by Tad Williams
Was that a dream I had last night? Shem and Ruben and the voices? Was it truly just a mad fancy, or was it as real as it seemed... as it sounded?
Ever since the night of his escape from the Hayholt, he had not felt a master of his own destiny. That same Stoning Night, when he had somehow felt Pryrates’ repellent thoughts and had unwillingly shared in the ritual as Elias received the terrible gift of the sword Sorrow, Simon had wondered if he was even a master of his own mind. His dreams had become vivid far beyond the realms of mere night-wandering. The dream at Geloë’s house, in which a cadaverous Morgenes had warned him of a false messenger, and the repeated visitations of the great, all-crushing wheel and of the tree-that-was-a-tower, white among the stars—these seemed too insistent, too powerful to be just unsettled sleep. And now, in his dreams the night before, he heard heard Pryrates talking to some unearthly thing as clearly as if Simon listened at a keyhole. These were not anything like the dreams of his life before this last terrible year.
When Binabik and Geloë had taken him on the Road of Dreams, the vision he experienced there had felt much like these others—iike dreaming, but with a wild and indescribable potency of vision. Perhaps somehow, because of Pryrates on the hilltop or something else, a door had opened in him that sometimes led to the dream-road. That seemed like madness, but what did not in this topsy-turvy age? The dreams must be important—when he awoke, it was with the sense of something infinitely crucial slipping away—but terrifyingly, he had no idea what they might mean.
Qantaqa’s mournful cry sounded again through the storm that blew beyond the abbey’s walls. Simon wondered that the troll did to get up to soothe his mount, but the sound of Binabik’s and Sludig’s snoring continued unabated. Simon tried to rise, determined to at least offer her the chance to come in—she sounded so lone and lorn, and it was so very cold outside—but found that a heavy languor clutched his limbs, so that he could not force himself up. He struggled, but to no avail. His limbs were no more responsive than if they had been carved of ash-wood.
Simon suddenly felt terribly sleepy. He fought his drowsiness, but it pulled him relentlessly downward; Qantaqa’s distant howl faded and he went sliding as though down a long slope, back toward unknowingness....
When he woke again, the last coals had burned black and the abbey was in utter darkness. A cold hand was touching his face. He gasped with horror, but air barely filled his lungs. His body still felt heavy as stone, without the power of movement.
“Pretty,” Skodi whispered, a deeper shadow, sensed rather than seen, looming tall and wide above him. She stroked his cheek. “Just got your beard, too. You are a pretty one. I will keep you.”
Simon strove helplessly to wriggle from beneath her touch.
“They don’t want you, either, do they?” Skodi said, crooning as though to a baby. “I can feel it. Skodi knows. Cast out, you were. I can hear it in your head. But that is not why I had Vren bring you.”
She settled down beside him in the dark, folding into a crouch like a tent pulling loose from its stakes. “Skodi knows what you have. I heard it singing in my ears, saw it in my dreams. Lady Silver Mask wants it. Her Lord Red Eyes does, too. They want the sword, the black sword, and when I give it to them they will be nice to me. They will love Skodi and give her presents.” She caught a lock of his hair between her plump fingers and gave it a sharp pull. The twinge of pain seemed far away. A moment later, as if in recompense, she ran her hand carefully over Simon’s head and face.
“Pretty,” she said at last. “A friend for me—a friend my age. That is what I have waited for. I will take away those dreams that are bothering you. I will take away all your dreams. I can do that, you know.” She lowered her whispering voice even further, and Simon realized for the first time that the heavy breathing of his two friends had ceased. He wondered if they were lying silent in the darkness, waiting to save him. If that was so, he prayed they would act soon. His heart seemed as nerveless as his leaden limbs, but fear beat through him, aching like a secret pulse. “They drove me out of Haethstad,” Skodi muttered. “My own family and neighbors. Said I was a witch. Said I put curses on people. Drove me out.” Horribly, she began to snuffle. When she spoke again, her words were garbled by tears. “I sh-sh-showed them. When Father was drunk and sleeping, I stabbed Mother with his knife and then put it back in his hand. He killed himself.” Her laugh was bitter but remorseless. “I could always see things others could not, think of things they would not. Then, when the deep winter came and would not go away, I began to be able to do things. Now I can do things no one else can do.” Her voice rose triumphantly. “I am growing stronger all the time. Stronger and stronger. When I give Lady Silver Mask and Lord Red Eyes the sword they’re looking for, the singing black sword I heard in my dreams, then I’ll be like they are. Then the children and I will make everyone sorry. ”
As she spoke, she absently slid her cold hand from Simon’s forehead down into his shirt, letting it play over his naked chest as if she petted a dog. The wind had stilled, and in the dreadful silence of its abatement he suddenly knew that his friends had been taken away. There was no one in the lightless room but Skodi and Simon.
