by Gav Thorpe
'Who more than you know the meaning of sacrifice? What priest or priestess in the towers of Ghuras or Vharadesh can say they know the desires of the Powers more than those forced to suffer each day beneath their burning scrutiny?' He waved a hand towards the great orb beyond the parasol-sails. 'Make no mistake that what the sun is to the day, so the Powers are to life. They are the light that sustains it, the fire that will consume it. As the sun is relentless upon our backs, so we must be relentless in our service.'
The Declined were held rapt by these words, so different from the dry testaments of other missionaries who had sought faith for their cause Here was one who spoke in ways that matched their experiences, who knew something of their miserable lives. More than half the adults of the camp had gathered to listen to his sermon, and as many children as could muster a few moments of attention.
Kor Phaeron caught himself upon the crest of pride, about to plunge into the self-congratulatory trough beyond. It was not to him that they pledged their attention but to the Truth. He reminded himself he was but a vessel for the Powers, an instrument of the Will and nothing more. His was not the credit, only the sacrifice. Such was the position to which he had been appointed.,
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Kor Phaeron, possessed by the energy of the Powers, started to pace as he spoke, moving along the row of cross-legged nomads at the front of the crowd. He directed his words to those at the back, encouraging them to hearken to his message so that they might know the Truth.
'Unto us will be delivered the Word, and with it shall we know the Will of the Powers,' he told them. He clenched a fist to his sun-scarred chest. 'Into me has been passed this knowledge. I pass it to you, for the Powers have spoken and declared that the message must be heard. A time of testing will come, when the Powers turn their immortal gaze upon Colchis and judge the worthy from the unworthy. None can raise up the defence of 'but I did not know' for the Powers have gifted us all with the means to know the Truth.'
He waved a hand towards the slaves bearing his accoutrements behind him - many sacred books, a sceptre with a fist-shaped head and other relics that he had come upon in his searching across the wastes. At the gesture the slaves knelt and proffered up their burdens.
'I have read the wisdom in these ancient pages,' - a half-truth, for he understood the language in only six books from his library - 'and in them I have discovered the Word. And the Word sayeth that we shall serve the Powers to the exclusion of ought else. Slaves shall provide the food, for free men and women must bear the burden of worship, bending all effort to the praises of the Powers that created and sustained us.
'Each of you is a chosen one.' He pointed at the crowd with a skinny finger. Some smiled, others flinched. He noticed Fan Morgai and a few others glance away. Kor Phaeron pondered this as he continued, 'Each has their place in the machine of the universe, whether to be the cog or the cable, the switch or the fulcrum. The texts tell us that one will come, raised above the others in the eyes of the Powers, to bring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the Word to the mute.'
Again the sharp eyes of the preacher caught a small flutter of movement from the chieftain and his family. Was it nervousness? Shame? Kor Phaeron took several paces, changing his perspective, his words now coming through instinct as he surveyed the camp from a fresh angle.
'Prestige and honour will reward the Faithful.' He indicated his followers, who waited in groups under the shade of the sunsails and on the deck of the mobile shrine. 'The light of the Powers shall fall upon them and all blemish will be removed from the body so that it reflects the purity of the soul.'
From this new position he realised that Fan Morgai had not been looking away from Kor Phaeron, but rather the chieftain and his close companions had glanced towards something. The main tent at the very centre of the encampment, a large conical structure of white, black and red embroidered with sacred constellations.
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'Plague and misery shall be the lot of the faithless,' said Kor Phaeron, voice dropping to a snarled whisper, his fierce gaze roaming over the crowd, seeking other suspicious behaviours or signs of guilt. 'Nothing is hidden from the gaze of the Powers. All is laid bare before their immortal scrutiny as the desert is set before the blazing sun.'
This garnered a definite reaction, an exchange of looks between Fan Morgai and his wife Kor Phaeron stepped towards the crowd, arms outstretched with palms facing out as though laying benedictions upon them. They shuffled from his path, parting like sand before the wind, until he came to stand before Fan Morgai. He turned an accusing stare upon the nomad leader.
