Tathea

by Anne Perry

  “Nonsense, you old sod!” Mynoth snapped. “It is Tathea, the Shinabari!”

  “It is Lady Eleni, the Emperor’s aunt!” a young woman said with withering contempt. “She lived here because she believed in the old way. She is no more Shinabari than I am!”

  Mynoth felt the coldness wash over him, filling his body and dragging him down, drowning him.

  The crowd moved closer, angry and unforgiving. This time the priests had gone too far. They had ceased to be merely part of the general oppression of life and become acutely, personally responsible for a violation in their midst. They knew Eleni. They knew she had not fought these men. She had lived here. She had talked to them and laughed at their jokes, played with their children. Above all, she had healed their sick. Her death was a trespass which stirred a deep, primal anger in them; they would not back away, and they could not forgive.

  Mynoth held up his dagger warningly.

  They looked at him with cold disgust.

  “Want to murder some more of us, do you, priest?” one old woman said scathingly. “Now we see what you really are!”

  “Tell Zulperion to go back to his master the devil!” a man in gray shouted. “We want none of him here!”

  His cry was echoed in the crowd till the noise grew to a roar, and Mynoth and the priests dropped Eleni’s body and fled.

  Tathea heard what had happened as she was returning from delivering the latest copies of the Book. The crowds in the streets were still clustered in groups, talking. They fell silent as she approached. It was a very young woman with a child who told her, tears still wet on her face.

  “Zulperion’s men came for you. They took Lady Eleni.” She swallowed, and her eyes brimmed over. She was not ashamed to weep. “She let them think she was you. They murdered her. She didn’t resist them, but they murdered her anyway. I think they always meant to.” She was very pale, and there was fear in her voice. “You can’t go back there or they’ll get you too. I have an uncle with a house near the arena where they train the horses. My brother will take you. Go now! And God speed!”

  Tathea stood still in the shadowed alley, sick at heart. She should have foreseen this, and yet it caught her with numbing shock. These past months Eleni had been her sister and her friend. Now she had died to save her. She knew that absolutely. It came from some memory within her, of sunlight on golden stone—steps, bright water, another betrayal, and another sacrifice.

  “Go!” the woman repeated urgently, her voice growing louder. “I’ll tell Sanobiel where you are, and Saspia and Timmaron. Run, while you can!”

  Tathea turned and obeyed, her feet stumbling, her eyes blind with tears.

  News of Eleni’s death spread through the city and was carried by word of mouth to other cities, and with surprising rapidity even into the provinces. There was no softening of the truth. She had gone unresistingly, a quiet woman with gray in her hair and peace in her eyes who had taught the word of God and healed the sick ... and she had been murdered by the priests of Zulperion. It was the beginning of the end of his power. In order to preserve his own, Ra-Nufis charged him with instigating the crime. Zulperion took his own life before he could be tried. Mynoth claimed he was merely following orders and was executed anyway. Ra-Nufis felt it was safer to show no leniency, and he did not want Mynoth left alive anyway. His tongue was too ready to excuse himself at his master’s expense.

  The Emperor Tiberian was not satisfied, but he was powerless to take matters further. Ra-Nufis had expressed horror and grief and separated himself from the act. The people wanted reassurance and he gave it to them. “All is well,” he told them. “We had one rogue and he has been dealt with—he has paid the price. The illness of the soul is past. Now all is as it was before. Go your ways in peace.”

  But in Ra-Nufis’s heart there was anything but peace. Measures were needed to stop this from happening again. Priests must be chosen with greater care and trained to exercise more authority over the people.

  “From now on there will be no discussion of doctrine,” he told the Light Bearers as they sat before him, gowned in white, edges embroidered in gold and blood-red. “The people must be protected from confusion and deception. They are children in spirit, and it is our charge to lead them along the paths of righteousness. In eternity they will thank us and bless our names that we have kept their feet from straying.” Ra-Nufis gazed at the eager, upturned faces before him.

