Nexius pointed to Reglum. “Lieutenant Bammary made his first trip on a tough ship as a member of one of the search parties. They only took volunteers.”
Reglum said, “Thank you, Captain.” Then to the others: “Nexius was my commanding officer on that ship.”
“The Swift,” said Nexius. “One of our last before we got the steam engines. But, hunh, we were not ospreys to save a tern, as we say in Yount.”
Sally thought of something. “Does the Queen have any sons?”
“Ah, Miss Sally,” said Reglum. “No, she does not. One son she had who died of childhood pox, and then her daughter . . .”
“So Yount — at least Yount Major — has no heir,” said Sanford.
“Say rather the House of Hullitate has no heir,” said Reglum. “Yount Major has an heir, a prince from the Presumptive House among the Optimates, a family called Loositage.”
Nexius shifted, looked even more than usual like a badger with a briar in his paw, but he said nothing.
“Our rules of inheritance are complicated,” said Reglum, choosing his words carefully. “Just as yours are. Perhaps we should leave it at that, since this question is not imminent in the way our rendezvous at the Sign of the Ear is.”
But Nexius clearly wanted to continue the conversation just a little longer. The briar in his paw had grown to an entire bramble.
“Tell them more, Reglum,” he said in the tone of a captain to a lieutenant.
Reglum sighed and said, “The rules of inheritance are all nicely codified but there is also, outside the rules, a . . . sentiment, I suppose I could call it.”
“A prophecy from the Mother,” said Nexius.
“As some call it,” said Reglum with another one of the gestures that the McDoons did not understand. “Not a canonical text, not according to the Gremium for Guided Knowledge. The story was first circulated by the Sibyl of Qua, who attracted a large following. Then the story resurfaced independently, preached by the young Matthias Laufer, the passionate Pietist boy who came years later.”
“What does the prophecy say?”
“That Yount’s eleventh dynasty since our New Reckoning, which starts with the crowning of First-King Ussommeous Chabimate almost two thousand years ago, will be a dynasty begun by two individuals from Karket-soom.”
“I guess that the House of Hullitate is the tenth dynasty,” said Sally.
“Precisely,” said Reglum. “The prophecy is one reason we put all Karket-soomi under Crown protection. Everyone welcomes Karket-soomi as proof that we are not alone, as evidence of our eventual freedom, but not everyone relishes the idea of Karket-soomi as rulers in Yount.”
“So,” Nexius said. “Two schools of mind. Those who would advertise our presence to Karket-soom, the better to advance the fulfillment of the prophecy, those are called Proclaimers. The others, who feel otherwise, we call Secretists.”
On the way back to their quarters, Barnabas said, “Buttons and beeswax, Yountish history is every bit as complicated as our own. Indeed, I think I might even prefer old what’s-his-name of Halicarnassus with his that battle and this battle until one’s eyes cross. Happy there is no examination on all this!”
“Even if there were, all that matters is Tom,” Sanford said.
Sally put up her hand before anyone else could speak. She took out the ansible pendant from around her neck and held it up for all to see. The pendant glowed a dull-red.
Sally felt her stomach tighten as they neared the Hills of the Temple, held Isaak even more tightly in her lap. She knew from her dreams that it was impossible to land a ship at the base of the promontory, that the only approach to the Temple was by land over the encircling hills. For two days they had travelled east and then southeast from Yount Great-Port, on a broad road hugging the coast. At dawn the second day, several companies of sharpshooters joined the members of the Queen’s Household Guard already escorting them. Sally looked out of the carriage window. All she saw jogging along on horses were swords and pistols, and, when she craned her neck to look upwards, the faces of soldiers. Several of these were women, just as Nexius had said.
First Tom, then we’ll see about heart’s desire , thought Barnabas, as the carriage bumped along. How Rehana figures into this, I cannot reckon. Rehana . . .
He thought of the Khodja garden in Bombay. The carriage jolted, tossed everyone nearly to the ceiling, and brought Barnabas back to the present.
“Hah! Time to get our revenge on the Cretched Man. Now we’ll handle ’im, just like Lord Rodney against the French — straight at ’im, and no quarter!”
