Tathea

by Anne Perry

  “I know,” he agreed quickly. “But for those who endure, there will be the joy of God and peace which has no end. Is that not worth any price?”

  “No!” She did not have to think about it. “I like what I have, Alex.” She moved her hand expressively to indicate the garden and the city beyond. “I don’t want the sun and the moon and the stars. I am perfectly happy with the ordinary mortal earth I have, with Maximian, with honor and wit and a decent life from day to day, with kindness and diligence and honesty between one man and another. That is what the best in Camassia have believed and lived by for generations, and it is good! I don’t know why you want something else.” She looked at him earnestly, struggling to understand.

  Why did he? She deserved an unequivocal reply.

  The sun was warm on the lilies and the perfume heady, the drone of bees lazy and far away.

  “I’ve seen something brighter,” he replied with the simplest truth. “And I can’t forget it.”

  She shivered, annoyed with him. His stubbornness was causing unnecessary pain. “What’s brighter about it?” she demanded. “It is full of threats as well as promises. What about the world crashing around our ears and death and despair in every land? I don’t want that for myself or for those I love—or anyone at all! I don’t want sacrifice, or all the years of laboring and learning and trying to understand.”

  There was anger in her voice and defiance in the way she stood. She was frightened. He had no doubt of it. He moved towards her, taking her hand gently.

  “It is possible to achieve,” he promised. “He is not some demon mocking us by commanding things we cannot do.”

  “Some of us!” She snatched her hand away, her rings catching roughly against his skin.

  “No, all of us,” he corrected. “He expects from each of us only what we can do. He is a God of morality, not just of power.”

  “He wants everything!” She was not in the least mollified. “You say in one breath that there is a sacred freedom of choice, then in the next you say we must obey or be punished. And if we don’t obey everything—sacrifice, tribulation, suffering, and labor—then the alternative is to lose it all!”

  He kept his patience with increasing difficulty. Had it been anyone else, he would not even have tried. But there was a bond between them he could not break. He could not leave her behind and still be whole.

  “No, that’s not true,” he persisted. “Everyone will be rewarded according to their acts and their desires, what they would have done, had they the power, for good or evil. But if you turn away from the best, the utmost you can do, then your reward will be only part of what you could have had.”

  She stepped back on the paving, away from him and almost into the flowers. “I’m perfectly happy with an ordinary reward. I don’t want to be a god, now or ever! I think it is arrogant and, frankly, ridiculous.” Her voice was sharp. “I’m a human being. I have faults and weaknesses and I probably always will have. I don’t mind it. And I’m happy with other people who are the same.”

  He knew why she was angry. The last sentence held it all. Some part of her feared that the Book held the truth, but she did not want to be alone. Maximian did not believe. He did not see in the Book anything beautiful or sublime. He saw only mysticism and confusion, the clouding of reason, the loss of self-discipline and that code of duty which had made Camassia great. Xanthica had caught a glimpse, however small, of the light in the words, but she would not risk losing any part of Maximian’s love, or his approval. Had she already tested his reaction were she to accept the Book? Or dare she not even do that?

  Alexius had argued with Maximian himself and met polite but total resistance. He was too courteous to insult another person’s belief, or even to refuse to listen, but he listened with the ears, not the mind. Talking to him had made Alexius realize just how great was the gulf between them. He had never appreciated before how unalike they were. Maximian was of an ancient family, and in his own sober, dryly humorous way he was intensely proud of it. His praise of the old ideals was no mere lip service. He lived by them, and would have died for them as willingly as any lover of the Book would live or die for it. He made no passionate speeches, nor did he attempt to persuade anyone else, but it was no less deep in his blood and bone for that.

  “Why don’t you say something?” Xanthica demanded. “Don’t just stand there accusing me!”

  “I’m not accusing you,” he answered quietly. “You must choose as you wish. I only want to be sure I have explained it to you well, so that—”

  “You have,” she cut across him. “Several times. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” And she started to walk down the path towards the steps and the carved animals on the ascending wall, her bright, terra-cotta skirts sweeping behind her, embroidered borders catching the light.

  Isadorus had asked Tathea to simplify the teachings in the Book and set them forth, in Camassian, in a manner all people could read so that they might find in them a way of life and a structure in which they could teach and support each other. There were now many hundreds of believers, and they required more than solitary reflection on its philosophy, which was at the moment random and in no order of increasing complexity.

  Tathea had argued with Alexius that one values only what one has struggled to grasp, but she understood very well that those whose nature did not drive them to study and to seek were still worthy of all the knowledge the Book could offer. The ancient language in which it was written was unfamiliar to the vast majority of the people. There was an element of it which was universal, but it was too easy for even scholars to misinterpret.

  “Make of it something I can give to anyone,” Isadorus urged. It was not a command but a plea, and she could not refuse, nor did she want to. He gave her scribes and promised assistance from anyone whose help might further the work.

