William Nicholson - [Wind on Fire 02]

by Slaves of the Mastery (epub)

  Oh, you boy! said Mist to himself. What are you doing to me? I’ve been alone too long.

  ‘Alone too long,’ said Bowman.

  He had heard.

  ‘You heard me?’

  ‘Yes. I heard you.’

  ‘Oh, you boy! The hermit was right!’

  Eagerly, gratefully, he licked Bowman’s cheek and brow, tasting the sharp salty tang of human skin.

  ‘Well now, cat. I’ve found you at last.’

  ‘You’re a dear boy. You’re a fine boy.’

  Mist went back to licking, astonished to hear himself. Anyone would think he was expressing affection. Of course, it was nothing more than an overflow from the memory, an echo of the emotions of his kittenhood.

  ‘Have you come to tell me what I’m to do?’ said Bowman.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mist.

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘You’re to teach me to fly.’

  Mist felt the boy’s head move away, and saw the dark eyes looking at him with a quizzical expression. Then Bowman started to laugh.

  ‘But I don’t know how to fly.’

  ‘It’s just a matter of practice,’ said the cat. ‘And wanting it enough.’

  But before they could pursue the subject further, a bell began to ring from the nearby village, the urgent clamour of an alarm. Soon other bells were joining in, and lights were being lit. Bowman jumped up.

  ‘Something’s happened.’

  There were troops of grim-faced soldiers moving everywhere, searching with lanterns, checking the people out on the roads. Bowman was stopped three times on his way back to his slave quarters, and each time his brand number was examined and checked. Late though it was, he found everyone in the barracks awake, and gathered in anxious clusters. He soon learned what had caused the alarm. One of the slaves was missing.

  The officials of the Mastery ordered a room check. But the word was already out. Pinto whispered to Bowman as he joined them.

  ‘It’s Rufy Blesh. He’s run away.’

  Clerks with ledgers moved up and down the lines of shivering slaves, checking off their names and numbers. Then they checked the kin group of the missing slave, and from the night’s lists they identified which of the monkey wagons contained his relatives. The Greeths were cousins to the Bleshes. Pia Greeth, the young woman who had been betrothed on the last night before Aramanth was burned, was even now incarcerated in Cage Number Eleven.

  ‘But they can’t, can they? They wouldn’t!’

  The soldiers moved away down the road, following the chief clerk and his team. Behind them trailed the Manth slaves. To their horror, they found the guards already stacking extra firewood in the under-tray of the cage where Pia Greeth was held. Nearby an iron brazier burned red in the darkness.

  The Hath family followed with the rest; and the grey cat loped along at Bowman’s feet.

  There were twenty men and women in Cage Number Eleven. Within a very short time, all their husbands and wives, parents and children, had gathered, fearful of the punishment. No official threat or announcement had been made. The guards were surely acting without instructions. Tanner Amos, holding his young wife’s hands through the bars, was certain it would all end in nothing.

  ‘They’re just doing it to frighten us,’ he said. ‘They can’t burn you all. You’ve done nothing wrong. It would be too cruel.’

  Pia Greeth’s father, Dr Greeth, arrived panting, and started shouting at the guards.

  ‘Who’s in charge here? Who’s in authority?’

  The guards paid him no attention. Dr Greeth saw the chief clerk standing to one side, looking at his ledger.

  ‘Are you in charge here?’

  ‘I don’t know that I’m in charge,’ said the chief clerk. ‘I’m just here to make sure everything’s done right.’

  ‘Then you will tell these fools to leave the firewood alone. The people in the cage are innocent. They’ve made no attempt to escape.’

  ‘There’s been an escape,’ said the chief clerk. ‘Now there’s to be a punishment. That’s how it’s done right.’

  ‘No! It’s not right! Where’s the sense in punishing people who haven’t done anything wrong?’

  ‘Where’s the sense in punishing people who have done something wrong?’ said the chief clerk. ‘That’s too late, isn’t it? They’ve already done it. No, punish people before they’ve done anything wrong, and then they won’t do it, will they? You nip it in the bud. That’s what the Master orders, and the Master’s always right.’

