Sword of the Lamb

by M. K. Wren

  There was in the labyrinths of his mind a steel-barred chamber, and there the black angel was confined, and he had locked and double-locked the door. The beast lived still, but it was enough of a victory that it had been forced into that cell, the locks had been set.

  It was enough.

  He pulled himself to his knees, and the effort was consuming, but there were no tears. There would never be any tears. He looked down at the welling cuts in his hand; he still couldn’t feel the pain.

  At length, he could stand without support. He crossed to the ’spenser for a towel and wrapped it around his hand, watching the red stains blossom against the white.

  He felt nothing. Not even the weight of his footfalls as he left the salon. He negotiated the silent corridors blindly, and, when he emerged on the landing roof, he didn’t feel the bite of the winter wind.

  “My Lord?”

  He looked around; the guard had repeated his inquiring salutation several times, staring at him, half afraid.

  “Ket, call for my ’car.”

  “Yes, my lord. Do you wish a chauffeur?”

  “No.”

  Ket spoke briefly into his pocketcom.

  “A few minutes, my lord. Will you be going far?”

  Alexand gazed at him with unfocused, still eyes, and Ket paled, expecting a rebuke for his inquisitiveness.

  But Alexand’s gaze moved past him and away.

  “I don’t know.”

  4.

  14:55 Terran Standard Time. 22 July 3253.

  The Fountain of Victory was stilled, the Concord’s gesture of respect; a life would soon be taken at its command. A custom as old as the Plaza; as old as the ceremonies of execution. Alexand moved through the murmuring crowd, oblivious to the curious whisperings as a path opened before him only to close again in his wake.

  The execution stand. That was all his awareness; stark black against the white steps of the Hall of the Directorate, lined on the sides and across the back with golden-helmeted Directorate guardsmen, their uniforms as black as the stand. Black as mourning. More black figures lined the arched promenades on both sides of the Plaza.

  The usual guard contingent for an execution had been doubled today, and he didn’t have to wonder at whose command. A precaution, Phillip Woolf would call it, and by doubling the number of armed men here, he doubled the risk of bloodshed.

  Richard Lamb would have his Testing today, but more than his soul would be tested.

  Alexand was here to witness that Testing and to keep a promise made not to Rich, but to himself. His brother would not die, would not endure his Testing, alone. His steps carried him forward, toward that black monolith. He was enveloped in a mantle of numbness; the steel-barred chamber in his mind was still locked, and he held the key. He wore no outward signs of identification, and his face was hidden behind the shadow of his face-screen. If anyone noticed the occasional flash of the scarlet lining of his black cloak, he wasn’t concerned.

  The execution stand was suddenly before him, filling his field of vision with black. He went to the steps at one end and mounted them without breaking pace. The guardsman there recognized his rank, if not his identity; he made no attempt to stop him.

  There was a space of two meters between the end of the stand and the row of guards. Alexand took up a position a pace from the stairs, behind that grim barricade, feeling out the atmosphere of suspicious wariness here. The guards furtively surveyed the crowd, quiet, totally Bond. The execution had been scheduled for the middle of the daytime work shift when few Bonds would be free to attend it, but there were at least three thousand here. They, too, had come to witness Richard Lamb’s Testing.

  But there were no reporters or vidicam crews in the Plaza. That would also be at Phillip Woolf’s order.

  Winter sunlight, clear as white wine, reflected from the mirrored windowalls of the Hall of the Directorate. Galinin watched from behind one of those sun-glazed walls. Alexand knew his grandfather wouldn’t close his eyes to this, and perhaps his father was with him.

  Alexand had ignored all Galinin’s summonses the last three days, knowing his purpose—to bring him and his father together. Galinin didn’t yet understand that it was too late. Nothing would ever be as it had been. Nothing.

  A few more minutes. The Testing.

  It would also be a Testing for him, for the locks on that steel-barred chamber.

  They survived the first test as his gaze moved to the center of the stand and the simple mechanism that was the Concord’s instrument of justice: a vertical pole fitted with a padded collar, adjustable to height, to grip the victim’s neck and hold his head in place, a framework to hold a stabile laser against his right temple, and a small metal shield to stop the beam once it burned through his brain. And, standing to one side, the red-uniformed, face-screened man who would press the firing lever. The executioner. At the foot of the steps behind Alexand, two men waited with an empty stretcher. The burial detail.

  A subdued voice, one of the guardsmen leaning toward the man next to him in the rank. “I don’t like it, Harv. Look at ’em.”

  The second guardsman surveyed the crowd, his head moving in a slow, affirmative nod. “Yeh, I know what you mean. Too damned quiet.”

  “Something’s going on—doubling the guard, and them so quiet.”

  A Testing. Soon.

  Alexand’s muscles contracted, reacting before his mind took full cognizance of the sound thrumming from the ampspeakers.

  The drum roll.

  His mouth was dry, a sudden vacuum under his ribs.

  15:00 TST.

