Tathea

by Anne Perry

  “Sister,” he said gently. “You are welcome to be among us, but your action here is inappropriate. Return to your place and I will speak with you afterwards.”

  “I am Tathea,” she said clearly and without flinching from his gaze.

  Zulperion faltered. “Tathea?”

  One of the other priests stepped forward and drew breath to speak, but something in her face silenced him.

  “I am Tathea,” she repeated. “It was I who brought the Book from the world before this.” She half turned towards the congregation but continued to address Zulperion. “You have perverted the doctrines of God, perhaps in innocence, but you are preaching untruth. You are promising life without pain.” Her voice rang out, gathering power. “Don’t you know that such a life would also be without learning, which is the whole purpose of mortal life? It would be without terror or pity, humility or the remorse, which teach us to forgive. That is the Great Enemy’s lie, that abstaining from life and risk will end in your being praised for your purity above those who have the courage to love, with all its perils, and who have magnified life!”

  Zulperion made to interrupt her, but she overrode him, her voice passionate with anger. “Yes, you did! You told these people that suffering is unnecessary!” She flung her hand out towards them. “You told them that if they make covenants with God and strive to keep them, then He will remove all afflictions from them. If that were really so, wouldn’t all people of any sense obey God?” she demanded. “It would be madness to do anything less!” She almost laughed. “And we can only pity the mad for their suffering, but they are not accountable. God is their judge, we are only their watchmen and their shepherds.”

  There was total silence among the massed crowd, uncomfortable and embarrassed. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

  “Is it virtue to do that which you know will be rewarded, or is it well-informed self-interest?” Her contempt was scalding. “Do you wish to be loved by someone who does so only as long as you pay him? Is that anything more than purchase?”

  One or two people moved uncomfortably. For the first time there was doubt in their faces, the beginning of uncertainty.

  “There is nothing noble in an equal trade!” she went on. “There is no courage without the knowledge that there may be pain, loss, even death. What is brave in those who know they cannot be hurt?” She glared at Zulperion, then back at the throng. “He has offered you a life without pain. What for? What would you learn? What more would you be at the end than you were at the beginning? There is no pity without the understanding of what it is to suffer. No forgiveness without a knowledge of temptation and frailty, and your own need for pardon. There is no growth without anguish, which must be borne well and without bitterness, self-pity, or anger; there is no love without the ache of loneliness, which must never tire of giving, never surrender to indifference or despair. There can be no victory if there is no battle!”

  There was a slow murmur of amazement from the throng, then a new light in their faces. Not an eye moved from her.

  She lowered her voice. “There is nothing beautiful, no praise of God or love of man written on an empty page. Affliction is not a punishment from God. Most of it we bring upon ourselves, but it is the fire which burns the dross out of our souls.” She leaned forward and her voice became intimate, urgent. Such were the acoustics that even in that vast hall every man, woman, and child heard her. “Do you want to walk with God or with the Enemy?

  “The reward may be long in coming. God does not reap his harvest each day. The seeds you sow now may not ripen until you rise from the dead. That is the requirement of faith, to know that God is, and that He is just. No pain will be lost, no sacrifice unaccepted if it is given in love. The harvest is sure. What you have cast into the ground in love will yield a hundredfold in God’s time.”

  Zulperion made as if to move towards her, then saw the faces of the throng and knew better.

  Tathea spoke gently now, tenderly, as if she were with close and dear friends. “Prove your love of the good because it is good, whether you profit or lose by it. And afterwards will come the glory and the splendor and the everlasting joy. Then your eyes will be clear enough to see God, and your soul large enough to abide His presence and to hold the things He has prepared for you from the beginning.”

  Quietly she stepped back and turned for a moment to look at Zulperion. He was mute, numbed by a confusion so great it clawed his heart. Talons of darkness entered his soul and he saw only his own power slipping away, eroding like sand towers before the tide.

  “We will be ever grateful to you for bringing the Book, Tathea,” he said loudly, so that his voice, suddenly harsh, carried over the murmuring, disturbed crowd, speaking more to them than to her. “But we have moved on since you left. You cannot cling onto power now, and arrogance will not serve.” His confidence began to return. “We have learned more. Ra-Nufis has understood what you did not, which is why you failed. We have seen a greater vision. God is kinder and immeasurably more powerful than the limited being you had supposed.” He smiled with a cold, careful movement of his lips, and Tathea saw the ice in his eyes.

  “You measured God in the likeness of men.” There was derision in him now, even an aping of pity. “You do not mean to blaspheme, nevertheless you do. You are frightening people. Come away from here and we will discuss this in a quieter place.” He put his hand on her arm, and his grasp was so hard it dug into her flesh, bruising her. She tried to protest, but the fingers tightened and she gasped.

  His mirthless smile widened. “Come.” His voice still dripped honey. “Let us conduct the resolution of our differences somewhere more discreet. I’m sure you do not wish to discomfort or confuse these people.”

  It is exactly what she wished to do, but to admit it would destroy her purpose. And his sheer physical power overwhelmed her. Short of screaming for help, which would make her seem hysterical, exactly as he wished, she had no choice but to allow him to lead her from the platform, back down the steps and through the great beaten copper doors. She heard the music swell again as the doors closed behind her.

