Seeker

by William Nicholson

  Seeker felt his brother's arms round him and tried to speak and couldn't. The terror of the machine, the shock of the minutes he'd been in its power, the astonishing appearance from nowhere of his beloved brother, all staggered his mind and scattered his thoughts. But then, looking up through the windows in the roof, he saw the red sky, and he remembered.

  "Sunset! They're going to throw her from the rock!"

  Blaze lifted up his head and uttered a long high whistling cry.

  "Fall! Fall! Fall!" chanted the people of Radiance as the sun sank into the water.

  On the emptying terrace there was pandemonium. The court officials were scrambling to escape the revenge of the spikers, even as the great dogs came bounding up the crowded stairways. The tribute was facing the very edge of the rock and seemed about to fall. The priests had left her side, afraid of the spikers. Fearful for their own lives, they were running for the safety of the stairs.

  The sun was half gone below the horizon.

  "Fall! Fall! Fall!" shrieked the people.

  The great dogs burst baying onto the terrace, rending the crazed spikers with their jaws. After them came the axers, swinging their chains. The Wildman stood over Morning Star and prepared to fight. A dog crouched to spring. An axer closed in, his sweeping chain hissing by so close it rattled the bracelets on the Wildman's golden arm. The dog sprang—

  A high whistling sound came lancing through the air. Out of nowhere dropped a tall hooded man in a gray tunic. The leaping dog folded in mid-spring. The axer's chain fell to the ground with a clatter of heavy iron links. A second hooded man appeared on the terrace, and a third. The shouts faded on the lips of the escaped spikers. As more and more hooded men threw off their disguises and revealed themselves, the terrified priests and officials scrambling down the stairways came to a stop. The panic in the temple square faded away. A sudden stillness came upon the people of Radiance.

  The Nomana had taken control.

  Now at last, in utter silence, the sun slipped away and was gone, and no tribute had been offered.

  Night had come for the people and city of Radiance. The unthinkable had happened. The day had ended, and no offering had been made to the Radiant Power that gave life to all the world. Therefore the sun would not rise in the morning. The end of the world had begun.

  As this realization spread, a terrible lamentation rose up from the temple square. The people began to groan and keen like wounded animals. Halfway down the broad stairway, the king dropped to his knees and bowed his head. The High Priest staggered as if in pain, uttering low guttural cries. Blessing breathed rapidly and felt hot and tore off her headdress and felt hotter still and tore at her gown. Only the king's secretary remained in control of himself He looked round at this city of fools, and thought of the weapon he had caused to be built, and of Blaze who was waiting for him, and he felt only a contemptuous pride. What did he care if their god had failed them? What did he care if a handful of Nomana destroyed their entire city? He possessed the ultimate power. His move was yet to come. When it came, it would be final.

  Morning Star rose to her feet and made her way across the terrace towards the rock edge. The lady in white stood still, rimmed by the crimson afterglow in the sky, waiting for her. She was so beautiful and so familiar and so sad.

  "Mama?"

  Morning Star was timid in the face of what she had wanted for so long. If this was her mother, why didn't she reach out to her and hold her?

  "Not Mama," said Mercy. "I lost the right to be your mama long ago."

  But it was her mother's own sweet voice, long remembered, long forgotten.

  "You'll always be my mother," said Morning Star. And she knelt before her.

  "My darling," said Mercy. "What use am I?"

  "You're no use, Mama. You're just my mother."

  At that, Mercy too sank to her knees, and kissed her child on one cheek, and then on the other, meaning by these kisses to ask her forgiveness, which Morning Star understood and gave. Then at last the mother took the child in her arms.

  Seeker came limping and stumbling over the iron walkway above the now-empty tanks, and so out onto the temple terrace. Here he saw the aftermath of the chaos that had struck the city. The last of the escaped spikers were making their way off the terrace, down to the square below. Dogs lay whimpering in the shadows. The mountainous body of an axer half blocked the doorway.

  And there stood the Wildman, silver bracelets glinting crimson in the dying light.

  "Heya, Seeker!"

  They fell into each other's arms.

  "She's safe!" said the Wildman. "She's good!"

  Seeker then saw Morning Star, kneeling on the rock, holding the hands of a lady in white.

  "So she found her."

  No one had told him. He had not needed to be told. As he looked, Morning Star rose to her feet and left her mother, and came towards them.

  "My friends," she said. She had tears in her eyes.

  Seeker reached out his trembling arms. She came to him, and he held her, and the Wildman hugged them both, and for a few sweet moments they were close, and did not speak.

  Then Morning Star said, "The Wildman saved me."

  The Wildman said, "The hoodies saved me."

  Seeker said, "My brother saved me."

  They looked round. There were the Nomana; and standing with them, as one of them, was Blaze.

  The Noble Warriors raised their arms high above their heads, each one reaching up his forefingers and touching them together, to make of his body an arrow pointing to the stars: the Nomana salute.

  Blaze looked from the Wildman, to Morning Star, to Seeker.

  "Be proud, little brother," he said. "The Nomana honor you."