Must not let Barnabas do anything rash , thought Sanford, rearranging his hat. Can’t let him charge the line lacking his flints.
Sanford looked to Sally. “I do not understand what has happened to her. I’d call it witchly. It is surely unnatural. But whatever it is, she is on the side of the righteous: she has cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light, as the Book talks about.”
Fraulein Reimer said nothing but did her needlework despite the jouncing of the carriage. She tried to hide the fact that the needle had jabbed her several times, but Sally saw drops of blood on the embroidery. Like the Queen in the fairy tale, Sally thought, whose drops of blood on a handkerchief foretold the doom of a missing child.
Rattling behind the McDoon’s carriage were others, filled with Learned Doctors and members of the Gremium for Guided Knowledge, all wrapped in dark green overcoats. The Arch-Bishop — who was thus the Arch-Dean of the Learned Doctors — was among them. He seemed ill at ease around Sally, who returned the feeling. She noticed that none of the Marine officers spoke more than was necessary with the Arch-Dean or with any of the others in the other carriages. She also noticed that the carriages had their own escort, soldiers dressed not in the Marines’ dark blue but in deep-green uniforms. Their brooches were silver with a green tree, not a leaping dolphin.
“Sacerdotal Guards,” growled Nexius when asked. “Only Optimates can join. Better equipped than we are.”
They stayed the second night in a small fort at a fork in the road.
“How far to the Temple now?”
“One more day. There to the southeast you see already the first Hills of the Temple.”
The next day was Sterrowday. With scores of soldiers riding along side, some in dark blue, some in deep green, they left the last of the farmed lands and rode into the hills. The sun was out but it was cold. A few birds piped from thickets at the base of the hills but otherwise they saw and heard nothing. The road, winding through the hills, became narrower and rougher, until it was just barely wider than the carriages.
“Interminable ride is breaking my back-parts,” Barnabas said. “But, from the egg to the apples, we’ll soon be done! I cannot imagine anyone, not even that wicked chap in the coat, standing up to the lot of us!”
Sanford pulled his chin in as he said, “Old friend, you are sometimes just a little bit too much like a sundial, seeing only the sunny hours.”
“Really . . .” said Barnabas, looking affronted and amused at the same time.
“Let us not count bearskins before the bear is shot,” said Sanford.
And skinned, added Sally to herself.
Late in the afternoon they passed out of the hills. Sally was glad the soldiers rode alongside again so she could not see. She feared the view though she could not say why. She heard the surf in the distance.
“Halt,” said Nexius. “We camp here tonight.”
Sally looked and beheld what she had seen so many times in her dreams. As the sun set, and dozens of campfires were kindled, Sally looked over a bare stretch towards a distant sea. At the edge of sight were five giant trees huddled around a white building. Sally gasped: it is one thing to dream a thing, it is another to see it in the waking world, and then to wonder which came first, the dream or the waking experience. She seized her St. Morgaine medallion and clenched her jaw.
“Every Yountian knows of this place,” said Reglum in a low
voice. “Only a few come here. Mostly just Sacerdotes, especially the Learned Doctors and the members of the Gremium, and even they do not come often or stay long. All the soldiers, men and women alike, are anxious and uneasy. ’Tis our most holy ground . . . holiness is hard to endure in such concentration.”
Sally did not answer but was glad for his company.
“Come back to the fire,” said Reglum. “It grows colder as we speak. The wind off the ocean is chilling.”
“No moon,” she said, and pulled her hood up over her head.
The next morning, Mickleday, came cold and clear. Over the sound of many hooves was the suffle of the wind, and over that, the boom of surf. The carriages slowed. Sally watched as the soldiers hived off to right and left, the green in one direction, the blue in the other. The carriages stopped.
Sally stepped into the scene she had dreamed so many times. For a second she stopped breathing. Here was the grassy lawn, with small blue flowers in it. There was frost on the lawn and on the flowers. She pointed at the flowers and mouthed, “Bixwort.” Fraulein Reimer nodded.
