Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra

by Stephen Lawhead

  “Is there anything you can do?” Bela had inquired, thus plunging the priest into a period of deep contemplation during which he stared at Yarden as if she were the carrier of a dread disease.

  Finally the priest shifted his bulk and yawned. “How much do you have?”

  “Not much,” Yarden replied shakily.

  “How much?”

  “Ten shares.”

  “It’s not enough,” he said dryly. “You may go.”

  “Wait,” interposed Bela. “Perhaps you can think of something. Hage priests supervise the allotment, do they not?”

  “You know well that we do.”

  “Then perhaps at the next allotment you could arrange to give her extra shares. She could pay you then.” In essence Bela was inviting the priest to name his fee and pay himself.

  “It would be expensive,” the priest observed. He shook his head slowly, already calculating how much he could get away with.

  “Of course.” Bela gave Yarden a little squeeze.

  “Reorientation.” The priest’s porcine eyes narrowed. “As much as a hundred shares. Maybe more.”

  “Maybe two hundred?” inquired Bela.

  “Yes. Two hundred.”

  “You’ll do a benefice for two hundred?”

  “Very well.” He withdrew a short, ball-tipped wand from his clothing and struck a bell hanging from a stand next to him. Another priest came forward with a tripod on which a brazier full of burning coals smoldered. He placed the brazier in front of his fellow priest, then retreated, only to reappear a moment later with a tray. On the tray were bowls of powder in various colors.

  “Prepare a healing benefice,” said the Hage priest, stifling another yawn.

  “Mind or body?” asked his assistant.

  “Mind. Make it twice strong. She has been in reorientation and has lost her memory.”

  The second priest lay down the tray and picked up an empty bowl. He began dipping into the various powders with his fingers. “I will add a sarcotic too, to be sure.” He tossed powder into the bowl and stirred it with his fingers before handing it to Yarden.

  She looked into the bowl, and the assistant priest smiled, revealing brown teeth. He inclined his head and pantomimed dumping the bowl into the brazier. Bela nodded in encouragement.

  Yarden stepped up to the brazier and lifted the bowl, tipped it, and carefully emptied its contents onto the coals. There was a sputtering flash, and foul vaporous fumes arose from the coals. Resinous smoke rolled up into the darkness. Yarden stepped from the brazier, convulsed with coughing.

  “Benito, benitu, beniti,” intoned the Hage Priest in a bored voice. He raised his hand in the air above Yarden’s head. “In the name of Trabant, I cleanse the aura of all astral interference … and so forth. Let the Seraphic Spheres be content with the offering thus poured out. Restore—ah, what is your name, woman?”

  “Yarden.”

  “Restore Yarden’s memory to her in good time,” continued the priest, “that she might serve her Hage and follow the Clear Way faithfully. Trabant Animus be praised.”

  They were dismissed then and left by a side door as the brazier was removed and the next petitioner ushered in quickly. On the way back to Bela’s kraam, Yarden remained silent, reeling from the experience with the priest. She could not explain it, but felt dirty, as if she had wallowed in filth and now bore the stains on her face and hands. Waves of revulsion churned inside her. She gulped deep breaths and fought to keep from vomiting.

  Bela watched her curiously, but said nothing until they were almost to the kraam. “Do you feel any different?” he asked.

  Yarden shook her head, lips pressed tightly together.

  “Oh well,” said Bela sympathetically, “it often takes a little time. We may have to ask for another benefice if this one doesn’t work.”

  “No!” Yarden turned horror-filled eyes on him. “No more.”

  Bela laughed. “All right. It doesn’t matter. Let me know if you change your mind, though. I’d be glad to take you again.”

  Yarden turned away. I never want to go back there, she thought. Anger flared. This was Bela’s doing. He insisted I go. He knew what would take place. But no, Bela is my friend; he stood by me the whole time. It wasn’t his fault, and nothing bad happened.

  Still, if nothing bad happened, then why do I feel so unclean?

