by Anne Perry
His face hardened. “Grace became stronger than works. And of course the less knowledge the people had, the more power lay with the priests. That was it in the end—power. They loved Ra-Nufis. I have seen meetings of twenty thousand people all crying, “Praise be to God!” But in their heart it was Ra-Nufis’s name they were saying, and I think he knew that. Twenty thousand became two hundred thousand, two million, and then twenty million.” He took a long, deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Now, spiritually, the priests do not lead the people, they follow them because they are prepared to say what they know the greatest number wish to hear.”
She could see it, the intoxication of beauty, the desire to share it, the shallow stairs of the descent to darkness, each act only a single candle going out. Gradually the power became a habit, and then an addiction, and finally a kind of madness.
“You have spoken to him, of course?” she said.
“I have tried.” He laughed abruptly. “He won’t even receive me now.” He gestured to the room around him. “As you can see, I am a fugitive.”
“Is the resistance strong?”
“Strong, yes, but still small and secret. But now you are here, you must lead us. We can begin again.”
“You have led them so far, you are the founder of the movement and I am perfectly content to follow you,” she answered.
“No.” He shook his head quickly. “You are the bringer of the Book, and much more important than that, you have a vision and a certainty that we shall need. Your knowledge is more than faith now. That is why you left, and why you have returned. I can see it, even if you cannot yet.”
“But a leader must be by common consent,” she argued.
“It will be.” There was no doubt in his voice. “I was only the beginning, now you must take it up.”
She did not protest further. “If it is agreed, I shall do as the people will.”
Chapter XXI
SANOBIEL HAD TOLD HER that it was useless trying to plead with Ra-Nufis, but there was a part of Tathea that remembered too vividly his old loyalty to her and the goodness in him. He had been gentle with her when she was tired. In the desert he had not rested until he was certain she had food and water, a blanket, and a place to lie. When she had doubted herself, his faith in her had never wavered, either in her calling to God or her strength and courage to carry it through. He had worked unceasingly and often at great personal risk to pave the way for her return to Shinabar. It was his labor, his gathering of information with such skill and accuracy that had secured the invasion.
She could not believe he was beyond reaching. So in spite of Sanobiel’s advice, she went to the palace on the Hill of Cypresses, where he now lived when he was not traveling to other cities and to the provinces.
She presented herself at the hall where he customarily held audiences and waited her turn, giving her name to the steward. He took it without any apparent recognition. She waited into the late afternoon until finally, as the sun was lowering, she was admitted.
Double doors of cedarwood were opened by two servants in white linen. She went in without looking at either of them, and the doors closed behind her. The room was magnificent with a high, coffered ceiling of pale plaster, and western light gleamed gold through the windows. The furniture was gilded wood, and a life-sized alabaster hunting dog sat on an ebony plinth. She remembered with sharp misery the tiny lapis tortoise he had given her.
Ra-Nufis was standing in the center of the room. He was robed in white and gold with a blood-red apron around his waist, the ties falling to the floor on either side. It was embroidered with the abacus and wheel in gold thread. He was a little heavier, his face fuller, the youth gone from it.
He smiled when he saw her, and she realized that until that moment she had been hoping that somehow when they met all the ugliness would prove to be an illusion, a mistake, the old friendship would still be there. One glance shattered the hope.
“I wondered if you would come,” he said with slight amusement. “You are too late. Your day is past. You have no place in the Empire, Ta-Thea. You have proved that—twice. Go back to the Island at the Edge of the World. There is nothing for you here except disappointment,” he looked at her very steadily, “and perhaps humiliation.”
“They told me you had changed,” she said slowly, still searching his face for the man she had loved. “I found it hard to believe, but I see they were right. What happened to you?”
“Not changed, Ta-Thea, grown,” he corrected. “My perception is larger than it was when we were together in Shinabar, and before.” He moved at last, walking easily, still gracefully, towards the windows. “My understanding was only beginning then. I had barely caught the vision. I thought only of my own people.” He glanced at her. “As you did.” He turned back to the windows. “Now I realize all people are mine; there are no outsiders to God. The Book is for every man on earth.”
She challenged without thinking, her words born of the anger and the loss within her. “Is it? Or has it become for you, for your power and your glory?”
“Jealous, Ta-Thea?” His voice was mocking, no anxiety in it. He did not even bother to look at her. “You had your thousands of followers, I have my millions. I shall see that the Book reaches across the face of the world, as it was meant to do. You should rejoice.”
“It is not the Book which is spreading!” she retorted, moving towards him. “You have adulterated it until it is only what people want to hear, not what is true!”
He swung round to face her. It was a momentary violence, a swirling of skirts, but she was overwhelmed by a sense of his physical power.
“It is what they can take,” he replied easily. He was very much at home in this magnificent room. His voice remained soft, infinitely reasonable. “There is no good in giving people a doctrine they will not accept. You of all people should know that! What did you achieve in Shinabar? Nothing, except to get yourself exiled—again. What I am doing is different because I have learned. The people love me.” He said it with immeasurable satisfaction, rolling the words on his tongue. “They listen to what I say, and they believe me. I can lead them to goodness, even to God. You had your chance, Ta-Thea, and you failed. I can do it, and you will not stop me. For your own sake, don’t try.”
