Sorrowing Vengeance

by David C. Smith

  As Asawas spoke to the trembling, troubled crowd, the young initiate returned from the governor’s palace, dipped his head, and told Anasiah, “Lord Abadon hears what this preacher is saying. He mistrusts him.”

  “Return to Lord Abadon and tell him that I and our Inquisitor would have words with this false prophet.”

  The young predicant bowed again, hurried down from the roof of the Temple, and ran through the street toward the governor’s palace.

  “When the man of evil comes to you,” Asawas warned the people, “the man of fear and intolerance, you will welcome him with your arms and your hearts because he will not seem to be evil to you! He will promise you all the things that are good! He is a man meant to be, as I am meant to bring you the word of On! But I, who come to warn you that the earth must die to be reborn—do you think I am a good man? Or do my words frighten you, so that you think I am evil? I speak the truth, and I show you to yourselves, and you are frightened of me, and I am love! But the man who will not tell you the truth, the man who will reassure you and tell you what it is you want to hear—that man you will welcome, but he is to be feared!”

  Then he said to them, “Listen and I will tell you of the signs that have come already and of the signs that are yet to come, marking the end of days! Here is the first sign, the sign that nature is upturned, that the earth rebels against the pain we have subjected it to: birds fall into the seas to die and animals attack their masters—these are the signs of a rebellious earth! Last night you stared into the sky and saw a rain of blood—blood cleansed only by the power of God: that was the second sign! You will feel a great wind blow upon the earth, like the breath of On, delivering a storm upon the fields and cities and the seas: know this to be the third sign! And know this to be the fourth sign: that I, the voice of the one true god that lives within men’s hearts, will be taken by unclean men and made to face judgment in an earthly court! And the fifth sign is this: the earth will suffer a day and a night of plague that will strike the true and the false, the trusting and the mistrustful, the honest and the dishonest, all of us, for all of us are within the heart of God! Then know this as the sixth sign: that the Prophet of Light will meet the Master of Evil! The old gods will fall away, the old ways will pass, and every person’s crimes will return ten-fold and a hundred-fold! The earth will grow angry, the skies will collapse and the seas rise, as On grows impatient to be done with the old days! For the seventh sign is the end of a beginning, and a beginning to an end!”

  The citizens of Hilum, perplexed, frightened by the implica­tions of these words, began to grow indignant. A few in the street picked up stones and bricks and flung them at Asawas, although none touched him.

  “Where is your faith?” he called to them. “Where is your faith? Am I now a thing for you to attack? Or am I the man of the one true god, bringing you the truth?”

  The increasing temper of the crowd was suddenly arrested by a strident horn blast; immediately, the throng fell back in waves, and stragglers were rudely pushed to the sides as a long double file of Athadian foot soldiers imperiously advanced. The soldiers held the people far away from Asawas, clearing an area for the arrival of mounted troops. At their head rode a tall, darkly handsome man dressed in the garb of a state official. He brought his horse still before the prophet; from his saddle he sat at eye level with Asawas. The prophet said nothing as the official, regarding him sternly, finally explained:

  “I am Governor Abadon, the authority in Hilum by the gracious permission of King Elad, our emperor. Priest—your words have created civil unrest in my city, and that is against the law. You prophesy well. Consider yourself under arrest.” To foot soldiers beside his horse: “Shackle him and bring him to the palace.”

  * * * *

  The office of inquisitor, which once had commanded great power and respect within the Church, had become, with the Church’s waning influence in a secular world, little more than a title. By tradition charged with investigating heresy, apostasy, and other cardinal infractions within the Church body, inquisitors in the past had ordered the wholesale torture, mutilations, imprisonment, and executions of entire communities deemed heretical in the sight of the Prophet—as the Prophet’s Church on earth interpreted such matters. But Seraficos, before whom Asawas was brought, enjoyed no such extremes of authority. His duties were now reduced to a simple formula of inquiry into events contained within the jurisdiction of the Temple of Bithitu proper, in Hilum.

  Seraficos was an intelligent man, learned in mundane matters as well as spiritual ones. If his office found itself looking after troubled young priests these days (and inquiring into the reasons for such personal distress) and investigating incidents for possible reform in the codes of conduct for Church brethren, nevertheless Seraficos was fully aware of how strictly he could apply the authority he held at his command. True, it was not within Seraficos’s power to order the execution of entire villages, but the inquisitor was better concerned in his later years with effecting more personally satisfying (and materially rewarding) objectives than he was in slaughtering the fallen and the lost. Seraficos, in his progress through the Church hierarchy, had spent several years studying administrative policies under the tutelage of Andoparas of Erusabad, and he had himself instituted several measures of reform within the Hilum Church since obtaining his post here. Seraficos was a man orthodox in his beliefs: belief in the Prophet meant adherence to the Church’s regulations and proscriptions, and praise for Bithitu must necessarily translate itself into tangible offerings to the Church.

