Some, such as the sons of Bes Orbes, expressed sympathy with the Damons for their plight - though no noble expected to ever see Dohan again. Being out of the city-states and out of his father's favor, Dohan's official status was "presumed dead."
During the remains of that day, the guilds and noble families held secret meetings in the cities - trying to sort out what was afoot, and how to respond to it. Most city lords agreed to declare a formal ban on radio receivers as soon as possible - it took only instinct for a feudal lord to see the danger in unchecked free speech.
Starting with the Doctors' Guild of Damon City, the physicians took the most immediate openly negative stance: they claimed the leaflets to be a plot orchestrated by Lepers, to infiltrate the city-states of Castilia. Conspiracy rumors spread like wildfire.
The guilds of the merchant class, at least initially, played it carefully. They took an official stand against the use of radio, since it threatened stability.
Yet many of them secretly admired Darc and his defiance against the might of the nobility - and the boldest of them started gathering contacts and resources to follow the leaflet instructions.
The guilds of the mechanics held large official meetings that same evening, because they needed to demonstrate their strength and loyalty - their greatest fear was to be thrown under the direct control of the city lords and their court.
It was the mechanics' meeting in Damon City that revealed the most open frustration with the ruling warrior class. A minority of mechanics said out loud that they ought to be the rightful rulers of the cities, since it was they who kept it running. This minority was quickly silenced and thrown out.
An official statement from the guilds was voted through and delivered to Lord Damon the next day: The city's guilds assured their continued allegiance to the ruling lord, and to the safety of the city above all.
Bor Damon seemed content with this. A clash for power between the guilds and the warrior caste had been averted, for the time being.
Other cities were less fortunate. In Pasko City, Sir Tharlos sent his troops searching through the entire metropolis, and burned every leaflet they found.
Leading guild members who were not enlisted in Tharlos's death-cult - a handful of brave men - were arrested and tortured. During the days to come, they would die in the depths of the castle dungeons, without confessing any clues to secret intentions.
Still Tharlos did not feel safe. The nemesis of his nightmares was back for certain, now in a form that could penetrate walls. So the acting city leader went to extremes that shocked even his peers.
All equipment and property of the mechanics - workshops, foundries, tools, funds, spare parts, supplies, libraries - were forcibly appropriated and put under guard.
Tharlos also ordered all nobles and wealthy citizens to deposit their electronic jewels, trinkets, and mobile appliances in the city armory. This absurd order caused outrage and open complaints among the citizenry, even in the face of the armed militia.
The public image of Tharlos began to waver, from brave warrior to usurping, greedy tyrant.
High-priestess Inu of Damon City did not care to meet with the other high-priestesses of Castilia - each city had its own religious leader, and they naturally disliked each other's pretensions to divine grace.
Instead, she gathered her twenty-odd novices and priestesses in secret, in the city cathedral. Incense was burned and inhaled; smoke sipped into Inu's nostrils like the fingers of spirits. She started to rock back and forth, her eyes gazing blindly into the smoke.
And when Inu had put herself into a trance, the Goddess spoke through her in distant, throaty words: "Wait and listen. The King is yet with us. Wait and listen."
That was all. The other priestesses were confused. When the people of Damon City - and Librian, acting as Lord Damon's secret ambassador to the church - asked for the church's opinion of the state of things, Inu's statement was repeated.
This annoyed Bor; to challenge the ever-popular church, however, was out of the question. His estranged wife annoyed him even more, by making private visits to the cathedral - which she did the day after the re-appearance of the Sunray.
Inu could turn away even a noblewoman at a whim - she was a sacred person, until she resigned at the age of fifty - but she ordered the city lord's wife to be let inside.
Osanna Damon was received into a small study where she found Inu sitting, dressed in a white robe. She kneeled and bowed before the high-priestess, and kissed her cloth. Inu blessed her and asked her to sit on a lower, opposing chair.