  He let go of her arm at last. The pain shot through her, and without thinking she clasped it with her other hand.

  “You should have stayed on the Island at the Edge of the World,” he said viciously, the hatred in his face no longer masked. “There is no place for you here. Speak those views again in public and you will be lucky not to be attacked.” It was a naked threat. “We have great happiness now. People know a virtue and believe in hope. I will allow no one to mar that!”

  The door opened and another two priests came in, their faces hard, full of anger and fear. They looked to Zulperion.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  “People are disturbed,” one of them answered. “Some wonder if what she says could be true. Others are angry.”

  Zulperion looked quickly at Tathea, then back again. “Take her out by the back door,” he ordered. “I’ll go and calm the people. There is nothing to worry about. She is confused. I will apologize for her. You know what to do?” His eyes were steady and hard.

  One of them swallowed and nodded, the other looked less certain, glancing unhappily at Tathea, then at Zulperion.

  Zulperion strode through the great doors back into the hall in a swirl of white silk. The doors closed behind him.

  The priests moved to Tathea and took her by the arms, leading her the other way, towards the back of the building.

  “This way. You have upset the people. They find what you have said to be blasphemous. You cannot attack people’s faith like that and promise them pain, you know, and then expect to be liked for it.”

  “I don’t care about being liked!” she said incredulously, half dragged along by them. “I care about speaking the truth! Is that what you want, to be liked?”

  “Love is the greatest power in the universe,” the other replied with ringing certainty.

  Tathea tried to snatch her arm away from him, but hi
s grip was tight and hard, and he was a young man with twice her strength.

  “For pity’s sake!” she spat out. “There is all the difference in creation between love and saying whatever people want to hear so they will like you! You don’t care a whit about those people! You don’t care whether their souls grow or perish! All you want is their adoration in order to feed your own appetites!”

  One of them hit her sharply.

  Suddenly the outer door flew open and two men in street clothes stood there, one carrying a knife, the other a short club.

  The priests stopped abruptly.

  “I won’t kill you,” the man with the knife said very slowly. “But I will certainly hurt you very badly if you do not let the woman go.”

  Both priests stepped back as if burned. Tathea stood frozen.

  “Come!” the man with the knife ordered peremptorily. Then seeing her dismay, he said, “We won’t hurt you, lady. We know what you say is true. We believe the old way.”

  She made up her mind. She moved instantly, and the three of them went out the door and ran along the alley past startled onlookers and into another narrow side street. There were shouts behind them, the sound of running feet. One of the men grasped Tathea by the hand and pulled her faster. They swung round a corner into a small square just as three men entered the side street.

  Tathea and her rescuers crossed to a wooden door. One banged with his knife hilt in a staccato rhythm while the other watched the square behind them.

  “Who are you?” Tathea demanded, gasping to catch her breath, her heart pounding. “Why did you come for me?”

  “Because Zulperion would have had you killed,” the man with the dagger answered. “It would have looked like an accident.” He beat on the door again, more urgently. “I am afraid you have more courage than sense.”

  The door opened and they scrambled inside, closing it sharply behind them. It was a very ordinary house like those of thousands of artisans in the city, with plaster walls washed in pale colors, a tile floor, and plain wooden furniture. The woman who stood in the center of the small room was obviously in the middle of a domestic chore. She regarded Tathea with wary curiosity.

  “Best you don’t know,” the other man warned her. “Safer for you.” He turned to Tathea. “We’ll go out the back way.”

  “Where to?”

  “The leader,” he answered. “We are a resistance to the new perversions of the Book. Come.”

  Tathea followed obediently. Perhaps this was why Alexius had come for her, to begin again. It would be a difficult battle without him, harder, lonelier, but now she understood more of the Enemy than she had before, and more of herself. And she understood also why Nastemah had lured Alexius to his death. It was not just a solitary victory, it was part of the war, more than she had understood until now.

  She was led through a warren of alleys and passages in the old part of the city, built before the days of the emperors, and at last down a flight of steps into an underground room. The door closed behind her.

  There was one man inside. He was slender and dark with a poet’s face, and yet there were lines of courage and endurance in it, and wisdom in his eyes greater than dreams.

  “I am Sanobiel,” he said with a smile, a little uncertain, as if he knew who she was and it touched him with awe, “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I wish you had not returned to this. You should not have spoken so openly. Did Alexius not warn you? Where is he?”

  There was something familiar in his voice, and for an instant she remembered music, glory and terror, and moonlight over the ice. Then it was gone, and she was alone in the room with a man she had only just met.

  “He died on the island,” she answered. “It happened before he told me about this.” She saw the shock and grief in Sanobiel. “He died well,” she said gently. “He faced an emissary of the Great Enemy and beat him. It cost him his life, but he won certainty of the soul. If you had seen his face afterwards you would know that as I do.”

  “I’m glad.” But his voice was thick with pain. “And you?” He looked at her closely, searching her eyes.