“And you will save them all ...” Tathea said softly, ice-cold inside. The words were an ache of something so dreadful it was beyond memory to recall, and yet it was on her lips with certainty.
“Not all,” he answered, still smiling. “But most of them, yes. Does that displease you?” His black eyebrows rose. “Do you want salvation to be exclusive, just for you and those few you choose? Do you want to see some people damned?”
Was there any point in arguing? Had she not already said it all?
“No,” she answered him. “But what you or I want doesn’t matter. What anyone wants, even God, has nothing to do with the truth. You are teaching that God can do anything, and that is a lie. Wickedness cannot be joy. Even God cannot make it so.”
“That is blasphemy!” Ra-Nufis’s face darkened dangerously, and he took half a step towards her, then stopped.
She did not flinch. “No it isn’t. Go back and read the Book. They are His own words. If the indifferent, the cowardly, the unclean, or unloving were to enter heaven, it would no longer be heaven.”
“Heaven is a mystery!” he said between clenched teeth. “Would you dare to stand here, one puny woman who failed in every task she was given, and tell God what heaven should be?”
“I haven’t failed yet because I haven’t finished trying!” she returned hotly, and knew the instant the words were out of her mouth that she should have let him think her beaten. Alexius had taught her better tactics than this. “And I am not telling God, I am telling you.” She saw the rage in his face, and at last she was afraid. The man she knew in the past and had loved so dearly was gone. The person who stood in front of her was beyond her reach. He reminded her for an instant of someone else, precious and close, b
ound by blood and heritage, in another room in a tower above water, and another betrayal. And then it was gone again.
“It was a mistake to have come,” she said quickly, catching her breath, her heart beating hard and fast.
“You have made a lot of mistakes,” he replied, taking a further step towards her, now only a yard away.
She whirled round and walked out of the room, too hastily for dignity, swinging the doors open and seeing the hall full of people with a surge of relief.
Outside in the sun and noise of the street she was ashamed. She had run away from him! But she continued on her way and did not slow her pace until she was back in the old quarter and within sight of the house where Sanobiel lived and had prepared a room for her.
“We must be better organized,” he said urgently, sitting in the same chair where he had told her of the changes in the city. “So far we have done little more than encourage people who wish to follow the old, true faith and given them a place to gather together and worship. We cannot read the Book because it is available only to the priests, and they reinterpret it in different ways. But we discuss the principles we remember clearly, and give each other comfort and whatever help we can to those who are in need.”
“How many people are there? Do you know?” she asked, sitting opposite him.
He shook his head. “I prefer to know as little as possible. It is safer.”
A flicker of fear moved across her mind like a cold wind. “Is that necessary?”
“Perhaps not. But I think maybe the Great Enemy matches his stride to ours.” He looked at her searchingly to see what she thought. “I believe that as we lengthen ours, so he will lengthen his also.”
She would have liked to deny it, but the instant his words fell into the still air of the room, she knew they were true.
He saw it in her eyes, and a deep sadness filled him. “It is war, isn’t it?” he asked.
She nodded, tightening her lips. “I suppose it always was. If the Enemy were not concerned with us, perhaps that would be the surest sign that we were achieving nothing.” She stood up and began to pace back and forth. “In this battle, and I know from Ra-Nufis it is close, there will be no bystanders. Everyone will eventually be on one side or the other. We need to be very well shielded in the spirit. We can make no allowances for false teaching, for error or any kind of lie.”
“We need the Book,” he said simply, looking up at her. “And Ra-Nufis has it. Only priests are allowed to read it, and we have none in our number. They have too many vested interests to leave the Light Bearers, as they call themselves. We have been trying to convert some of them, but it is becoming too dangerous. Even so, much of what they think they know of the Book is false anyway. Shall we keep on trying? We have those who are prepared to risk their lives.”
“No,” she said without hesitation. There was no doubt in her mind. “I will write it again. With God’s help I can. Give me a room where I can work, ink and paper, and I shall do it.”
He watched her for a moment, his eyes soft and bright, filled with hope at last. Then he rose to his feet and took her arm gently. “Thank the heavens you are back! We will start again. If God is for us, what can it matter who is against?”
Through the heat of summer she worked. Often she slept by day and sat at the plain wooden table all night, working by candlelight. Many times she would stop and fall to her knees to pray, and the brilliance of memory returned so sharply it was almost as if she were hearing the words spoken in her head. Their meaning was so utterly clear that she understood them anew with a depth and a love that filled her till there was no room for anything else. She was unaware of time passing as she wrote. The teeming city only a few yards away did not impinge on her consciousness. Sanobiel brought her all she needed, but he did not interrupt her with news or conversation.
When her task was completed it was both a triumph and a parting. The time for study was over. Now she must use the weapon of knowledge in battle. It could not be put off any longer.
She gave the papers to Sanobiel, watching his face.
He took them, his delicate hands holding the sheets as if the heart of the world was in them.
“I have scribes ready,” he said quietly. “We shall have it copied as many times as we can and given out to believers.”
