The High Priest and the Idol

by Jane Fletcher

  “We need to destroy the idol,” someone behind Jemeryl said. She turned her head, but not in time to identify the speaker.

  “Yes. Obviously.” Alendy’s voice held a note of exasperation. “The problem is Ciamon placed magical defences on it, and we don’t know what these are. But Ciamon asserted that they’re very potent.”

  “In his dreams.” This time the speaker was an elderly sorcerer, named Weilan, who was sat on the front row. He had followed Jemeryl’s report intently, with an expression of scepticism bordering on incredulity, although he had not spoken before.

  “Ciamon was sure we wouldn’t be able to overcome them,” Jemeryl said.

  “Given that Ciamon couldn’t put out a candle except by blowing at it, I wouldn’t get too worried over what he thought was possible. Believe me, I knew the man, and I know what he was capable of. It didn’t amount to much.”

  “Yes, of course, Weilan. He was your assistant for a while, wasn’t he?” Alendy’s tone had perked up.

  “Supposedly. I mean, he was assigned to me, but the only thing he was any good at was sweeping the floor. We have janitors to do that. I expect more from a sorcerer.”

  “If I remember correctly, protective shields have been a special interest to you. Were you working on them when Ciamon was with you?”

  “Yes. I’d almost like to think he has put some serious defences on the idol, because that might mean he’d paid attention to me rather than floating around in a daze, which was all he ever seemed to do.”

  While not completely unfounded, Jemeryl felt the criticism underestimated Ciamon’s talent. “He wasn’t incapable.”

  “True. That was the annoying bit. He simply had no interest and wasn’t prepared to exert himself.”

  “This was something he cared about. It might have motivated him.”

  “If I understand the timescale correctly, he’d have needed to put a decade of work into two months.”

  The image of Ciamon on the balcony ran through Jemeryl’s head. “He sounded so confident when he told me about it.”

  “Then he was bluffing.”

  Jemeryl sat back, frowning. Bluffing had never been Ciamon’s style. He had been an atrocious card player. His face always gave his hand away. Jemeryl felt her throat constrict at the memory.

  Alendy looked at Weilan thoughtfully. “You’re an expert in protective shields, and you worked with Ciamon. How long would you need to make a portable device to destroy the idol, even if the person using it couldn’t perceive the higher dimensions?”

  “For any spell Ciamon might have used?” Weilan snorted dismissively. “Ten minutes.”

  “This is serious. Remember what rides on it.”

  “You mean absolutely, definitely, stake the future of the world on it, certain?”

  “Yes.”

  Weilan pursed his lips, clearly running options through his head. “Give me three days.”

  “You got them. And any assistance you require. Just ask.” Alendy turned to address the whole meeting. “Does anyone else have any suggestions—practical ones?”

  “I do.” To many people’s evident surprise, it was Tevi who had spoken.

  Alendy stared at her. “What?”

  “I was a captain in Bykoda’s army for three years. All the officers apart from me were either witches or sorcerers, but the ordinary soldiers weren’t. Her armoury made all sorts of magical weapons that anyone could use. They were”—Tevi grimaced—“very effective at killing people. With the resources of the Coven, you could produce a similar arsenal. Make the weapons and the Guild of Mercenaries will provide the warriors to use them. They’ll clear the way through to Kradja. Sefriall’s sentinels won’t stand a chance. Then you can walk in and take your time dismantling the idol.”

  “We can’t give that sort of power to ordinary citizens,” a voice shouted from the back.

  “Bykoda did.”

  “Supposing the mercenaries hang on to the weapons? Can we trust them?”

  Tevi looked angry, but her voice stayed level. “Guild warriors will stand by their word. It’s what our livelihood depends on.”

  “Will they risk their lives for the Coven?”

  “Sefriall hoped the destruction of Villenes would cause so much fear nobody would dare oppose her. My guess is it’ll have the opposite effect. The thought of the same thing happening here…” Tevi did not need to finish.

  “But they can’t—”

  Alendy interrupted. “We cannot reject the idea out of hand.” He directed a long, hard look at Tevi. “If it’s the only way to save the Protectorate from destruction, then we’ll do it. But it must be a last resort.”

  “I agree. The loss of life would be appalling.”

  Alendy nodded. Jemeryl suspected his reluctance was for reasons more in common with those of the other speakers than with Tevi’s.

  “Hopefully, these weapons will be unnecessary. But we’ll make them in readiness, while a small team return to Kradja with Weilan’s device.” Alendy stopped in front of Jemeryl. “If you’re willing, I’d like you to lead the team since you have some familiarity with the town and this Sefriall.”

  “Of course.” Jemeryl had half expected the assignment.

  “You’ll have a couple of volunteers with you.”

  “I’ll go.” Tevi spoke immediately.

  “You would be more use here, sharing your knowledge of Bykoda’s weapons.”

  Tevi shrugged. “I’ve got three days. That’ll be more than enough to tell everything I know.”

