Chapter 19 – A Vote for War
I insisted the meeting be kept small, mostly those who had dwelled in the dream: me, Caleb, and Kara, with Nathaniel too weak to attend. No need to involve others in matters they did not understand. Though the vicar of Bradford knew little of dreamers, I invited him as well. He’d accompanied us on our trek so he could minister to the troops, and now I coveted his counsel for such a difficult decision. This meeting dealt more with the spirit than science.
Before describing the purpose of the gathering, I swore everyone to secrecy.
Kara leaned in with her elbows on the table, made a bridge with her hands and rested her chin upon it. As I described my plan, she hardly blinked.
When I finished, I fixed on her. Of those in the room, only she had the ability to carry out what I proposed.
She straightened, took in a stream of air and let it out. “I’ve brooded on this option for a long time, ever since we shared our memories. I could guess what your vicars would do. Can we match them? Of course. Your craftsmen have most of the skills I need and with mentoring, I could teach them what they lack. But what good to match our enemy? Let me ask the dreamers for more.”
A panic fluttered within me, as I envisioned the horrors Thomas had described from his teaching. “Like the false sun that burned people to ash, or the liquid that melts flesh from bone?”
She shook her head. “No need to go that far.”
As we debated, the vicar of Bradford stood and paced to the cabinet with the image of the sun carved into its front. With his back to us, he seemed to be studying the icon that had once been the cornerstone of his faith.
When Kara finished, his shoulders heaved up and down, and he turned around to face us. “I understand little of such matters, but you speak of the forbidden, actions I’d never before condone. Yet in these past weeks, I’ve witnessed cruelty beyond imagining, atrocities I struggle to accept even now.”
I slipped between him and the sun icon, and let my fingertips trace the symbol of what I’d once called the giver of life. “I invited you to this meeting, not for your knowledge, but for your wisdom about right and wrong. Will asking the dreamers for weapons cause more harm than good? Will this single step send our world sliding back to the darkness?”
He sucked the air between his teeth and shook his head. “I have less wisdom than you presume. We know from both the book of light and the history found in the keep that our ancestors nearly ended our existence. What we’ve witnessed is but a trace of the horrors they committed. Like you, I was taught to beware the stray thought, because once we allow a hint of the darkness to seep into our minds, something wicked in our natures rears up and drives us headlong down that slope. Good folks find ways to justify cruelties they’d never dream of tolerating before... just as we’re doing now.”
Caleb joined us, his broad frame blocking the sun icon from view. “Noble thoughts, but my people suffered the same cataclysm. After we crossed the ocean, fleeing from your temple, we struggled for generations to rebuild our lives, but unlike you, we never abandoned the pursuit of knowledge. Now only that knowledge stands between you and your destruction at the hands of so-called magic stolen from the keep. Tell me, wise elder, if we dismiss Orah’s proposal and choose the way of peace, what do you predict will happen? Will your former colleagues rediscover the light and forgive us all, or will they punish us in ways so harsh they give new meaning to the darkness?”
Though the smaller man, the vicar of Bradford stepped toe to toe with Caleb, so close I imagined the heat passing between their eyes. “My temple offers a broad canopy, which encompasses many things. Not all have been good, but over the centuries we’ve maintained the peace and preached kindness to everyone. To my distress, a disease now rots the Temple from within. I reject the usurper as my leader and condemn the harm he’s done, but we mustn’t ignore the sins of the past. The evil can grow worse, horrors without end that threaten once again to consume us all. We should take care before making this leap.” He turned to Kara. “Your dreamers.... Can they conjure up weapons that will defeat the deacons, yet do minimal harm?”
“To answer your question,” she said, “I’ll need to meet with them first.”
***
I went to my room to fetch my bonnet and check on Nathaniel. Kara had insisted he’d sleep until morning as his body recouped from the mending. I bent low and brushed my lips to his forehead to measure his health. His skin felt cool but not clammy.