  “Preserve their innocence before heaven. Command them, teach them in all things, step by step,” he preached. “Cut out all contention and dispute as if it were a rotting limb. Remind them of the briefness of their lives. Tell them the hope of eternity is all, that their body of flesh is worthless, a temporary house of dust, here today and tomorrow consigned to the earth again. Innocence and obedience will give them a body which will be immortal. They shall inherit everlasting peace.”

  His voice reverberated around the walls and not a soul looked away from him.

  “Go now, and be shepherds to your people,” he commanded. “Never use violence of the hand! It is not necessary. You have all the power you need in the teachings of the Book. You know the secrets of salvation, and they do not. You have the knowledge of miracles and, above all, I am behind you, and I have the great Book which Tathea brought from God. She could have been where I stand, but she lost the Book through sin. Thus God gave it to me. If anyone dares question you, tell them that.” He held it up before them, shining gold and warm in the light. There was a sigh of breath around the hall, and hearts beat faster, dizzy with wonder.

  Then he took the Book and locked it in a mighty room with guards posted at the door, so no one but he should ever touch it. It was the ultimate symbol of power, greater than any laurel or crown because it was the pathway to heaven. It could not be shared with anyone.

  Chapter XXII

  NOT VERY LONG AFTER this, as the season turned, Saspia came to Tathea in the narrow stable where she now lived. Her face was anxious.

  Tathea looked up from her copying. Her fingers were stained with ink; there were straws in her hair and her clothes, prickling through the coarse-woven linen. The candle flickered in the breeze from the door. The smell of horses was sharp and warm in the air.

  “The Archon Maximian wants to speak to you,” Saspia said in a hushed voice.

  Tathea felt a sharp stab of fear. “Where?”

  “Not here,” Saspia answered quickly. “He does not know any of us, even if he may suspect one or two. He has simply said so, discreetly. One of those to whom he spoke is a member.” A tiny flash of wry humor touched her eyes, although it frightened her also that Maximian should guess so rightly. “He will know to be more careful from now on, or go underground.” She shrugged slightly. “Timmaron thinks there are probably about five or six thousand people now who have left their homes and disappeared in hiding because they are followers of the true Book. The poor quarters are teeming with them. Do you want to see the Archon Maximian? We can find a safe place, if you do.”

  Tathea hesitated. What could Maximian want? He had believed the Book was an evil teaching even in Isadorus’s time. How infinitely worse he must think it now. Would he come as a representative of the Hall of Archons to ask her to withdraw her teachings, for the sake of peace?

  She could not do that. She could not leave Ra-Nufis unchallenged to spread his great apostasy throughout the world. As long as she lived, she would defend the truth.

  Saspia was waiting, watching her.

  Maximian as she had known him in the past was a man of strict honor. He had an unshakable love of the old, austere ways of Camassia before the emperors—stoic, self-reliant, brave, kind but unforgiving.

  “Yes, I’ll see him,” she answered.

  Saspia smiled, then turned and went out.

  They met in the fish market in the old quarter down by the docks. It was noisy, salt-smelling, the sharp wind blew cold off the water. People came and went. Since her return from the island, Tathea had made her home here among thos
e who labored all the daylight hours and were still poor. She felt safe here, as much as she could anywhere. She might hide from men, but the Great Enemy would always know where she was, and his emissaries would find her if they wished.

  Maximian came alone, dressed like a merchant, not an Archon. There were no purple borders to his robes.

  He looked much older than when she had seen him last; his face was deeply lined and his hair almost white, but he still walked with a straight back and a graceful step. It was grief which had marked his face, not age or illness. The decline of his country from its old stoicism into self-indulgence had hurt him deeply.

  He looked at her with a slight smile. She realized how much she too had changed. The last time he had seen her she had been dressed in scarlet beneath her armor, ready to sail for Shinabar and take the throne of the Isarchs. Now she must look like any of the other women who gutted fish on the wharf. And there was white in her hair too.

