Past Imperative

by Dave Duncan

  Eleal was confident she could find a shortcut. Rather than follow the old highway and the pilgrim path, she would head directly northeast until she reached the edge of the gorge and then approach the Sacrarium from the other side. Holding her hat on with one hand and her sandals in the other, she ran barefoot through the grassy woodland of Ruatvil, skirting its stony ruins. A few young goatherds watched her, but no one challenged her or jeered at her awkward lope. Puffing and sweating in the heat, she came to the woods and realized her error. She had forgotten how dense the jungle was.

  Thorns and brambles became so thick that she was slowed to a stumbling walk. Masses of stone lay hidden everywhere. She found the way hard going in sandals, but she forced her way through, being as quiet as she could. Her hat kept catching in branches; she took it off and carried it in front of her to shield her face from twigs. The grove was utterly silent in the heat of the afternoon. Not a bird sang. Even insects seemed to be sleeping.

  Then she discovered a stream by almost falling into it. Where had that come from? It crossed her path in a deep gully, whose sides were muddy and crumbly. She slid and floundered down to the water, and was infuriated to discover that it was flowing from right to left. As far as she could remember, the pilgrim path never crossed a creek, so she must be on the correct side already. She struggled back up again, and set off to follow the gully—it could only flow to the river, and the cliff.

  It certainly did not flow directly to the river. It wound and twisted until she lost all sense of direction and began to think that the sun was setting in the east. Her legs shook with weariness; her hip ached fiercely. Soon she was tempted to turn back and forget stupid T’lin Dragontrader and his idiotic interest in ruins. Trouble was, she would have to follow the stream all the way.

  In the distance, someone began whistling a solemn refrain. She halted and listened. It was not a tune she knew. It stopped suddenly. She started to move again, heading in that direction. Soon she saw steps rising out of the undergrowth, the edge of the plinth. Directly above her stood a stub of stone pillar as thick as a man’s outstretched arms and furred with dense ivy.

  She heard a murmur of someone speaking.

  Step by step she approached. When she reached the base of the mossy, crumbling stair, the voice was clearer, and apparently coming from just behind that same pillar. Barefoot again, she tiptoed up until she stood beside its ivy-coated bulk, and then she could make out the words.

  “…the boy to bring her to my camp. I went and told my men to expect them. Then I went back into town and reported to Narsh Prime.”

  T’lin himself!

  That was better. Eleal eased around the curve of the stone like growing moss.

  A man chuckled. “And what did he make of all that?”

  A Thargian! He was speaking Joalian, but the guttural accent was unmistakable.

  T’lin again: “He thought the Service would be interested.”

  “He was right, of course.”

  T’lin sighed. “Glad to hear that! Well, we thumbed through the Testament—as much as we had time for—and found her name, as she had said. Funny, that! I’ve known the brat for years and never guessed she was anyone of consequence. She’s an incredible little busybody. I always thought she might make a good recruit when she’s older.”

  “Sounds like she might.”

  “Well, Prime agreed I ought to bring her if I could. When I got back to my camp, I found the kids had arrived safely—much to my surprise. So I loaded them up on mounts. What I hadn’t realized was that the old nun was skulking in the herd. I geared up my own dragon and turned my back for a moment. Before I knew it, she’d scrambled into the saddle and taken off.” He paused, then added diffidently, “In the end I had to bring her also.”

  The other man chuckled. He sounded quite young. Peering with one eye around the pillar, Eleal made him out. He was seated on a fallen block of stone, his back to her. T’lin must be at his side. They were facing into the empty paved space within the Sacrarium.

  “I’m not surprised! The Filoby Testament has turned out to be astonishingly accurate. It said the girl would come with a blue nun, so she came with a blue nun. Only a miracle could have prevented it.”

  “It’s a miracle I didn’t strangle the old witch!”

  The Thargian chortled loudly, as if that were a good joke. “Violence is not advisable with her kind!”