I tiptoed to the bureau and slid open the drawer an inch at a time, trying to make little noise, and withdrew the white bonnet. Before returning to the others, I hovered over Nathaniel, knowing how much he needed the sleep, but wishing him awake for a minute or two, long enough to share my burden and seek his counsel. Not a twitch as he slept more soundly than before.
Kara, Caleb, and I regrouped in the anteroom to the dreamers’ chamber. We ordered the bearers who guarded them to wait outside, making sure no one entered.
Though they’d carried the black cube for many a week, they’d rarely witnessed us communing with the disembodied minds. Now Jubal and three other stout men stood on either side of the door, shuffling their feet and wringing their hands, with the look of those expecting the dead to arise.
When Kara spotted my bonnet, she held up a hand and shook her head. “Better I do this alone.”
“Can’t we commune together as we did in the dream?”
“The cube is different, not a sharing of minds, but one of the living conversing with the dreamers, asking questions and hearing their answers through the sensors. We’ve never tried two at the same time. Unencumbered by their physical bodies, they think so much faster than we do. We may become confused and struggle to grasp their responses. Moreover, I’ll be asking for complex plans using technology I understand far better than you. You’d only slow me down.”
I opened my mouth to object, but Caleb stopped me. “Time is not our friend, and lives are at stake.”
I imagined the gray friars hard at work, querying the helpers to find more efficient ways to kill. My thoughts flew off to dark places, to a world of unchecked evil. I pictured Nathaniel’s anguish as blood seeped from his wound, and the battered faces of Thomas, the arch vicar and the prior. Their faces transformed into my mother and Miss Junia, who would surely be punished, and to Lizbeth and Zachariah.
I bit down on my lower lip and agreed. “Let me at least accompany you, so I can support you in spirit.”
She nodded but glared at the bonnet clutched in my hand. “Leave that here. If you yield to temptation and intrude, you’ll disrupt my connection, and I’ll need to start over.”
I handed my bonnet to Caleb and entered the chamber, latching the door behind me. The black cube lay on its carrier in the center, surrounded by clusters of flowers—more than ever before, a growing tribute from people who viewed it with awe. The blues and reds and the brightest of yellows pleased the eye, and their scent filled the air, a foolish embellishment, since the dreamers sensed nothing of the physical world. Only Kara and I provided their eyes and ears through our bonnets.
Kara aligned the sensors to the pressure points on her scalp and focused her mind. So young, no older than I was when I first set out to the keep.
“Are you ready?” I said.
She nodded and placed both hands on the cube palms down, an unnecessary ritual adopted more for our own comfort than for the benefit of the minds within. As I imagined the familiar tingling in her fingertips, the bits of lightning stirred, not from the touch of her hands but from her thoughts transmitted through the bonnet. She closed her eyes.
As I waited, the pounding of my heart seemed to echo off the walls. I caught other sounds as well—a thud like a tree limb falling outside, the groan of a floorboard under weight, or the creak of a door swinging wide—but I never took my eyes off Kara.
After what seemed like forever but was less than an hour, she stepped away and opened her eyes. Her head tilted to one side, as she wiggled the bonn
et free and fluffed up her hair where the sensors had matted it down. I tried to catch her eye, but she glanced away, gazing instead off into the distance like a sailor seeking the horizon.
I unlatched the door and let Caleb in.
He eyed the cube as he always did, with a mix of wonder and rage. More than any of us, he appreciated its power, but loathed the science that had destroyed his Rachel’s mind.
The bearers guarding the entrance peeked in, but feared to come near.
I closed the door behind Caleb.
“Can they help,” he said.
Kara nodded, though the gesture lacked energy. Perhaps she was still tired from the mending. “All I need is a blacksmith, a carpenter, and four wooden carts. The rest I can cull from my box of parts. While I construct the devices, pick eight stout men I can train, those who can be trusted to obey without question and not flinch under pressure.” She faced me for an instant, but before I could read her mood, her lids drifted lower, and her gaze shifted to the floor. “Of course, I’ll await your word to proceed.”