  His reputation in Hilum was an enviable one. Regarded by the faithful as a stern administrator as well as a prelate tireless in his work to improve people’s souls, Seraficos was known to the government leaders as a singularly redoubtable politician of great influence and persua­sion. It was upon the testimony of Seraficos, and none other, that Governor Abadon decreed which sections of the port city should receive government benefits, and which should not; which guilds of working men should receive certain contracts to perform government-authorized labor, and which should not; which young men should gain advancement within government offices, and which should not. Seraficos, although not yet the highest ranking official in the Hilum Church, was nevertheless deferred greater authority than his station actually obtained because of his powerful personality, his shrewdness, and his personal acquaintance with many important figures in both the secular and clerical offices of the empire.

  After Asawas’s arrest had been entered into the governor’s ledgers at the palace, he was brought before this Seraficos, and the prophet understood instantly that, whatever the crimes he might be charged with, they would fall not under the jurisdiction of the civil authorities but rather under that of the Church. Perhaps it was simply as Governor Abadon had told him while he was being held in the palace: “As far as I’m concerned, you can get on a boat and be gone from here. But our Church officials here want to ask you a few questions before we kick you out.”

  “Am I not under arrest, then?” he had asked Governor Abadon.

  “Oh, you’re under arrest. But I’m not going to martyr you—not in this city. Haven’t I problems enough right now?”

  And so Asawas had been detained in a cell in the city government building until late in the afternoon, when a young priest in the company of two city guards came for him and escorted him to the Temple.

  “Am I to be brought, then, to the master of your Temple?” Asawas had asked.

  “To Anasiah? Oh, no, he can’t be bothered with you. We’re taking you to Seraficos, our inquisitor.”

  They led him by a back entrance into the Temple and down a dark stairwell into its underground. Here, where the wet walls of stone and the floors seemed to breathe with damp mist, the torches carried by the city guards almost suffocated in the rank humidity. Asawas, as he passed through the dank corridors, saw signs of the oppression of old: cells and bars and chains hanging on the walls, all rusted. It came to him that those who had enslaved the minds of men
with their corruption no longer needed such gross methods: the work they had begun with torch and sword, poisons and handcuffs, was now accomplished: the prisons that people were held in they now built themselves, in their own hearts.

  He was taken into a wide stone room that stank of such things; and there, in the gloom relieved only by a wall of whispering torches and hanging oil lamps that smoked, Asawas was inter­viewed by Seraficos. The inquisitor, this old man, tall and erect, with a seamed face and heavy brows, owned deep eyes that burned with an unquenchable inner fire. He nodded wordlessly to the young priest and the two guards. Having delivered Asawas, they removed themselves, leaving the prophet and the inquisitor alone with each other.

  Seraficos did not ask Asawas to be seated, although he himself sat in one of several high-backed wooden chairs placed around a long oak table. The old man kept his keen eyes on this prophet; then he stood slowly—a carnivore suspicious of its prey—and approached Asawas, carefully walking around him, circling him twice, watching him, breathing but not yet speaking. Finally, with hands behind his back, head tilted forward so that he seemed a disembodied face atop a long, dull gray robe, Seraficos whis­pered:

  “Is it truly you? Is it? Is it truly? Have you come back?” And then, before allowing Asawas any time to reply: “Don’t an­swer. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know who you are, and it doesn’t matter. You spoke to them out there—they waited on you like starving slaves being offered bread. Is that your strength? Did you come here thinking that because they listen to you, you’re as powerful as I am, as powerful as the empire? You’re very wrong if you think that. I could draw up charges against you; I could have you executed tomorrow morning. Do you think any of them would care? You ask them to reach into their hearts, to listen to the truth. Do you think they care? Do you think they know what truth is? Do you know what truth is, ikbusa? Do you? Tell me. What is truth?”

  Asawas stared at him.

  Seraficos grinned foully; the wrinkles of his face shifted in living patterns, the wet brightness of his face altering with the moving, creased shadows. “I’ve seen your kind before,” he said to the prophet. “They come through here all the time. They all have messages; they all have something to preach. The crowds listen to them, then the crowds go away. They listen, but they don’t listen. Do you know why? Do you know why the crowds listen to them, but stay with me? Who do you think you are, Asawas—‘seeing one’—to tell people the truth? Do you want to know why the crowds will not follow you but will stay with me? Why they worship within the Church? Why they serve this government? Do you want me to show you why?” Seraficos smiled, lifted an arm, and showed Asawas his right hand; he wore a priceless ring upon each finger. Still smiling, the inquisitor pointed to the stone blocks of the walls all around.

  “I understand that you can create miracles,” he said to Asawas. “Is this true?” Confidently, he walked to the stone wall nearest him; stones and bits of broken brick littered the corner. Seraficos stooped and picked up a small stone and carried it to Asawas. “The people have no work; they have no food,” he said. “They are starving. If you can work miracles, do something for the people you preach to, Asawas. Here—turn this stone into bread. Is that asking too much of a prophet of the one god?”

  He held out the stone. Asawas looked at it, eyed Seraficos, but refused to take the stone. “Shall the people live by bread alone?” he asked the inquisitor.