  Eleal eased herself a few more inches around the ivy so she could watch with both eyes. The two men were sitting in shade, and had removed their hats. The Thargian was as tall as T’lin, but he was leaning back on his arms, and they were sinewy, youthful arms, well burned by the sun. He was a much younger man. His hair was black and when he turned his head she saw that he was clean-shaven.

  He wore a small gold circle in his left ear!

  “She’s back at the hostelry now, sir,” T’lin said. “So what do I do with her?”

  Sir? T’lin Dragontrader addressed this stripling as Sir?

  “Good question!” The Thargian straightened up and ran his fingers through his hair. “What do you get when you cross a wallaby and a jaguar?”

  T’lin said, “Huh? Oh! ’Fraid I don’t know, sir.”

  “That’s all right. Just means there are some things I’m not supposed to tell you. Don’t feel slighted, now! I’m sure you have secrets in the political branch that I don’t know. This is a religious matter, that’s all.”

  T’lin uttered his familiar snort. “I had gathered that! Subversion and infiltration I can understand. I’m totally out of my depth with something like this.”

  “You’re not the only one, believe me! How much have you put together?”

  “Very little. There’s supposed to be some child born in Sussland during the festival. The girl delivers it. The Karzon and Eltiana faction is trying to prevent this. Tion and Astina seem to be in favor. I gather the Service is in favor also?”

  The younger man grunted. “We are. Zath and Ois are opposed, certainly. Karzon and Eltiana, probably. But don’t ever trust Tion! He plays his own dirty games.”

  Eleal gasped. Blasphemy!

  “Tion sent the boy to rescue the girl,” T’lin demurred.

  “Kirb’l did, you mean! I shudder to think what his reasons may be. Kirb’l is an outright maniac. Astina herself is staying out of things at the moment.”

  “That was her grove got burned this morning.”

  The Thargian sighed. “No! That was Iilah’s grove. Iilah is more or less on our side—or she was. She may be dead now. Listen, I’ll tell you some things I’m not supposed to, so be discreet, all right? The priests’ theology is totally muddled, understandably. Their idea of five great gods, the Pentatheon, is a useful simplification, but it has definite limits. Yes, the five are all very powerful—Visek, Karzon, Eltiana, Astina, Tion. But some of the others carry a lot more weight than you’d expect, and their loyalties are not always what you’d expect either. All the aspect-avatar business is stable washings. Iilah is not Astina; Kirb’l is not Tion; Garward is not Karzon! Ois is not Eltiana, either. She’s an utter bitch, that one, with her ritual prostitution—and immensely powerful because of it, of course. She probably can cause avalanches as she claims. For all his patronage of art and sport, Tion is just about as depraved as she is.”

  This was foul, foul heresy! Why was T’lin Dragontrader listening to such blasphemy?

  “Fortunately,” the stranger added, “they don’t all support the Chamber. There’s some decent types, and a lot of fence-sitters.”

  After a moment, T’lin laughed ruefully. “And I thought politics was complicated! Thargdom’s going to annex Narshia, you know. Any day now.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” the Thargian said. “And the Joalians won’t stand for it. Idiots! But that doesn’t matter much compared to this. Wars come and wars go. The Liberator may turn out to be far more important than
any war. You arrived in Sussland after dawn?”

  “Well after. After noon.”

  “Ah! Garward’s mob sacked the Filoby grove before that. So he didn’t succeed.”

  Silence followed. Eleal resisted a temptation to scream. She was relieved when T’lin said, “Succeed in what?”

  There was another pause then. The Thargian bent over and produced a bottle from near his feet. He drank and passed it to T’lin. “I’ll have to explain a few things. First of all, the birth thing is a misinterpretation. We’re not expecting a baby. This Liberator the Testament mentions will be a grown man.”

  T’lin chuckled. “My young friend will be relieved. She did not enjoy hearing she was going to be a midwife.”

  “Don’t tell her any of this!” the Thargian said sharply.

