He had imagined a thousand eyes following him there; now, alone in Inu's candle-lit study, Awonso's mind went blank. Inu smiled to calm him down - or was it to enchant him even further? The Goddess Incarnate could be fickle as well as generous.
"My blessing on you for coming here," she said, and added, "You may kiss the cloth."
Blushing deeply, Awonso kneeled and kissed the hem of her skirt. Like a bumbling fool, he had forgotten the proper procedure. Inu made a small gesture at him to rise up and sit down.
"I have called you here, Awonso, because of my concern for the safety of your soul. And other souls. You are a friend of Darc, are you not?"
Was that an accusation or a compliment in her neutral, throaty voice? Awonso stared at the high-priestess and hesitated, his mouth half-open.
"I... I don't know if I have the right to call myself his friend, Your Holiness... b-but I have certainly spent a long time with him in the castle library, when he learned our language... he told us a great deal of his time and origins."
Inu nodded approvingly, and leaned forward ever so slightly, so that her voluptuous curves thrust out against the silken fabric of her black long-sleeved robe.
"Confess to me, Awonso. What is your opinion of Darc?"
Was that all it was about - an ordinary confession? Awonso's tension receded somewhat. "Darc is... an amazing man, Your Holiness, a miracle worker - forgive me for using that word, but it is the only appropriate term..."
"Yes...?"
"He truly is a time traveler as they say, from the Golden Age. Some things we know are unknown to him, because they happened before his time. But other things he knows better than any other man. His music..."
He ceased talking, when Inu stood up and walked across the small study to the gold-specked altar. She lit two incense candles, and a heavy scent filled the room.
The high-priestess moved behind Awonso's seat; he swallowed, and waited. The incense made his head dizzy and light; despite his nervousness, Awonso felt more talkative.
"The music, yes," she half-whispered behind his back, "that is what you must confess to me about. Tell me about the secret radiowave transmissions that people listen to at night."
Awonso twitched in his seat, afraid to turn around and let Inu see his guilty face. He was forced to answer truthfully, though - this was a confession in church, and the Goddess was listening through the high-priestess. Lying guaranteed damnation.
"I... I have sinned, Your Holiness. I have listened to the radio transmissions in secret. Forgive me! "
Awonso gasped at a sudden prickling sensation. It was Inu, touching his shoulder with her warm, soft palms - holding them there, letting them radiate heat through his body. A large bead of sweat trickled down his cheek and landed on Inu's right hand.
"You are forgiven," she whispered. "It may be against the will of the city lord, but he cannot command Monro Our Goddess. On the contrary... she wishes to spread the voice of the Singing King . There is one thing, Awonso, that I must ask of you."
So close her mouth was now, so close to his ear. Awonso could sense her radiant presence - or maybe it was just her breath on his neck. He dared neither move nor speak, but wished she would never stop.
"Get me one," she hissed. "Get me one of those radio devices, so that I can hear him. No one must know. No one but you and I."
At that moment, Awonso would have obeyed practically any wish from her. But from somewhere, he got the courage to utter an objection.
"Bring a machine in here? Into the sacred cathedral, against the law? I'll take a great risk -"
Inu's arms enfolded Awonso; his eyesight drowned in her golden tresses. She whispered, and her generous lips brushed against his earlobe: "You shall be greatly rewarded."
Hours later, a very drowsy Awonso sneaked back into his family house. His mother was waiting behind the door, with a candle-lamp in one hand and a big stick in the other. Awonso's father was not around.
"Well?" she asked in her usual stern tone. "Where have you been all night? And if you lie to me, boy, you will sorely regret it -"
"Shut up!" he snapped, slurring a little. The harsh woman stared at her young son, stunned by his sudden new courage. "Not under any circumstances can I tell you where I've been, and you must tell no one I was away. Swear! Tell no one! The peace of the city depends on our silence."
"But..."
"Swear it!"
She gave him a promise. Awonso sighed in relief and stumbled to his bed alcove. He sent a silent prayer of gratitude to the higher power that had helped him earn his manhood.
