I grasped her by both arms and spun her around. “Then our enemy will win, and all those we lead will be imprisoned or die.”
She twisted the white bonnet in her hands as if wringing out moisture from a dishrag. “I’ll speak with them, but I make no promises.”
I showed my own bonnet. “This time, I go with you.”
“No!” Her voice rose, forcing me to step to the closed door and listen for footsteps outside.
Not a sound.
I turned back to Kara, and my eyes narrowed. A tremor in her fingertips made me view her in a new light. She’d always been honest with me before.
Is she being honest now?
My back stiffened, and the air around me went thin, so my words emerged muffled. “If I can’t go with you, I’ll speak to them alone. With so much at stake, I need to assess their response for myself.”
The blood drained from her face, but she still averted my gaze.
When she had no more to say, I swept past her and out the door. I marched to the chamber that housed the black cube when not in the sun gathering strength from its rays, and ordered the guards to let no one in, not even Nathaniel or Kara.
Once alone with the dreamers, I adjusted the white bonnet until the sensors rested firmly against my scalp. Then I stepped to the cube and placed my palms on its surface. At once, my fingertips tingled, and the buzz of a hundred thoughts surged in my mind, but this time, I kept my eyes open, needing to maintain a part of me with the living.
“Orah,” the speaker said. “We’ve met with Kara five times since we spoke with you last. Are you well?”
“I’m well, but the latest battle with the deacons went badly. The gray friars supplied them with new and unexpected weapons, and a number of our companions died. We would have all been destroyed without the weapons you provided Kara.”
Their thoughts surged, and I waited as always for them to subside. Seconds passed but this time rather than diminishing, the buzzing increased, rising to an unprecedented level so I was tempted to cover my ears, though none of it made a sound in the physical world. My mind cried “stop,” the dreamers’ equivalent of a shout.
The buzzing quieted, and I cast out a new question. “Why the uproar?”
The answer rang out from the speaker, distinct and surrounded by silence. “We provided no such weapons.”
I recalled Kara’s face when I left her, lips parted, eyes wide, and one trembling hand reaching out to stop me. “But she told me you....”
“Ah. A lie. A story made up to deny a fact. She must have used her own knowledge, because we refused to help.”
No further explanation came my way, and I was afraid to ask. I thought of the founder of the keep years before denying my request:
We decided the abuse of knowledge brought the world to its current state. It seemed foolhardy to encourage you down a similar path. We determined to eliminate weapons from the keep. Of course, the foundation is here for you to re-invent them if you insist, but we refuse to help.
I held my breath—that precious commodity the dreamers lacked—and waited until I wondered if the bonnet had ceased to function. Then I cast my question through the sensors, almost hoping for no response. “Why did you refuse?”
The answers flowed in a stream.
“Our ancestors had enough knowledge....”
“To nearly destroy our world....”
“Now our science is much more advanced....”
“We could invent more powerful weapons if we chose....”
“An interesting engineering problem....”
“But why would we?”
A question I’d asked myself, until I pictured the field of litters covered with sheets. “You may not have hearts, but you are creatures of logic. Compute this. Without your help, Kara and I and all the others will die.”
The speaker’s thoughts remained measured, as if explaining a complex lesson to a child. “Though we have no hearts, we understand mathematical models. As each side does more harm to the other, the violence grows. Those close to the victims seek revenge, and the number of casualties increases. Even allowing for a generous percentage of reasonable people—those willing to forego revenge—the violence climbs asymptotically over time, approaching a singularity—a rate of acceleration that approximates infinity and becomes irreversible.”
My head ached as if the bonnet had taken on too much weight. “I don’t understand.”
Other voices chimed in.
“Use her background and education....”
“Explain it in her terms....”
I waited.
At last, the speaker’s words burst through the sensors to my brain.
“What you ask may lead to a cataclysm more destructive than what you call the darkness—the end of all things.”
***
I removed the bonnet, and the buzzing in my mind ceased. Nothing new to learn. My feet stayed rooted to the floor as I gazed transfixed at the lightning flashing in the cube. I rocked back and forth and hugged myself as if the cataclysm had already occurred, and I were the last person alive.
I slowed my breathing and closed my eyes, trying to return to my center, the part of me that housed my deepest beliefs, but all was covered in fog. I peered through the haze, hoping to peel back its layers and discover a glimmer in the dark.
I found only despair.
The gray friars would extract the information they needed from the indifferent helpers and build new weapons to meet their master’s demands.
Without the dreamers, Kara offered nothing more than tricks and a smattering of machine parts.
The deacons would come. We’d all be destroyed.
From the depths of that despair, a wellspring of courage arose within me, a trait suppressed since arriving back on my home shore. My mother and father had given me a name that means light, and my whole life, I’d rejected the darkness in all its forms. Now, in a flash of insight, the glimmer I sought appeared, like looking out the window of our bedchamber after a storm to discover the rain-soaked branches of the willow gleaming like a thousand blades in the moonlight.
Time to confront Kara.