They passed under the five gargantuan trees, live oaks whose leaves did not fall. Acorns carpeted the ground all around the great, twisted, runicled trees. Now and then another acorn fell, bouncing a little before coming to rest. Sally looked up and, yes, caught glimpses of little fox-red monkeys with prehensile tails and antlered heads. “Chip, chip,” they mewed as the troops marched beneath the trees.
Sally walked more slowly. The Temple, which had seemed small in her dreams, loomed overhead. As big as St. Paul’s, almost as tall as Sankt Jakobi, she thought. Its roof was cracked, its portico ruined, with bits of column and metope missing or lying in the grass. An enormous fissure ran up the façade.
“This is it,” Nexius said. “In we go with the Arch-Dean and his colleagues. With two dozen soldiers. The rest of the soldiers have surrounded the temple.”
Up the worn and crumbling steps they went and through one of the five doors into the five-sided temple. The temple seemed even larger inside than outside. Their steps echoed within it, and from outside came the sound of the wind and the throb of the waves smashing into the rocks of the promontory.
Light came from windows in the dome and from the clerestory, and especially from the rent in the roof. It fell on intarsia inlay that ran around the doorways, scrolling geometrical designs that Sally remembered from the Gallinule. A dado ran along the entire circuit of the wall, at a height of about five feet, with friezes of leaping dolphins, spouting whales and soaring albatrosses below it. The friezes were chipped and cracked: here a dolphin had no head, there an albatross lacked a wing. Rubble lay on the floor.
At each of the five angles, where the walls came together, was a mounting high in the wall holding a large clock. Each clock had a moon face, in a different phase of lunar progress, made of silver, white marble, and ebony. Every clock was stopped at a different time.
Bell horses, bell horses, what time of day? thought Barnabas. In the middle of the temple were five pillars in a pentagram that soared to the plane from which the dome began. Each of the pillars was topped with the moon in one of its phases. Nexius, Reglum, and the McDoons passed through the pillars, followed by the Learned Doctors, and came to the centre of the temple. Here was a massive marble pedestal, ten feet tall at least, upon which was a single squat pillar, which held one huge round orb, a great white marble moon. Steps were cut into the pedestal and into the pillar leading to a small platform attached to the moon. At that spot on the surface of the moon was a doorway, perhaps eight feet tall, with three locks and knobs in a triangle in its middle.
Nexius halted. Sally looked up, seeking a scissor-tailed shape that might swoop upon them. Sanford looked behind them, past the Learned Doctors, and saw the shadowy figures of Yountish soldiers beyond the pillars. Barnabas gripped the key in his pocket. It felt warm but he could not tell if this was only the heat from his sweaty hand or if it was heat that emanated from the key itself. All was silent except for the wind and the surf outside. The huge moon sat above them, as unmoved and unmoving as it had sat for centuries.
Barnabas stamped his foot and said, “Quatsch.”
His voice echoed. Nothing moved. Nothing could be seen.
Barnabas clapped his hands and yelled, “Cretched Man, Pausanias, or whatever you call yourself! Here we are again! We have chased across all time and space to collect Tom.”
No one answered.
“Show yourself, Cretched Man!” shouted Barnabas. He held his pistol steady in his left hand. He wore his oldest hat and his oldest vest. He could not even say what colour his stockings were.
At that, figures suddenly appeared, walking from behind the moon on top of the pedestal. (When asked later, soldiers who had a view of that side of the moon said that they saw no persons there.) First in view was —
“Tom!” yelled the McDoons.
“Sally! Uncle Barnabas!” Tom called. “Oh, thank you, Sally! Dear Sally! Good old Sanford! Fraulein, it’s really you!”
Behind him came the Cretched Man, his coat a ruddy streak against the dully gleaming white marble. Five men filed behind them, each carrying a rifle loosely at his side.
“We keep our tryst,” said the Cretched Man.
“You are surrounded by soldiers, inside and out,” said Nexius.
“Send down Tom and I will come up, but not before Tom is safe below with us,” said Barnabas.
To their surprise, it was not the Cretched Man but Tom who replied.
“No, Uncle, the Cretched Man is not what you think. Nexius, listen to me, this is a horrible confusion. You must not do what you ask Uncle Barnabas to do!”