  It was not merely a matter of translating the Book into daily Camassian, understandable to all. That might have been relatively easy. It must also have the power and the beauty to move men and reach into their hearts, and she must be certain that she did not unintentionally corrupt its meaning. For that she wanted more than scribes, however skilled. She must read it over and over again, ponder it in her mind, walk alone and search her memory for those fragments of joy that lay just beyond recall, the peace that filled her and gave her soul wings when she saw the light arch across the sky in a particular way or reflect back from water. She must allow the peace to settle within her until she could feel the certainty blossom warm inside her that she was right.

  She needed to work, to converse, to argue and test every sentence against the judgment of someone else who grasped its truth and who would measure her work without fear or favor.

  Alexius was that person, and Isadorus spoke his name before she did. She would work with the Book, and at regular intervals Alexius would read what she had written and weigh it against every argument he could bring to test its strength and probe for weakness, ambiguity, clumsiness, omission.

  They were given a long room on the top floor of the palace, overlooking the wing where once Baradeus had counseled with his generals. There were windows all along the southern side, and the light was excellent, even though it was now approaching winter—the fourth since Tathea had come to Camassia.

  They worked with pleasure. There were always scribes present at the other end, but in spirit it was as if they were alone. Usually they worked in the evening after Tathea had spent the day wrestling with the text and Alexius had completed his military and diplomatic duties. He usually wore not a uniform but a long tunic and robe like an Archon, but without the purple border.

  “This passage about miracles,” he said one night, looking up from the page in his hands. “You have made love plain, but not the law.”

  “Yes, I have.” She leaned forward and indicated where she had written it.

  He shook his head. “It is not strong enough. It would be too easy to believe from this that love and belief are sufficient. If you go ba
ck to the original ... where is it?”

  She turned back a page in the great Book on the table and found it, reading it aloud.

  “You see?” He met her eyes. “The power of the law is given greater weight. People can convince themselves to believe all kinds of things if they want them badly enough. You are leaving too much room for mistaking desire for faith. And then when the reward does not come, abandoning the truth will have its ready excuse. It will appear that the promises of God were broken.”

  “People will do that anyway,” she said with wry memory, “if that is what they wish. We can justify anything to ourselves.” Then she saw something deeper in his face, an emotion behind the thought, a softness about his lips. He was thinking of someone he loved. She did not want to hurt him.

  There was no sound in the room but the faint scratching of the scribes’ pens across paper.

  “There is a difficulty,” she said slowly, trying to choose her words so they were both gentle and honest. He was the last person who would appreciate a moderation of the truth, even in compassion’s name.

  He laughed quietly, looking at her, the lamplight catching gold on the fine hairs on his cheek. “Only one?”

  Was he aware of her understanding? Searching his eyes, then lowering her gaze again to the page, she was certain he was.

  “One at a time,” she responded with a smile, her voice catching a little. “How to balance law and hope, justice and love. We must be honest in warning, and yet not so rigid as to frighten people away.”

  “It is deeper than that.” His voice held anxiety, and hurt. He was watching her.

  She knew it, but did not look up. “How deep?”

  “Those who do not know the law cannot be accountable to it.” He was seeking the words as he spoke them. “If you love someone ... and we should love all people ... and you tell them the law, show them the precise path, then you have laid on them the burden to choose. If they refuse it, even though they have seen, then you have helped them to a condemnation they would not have deserved had you kept silent.” He hesitated, his emotion naked in his voice. “Have you helped them or hurt them?”

  She knew exactly whom he meant—Xanthica and, beyond her, millions of others through all the ages past, and to come, who would see something of the truth and turn away from it because of its cost.

  She had no answer.

  “You say nothing,” he prompted, leaning a little closer. He needed to know. He was afraid of the answer, but he was long schooled in courage and he would not allow himself to turn aside. She knew so much of him. She had learned to anticipate his thoughts, to know his instinct. And yet there were other ways in which they were strangers. There were vast areas of his life of which she knew nothing at all, multitudes of facts, experiences she could only guess at from the results carved into his nature—just as he knew her as she was now but had no conception of the Empress she had been in Shinabar and could barely comprehend the power she had held then. Yet he seemed to grasp something about her love of the Book that even Isadorus and Eleni had not. She had never told him, because she was only reaching after the knowledge herself, but she had fought for it, and paid dearly. She had waged and won some war of the spirit which held real and terrible dangers. And perhaps it was not over.

  “‘It requires all that a man has,’” she quoted softly, looking up into his clear eyes. “‘To the height and depth of his soul, but it does not require more. I give no commandments except I make a way possible that they may be accomplished.’”

  She tried to read how far he wished to go. She would insult him if she did not pursue it to the end, and hurt him if she did. She hesitated, clenched inside.

  “Say it!” He half smiled. He was so close she could smell the warmth of his skin. “The law is from eternity to eternity, and even God must obey it or cease to be God.”

  She could not argue, it was a direct quote from the Book, in the plain words everyone understood.

  “And where there is law there has to be the possibility of obedience to it,” he went on. “And of disobedience.”