  “I would not have known you but for your eyes and the way you hold your head,” he said ruefully. He did not use her name, and perhaps that was wise.

  “Much has happened,” she replied, smiling back. “Through all the world.”

  “I only know about Camassia.” He moved closer to her. He wanted them to seem like a merchant and a fishwife bargaining. A flash of sympathy crossed his face. “I am sorry about Shinabar ...”

  “Don’t be.” She bit her lip. “I thought it was failure at the time, but I know better now.”

  He was surprised, curious. His brows puckered. “If this is not failure, for both of us, then what would be?”

  “To join with Ra-Nufis,” she answered him. “To cease to fight for what is good. I know your perception of that differs from mine, but we can only seek what we believe the truth to be, and then fight to preserve it, to carry it high and show it to all who will see.”

  He smiled. For all his austerity, there was a softness in his face, a great kindness. His eyes never wavered. It was not hard to know why Xanthica loved him, only tragic that she had placed him before God and would thus lose them both.

  “You haven’t changed much, have you?” he observed. “Yes, my truth is still different from yours. But your Book was a beautiful thing compared with this mystical blasphemy we have now.” His mouth pinched. “Ritual is everything—music and tapers of light, incense that dulls the mind, chanting until the wits are half alive, willing to believe anything they are told, with no understanding of sin.”

  Two women passed by, arguing vociferously.

  “The priests have become wizards,” Maximian continued grimly, “able to grant all kinds of dreams regardless of virtue or vice. Innocence and ignorance are held to be the same. The priests get more power every day, and the love of it corrupts their souls.”

  “I know,” she said bitterly. “I had hoped the evil of it would be so apparent that people would turn away.”

  He laughed abruptly. “Ever an optimist!” He shivered although the wind was not cold. “Some do, but far too many love it. The velvet of sin is easy compared to the hard reality you teach.”

  A flock of gulls swooped low, their cries filling the air. A man waved his arms at them and they ignored him, diving for the fish heads.

  “Strangely, in the perversion of it, I can see something of the virtue of what you teach.” Maximian’s voice was soft with regret. “But that is not why I have come.”

  “Why have you?” she asked.

  He hesitated, looking beyond her to the light on the waves. “Is the Book really of God? I don’t mean the words in it, I mean the Book itself. Or is it man-made, the dictation of some spirit?”

  “The Book itself is of God,” she answered. “I did not write it or craft it. I journeyed in some world beyond this. I remember only moments of it, like a dream revisited, but the Book was in the skiff with me when I touched the shore.” She did not press him why he asked, she knew he would tell her when he found the words and was ready to say them.

  A bird swooped and took the entrails of a fish from the wooden boards of the wharf, then it soared up on the wind, away over the blue water.

  “Ra-Nufis has made it the symbol of his power,” Maximian said. “It is more than a scepter or a crown.”

  She took his arm and began to walk along the quayside. They must not seem different from the other people working, arguing, haggling over prices. No one had time to stand long in conversation.

  “If it is truly what you say,” Maximian went on, “then it does not belong to him. It belongs to everyone, or no one. Without it he will fall—by his own words.”

  “Will he?” She was not sure, but even as she questioned it, the doubts were shredding like mist before the sun.

  “Yes.” He turned to her, his gaze steady. “I see more of it than you do, now. It is a long time since you have been at court, or in the Hall of Archons.”

  “The Book is locked away,” she replied softly, waiting for his next words.

  “I know,” he answered. They were close to the sea wall. The tide slurped noisily under the stones. “But not in his own palace,” he pointed out. “That would be impolitic, and he has learned from Zulperion’s downfall. It is in a special vault in the Imperial Palace, with its own entrance. It is very magnificent, and very secure. It used to be the place where Baradeus met his generals. I know it well, and I know the old entryway. After that we would have to overpower the guards who are there night and day.” Without even giving it words, he had assumed she understood his intent.

