by Dave Duncan
Dommi’s face did not react and that very blankness was a reaction.
“We’ve done what we came to do,” Julian added.
“Yes, Tyika.”
Oh, blast! “You want to stay, I suppose?”
Dommi nodded and bit his lip.
Julian stepped closer and sat down. He leaned his arms on his knees. “Tell me. You can’t expect Tyika Exeter to need a valet when he owns nothing but a gown. Your wife is very near her term. Tell me why you want to stay.”
“It is most difficult to describe in words, Tyika.”
There, for a moment, the conversation rested. As a stranger himself, Julian was almost immune to Exeter’s charisma—he could feel it, but he understood it and could resist it in ways that a native could not. To explain the mechanics of charisma or mana and what had happened in the temple that day would not cure Dommi of his enchantment, any more than a child could believe that the rabbit had come out of the conjuror’s sleeve. Did Julian feel like this just because he didn’t want to lose a damned good houseboy? No, he was honestly concerned for Dommi himself, and Ayetha. The Liberator’s cause had always been doomed to failure, and now its black heart was cursed by a terrible crime.
“You realize that there may be more danger, don’t you?”
Dommi smiled. “Not from soldiers, Tyika! Twice Queen Elvanife has sent her warriors against him, and twice they have failed her. What army will challenge the Liberator now?”
“I suppose you do have a point there.” The tales of haughty cavalry officers weeping in contrition and digging graves for their victims would sweep through the Vales. The kings and magistrates might still try assassins, but they could send no more armies against Exeter’s crusade. “Writing to Ayetha, are you?”
Domini clutched the papers closer. “I am making some notes, Tyika.”
“Sorry. None of my business. I’ll leave you to your task, then. We can talk in the morning, when Entyika Newton and I have decided what we’re going to do.” Julian began to rise.
Dommi looked up. “I am recording the words of the Liberator, Tyika. While they are remaining green in memory.”
Julian subsided again. The Gospel according to Saint Dommi? With his appalling spelling? But Julian had seen enough of the paper to know that Dommi was not writing English. He was using the Greeklike alphabet of the Vales.
“In what language?”
The question produced surprise. “In Randorian, Tyika, of course. As he spoke. He numerously revealed things about the Undivided that are not told in the True Gospel.”
Of course! Exeter had been making it all up as he went along, and he had been speaking in tongues, not Randorian. Among other things, he had completely scuppered the Service’s teaching on the subject of the afterlife and the nature of the Pentatheon. The Undivided Reformation was now split into two opposing sects.
There was one question that Olympians never put to Carrots. Prophets had no honor in their own country and no man was a hero to his valet—except perhaps Edward Exeter. The Carrots knew that the apostles were only human and did not practice their public religion in the privacy of Olympus. Now, on impulse, Julian asked the forbidden question. “Dommi, what do you believe in? What god or gods do you follow?”
The freckled face glowed in the firelight. “I am believing in the Undivided, Tyika Kaptaan, although it is admissible that my faith was a most frail wisp until this afternoon when the Liberator spoke to my heart.”
Which was to be expected. Exeter had a hell of a lot to answer for!
“Good,” Julian said, and this time he did stand up. “I understand, and if you wish to remain with him for the time being, then I don’t mind. You have been an exemplary house-boy, Dommi. I could never hope for better service. I shall miss all that you do for me at home very greatly, but I shall keep your position open. It will be yours again any time you wish to return. And if you do want to write a letter to Ayetha, give it to me and I will see she gets it.”
“That is most kindly of you, Tyika!” Shyly, Dommi released his writing board so that he could raise his arms and touch his hands together in the sign of the Undivided.
Julian nodded and turned away.
“Tyika?”
“What?”
“What god do you follow?”
The question left Julian at a loss. Certainly not Edward Exeter! “I’m not sure, Dommi. I’m still thinking.” He beat a fast retreat.