The formalities done away with, Lady Osanna spoke: "There are too many ears in the castle, Your Holiness. I am grateful for the sanctity of the Church, where we can speak freely."
High-priestess Inu gave her a slight smile, and the dreamy gaze of a woman not quite in the same sphere of consciousness as other citizens.
"Everywhere," she said, "the Goddess is with us. She is our eyes and ears."
Osanna blinked uncertainly at the light-blond woman, who seemed so serene when she herself was a bundle of nerves. It took the power of a goddess to stay confident in such times, she thought.
"Your Holiness, I wish to confess how worried I am for my son Dohan's safety. He is a close friend of the Incarnation... of Sir Darc, as you know."
Inu nodded her consent and knowledge. "Yes, your son has a special destiny. Your lord has, too; your whole family has. The visions are clear in this matter."
Lady Osanna eagerly leaned forward, and said: "Lord Fache's wife had a vision of -"
She stopped. Inu's perfect face hardened somewhat. Osanna understood that the human part of Inu's soul, her personal vanity and pride, had been hurt by that remark. Osanna looked down. Inu smiled a little wider this time, a little colder.
"Yes, I have heard so too. I admit she may have the gift, though she is dark-skinned and cannot be fully possessed by the All-Mother."
Neither of these women questioned the Central Dogma of the church, that the Goddess only took hold in the bodies of women who resembled her first incarnation. Only pale-skinned, fair-haired women could apply for priesthood. The dogma, though unfair, had remained unchanged since before the Great Wars.
"Will my son be safe?" Osanna asked, her voice on the verge of breaking.
Inu sat breathing for a long moment, drifting in and out of the state of meditation like she sometimes did; she had the gift.
And after a time, the high-priestess responded: "Unless he strays from his destiny, Sir Dohan shall return safely to his family. That much is clear. In the meantime, be strong and do your best to help your family through the trials that lie ahead of us. Remember, the city lord is also under the blessing of the reincarnated King - even if he does not see it himself. I can say no more."
Lady Osanna thanked the high-priestess, and the audience was finished. It was a relieved, but puzzled noblewoman who left the cathedral that day.
CHAPTER 43
Late at night, in the month of Septam , Darc's first radio transmission began.
He and Mechao had prepared the ground by sending out a beacon signal - a recurring beep, nothing more - so that any listeners could find the right frequency in advance.
Darc had asked Shara earlier, if the city-dwellers were able to record radio messages. The idea had not occurred to her. Except for laser, most of the letters were sent in written form inside the cities. The available technology for storing electronic information was rare and crude, unavailable to all but a tiny minority.
So even though the coming broadcasts could be transcribed or spread by word of mouth, Darc's safest bet was to repeat each broadcast several times.
And so, without knowing the size of his potential audience, Darc sat in the soundstage in Mechao's workshop that night. A set of clunky microphones, earphones, and switches hung down on him from cables above. Nearby, Mechao and his assistants worked the power-control board and made constant checks of the oversized, humming machinery.
Mechao gave the cue to b
egin - Darc took a deep breath - it was, ironically, his first radio appearance ever. The instant before he began to speak, his friends waved at him from behind the stage perimeter. He grinned back at them and his tense gut softened up, just enough for him to be able to speak into the microphone.
"Hello... I will now make a voice test... one, two, three. "
Mechao nodded excitedly; the broadcast was working!
"This is the voice of Darc. This is the voice of liberty ," Darc said into the microphone.
He had written down a few notes in advance, but as always he went mostly on gut feeling. He chose a tone to fit the archaic age; this was not the 20th century.
"I speak to you from a secret place, though I wish everyone could hear. This is the voice of liberty. In these times, liberty is not defended in the world. People live in fear, and they cannot choose their leaders. Many are poor, and food is scarce. The lands are not safe. I have come from another time, through a long sleep, and I have spent a great deal of time discovering the world again, and I have found out why things are this way.
