his face showed peace.
The realm exhaled.
Mamonitis was confident. The numbers had been divined. The future was known. All was well in Cubicalis.
Excelus was placed in the palace reliquary, beside the Excelus of the previous Proventus, and the one before that, in a long row of ledgers stretching back beyond memory. Dust settled upon the bronze. The bearers dispersed. The citizens returned to their labors.
It was said that a minister, some years past, had attempted to retrieve an earlier Excelus to compare its projections against what had actually come to pass. He had been discouraged. The comparison served no purpose, he was told. The Proventus was not a record of what would happen. It was a record of what had been divined. These were not the same thing, and conflating them showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the ritual’s function. The minister did not raise the matter again.
Weeks passed. The moon turned. Turned again.
In the eastern reach, Brother Justinian copied manuscripts and said nothing. In Vendoria, the sorcerers tended their fires and awaited the next summons. In the palace, Mamonitis ruled with confidence, for the future had been written and sealed.
And then, one evening, the King felt a familiar unease settle in his chest.
His ministers noticed.
By morning, messengers were riding forth.
Ernest J. Sludge is a lay brother of the Balancian Order. He has transcribed fourteen Proventus and expects to transcribe fourteen more.