by Gav Thorpe
'I am sorry, my master. The Declined live in tents, there is no surface upon which to knock.' The apology seemed sincere even tempered as it was by excuse. Lorgar's fingers moved to his eyes in the gesture of contrition, somewhat uncertainly, unsure whether it was appropriate at that moment. 'I am here for my first lesson, my master.'
'Kneel here.' Kor Phaeron pointed at the floor between the door and the cot. Lorgar obeyed. The preacher stood and slid the Book of Heavenly Scripts back into the space upon the chest-shelf and took down the Instructions on the Lessons of Dammas Dar.
'Am I to learn to read, my master?'
Kor Phaeron's backhanded slap caught the boy across the cheek, leaving the skin reddened, though also a throbbing in the bones of the preacher's hand. Lorgar's head had barely moved with the blow but his eyes were wide and tear-filled from shock.
'I gave no permission for questions, child,' Kor Phaeron said coldly, nursing his knuckles. 'If you cannot accept simple instruction I will not waste my time with you. Attend to my words and leave aside your own.'
'Yes, my master,' replied Lorgar, head lowered, lip trembling.
'You will learn to read and write in time, but first you must be taught the principles of faith.' He opened the book to the title page, tracing the words as he read out loud, each fastidiously copied by hand from the original text written in the Age Before. 'Instructions on the Lessons of Dammas Dar. Translated from the Epicean by Kap Daeron of Vharadesh. Third Imprinting. Vharadesh University Press.'
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Coldfall was nearing rest-eve, the better part of wake-main spent in reading. Kor Phaeron's neck ached. He flexed his shoulders and looked up to see Lorgar staring intently, soaking in each word with penetrating eyes. The preacher could also read the already familiar furrow at the bridge of the nose that marked Lorgar's face before he made an inquiry. Yet for all that he obviously desired to ask something he held his tongue. Kor Phaeron chose to reward this display of discipline.
'What do you wish to know, child?'
'The Declined spoke of Vharadesh as though it were a place of devils and murderers. Yet you have a book from there.'
'Is there a question in that?'
'Teach me more of Vharadesh, my master.'
'No. Today is not a lesson in geography or history. You need only know that Vharadesh is both the paradise of the Powers and the hell of mortals. It is the capital of the Covenant, blessed in the light and plunged into the abyss for their ignorance. One day we shall travel there, you and I, but it shall not be as supplicants again Ill-favoured for Vharadesh will be that day. The Covenant must fall so that the Covenant might rise again in the light of the Truth.
Lorgar opened his mouth but closed it again, stifling the next question that had risen in his thoughts. The boy clenched his jaw as though the words were physically fighting to escape him.
Kor Phaeron's glare forestalled any further struggle and the boy fell into acquiescent immobility. Still regarding Lorgar with an injunctive stare, the preacher turned the page and then started to read once more.
The book was not the prayers and prophecies of the Kpicean himself, but a summary and examination of them. Unfortunately Kor Phaeron had never seen the original text on which the book remarked, but he had inferred much of Dammas Dar's observations nonetheless.
As he continued to read aloud he became uncomfortably aware of Lorgar's scrutiny. The boy's gaze moved between the face of the preacher and the book in his hands, his jealousy plain to see.
'You desire this?' snapped Kor Phaeron, slamming the book shut to thrust it into Lorgar's face. 'You think you will find your answers in here without my help?'
'No, my master,' Lorgar pleaded, holding up his hands in sub mission. 'Forgive my trespasses, my master, as we pray the Powers forgive them. I desire only to understand. Please, read me more of the Instructions on the Lessons of Dammas Dar.'
'Do not make demands of your teacher, child.' Kor Phaeron stood up, blanketing the boy in his shadow. 'Do you think to know what is best for you? Perhaps I should have left you with the ignorant sand rats?'
Lorgar said nothing in response to this accusation, his lips tightening against a rebuke that went unspoken. The thought alone enraged Kor Phaeron; that this waif he had saved from destitution and damnation would gainsay his wishes?
'Wake-main is near spent, and the observations of the Empyrean must commence shortly. What have you learned, Lorgar? Why should I not consign you to the slaves' lot and leave you to grub what you can of the Truth from my sermons?'
