by Tad Williams
“But I will keep you,” she said. “I will keep you for myself.”
15
Within God’s Walls
Father Dinivan toyed with his food, staring into his bowl as though some helpful message might be written there in olive pits and breadcrumbs. Candles burned fiercely the length of the table Pryrates’ voice was loud and harsh as a brazen gong.
“…So you see. Your Sacredness, all that King Elias wishes is your acceptance of one fact. Mother Church’s provenance may be men’s souls, but she has no right to interfere in the disposition of men’s corporeal forms by their legitimate monarch.” The hairless priest grinned in self-satisfaction. Dinivan’s heart sank to see the lector smile dully in return. Surely Ranessin must know that Elias was as much as declaring that God’s shepherd on earth had less right to power than an earthly king? Why did he sit and say nothing?
The lector slowly nodded his head. He looked across the table to Pryrates, then briefly to Duke Benigaris, new master of Nabban, who appeared a trifle nervous beneath the lector’s scrutiny, hurriedly wiping grease from his chin with the back of a brocaded sleeve. This Feast of Hlafmansa Eve was usually only a religious and ceremonial occasion. Although Dinivan knew him to be utterly the creature of Pryrates’ master Elias, at this moment the duke seemed to be wishing for more ceremony and less confrontation.
“The High King and his emissary Pryrates wish only the best for Mother Church, Sacredness,” Benigaris said gruffly, unable to hold Ranessin’s gaze, as though he saw his rumored murder of his father mirrored there. “We should listen to what Pryrates says.” He addressed his trencher once more, wherein he found more convivial company.
“We are considering all that Pryrates has to say,” the lector responded mildly. Silence fell upon the table once more. Fat Velligis and the other escritors present returned to their own meals, obviously pleased that the long-feared confrontation seemed to have been averted.
Dinivan lowered his eyes to the remains of his supper. A young priest who hovered at his elbow refilled Dinivan’s goblet with water—it had seemed a good night to avoid wine—and reached forward to take his bowl, but Dinivan waved him back. It was better to have something to concentrate on, if only to avoid looking at viperous Pryrates, who was not bothering to hide his immense pleasure at discomfiting the church hierarchy.
Absently pushing breadcrumbs with his knife, Dinivan marveled at how inseparably the great and the mundane were linked. This ultimatum from King Elias and the lector’s response might one day seem an event of unforgettable magnitude, like that day long ago when the third Larexes had declared Lord Sulis heretic and apostate, sending that magnificent and troubled man into exile. But even during that momentous event, Dinivan reflected, there had probably been priests who scratched their noses, or stared at the ceiling, or silently bemoaned their aching joints as they sat within the very crucible of history—even as Dinivan now poked at his own supper-leavings and Duke Benigaris belched and loosened his belt. So men always would be, ape and angel mixed, their animal nature chafing at the restraints of civilization even as they reached for Heaven or for Hell. It was amusing, really…or should have been.
As Escritor Velligis tried to initiate a more soothing supper-table conversation, Dinivan suddenly felt an odd trembling in his fingers: the table was shuddering gently beneath his hands. Earthquake was his first thought, but then the olive pits in his bowl began to slide together slowly, forming themselves into runes before his astonished eyes. He looked up, startled, but no one else at the banquet table appeared to notice anything amiss. Velligis droned on, his chubby face gleaming with sweat; the other guests watched him, politely feigning interest.
Creeping like insects, the leavings in Dinivan’s bowl had merged to form two sneering words: “SCROLL PIG.” Sickened, he looked up to meet Pryrates’ shark-black eyes. The alchemist wore a look of vast amusement. One of his white fingers was waving above the tablecloth, as if sketching upon the insubstantial air. Then, as Dinivan watched, Pryrates waggled all his digits at once. The crumbs and olive stones in Dinivan’s bowl abruptly tumbled apart, whatever forces that had bound them now dispersed.
Dinivan’s hand rose defensively to grasp the chain that lay beneath his cassock, feeling for the hidden scroll; Pryrates’ grin widened in almost childish glee. Dinivan found his usual optimism melting before the red priest’s unmistakable confidence. He suddenly realized what a thin and breakable reed his own life actually was.
