Beneath Ceaseless Skies #16

by Dolton, Brian; Dikeman, Kris

  “I am a Priest,” Sanquor reminded him. “I am a servant of the Tetharan. I will not be swayed by heresy.”

  “I am sure she said the same thing. You may not speak with her, Sanquor. It is my duty to protect us all.”

  “I do not forget your duty. But we have a higher duty, all of us; to do the will of the Tetharan. To ensure that all may live in their grace.”

  “She has fallen from grace, Priest,” he said. “She has fallen, and there is nothing that can be done to save her.”

  * * *

  He went straight to the Cambrus, to request an audience with Phiruani herself. He had to wait, and paced back and forth across the antechamber. The long climb to the Cambrus had wearied him; there was a dull knot of pain, behind his ribs.

  “You are here because of Amuranya,” the High Priest said, before he could even speak. He bowed his head.

  “You are wise, Mistress,” he answered her. “I heard... I cannot believe it. She was an Adept. She was faithful.”

  “She was. But let this be a lesson to you, Sanquor. Any of us can fall from grace; citizen, Adept, even Priest. We must be vigilant. We must be diligent.”

  “But... Mistress, she shows no sign of infection. Perhaps there is yet hope? If she can be made to see... if she can be brought back to the grace of the Tetharan?”

  There was silence. He waited, trying to still his breathing, slow his heart.

  “You have ever been faithful, Sanquor,” Phiruani said, at last. “But I will not grant this. She has fallen from grace. She is tainted, even if the contagion does not yet show. I would not lose you to temptation.”

  “Mistress... forgive me, but... do you think I am so weak?”

  She offered a weary smile.

  “We are all weak, Sanquor. If we were not, we would not be human.”

  * * *

  In his chambers, Sanquor paced, back and forth. Outside, the sun was setting; he could not see it, from his window, but he could see the ochre towers glowing, could see the long shadows being cast across the city by the Temple tower.

  He gulped down a goblet of quey. The heat of it seemed to spread through him, congealing here and there into bright nuggets, so intense as to be almost painful. He poured another goblet, and stood at the window, watching the shadows spread, watching the darkness grow.

  No. He was a Priest of the Tetharan. He was a brick in the wall that held the darkness back. It was his duty to stop the darkness from spreading.

  He tipped the goblet back, and belted his robe, and headed down.

  * * *

  Maricho stood at the doors of the Interrogium. Sanquor wondered if he ever left; if he had any human needs, any human desires.

  “I have spoken with the High Priest,” Sanquor told him. That part, at least, was true. “I am here at her bidding to speak with Amuranya, that I might bring her back to the way of the Tetharan, to their holy grace.”

  So much of it true, so little of it a lie. But his stomach churned at the thought of it. He did not want to think what punishment he might face, once Phiruani learnt of his disobedience.

  But if he brought Amuranya back... that, surely, would be enough to earn forgiveness. To bring back to the grace of the Tetharan an Adept who had turned away. Such an example might stand, bright and shining against the darkness. Perhaps other heretics would see the light of truth. Perhaps....

  Maricho did not question. He lifted the bar, and swung open the door to the Interrogium.

  “Vardo will guide you,” he said. For a moment, Sanquor wondered what he meant; but then, from one side of the Interrogium, a man stepped into view. He was enormous; a head taller than Sanquor, his shoulders broad, his belly vast.

  “Dwell in grace,” Sanquor said, bowing. He got no answer. As he rose from the bow, Vardo was still standing there, implacable, monolithic.

  “Vardo is deaf,” Maricho explained. “This is the ideal work for him. He cannot be swayed by heresy he cannot hear.”

  Vardo smiled. Maricho made certain gestures; Sanquor could only guess what he was telling the deaf giant. He waited, impatient, his stomach churning. He had never been inside the Interrogium, let alone the prison beyond, where the untainted were confined.

  When Maricho’s gestures ceased, Vardo gave a nod, and a grunt that might have been understanding. Then he clapped Sanquor on the shoulder and, turning, led him to another door, and through, and down. Down, to bedlam.