'What is in your heart. Fan Morgai? When the Powers turn their gaze upon you, shall they see one of the Faithful, or an agent of the faithless?'
Fan Morgai said nothing but swallowed hard, meeting Kor Phaeron's gaze for only a moment. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face - not unusual in such conditions, but the preacher took it as a further omen of the Powers' desires. He pressed on, stepping past the chieftain, to thrust a hand towards the leader's abode.
'What secrets do you hide in your own sanctum?' he demanded. 'You may think that you can keep your secrets away from the sight of mortals, but the Powers see all. They look into the hearts and minds of men and women as easily as I look into your eye now. Do not sully your tongue and my ears with denials and lies!'
Cowed, hands trembling, Fan Morgai gave another look to his family and nodded. His wife and children gathered close as he moved towards the tent.
'I meant no wrong by it,' he said quietly, stopping at the threshold. 'I intended no offence to the Powers.'
Kor Phaeron nodded in silence, neither accepting nor condemning the statement. He waited, suppressing his eagerness to see what the Declined had concealed from him. It would be archeotech, he was sure of it; something from one of the dead cities made in the time of the Age Before. All such artefacts were supposed to be turned over to the Covenant but many tribes and rival sects hoarded the archeotech for themselves - as did Kor Phaeron, though the Declined were not to know that he was no longer an accepted member of the Covenant. In fact, he traded on that ignorance, assured of the traditional protections offered to a traveller of holy position.
'Bring it forth so that we might see what the Powers already know,' he commanded imperiously, thrusting his finger again towards the tent.
Fan Morgai pulled back the heavy flap of the door and stepped back.
'Come out,' he said with a tremulous voice. 'Don't be afraid.'
Kor Phaeron's already furrowed brow knotted further, confused by this turn of events.
A figure stepped from the tent, with the height and build of a child, swathed in the robes and scarves of a desert dweller. Kor Phaeron was about to demand to be told what was happening when the child turned his face towards the preacher. For an instant he saw violet eyes, as intense as the sun, before the light of the Powers blinded him, ending the universe as it had been, ushering in the Age of the Golden One.
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Nairo and a few others broke into a run as the master gave a piercing cry and fell backwards as though struck, hands clutched to his face. Like grass flattened by a wind, the Declined fell to their knees around the tent, the movement rippling outwards to reveal a solitary figure stood in the doorway. Axata, the commander of the guards, a giant of a man from Golgora, bellowed orders to his warriors, sending them into the camp, weapons at the ready.
'Wait, wait!' Nairo shouted, surging in front of the others despite his age-worn limbs.
His fears were unfounded; Axata moved his company only to secure the area, but gave no order to attack. Nairo had eyes only for the master - not out of any loyalty to Kor Phaeron, for he was a despicable man, but for fear of his own future. Without the master, he and the other slaves would be left to the untempered attention of the guards, who would likely be even worse than the preacher.
Nairo was a few strides from the fallen figure of Kor Phaeron before he looked at the figure at the threshold o
f the tent. In the moment his eyes met the violet gaze of the child all the strength ebbed from his body and his head swam. Mid-stride he fell face-first into the hot sands, senses whirling, the image of a golden face burned into his thoughts.
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It sounded like singing at first, as though a chorus from an Empyreal choir away in the distance. A harsher sound entered, the chatter of the silver crows that used to flock in the trees outside the gate of the orphanage Noise swirled around Kor Phaeron, swaying from one side to the other, dizzying and brutal. It resolved into voices: the desert-cant of the nomads. He knew a few words and phrases of the tongue but recognised nothing that was said.
He opened his eyes, but saw only the darkness of the sunshade for a few heartbeats before the scarf-shrouded, weathered faces of the Declined intruded upon his view, concern in their dark eyes. They receded at a shout from Axata, scattering from the approach of the guardmaster and his armed companions. A few of the slaves crouched over their master, hands outstretched but unwilling to touch his holy flesh.
Pain throbbed across his forehead and pulsed in his temples when he sat up. Blinking hard, he could not dismiss the twin pinpricks of brightness that seemed seared into the centre of his eyes. For a moment his discomfort robbed him of all recollection, but with a gasp the memory returned and he sprang to his feet. He averted his gaze from the boy - a half-year old and no more from what Kor Phaeron vaguely remembered of the height and features of the figure that had so stunned him - and his piercing eyes sought Fan Morgai.