He began wandering between the campfires, looking for Ursula, but it was she who found him. Shimmering like a white ghost in the darkness, she caught him by the arm and pulled him close.
“There you are! Have you eaten?”
“Not hungry.”
She leaned back to study his face and said, “Mm!” thoughtfully.
“You can’t stop him now, can you?” he snarled. “If we’d arrived here a day sooner…but not now?”
“No, not now. Come along, he wants to see you.”
“I want nothing to do with him!”
“Now, now!” She sounded like a nanny. “Every man is entitled to face his accusers. Come and tell him what you disapprove of.” She was urging him forward, over the sand.
“Disapprove of? Ursula, don’t tell me you’re on his side now?”
She squeezed his arm. “Not on his side, exactly, but now I don’t think we can stop him. Zath probably can…but I’m not even quite certain of that anymore. I want to learn more of what he’s up to. I underestimated him.”
“I overestimated him. Christ, did I overestimate him!”
She pinched him. “Stop that!” They were heading back to the temple, back into the virtuality. His scalp prickled and sweat trickled down his ribs.
“What do you mean you underestimated him?”
She took a moment to answer. “He’s done some things I never thought were possible.”
“Such as slaughtering his friends? God! Don’t you feel that’s letting the side down a bit?”
“I wasn’t thinking of that. He’s won the support of the Pentatheon, or some of them, or at least he’s won their neutrality. That’s clever, darling! He must have impressed them. We know they’re frightened of Zath, and Exeter’s managed to capitalize on that.”
“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. The Pentatheon may decide Zath’s a better bet when they hear how the Liberator treated his own supporters today.”
Horrors! Obviously Ursula had switched sides—did that mean Exeter had bewitched her as she had planned to bewitch him? Would he now twist Julian’s mind in the same way? For a moment, Julian considered doing a bunk, and then pride stiffened his spine. If he had not run from the Boche guns, he would not run from this.
They walked around a tent and there was the messiah, safely hidden from prying eyes in a private little sanctum. The tent and a fallen pillar and two ruined walls formed its sides; a fire of driftwood crackled and sparked on the sand in the center. The Liberator sat well back, in the corner of the two walls, his head bare and yet tightly hunched in his robe as if he were cold. Julian had seen that look on strangers before and knew it came from too much exposure to virtuality.
About a dozen Nagian shields had been laid out around the fire like hour markers on a giant clock face, with a disciple sitting by each—a new Round Table to replace the slain War-band. The two surviving Nagians were there, with their spears beside them. Another was the blond boy with the bandaged feet, Dosh Somebody, who looked as if he had been weeping. The rest seemed to be equally divided between men and women. They had been listening to their peerless leader talk, but he broke off when he saw the newcomers, and all eyes turned to study them.
There was a gap opposite Exeter, and Ursula’s hat lay there—but no shield, Julian was relieved to see. The women on either side moved to make the space wider. Ursula sat down, adjusting her white dress, leaving room for him, but he remained on his feet and folded his arms, scowling over the campfire at the man he had hitherto called friend.
Exeter did not even
appear weary. The exhaustion he had displayed so many hours ago had been washed away by his gluttonous feast of mana. Charisma and authority had replaced it.
For a long moment the two stared at each other. It was Julian who looked away first, of course.
“Tell me what troubles you,” Exeter said, in English.
“Murder. Betrayal.”
“Be more specific.”
Julian glared at him. “You knew from the Filoby Testament that there would be bloodshed in Niolvale. You deliberately let it happen—hell, you invited it! You offered up your own team as human sacrifice, you sucked mana from the deaths of women and children and innocent men. You are no better than Zath himself!”
Exeter pulled a face, as if he felt the acid burn. “I knew there would be bloodshed, yes. ‘Young men’s bones,’ was what the prophecy said. I told them that back in Sonalby. Some of them must die, I said. They knew.”