"A great secret dwells out there, in the Wastelands. I can reveal the secret of the Wastelands to you - because I have been there and lived to tell it. I address everyone: commoners, lords, even those called witchdoctors, even the people of the Wastelands, if you can hear me. I shall tell you all the secret of the Wastelands.
" 'What secret?' I think I hear you say. I think I hear you say: 'There is no secret in the Wastelands, nothing but wilderness and Plague and ruins and Lepers.' Wrong. The world, our world, is out there! It should belong to all of us - the people in the cities, outside the cities, every one of us. Our ancestors took the world away from us, their descendants. It was our ancestors who started the Great Wars; they created the Plagues; they built the prisons we came to call 'cities' ."
Darc took a pause for breath. His heart was beating hard and fast, and already he was dripping with sweat. But he went on, slowly, so as not to mispronounce his words.
"This is the secret, I say: The world that our ancestors took away and hid from our sight. As long as humans hide in cities, or huddle in caves in the Wastelands, we shall never become truly human again.
"We will starve and wither away - until one day, when the entire planet is again under some great threat that only the united strength of all peoples could defeat - then we will be defenseless, because we are scattered and divided. In order for us to become truly free, truly safe, truly human again, there is something I would ask you to do. One single thing ..."
Darc dwelled on the last syllables, drew out the tension, and said: "I ask you to open the cities.
"Yes, I know how frightening this may sound. But imagine, just for a moment, that you could. Imagine a world with open cities. People could come and go as they liked, travel freely, see the wonders of the world with their own eyes. Travel would no longer be the privilege of the few rich, who can afford to fly. Boats could go everywhere, up rivers, across the oceans. Men could travel to other planets again, like in the Golden Age.
"And yet, one thing stops us from opening the cities to the world. What is it? There are many words for it. The Unclean Touch. The Plague. Pseudo-Leprosy , as Al-Masur names it.
"But I say to you: Those are false names. What is the Plague, after all? A divine punishment? A law of nature? No! It was created by humans , and humans should be able to undo it. But fear and ignorance has kept the Plague alive for centuries.
"Therefore I say to you: the real enemy that stops us from opening the world, is fear and ignorance . Thus I have chosen to fight fear and ignorance. This is the purpose of my message, and there shall be more messages soon. If you listen, and learn, you shall know the ways of liberty again.
"This is the voice of Darc. This is the voice of liberty."
Darc gestured to Mechao, who switched over to the beacon.
Darc wiped his sweaty brow. His audience was stunned for a full ten seconds - then Mechao's family, Dohan, and Shara began to applaud him. Even Eye-Leg was able to listen, seated on her special chair in the background. She made a gurgling-clicking sound and smiled. Shara hurried over to Darc and hugged him.
"That was fantastic," she said. "How many people do you think heard it?"
"Don't know," Darc said with a shrug. "Ten, a thousand, a million... Damn! I didn't say enough." He added: "Besides, it was a gloomy, sad speech... I should have sounded uplifting instead."
Shara grabbed his shoulders. "Couldn't you sing? " she asked. "I heard you sing the ancient songs of the King, for the Lepers! You... and Pop Shah. Together."
Darc blinked at her, and scratched his head. "Sing to, what, thousands or millions of listeners? I'm no real singer! They'd think I'm crazy, a foolish minstrel!"
"Are you afraid?"
"No! It's just that... I want to use the radio broadcasts for serious matters, not just... entertainment."
Shara almost smiled in her astonishment. Waving her arms, she exclaimed: "You just don't know, do you? Why do you think people look at you that way when you sing? There's power in that music! The redeeming power of the Sacred Song, the call for heavenly reunion with the All-Mother!"
It constantly baffled Darc how religion pervaded the thoughts of those around him. "I didn't expect you, a believer in Kristos, to say that."
"I don't give a damn about what I believe now! Ordinary people wouldn't dream of singing those songs outside of a church! But you can! You're not afraid of breaking the rules."