  TWENTY-SIX

  The next day for Orion Treet, and the next, was much the same as the day before. In fact, for the next several days in a row he played the tourist, dutifully tagging along beside his guide, visiting each Hage in turn, viewing the life in each of Empyrion’s spheres.

  By day he was the sponge, soaking up all he could see and all he was told. By night he examined what he had absorbed. He paced the confines of his kraam, sifting facts and observations, trying to create, as with the tiny colored tiles of a mosaic, a single, sweeping picture of Empyrion.

  The emerging portrait was that of a civilization in decline: old, decrepit, timeworn. The signs of advanced age were everywhere apparent—stone steps worn hollow by the tread of feet over the centuries; once-straight walls now sliding, tilting, wrapped in thick moss; towers whose shifting foundations bore the marks of decade upon decade of attempted repair; dwelling blocks in whose peeling facades one could trace the histories of whole generations of inhabitants, layer on layer; fetid catacombs where water-stained walls bore ancient graffiti. Empyrion wore a thick patina of time.

  Treet sensed a primordial heaviness, the all-pervading lethargy of decay.

  The untold years had witnessed the evolution of an extremely stratified society—not only distinct classes, each separate from the other, but classes within classes—and each stratum fiercely protective of its station and function while at the same time aggressively seeking to improve its position in relation to the others through a subtle ongoing competition, the rules of which Treet had not yet discovered, much less understood.

  For the citizenry of Empyrion, the Hages were everything: home, family, country—all in one. A Hage was a political entity as well as a gear in a complex economic machine; it was both social matrix and utilitarian construct; it was a rigid caste system which created for its members a sense of place and purpose and belonging in return for work.

  Each Hage was governed by a Director who, through his staff of Subdirectors, ruled his fief with despotic power, answering only to the Supreme Director, chief dictator among dictators. The power of the Director seeped downward through a bewildering hierarchy of priests and magicians. Hage priests supervised the allotment, paying out shares for work; they conducted the regular Astral Services and presided over the occasional feast day celebrations.

  Calin had even taken him inside an Astral Temple. It was a big, black pyramid, empty but for rows of seats placed round a small stage. At a Service the priest read from the Sacred Directives—a body of writings that had come down from the earliest times—and exhorted their congregations to follow the Clear Way, a path of obedience leading to enlightenment.

  The dome dwellers worshiped a god called Trabant Animus, Lord of the Astral Planes. It was Trabant who bestowed immortality on a soul and, if sufficient progress had been made during its lifetime, joined it with one of the many oversouls or spirits of the highly enlightened departed. Once joined to an oversoul, a soul journeyed through two realms or existences: Shikroth and Ekante. One, Shikroth, was called the House of Darkness; the other, Ekante, the House of Light. The journey through both was accomplished under the direction of sexless astral bodies known as Seraphic Spheres—entities of pure psychic energy.

  The religion made no sense to Treet. Rather, it made about as much sense as any other religion he’d ever encountered. Treet had little use for religion, tending to see it merely as something to keep the dim, cold unknown from becoming too frightening. He wasn’t easily frightened, so relegated religion to the dustbin of outmoded ideas.

  Magicians, Treet learned, were just as mystical as priests in their own way, and ju
st as bound up in an incomprehensible code of belief. Each Hage had at least six magicians assigned to it, and often many more. Their function was to maintain the electronic equipment and oversee the use of all machinery. They were technicians, but with a difference: in order to repair Empyrion’s failing equipment, magicians had to steep themselves in technical knowledge—machine lore, Calin called it— which had been handed down from magician to magician for ages past remembering.

  For this, some of them were schooled as Readers, as Calin had been, in order to scour old documents for references pertaining to the repair of machines. All were trained in psychic abilities, since most of the equipment was so old they often had to, as Calin put it, merge with a machine in order to repair it. The knowledge of how to manufacture the more complex machines had been lost in the second Purge. So magicians had their hands full just keeping up with simple maintenance and willing tired machines to go on functioning.