'In the first instance, we can summarise the attitudes of Epicea and its people as one of platitudes rather than adulation, as evidenced by the need for Dammas Dar to speak out against the rites of the Crimson Temple,' began Lorgar perfectly repeating the opening lines of the text. 'We shall investigate the origins of this protest in the initial chapters. When we have established the platform from which Dammas Dar was si—'
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'Enough!' growled Kor Phaeron. He seized the collar of Lorgar and made to drag the child to his feet. For two heartbeats nothing happened; the boy remained exactly where he knelt as the acolyte's tunic stretched in Kor Phaeron's spindly fingers. And then Lorgar rose, seemingly only by his volition, though the child was of no size to contest the preacher's strength - even given that Kor Phaeron was not himself a muscular individual.
'Do not echo my words back at me, child! It is a mockery of the lesson.'
Me propelled Lorgar to the door and then out to the steps in the corridor beyond, slapping his hand upon the back of Lorgar's head to urge him to the deck,
'My master, I heard every word!' protested the boy. Me sobbed between the preacher's blows and tried to continue with his recitation. 'In chapters seven and eight we shall endeavour to unpick the tapestry of exaggeration the Epicean wove around the events during the siege of Gall Tassara, to see if we might extract some semblance of reality from the fanciful.' Are these not the words you spoke, my master?'
They reached the harshly illuminated deck and Kor Phaeron put his bare foot to the rump of the boy to send him stumbling into the light, though the impact jarred his knee and hip. The guards and slaves roused from their idling and labours to see what was happening.
'You speak but say nothing!' roared Kor Phaeron. 'You think to make an idiot of me by learning the words but not the meaning. It is not the mere rote of the phrases that you will learn, but the inner Truth. The Covenant would bury our world with ceremony and holy cant, but we will die of it as a man in the desert dies of lack of water, for there is no faith in blind devotion, no Truth in the word spoken out of thought. I will not be tasked in this way by an acolyte.'
Lorgar stood trembling, clutching at his tunic, but Kor Phaeron knew that an example had to be made right now. The boy, and those who watched, needed to learn that only true faith would serve the Powers. He would not raise an automaton like the academies of Vharadesh, but an acolyte of the Truth.
'Axata, bring your lash here,' he said, gesturing to the commander of the converts. 'If Lorgar will not heed my words, chastisement will make a deeper impression.'
Axata approached, uncoiling the whip from his belt. Kor Phaeron sneered at the man's caution and thrust a finger towards Lorgar.
'Make the marks upon his flesh so that the Truth might make marks upon his soul!'
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In the darkness of the below deck, the boy's startling eyes glistened and tears cut tracks through the grime on his face. Lorgar huddled close to a thickly riveted stanchion, eyeing Nairo with suspicion. The slave had cleared the others out of the room to give the child some privacy, and stood protectively at the bulkhead, the door behind him opened a hand's width to let in a sliver of light from the corridor outside.
'I… I did… I learned the words, Nairo,' Lorgar said, choking out the words between sobs. His eyes roamed the gloom for a moment and then settled again on the slave, lost and confused. 'I remembered them perfectly! I thought he would be pleased. Why was
he so upset?'
'I don't know, Lorgar,' Nairo confessed. 'The master is sometimes swift to take affront but very slow to offer explanation.'
He held out a hand, laid it carefully on the boy's arm so as not to startle him.
'Let me see,' he said softly.
Lorgar shuffled away and shook his head.
'No.'
'Where does it hurt?'
'In here,' Lorgar said, tapping his exposed chest. He raised quivering fingers to his forehead. 'In here.'
'What of your back? Six blows Axata put upon you.' In a crouch, Nairo moved closer, tugging gently at the tunic. 'Let me check the wounds.'
Lorgar darted him a scared look, but Nairo smiled as reassuringly as his gap-toothed mouth allowed, nodding encouragement.
'I'll not touch anything. Just let me see.'