  He turned toward the steps, nerves quivering with that incessant beat; a sound like a wind moved through the crowd and the black aircar hummed to ground near the stand. Face-screened SSB officers moved silently, methodically, opening the door, forming an entourage around the nulgrav chair, one in front, one behind, one on each side guiding it, marching to the rattling cadence of the drum roll toward the stand.

  Phillip Woolf had called up this scene out of his ravening fear; he had named this would-be saint pitiful, and in that, as in so many things, he was in error.

  Richard Lamb carried his head high, his graceful, fragile hands resting at ease on the arms of his chair. He wasn’t bound, his paralysis was binding enough, and his conditioning was no longer functioning; he was alert and fully aware of his destination, and it engendered no fear in him. The consumptive fire within his frail body emanated from him in flickering waves, his sky-colored eyes were incandescent, and pity was inimical to that light.

  Alexand watched the long approach, fighting the urge to close his eyes, yet begrudging the split-seconds lost to blinking, hearing another beating behind the drum roll: the beat of black wings. And another rattling: the locks.

  The small procession mounted the steps. It was then that Rich looked up and saw his brother, that lean, straight-backed, mourning-clothed, face-screened figure waiting at the top of the steps. Rich’s expression didn’t change except for an indefinable shift in the quality of the light burning behind his eyes, something ineffable and intangible.

  The guard rank opened to let him and his escort pass, then closed again, and Alexand watched, transfixed, as Rich was brought to the executioner, watched as that red-garbed figure stolidly went about his duties, adjusting the collar and the headpieces. The ampspeakers blared a new tune: the reading of the charges, but Alexand was no more aware of them than were the waiting thousands of Bonds. Words. Sounds. Noises. A background for the executioner’s work.

  At length, the sounds ceased; the executioner stepped back and faced the ranking guard officer, the captain who stood near Rich, the man who would give the order.

  And in that brief silence, Rich crossed his arms, resting his hands on opposite shoulders in the Bond attitude of prayer. His voice moved across the silence like a
raindrop in a quiet pool.

  “Zekiel and all my beloved, remember me and my words. For my passing, my friends, I ask a sanna.”

  Zekiel, Elder Shepherd in Galinin’s Estate compound, the grayed patriarch who stood in front of the execution stand gazing up at Rich. He sank to his knees and crossed his arms.

  “We will remember you, my lord.”

  At those words the guardsmen tensed in wary bewilderment. Even the executioner paused, scanning the crowd, his uneasy movement echoed by the captain. Zekiel’s quavering voice, strangely sweet, began a song, and the captain stared at him as if the sound were utterly foreign. A song with a simple melodic line set in an unfamiliar, minor mode.

  “The Lord is my shepherd . . .”

  An expanding wave of motion as thousands of arms crossed and every Bond in the Plaza sank to his knees. The words were lost until the voices found a unified cadence.

  “. . . He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters . . .”

  The ampspeakers erupted again, but the song burgeoned, thousands strong, against the renewed beat of the drum roll.

  “. . . He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake . . .”

  The captain recovered himself and faced the executioner.

  “. . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”

  Rich waited, listening, wrapped in the lambent aura of that consuming light.

  “. . . I will fear no evil: for thou art with me . . .”

  The captain gave the command; the executioner snapped a salute, his hand moved to the firing lever.

  “. . . Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me . . .”

  Alexand, suddenly rigid with terror, stared at his brother’s face. Rich, oh, God, Rich—no!

  “. . . Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies . . .”

  The executioner pressed the lever; the drum roll ceased.

  The white, frail hands fell.

  “. . . my cup runneth over . . .”

  Alexand stood motionless, a harp for the wind that plucked at his bones; the wind of flailing black wings.

  “ . . . Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life . . .”

  The song rode the wind of anguish, and he saw Zekiel’s face as if it were a dreaming vision, uplifted, transfixed, tears moving down the gullies of his age-eroded cheeks like spring rain on desert hills.

  “. . . and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

  The locks held.

  And there was some comfort in the darkness behind his closed eyes. He heard the booted feet on the steps: the burial detail. The comfort was only that he didn’t have to watch the cruelly mundane act of the removal of the body of Richard Lamb from the strictures of the execution mechanism.

  Richard Lamb had endured his Testing, but another was coming. The voices, one pleading, the other curt and cold. The sea-soothing murmur of the crowd was suddenly ominous; an undercurrent of ferocity, numberless unforgotten frustrations finding focus. And a smell. He recognized it. Fear.

  The voices. Zekiel, the pleading, querulous one; and the sharp, impatient one, the captain in charge.

  “But, sir, he’s a holy man. He must be given the Rites of Passing.”

  “I’m not turning the body over to anybody but the burial detail, old man.”

  The tension was stifling. Alexand opened his eyes, and his mental focus allowed him no pain, even when he saw the still body on the stretcher at the captain’s feet.

  “But, sir, it’s the law of the Concord—” Zekiel craning back to meet the cold eyes of the captain, his gnarled fists grasping the edge of the stand, his head on a level with the sightless eyes of Richard Lamb. A young Bond wearing the golden skullcap of an acolyte stood beside him, staring with open resentment at the captain.