  “You—”

  Jemeryl spoke up. “As team leader, I’d like Tevi with me. My knowledge was restricted to inside the temple. Tevi has contacts in town, including a group of dissident priests, who might be valuable.”

  For a moment, Alendy looked ready to argue, but then he nodded. “Very well. It’s your decision.”

  *

  Ralieu was at least eighty years old, although still in sound health physically. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for her wits. She had a disconcerting habit of talking about herself in the third person, and a tendency to break off mid-sentence to examine some minor detail of the room. After watching her spend a whole minute tracing the grain in her chair’s wooden armrest as if it was remarkable, Tevi had reached the conclusion they were wasting their time. They were not going to learn anything worthwhile from the old woman.

  She muttered to Jemeryl, who was standing beside her, “Age has got to her.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Her mind has gone walkies.”

  “She might always have been like this.”

  “I thought she was a great inventor.”

  “The two can go hand in hand. Some sorcerers have an odd set of senses. They see and link up things in remarkable ways, but they’re out of step with the rest of the human race. You don’t know how lucky you are that I’m normal.”

  “If you’d been acting like this when we met, I’d still be running.”

  “She’s not so bad, and underneath it all, I think she’s quite sane.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “I just need to get the hang of how she’s thinking.”

  “It’s up to you, then. I’ll just stand here and watch.” Tevi leaned her shoulder against the wall.

  “Thanks.” Jemeryl gave an ironic grin and then sat in the chair opposite Ralieu’s. She repeated the question she had asked before. “Why did you design the morphology?”

  “The gardener was upset.”

  “What was he upset about?”

  “Lots of things. The cabbages. His daughter. The slugs.”

  “Did the morphology have anything to do with something upsetting the gardener?”

  “Yes, of course. His daughter was murdered, you know. Ralieu had to do something about it.”

  “The morphology was going to help the gardener deal with his daughter’s murder?”

  Ralieu looked sad. “No. Nothing could be done. She was dead, and he is too.” />
  Tevi could sense Jemeryl’s frustration, although her face stayed placid. “Why design the morphology? What was it going to achieve?”

  “The gardener was a good man. Ralieu wanted to help.”

  “You were trying to stop him being upset?”

  “I was trying to upset the murderer. He needed it. The murderer had something missing in his mind.” Ralieu traced the outline of her own skull with both hands, as if to illustrate. “Ralieu knows she doesn’t think the same as other people, but she cares when her friends are unhappy. She feels guilt.”

  Is she guilty about the people she bricked up? Tevi wondered.

  “The morphology was going to make people feel guilty?”

  Ralieu relaxed back in her chair, smiling broadly. “Yes. That’s it precisely.” She drew a pattern in the air. “You see it there in the skein? The confluence in the fifth dimension that ties us all together? The murderer wasn’t attached. He couldn’t feel other people’s unhappiness.”

  Tevi pushed away from the wall. Maybe Jemeryl was right and there was some sort of sense to be found in the ancient sorcerer. “Jem, is she saying regret and sympathy are caused by magic?”

  Jemeryl was frowning as she watched Ralieu’s fingers weave shapes. Maybe to a sorcerer there was some significance in the gesture.

  “Jem?”

  “Not exactly. It’s empathy rather than sympathy, and I’ve never quite thought of it as a by-product of the skein, but…” Jemeryl’s face twisted in a grimace of deep concentration. “She might have a point if she’s subsuming it with the tangential sixth-dimensional persona.”

  Tevi assumed that was some sort of a yes. She moved into Ralieu’s line of sight. “That was the mind control you were working on? You wanted everyone to feel empathy for others?”

  Ralieu scrambled eagerly from her chair, hurried over, and then bent down to examine the stitching on Tevi’s waistband. Tevi met Jemeryl’s eyes, raising both hands in a gesture of helplessness. Talking about the elderly woman as if she were not there seemed impolite, but addressing her directly obviously required some special sorcerer talent.

  “Jem, do you know if that’s what she was doing?”

  “I think so.”

  “Was she allowed to?”

  “No. Any sort of mental manipulation requires the subject’s informed consent.”

  “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” Ralieu spoke angrily. At first Tevi assumed the outburst was criticising some aspect of her clothing. However, Ralieu was now glaring at Jemeryl. “Stupid rules. Being cured of unkindness, nobody has the right to refuse consent for that. Ralieu isn’t talking about freedom of thought. People can think what they want, but they need the right alignment in their head to do the thinking with. People can’t think with a defective mind.”

  “Who gets to say what’s defective?” Tevi asked. To her surprise, this time, she was answered.

  “It’s a defect when you murder a child and feel no guilt.”

  “People like to think they’re responsible for what they do. They can choose whether they’re a good or a bad person.”

  Ralieu plonked herself back in her chair, and stared at Tevi. “When they were born, they didn’t get to choose whether they fit in the skein like this”—Ralieu stabbed at the air at if pointing something out—“or like this. So where does choice come into it?”