Reluctantly, Lorgar nodded, turning so that his back came into the light. Nairo slipped away the tunic, exposing the boy's shoulders and upper spine. In the dim light he could barely see half a dozen red welts running diagonally across the middle of his back and left shoulder. He turned and pushed the door open a little wider to let in more light, but this did not reveal any further damage. There was not even a scab to show where the whip cracks had landed.
'No grazing, no bruises. The skin isn't broken at all…' Nairo shook his head in disbelief. 'I think perhaps you have an ally in Axata, and he laid the whip on you less harshly than it seemed. I thought it odd you did not cry out. Perhaps you need to be as good an actor as he is, for I would swear he put his arm into every blow. Cover up, lest the master sees the lack of injury. He would not like to think that Axata has spared you the full application of chastisement, and it would bode poorly for both of you.'
Lorgar shrugged the tunic back on and turned to Nairo.
'It does not hurt, not there. My soul is injured, Nairo. The ache is in my hearts.'
'You mean heart, Lorgar. Just the one.'
The boy scowled and shook his head.
'I can hear your heart, Nairo. And that of Dervas on the deck above, and many others. I know you only have one heart. But listen to mine.' He waved for the slave to bow his head to Lorgar's chest and Nairo did so, hesitantly, until his ear came upon his slender breastbone.
He heard an unmistakable twin-beat pulsing through the bone and sat bolt upright, staring at Lorgar with fresh amazement. The boy smiled, thrilled by this small surprise.
'I told you!' he grinned.
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Nairo wondered what other marvels were hidden in the body of the child, but said nothing. There had been something unsettling in the way he had meekly submitted to his punishment, crying but not struggling, not protesting. His soul was as special as his body, that much was evident. The master had been right - the Powers had set Lorgar upon this world for a purpose. A fifth prophet, perhaps? But for whom? A new Power? The thought both excited and terrified Nairo in equal measure.
Lorgar laughed and pointed at the slave.
'See? Your heart, it beats faster now. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. I can hear it like the footsteps of Dagaron the Capazcian pacing the deck above.'
Nairo listened and could hear only the creaking of the metal and the judder of the engines idling to keep the generators going. Yet he did not doubt the boy's testament. He could no more stop the racing of his heart at the thought of what the child represented than he could hold back the desert winds.
'Rest here until the master summons us for the observations,' he told the boy as he turned to leave.
'Nairo…'
The slave looked back.
'I could learn the words more quickly if I did not have to wait for Kor Phaeron to read them.'
'You can read the books?' Nairo had thought that he could not be any more surprised by anything else he learned of the boy, but was mistaken, as he would be about a great many things in the coming years.
'Not yet, but I'm sure it wouldn't take long to learn, would it?'
'For you…?' Nairo shrugged. 'Probably not. But Kor Phaeron lets no other read his holy books. You must be patient and attend to his lessons and his instructions. Be diligent - the slightest trespass might incur his anger.'
'But if I could just get—'
'No!' Nairo turned back fully and held up a finger in admonishment. 'Put such thoughts from your mind, Lorgar. Do not disobey the master. It will go badly.'
'But perhaps you—'
'If he caught you, his acolyte, you would be beaten. If he caught me taking one of his books. Me, a slave… My hands would be forfeit. My life, most likely, taken in a painful and drawn-out way.'
'I thought you wanted to help,' Lorgar said with a pout.
'When did I say that?'
'You did not say it, not with words. But you are here, now, and others are not. Thank you.'
Nairo retreated, not acknowledging the praise nor the boy's assessment of his spirit, for he knew that as much as he could not let the boy needlessly suffer, he also harboured a secret, grander hope. The boy's favour. With it, who could say what might yet be achieved for the likes of a slave?
'Nairo?'
The question stopped him just at the threshold, but he did not look back.
'Is there ever not a question upon your lips, Lorgar?'
'You speak well, better than the other slaves. I think you can read, also. You were not born into slavery, were you? What did you do before… before becoming a slave?'
He was not going to answer at first, but there was something undeniable about Lorgar's questions, about his voice, that meant one could not disobey nor ignore his request.
'A teacher. I was a teacher, of sorts, before I was made a slave.' He heard the boy take in a breath, ready to speak, and guessed at the next query. 'I was enslaved for teaching the wrong thing, to the wrong people, if that is what you want to know.'