  “Listen, old man, if he was so damned holy, what was he doing up here on this stand?”

  Zekiel paled. “But—but it was the Mezion’s will!”

  “Yeh? Well, nobody told me about it. Now, get back to your compounds!”

  The crowd compressed and the ominous murmur swelled to a warning growl. One of the guardsman’s hands moved furtively to his holstered laser.

  Zekiel cried, “Sir, we only ask what is ours!”

  “What’s yours?” The captain gave a mocking laugh, but there was fear in it, and his eyes moved across the closing crowd that was fast becoming a mob. “What’s yours is going to be a laser beam between the eyes if you don’t get out of here! Now, clear the Plaza!”

  The throbbing undercurrent surged to a snarling crescendo of shouts and cries; mouths gaped savagely behind flailing fists. The black ranks, taut and ready, stiffened.

  The captain gestured to a subordinate for an ampmike.

  “I told you to get out of here, old man! All of you! That’s an order! Back to your compounds!”

  The amplified words boomed, but the Bonds only pressed closer. The stand had become an island bastion in an angry, clamorous sea. A few Fesh watching from the promenades scurried to the safety of the buildings, leaving the walks empty except for the ranks of guards—the ranks that could trap the Bonds in a three-way crossfire if the captain gave the order.

  Alexand saw him take out his transceiver and speak into it, and almost expected the order to be given. But not yet. Under the impetus of the command audible only to the guards through their earceivers, the ranks on the stand shifted position, every other man in the line at the back of the stand marching forward to form a new buttress at the front, those at the side about-facing, the first five moving down onto the steps to defend that access. The captain was speaking into the ampmike again.

  “Clear out! All of you! Get back to your compounds!”

  But the only response was a raging roar. Zekiel staggered as he was pushed against the stand by the force of pressing bodies.

  “This is an order! Get back to your compounds!”

  The angry tumult drowned the captain’s amplified voice. An assault on the stairs was put down with curses and charged lashes, and Alexand recognized the cloying breathlessness of his own fear. The captain’s repeated commands rang futilely against the wall of rage and, along the rigid rows of guards, eyes shifted from the captain to the crowd, waiting. Waiting for the command to open fire.

  And finally, slowly, the captain lowered the ampmike and brought up the transceiver.

  Zekiel.

  Alexand stared at the old man and saw his tear-burned eyes fix on Richard Lamb’s still face. The captain surveyed the crowd grimly. Another second, perhaps two. Zekiel straightened and spun around, arms flung upward.

  “Peace! My children—listen!”

  A hush moved out from him; the words moved before it passed from one Bond to another: “Zekiel speaks . . .”

  But the quiet wasn’t one of resolution; only a pause on the brink of decision. The captain hesitated, the transceiver still ready, and Zekiel’s voice soared over the Plaza.

  “Richard the Lamb lies dead before you, his body still warm. Have you forgotten him so soon?” He paused at the ripple of cries of anger and shouted demands. “The way of the Blessed is peace. As all people are children of the All-God, they are all brothers. Who lifts his hand in wrath against any person, lifts his hand against his brother and reaps the harvest of doom! Have you forgotten him who lies here? He who showed you the way of the Blessed? The immortal soul of Richard the Lamb is in the gentle hands of the Mezion. His mortal remains will be done with as the Mezion wills!”

  The silence was palpable. An equilibrium had been struck; the scales rested at an uneasy perfect balance. A call to action from one of the Bonds or a single aggressive gesture by any of the guards would tip the scales to disaster, but Zekiel spoke n
ot another word.

  Alexand counted the seconds, waiting for the scales to shift, and perhaps the wordless longing within him was a prayer. When he reached twenty, he felt, rather than heard, a collective sigh, and at the edges of the crowd first one, then another, then groups of three and four, began moving away. The tight-packed agglomeration loosened, fragmented, and the exodus was under way. The only sound in the wide white Plaza was the soft shuffle of footsteps. Alexand felt the tension slip away with the retreating footfalls, felt the black lines sag. The captain lowered his transceiver, his hand fell away from his holster.

  Alexand’s gaze moved down to the lifeless, emaciated body on the stretcher. He steeled himself, putting yet another lock on that chamber within his mind.

  They had not failed Rich; he could not fail them.

  He switched off his face-screen as he strode toward the center of the platform.

  “Captain!”

  The guardsman’s head jerked around, eyes going to impatient slits, then widening.

  “My lord?”

  The men of the burial detail had been bending over the stretcher, but now they retreated a few steps, making tentative bowing motions, but Alexand’s level gaze never left the captain’s face as he closed the distance between them.

  “Captain, dismiss the burial detail.”

  “Dis——but, my lord . . .”

  “Dismiss them.” He didn’t wait to see the order carried out; it would be. He turned to the retreating crowd. A few had stopped to watch this new development, among them Zekiel and the acolyte.

  “Zekiel—” He saw the Shepherd stiffen, and softened his tone. “Zekiel, bring your acolyte and another man and come to the stand.” He turned to the guards at the steps. “Let them pass.”