“But I will keep you,” she said. “I will keep you for myself.”
13
Within God’s Walls
FatherDinivan toyed with his food, staring into his bowl as though some helpful message might be written there in olive pits and breadcrumbs. Candles burned fiercely the length of the table. Pryrates’ voice was loud and harsh as a brazen gong.
“... So you see, Your Sacredness, all that King Elias wishes is your acceptance of one fact: Mother Church’s provenance may be men’s souls, but she has no right to interfere in the disposition of men’s corporeal forms by their legitimate monarch.” The hairless priest grinned in self-satisfaction. Dinivan’s heart sank to see the lector smile dully in return. Surely Ranessin must know that Elias was as much as declaring that God’s shepherd on earth had less right to power than an earthly king? Why did he sit and say nothing?
The lector slowly nodded his head. He looked across the table to Pryrates, then briefly to Duke Benigaris, new master of Nabban, who appeared a trifle nervous beneath the lector’s scrutiny, hurriedly wiping grease from his chin with the back of a brocaded sleeve. This Feast of Hlafmansa Eve was usually only a religious and ceremonial occasion. Although Dinivan knew him to be utterly the creature of Pryrates’ master Elias, at this moment the duke seemed to be wishing for more ceremony and less confrontation.
“The High King and his emissary Pryrates wish only the best for Mother Church, Sacredness,” Benigaris said gruffly, unable to hold Ranessin’s gaze, as though he saw his rumored murder of his father mirrored there. “We should listen to what Pryrates says.” He addressed his trencher once more, wherein he found more convivial company.
“We are considering all that Pryrates has to say,” the lector responded mildly. Silence fell upon the table once more. Fat Velligis and the other escritors present returned to their own meals, obviously pleased that the long-feared confrontation seemed to have been averted.
Dinivan lowered his eyes to the remains of his supper. A young priest who hovered at his elbow refilled Dinivan’s goblet with water—it had seemed a good night to avoid wine—and reached forward to take his bowl, but Dinivan waved him back. It was better to have something to concentrate on, if only to avoid looking at viperous Pryrates, who was not bothering to hide his immense pleasure at discomfiting the church hierarchy.
Absently pushing breadcrumbs with his knife, Dinivan marveled at how inseparably the great and the mundane were linked. This ultimatum from King Elias and the lector’s response might one day seem an event of unforgettable magnitude, like that day long ago when the third Larexes had declared Lord Sulis heretic and apostate, sending that magnificent and troubled man into exile. But even during that momentous event, Dinivan reflected, there had probably been priests who scratched their noses, or stared at the ceiling, or sile
ntly bemoaned their aching joints as they sat within the very crucible of history—even as Dinivan now poked at his own supper-leavings and Duke Benigaris belched and loosened his belt. So men always would be, ape and angel mixed, their animal nature chafing at the restraints of civilization even as they reached for Heaven or for Hell. It was amusing, really ... or should have been.
As Escritor Velligis tried to initiate a more soothing supper-table conversation, Dinivan suddenly felt an odd trembling in his fingers: the table was shuddering gently beneath his hands. Earthquake was his first thought, but then the olive pits in his bowl began to slide together slowly, forming themselves into runes before his astonished eyes. He looked up, startled, but no one else at the banquet table appeared to notice anything amiss. Velligis droned on, his chubby face gleaming with sweat; the other guests watched him, politely feigning interest.