She nodded. “And when we have sufficient for all of us, we will leave pages in places where people can find them, and some will know they are the truth. It will spread.”
And it did indeed spread. By the waning of the year there were over twenty-five individual cells of believers in the city, with up to a score of people in each. Pages with quotes from the Book were being left in all sorts of places. Any scrap of paper blowing about or lying on a table, a chair, in the folds of a scroll might have neatly copied on it some discussion between God and Asmodeus, from Tathea’s hand, not the altered version Ra-Nufis had given to his priests.
It could not go unnoticed. By midwinter the first warning came with a young man called Timmaron. He raced along the street, his sandals slapping hard on the dusty pavement, and swung round the corner to the doorway. He banged with the urgency of fear, and the moment it was opened he all but fell in.
“We’ve got to move! They’re coming! Zulperion’s men. Get the scribes out—quickly. I’ll carry the ink and paper. Hurry!”
After a single frozen moment, Saspia, who was in charge of the work, turned and slammed the door closed, then ran ahead of Timmaron to warn the scribes, collect the finished work, and hide the supplies.
“Run!” she ordered. “Out of here, and don’t come back! We’ll meet again in the street of the basket weavers. Don’t sit there! Go!”
From then on the scribes never stayed in any house more than six or eight days, moving carefully, one at a time and at night. But the pieces of paper kept on appearing. Zulperion’s priests might rail against them from the platform and say they were blasphemous, but more people read them and kept them, and the cells of believers continued to grow.
Tathea and Sanobiel worked tirelessly, helped by people like Saspia and the young man Timmaron.
It was a few days into the spring and raining hard with the wind behind it when Lindor, a middle-aged man who worked in the tax office of the Archons, came one day to Tathea as she walked from the marketplace past the weavers’ shops. She saw him and respected the courage and power of conviction that even in his position he dared espouse the old faith. He had much to lose, and the risk of discovery was greater for him than for most.
He fell in step beside her, his face grave, his voice low. He was dressed very plainly and must have hoped that no one in this quarter would recognize him.
“I have very bad news, lady,” he said breathlessly. “I overheard it. I came as soon as I could, and I fear I may not be able to come again.”
“What is it?” She only glanced at him. They must not draw attention to themselves even here where they were safest. A chill settled inside her, greater than the wind or the rain.
“A new law,” Lindor answered. “I have friends among some of the priests, but don’t ask me who. One comes to me in the dark. I know him only as a shadow on the steps down by the old road to the harbor. But he has never told me less than the truth.”
“What new law?” She did not want to know the name of the informer. It was safer not to know. Silently she blessed his courage.
“Ra-Nufis’s interpretation of the Book is the only correct one,” Lindor answered. “Anyone who deviates from it will be guilty of the crime of heresy.”
She stopped, swinging round to face him. “What?” she demanded. “What do you mean, a crime? Camassians have always allowed people to believe whatever they liked! You can worship a pile of stones if you want to! The Hall of Archons will never pass it.”
“The majority will,” he answered, taking her by the arm and impelling her forward again. He glanced from side to side as they crossed a busy street, wary in case she had drawn attention to them. “The new law does not den
y freedom to pagans. You can still worship a pile of stones if you want to. What you cannot do is teach or practice a different version of the Book. Any other faith is free. But the Book is the official religion of the Empire, and it must be kept pure from adulteration. That is considered different from ignorance.”
“You mean it is against us.”
“Yes,” he agreed, his head down, eyes straight ahead. “There is from now on no room for differences of opinion. What Ra-Nufis has taught is holy, and to question it is heresy, and the law will punish offenders appropriately. They are a danger to the welfare of the state, to the peace and prosperity of their neighbors.”
“That’s absurd!”
“Of course it’s absurd.” He nodded to a group of women gossiping, cloaks drawn tightly round them. “But if you frighten people, you can make them do all kinds of things. They are saying we are seditious and undermine morality and that you in particular will do anything for power.”
“That’s monstrous!” She was furious. “Ra-Nufis knows that is untrue!”
“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Lindor said quickly.
“Of course he does!” She tried to stop, but he pulled her forward, hurting her arm.
“You forget, lady, or perhaps you don’t know,” he answered, his face set in sad, angry lines, “we tend to judge people by our own standards. If a man says all people are liars or thieves, you may be sure of one thing, that he is himself. Ra-Nufis is obsessed with power, consumed by it. The love of power has eaten his soul. He has forgotten what it is like to be able to let it go, to love another’s welfare more than your own. Perhaps he has even forgotten how to love at all.”
She was unaware of the people around her, even the street dimmed to a shadow beyond the rain. She was conscious only of Lindor’s fingers tight round her arm and her wet feet stumbling on the cobbles. He was right. Ra-Nufis saw her as driven by the lust for power because that was the mission of his own soul and he knew no other.
“I must go,” Lindor said as they came into a small square. “I dare not stay in case I am recognized. Then I would be of no more use. I will do all I can.” His voice caught. “God protect you.” And before she could answer, he had let go of her and turned away. A moment later he was hidden by a cart carrying hides.