Julian shuddered and swallowed against a surge of nausea. “A few days after you went away, Prof Rawlinson gave me the standard welcome-aboard pep talk in Olympus. I’m sure you had it, too, once. The source of mana is obedience, he said—the greater the pain, the greater the sacrifice, the greater the mana. And I said, ‘And human sacrifice is the greatest of all?’ He told me there was one much greater.”
The blue eyes were steady and unreadable. “Martyrdom.”
“Yes, martyrdom! The greatest source of all. ‘Greater love hath no man.’…You let them die for you, so you could have their mana!”
The onlookers were frowning at this unfamiliar tongue and at the heretic who used so disrespectful a tone to their leader. Ursula was studying the fire. Standing over her, Julian could not see her face.
Exeter sighed. “I knew some of the Warband must die. I honestly did not expect so many. I honestly did not expect the others—the prophecy did not mention them. But”—he spoke quickly, before Julian could interrupt—“but I have been hearing tales recently of the Church of the Undivided coming under attack. Will you swear to me that the Service makes no use of martyrs?”
Unfair! “We try to defend our own. I never took mana from a killing. I never—”
“No.” Exeter smiled grimly. “You aren’t one of the inner circle, are you? But you aren’t guiltless. You live your parasitic life in Olympus on the fruits the others gather. You eat with your silver spoons in your fine houses, tended by your servants. Very fine houses! What exactly has the Service achieved in fifty years, apart from that cushy little settlement at Olympus? I’d ask you to explain to me just how the strangers of the Service differ from the strangers of the Chamber, but I know the answer already. It’s a matter of degree—that’s all, isn’t it? None of you are virgins, some are just more pregnant than others. And the martyrs are all on your side, aren’t they? The Pentatheon doesn’t dabble in that. Never mind. Swear something else to me, Captain Smedley. Swear that your guns in Flanders never killed a civilian.”
A jolt of fury made Julian break out in cold sweat. “If they did, I never benefitted from the death!” he yelled. “I took no blood money!”
“You took your pay! You took your medals. Your side benefitted, your team—your cause, dammit!”
Julian opened his mouth and was shouted down. The blue eyes blazed brighter than the fire.
“I know you weren’t in the trenches with the infantry. You never ordered the lads to go over the top, did you, but—”
“British officers don’t order their men to go over the top, you bastard! They lead them over the top!”
“Like Field Marshall Haig, I suppose? Like Asquith or Lloyd George?” Either mana or the walls behind him made Exeter’s voice thunder. Even the fire seemed to bend away from the blast. The disciples gaped, aghast at this quarrel. “The real leaders stand well back and order, Captain.”
“If you’re content to be compared with them, then may you rot in hell with them! I’ll ask some questions now! I saw you in that circular window. I know a symbol when I see one…. Chose that in advance, didn’t you? Scouted out this node and decided this was a good place to hold your bloodbath, didn’t you?”
Exeter’s lips vanished into his beard. He nodded to concede the point. Bastard!
“And your god is undivided?” Julian roared. “But you’re not claiming to be a saint, Mr. Exeter. You’re not quoting ancient prophets. You’re issuing wisdom on your own authority! ‘Verily I say unto you,’ and all that. Where does your authority come from? If you’re not a saint and your god is undivided, then what does that make you—Christ?”
“I am the Liberator.”
“But are you human or divine? Are you god or prophet? Buddha or Mohammed or Jesus or Zarathustra or Moses?”
He had scored again. Exeter said, “I am human, Julian, you know that.” But he had hesitated.
“Have you told them that? Go ahead and tell them now. I want to hear it. Speak nice and slow, in Joalian.”
Exeter stared at him for a moment and then said, “No.”
“Ha! Then I rest my case.” Suddenly all Julian’s anger drained away in a rush, leaving bone-aching weariness and a sick regret like the pain of bereavement. That it had come to this! “Remember that morning at the Dower House at Grey-friars? Two years ago. At breakfast. You explained all this to me. You swore you’d never become the Liberator. You asked what it would do to you. ‘What would I have to become?’ you said. Well, you did it and it happened, damn you!”