I knocked on the door so as not to surprise her, and waited until a melancholy voice bid me enter.
She sat on the bed, staring at her hands folded in her lap. She looked up at me, eyes pleading. “The mending... it’s like seeing into the hearts of tormented souls. So much pain. I had to find a way to help.” Her reddened eyes drooped at the corners. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
I settled next to her, and we embraced. “I understand what you did. You saved many lives.”
“But what do we do now?”
I grasped her by the arms and forced her to face me. “By now, the usurper has learned of our latest weapon. We know the limits of the keep, but he can only imagine the power of the dreamers—other than that they’re a thousand years more advanced than the keepmasters. Despite the efforts of his gray friars, he must dread what we’ll do next.”
She pulled away, her shoulders slumping and the pall of defeat clouding her features. “You don’t understand. The dreamers won’t help, and without them, I’m little more than a child playing tricks, using nothing but what I learned in my lessons and a box of miscellaneous parts.”
I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Only you and I know the dreamers’ response, and no one else has access to them. We can use that to our advantage.”
One brow raised, and she wrinkled her nose, causing a crease to form between her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean... you already told one lie. Now... together... we’ll tell another.”
Chapter 23 – To Dream No More
I asked Nathaniel to join me on a stroll to the grist mill, needing private time to explain my plan. We meandered along the winding path, holding hands and swishing our feet through the dried leaves, as we used to on our way to the NOT tree. Once there, we settled on the stone bench by the stream. The sunlight off the wate
r captured my eye, and for a moment I felt no longer in Riverbend but back home in Little Pond, as if finding the keep had been imagined, just another of our adventure games.
Memories of childhood flooded my mind. “Do you remember the first time we visited the mill? I thought the wheel a wondrous device, but saw only the sparkles. As I grew older, I discovered the shadowy place where no sun reached, and imagined demons lurking there. Now I find those fears may be true... in a way.”
“How so?”
“This mill wheel is like the earth mother’s wheel of life, always cycling between light and dark. What if all we’ve accomplished has been to climb to the sunlit crest, and now we’re about to descend back into the darkness?”
He crumpled his brow and eyed me across his nose. “What are you trying to say?”
I turned to him. “The dreamers refuse to help. No one but Kara and I know, and now you as well.”
He drifted to the wheel like someone newly awoken from a deep sleep, and stretched out an open palm, letting the icy water splash off his hand. When he spoke, his words chilled like the water. “So much for changing the world. Maybe the founders of the Temple were right. What if we were meant to live simple lives, to take nature in stride and spend our existence content like sheep in the fields? If we’d accepted that life, those who died for our cause would be alive today, those who followed us would be safe in their homes, and our journey wouldn’t be hurtling toward a horrible end.”
My heart ached to hear such words from Nathaniel, and I rushed to embrace him, holding on as if to keep the hope from leaking away.
After we separated, I kept my gaze fixed on his, nodding ever so slightly to draw him back from the brink. “What about those who died because the Temple stifled our progress? What about my father and your mother? What about the children in the cemetery? If they lived on the far side of the sea, some might have been saved.”
In my rush of words, I’d taken in no air, and now I paused to breathe.
Nathaniel waited, knowing I had more to say, my friend since birth. “You’re planning something, Orah. I can tell.”
“As you once told me, the ending hasn’t been written yet. Everyone else, including our enemy, expects us to return to battle with new and more powerful weapons.”
His shoulders heaved up and down, and he shook his head. “But there’ll be no such weapons.”
“Yes, but truth is sometimes elusive. Temple magic had nothing to do with the voice in the sun icon, yet still we believed.”
“You mean....”
“We bluff. The vicars witnessed a hint of the power we brought from across the sea. We use their fear of the dreamers to threaten them with extinction. We force them to sue for peace.”
***
The next morning, I summoned the prior, the man who had escaped the torment of the deacons to seek refuge with us, and who had been healed by the mending machine.
We waited at a round table, Nathaniel, Caleb, Kara, and me, with guards blocking the door to ensure secrecy.
When he arrived, I offered him a seat and a mug of hot tea, and gave him time to settle before beginning. “What I’m about to request of you is more than I have a right to ask, and if you decline, I’ll understand.”
He wrapped his hands around the mug and stared at the steam rising from his drink. After a moment, he took a sip and fixed on me. “I’m in your debt, and will do anything in my meager power to help.”
“Are you willing to return to your former masters, those who abused you so?”
He grasped the edge of the table and pressed down until his body unfolded to upright. A tremor racked his frame, but he steadied, lifting his chin like an elder about to address a Little Pond meeting. “Each night, I dream of my time with my captors, and each morning I awake in a cold sweat. Now, as my days dwindle, I live in terror of returning to their grasp. Yet you not only healed my body. In the depths of my despair, you gave me hope for a better world. I’ll do anything you ask if it serves your purpose, though it costs me my life.”
“I need you to deliver a message from the seekers of truth.”