  “Yes.” She knew what he was going to say next, and she did not say it for him.

  “And where there is obedience and disobedience, there must be reward and punishment or, if you prefer, cost,” he stated. “Otherwise there is chaos, and the Adversary has won. There is no meaning to anything.”

  “Yes,” she said again. There was no disagreement possible. “But you must remember there are great variations in agency and power to understand, let alone to obey. Millions will live and die without ever having heard any of the law. We are judged according to the light we have. To whom much is given, much will be required.” She knew that with a passionate and absolute truth as she heard her own words as if from the lips of a stranger. “Judgment is just. The desires of the heart are measured. We are weighed for what we would have been, had we the chance, as much as for what we are. There are many who would do good, or evil, but circumstances prevent them.”

  Outside, the wind was rising a little, and the room was growing colder. One of the scribes left his table to place another piece of wood on the fire.

  Alexius looked at Tathea very steadily. The sand trickled through the hourglass and she did not speak. He kept his eyes on hers. Only his lips moved to form a slight, sad, self-mocking smile, full of gentleness.

  “I’ll say it for you,” he said. “There is no escape.”

  “No ...”

  He sat silently for several minutes, then stood up and walked towards the windows and the panorama of the dark city beyond Baradeus’s council rooms. “What should we tell people, Tathea? How much? If they hear the truth and turn away from it, their condemnation is far worse than that of anyone who didn’t know. So I ask again, have we helped them or hurt them? Without us they could have claimed innocence. We are responsible either way.”

  “We are responsible for their knowledge, not their choice,” she answered.

  “Don’t be a sophist.” He did not turn from the window. “That’s not an honest argument, and you know that. If we didn’t force them to hear the truth, they wouldn’t have had to make the choice, right or wrong.”

  She leaned a little against the polished tabletop, watching him. “I don’t think it is sophistry. The choice will have to be made. Sooner or later, in this life or after it, everyone will have the truth.” She shook her head. “And if they don’t, isn’t that what the Great Enemy wants—ignorance, to remain forever in the womb?”

  He half twisted from the window, the light on his face again, showing the pain and the confusion in it. “Yes ... yes, I suppose it is. But ...” He stopped again.

  “I know,” she whispered. “It hurts and will go on hurting when those we love choose the other way. I don’t know another answer. Can we have two rules, one for those we love and another for those we don’t? God loves us all.”

  He closed his eyes. “I know! And if we know and don’t speak, then we are taking from others their right to choose; we are making the judgment that they would fail.” He said the words bitterly.

  She wanted to touch him, to hold him in her arms and share his pain. She knew what it was as if she felt it herself. It was a universal grief. It stretched beyond any man or woman up to heaven itself, but there were ways in which each would taste it alone, and she was afraid to trespass. He was thinking of his sister, and she was not part of all that that meant.

  He came back to the table and sat down. “Is it in the Book?” he said at last, looking at her.

  “Is what?”

  “In the army,” he explained, “especially on the frontiers, there are always sentries, men whose job it is to guard the rest of us while we clean weapons, cook, tend the wounded, plan the next attack, whatever else needs doing. We trust them—it is only the trusted men who are chosen.” He regarded her gravely.

  “The watchman,” she answered. “Yes, all peoples have him. Without him we could not eat or sleep or turn our minds to any other thing. And if he fails h
is trust, he is executed, because without him we all perish. I know what you are saying. It is the watchman’s duty to speak the truth. Whether the army then fights or flees has nothing to do with it. He must cry the warning whether he is believed or not.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Then there isn’t any question left ... is there?” she whispered.

  “No.” He sighed and rose to his feet. “We’ve answered it. I’m not sure I like it, but I know it is the truth.” He rested his hand lightly on her arm for a moment, his fingers strong and warm, then he turned to the door, calling good night to the scribes. He did not speak to her again before he left the room, but their understanding was complete.

  Chapter XII

  WHEN RA-NUFIS RETURNED from his second journey to Shinabar, he came straight to see Tathea late in the evening. He looked weary as he came into the quiet room with the warm color in the sharp spring light. Her pleasure in seeing him was great, though she noticed that he seemed older, as if the boy in him had given way to experience. But there was an energy of enthusiasm in his eyes, and he came across the room in swift, easy strides, carrying a package in his hands, carefully, as if it might shatter if he dropped it.

  She felt anticipation like a child. She had had other gifts, of course. Eleni was always generous. But this was from Shinabar, and Ra-Nufis held a place in her emotions which was special and apart, perhaps because in him she saw what Habi could have become.

  He held the package out for her in his slender hands. She took it slowly. It was lighter than she had expected, as if most of it was wrapping. She glanced up at him and saw the eagerness in his face. It was tied with fine twine, and it took moments to undo it. She unfolded the cloth slowly, layer after layer, until her fingers felt the cool, smooth surface of a tiny Shinabari wild tortoise, carved from a single piece of lapis lazuli. It was perfect to the minutest detail and only a little larger than the first joint of her thumb.