"Bless the power of Rokenrol," he mumbled and fell asleep.
Chapter 45
By the time of Darc's third broadcast in as many weeks, several secret radio receivers were active throughout the city-states of Castilia. Most of the receivers were smuggled from hideout to hideout.
Increasingly desperate city lords offered huge rewards to those who would betray the illicit radio listeners - but the response proved poor.
More and more of the citizens who gathered to listen were also members of the ruling families. Darc's new music made them dance like commoners, and his words made them think new thoughts.
A sense of apprehension was in the air at every such secret gathering, a sense of floodgates about to open, every time a radio receiver tuned in to the Voice of Liberty.
One of those illegal devices now also belonged to Sir Tharlos Pasko, who had installed it at the top of the main castle tower. He listened to Darc's speeches and music in tense silence. In fact this radio set, confiscated from an executed court mechanic, was the only one remaining in Pasko City. And Tharlos allowed no one to hear Darc but Tharlos himself.
When the third broadcast was over, the yellow-haired usurper sat quiet for a long time, trying to conjure up in his mind a defense against this new threat. He came up with nothing.
Obviously to Tharlos, Darc's words were the antithesis of his own beliefs and practices. Yes, Tharlos also used music to get the attention of his own followers - but within an exclusive group, among the select worshippers of Koban-Jem.
The very idea of letting the common ear hear a sacred song in a dead language, and in public, struck the young aristocrat as disgusting. And there was another great difference. Koban-Jem's hymns were monotonous, wailing, desperate, dissonant, dependant on non-mechanical music and choirs.
Darc, on the other hand, sang cheerfully even when the song was about pain and sorrow - he was profane precisely where Tharlos would have been somber.
But worst of all for Tharlos was to hear Darc's promises of liberty, his suggestions that the Plague could be cured, and that the fear of Lepers and the Wasteland might be defeated. And that eventually, the people might not depend on the rule of the nobles and their knights.
And Darc kept urging for yet more profound changes in people's beliefs and thoughts. Tharlos's entire existence was being challenged.
"No one must hear this," he muttered to himself. "The church must banish him, call him a blasphemer. I will see to that.
"Liberty!" Tharlos spat. "I'll teach him a thing or two about liberty, I will." Tharlos nodded repeatedly to himself. "I have the liberty to seek out and crush Darc and his witchdoctor friends. As long as I live, there shall be no cures except the cleansing fire! My liberty. I can use you, Darc. I will use you to unite the nobility - under me! "
Like a madman, Tharlos said this to his reflection in the mirror. And like a madman, he thought he saw his mirror image laugh at his speech. A part of Tharlos, the sane part, knew that he was a doomed man.
But that part was shrinking, as the inner void ate away at his mind.
The Kap Verita archipelago, this late in the year, was a place of constant activity. The terraced fields were being seeded with next year's crops, and the people were arming themselves.
Every islander was aware by now, that Darc's radio broadcasts would awaken the wrath of the outside world. Only the fear of the Plague secured them against retaliation -
but it was precisely that fear Darc was attacking.
The ultimate cure against the second Plague virus seemed yet out of reach, when Darc visited Mechao and sons in the genetics laboratory one windy day. Mechao's first response, when he heard Darc enter, sounded evasive.
"Can you feel the tension, Darc?" he asked without looking up from his microscope.
"What tension, my friend?"
"The pressure building up below our feet. Fogo has been silent for too long. There will be a new earthquake..."
Darc said: "The equipment, the laboratory, the radio transmitter - we cannot afford to lose them now."
Still preoccupied by the sight in the microscope, Mechao scribbled down a few notes and said: "The mansion survived the last earthquake intact - a chunk of the front wall crashed down the rock face, but this part is built into solid volcanic rock. I think it shall hold."
"Great." Darc paused. "Now, how is Eye-Leg doing?"
Mechao finally looked up at Darc - one short white-haired scientist with Asian features facing a tall white-hared one with European features.