  Dr Greeth realised to his horror that the nightmare was really going to happen. Tanner Amos started to bang his fists against the bars. The chief clerk saw this, and called out loud so everyone could hear him.

  ‘Any trouble, and another wagon will be burned.’

  There was no trouble after that.

  Bowman stood in silence with the rest; but alone among them, he knew he was not powerless. Now if ever was the time to use his secret strength. He fixed his mind on the burning brand that the guard was even now carrying from the brazier towards the cage. He gripped it, as he had gripped his staff in the night pasture, and he pulled hard. It jerked clean out of the guard’s hand, and fell to the ground.

  ‘Clumsy oaf!’ said the chief clerk.

  The brand was still burning. Puzzled by what had happened, the guard stooped down to pick it up. Bowman held the brand with his mind, and pulled it away, over the ground. The movement through the long damp grass doused the flame. The guard stared in bewilderment.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said the chief clerk.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said the guard.

  ‘Idiot! You!’ The chief clerk pointed to a second guard. ‘You do it. And don’t drop it!’

  The second guard pulled a burning branch from the brazier, and carried it towards the monkey cage. Once again, Bowman reached out to grasp it. But this time the guard was holding the branch firmly in both hands, and when Bowman tugged, he didn’t let go. The struggle between them was short but intense. Bowman found he was strong enough to stop the guard moving the burning branch closer to the cage, but not strong enough to pull it from his grasp. For a few tense moments they strove with each other, the guard leaning forward as if against a strong wind, and Bowman pulling him back.

  ‘Come and help me here!’ shouted the guard.

  Two of his companions, willing but bewildered, came alongside him and pushed. Bowman knew then that he couldn’t hold them. He just wasn’t strong enough. As soon as this certainty entered his mind, his power collapsed. The guards, suddenly released, tumbled forward, falling to the ground. But the branch was still burning. Now Bowman could do nothing but look on, helpless and exhausted, as they lit the firewood.

  It caught quickly. The flames spread. The people in the cage climbed the bars. They started to scream. The guards went round the cage, banging their sticks at the fingers clinging to the bars, to make the people inside fall down into the fire. The onlookers, unable to help, sobbed and turned away. Bowman too turned away at last, bitterly aware of the cost of his failure. Only Tanner Amos never took his eyes off his young wife. Jessel Greeth knelt on the ground and howled like an animal. The screams of the dying grew louder for a while, and then quieter. The bright orange fire raged, lighting up the crossroads and all the wagons along the four ways.

  No one, not even Tanner Amos, watched the horror to the end. One by one they knelt before the fire, and bowed their heads, and blocked their ears so as not to hear the sounds of the burning. There they stayed until the fire burned low, and the agony of their loved ones was over.

  Jessel Greeth then rose up on unsteady legs, and trembling all over his body, he tottered over to Hanno Hath, his face contorted in bitter rage.

  ‘You killed them!’ he shrieked. ‘You and your sick dreams! You made the Blesh boy run away! You filled his head with your lies! And now – look!’

  ‘Don’t hate me, Jessel,’ said Hanno. ‘Hate the Master.’

  ‘I hate you!’ scre
amed Dr Greeth. ‘I blame you! We don’t want you, and we don’t want your poisonous dreams, and we don’t want your mad wife!’

  ‘Shut up!’ shouted Pinto. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’ve still got a daughter,’ sobbed Dr Greeth, frantic with pain. ‘There she is, spitting at me. But where’s my daughter?’

  ‘I’m more sorry than I can say –’

  ‘I don’t want you to be sorry! I want you to be punished! I want you to suffer as I’m suffering now!’

  Hanno Hath saw the faces of the others, all looking at him with the same reproach in their eyes. He knew then there was nothing he could say.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ he said to his wife. In silence, he led his family back to their rooms.

  Bowman followed, lost in self-punishing thoughts. Then he felt Pinto’s arm creep through his, and he realised she was crying. He put an arm round her and hugged her close, and felt the torrents of fear and anger within her.