In a matter of minutes, Darc saw the reason of Shara's idea. He chuckled. Why, it would be just like those amateur gigs back in his youth!
"Call for Pop Shah," he said. "Pop'll get a brand new bag!"
CHAPTER 44
Awonso failed to complete his radio receiver in time to tune in to Darc's very first broadcast. All he managed to take in were atmospheric buzz, and a faint recurring beep.
This did not discourage him. Educated as he was, he knew the electromagnetic field from his receiver could be traced. And yet he kept using it night after night, searching for the next broadcast.
"This is the voice of Darc . This is The Voice of Liberty ..."
Darc gestured to Pop Shah and his group of musicians, who were only too eager to start playing. When Darc continued, his accent changed into the essence of cocky, masculine energy.
He shouted: "And the music of liberty is called ROCK'N ROLL!"
On his cue, the band started to play; the drummer struck up a beat; Pop Shah played a raw, rhythmic bass. Darc stood up from his seat, grabbed the microphone which hung down from the ceiling, and sang. He had chosen "King Creole", the one song he could recall perfectly. Dohan, Meijji, and the others attended the broadcast from outside the soundstage.
Dohan recognized the music instantly, if not the words, and whispered: "He's doing it again!"
Meijji hushed him down - she was spellbound by the performance. A just-completed, crude electric guitar made its first star appearance in Darc's band, played by Pop Shah who had never handled anything electric in his life.
The guitar crackled and growled in his wrinkled hands, making wonderful noise. The music had touches of calypso and Awrican work songs in it - and just the right flavor of danger.
Darc thought his performance sounded insane, an enchanting madness that he could not help but enjoy. The studio audience and the musicians thought they witnessed a strange transformation: Darc seemed to become the "king" of the song they barely understood.
Dohan remembered Lord Azuch Fache's words again: Guard him with your life.
Shara noticed, to her immense joy, that Eye-Leg moved her misplaced head to the rhythm of Darc's music.
The musical number lasted only four minutes. When they had finished, the band members were exhausted; a servant wiped Pop Shah's perspiring face. In the speech that followed, Darc repeated most of the first broadcast - only with greater assurance.
His friends heard him through, just to experience the power of his voice again.
This ti
me, Awonso had his radio receiver working and ready. Hidden in a closet with a set of heavy hand-crafted earphones on his head, he tuned in to the right frequency. And he got to hear Darc's every word, coming strong through waves of static.
But it was the music of "King Creole" that would stay alive in Awonso's memory for the rest of his life. How feeble, how emasculated Rokenrol had sounded in the hands of lowly musicians and church choirs, compared to this! Awonso felt energized by the unfiltered, electrically enhanced force of Darc's performance.
Without that energy, this mild-mannered bookworm would have shrunk before the challenges to come.
The morning after the broadcast, Awonso was attending Mass in church - half asleep as usual - when a female novice stuck a note into his prayer-book.
He hid the note and read it afterward. It requested - or demanded, the interpretation depending on one's loyalty to the Church - a meeting with high-priestess Inu in the evening. Alone.
His first reaction was that someone was playing a joke on him. Rumor had it, only a select minority of influential - or exceptionally handsome - male citizens received such invitations. Why him? He was a clumsy, awkward youngster with acne, and knew it perfectly well.
As he read the note over and over, the round-faced Awonso's hands began to sweat, and his mouth felt dry. The evening was all too far away yet.
Reluctantly, Awonso entered the cathedral, and was led into the inner sanctum by two beautiful novices in white robes; their yellow-dyed hair gleamed like gold in the candlelights. Finding himself in a smaller lit chamber, he gasped as the novices shut and locked the door behind him. And before him stood Inu.
The high-priestess was every bit as enchanting as Awonso imagined her, only more so this time. The young scholar-to-be had washed himself thoroughly and put on his finest set of clothes, all the time fearing this would reveal his visit to the eyes of the public.
Yngve, AR - Darc Ages Page 30