He gave Darc a strange smile, and replied: "She is feeling a little better, but her condition is still on the decline. I regret to say this, but she won't last until the end of next year. Have you told Shara this?"
"How could I? And she knows, she feels it."
Darc turned his attention to the large artificial womb standing on the floor behind Mechao's back. It vaguely resembled an archaic steam engine, with a central cistern connected to a control panel by way of tubes and pipes.
The whole contraption stood sealed off inside a glass-panel cube, not unlike a greenhouse from Darc's own time. A greenhouse to grow bodies, he mused.
"Is the clone going to be finished soon?"
Too uneasy to speak about the subject, Mechao stood up and walked across to the womb cube. He wiped some vapor from a glass pane and pointed at a porthole window in the central cistern.
A red light emanated from the porthole, but it was hard to make out any details inside. Mechao dashed to the control panel and turned up the lighting inside.
Now Darc could see the shape growing inside the cistern. It was a distinctly female body floating in artificial amniotic fluid; seemingly very young, but just into puberty. Since the splitting of its first cell into an artificial embryo, the body had successfully lived and grown for only a few months.
Its head was out of sight, but Darc had no desire to see the head. He knew that it had always been empty, the clone kept alive by machines until Eye-Leg's head could be grafted onto it.
After a time, Darc noticed... something vaguely recognizable about the clone. He had to ask Mechao, who was just taking a drink from a bottle.
"Mechao... our plan was to make this clone from Eye-Leg's own cells... but with some crucial parts of their genes replaced, to keep Virus B from distorting the growth of the clone."
Mechao avoided Darc's eyes and was quiet.
"But..." Darc peered in at the porthole again. Something was drifting down from the clone's obscured head, something black and stripy... "The clone, as it looks now, seems very... different to me. The replacement genes... where did you get them?"
Mechao rubbed his balding head and tugged at his stripy white beard. He was struggling with his conscience.
"You may not want to hear this, Darc." Darc took a sudden stride toward his colleague, filled with inexplicable anger. Mechao turned and faced him, wringing his hands.
Then he spoke, and his old eyes turned moist: "Even my own people fear me as much as they love me. Our knowledge inspires awe and superstition among those who don't understand it. The city-dwellers wish my knowledge to be buried and destroyed. My own father told us how his ancestors escaped from the walled cities to places like this island. Even my own family... I know what fear is, what it does to people."
Darc couldn't recognize his friend any longer. Was this the same man who fearlessly toiled, laughing in the face of hardships? Mechao had obviously been affected by recent events. And Darc had failed to see it until now.
"Where does the clone come from?" he asked firmly.
Mechao sighed, and told him with a plain face: "A few days before you sailed away to Dakchaor, I found that our first plan would not work. I could not risk contaminating the artificial womb with Eye-Leg's damaged genes - the Plague virus might mutate inside, then multiply and spread into my laboratory.
"So I had to use a healthy woman's cells to grow this clone. The women on Kap Verita refused to donate any cells of their own - you can understand that, no? In the end, only one woman volunteered. It is the offspring of her cells that is growing in there now. She wanted it to carry Eye-Leg's head."
Darc looked at the porthole again, and he saw. Raven black hair drifting down from the clone's empty, eyeless head.
It was a younger copy of Shara's body.
An acrid taste in his throat overcame him, and he was assaulted by intense nausea. Darc rushed over to Mecaho's chair and fought down the vomit reflex. He drank a few gulps, and settled down - pale, but in control of himself.
When he could speak, it was in a hoarse voice: "Why didn't you tell me?" A part of him felt betrayed by Shara, by Mechao.
"She and I both agreed this was the best way. I grew up on an island run by women, Darc; I understand them better than you do. You chose to love a very strong and bright female, and you ought to respect her personal judgment. Don't rush ahead and accuse her of anything, no?"
Mechao put his hand on Darc's shoulder. Darc nodded repeatedly in a silent Yes, yes, I know. He waited for his hurt pride to cool off, before he said anything. It took half an hour.