He spied the chief of the Declined tribe close to his tent, conversing conspiratorially with his family. He stepped away as he saw Kor Phaeron rouse himself.
'What heresy is this?' demanded the preacher, advancing on Fan Morgai, spittle flying from his lips. 'What have you sequestered from the light in this camp of blasphemies and darkness?'
'He is just a boy, Kor Phaeron,' retorted the chieftain's wife. 'A child we found in the desert. We saved him from the scorching.'
'Just a boy? Do you not see that the light of the Powers is upon him? Why would you hide him from me, the Bearer of the Word?' Kor Phaeron reached the gaggle of nomads and snatched at the robe of Fan Morgai, dragging him close. 'Would you raise him up as some desert soothsayer? Perhaps a false prophet? Think you to be the captor of another Tezen or Slanat, Khaane or Narag? What falsehoods would you lay in his heart, corrupter?'
'He is just a child,' said Fan Morgai, echoing his wife. He pulled himself away from Kor Phaeron's grasp, careful not to lay his own skin upon what he believed was the blessed flesh of an ordained priest. Kor Phaeron noticed a lack of determination in the chieftain's manner, as if an unspoken doubt troubled his thoughts. The itinerant preacher knew that he had looked upon something great, and he knew with equal vehemence that the child could not be raised by the superstitious, ignorant savages of the Declined. Worse still would be to allow the boy to remain with them and then fall into the clutches of the Covenant or one of the other city-churches.
Even so, there was only so far he could push the traditions of hospitality before Fan Morgai decided his guest was no longer welcome. Kor Phaeron raised his hands, touching his fingertips to his briefly closed eyelids in a gesture of apology.
'Forgive my blindness, Fan Morgai,' he said, in what he hoped was his most conciliatory tone. 'You must know that the child is not of mortal birth.'
'Not… mortal? He is not, you are right. Not as we think it. It is only seventeen days since we found him, preacher, in a glassy crater edgewards of the Catarc Oasis. He was an infant, a babe in arms. Now look at him… A half-year aged in just seventeen days.'
'He should come with me, Fan Morgai. I shall lead him to the Truth. You know it is more than happenstance that we have met this day. Of all the deserts to cross, of all the preachers and tribes to meet, the Powers have placed you and I together in this place, at this moment A greater work is unfolding around us. You have done your part, kept safe that which the Powers have gifted us. Let me take him, Fan Morgai.'
'Why do you not ask me?'
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Kor Phaeron stiffened at the sound of the new voice behind him. Its timbre was childlike, formed by immature vocal cords and a small chest, but its tone put him in mind of the High Acolyte of the orphanage where he had been raised, steeped in considered wisdom and calm temperament. It was a voice filled with dignity, speaking perfectly the waterwords. Kor Phaeron met the gaze of the nomad leader and recognised the look in his eye - an understanding of the shock that currently bewitched the holy wanderer. 'I know exactly how you are feeling,' Fan Morgai's expression said to him.
'It is all right, you can look at me now,' the boy said quietly.
Kor Phaeron turned his head and glanced over his shoulder, expecting the blaze of energies that had assailed him before. Instead he saw the boy swathed in shirt and trousers too big, face framed by a dark red scarf. The violet eyes were as bright as before, but there was none of the Empyreal abyss into which Kor Phaeron had found himself dragged when he had previously met their stare Even so, the gaze of the child was disquieting. The preacher turned fully to look at the infant but could not find the words he desired. The aura of the boy was intoxicating, a vessel for the Light of the Powers.
'What did you say, Lorgar?' said Fan Morgai.
'You named him?' Kor Phaeron directed a venomous glare at the nomad. 'You gave him one of your filthy sand-names?'
'It is a good name,' Fan Morgai replied. 'A very old name. It came to me the moment I laid eyes upon him. Or, I should say, the moment I recovered my senses after seeing him. It means the rain-caller.'
