“I don’t think she fears anything. Women on the Eastern Continent are different from ours.”
“I can see that. How did you expect us to control her?”
“Well, Your Grace, knowing how skilled you are at establishing respect and fear in the hearts of even the most recalcitrant lay people, I felt quite confident that you would be able to reduce the outlanders to submission in short order.” An-Shai snorted. “However confident you may be, the fact remains that you’ve brought an uncivilized woman among our well-behaved people. What effect will these people have on our own folk? Aren’t they likely to see them defying us with impunity and decide to try it themselves?” “Then, sir, may I respectfully suggest that they ought not to be allowed to defy us? They, and especially the woman Adelinda, must be brought under control. The means to do it lie ready to your hand. The supernatural has been virtually eliminated in their own land. They should be frightened to death and eager to turn to you for protection at the first manifestation.”
An-Shai looked thoughtfully at Li-Mun. “I hope you’re right. I certainly do hope you’re right. What about the rest of the group?”
“They’re of little account. One is a cripple and the rest are stablehands—peasants, sir, much like ours. They don’t even show Adelinda much respect. They should be easy to subvert, once they’re frightened.”
“Perhaps, provided that the woman is not among them to bolster their loyalty. H’mm... go tell the woman that I have decided to offer her the hospitality of the Bishop’s Palace, since she is obviously of high rank in her own land. And don’t let her refuse you!”
Li-Mun was shocked. “A woman? Here? If word of it gets to the initiates..
“If word gets to the initiates that we have imported a bunch of unconverted outlanders and set them to work among the peasants where they could do the most damage, we’ll be bishop and bishop’s secretary of the Seaward Islets and up to our necks in saltwater at every high tide.”
Li-Mun gulped. “I’ll try to persuade her. She won’t want to leave her people.”
“Do better than try. Oh, while I’m thinking about it, I’ve arranged for a raid of slavers to carry away some of the
young breeding-age women tomorrow. See to it that the out-landers are well out of it. I’ve had to let the night stalkers in, too, to thin out the old and infants, but they won’t bother young healthy stock. Better have a care for the cripple, though.”
Adelinda made less difficulty than Li-Mun had anticipated. The accommodations offered them in the village, though much better than the conditions the peasants lived under, were crowded, and one less would make a considerable difference in the comfort of the others. Besides, she judged it as well to find out as much about An-Shai as she could. “That bishop means us no good,” she told Karel and Orvet, as she gathered her things. “I knew it the minute I saw him. I’m going to keep an eye on him.”
“I think you’re right,” agreed Karel, easing his aching leg up onto the sleeping bench. Adelinda’s leaving meant that he could stretch it out and that Ina could have a little curtained-off corner for privacy. “Just remember that when in enemy territory it’s always wisest to speak sparingly and listen well.”
Orvet followed her outside. “Take this,” he said, handing her a little bag. “Keep it in your possession all the time. It’s an herb that tends to discourage attacks by the supernatural. It won’t protect you if you’re attacked directly, but it might encourage a supernatural predator to look for easier prey.”
Adelinda made no objection. She slung the bag around her neck by its long drawstring. “Are there supematurals here?”
“Several kinds. I haven’t identified them all yet. The traces of some of them are completely unfamiliar to me. Be careful.”
“I don’t think the supernatural is nearly as dangerous to us as the bishop is.”
“You deal with the bishop and I’ll concern myself with the supernatural. Karel can look to our defense from more mundane perils.”
“I think you had better get him aside and tell him what you are. He needs to know what resources he has available.
But don’t tell the farmer folk; they’d be more frightened of you than of the real dangers.”
Orvet sighed. Adelinda assumed that the farmer folk were the mental and moral equivalent of children. The prejudices of her class blinded her still. But this was not the time to argue. “I’ll tell Karel,” he agreed.
Chapter 4
As she carried her pack into the palace, Adelinda thought about the bishop. “An interesting man,” she mused. “Too used to having his own way, but still unsatisfied. There’s something uncanny about him. He’s cold as ice, but as full of fire as a volcano. Handsome, but not interested in women. People like that are dangerous. They aren’t easily distracted from their own ends. I’d like to try sparking some of that fire—but I might regret it if I succeeded.”
The Bishop’s Palace was not palatial. It was large, with many rooms and chambers. But it was starkly furnished, with few comforts. Sleeping arrangements were stone benches along the walls, which served as seats during the days, just as in the poor huts they had seen. The only decorations were simple watercolor paintings, never more than one to a room. At least she was given a room to herself, for which she was grateful. Privacy was evidently more important to the subjects of the King than to Godsland’s simple folk. It did not occur to her that there was safety in numbers nor that she might have been separated from the others in order to render her more vulnerable. She thought she had been invited to the palace so that she could not protect her people.
At dinner, a meal even more ascetic in its simplicity and sparseness than those they had been given, An-Shai and Adelinda took each other’s measure. Wills had clashed, and neither had prevailed; now the arena shifted An-Shai found that the woman fascinated him. She was as different from the dutiful women of Godsland as an eagle is different from a barnyard hen.
“Is it the custom in your homeland to send women on long voyages without the protection of their men?” asked An-Shai.