“…They are not, I suppose, truly dangerous…” Velligis was blathering, “but it is a dreadful blow to the dignity of Mother Church, these barbarians settling themselves afire in public squares, a dreadful blow—as much as daring the church to stop them! It is a kind of contagious madness, I am told, carried by bad airs. I no longer go out without a kerchief to wear over my nose and mouth…”
“But perhaps the Fire Dancers are not mad,” Pryrates said lightly. “Perhaps their dreams are more…real…than you would like to believe.”
“That is…that is…” Velligis spluttered, but Pryrates ignored him, his obscenely empty eyes still fixed on Dinivan.
He fears no excess now, Dinivan thought. The realization seemed an unbearable burden. Nothing binds him any longer. His terrible curiosity has become a heedless and insatiable hunger.
Had that been when the world had begun to go wrong? When Dinivan and his fellow Scrollbearers had brought Pryrates into their secret councils? They had opened their hearts and treasured archives to the young priest, respecting the honed sharpness of Pryrates’ mind for a long time before the rot at the center of him could no longer be mistaken. They had driven him from their midst, then—but too late, it seemed. Far, far too late. Like Dinivan, the priest sat at the tables of the mighty, but Pryrates’ red star was now ascending, while Dinivan’s track seemed murky and obscured.
Was there anything more he could do? He had sent messages to the two Scrollbearers still living, Jarnauga and Ookequk’s apprentice, though he had heard from neither in some time. He had also sent suggestions or instructions to others of good faith, like the forest-woman Geloë and little Tiamak in the marshy Wran. He had brought Princess Miriamele safely to the Sancellan Aedonitis and made her tell her story to the lector. He had tended all the trees as Morgenes would have wished: all he could do now was wait and see what fruit might come…
Slipping Pryrates’ troubling gaze, Dinivan looked around the lector’s dining hall, trying to take note of details. If this was to be a momentous night, for good or ill, he might as well try to remember all he could. Perhaps in some future—a brighter one than he could now envision—he would be an old man standing at the shoulder of some young artisan, offering corrections: “No, it wasn’t like that at all! I was there…” He smiled, forgetting his worries for a moment. What a happy thought—to survive the cares of these dark days, to live with no greater responsibility than being an annoyance to some poor artist laboring to complete a commission!
His moment of reverie ended abruptly, arrested by the sight of a familiar face in the arched doorway that led to the kitchens. What was Cadrach doing here? He had been in the Sancellan Aedonitis scarcely a week and would have no business that could bring him near the lector’s private quarters, so he could only be spying on the lector’s supper guests. Was it only curiosity, or was Cadrach…Padreic…feeling the tug of old loyalties? Of conflicting loyalties?
Even as these thoughts flashed through Dinivan’s head, the monk’s face fell back into the shadows of the door and was gone from sight. A moment later a server marched through with a wide salver, making it obvious that Cadrach had vanished from the archway entirely.
Now, as if in counterpoint to Dinivan’s confusion, the lector rose suddenly from his tall chair at the head of the table Ranessin’s kind face was somber, the shadows thrown by the bright candlelight made him seem ancient and bowed with troubles.
He silenced prattling Velligis with a single wave of his hand. “We have thought,” the lector said slowly His
white-haired head seemed remote as a snow-capped mountain. “The world as you speak of it, Pryrates, makes a certain kind of sense. There is weight to its logic. We have heard similar things from Duke Benigaris and his frequent envoy, Count Aspitis.”
“Earl Aspitis,” Benigaris said abruptly, his heavy face flushed. He had drunk a great deal of the lector’s wine. “Earl,” he continued heedlessly. “King Elias made him an earl at my request. As a gesture of his friendship to Nabban.”
Ranessin’s slender features curled in a poorly-concealed look of disgust. “We know you and the High King are close, Benigaris. And we know that you yourself rule Nabban. But you are at our table now, in God’s house—my table—and we bid you to remain silent until Mother Church’s highest priest finishes speaking.”