Something made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Kara had supported me in the mountain fortress when I feared losing Nathaniel. Together, we’d mourned the death of her grandfather and shared our deepest memories in the dream. She’d accompanied me across the ocean to help in my cause, and through it all, she’d become like a sister to me.
Why then, in this moment of peril, does she refuse to meet my eyes?
Perhaps my imagination, or the way one feels when the unthinkable becomes possible.
Kara waited for my response. All that remained was to give the order.
I tapped my teeth with the tip of my thumb, and glanced from her to the lightning in the cube. “I’ll need until tomorrow. A choice this dreadful deserves a night’s sleep. In the morning, I’ll decide.”
I turned to walk away, but Caleb grabbed me by the elbow and spun me around. “Why wait? Nothing will change by morning, and Kara should start right away.” His harsh features softened. “Please, Orah, be a leader now.”
I yanked my arm away and glared at the two of them, so deafened by the blood rushing through my temples that I spoke too loud. “Do it, and may the light forgive us all.”
Chapter 20 – The Cause of Strife
That night, I dreamed of my unborn child. I heard her crying in the crib and rose to comfort her, floating along in that way people do when they dream, my feet barely brushing the floor.
I picked her up and pressed her to my breast, but she failed to calm. I offered food and drink to no avail. As a last resort, I rocked her in my arms, swaying from side to side and singing the song my mother had sung to me after my father died, the same one I sang to Nathaniel through the peephole during our imprisonment.
Hush my child, don’t you cry
I’ll be here with you
Though light may fade and darkness fall
My love will still be true
~~~
So close your eyes and trust in sleep
And dream of a better day
Though night may fall, the morn will come
The light will show the way....
She stopped crying and stared up at me, mouth agape, but before I finished, she interrupted.
“How can there be a better day,” she said with a voice too wise for her years, “when you’re about to lead us back to the darkness?”
“I’m not leading us back to the darkness,” I said, unperturbed by this infant speaking in such an adult way. “I’m fighting for the light.”
“I don’t understand the difference.”
I began to answer in my schoolgirl, I-know-the-answer tone, but whenever I tried to say the word ‘light,’ ‘darkness’ came out instead. As I stuttered, trying to explain the universe, the room dimmed. Through the window, I spotted storm clouds racing across the sky, consuming first the moon and then the stars. A sudden gust blew out the only candle in the room, and we were cast into darkness as deep as a teaching cell.
As I gazed into the gloom, the air above me shimmered and a vicar appeared, the one who had dragged me and Thomas off to our teachings so long ago, the man my people now called the usurper.
He bared his pointy teeth and leered at me with black button eyes. “So, Orah, whose name means light, you stepped into my trap. Perhaps we should change your name to something more appropriate. What word in the forbidden language means darkness?”
He twirled his fingers above his head, and the gust grew into a gale.
I clutched my child more tightly, but the strength abandoned my arms. A wicked wind snatched her from me and swept her through the open window, high up into the clouds and lost into the night.
***
When I awoke, I lay in a cold sweat, eyes pressed closed, afraid to confront the day. What kind of world would I bring my child into? Or would Nathaniel and I, like the last of the keepmasters before us, deem it unwise to bring offspring into such a troubled world?
I opened my eyes to a stirring at my side and found Nathaniel sitting on the edge of the bed, chin propped up in his hands and staring out the window.
“Are you all right?” I said.
“Just tired. What did I miss?”
I described the plan I’d approved the day before.
He brushed a lock of hair from my eyes. “You did the right thing. I would have done the same.”
Now that I’d shared my burden, my lower lip began to tremble. “I’m not so sure. I’m afraid where this will end. Will we stumble like our ancestors, step by foolish step, back to the darkness?”