  “I have learned many things which I must share with you,” she answered. “I have seen what happened at the center of time, and I know that at last it will all be well. Any victory of the Enemy’s is only for a short time. Individuals may fall, but the world will not.”

  Sanobiel sat down on one of the wooden seats and offered her the only one with cushions on it. He poured wine from an earthen goblet and unwrapped a loaf of bread. “Tell me, please.”

  For hours she told him of her years in Shinabar, not the physical truth but the spiritual, her knowledge of Tiyo-Mah and the dwarf Azrub, of Arimaspis’s death, and then of Tugomir. She remembered almost word for word Iszamber’s prophecy. She told him of the Island at the Edge of the World, describing its wild beauty, at once gentle and terrible. She made him laugh at Tugomir’s hatred of the forest, then weep for his failure, and for Merdic and the Lost Legion.

  She recounted something of Yaltabaoth and of Menath-Dur, and their victory and the building of the fortress on the western shore, and how the women had come, and of Tugomir’s triumph in the end. And she told him of her vision of the beginning of time and the woman in the garden, her choice of the man who faced hell and whose love was stronger than darkness, then of the terror and the glory when time should end and eternity begin.

  Sanobiel told her in return of his crossing to Camassia in search of truth and his discovery of the Book, touching only lightly and by omission on the cost it had been to him. His love for the Book had brought him courage and disaster, and leadership of the resistance against the new apostasy.

  “Tell me of Ra-Nufis,” she asked. She was deliberately walking into pain, but she thought now that she was strong enough to face it; she must face it.

  His face shadowed. “We watched it,” he said slowly, seeking for the words. “We saw it happen, without recognizing what it was.”

  He looked at Tathea to see if she could understand and believe what he said. “When he first came back from Shinabar with the Book and told us what had happened, we were devastated that the whole nation had been offered such light and had turned away.” He frowned. “It was difficult to believe, but as he recounted it detail by detail, we realized how it could be so. There will always be those who will not accept the Word and the changes it must bring. And the more there are of them, the easier it is for them to blind themselves to the good.” He gave a wry little smile. “I can see it far more plainly now than when he told us. And of course he had the Book. It was returned to us, and that was a joy. We had a sort of revolutionary zeal then, as if we could redouble our efforts. We thought we could be the light of the world.”

  “He did not tell you of Azrub and the stoning of Arimaspis?” she asked with surprise.

  Sanobiel bit his lip. “He told us you had been driven out by a great evil, and that the High Priest Tugomir had been at the head of it and something terrible had happened in the streets, but accounts were garbled and he did not know the truth of it.”

  There was nothing for her to say.

  “We grieved for you,” Sanobiel went on. “I especially, but in my heart I believed that God would preserve you, even if we had no idea where you were. It was only a month or two ago that word came that you were still on the Island at the Edge of the World. We had heard earlier that you had been there but had left—some said to the Lost Lands again.”

  “I was always on the island, but I went north. Tell me more about Ra-Nufis.”

  He stared downwards. “We redoubled our preaching under Ra-Nufis’s leadership. Of course there were more converts all the time, but some found certain laws hard to keep, the austerity of it was less appealing than the old ceremonies, so Ra-Nufis introduced a little of the pomp.” His lip puckered, and his voice dropped a little. “It seemed harmless then, an outward manifestation of the inward beauty which he so loved. The abacus was introduced as a symbol of the exactness of the law.
” He looked up quickly. “That’s a nice touch of irony, isn’t it? And the wheel symbolized eternity. We started carrying tapers of light. They liked that. It happened so slowly we didn’t even see it at the time, like a glacier creeping.”

  “A what?”

  “A glacier.” He frowned as he said it. “A river of ice that moves only inches in a whole season. They have them in the far north, so I hear.” He looked puzzled. “I don’t know why I thought of that, except it was a slow, terrible coldness, a kind of death, though it had an outward semblance of beauty. That’s what it was, I think, in Ra-Nufis’s mind, an outward beauty to win more people over, a relaxing of laws an inch at a time so as not to drive people away because the discipline was hard for them.”

  She could see it with a hideous clarity. It was so easy to do, and could seem like kindness, even love.

  “And it did grow,” he went on. “He was very skilled. He even wooed Barsymet with flattery and deference to her opinion. He made her important again, and she loves it.” He sighed and shifted his position in the chair. “Through her he won many of the old noble families, even those of the Archons. It has become perfectly respectable now, even among them, to be a believer of the Light. Only a few like Maximian still will not yield.

  “People flooded in, whole towns at a time. The beauty and the promises drew them. It is hard to understand the Book, and they want something immediate.” He looked at her intently. “So Ra-Nufis began to appoint special priests to explain it to the people. Within a year they became a profession. They interpreted the Book. They saved people the labor of studying for themselves. They could go to meetings once every six days and be told what to think and what to believe.” He bit his lip, a terrible weariness in his voice, as if he had seen something old and very ugly. “They wanted quick answers, not the miracles which come after faith, but the magic which comes before, answers unrelated to keeping commandments and seeking God with a whole heart.”

  She nodded but did not interrupt. The candle flickered on the table. She was barely aware of it.