  “Of course not, sir. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Right. She has to act on her own volition. If she knows what’s expected of her, she may do the wrong thing altogether. Not that I know what is expected of her either, so it probably doesn’t matter, but we mustn’t risk upsetting the prophecies now. The Chamber’s been trying to do that for years, and whatever they want we don’t want, if you follow me.” He paused again. “That’s why Garward sacked Iilah’s grove this morning—he wanted to break the chain of prophecy. I think he just strengthened it. He’s a headstrong bully and none too bright.”

  This was a god he was insulting!

  “Nevertheless,” the blasphemer continued, “the Chamber has much greater resources in this than the Service does, Seventy-seven. Zath is deeply involved, for one.”

  “Death!”

  “The person who claims to be Death. The Liberator sounds like a personal threat to him.”

  “He’s got a couple of his reapers here, apparently.”

  “More than just a couple. We’re pretty sure he’s done a foreseeing of his own—he’s plenty strong enough to risk it. He probably knows exactly where the Liberator is going to arrive, and we don’t.” The young man laughed ruefully. “At least we didn’t until you came. I thought I had an easy watch here, and now you’ve thrown me right in the thick of things.”

  “Bringing the girl, you mean?”

  The Thargian made an affirmative sound as he tipped the bottle again.

  “I should have left her at some handy farmhouse and come on alone!” T’lin said, sounding annoyed. The other passed him the bottle. “Maybe. Maybe that would have fouled up everything—who knows? Why did Narsh Prime send you here, to Ruatvil?”

  T’lin wiped his lips. “Didn’t. He suggested I go to Filoby and report to Thirty-nine. He mentioned this place as a backup. Said there was sure to be someone from religious branch here.”

  He tried to pass back the bottle and the Thargian said, “Finish it. See, as far as we know, there’s only six places in Sussland where the Liberator can realistically be expected to appear. Tion’s temple is one, the Thogwalby monastery’s another. If he picks either of those, the Chamber’s got him and he’s dead meat. We were banking on Iilah’s grove at Filoby, because she’d have sheltered him. Probably she would. Garward’s taken care of that possibility! You can bet your favorite organ that he’s left some henchmen there to look after matters if the Liberator does arrive. There’s a roadside campground just outside Filoby that has loads of virtuality…”

  “Loads of what?”

  “Forget that. I just mean it’s another possible choice. That leaves this place, the Sacrarium, and another node…place, I mean…up in the hills near Jogby. That was our second choice, after Filoby, because it’s unoccupied.”

  “You’ve lost me, sir.”

  “Nothing there, I mean. No temple or shrine. Too obvious, perhaps? Well, never mind. Question is what to do now. The festival starts tonight.”

  He thought for a moment. “First, you’ve got to dump the boy. If he really is a Tion Cultist, then Kirb’l may have marked him in some way. So give him some money and send him off to the festival. That’s easiest. After that, he can fend for himself. He’ll never be any good to us. There’s still a couple of hours of light. Take your dragons over to Filoby and see if you can help ferry survivors to Rotby. Go back and forth several times. You’ve drawn attention to this place with the dragons, so you’ll have to try and muddy the waters.”

  T’lin seemed to swell. “They’re tired, sir!”

  “Kill ’em if you have to and put it on your expense account!”

  The dragon trader subsided again. “Yes, sir.”

  “Sorry, but the stakes in this are higher than you can imagine. Leave the girl at the hostelry.”

  “I’d best keep her away from this place, you think, sir?”

  The young man laughed. “You can try, but I’ll put my bets on the prophecy.”

  Eleal liked him a little better for that remark. She was fighting an urge to walk out and ask T’lin if he’d had any trouble finding the Sacrarium, just so she could see his face.

  The Thargian stretched his ropy arms and yawned. “We’ve got a courier coming round tomorrow on a fast moa, so I’ll pass word to the others and hope they can spare me some reinforcements. It’s not likely. Got all that?”

  And again the strangely humble T’lin said, “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s a pity the Chamber identified the mysterious Eleal before we did, but perhaps our turn is coming. I suppose there couldn’t be two Eleals, could there? She sounds too young.”