He lay back down, and I rested my head on his chest, letting his heartbeat calm me.
He wrapped a comforting arm around me. “You saw what happened. We have no choice.”
I turned to face him. “No choice? We sought a better world. Is this the world we wanted?”
My head rose and fell as he sighed. “What we want no longer matters. Look at the harm they’ve done, worse than we ever believed possible. They threaten all those we love and everything we hold dear. A time comes when the blood rushes and the heart should dominate the mind. If someone attacked you, I’d fight back and kill them if necessary, without thought, as I hope you’d do for me. I might have died if not for the mending machine. Isn’t that worth fighting for?”
“But when does this cycle end? They harm us, we harm them. Will we all be destroyed? There must be another way.”
He rose on wobbly legs and took a halting step—only one, but it felt like the breadth of the ocean.
He spoke with his back to me. “You think too much. Now’s not the time for thought. Once, in the keep, you dismissed my notions as childish illusions. Now you’re the one with illusions. Open your eyes. What does it matter whether we call it darkness or war? There can be no peace until we win—by any means.”
I crept up behind him and rested a hand on his bare shoulder. I knew I should say something, should argue or disagree, but my words died in the hollow of time, sinking soundlessly as if tossed into the bottom of a darkened lake.
He staggered away to the bureau and pulled out his tunic. While he dressed in silence, he glared at me with a look like fog on the sea, a cold mist that wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long time... until it becomes a part of you.
***
Though still weak, Nathaniel went off to join the men training, claiming that watching them and listening to their grunts inspired him.
With the troops drilling and an audience of townsfolk cheering them on, and with Kara and her cohorts hidden away and preparing for the battle to come, the center of Riverbend lay quiet. I wandered off, my mind in a haze. At the outskirts of the village, music came wafting on the breeze—not a tune, but a toot here and there. I followed the sound down a side trail off the road.
On a bench at the base of a broad elm, Thomas was crafting a new flute with knife and sandpaper.
When he looked up, I raised a questioning brow.
“For my pupil, Za
chariah,” he said.
I forced a smile. “I’m happy you’ve taken him under your wing.”
He flashed his usual grin. “You’re just glad he’s following me around instead of you.” As he took me in, the grin vanished. “You look awful, like you just came out of a teaching.”
“My face shows how I feel.”
The corners of his eyes drooped, and he crumpled his brow. “It’s not Nathaniel, is it? Is he all right?”
“Nathaniel’s fine, or at least his wound has healed, and he’s itching to rejoin the fight. I don’t....” I glanced up to the treetops and bit down hard on my lower lip, afraid to say more.
He brushed the surface of the bench beside him. “Come sit and stay awhile. Share your woes with me.”
I settled next to him, massaged my cheeks with my fingertips, and breathed a sigh. “Where to begin? Maybe I should have accepted the vicars’ teaching, gone home a loyal child of the light and never left Little Pond again.”
“You can’t think that way. If you accepted the teaching, we’d never have found the keep.”
“What did that accomplish? Now I’m a seeker of truth. Hundreds follow me and place their lives in my hands, but truth’s an elusive thing. Are we better off today than before?”
“I am.” He waved the flute in the air. “You gave me the freedom to make music as I please.”
“Music, yes, but what about all the suffering we’ve caused?” I folded my hands in my lap and stared at them. “What about the sorrow yet to come? I once thought I had all the answers, or at least I pretended I did, but now I have none.”
Thomas lifted my chin with one finger and turned my head until I faced him. “They claim I’m a seeker of truth as well, though a minor one compared to you and Nathaniel. Maybe for once I can answer some of your questions.”
I studied him as he waited for my response, my childhood friend. His boyish features still appeared young despite the trials he’d been through.
I smiled. “My first question? What is the cause of strife?”
He scratched his head and narrowed his eyes. “You couldn’t start with an easier one? Something like what’s for dinner?”
The Light of Reason (The Seekers Book 3) Page 13