Creeping like insects, the leavings in Dinivan’s bowl had merged to form two sneering words: “SCROLL PIG.” Sickened, he looked up to meet Pryrates’ shark-black eyes. The alchemist wore a look of vast amusement. One of his white fingers was waving above the tablecloth, as if sketching upon the insubstantial air. Then, as Dinivan watched, Pryrates waggled all his digits at once. The crumbs and olive stones in Dinivan’s bowl abruptly tumbled apart, whatever forces that had bound them now dispersed.
Dinivan’s hand rose defensively to grasp the chain that lay beneath his cassock, feeling for the hidden scroll; Pryrates’ grin widened in almost childish glee. Dinivan found his usual optimism melting before the red priest’s unmistakable confidence. He suddenly realized what a thin and breakable reed his own life actually was.
“... They are not, I suppose, truly dangerous ...” Velligis was blathering, “but it is a dreadful blow to the dignity of Mother Church, these barbarians settling themselves afire in public squares, a dreadful blow—as much as daring the church to stop them! It is a kind of contagious madness, I am told, carried by bad airs. I no longer go out without a kerchief to wear over my nose and mouth ...”
“But perhaps the Fire Dancers are not mad,” Pryrates said lightly. “Perhaps their dreams are more ... real ... than you would like to believe. ”
“That is ... that is ...” Velligis spluttered, but Pryrates ignored him, his obscenely empty eyes still fixed on Dinivan.
He fears no excess now, Dinivan thought. The realization seemed an unbearable burden. Nothing binds him any longer. His terrible curiosity has become a heedless and insatiable hunger.
Had that been when the world had begun to go wrong? When Dinivan and his fellow Scrollbearers had brought Pryrates into their secret councils? They had opened their hearts and treasured archives to the young priest, respecting the honed sharpness of Pryrates’ mind for a long time before the rot at the center of him could no longer be mistaken. They had driven him from their midst, then—but too late, it seemed. Far, far too late. Like Dinivan, the priest sat at the tables of the mighty, but Pryrates’ red star was now ascending, while Dinivan’s track seemed murky and obscured.
Was there anything more he could do? He had sent messages to the two Scrollbearers still living, Jarnauga and Ookequk’s apprentice, though he had heard from neither in some time. He had also sent suggestions or instructions to others of good faith, like the forest-woman Geloë and little Tiamak in the marshy Wran. He had brought Princess Miriamele safely to the Sancellan Aedonitis and made her tell her story to the lector. He had tended all the trees as Morgenes would have wished: all he could do now was wait and see what fruit might come....
Slipping Pryrates’ troubling gaze, Dinivan looked around the lector’s dining hall, trying to take note of details. If this was to be a momentous night, for good or ill, he might as well try to remember all he could. Perhaps in some future—a brighter one than he could now envision—he would be an old man standing at the shoulder of some young artisan, offering corrections: “No, it wasn’t like that at all! I was there ...” He smiled, forgetting his worries for a moment. What a happy thought—to survive the cares of these dark days, to live with no greater responsibility than being an annoyance to some poor artist laboring to complete a commission!
His moment of reverie ended abruptly, arrested by the sight of a familiar face in the arched doorway that led to the kitchens. What was Cadrach doing here? He had been in the Sancellan Aedonitis scarcely a week and would have no business that could bring him near the lector’s private quarters, so he could only be spying on the lector’s supper guests. Was it only curiosity, or was Cadrach ... Padreic ... feeling the tug of old loyalties? Of conflicting loyalties?
Even as these thoughts flashed through Dinivan’s head, the monk’s face fell back into the shadows of the door and was gone from sight. A moment later a server marched through with a wide salver, making it obvious that Cadrach had vanished from the archway entirely.
Now, as if in counterpoint to Dinivan’s confusion, the lector rose suddenly from his tall chair at the head of the table. Ranessin’s kind face was somber; the shadows thrown by the bright candlelight made him seem ancient and bowed with troubles.