"All right," Darc finally admitted. "Shara loves the poor girl. Of course she has the right to donate her cells. I would never have tried to stop her, if she had asked me first. I swear."
"Of course you wouldn't," Mechao said ironically. He returned to his work, and gave his taller friend a mocking smile. "You're above such vanity, no?"
Chapter 46
The church of Monro had erected its ancient cathedrals in most city-states - also in Pasko City. The day after Darc's third broadcast, a small platoon of soldiers escorted the city lord Migam and his son Tharlos to the local cathedral.
Their electric carriage clanked to a halt outside the main portal of the building. Two pages rolled out a carpet onto the church steps. The priestesses alerted the high-priestess, a rather aged woman of noble birth named Monrosa Obispo Al-Fache.
Through the complex marriage system of the nobility, Monrosa was distantly related to Lord Azuch of Fache City. Like all other high-priestesses she was blond and beautiful - if not as gifted as Azuch's second-sighted wife. But she was aware that when the Paskos made one of their rare official visits to the Church, trouble was in the air.
Monrosa did not rush to greet her visitors; she sent a number of priestesses to the gates first. Armed soldiers marched up the steps and placed themselves inside the antechamber.
"My lord," a middle-aged priestess objected, "the Church is sacred ground! No arms, no robots, please!"
The bloated Lord Migam Pasko trudged up the steps to the cathedral in a mindless stupor, half supported by his taller son. The priestesses could smell Migam's alcoholic breath, in spite of the heavy perfume he was using to cover it up. He did not seem to hear their objections.
"We wish to see Her Holiness now," Tharlos stated urgently. "The guards are here to protect her from our city's enemies."
Without further explanation, Tharlos guided Migam into the cathedral. It was no less splendid than the one in Damon City, and Tharlos had not sacked the church of its gold and jewels - yet.
The high-priestess was reading a sermon to a group of late churchgoers, when Sir Tharlos rudely interrupted her. He walked past the aisles and up to the big altar where she stood, leaving his swaying father behind.
With only a slight bow of his head, he said: "Your Holiness, I urge you to clear the cathedral of all listeners. The city lord wishes an aud
ience with you, now."
High-priestess Monrosa peered down at the young intruder without making a face. Once she had been receiving Tharlos's father into her private quarters every month - but that was long ago. Monrosa knew Tharlos as the unofficial benefactor of covert cult activities, and the hatred between the two was mutual.
She finished the reading for the handful of churchgoers, blessed them, and asked them to leave. As they hastily exited, the soldiers pushed the heavy doors shut and locked them. Not having moved from her standing position, Monrosa addressed Lord Migam Pasko. He was sitting slumped in a front aisle.
"My dear lord. What an unexpected visit. Have you come for a confession? The Goddess loves and forgives all sinners who sincerely repent."
Migam kept staring forward with unseeing, morose eyes.
Tharlos raised a hand in Monrosa's line of sight, and said gravely: "Your Holiness, we have come to ask that you declare a ban against the unholy radio transmissions from the fiend named Darc."
"What transmissions, Sir Tharlos? The Church does not concern itself with matters mechanical. Our sphere is the realm of feminine virtues."
Tharlos gave Monrosa an impatient glare - that last remark of hers was laden with irony.
"I am sure your congregation knows what I mean. The so-called 'Voice of Liberty' ."
Monrosa raised an eyebrow. Yes, she knew. Like all church people, she was enthralled - not to mention shocked and outraged - by the statements and songs of the man rumored to be the Singing King reborn. Transcripts of his radio broadcasts had recently reached Monrosa through her spies, before the city's last illegal receiver was destroyed.
Unlike high-priestess Inu, however, Monrosa half doubted, half feared Darc. With her higher age, Monrosa felt more comfortable in a stable world, where the King's return was always promised but never realized. Had it not been for his reprehensible cult, the high-priestess might even have agreed with Tharlos to ban Darc.
"The Church cannot make a difference in such earthly matters," she said. "Surely the combined forces of the nobility could deal with a single man without our help?"
Yngve, AR - Darc Ages Page 31