by Anne Perry
Tiyo-Mah had exceeded his best hopes. He would let her be, for the moment. Camassia was more ripe for the plucking than he had supposed, and her strategy had been superb. For an instant he had feared Tathea would foil her, but he should not have doubted. Tiyo-Mah knew the stakes she was playing for. She would not allow Tathea to forewarn or forearm a perfect tool like Justinus.
Flattery, ridicule, fear: they were the supreme weapons, broad enough to ruin a population, and sharp enough to wound the most subtle and complicated soul.
It was working magnificently. All through Camassia people were denying old principles of tolerance and freedom they had held for generations. The violence had begun already, and it would progress. In a few months it would be so common it would no longer occasion surprise. Retaliation perhaps? But that was good. The lust for revenge was perfect!
And there was anger, which, like fear, was the enemy of judgement.
Everywhere truth was being suppressed or denied in the name of the common good. And better still, it was being done in the name of patriotism. Convince a man that his act is for “us” against “them,” and you can make him do anything at all. Soon there would be enough lies seeping into the heart like a black ooze that Azrub would be able to function; that was the next step. And then after him each of the other Lords of Sin could come into the world, as it was ripe for them.
When the war escalated and the soldiers panicked enough, forgot their training, forgot what cause they were fighting for and remembered only that they must kill or be killed, then Cassiodorus could enter the fray, and spread the blind, scarlet terror everywhere, until madness reigned.
But it was a long way from dark enough yet for Yaltabaoth. Men were still fighting, still believing in victory. There might be lies, hatred, fear, corruption, greed, but no vast stretches of the paralysing darkness of despair, the end of all light and life, the death from which there was no return.
But Asmodeus did not want even to think of that. Keep Yaltabaoth out—for ever, if possible. Win without him.
A tiny flicker of panic inside him stilled and disappeared. This was not the way he had intended Armageddon to come about, but it would work well enough. There was no question of forgiving Tiyo-Mah or those who had followed her. No one should ever be forgiven for anything. But they had done well ... in all respects. He was pleased. That beautiful blue orb in the sky was almost within his grasp, and getting closer every day. All he needed to do was watch Ulciber and Tiyo-Mah, and prepare for the next move.
Tathea and Ishrafeli worked to influence people, to weigh and judge who might be willing to risk their lives in the growing danger and oppression in the City. News came from Ythiel in the Island that all was well. The Islanders were preparing the defences both physical and spiritual. They were keeping trade routes open to the Sea Isles and other maritime cities, and war ships were at the ready, should they be needed. Rumours had come out of Tirilis, that most secretive country which guarded the world’s treasuries, which lent and borrowed, and grew rich on other nations’ trade. Loans had been withdrawn from some, and offered to others who were new and unknown, especially one named Accolon, whose face was so hideously disfigured he wore a mask out of consideration for the susceptibilities of others. The trade in money itself was gaining pace. Fortunes were being made and lost, without labour. It was no longer the lending of capital so business might flourish, it was becoming the art of gambling, so one man’s greater foresight, or luck, could ruin another.
“One of the Lords of the Undead,” Ishrafeli said grimly. “Ulciber’s disciple, by the sound of him.”
“We can’t go,” Tathea replied with a frown of anxiety. “The corruption is even greater here, but we are beginning to find people who will fight.” She breathed out slowly, staring at the light on the trees. “Why can’t we find our sixth warrior? What are we failing to do? Are we looking in the wrong places? Or is he here, and we just don’t recognise him?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We must fast and pray more deeply. Have you prayed for that?”
“No,” she confessed, touched with shame for her omission.
“Nor I,” he said wryly. “But in the meantime we should send someone to Tirilis. There is no word of Sardriel.” His face was light, his eyes downcast. “I shall write to Ardesir. We have enough news from Shinabar, and there is little enough he can do there against Tiyo-Mah now.”