  32. Night

  ALL THAT NIGHT THE PEOPLE OF RADIANCE WALKED the streets, weeping and calling for mercy, gathering in open squares round improvised bonfires to share their terrors and hide from the dark they feared would never end. The king, the High Priest, all the higher court officials, and the senior priests gathered in the main sanctuary of the temple, where they abased themselves on the marble floor before the golden hearth, in which burned the night fire that was the symbol of their god. Here they waited in dread for the dawn that they knew would not come.

  Cheerful Giver called together his wife and his sons and his servants, and lit a ring of torches in the courtyard of his house, and there they passed the whole night in prayer. Blessing, who had always been the most devout member of the family, had almost lost her wits with fear and shock.

  "I had a daughter," she kept saying. "Where have they taken my daughter? Why doesn't she come?"

  Cheerful Giver understood very little of the disaster that had struck them all, but he was sure that he personally had been duped. Somehow the tribute he had purchased for so high a price had turned out to be in league with the Nomana. He was consumed by a bitter rage. Somehow, for reasons he could not fathom, everybody had conspired to cheat and humiliate him.

  "She's gone," he said savagely. "She made a fool of us all. I knew it all along. But you would believe her."

  "Where is she?" cried poor bewildered Blessing. "She's my own little girl."

  Soren Similin stood in the dark laboratory and saw by the light of the moon the devastation that had overtaken all his hopes. The complex apparatus that had filled the high room was destroyed. Blaze, his perfect volunteer, was gone. All his planning, all his work, was lost. How had this happened? How had the secret laboratory been found and entered?

  Suddenly weary, he sat himself down and put his head in his hands. What had he done wrong? What clues had he missed? He had been as surprised as everyone else by the coming of the Nomana, but he had told himself it was not his war. He was no part of Radiance, or its god. Only now, before the shattered remains of his greatest creation, did he begin to guess that it was his war after all: that the Nomana had attacked not a false god—for why should they fear the superstitions of fools?—but a real weapon.

  He heard a moveme
nt in the darkness.

  "Who's there?"

  Out of the shadows crept Evor Ortus.

  "All gone," he said. "All gone."

  "Did you see what happened?"

  "Oh, yes. I saw."

  "Was it the Nomana?"

  "It was the one you brought here. The Noma you brought here. It's all because of you." Ortus started to laugh, in a jerky hysterical fashion. "He smashed it! He broke everything he could break! Smash! Smash! Smash! All because of you! You wanted all the credit. Well, take it! It's all yours! You brought him here! And because of you, he destroyed my life's work."

  "Nonsense! We can build it again."

  "How? The sun will never rise again. It's over. It's all over."

  Similin said no more. The man had lost his mind, he could see that. The little scientist shuffled away through the open door, babbling and cackling to himself, no longer of any use to anybody Similin's calculations moved on.

  So somehow Blaze had been using him all along. He must take responsibility for that. So be it. He would accept the consequences. Let there be punishment. Let there be disgrace. Once more he would turn the enmity of the world into his own peculiar source of strength. The more they mock me, the stronger I become, he said to himself I am myself like the weapon I created, and will create again. All the hatred and contempt that is hurled at me flows into my blood and makes me ever more dangerous. I have not been defeated. I have only been delayed.

  But first, he knew, must come the punishment. He sank to his knees and let his forehead fall until it was resting on the ground.

  "I have not done well, mistress."

  You have not done well, came the reply.

  "I must be punished."

  You must he punished.

  So it came. Like sharp needles run deep into his flesh, the keen pain lanced him again and again, causing his limbs to spasm and then to thrash. But not one sound did he make. He writhed on the floor, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and the sweat streamed from his brow, but he never cried out. When he was deserving, there came the sweetness. When he failed, there came the punishment. Both were supreme gifts of love, and in return he loved his mistress with all his being, even as she made him suffer.

  When the punishment was over, he picked himself up from the floor and sat, drained of all strength, in the wooden chair built for the carrier. He looked up through the roof windows at the stars in the night sky. In a few short hours it would be the dawn of a new day.

  "A new day," he said to himself.

  An idea began then to grow in him.

  "A new day."

  As the first light of the new day spread across the sky, the frightened people of the city looked up in confusion and disbelief. Were they to rejoice, because the world had not ended? Or to despair, because their god was shown to be indifferent to them? For all their lives the ritual and drama of the evening offering had demonstrated to them, like a test ever renewed and ever passed, that they were a chosen people. So long as the Radiant Power that gave light to the world required their daily tribute, their god was in some sense tied to them. Their god needed them. But if the daily tribute was not necessary after all—if the sun rose whether or not they showed themselves to be worthy—then who was to say that the Radiant Power looked on them with any more favor than on anyone else?

  These were shocking thoughts. Too shocking for some. Cheerful Giver, still on his knees in the courtyard of his house, saw the pre-dawn light in the sky, and smelled another trick designed to fool him.

  "Just because there's light over the mountains," he said, "doesn't mean it's dawn. It could be moonlight. Or firelight. Or a false light sent to test our faith."

  But even as he was speaking, the sun itself rose over the rim of mountains. From all over the city there went up shouts of wonder and consternation. The sun had risen after all.