  He had not imagined it. There were dozens of cells; hundreds. He could hear the clamor of the voices. Some were praying, some begging, some weeping. Now and then a scream – of what he could only imagine was utter despair – pierced through the tumult like a sacrificial knife. His body pulsed with pain in sympathy. He did not want to think how long some of these people had been incarcerated here, waiting for signs of contagion to show, waiting for the inevitable; to be taken to the sacrifice pit. To be imprisoned, in this hot darkness, knowing that the only escape was sacrifice... it was no wonder that madness walked here, and cried out its pain.

  He envied Vardo.

  * * *

  She rose, when the door opened. Sanquor looked at her, and felt his heart twist within him.

  “Amuranya,” he breathed, like an orison.

  “Sanquor?” He thrilled to the sound of his name, from her lips. “You are... why are you here?”

  “To bring you back to grace,” he said. “I know that the sacrifice of your brother lit a fire of doubt within you. But that fire can be quenched.” He wished the fire in his own chest would snuff itself out.

  Her head tilted forward; her long hair, unbound, fell about her face like a veil.

  “It is too late,” she said. A spasm ran through him; fear, horror. He mastered it.

  “No. Not if... you are untainted. You can yet be saved.”

  “None of us can be saved,” she said. “If my brother fell from grace... none of us are pure, Sanquor. We should all be down here. All of us, just waiting to die.”

  “No. You are wrong, Amuranya.” He kept his voice low, but urgency spilled out of him. “You are mistaken. This is not the place for you, here, amongst these heretics. The Tetharan shine their light of grace upon us, and so long as we do not turn aside from it, then we are blessed. We are pure.”

  “And my brother? What was his sin?” There was bitterness there, and pain. He felt it as if it were his own.

  “I cannot say. Only the Tetharan know the secrets of our heart, Amuranya. They are wise, and....”

  “Wise? They are cold gods! They take joy only in our suffering!”

  He stepped back, appalled. How could she have fallen so far, so fast?

  “Amuranya... this is grief. Grief, speaking through you. Deep in your soul, you know that we dwell in the grace and love of the Tetharan.”

  “I know nothing. Nothing! But I feel. I hate them, Sanquor. I hate them!”

  Her venom stung him. His lungs tightened, spasmed. He almost doubled over, then, and he grasped at his chest, pulling his robe apart, clutching at the agony that coiled and twisted within him. That writhed....

  He realized it, even as she gasped in shock and horror. He looked down at himself, saw the flesh of his belly distending, saw the movements under his skin. She screamed, and pressed herself back against the wall of her cell.

  “You see?” she cried. “Even you! The Tetheran mock our faith!”

  He wanted to deny it, to deny her, but the pain seared through him and denied all else. He clutched at his abdomen, as if he could claw the thoravids out of him with his fingers. But it was impossible. There was only one way to deal with the parasites, once they had grown so strong.

  He thought of the row of sacrificial knives, bright and beautiful on the wall of his room.

  “What was my sin?” he cried, falling to his knees. The tide of pain was drowning him. “Lord Dohem, Lord Morvay, Lord Chark... what was my sin?”

  He was still pleading, still praying, when they came to bear him away.

  * * *

 
; He would have struggled. He would have fought against it, but the pain was too great. The poison of the thoravids made his limbs heavy. Ten Adepts bore him to the sacrifice pit. The stone of the altar was warm underneath him. It never cooled, now; not from the succession of purification fires.

  Tears forced themselves from his eyes.

  “It is a lie,” he tried to say, as the Priest intoned the Great Prayer to the Tetharan. “It is a lie! I deserve grace! I only tried to save her! I am without sin!”

  But his voice was weak, and drowned by the crowd.

  And then the knife came down.

  Copyright © 2009 Brian Dolton

  Comment on this Story in the BCS Forums

  Brian Dolton has ridden a camel in the Sahara, played volleyball on a sandbar in the Pacific Ocean, and stayed in a Zen Buddhist monastery on a sacred mountain in Japan. He recently moved from rural England to rural New Mexico, where he intends to continue writing until they pry the computer from his cold, dead hands. Anyone who knows who the “they” in question might be should get in touch via http://tchernabyelo.livejournal.com so that suitable preparations can be made.