'And what was that?'
Nairo gritted his teeth, trying to refuse the urge to comply. It was more than simply the child's voice prising open his volition; it was his desire to speak that made him do so, to share that secret.
'Freedom, Lorgar. A heresy in the eyes of the Covenant. I taught that all men and women were equal beneath the gaze of the Powers.'
And that was more than Nairo had been willing to share. If such a thing became known to Kor Phaeron his former identity might be guessed and his life would be forfeit; so before he admitted more, he fled.
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The incident with Lorgar left Kor Phaeron's patience worn thin, and knowing his own nature the preacher secluded himself in his dorm through rest-eve until the next astromantic observations were required at the break of wake-rise on High Night. He sat on his cot and stared out at the dark desert, waiting for the Powers to pull the thickest veil of night over the skies.
The temperature had dropped rapidly as the heat of the day faded through Coldfall. Here, at one of the highest points of the Vhanagir desolation, snow was more common than rain, but it was not yet the season for such bounty from the Powers. The High Night winds had not yet started, but it would not be long before they brought their chilling touch. Near cloudless, the air would not trap the heat of the day, and well before the close of wake-rise the thermometer would be close to freezing.
Through the caravan the slaves were making ready for the cold, lighting fireboxes and dragging out the solar collectors that had been storing the sun's energy since dawn on Mornday. Parasols that had shielded them from the deadly sun were now reversed, their reflective sides turned inwards to trap as much escaping heat as possible.
The paradox seemed appropriate. Kor Phaeron took up the fitfully glowing screen of an auto-scriber and pressed his thumb to the relic's activation rune.
'We must forever desire the gaze of the Powers,' he said, clearly, slowly so that the diction device could catch each word precisely. A spool of transpex parchment slid out of the end, his words neatly burned onto the surface in a flowing script. The effort of restraining his racing thoughts was a good discipline, helping him s
hape his philosophy even as he gave voice to it.
'That they have abandoned Colchis is no mystery to me when the Covenant spews mindless rote into the Empyrean, devoid of faith and passion. But to draw the eye of the Powers is to be laid bare to their scrutiny. A testing will come, when we are beset by that immortal gaze once more. Those who hold true to their faith will pass. Those who show weakness of resolve will fail. It is not for mortals to judge but to bring forth the gaze of the Powers and allow their judgement to run its course. When the testing is complete those who remain shall live beneath the invigorating and protective gaze of the Powers once more.'
As he considered these words, Kor Phaeron felt his anger ebbing. He remembered the Truth, that unto each would be given the tasks set to them by the Powers, according to their design. Into him the Powers had invested knowledge of the Truth and the strength to be the Bearer of the Word - the seer among the blind, the listener in a crowd of the deaf, the speaker in a world of mutes. They had entrusted that duty to no other.
But it was so taxing, bearing the responsibility of so many souls.
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Three knocks at the door announced the arrival of a visitor. Axata, Kor Phaeron believed, knowing well the force and pace of his chief convert's request for entry.
'Come in.'
It was indeed the guard captain, his bulk suddenly filling the cabin.
'Sentries posted, patrols sent out, master.'
Kor Phaeron silently nodded his acceptance of the report. He detected a slight awkwardness about his lieutenant's demeanour and his presence was a change from the norm.
'Why do you report in person, Axata? Normally it is sufficient to send word with an underling.'
The giant twisted his hands around the knot of the rope belt that held his acolyte's robe over the plate and mail armour beneath.
'The boy…'
'What of Lorgar?'
'He is not normal. You said so yourself, master.'
'I did.'
'Why is he here?'
Kor Phaeron considered dismissing the question but he could see that the matter would nag at the captain, and through him would infect the thoughts of the other converts. He almost delivered a throwaway platitude, to assure Axata that the Powers had a plan and that they were all a part of it, whether the divine scheme could be seen or not. He stopped himself, knowing that it would be an affront to the Truth. It would be no admission of weakness to share his concerns, and would strengthen Axata's loyalty to think he had been taken into his master's confidences.