“Good. The caravan masters will carry letters. They can find people, even in Thoth-Moara. Send two copies, one to Tarra-Ghum also.”
“I will. But it is time we took more risks here too. We have been careful long enough. We must strike back. Tomorrow I am going to speak to Merkator.”
Tathea had known it would come, and yet it still knotted inside her now that the moment was here. Merkator was the Archon she had seen and respected before. Now he had formed a small group in the heart of the City who did what they could to help those in trouble who came to them. Because of his family and his history in the Hall of Archons, he was trusted as no newcomer could be, and he had resources of wealth and wide respect to draw on.
“Yes, I suppose it’s time,” she agreed aloud. “But I ...” She stopped. A glance from him warned her and she smiled instead, feeling the blush warm on her cheek. “I know!”
He said nothing, but all the arguments and their answers were in his face.
The place where Merkator had set up his quarters was a large tenement in the heart of the City, a massive stone building, now long fallen into disuse which had once formed housing for athletes who had entertained the crowds in the days of the Emperor Tiberian. The huge granite blocks were chipped, the plaster inside cracked across, but the concept still held echoes of the old magnificence. The baths underneath were fed from the City’s cisterns. Fires no longer heated them, but the steam had left patches on the frescos, and the marble pillars were marked with ancient lichens from long-forgotten pools.
Now Merkator met people who were frightened, dispossessed, ill or desperate, and offered what help he could. He greeted Ishrafeli with a patient attempt to cover his own weariness.
“What has happened to you?” he asked with puzzlement. He regarded the figure in front of him, so unlike his usual petitioner.
Ishrafeli smiled, not comfortably or easily, but with wry knowledge of what he was going to ask. He had observed Merkator for weeks, and believed he understood him.
“What has happened to me? I have realised something at least of the magnitude of the war we are fighting,” he replied. “I am looking for allies.” He saw the flash of humour in Merkator’s eyes, and also the fear. He relaxed the way he stood, leaning a little against one of the pillars, and dropping his voice so low it was barely audible. “One old woman from Shinabar has changed the way a whole city thinks, and in a while it will be the nation. She has created for us an enemy that terrifies the sense out of people, and when they become hysterical enough, offered them a way of escape. We shouldn’t be surprised that they accept it.”
Merkator stared up at him. “Oppression, censorship, corruption of the law! We have become our own enemy! What’s the matter with us?” He too spoke softly, but the walls gave back the whispering sound.
“We have looked to ourselves for so long that we have no moral core except what we have created of our own,” Ishrafeli replied. “We were given the word of God, but we took out the bits we didn’t like. We wanted an easier message, and in removing the labour and the price, we also removed the reward. That left us with something meaningless, and gradually we ceased to believe in it. And that is hardly surprising, since it is an echo of our own voices, and not the truth.”
He shifted his position slightly. Above him rainwater dripped on marble.
“Our heads may believe it,” he went on. “Because it says what we think we would like, but our hearts know it is lies. It serves well enough in times of prosperity, and even in times of some national hardship, but when the real enemy is at the door, it’s shown for the sham it is, and we
are left naked.”
Merkator looked at him very steadily, his brow puckered. “You believe that, don’t you!” It was a statement. “But nobody has read the Book of God in over five hundred years—or longer.”
“Not here,” Ishrafeli agreed. “But in the Island at the Edge of the World we have.” He saw Merkator’s start of surprise and the struggle in his eyes as he wanted to believe. He bit back the words. He must not say too much yet. “All I want so far is to help you here, and my wife is wise in the law. She will help the persecuted fight their cases and perhaps obtain some justice. It would be a beginning which would grow, others would see, and gain hope. In time more centres would arise.”
Merkator’s face reflected too many defeats. There was a tiredness in him that marked the lines deep and hollowed out the flesh around his eyes. “Have you seen Balour? He has replaced the Emperor in everything that matters. Sometimes I think even Justinus is afraid of him.”