Caleb stood and wrapped an arm around the prior’s shoulders. “Why him? Despite the mending machine, he still bears his captors’ scars. What might they do to him if he returns? Better I send one of their own instead, a deacon we’ve taken prisoner.”
I wavered, for an instant wondering what kind of monster I’d become, cursed by the burden of leadership. Then that same burden made my back stiffen. “No. We need him, a learned man. He knows the secrets of the keep, and now he’s experienced the miracles of the dreamers. He’s walking proof of their power, the perfect man for this task, the one they’re most likely to believe.”
From my tunic pocket, I pulled out the text Nathaniel and I had composed the night before, and smoothed the paper on the table.
The room lay still while I recited the words, with not so much as a creaking of the floorboards or a body fidgeting in a chair.
To the leaders of the Temple of Light
From the Seekers of Truth
We find ourselves at a crossroads. You chose to fight the people using knowledge from a place you once condemned as of the darkness. From this leader of the gray friars, we know that they work day and night to recreate forbidden weapons that once nearly destroyed our world.
Now we, the seekers of truth, have traveled across the ocean and brought back science beyond your conception, a thousand years advanced from the keep. What you witnessed at our most recent victory is but a hint of what’s to come.
We grew up with your sermons and have no desire to send our people tumbling headlong down the slope to the darkness. Yet if you escalate this war, we will have no choice but to ask those far wiser than the keepmasters for more powerful weapons that will destroy you all.
At this crossroads, we ask you to pause and consider your fate. We’re willing to meet at a site of your choosing, to talk peace and give you one last chance to choose the light.
The prior nudged the much larger Caleb’s arm aside and nodded to me. “I’ll do as you wish.”
I sealed the missive and handed it to him.
And then we waited.
***
That summer when we first found the keep, the days flew by as I raced from one helper to the next, searching for solutions while our dreaded decision loomed.
Now, while awaiting the usurper’s response, the hours and minutes crawled. Morning came early as I struggled to sleep, and a sluggish sun plodded its way across the sky.
Late on the second day, as most of the troops retreated to their lodgings to prepare for the evening meal, a murmur spread through the camp, which soon turned into sharp outcries and the thud of running feet. The prior had returned, and with him an envoy from the Temple.
The envoy recognized me and made a small bow, no more than a dip of the head. “I come in response to your message, bearing an answer from the Grand Vicar, the human embodiment of the light in this world. His holiness has agreed to a meeting.”
Caleb and Nathaniel came running up behind me, and together we took in the man. From the red stripes on his not-quite-square hat, I deemed him an arch vicar, though his dress was embellished beyond the traditions of the clergy. He now wore a sash across his chest, bedecked with gold medallions, and a cape of white silk clung to his back.
Nathaniel squared his shoulders to the man and rose to his full height. “The purpose of the meeting?”
The envoy took a deep breath and steadied himself, rising in stature as if trying to match Nathaniel. “To discuss a path to peace.”
“And the place?” Caleb said.
“The clearing by the river where the road begins to climb, at the northern edge of what had been our encampment.”
Caleb scowled at him. “Too close to your forces, too far from ours.”
“The place has been sanctified by the blood of those who died. His holiness believes it a fitting location, a place that will remind us how devastating a return
to the darkness would be. I give you the grand vicar’s oath, sworn on the light, that he’ll guarantee your safety.”
Caleb twisted his mouth into a sneer, but before he could argue, I waved him to silence. I’d grown up believing in the sanctity of oaths on the light, and preferred any chance for peace.
“One final term,” the envoy said. “Each side may bring only three, and all should come empty-handed. We can meet tomorrow at noon, if you accept these terms.”
I agreed at once.
He lingered not a moment longer, spinning around so fast his cape unfurled in the breeze as he swept out of town.
***
We began the trek to the meeting before the sun reached its peak in the sky. I chose Caleb to accompany Nathaniel and me. Beyond his role as leader of the troops, his imposing figure and exotic accent would emphasize to the vicars that they dealt with people other than the children of the light.
After three years of frequent use, the Temple had cleared the scrub behind the rock face and added a paved roadway wide enough for their fast wagons. What had once required two hours of battling through thick brush now became easy to navigate. In no more than twenty minutes, we reached the spot by the river, where we’d once sent the arch vicar’s tracking device floating downstream.
Thank the light, we’d arrived first. I took the time to quench my thirst and organize my thoughts, but soon the roar of a fast wagon overwhelmed the rush of the water.
The vehicle skidded to a stop, and the envoy emerged with a burly deacon in tow, both empty-handed as promised.
Despite the small audience, he used a booming voice to announce his superior. “His holiness, the grand vicar of the Temple of Light.” His words began as an echo off the mountain ridge but quickly dissipated into a murmur, as if nature cared nothing for the usurper’s title.
From the back seat of the wagon, the upstart emerged. He appeared older now, with a hint of gray streaking his long beard, but the black button eyes burned the same, eyes that had terrified me when he called my name for a teaching, in a time and place so long ago.
The Light of Reason (The Seekers Book 3) Page 15