Dinivan was shocked by the lector’s angry tone—Ranessin was ordinarily the mildest of men—but found himself heartened by such unexpected strength. Benigaris’ mustache quivered angrily, but he reached for his wine-cup with the clumsiness of an embarrassed child.
Ranessin’s blue eyes were now fixed on Pryrates. He continued in the stately manner he so seldom used, but which seemed so natural when he did. “As we said, the world which you and Elias and Benigaris preach makes a certain kind of sense. It is a world where alchemists and monarchs decide the fate not only of men’s corporeal forms, but of their souls as well, and where the king’s minions encourage deluded souls to burn themselves for the glory of false idols if it suits their purposes. A world where the uncertainty of an invisible God is replaced by the certainty of a black, burning spirit who dwells on this earth, in the heart of a mountain of ice.”
Pryrates’ hairless brows shot up at this; Dinivan felt a moment of cold joy. Good. So the creature could still be surprised
“Hear me!” Ranessin’s voice gained force, so that for a moment it seemed that not only the room had fallen silent, but the whole world with it, as though in that instant the candlelit cable rode the very cusp of Creation. “This world—your world, the world you preach to us with your sly words—is not the world of Mother Church. We have long known of a dark angel who strides the earth, whose bleak hand reaches out to trouble all the hearts of Osten Ard—but our scourge is the Arch-fiend himself, the implacable foe of God’s light. Whether your ally is truly our Enemy of countless millennia or just another vicious minion of darkness Mother Church has always stood against his like…and always shall.”
Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath for an endless moment.
“You do not know what you say, old man.” Pryrates’ voice was a sulfurous hiss. “You grow feeble and your mind wanders…”
Shockingly, not one of the escritors raised their voices in protest or dissent. They stared, wide-eyed, as Ranessin leaned across the table and calmly engaged the priest’s angry stare. Light seemed to quail and almost die throughout the banquet hall, leaving only the two illuminated, one scarlet, one white, their shadows stretching, stretching…
“Lies, hatred, and greed,” the lector said softly. “They are familiar, age-old enemies. It matters not beneath whose banner they march.” He stood up, a slim, pale shape, and lifted a hand. Dinivan felt again the fierce, uncontrollable love that had driven him to bend his back in supplication before the mystery of Man’s divine purpose, to bind his life over into the service of this humble and wonderful man, and to the church that lived in his person.
With cold deliberation, Ranessin drew the sign of the Tree in the air before him. The table seemed to shudder again beneath Dinivan’s hand; this time he could not believe it the alchemist’s doing.
“You have opened doors that should have remained closed for all time, Pryrates,” the lector proclaimed. “In your pride and folly, you and the High King have brought a ponderous evil into a world which already groaned beneath a mighty burden of suffering. Our church—my church—will fight you for every soul, until the very Day of Weighing-Out dawns. I declare you excommunicate, and King Elias with you, and also banish from the arms of Mother Church any who follow you into darkness and error.” His arm swept down, once, twice. “Duos Onenpodensis, Feata Vorum Lexeran. Duos Onenpodensis, Feata Vorum Lexeran!”
No clap of thunder or horn of judgment followed the Lector’s booming words, only the distant peal of the Clavean bell tolling the hour. Pryrates stood slowly, his face pale as wax, his mouth twisted in a trembling grimace.
“You have made a horrible mistake,” he rasped. “You are a foolish old man and your great Mother Church is a child’s toy made of parchment and glue.” He was quivering with surprised fury. “We shall put a torch to it ere long. The howling will be great when it burns. You have made a mistake.”
He turned and stalked from the dining hall, his boot-heels clocking on the tiled floor, his robes billowing like flame. Dinivan thought he heard a terrible intimation of holocaust in the priest’s departing footsteps, of a great and final conflagration, a black scorching of the pages of history.
Miriamele was sewing a wooden button onto her cloak when someone rapped on the door. Startled, she slid off the cot and padded to answer, her bare feet chill against the cold floor.
“Who is it?”
“Open the door, Prin…Malachias. Please open the door.”
She drew the bolt. Cadrach stood in the poorly lit hall-way, his sweaty face gleaming in the candlelight. He pushed past her into the small cell and elbowed the door shut so abruptly that Miriamele felt a breeze as it swept by her nose.