  The rest of the tasks necessary for cohering a complex society fell to the workers. Everyone in the colony was assigned a job, and everyone worked. Children—and Treet saw very few children—were born into a Hage creche where, at the age of six months, they were assigned a function. Children were apprenticed in their crafts until the age of fourteen, when they were formally initiated into the Hage and took their places as adults beside the other workers.

  Hage populations, therefore, were kept at fairly constant levels, adjusted as need arose. New workers replaced old. Treet had not learned yet what happened to those who were replaced. He presumed they stayed on in deep Hage, caring for children too young to work, since neither the very old nor the very young were visible in the places he’d visited.

  This then was the emerging portrait of Empyrion. True, it bore little resemblance now to what its creators must have established. There was no trace of its original intent that he could see. Empyrion had evolved into a creature far different from any corporation colony Earth had ever seeded. The time shift, whatever its mechanisms, accounted for most of that, certainly. But there were other forces at work too, Treet knew.

  He’d read of European miners in South America who, lost for years in the Brazilian jungle, had evolved a strange, cultic society with an entirely new language and culture. When they were discovered forty years later, none of the rescuers could understand a word they said, nor did the miners wish to return to civilization— they had their own civilization!

  Something like that had happened to Empyrion. But what Treet saw around him had taken far longer than forty years to evolve. Just how much longer, he would have to discover. They must have a data bank, or some sort of official repository of information on the colony. And that, he thought, is the next place I want to go.

  When Calin came for him the following morning, Treet hit her with his request. She did not react at first; she looked at him blankly, as if she had not heard. When Treet repeated himself, she became flustered. Her eyes slid away from his, and she twisted her features grotesquely.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Treet. “What did I say?”

  “I—” She hesitated and started again. “We can’t go there!” she managed to force out.

  “What do you mean, we can’t go there? Why not? And why are you whispering?”

  “It is forbidden.”

  “Forbidden? The library is off-limits? I don’t believe it.” He laughed sharply. This seemed to agitate the magician even more.

  “Don’t talk so!” she rasped.

  “I’ll talk any way I please,” sneered Treet. What had come over his guide this morning?

  She reached out and plucked at his sleeve, inclining her head toward the door. Treet caught her meaning and nodded, and they both left the kraam without another word.

  Once outside, Treet demanded, “All right, now suppose you explain what all that was about? Why the convulsions in there just now?”

  Calin was pulling him along the corridor which led out to the Sweetair level terrace. “We could not talk in there,” she said, glancing up at his face once and then turning her eyes forward once more. “Your kraam is … is—”

  Treet supplied the word himself. “Wired? Is that what you’re trying to say? Someone’s listening in on me?”

  Calin nodded solemnly. “They are listening.”

  “Who?”

  “Invisibles.” The word was a whisper.

  “So what?” Treet shrugged. “I don’t care if they listen. They can take pictures too, for all I care. I’ve got nothing to hide.” Except my suspicions, he added to himself.

  “It is not good to talk openly about such things,” Calin said, returning somewhat to her normal demeanor.

  “Not good for who—you or me?” Treet frowned and watched the dark-haired woman beside him. In the handful of days they’d spent together he had grown quite fond of her. She had loosened up around him to the extent that he felt he could ask almost any question that occurred to him. This little episode just now in his quarters served as a fresh reminder that he was not on a sightseer’s holiday. These people were different from him in subtle yet fundamental ways; he would do well to remember that.

  Treet stopped. Calin walked a couple of paces alone until she halted and faced him.

  “Okay, spill it. What is the big secret around here?” he said. “I won’t go another step until you tell me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You’re all hiding something—what is it? What do you know that I don’t know?”

  Treet looked at her sharply. He hoped that his abrupt question would have the effect of shaking part of an answer out of her—if she knew anything. “Well? I’m waiting. Do we stand here all day?” Far down the corridor behind them came a group of Saecaraz Hagemen.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Calin pleaded. She glanced quickly at the approaching figures. “We must go.” She turned, expecting Treet to follow. Instead he sat down.