  ‘It won’t go on like this forever. I promise you.’

  ‘Oh, Bo, I can’t bear it! I hate being a child! I want to be grown-up, and strong, so I can do something. I feel so useless.’

  ‘You’re not useless. Every one of us has something we can do.’

  ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. But our time will come. We must watch out for it. We’ll know it when our time comes. Then the strength will be given to us, and we won’t just have to stand and watch.’

  Once in their room, they sat together on their beds and held hands.

  ‘How much longer?’ said Hanno.

  ‘Not long now,’ said Ira.

  ‘All this will be destroyed,’ said Bowman.

  ‘How can it be?’ said Pinto. ‘How can we fight them? How can we hurt them? How can we destroy anything?’

  In answer, Bowman took her exercise book and her new pencil-case from the end of her bed, and opened it on his lap. He fixed his mind on one of the pencils, and picked it up. His mother and father and sister watched in silent amazement. With a steady motion, he lifted the pencil over the exercise book, and set it in motion, looping round and round.

  ‘That’s how the Mastery will be destroyed.’

  He held up the exercise book to show her what he had made the pencil draw. It was the curled-over S of the Singer people.

  ‘Sirene,’ said Hanno softly.

  Pinto looked up and saw from her parents’ faces that they understood this, and believed it, and the fear in her began to subside.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ said Ira, kissing her son. ‘You have a greater gift than me.’

  Pinto crept her arms round her brother, and crawled onto his lap, wanting to feel him close.

  ‘When will it end?’ she asked him. ‘When will the hurting end?’

  Bowman held her in his arms, and remembered how she had been when she was little, so round and happy, and how she had looked up at him with her sunny face and said, ‘Love Bo’. He was filled with a desire to make her happy again, so he rocked her in his arms, and told her his own dearest hopes.

  ‘One day,’ he said, ‘we’ll get to the homeland, which is our own country, and we’ll not go wandering any more. We’ll build a town for our people, by a river that leads to a sea. We’ll work hard all day, and at the end of the day we’ll sit round a big table and eat our own good food and tell stories about how it used to be. You’ll grow up, and maybe have children of your own, and they’ll hear the stories too, about how we used to live in a great city, and then how we were slaves, and then how we searched and searched for our homeland. But to your children they’ll only be stories, because they’ll be so safe and happy sitting round that big table they won’t be able to believe such frightening things could really have happened. They’ll sit on your lap like you’re sitting on my lap now and they’ll say, “Weren’t you terribly afraid, mama?” And you’ll say, “I expect I was, my darling, but it was all long ago now, and I’ve almost forgotten.”’

  Hanno and Ira listened to him, and saw how he stroked his little sister and calmed her wounded spirit, and they were prouder of the love in him than of all the powers of Sirene.

  ‘Thank you, Bo,’ whispered Pinto.

  ‘Thank you, Bo,’ said his father.

  Mist the cat had seen and heard it all. He had watched the burning with as much horror as any of the onlookers, and now from his position under the bed he heard Bowman’s gentle words, and he too was soothed.

  This boy of mine is a fine boy, he thought. A good boy. He will do great things. I’ve chosen well.

  13

  The Lost Testament

  Hanno Hath was at work in the depository the next day, when Professor Fortz came for him.

  ‘You!’ he boomed. ‘Time to find out how good you are at deciphering old Manth script.’

  Hanno followed the professor on foot towards the lake. The slaves they passed were subdued, and avoided meeting their eyes, as if they had done something shameful. Because the ones who had died in the night were innocent, every one of the Manth people who remained unharmed felt guilty.

  Professor Fortz noticed the familiar signs.

  ‘I gather there was a burning last night,’ he said. ‘I hardly need say that it shocks me. All acts of barbarity shock me. On the other hand, the Great Library, which is the glory of our academy, is entirely filled with priceless manuscripts seized in acts of war. So what is one to think?’

  He seemed not to require an answer. He was much shorter than Hanno, and wore a very wide-brimmed hat, so that all Hanno saw of him was a black circle bouncing along by his side, like a large beetle.