  “She’s twelve, I’m sure.”

  “Mmph! Mostly she just appears in the bit that sounds like delivering a baby, but another passage says she will be the first temptation. Little hard to relate temptation to a twelve-year-old, isn’t it?”

  T’lin uttered a dragon snort. “There’s many a time I’ve been tempted to thump her ear, sir!”

  I will get even with you for that remark, Dragontrader!

  The Thargian chuckled. “How about cavemen, then? You haven’t run into any cavemen in your adventures, have you?”

  “Cavemen, sir?”

  “One of my favorite verses: Many mighty shall go humbly, even as Eleal took him to the caveman for succor, then they are going mightily again. That’s about average for clarity.”

  “It doesn’t mention the Liberator.”

  “No, it may have nothing to do with him at all. Or it may refer to events years from now, because there’s lots of unrelated stuff about him: The-Liberator-comes-into-Joal-crying-Repent! sort of thing. But Eleal is only mentioned four times and that sounds like she is still helping the Liberator, so it may be relevant to what’s about to happen this fortnight. Just wondered.”

  “No cavemen,” T’lin growled. “I wouldn’t like anything to happen to the kid, sir.”

  “Nor I,” the Thargian said, rising. He was very tall and skinny. “But you could put the whole Joalian army around her and it couldn’t protect her from the Chamber. Until the Liberator himself arrives, she’s the obvious weak link in the chain. If Zath’s reapers find her, she’s dead. Nobody in the world could do anything for her then.”

  T’lin rose also. “The saints, sir?”

  The younger man cleared his throat harshly. “Ah, yes. Well, of course we must pray to the saints to intercede with the Undivided. Come over to the tent and…”

  The two men strolled away across the bare stone floor of the ruined temple. Eleal heard no more.

  41

  ELEAL STUMBLED DOWN THE STEPS AND PUSHED OFF INTO the bush.

  The enormity of what she had overheard stunned her. She had trusted T’lin Dragontrader! Gim was only a boy, Sister Ahn a senile maniac, but she had thought that T’lin was a strong man and reliable and a friend. Now she knew that he bore no loyalty to her at all, except some vague idea of one day enlisting her to work for his diabolical “Service,” whatever that was. Her last protector had failed her.

  T’lin had taken orders from the Thar
gian. He had not spoken out against the blasphemy. He was probably a Thargian spy himself! Eleal had never pondered her own political convictions very deeply. Had she been forced to declare her loyalties, she would probably have claimed to be a Jurgian, because she spent more time in Jurg than anywhere else and she liked the king, who clapped when she sang for him. She approved of the Joalians’ artistic principles and the concept of Joaldom, which gave peace to the lands she knew, and she had always heard bad things about the Thargians and their harsh military ways. Spying for them seemed like betrayal.

  Her religious loyalties were in no doubt at all. Tion was lord of art and beauty. Ember’l, the goddess of drama, was an avatar of Tion. So was Yaela, the goddess of singing.

  The Thargian had done one good thing, though—he had unwittingly told Eleal a lot about the Filoby Testament. She would not be required to deliver any messy baby. A grown man was going to arrive—young and handsome, undoubtedly—either here or somewhere…how? Nobody had said how he would arrive, she decided. And when the Liberator arrived, Eleal Singer was going to help him. Wash him and clothe him, T’lin had said that morning. She could do with a good wash again herself, to get rid of all the mud and perspiration. The flies had reappeared. Her smock was ripped and filthy. Her legs were so weary they would hardly hold her up.

  She staggered and lurched through the thickets, stumbling over hidden blocks of stone. If she kept the sun on her right, she would come to the city.

  What she would do when she arrived was another problem altogether. To return to the hostelry would be to put herself back in the hands of the despicable dragon trader and his Thargian overlord, but she had no money and no other friends. Gim would jump at the chance of going to the festival and would probably be gone before she returned anyway.