  It was a momentous thought: take the Book back. But not for her own power, not to challenge Ra-Nufis. That would only precipitate civil war and turn the oppressed into oppressors. It was time to end this dispensation of knowledge. The world was not ready for the great truths; only the lesser commands could survive, the laws that were innate in men of good will, of charity, and honor everywhere. She must take the Book back to the Lost Lands, where it would be safe from the lusts of power until this madness was forgotten and a new generation arose who could begin again.

  As soon as the idea had formed in her mind she felt the certainty that it was right. She had no need to hesitate, to ask for time to go away and think more deeply, or to pray. If the Book remained here, in their hands, they would destroy themselves with its power.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “If you are offering to help me take back the Book and return it to the Lost Lands, then I accept.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You will take it from here?”

  “I will.”

  He did not ask her to swear it. Implicit in his coming to her was the understanding that she would not keep it in Camassia.

  “Then we must plan,” he said very quietly. “It will require the greatest care. You must tell no one except those who have to know, and then as little as possible.”

  She agreed. She did not mention the Great Enemy. Maximian did not believe in him. “I will have to make plans to leave the city.”

  “Have someone else hire a ship for you,” he urged. “Trust no one you do not have to. We are all fallible.”

  She sighed very slightly. “I won’t. Meet me here in three days.”

  “Two,” Maximian insisted. “I have my reasons.”

  “Two,” she agreed.

  He nodded briefly, half smiled, then turned and left, swallowed up almost immediately by the crowd of merchants heading towards the square.

  She sat in the small room where they copied the Book, only Sanobiel, Saspia, and Timmaron with her. A single candle was lit against the gathering dusk, its yellow light illuminating their tense faces.

  “Back to the Lost Lands?” Saspia said quietly. “Yes, perhaps that is best. What a terrible thing for the world. We have been offered the light, and we will not accept it.”

  “We must be practical.” Timmaron leaned forward. “How will you do it? Do you really trust this Archon Maximian?”

  “Yes,” Tathea answered without hesitation. “Better you know as little as possible. Your task is to warn all the
other cell leaders so everyone understands what has happened. Ra-Nufis’s retribution will be terrible.”

  Sanobiel frowned. “Without the Book, his power to govern will be diminished. He may even be too busy with his own priests to bother with us.”

  Saspia laughed abruptly, and her face showed all too clearly what she thought of that hope.

  “Warn everyone,” Tathea said urgently, looking from Saspia to Timmaron and back again. “Give no reason. Speak only to those you trust absolutely, and say no more than that they must go further into the ancient quarters and become invisible. Trust no one, however close, however honorable you think them, unless they are proven believers whose lives would be forfeit also. Break all the chains of command, so no one can trace back, no one can betray even accidentally.”

  Timmaron was very pale. He sat motionless, his shoulders hunched. He was not yet twenty. “It is war, isn’t it?” he said softly.

  “Yes,” Sanobiel answered. “And some will die, but we must save all we can.” His voice cracked a little. “We shall not see each other again after tonight.”

  Timmaron looked as if he had been struck. Suddenly it was real. The secrecy, the whisper of danger, even of torture and death, in the end it all came down to one truth, a final parting. He took a deep, shaky breath, and looked at Saspia.

  She smiled at him and put her hand on his shoulder. “We shall get word to everyone,” she promised. “There will be no carelessness, no thoughtless trust.”

  Timmaron forced himself to smile. “That’s right. We’ll do it.”

  They said no good-byes, just wished each other God’s speed, then turned and parted as if it were just as always and they would meet again at the end of the day. There was no time for tears.

  Tathea left the little cat with Saspia. She took with her only the blue silk cloak from the Lost Lands. She and Sanobiel set out just after sunset, dressed darkly and with daggers concealed. They met Maximian under the cypresses near the palace. He had four men of the old Imperial Guard of Isadorus’s time with him. No one spoke. Maximian led the way under the trees towards the huge outline of the palace buildings and Baradeus’s old battle headquarters where the Book was now housed.