  ‘It’s the kind of dilemma that used to trouble me,’ the professor went on. ‘But I’ve found that moral scruples fade over time. The treasures, however, remain. If anything, they grow ever more precious. Our collection of old Manth texts is second to none. The pity is no one can read a word of them.’

  Hanno realised he was to be taken into the High Domain. He followed the little professor onto the long causeway, wondering very much what he would find within the towering walls ahead. Professor Fortz was still talking: and suddenly his words caught and held Hanno’s attention.

  ‘It was the Master himself who wanted the old Manth collection,’ he was saying. ‘He has great respect for one of your people, a tribal elder or prophet known as Ira Manth.’

  ‘The Master has heard of Ira Manth?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. But even the Master can’t read the old texts.’

  Hanno’s mind began to spin. How would the Master have come to know of the first prophet of the Manth people? Why would he care? Preoccupied with these thoughts, Hanno followed the little professor through a door in the gate, and down a long cloister-like passage; and so found he had arrived at the Great Library without taking in anything of the High Domain.

  ‘This,’ said Professor Fortz, ‘is our rare documents archive. We keep all the manuscripts in excellent condition, which is yet another benefit of war. Many of them were mouldering and unread in their original homes. And here’s the old Manth section. Take a seat.’

  Hanno Hath took a seat at the wide table, and stared at the carefully-wrapped bundles being opened before him. As he looked, he felt his heart begin to hammer with excitement. Never in all his life had he dared to hope he would find such treasure.

  ‘There! Make any sense to you?’ The professor tossed manuscript after manuscript onto the table. ‘There’s another!’

  ‘This is extraordinary,’ marvelled Hanno. ‘You have some of my people’s most precious documents here.’

  ‘What’s precious about them?’ boomed Fortz.

  ‘We lost so much, in the tribal wars long ago,’ said Hanno. ‘We thought they were destroyed.’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong. Now you can stop thinking, and copy them out in a form I can read. No one can read that wretched Manth scribble.’

  Hanno sorted through the papers, eager to begin.

  ‘Do you want them transcribed in any part
icular order?’

  ‘How can I, when I don’t know what’s in them? Do try to think before you speak. So few people do these days.’

  ‘Maybe I should start by listing the documents for you.’

  ‘Do as you think best. Just get on with it. Let me know if you find anything of any significance.’

  He then left Hanno alone. Hanno said nothing, but he knew already that he had found something of very great significance indeed. He had recognised it as soon as Professor Fortz had tossed the manuscript so carelessly onto the table.

  It was the Lost Testament.

  Bowman slept during the day, while the others worked. He was just waking when the soldiers came for him. He was alone in the barracks, but for the grey cat.

  They checked his wrist number.

  ‘Bowman Hath?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put your boots on and come with us.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’re wanted.’ They would say no more.

  The early autumn dusk was already gathering as he followed the soldiers down the road to the lake. Ahead, where the causeway joined the shore, a man stood waiting. As they came near, Bowman saw that it was Marius Semeon Ortiz.

  The soldiers saluted. Ortiz studied Bowman carefully.

  ‘Yes, he’s the one.’

  He dismissed the soldiers with a wave of one hand.

  ‘Come with me.’

  He set off over the causeway towards the High Domain. Bowman accompanied him in silence. On either side lay the placid waters of the lake, reflecting the lights of the city. Above, stars were beginning to show in the evening sky. All was at peace.

  ‘I picked you out on the march,’ said Ortiz.

  Bowman remained silent. He was trying to sense Ortiz’s mood, so that he could prepare himself for whatever was to be done with him.

  ‘You’re a quiet one,’ said Ortiz. ‘I like that.’

  They walked on. Bowman found the causeway was longer than it appeared from the land side. The walls of the High Domain grew ever more immense as they approached them. Behind, he heard the soft pad of the grey cat, following in the shadows.

  ‘I find I need a servant for a particular duty,’ said Ortiz. ‘The task is not a menial one. I have chosen you. Are you willing to serve me?’