Nexius had overcome thousands of odd and difficult moments but Tom’s plea was outside his expectations and experience. He lowered his pistol, and just stared at the young man from Karket-soom as if he had gone mad.
Barnabas stamped his foot again. “Quatsch, boy! What is it you say?”
Sally watched her brother’s face the way she dreamed: drinking in every detail and trying to make sense of it while she flew ahead of some awful pursuer. Tom looked just as intently at her.
Nexius found his voice at last, yelling, “Tom, come down!”
The Cretched Man shook his head, his coat shuddering.
“No, Nexius Dexius of the Fencibles,” Jambres said. “For once, all of you, listen to the truth when you hear it. Listen to Thomas. Listen.”
“Come down, Tom lad,” said Barnabas.
Tom shook his head.
“Enough, by the Trees,” said the Arch-Dean and Chief Sacerdote. “We understand. This Karket-soomi has lost his mind to the Evil One.”
“No!” said Tom. “You must believe me. If Uncle Barnabas uses the key to open the final lock, something terrible will happen!”
Sanford half-raised his pistol at the Cretched Man.
On one side is the truth, on the other . . . another form of truth? he thought, while lowering his pistol. Or are both falsehoods? Does it matter what competing bands of heretics or pagans believe? “Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.”
Fraulein Reimer had listened to hundreds of his fibs, tall tales and half-truths as he tried to evade his lessons or duck out to the theatre.
The truth often tastes bitter , she thought, lowering her pistol as well. But a sweet lie is poisonous. Dichtung oder Wahrheit? Nein, es gibt hier um Dichtung und Wahrheit.
Sally felt the truth in Tom’s mind. She did not trust the Cretched Man, not even so much as to offer him the sympathy she suspected his plight deserved, if half her guesses about that were even half correct. But Tom was another matter.
Barnabas had come to the same conclusion: “Alright, my boy. We’ll listen.”
The Arch-Dean signalled to his colleagues. A woman with rusty highlights in her jet-black hair stood forth, brought an instrument from a satchel at her side. Sally looked at the instrument and divine
d its purpose without knowing how it worked in detail. Reglum and Nexius moved to intercept her. Too late. The woman with rusty-red highlights lifted the tube she held, while the Arch-Dean said something in Yountish.
The Cretched Man stepped in front of Tom and yelled, “No!”
Everyone froze: the McDoons below looking up in hope at Tom; the Learned Doctors preparing their device; Nexius and Reglum torn between their allegiance to the Learned Doctors and their desire to understand what Tom would tell them; most of all the Cretched Man with his arms outflung in front of Tom. Five rangy figures with rifles in their hands moved up to protect Tom and the Cretched Man.
The Arch-Dean held out one hand to still the colleague with the tube in her hands. “No, what?” the Learned Doctor said.
The Cretched Man, his coat pulsating, said, “No to your use of that weapon. I can withstand such a thing, but the others here with me could not, and I will not allow them to be harmed in that way. You claim to fight evil, though you do not give me a chance to explain myself. How long have we danced this dance, for years uncounted through the ages of my perpession? Far too long, let it end now!”
The Arch-Dean had a terrible smile on his face. “Far too long in truth. If you stand aside, we can end that forever. Let us take the Key-bearer to the door to perform his duty. Otherwise we use the weapon that the Mother put into our hands.”
Tom felt something shift deep in Jambres, a small eructation of grief and anger.
The Cretched Man seemed to shrink. “Come up,” Jambres said to Barnabas. “Thomas will go down.”
Tom turned to Jambres. “No,” he said. “I can’t. This isn’t right.”
“I have no choice,” said Jambres, his perfect face a mask. “I cannot put forth my strength without harming you and many others who should not be harmed. I have failed again. No, Thomas, you must go down. Go now. Let your uncle come up.”
Tom looked at Jambres and the Minders. He looked down to his family. He found Sally’s eyes . . . long she held his gaze. Come down, brother, she murmured in his mind. He had a swift image of the little blue flowers, the ones he knew were just outside. He longed to see them, to run across that lawn. Sela-manri. He heard her voice. The little flower of repentance. He walked down the stairs, which were blurred beneath his feet as tears poured out of his eyes. Come down, brother.
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