  Cheerful Giver no longer knew what to think. He clambered to his feet and doused the torches. His wife and his two boys were fast asleep, as were many of his servants. His housekeeper was watching him with frightened eyes.

  "What will happen now, sir?"

  "How do I know? I'm just an oil seller. The High Priest will tell us."

  He spoke with a profound bitterness. He could see no advantage to himself, however this catastrophe developed. Either the priests would know what to do, in which case their prestige would be enhanced, or they would not, and the social order would collapse.

  He heard a murmuring sound from the street outside and went to the still-open gates to look. There, advancing from the lower city, was a great crowd. They weren't threatening, they were imploring.

  "Guide us with your wisdom! Protect us with your power!"

  They were converging on the temple square, chanting the familiar words, now charged with desperate meaning. They wanted to be told what to think of all that had happened and to be reassured that somehow life would go on as before. But beneath the pleas, Cheerful Giver also heard a more ominous note. The people were coming to the temple to be saved. And if they were not saved—

  He shuddered.

  "Come," he called, waking his household. "We should hear this, too."

  The crowd gathered in the temple square. The square was big, but even so it was not big enough for the great numbers that came pushing in from every side street. People climbed up on porches and railings, and filled the houses that looked on to the square, and even crowded onto the wide portico of the temple itself. They left a space before the great sanctuary doors, because it was here that the king and the priests would appear before them.

  The pleading cries of the crowd rose up and echoed from the temple walls.

  "Guide us with your wisdom! Protect us with your power!"

  No answer came from within the temple. But the people did not go away. At first patiently, and then impatiently, they cried their cries and beat on the great closed doors.

  At last there came the sound of bolts being drawn back. Word ran through the great crowd and down all the packed streets leading to the square.

  "The doors are opening!"

  As the news spread, a silence fell, reaching ever further out, like ripples in a pond. By the time the great doors began to open, an expectant stillness lay over the whole multitude.

  When the doors were fully open, the temple priests appeared. They were in two lines, and each priest had one hand on the shoulder of the priest in front. They came out uncertainly, weaving slightly from side to side as they came. The people watched and held their breath.

  Then the High Priest came into view. He walked with his hands reached out before him and felt his way with careful, probing footsteps. After him came the king, Radiant Vision himself. He too had his hands reached out before him. The watching people saw and were bewildered. Why were their leaders acting as if they couldn't see where they were going?

  Radiant Vision fumbled his way to the front of the steps, and his eyes gazed out over the sea of faces; but it was clear he saw none of them. The High Priest stood by his side, unseeing eyes also reaching out to nothing. The priests of the temple stood in their lines on either side, and though their eyes were open, they too were blind. It was no trick. These were the true believers. All their lives they had known that if the tribute was not paid, the great light would not rise again; so for them it had not risen.

  "My people!" said the king, his voice breaking with grief. "My dear people! Darkness has come upon us! The night has begun that has no end! There is no hope for any of us! It is over!"

  The people heard this in silence, thinking it must be the beginning of a longer speech. But then they saw the king turn and begin to hobble back into the temple. That was when their fury broke.

  "Liar!" they screamed. "Deceiver!"

  "Sacrifice!" The cry rang out from high above. "There must be sacrifice!"

  A dazzle of gold flashed from the temple terrace, from the place where the king presented himself to the people each evening. A figure in a golden cloak stood catching the bright r
ays of the rising sun, his arms outreached on either side.

  "Our god is angry!" the shining figure cried. "The Radiant Power is angry! There must be a death!"

  "Death!" cried the people. "Death!"

  They had no idea who it was who spoke to them, but his call sounded as the true voice of their fears, and gave them a way to save themselves from the horror into which they had been plunged.

  "Death to the deceivers!" cried the shining figure above. "Throw them from the rock!"

  This was all it took. The crowd knew at once that this was right, that this was fitting, that this would return them to the favor of their all-powerful god. Without further hesitation, they surged up the temple steps and poured into the sanctuary and hunted down their former masters. For all their lives they had trembled before them, but now the Radiant Power no longer favored them, and the proof of it was that they had been struck blind.

  The mob hunted them down and dragged them up the stairway to the high rock and from there they hurled them to their death. The king and the High Priest, the lesser priests and the court officials, in twos and threes and fours, fell screaming from the high rock to the bloody shallows of the lake far below.

  The man in the golden cloak stood in the rays of the rising sun, and his heart was filled with gladness. He saw clearly now. All that the little people asked in life was to be told how to save themselves. He would tell them. When they were unsure what their god wanted of them, he would guide them. All they required was clarity, and consistency.

  Soren Similin had discovered the secret of power.

  Now the little people would kneel before him and call him lord. Now he would deliver them to his masters, and they would be harvested.

  33. The Beginning

  THEY TRAVELLED TOGETHER, SEEKER AND BLAZE, THE Wildman, Morning Star and Mercy. The Nomana who had come to their rescue accompanied them too, on the long road south. Morning Star and Mercy spoke very little, still overcome by the immensity of all that had taken place. The Nomana spoke not at all. They walked quietly, their faces shaded by their badans, and seemed almost to be asleep.