'I like it, Kor Phaeron,' said Lorgar. 'If it does not displease you too much, I should like to keep it. As a reminder of this time with Fan Morgai and his kindness.'
The request was made quietly, but it entered Kor Phaeron's thoughts with the same weight as the commands of the Powers themselves. To deny it would be to attempt to hold back the energy of the sun with his bare hands.
He nodded, struck dumb for a moment.
'A reminder?' Kor Phaeron latched on to the meaning of the words. 'You will accompany me?'
'Your speech was very moving, Kor Phaeron. I know that I am different. Unique. You are the Bearer of the Word, and I would learn of the Powers and the Truth.' He spoke the words with the same inflection as Kor Phaeron, perfectly mimicking the emphasis the priest placed upon them. 'I think that if I am taught of these then perhaps I may understand myself. You can teach me these things.'
'I…' Fan Morgai had tears in his eyes but nodded at this pronouncement, as powerless to resist the boy's desire as the dunes are to resist the shaping of the winds.
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Kor Phaeron felt something else stir in his breast as he looked at Lorgar. The flame of passion burned as never before, ignited by the presence of the child. But in the fire he felt a different purpose than before. When he had been cast into the desert he had vowed to Bear the Word to all who would listen, every convert a reward in itself, proof that he did the works of the Powers and that the Covenant was built upon falsehood and dogma. Now Lorgar presented a new means by which the Word might be elevated. Kor Phaeron's thoughts buzzed with a grander plan, a triumphant return to Vharadesh with a new Prophet beside him to scour clean the corruptions of the Covenant.
He tilted his face away lest something of his desires were shown to Lorgar. Stepping past Fan Morgai, the preacher turned his back on the boy and beckoned impatiently for him to follow across the shadowed sands to the temple-rig.
'Come with me, Lorgar. I will teach you of the Powers and the Truth.'
Growls and grumbles followed them, but no overt protest was made by the Declined. The slaves who had come to their master's aid scurried past, dashing through the heat of the sun to either side to reach the temple-rig ahead of Kor Phaeron. Axata fell into step at his left shoulder.
'Others would kill for the child,' Kor Phaeron told his captain without looking round. 'He is salvation and da
mnation. Even though they are willing to give him unto us, these vagrants will happily flap their lips of what has occurred here and others will come looking for Lorgar. We cannot have news of the boy reaching the ears of the Covenant. They would scour the desert for us.'
'I understand, holy master,' replied Axata. He peeled away, leaving Kor Phaeron and Lorgar to approach the shrine wagon. Kor Phaeron waited at the bottom of the ladder and then motioned for Lorgar to precede him up to the deck. When the boy was halfway up, Kor Phaeron grabbed the rungs and hauled himself onto the rig as the sigh of windbows and crackle of fusils burst into life behind him, greeted by the panicked shouts of the Declined.
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Though the brightness that had assaulted Nairo's senses had dissipated, the boy, Lorgar, still shimmered with a strange gleam of power - the slave considered the possibility it was simply an effect of a quick onset of desert-fever, for he had fallen out of the shade of the sunsails and had returned to consciousness beneath the furnace heat of the Long Noon sun.
He waited for the master and his new charge to reach the shrine wagon, pausing beside the water butt to refresh them once they had ascended. His hand stopped short of the ladle when the first shots rang out over the camp. From his position on the deck of the temple-rig he saw the sparkle of fusils slash through the shade accompanied by the blur of arrows and slingstave bullets. Larger projectiles, flame-stars and spear-launcher javelins, crashed and whipped into the canopies of the encampment, pulping and piercing those who had incurred Kor Phaeron's wrath.
He tore his eye from the bloody spectacle to see what Lorgar made of the sudden violence. Nairo expected dismay or shock, anger even, but the child placidly watched the unfolding scene, showing not even the smallest evidence of perturbation. If there was anything to be read in Lorgar's expression it was a slight regret, perhaps, a tilt of the head and purse of the lips that made Nairo wonder if the child had been expecting this outcome. He seemed remarkably unflustered by all the other events that had swept up around him, and there was something knowing about his manner, far beyond his years.