“Are you mad?” she demanded. “You cannot just push in like this!”
“Please, Princess…”
“Get out! Now!”
“Lady…” Astonishingly, Cadrach fell to his knees. His normally ruddy face was quite pale. “We must flee the Sancellan Aedonitis. Tonight.”
She stared down. “You have gone mad.” Her tone was imperious. “What are you talking about? Have you stolen something? I don’t know if I should protect you any longer, and I certainly will not go charging out of…”
He cut her off in mid-speech. “No. It is nothing I have done—at least, nothing I have done tonight—and the danger is not to me so much as to you. But that danger is very great. We must flee!”
For several moments Miriamele could not think of a thing to say. Cadrach indeed looked very frightened, a change from his usual veiled expression.
He broke the silence at last. “Please, my lady, I know I have been a faithless companion, but I have done some good, as well. Please trust me this once. You are in terrible danger!”
“Danger from what?”
“Pryrates is here.”
She felt a wave of relief wash over her. Cadrach’s wild words had frightened her after all. “Idiot. I know that. I spoke to the lector yesterday. I know all about Pryrates.”
The stocky monk rose to his feet. His jaw was set in a very determined way. “That is one of the most foolish things you have ever said, Princess. You know very little about him, and you should be grateful for that. Grateful!” He reached out and seized her arm.
“Stop that! How dare you!” She tried to slap at his face, but Cadrach leaned away from the blow, maintaining his grip. He was surprisingly strong.
“Saint Muirfath’s Bones’” he hissed. “Don’t be such a fool, Miriamele!” He leaned toward her, holding her gaze with his own wide eyes. There was, she fleetingly noticed, no smell of wine about him. “If I must treat you like a child, I will,” the monk growled. He pushed her backward until she toppled onto the cot, then stood over her, angry yet fearful. “The lector has declared Pryrates and your father excommunicate. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes!” she said, her voice almost a shout. “I’m glad!”
“But Pryrates is not glad and something bad will happen. It will happen very soon. You should not be here when it does.”
“Bad? What do you mean? Pryrates is alone in the Sancellan. He came with half a dozen of my father’s guardsmen. What can he do?”
“And you claim to know all about him.”
Cadrach shook his head in disgust, then turned and began scooping Miriamele’s loose clothing and few possessions into her traveling bag. “I, for one,” he said, “do not want to see whatever he will be getting up to.”
She watched him for a moment, dumbfounded. Who was this person who looked like Cadrach, but shouted and ordered and grabbed her arm like a river-barge bravo? “I will not go anywhere until I talk to Father Dinivan,” she said at last. Some of the edge had disappeared from her voice.
“Splendid,” Cadrach said. “Whatever you wish. Just prepare yourself to go I’m sure that Dinivan will agree with me—if we can find him at all.”
Reluctantly, she bent to help him. “Just tell me this,” she said. “Do you swear that we’re in danger? And that it’s not something you did?”
He stopped. For the first time since he had entered the room, Cadrach’s odd half-smile appeared, but this one twisted his face into a mask of terrible sorrow. “We have all done things that we regret, Miriamele. I have made mistakes that set God the Highest to weeping on His great throne.” He shook his head, angry at wasting time with talk. “But this danger is real and immediate, and there is nothing we can either of us do to make it less. Thus, we shall flee. Cowards always survive.”
Seeing his face, Miriamele suddenly did not ever want to know what Cadrach had done to make him hate himself so much. She shuddered and turned away, looking for her boots.
The Sancellan Aedonitis seemed strangely deserted, even for the late evening hour. A few priests had gathered in the various commonrooms where they sat gossiping in hushed tones, a handful more strode the corridors with lighted candles, on errands of one sort or another. Except for these few, the halls were empty. The torches burned fitfully in their sockets, as though troubled by restless breezes.
Miriamele and Cadrach were in a deserted upstairs gallery, passing from the chambers where visiting churchmen stayed and into the administrative and ceremonial heart of God’s House, when the monk pulled Miriamele over to a shadowed window alcove.