“Not exactly the custom, Your Grace, but among my people women are considered to be fully capable and responsible. Few of our people, men or women, travel. We are a home-loving folk. Is it the custom here to prevent women from traveling?”
“The women of Godsland are conscious of their duties as wives and mothers. The idea of traveling would not occur to them.”
“What of those who are not wives or mothers?”
An-Shai glanced into his plate as if seeking a special morsel from among the attractively arranged vegetables. “All adult women are wives and most are mothers. We have a constant shortage of marriageable women in all classes.” He did not add that it was machinations such as he was currently engaged in that kept the ratio of women to men artificially low. “If women in the Kingdom are permitted to do as they wish, how are marriages made there?”
“Most women wish to marry and have children. Those who wish to do something else can usually do so.”
“In Godsland the women are not asked their opinion of the matter, but are allotted in marriage by the priests.”
Adelinda was aghast. “Whether they want to marry or not? What if they don’t love the man they are allotted to?” An-Shai looked at her in his cold way. “It is their duty to love the man they are given to. If people were allowed to marry whomever they chose, hereditary weaknesses would decimate the population, and the stock would deteriorate until the peasants and nobles were useless.”
Adelinda shook her head. “It must be very hard for your women, forced to marry without love. I’m surprised they tolerate it.”
“Surely even in your undisciplined land people are not allowed to marry indiscriminately. What if they are closely related? What if they are completely unsuited to each other?”
“Close relatives don’t marry, of course. And if two people
find they can’t get along, they separate and find other mates.”
It was An-Shai’s t
urn to be shocked. “Do you mean to tell me that your people are actually permitted to... er... lie with more than one mate?” He shuddered in disgust. “In Godsland such infidelity is punishable by death.”
Adelinda hastily decided not to tell him about her own early escapades. “It doesn’t happen often. For one thing, our people don’t usually marry until thirty or later, so they have made up their minds whom they want. But I thought Li-Mun mentioned that he had two wives?”
“Li-Mun is a hierarch. He may take as many wives as he wishes, and the two girls were sisters and did not wish to be parted. He is soft-hearted and acquiesced when they begged.”
Adelinda thought it well to change the subject. “Your Grace, if we’re to spend a year here, we need to know more about Godsland. May I ask you something about the government of this land?”
“Government?”
“Yes, the rulers or administrators of Godsland.”
“There are none.”
“But who makes the laws?”
“There are no laws.”
“Then who protects the people?”
“The Quadrate God grants His initiates the power and the responsibility to guide and protect the people, and the initiates inform the hierarchs of His will. The hierarchs in turn pass this information on to the village priests who guide the people in their everyday lives. We are all the servants of the Quadrate God.”
“Then is ‘God the Father’ one of the Quadrate Gods?” “There is only one Quadrate God. The Fourfold One is known by many names, but He is only one. But the concept of one God with four aspects is too complicated for the peasants and nobles, so ‘God the Father’ is the name by which He is known to the nobles and village priests, while the peasants are taught to think of Him as the spirits and gods which animate the trees and fields, the storms and many other things.”
“And what do the initiates call him, Your Grace?”
An-Shai shifted uneasily. “As I’m not an initiate, 1 don’t know.” It was the hierarch’s turn to feel that the conversation would be better channeled in other directions. “Do your questions imply that in the Kingdom, the governing of the people is in the hands other than those of the Church?”
“We have many religions, none of which have anything to do with the government. Some of them would like to, of course, but the King is the head of our government. The day-to-day tasks of governing are carried out by thousands of civil servants, each with his or her own special concerns, so that none becomes too powerful.”
“Why do the people obey this government, without God’s power to force them to?”
“Well, sometimes they don’t obey, but mostly they do because they understand that it’s really to everyone’s best interests to have a good government. The real lawbreakers are controlled by the King’s Constabulary, and wars and insurrections are dealt with by the army.”
“Here we have no wars or insurrections, and those who choose to place themselves outside of God’s will also place themselves outside of His protection. They are soon destroyed by the many perils from which He protects His own.”
Adelinda, of course, regarded this as so much metaphysical nonsense. Had she listened more carefully, she could have understood the Church’s whole strategy for controlling the laity of Godsland. It never occurred to her that the perils of which the bishop spoke might be provided by the Church itself. An-Shai, assuming that he was dealing with the sort of utterly ignorant and credulous person that might be, for example, one of the nobility of his own land, felt no hesitation in revealing the secrets of his Church, couched as they were in allegorical language. Too, he still thought of Adelinda as a woman, and to the bishop women were only a shade more perceptive than the beasts of the fields. He failed to connect her penetrating questions and ready understanding with the wary shrewdness and clear intelligence from which they issued.
So, by underestimating each other, both Adelinda and
An-Shai missed their best opportunities to estimate the resources of the enemy against whom they were ranged. Din-ner^over, they sat for a while in the deepening twilight of the balcony, watching the blue evening shadows fill up the Vale. They talked idly of the Vale and its people, and Adelinda learned a very great deal more than the bishop thought she did. As they parted for the night, An-Shai was startled and perturbed to receive a long, slow, knowing look from beneath Adelinda’s half-lowered eyelashes. It was not precisely provocative, but it was measuring. It showed, and was meant to show, that she was aware of his maleness. Had he reacted eagerly, she would have discovered one thing about him. Disgust would have told her something else. That he reacted with astonishment gave her much to think about.