  Calin took a step and then turned back, her eyes growing wide with horror when she saw him squatting in the middle of’ the corridor. “Get up! You can’t sit there like that!”

  “Why not? I’m not hurting anything,” Treet replied mildly. This was working better than he’d hoped.

  “It is forbidden!” Calin stooped and tugged at his arm, trying to raise him. The Hagemen behind her came closer. They had stopped talking among themselves and were watching the scene before them. “Please, get up and let us hurry away from here.”

  “What happens if I don’t?”

  “The Threl will hear of it. The Supreme Director will punish me.”

  “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll get up.”

  The Hagemen were within earshot now, and were watching very carefully. Calin nodded, whispering desperately, “Yes, yes, I will tell you what I know.”

  “About the data repository, too?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  The others were almost on top of them. Treet nodded and pushed himself up slowly, pressing his hands to his back. “I don’t know what happened,” he said loudly. “I must not have been looking where I was going. Nasty fall.”

  Calin had her hands on him, hauling him upright. She appeared properly concerned that he had not hurt himself. The Hagemen halted beside them, glancing at one another with puzzled expressions. “He is not hurt,” she explained. They grunted and moved on, looking over their shoulders suspiciously.

  “Easy, wasn’t it?” said Treet. “Now, about those answers.”

  “We cannot talk here. But I know a place—the Riverwalk.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The Riverwalk was a wide, ambling boulevard of square-cut stone which ran abreast of Kyan. Calin led Treet along the moss-grown rimwall which formed one bank for the river below. Hagemen from various Hages—Saecaraz, Tanais, and Nilokerus mostly—moved along the tree-lined road, some in the small electric carts, ems, that looked like chariots without horses or visible wheels, and the rest on foot in isolated groups. Quite a few of the latter were
pushing large hand-wagons of a type Treet had seen before in his travels: a sizable box slung over a U-shaped axle between two bicycle-type wheels with a third small swivel wheel in front. Each barrow was piled high with cargo, and those pushing strained to the task.

  They had walked along in silence for some time. Treet could see that Calin was mulling the situation over in her head, trying to decide how and what to tell him. That was all right, but he didn’t want to give her too much time; he’d get soft answers that way. “I think we’ve come far enough,” he told her. “Let’s talk.”

  “Many things are forbidden to us,” she said simply. “We know this is for the best, so we do not question it. To question what does not concern you is unwise.”

  “Unhealthy, you mean?” He watched her closely; she walked with her head bent, eyes to the ground.

  “Do not talk so loud,” she warned, “and keep your mouth hidden. There may be lipreaders close by.”

  “Lipreaders—informants?”

  Calin nodded. “The Invisibles use them.”

  “Okay, I’ll be discreet. But tell me, why all the secrecy? What is everyone afraid of?”

  “I have already told you,” she said lightly. “It is for our good that certain things remain hidden. Only pain and death come from knowing.”

  “Ignorance is bliss, is that it? Keep the masses happy, give them bread and circuses, and trouble stays away from your door.”

  Calin peered at him strangely. Clearly, she did not comprehend sarcasm. “Your words bite, Traveler Treet. They veil your meaning.”

  “Never mind. So why can’t we go to the library—or whatever you call it—where all the information about the colony’s past is kept?”

  She spoke into the folds of her yos, muffling her words. But her answer surprised him. “There are enemies among us who are trying to destroy our nation. They work in secret; so we use secrecy against them.”

  “I see. Who are they, and why do they want to destroy everything?”

  “They are called the Fieri. I know very little about them, but I know that once, long ago, there was a great war in which the Fieri were overcome and cast out. They pledged eternal hatred toward us, and ever since have tried to destroy us. They have sown their evil among us and have won over some of the weaker of our people, twisting them with their hatred. That is why we must all be so careful. That is why we are watched and why we watch.”