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  CLOCKWORK HEART, CLOCKWORK SOUL

  by Kris Dikeman

  “It’s beautiful,” Lichtman whispered, and I glanced over my shoulder at the Cathedral dome ensnared within its scaffolding and gleaming in the moonlight. Even in this rundown section of town, the Cathedral dominated the sky.

  The four of us—Lichtman, the Burgomeister, Fleischer, and myself—were clustered on the unswept threshold of the Doctor’s house like a covey of frightened schoolboys. Moonflower vines ran wild over the tightly shuttered windows, filling the night with sickly-sweet perfume. A roaring lion’s head, black with soot and age, stared from the stout oak door.

  “Have courage,” the Burgomeister said.

  Lichtman reached up to the fearsome mouth; the hollow boom of iron on iron reverberated through the narrow street. We waited. A rat scurried across the cobblestones behind us.

  “There is no one here,” Fleischer said. He sounded relieved.

  “The Doctor is surely home at this hour,” I said. “Knock again.”

  Just then came the shuffle of footsteps down the hallway. We heard something set against the door and a grating sound as the bolts were drawn back, top, middle, bottom. More shuffling and finally the door gave a groan and shuddered open.

  The house was darker within than the street without. Fleischer held up his little tallow lantern, sending ghostly flickering shadows down the hall. We pushed forward again, peering in.

  Below us a face popped into view, wizened and horribly simian in its aspect. Fleischer almost dropped the lantern and Lichtman gave a little squeal of fright.

  The Doctor’s servant was a malformed thing, with a horrible crooked back and a head too large for his misshapen body. I had seen him buying food at the market stalls. Boys threw stones when he passed by, and the women of the market did not haggle with him long. Easier to make his price and send him on his way than risk his ugliness spoiling the milk.

  He stared up at us dumbly. He was dressed in filthy rags, his face streaked with dirt. I did not know if he could hear; certainly I had never heard him speak. The Burgomeister bent down until he was eye to eye with the brute.

  “We would visit with your Master,” he said, his words slow and deliberate. “Is he at home to us?”

  This is what it had come to. The four of us, prosperous and successful men, begging for entry from the Doctor’s pet idiot. But we needed the Doctor’s help too desperately to turn back now.

  The crookback stared at the Burgomeister’s face, lips moving silently. Then the wretch stretched out his wizened hand and led us into the house. Lichtman and I followed the Burgomeister, keeping Fleischer and his light between us, trying not to trip over the detritus cluttering the narrow hallway. It felt strange to enter the Doctor’s home at last. All through my childhood I had tried to catch a glimpse of his fabulous inventions. And now I was here, about to beg this man to save our lives. To deliver us from evil.

  We were ushered into a dark room, cold and stinking of dust and mold but still recognizable as the parlor. There were no lamps, but the crookback produced a box of sulfur matches and scuttled about lighting candle stubs among the clutter. As the room grew lighter, the profound disorder of the place was revealed. Piles of papers and books crowded every surface, along with soiled plates strewn with dried crusts of bread and rinds of cheese. Empty wine bottles were scattered across the threadbare carpet; ragged curtains of cobwebs thick with dust hung from the beams. We stood awkwardly, not wishing to soil our coats on the filthy chairs. With a clumsy half bow, the crookback limped out.

  “For God’s sake,” Fleischer said, swatting at a cobweb clinging to his coat, “this is a fool’s errand. Let us go.”

  “We have only just arrived.” The Burgomeister held up a candle stub, examining a bookshelf crowded with leather volumes.

  “It’s madness, I say.” Fleischer left off wiping and looked up. “Please, gentlemen, let us go.”

  “There is no more than a month left,” the Burgomeister said. “Barely that. The Doctor is our last chance.”

  “We could postpone the dedication,” Fleischer said.

  “The work is on schedule to finish on the exact day Herr Kobalt predicted, seven years ago,” I said, trying to keep the weariness from my voice. “How many signs do you need? Kobalt is what he says he is. He will not be denied. All our other plans have come to naught. Only the Doctor can save us from him now.”