Later, arranging the thick quilted pad and her own blankets on the sleeping bench, Adelinda mulled over the day. “An-Shai means us no good, I’m even more convinced of it. Well, possibly he doesn’t mean us harm, exactly, but he certainly means to force us into his own mold—and that comes to the same thing,” she mused. “Why does his attitude irk me so much? Ah, I have it. He doesn’t expect me to understand anything he says. I’d like to shove his superiority down his throat... but it’s just as well that he thinks that; as long as he does, he’ll keep giving away his plans. Maybe I should play dumb, like Iona does when Felim’s around. No, I can’t; I’d gag. It’s hard enough to keep from telling him what I think as it is....” Her thoughts trailed off into dreams.
Adelinda had settled into that deep slumber from which it is as hard to awaken as to swim to the surface of a pool of quicksand. She heard the first dismal groans of the thing that hung above her sleeping form only as from a great distance. As she struggled back to consciousness, a stench of rottenness assaulted her nostrils. The thing groaned again, and she opened her eyes to find hanging over her a face—a rotten, maggoty face, squirming with obscene life. Nor had it been a human face before it had decomposed, for slimy great fangs protruded over the putrescent lips and the withered eyeballs bore slotted pupils like a goat’s.
Adelinda absorbed few of the details. After one appalled glance, she flung herself sideways off the sleeping bcnch, snatching the short sword which lay beside her right hand— she had not forgotten that she was in enemy territory— slashing at the disgusting thing as she rolled. Had the vision had any corporeal existence, it would have been halved by that blow.
For the space of a dozen breaths, the two regarded each other across the width of the chamber, Adelinda half crouched, short sword raised; the apparation floating just off the floor. With the whole decaying body visible, the thing was even more horrible. The rib cage protruded from the tattered rags of flesh. Moldy rags of ancient finery draped its shrunken limbs. Instead of fingers, claws, incongruously sharp, considering the advanced decomposition of the rest of the thing, were raised to strike. A green and lolling snake twined about the eviscerated basket of the pelvic girdle and coiled about the half-exposed spinal column. The nauseating stench emanating from its rotting flesh filled the room. An entourage of bloated rats and spiders lolloped around its ankles, shqwered by the dripping brown fluids of decay.
It surged forward again, looming over its victim, stretching as if to strike, spattering her with its noisome fluids. Adelinda swung the short sword at the thing with all her might. It slashed the vision cleanly in two, severing it across the breadth of the. chest and upper arms—or would have severed it; the sword met no more resistance than that of the polluted air. Swung around by the force of her blow, Adelinda staggered half across the room.
Catching herself, she whirled to face it. It was upon her once again, the rats and spiders making little darting charges at her feet. But Adelinda had learned that ordinary weapons were ineffectual; lowering her sword, she raised her left hand and experimentally felt at the vision. There was no palpable presence there. Adelinda straightened. “I guess if you can’t touch me, you can’t hurt me. You certainly are an unpleasant roommate, though. What do you want?”
There were, in fact, many ways that An-Shai, whose consciousness anim
ated the apparition, could have endowed his creation with the ability to do actual physical damage to a living human being, but he hadn’t done so. He didn’t want to hurt the woman, just bring her into submission. He was completely taken aback. He had expected screams, terror, panic-stricken flight. He hadn’t prepared himself for defiance, and he absolutely had not foreseen the possibility of being questioned by his construct’s victim. Nor was he ready for Adelinda’s next move.
“Someone sent you here to scare me, I suspect. And I’ll bet I know who. Where does the bishop hang out?” Without waiting for an answer she stalked out the door, her sword still in her hand. And if led by instinct she turned toward the bishop’s library, where his temporarily abandoned body lay sprawled helpless in its chair.
An-Shai hastily let go of the substance with which he had made his specter, allowed it to mix back with the amorphous stuff of the overmind. Invisible, he abandoned the control which had resisted the tendency of his selfness to flow back into its rightful vessel. Frantically he willed himself back to the library and into his body.
Adelinda was delayed in her search by not knowing exactly where she was going. Not finding the bishop in the hall where dinner had been served, she was forced to search through the public part of the palace room by room. So An-Shai had time to insert himself wrenchingly back into his corporeal envelope before she found him, and even to overcome some of the attendant giddiness and nausea. When Adelinda flung open the door of the library, he was standing beside his desk, pale but composed.
“It is not considered proper for women to enter uninvited into the quarters of the bishop,” he said coldly.
“Then you had better invite me,” Adelinda said, dosing the door behind herself. “How does polite Godslandish society feel about unwelcome specters intruding into a guest’s sleeping quarters?”
“Polite Godslandish society is properly submissive to the will of the Quadrate God. Being under His protection, they don’t suffer from unwelcome visitations.”
Claudia J Edwards - [Forest King 02] Page 5