“Praise God!” Father Brandt cried.
Alred twisted his head around and saw Father Aelfden standing in the doorway with the wild hair and wide eyes of Moses just come down from his mount.
Sigefrith leapt from his chair. “You’re home!”
“With reinforcements!” Alred added when he saw the second dark-robed cleric in the shadows behind him.
“What has happened here?” Father Aelfden asked dazedly.
“Have you seen the church?” Sigefrith asked. “Please, come in and have a seat. And your companion. Welcome.”
“This is Brude of Airdmore, who is come to witness the miracle of the evergreen willow. But such is nothing compared to what we have seen today.”
“You saw it?” Sigefrith repeated.
Alred thought the other priest an interesting-looking character, with hair redder even than Edris’s or Theobald’s, if this was possible, and more freckles than Lady Eadgith. But his face was ghastly pale beneath them.
If they hadn’t gathered for such a grave matter, Alred would have found the poor man laughable: some priest sent on a tiresome journey to the wrong side of the Scottish border, all to look at a tree that had got a few peasants excited – only to stumble into something that seemed to confirm at least the existence of the devil, if the tree were not a convincing sign of the Lord’s work.
“The people nearly dragged us there,” Father Aelfden said. “What happened?”
“We don’t know! What you saw! Last night there was a sound as of thunder that was heard for miles around. And it seems it was the sound of the church… what did our court poet say again?” Sigefrith snapped his fingers at Alred.
“Erupting,” Alred supplied.
“The church erupting! Exploding! What you saw!”
“And the earth beneath it,” Cenwulf added.
“I think it was the earth beneath it that pushed the rest of it up,” Alred said. “You’ve seen the hole. I don’t believe there’s enough dirt there to account for a pit of that size.”
“There were the catacombs under there,” Sigefrith reminded him.
“Even then.”
“Was it struck by lightning?” the strange priest asked meekly.
“Lighting!” Sigefrith cried. “Father! It may be, but such a thunderbolt could only have come from the hand of Jupiter!”
Aelfden clucked at his blasphemy and said, “I think we need not resort to paganism to explain this event.”
“Can you explain it?”
“Precisely what has been happening in this church since I left?” Aelfden asked pointedly and turned to Father Brandt.
“Nothing unseemly!” Brandt roared.
“It was profaned once before,” Aelfden reminded him.
“When thou wert within!”
“And wrestled with a demon!”
Father Brude choked.
“I’m sorry you weren’t here to wrestle this one!” Sigefrith said.
“Was there one?” Aelfden asked, going nearly as white as the other priest.
“Not that we saw. But something had to cause the church to – to – ”
“Erupt,” Alred said.
“Erupt and toss stones all the way across the road, and onto the roof of Father Brandt’s house!”
“I’m not certain I would ask even the good Father to wrestle a demon of that size,” Cenwulf said. “It must have been enormous to cause that much damage.”
“Perhaps that’s what was in the hole,” Alred suggested.
“But was there a demon?” Father Brude whispered.
“We didn’t say that,” Cenwulf said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Sigefrith said. “We have elves already, and at least one demon.”
“And the Dark Lady,” Alred said.
“And a hundred-and-fifty-year-old woman who can turn herself into a bat,” Sigefrith added.
“Egelric even saw a dragon once. And lately we host the Wild Hunt,” Alred said.
“Oh, that!” Cenwulf scoffed. “I’m certain it was only a couple of boys who got drunk and decided to have a horse race at midnight.”
“The men who saw it said there were dozens of riders,” Alred pointed out.
“Don’t forget,” Cenwulf said, “that since Sunday night, their number has at least doubled, the dogs have been transformed into wolves, the men have sprouted horns and grown ten feet taller, and the horses have begun breathing fire.”
“That is to be expected with the retelling, but they had to have something to tell in the first place.”
“Last night you didn’t believe a word of it!” Cenwulf cried.
“Last night the church had not yet ‘erupted,’ as His Gracious Majesty insists on putting it. The Wild Hunt is supposed to presage catastrophe, and a catastrophe of that scale suffices in my mind to prove the existence its antecedent.”
“I go away for a year and everything comes crashing down!” Father Aelfden groaned.
“Erupts,” Alred corrected.
“Thinkest everything is my fault?” Father Brandt wailed.
“I suppose I might have done something to prevent all of this!” Aelfden said.
“And who art thou?” Brandt roared. “Holier than I?”
“It may be! Saint Margaret’s chapel still stands!”
“Gentlemen, clergymen,” Alred soothed. “It took a year of your absence for the church to erupt, Father, but I see it still takes no more than five minutes of your presence for Father Brandt to erupt, and you likewise.”
Sigefrith giggled, but Cenwulf said gravely, “Let us not forget that we are all on the same side here.”
“That’s right,” Sigefrith said. “It’s us against the demons. And the elves. And the Wild Hunt.”
“Now, I wouldn’t say all the elves are against us,” Alred said. “Iylaine isn’t, and Sela wasn’t, and some of the elves are quite friendly. There are simply some others that are evil.”
“And a few others that are dead and continue walking around,” Sigefrith added.
“What is this place to which you have taken me?” Father Brude whispered.
Alred laughed. “Welcome to Lothere!”
And our first glimpse of the oh-so-dishy Father Brude. 
but that’s very funny to see!
Chapters
Usually it's tedious to take pictures for these talking-around-a-table scenes, but this one was fun--with the two priests snapping at each other and Sigefrith having a conniption back there.