  “This is madness.” Fleischer’s voice quavered.

  “To you it is madness,” Lichtman said, “because you have no sons. To me it is our last chance.”

  I saw the Burgomeister wince.

  Lichtman turned to me. “What do you think, Karl?”

  “You are both correct,” I said. “This is our last chance. And it is madness.”

  “Kobalt could not really.... It is not possible that he seriously means to—” he began.

  “The agreement we made was clear enough to you seven years ago.” I held up my right hand, with the little crescent-shaped scar at the base of my palm. I closed my eyes and recited the terms: “In return for sufficient monies to finish renovation of the Cathedral, Herr Kobalt collects the first man to enter the building on its dedication day, to do with as he pleases.”

  Fleischer ran a finger across the path of his scar. “Seven years is a long time,” he said softly.

  “The afterlife, I fear, will be longer,” the Burgomeister said, closing his own hand into a fist. “We were more naïve then, poorer and less wise.”

  “Do you really think the Doctor can help, Bader?” Lichtman asked me.

  “My sister came here once long ago,” I said. “She and her little friends wanted to see the Doctor’s doll, the mechanical woman. It would dance all day, waltzing along the top floor of the house—we could see it through the windows. So real we could scarcely believe it was a toy. Do you remember, Burgomeister?” We were friends then, I thought.

  “I remember,” he said. He gave a wan smile, and I was struck anew at how the last few years had aged him. “Your sister was a headstrong girl.”

  “She told me all about the workshop,” I said. “She said—”

  “She did a great deal of damage.” The voice at the doorway took us all by surprise.

  He was more cadaverously thin than I remembered, frailer and smaller. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. The white hair, once thick and full, lay in bare wisps across his peeling, freckled pate. His shirt was badly mended, the dirty and creased coat a style long out of date. The Doctor raised one veined and spotted hand and stabbed the air with a bony finger.

  “They broke things, those girls. They had no right to invade my workshop.” His voice had grown high and querulous; it had lost the booming quality that had so frightened me as a child.

  “She was only curious,” I said, “to se
e your wondrous dancing doll.” And father recompensed you handsomely for the damages, I thought, but held my tongue.

  The crookback wrestled a high-backed wooden chair out of the shadows and placed it near the empty hearth.

  “What a rare compliment, to have such gentlemen pay me a visit,” the Doctor said, making himself comfortable. “Be seated, pray, while my man finds us some refreshments.”

  “We brought a small gift, Herr Doctor.” The Burgomeister gestured to Fleischer, who proffered the bottle of cognac we had purchased at the tavern. The tavernkeeper had taken our money with a grudging, sulky air; an old man drinking in the corner had stabbed the sign of the evil eye towards us.

  “I grow more flattered by the moment.” The Doctor handed the bottle to the crookback, who went out again. “Sit, gentlemen, I beg you.”

  We each moved to find a seat amongst the squalor. Fleischer unfolded his handkerchief across a grimy brocade couch, then settled himself quickly when the Burgomeister caught his eye.

  “Let us have a fire,” the Doctor said. He made a languid gesture with his hand. At once a blue spark blazed up in the hearth; a moment later a fire burned vigorously. The shock and fear on our faces could be clearly seen by its light.

  He knows why we’ve come, I thought. Of course he knows. Our bargain with Herr Kobalt was common knowledge in the town now.

  The crookback returned with the cognac poured out into chipped clay cups. The crackling of the fire was very loud as he served us the liquor, making his distorted bow as we each took our measure from his tray.

  “Your health, gentlemen,” the Doctor said, with a mock-solemn salute, “and the health of your families.” Behind me, Fleischer drew in a sharp breath as the Doctor drained his cup with practiced ease.

  The Burgomeister took a sip of the liquor, then set his cup aside. “We are here to ask your help, good Herr Doctor. Your town has need of you,” he said.

  “My help?” the Doctor said. “But surely—under your august leadership, Burgomeister—the town lacks for nothing. A flourishing, prosperous place, ever since the renovation of the Cathedral began. Almost seven years now, is it not? I believe the work finishes soon.”