The onlookers could not be following the words, but they must be reading the tones and the expressions. They all turned to hear what their tin-pot deity would say next. He spoke very quietly, as if his anger, also, had turned to sorrow.
“The game isn’t over yet, Julian. It’s hardly begun. All I’ve done so far is jostle the board.”
“And Zath will burn you in the end.”
Exeter shrugged. “I have to trust the Testament, Remember it said that the dead would rouse me?”
“Ysian?” Julian laughed his scorn. He wanted to hurt, to wound. “Have you avenged her yet?”
“No, not Ysian. Not even the Carrots you helped me bury. Well, maybe a little. But mostly it was Flanders, that hell at Ypres. I saw a few hours of it. I saw fields turned to mud by human gore. I saw boys blown to bits or blinded by gas or driven insane by terror. I passed out cold from the shock of it. You must have seen a million times more than I did. You were there for two years. What can excuse that, Captain Smedley?”
“Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”
Softly, gently, Exeter drove in the dagger. “So the war was wrong?”
“You bugger! Wrong for the side that started it, yes. Not wrong for those who resisted the evil!”
“Then I, too, rest my case.”
Julian turned and walked off into the night.
Ursula did not come after him.
VI
And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
The New Testament: Mark, 3:13
34
Eleal awoke with a start. For a moment she just lay and stared at the roof overhead, heart pounding, soaked with perspiration. She had been dreaming about D’ward again. Rather, she had been dreaming about that mouthwateringly romantic admirer whom she knew to be D’ward although he did not look in the slightest bit like him. He might have grown broader in the last five years, might have grown a mustache and hairs on his chest, but he could hardly have grown shorter. Nor could he have changed the color of his eyes. And why, when they were locked in a passionate embrace, had she been singing? Oh, dreams were stupid!
It was very nice to wake up in a bed again, and even nicer to know that the stench of sewerberries had gone…almost gone. Never mind. She was awake now. Close above her hung a gable ceiling, with sunbeams angling through the dirty little skylight. From the street below came a faint racket of voices, wheels, and hooves as the world roused itself for business. This was not a luxurious inn, but it was not a slum, either. And she was in Niol! Today she would be able t
o explore a city as big and grand as Joal, one she had never visited before. She raised her head to peer over the edge of the blanket and make sure Piol Poet was still asleep, so that it would be safe for her to get up and dress.
Piol’s bed was empty. That was exceedingly annoying. He must have risen and departed without waking her, and who knows what he might have learned by now? She threw off the blanket and sat up. Why, he might even have solved the Liberator puzzle already! She reached for her dress.
There had been no shortage of news of the Liberator in Niol last night. The rumors were thicker than flies in a butcher’s, but no two of the stories agreed. She had dragged herself off to bed without reaching any conclusion.
With the inevitability of a glacier going downhill, the sloth’s snail-slow progress had brought them to Niol itself, the only place in the world where sewerberries were used or bought, so that a cartful of them going in any other direction would have provoked questions. Here, they had sold the stinking mess, cart and sloth and all, making quite a good profit. They had spent about a third of it replacing their ruined clothes and getting cleaned up, as no bathhouse had wanted to admit them, and the rest she had shared with Piol, since it had been all his idea.
Clip! Clop! She lurched down the steep little staircase to the barroom, which was gloomy and deserted. It stank strongly of wine, with lesser odors of urine and vomit. Deciding that she was not quite ready for breakfast yet, she clumped over to the big door and heaved it open, blinking as the sunlight caught her in the face. Niol was famous for the width of its streets. Porters trudged past in twos and threes, carrying bales on their heads and moaning away in their lazy Niolian singsong. A few smelly, humpy bullocks crawled by, hauling wagons. She could hear peddlers hawking their wares in the distance, and the shutters were coming off the little shops opposite. Half a dozen juvenile beggars flocked around her at once, shouting for alms. She cursed at them and slapped them away before their prying little fingers could discover her money belt.