  Seraficos sneered at him, cast the stone aside, and stepped back. “You’re a poor man,” he observed. “How long have you been traveling, preaching this word of the one god, claiming to be the new prophet? What do you receive for this? You command people’s attention, but what do you do with that? How do you guide them? How do you tell them what to do? What is your reward for this authority of yours, this voice you speak with? Don’t tell me that you’re content just walking the roads and touching souls. The people like to hear that from us, but we all understand just how far that goes. Look you, Asawas, preacher, prophet—we own the world. From sea to sea, we own the world. Would you like me to give you my robe, give you my office, give you what I have? The people will understand. Would you like to own the world?”

  “Should I serve On,” Asawas replied, “but put everything else before On?”

  Seraficos frowned with displeasure and said, “If you believe so greatly in this god of yours—if you truly believe what you say, that he is here, that he will do what he says he will do—then don’t speak to me of signs and portents. Show me. Prove it. Look you: we will take ourselves up to the height of this Temple, you can call the people to you, they will watch you, and you can cast yourself from the height. If your belief in this one god is so strong, if he is truly all that you say he is, then surely his power is great enough, and you will not be crushed when you fall but will land as lightly as a bird.”

  “Why,” Asawas replied, “for what benefit, should I test God? Have I not faith?”

  Becoming angry, Seraficos turned his back to Asawas, sat again in his chair and faced the prophet from across the table. “Who are you,” he grunted, “to tell the people that they must free themselves so that they can love one another in the name of God? That they are God themselves? Who are you to ask them to reach into their hearts, disdain the authority they crave so greatly, and choose for themselves between the shadow and the light? When Bithitu came to redeem humanity from itself two thousand years ago, he sought to give people freedom, and to instill in them love—and see the result! Temples have been erected to him. He is made the greatest of all gods from the hearth to the battlefield. His statues stand taller than all other gods’ statues—and everyone willingly bows to us, his Church. Where is their freedom? Where is their brotherhood? Where are their hearts? Where is their faith?

  “You come to give people freedom again by allowing them to choose between the shadow and the light? So that they may with grace and love choose the light? Or live with the burden of the shadow? If people were meant to make that choice, they would have chosen already! And they have chosen! Do you come to warn people that an angry god seeks to heave the earth, to punish them? Do you come to warn humanity that what will come, they have themselves caused to come, through their generations of labor? They rejoice in this! They will rejoice in the punishing! They would rather have the idol and the statue, Asawas, than the true words of the Prophet! They would rather be punished than take upon themselves responsibility for their lives! They would rather have you return to them so that they can speak with you, then believe in your words when you have gone! They would rather have no gods, no prophets, than be forced to face the gods and the prophets in themselves! And you come to them offering them truth?”

  Seraficos was very angry now. He rose to his feet, faced Asawas from across the table, and pounded on it with both fists.

  “You’re a fool! People don’t want the truth! They want to believe in the authority over them! They don’t want to take responsibility for their lives! They want answers given to them! And they find their answers—in the Church, in their money, in their businesses, in their wine and flesh! They want to be told what to think and what to believe! You ask people to open their hearts? They will not! You have shown them miracles! You have told them mysteries! You have come to them as an authority! And what will you do now? Ask them to believe in the one god?

  “We already have our miracles, and the gods and the prophets have indeed given them to us! We earn profit with pieces of gold! We have mysteries! If a man works, he will earn! If two marry, they will come to love one another! If a man believes, he will make that belief become real! We have authority! We tell the people what to do and we tell them that it is for their benefit in the name of the Prophet or in the name of the empire, and they concede us that right! And if they don’t want our authority, they’ll find someone else to use as an authority! And you ask them to look into their hearts and choose? You ask them to think? You ask them to have faith? When anyone on earth would gladly turn a mountain into bread and feed the poor
and call it a miracle! When anyone on earth would gladly rule the world and think it proper for himself to do it! When anyone on earth would jump from this building and expect the gods to rescue him? And you come to them, you ask them to have faith in themselves? They don’t need to believe in themselves! We allow them to believe in us! Bithitu freed men to choose, and they have chosen, and we acknowledge their choice and support them! Why do you come now to harass them? They have faith in me! In gold! In everything but themselves! They have chosen!”

  Asawas stood silent, listening only, while staring at Seraficos with sad eyes.

  “What have you to say to this, you imposter?” the inquisitor railed at him. “Explain yourself to me!”

  For a long moment, Asawas merely met his stare. Seraficos, panting and sweating, leaned forward, balanced himself on the table and glared at the prophet with his sharp, penetrating eyes.

  “Well?” he growled. “Explain yourself to me!”

  “Where is your faith, Seraficos?” Asawas asked him in a very low voice. “Where is your belief? You command a church, you have allied yourself with a government, you make profit from your businesses—yet you believe in nothing. The thing you have not learned, Seraficos, is that humanity truly is God. Have you not realized that yet? Do you not comprehend what these generations of life have yearned for? Do you think that your church is the final haven that will be built? This search does not end with you, Seraficos! Your authority is not final.” And then: “What do you carry in your heart, Seraficos? What do you carry in your ibi? Where is your faith?”

  The inquisitor paled and began to tremble. This ibi was the small phylactery worn by all high officials and administrators of the Church; by tradition, it contained its wearer’s own small relic or token of spiritual significance.