“Yes, I’ve seen him,” Ishrafeli replied, recalling with a shudder the bony, misshapen body, the narrow shoulders and rodent face of the creature who had come as Tiyo-Mah’s lieutenant and seemed now to govern in the Emperor’s place. Even if his physical malformation, the pustulant skin, narrow eyes and twitching clawlike hands had not identified him as one of the Lords of the Undead, his almost omnipotent knowledge and his endless cruelty would have done.
Merkator could not keep the fear from his eyes. “It is a dangerous thing to do,” he warned. “I would not have my wife do it. She will be risking her life.” There was warning in his voice but no blame, and Ishrafeli realised Merkator thought he was speaking to innocence, not knowledge greater than his own.
“I know,” Ishrafeli answered. “Would you step back from the battle?”
Merkator hesitated only a moment. “No ... but—”
“Would you deny it to anyone you believed as equal?”
“No. I couldn’t. But someone I loved ...” A sudden gentleness ironed some of the weariness from his face. “My wife ...”
“You would protect her from being the best she can?” Ishrafeli pressed. “For whom? Her—or yourself?”
“Myself,” Merkator admitted. “You are a hard man!” he added ruefully.
“It is the final war—the last chance to be who you want to.”
Merkator stood up and his robes fell straight, showing the marks of the mould he had touched. “Then you’d better bring your wife to fight our battles in the courts. God knows, there are new ones set up every week to handle the number of cases. People are being charged with one form of treason or another every day. What is her name?”
“Tathea.”
Merkator’s eyes widened. “Shinabari?” He said the word with wariness, close to dislike.
“It’s a Shinabari name, but we come from the Island at the Edge of the World,” Ishrafeli replied. “She knows Camassian law, and is prepared to defend anyone who needs and wishes it.”
Merkator breathed out. “I’m sorry. Of course. I am glad of all help, especially if it is skilled.”
Ishrafeli soon met Merkator’s wife, Belida, and understood why he would have shielded her were he able. She was intelligent, imaginative, quick to sense danger, more for him than for herself. Could she have remained apart from the struggle she would never have understood what perils they all faced. As Ishrafeli watched her slender form moving from one sick or injured person to another, strong, thin hands always cleaning, binding, stitching a wound, measuring a dose, crushing leaves or powders, he too would have protected her had it been possible. At least he would have sheltered her from the knowledge of what Merkator was doing forming a resistance to Balour, and how already his name was known.
Tathea began her task immediately. As soon as someone was arrested for any form of treason and she heard word of it, she presented herself at the courts and offered her skills to plead for them. She rose early in the morning and sat up late at night, papers spread all over the table in the candlelight, studying the laws Balour had passed and the Hall of Archons had ratified.
She pleaded, argued, ridiculed and quoted laws old and new. She reminded judges and onlookers of their history as a great Empire, a people who created just laws and lived by them, to the envy, and the mastery, of the world. She obtained release for many, mitigation of sentence for even more. But immeasurably more important than that, she created hope that the oppression could be fought against and beaten. She reminded people of who they were, of the self-respect they would forfeit if they yielded to the panic around them and joined a denial of the heritage that had formed the best in them.
Ishrafeli knew the danger to herself that she provoked, and many nights he lay awake beside her, fear fluttering and twisting inside him, not for her death, because he believed Asmodeus had no power to kill her, but for the pain she would endure, perhaps the imprisonment, the torture of her mind. But his own words to Merkator haunted him, and he knew he could not prevent her, nor should he try. Sometimes it is harder to suffer for others than for oneself.
He chose a different battlefield. To fight the courts of the law was of the utmost importance. The suffering the law caused was acute, and the eternal change to the soul of those who enforced it was greater. If the time came when the ordinary people ceased to believe in the law to the degree that they no longer paid even lip service to it, then anarchy would take its place and the City would revert to the chaos of the Pit. And surely that was what Balour was here to do?