He silenced prattling Velligis with a single wave of his hand. “We have thought,” the lector said slowly. His white-haired head seemed remote as a snow-capped mountain. “The world as you speak of it, Pryrates, makes a certain kind of sense. There is weight to its logic. We have heard similar things from Duke Benigaris and his frequent envoy, Count Aspitis.”
“Earl Aspitis,” Benigaris said abruptly, his heavy face flushed. He had drunk a great deal of the lector’s wine. “Earl,” he continued heedlessly. “King Elias made him an earl at my request. As a gesture of his friendship to Nabban.”
Ranessin’s slender features curled in a poorly-concealed look of disgust. “We know you and the High King are close, Benigaris. And we know that you yourself rule Nabban. But you are at our table now, in God’s house—my table—and we bid you to remain silent until Mother Church’s highest priest finishes speaking.”
Dinivan was shocked by the lector’s angry tone—Ranessin was ordinarily the mildest of men—but found himself heartened by such unexpected strength. Benigaris’ mustache quivered angrily, but he reached for his wine-cup with the clumsiness of an embarrassed child.
Ranessin’s blue eyes were now fixed on Pryrates. He continued in the stately manner he so seldom used, but which seemed so natural when he did. “As we said, the world which you and Elias and Benigaris preach makes a certain kind of sense. It is a world where alchemists and monarchs decide the fate not only of men’s corporeal forms, but of their souls as well, and where the king’s minions encourage deluded souls to burn themselves for the glory of false idols if it suits their purposes. A world where the uncertainty of an invisible God is replaced by the certainty of a black, burning spirit who dwells on this earth, in the heart of a mountain of ice.”
Pryrates’ hairless brows shot up at this; Dinivan felt a moment of cold joy. Good. So the creature could still be surprised.
“Hear me!” Ranessin’s voice gained force, so that for a moment it seemed that not only the room had fallen silent, but the whole world with it, as though in that instant the candlelit table rode the very cusp of Creation. “This world—your world, the world you preach to us with your sly words—is not the world of Mother Church. We have long known of a dark angel who strides the earth, whose bleak hand reaches out to trouble all the hearts of Osten Ard—but our scourge is the Arch-fiend himself, the implacable foe of God’s light. Whether your ally is truly our Enemy of countless millennia or just another vicious minion of darkness, Mother Church has always stood against his like ... and always shall.”
Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath for an endless moment.
“You do not know what you say, old man.” Pryrates’ voice was a sulfurous hiss. “You grow feeble and your mind wanders ...”
Shockingly, not one of the escritors raised their voices in protest or dissent. They stared, wide-eyed, as Ranessin leaned across the table and calmly engaged t
he priest’s angry stare. Light seemed to quail and almost die throughout the banquet hall, leaving only the two illuminated, one scarlet, one white, their shadows stretching, stretching ...
“Lies, hatred, and greed,” the lector said softly. “They are familiar, age-old enemies. It matters not beneath whose banner they march.” He stood up, a slim, pale shape, and lifted a hand. Dinivan felt again the fierce, uncontrollable love that had driven him to bend his back in supplication before the mystery of Man’s divine purpose, to bind his life over into the service of this humble and wonderful man, and to the church that lived in his person.
With cold deliberation, Ranessin drew the sign of the Tree in the air before him. The table seemed to shudder again beneath Dinivan’s hand; this time he could not believe it the alchemist’s doing. “You have opened doors that should have remained closed for all time, Pryrates,” the lector proclaimed. “In your pride and folly, you and the High King have brought a ponderous evil into a world which already groaned beneath a mighty burden of suffering. Our church—my church—will fight you for every soul, until the very Day of Weighing-Out dawns. I declare you excommunicate, and King Elias with you, and also banish from the arms of Mother Church any who follow you into darkness and error.” His arm swept down, once, twice. “Duos Onenpodensis, Feata Vorum Lexeran. Duos Onenpodensis, Feata Vorum Lexeran!”
No clap of thunder of horn of judgment followed the Lector’s booming words, only the distant peal of the Clavean bell tolling the hour. Pryrates stood slowly, his face pale as wax, his mouth twisted in a trembling grimace.