But another product of the fear that hung over the City like smoke over a forest fire was intolerance of the weaker, the slower, those who were different from the ordinary—uglier or in some way maimed or incomplete. They were seen as hampering the war effort, a drain on the food and housing resources of the nation and contributing nothing but a lessening of the strength for the battle which every day’s news bulletin brought closer.
Ishrafeli chose to work with those people. He walked the dark alleys and the crumbling tenements where they had taken refuge. He moved slowly, carefully, and it was nearly a month before he won his first sure recruit.
He was in a small square, high blind houses surrounding it, the guttering broken and the walls stained with the overflow. The well was rusted and piles of refuse stood uncollected, sagging against the stone posts which had originally supported a seat, long since rotted and fallen away.
A blind woman with brown hair shuffled towards the well, carrying a leather bucket. Ishrafeli went to help her as she fumbled for the handle, but she knew he was a stranger. He smelled of clean linen and soap. He carried no familiarity of the seeping damp and the refuse around the narrow streets, and it frightened her. She lashed out and lost her balance, stumbling backwards and landing awkwardly. The bucket smashed and she screamed with fear and pain.
Suddenly other people were there, coming out of shadows, doorways, from beneath arches half crumbled. A thin man with a crooked shoulder and lame leg, scrambled across the cobbles to the woman and tried to lift her, but she was too heavy for his one good arm.
Ishrafeli backed away, knowing he was frightening them.
A man with a fearful stutter tried to say something and his anxiety only made him worse. Two bare-footed children looked on with wide eyes. One of them stifled a cry which turned into a giggle, then hid her face, embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” Ishrafeli apologised, first to the woman, then to the man with the crooked shoulder, still trying ineffectively to lift her. “I meant you no harm.”
“Fool!” the woman spat at him.
“No call for that,” the man said to her, but his tone was chiding rather than angry. “Can’t help being clumsy. No one can. Got to take folk as you find them. Lean on me a bit—no, this side!” He looked up at Ishrafeli. “You take her that side, if you don’t mind.”
With a wave of relief, Ishrafeli leaned forward and put his hand under her elbow and she allowed him to raise her to her feet.
The man with the crooked shoulder was called Severinus. His whole left side a
ppeared to have been misshapen from birth.
“I’ll mend the bucket,” Ishrafeli offered.
The blind woman grunted. It was neither acceptance nor refusal.
Severinus nodded. “That’s fair, seeing it was you who caused it to be broken.” He regarded Ishrafeli dubiously, particularly his hands, clean and uncallused. “Can you do it?” he asked doubtfully.
Ishrafeli took it as an offer of help. “Thank you.”
It took him nearly three hours of cutting, plugging and gluing. He was not good at it, and his attempts occasioned much amusement, but finally the job was functional, if far from aesthetically pleasing. Severinus refused to praise it, but his smile was wide, broken-toothed, and full of good humour. There was respect for kindness in it, if not for skill. The blind woman took it back, feeling all around it with her hands to make sure it was satisfactory.
“No water in it!” she challenged him at the end of her inspection, but then she too smiled, her sightless eyes turned towards the sound of his voice.
Everyone laughed, and watched while Ishrafeli picked it up and took it back to the well. They applauded when he returned with it, full to the top and gently slopping over.
Ishrafeli discovered in Severinus a compassion more whole than in many a man whose body served him far better. The blind woman, Callia, was quick-tempered and apt to be flustered when out of familiar surroundings, but she knew a wealth of stories and would entertain children by the hour, never tiring of repeating a tale, especially the parts that made people laugh or cry, or squeal with delight.
The circle grew wider, the outcast and the incomplete bonding together to help first each other, then those whose minds or bodies might appear to be immeasurably superior, but in whom fear drove out compassion, confusion clouded honesty, and old loves and loyalties eroded the courage to stand alone or work against the tide.
As Tathea succeeded in defying the arbitrary arrests, the laws were changed, tightened, and more courts were instituted. Balour called the Hall of Archons and proposed a new measure.