  “They have the right to say no to you changing them.”

  “People would only say no because they’re misaligned. With the morphology they would want to say yes. Then we’d have their consent.”

  “You can’t backdate consent.”

  “Yes, I can. The girl didn’t consent to be murdered. I’ll backdate that. Like the backstitching on your belt.”

  Tevi shook her head, giving up. Ralieu was half making sense, but it was never going to be a coherent discussion.

  Jemeryl took over. “The morphology didn’t work as you wanted, did it?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “It affects magic, not morality.”

  “Only after Ralieu modified it.”

  Jemeryl frowned. “It was affecting empathy, but you changed it to affect magic?”

  “I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “The morphology affected everyone.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “The empathy was overwhelming. Even sorcerers were affected. That was the problem.”

  “In what way?”

  “Sometimes a leader has to make decisions that hurt people. Once the morphology covered the entire Protectorate, Coven sorcerers wouldn’t be able to make independent judgements. How would the Guardian rule? Ralieu tried to modify the morphology so it wouldn’t affect people who could access the higher dimensions. But she got the aural conjunction transposed. Instead of using associations on the upper dimensions as neutral nodes, it severed them, and the empathic confluence was lost in the cross-stream.”

  The second half of Ralieu’s explanation was gobbledegook to Tevi, but the first half she understood very clearly. “What you mean is that although you expect ungifted people to be quite happy to lose their freedom of thought, you won’t stand for it as a sorcerer.”

  “We have responsibility.”

  “And you want to be responsible for what you do.” Tevi felt anger bubbling inside her.

  “Want is not the issue. We are responsible.”

  “And people like me aren’t?”

  “Not as much, and there aren’t the same benefits for us.”

  “Benefits?”

  “We aren’t so vulnerable. We can choose not to be murdered. If Ralieu was an ordinary person, at the mercy of all the dangers the ungifted face, she’d be happy for the morphology to shield her.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course.”

  Tevi gave up. She had met enough sorcerers, of sounder mind than Ralieu, who could not be persuaded that the ungifted valued their freedom as much as any member of the Coven.

  “Ralieu made a stupid mistake in her modification, and when she tested it…” The old sorcerer went back to tracing the wood grain on her armrest, but continued talking, her voice soft, sorrowful. “Ralieu saw the convicts kill Eli. He was still stunned by the morphology enveloping him. Hirn was on the far side of the room. Ralieu beckoned to him, but the convicts had him cornered. He looked at Ralieu. Hirn had been her gardener for years. He loved flowers and his daughter was dead. But there was nothing Ralieu could do. She bustled Ciamon from the room. He was standing there, useless.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Alendy said you checked the fifth dimension for life signs.”

  “Only two left. But then…but…maybe Hirn was one of them.”

  Jemeryl looked surprised. “If you thought of that, why didn’t you send for guards? If nothing else they could have arrested his killers.”

  “A silly, silly mistake.”

  “Which bit?”

  “The morphology. How could Ralieu have been so careless? She’d got it all wrong. The empathy was snared in the second harmonic. In the aftermath, for a while, Ralieu lost her alignment with the skein. She was so angry. All she could think about was revenge. That’s why she ordered the door bricked up. She didn’t know what she was doing until it was too late. Now she looks back, it was awful, to not have her own mind.”

  Except if you were one of the ungifted, in which case you’d have welcomed it. Tevi made enough sense of Ralieu’s explanation to spot the hypocrisy.

  “But Ralieu now knows exactly what she did wrong with the morphology. She wanted to sort out the problem and try again, But Alendy won’t let her.” The old woman wiped her eyes. “The world would have been so much better and kinder, but it will never happen.”

  Tevi groaned. The worst of it was that Ralieu, like Ciamon, had meant well. She turned, about to go, but Jemeryl had more questions. “What sort of protection did the emanator have?”

  “None. Who’d have harmed it?”

  “Ciamon copied your work.�
��

  “Copied! The thief stole all Ralieu’s notebooks. Ten years of research.”

  Jemeryl leaned forward. “Were there any powerful defensive spells in them?”

  “Ralieu found a way to keep slugs off the cabbages. That made the gardener happy…before his daughter was murdered,” Ralieu ended sadly.

  “No. I mean a way to protect the emanator from harm, so nobody could attack it.”

  Ralieu shook her head. “No, that was never Ralieu’s interest. You should talk to Weilan. He’s made a great study of those sort of things.”

  *

  The main council chamber was less full than before, but even so, over four dozen people were present. The sorcerer who had questioned Ralieu about the construction of the emanator was concluding her report—or Tevi hoped this was the case. As far as she was concerned it had been a tedious hour filled with incomprehensible descriptions of tensors, fluxes, and ordinances.

  Tevi leaned a little closer to Jemeryl and whispered, “I’m hoping all that made sense to you.”

  “Yes, it did. And it explained something that had puzzled me.”

  “What?”

  “When I was captured at the oasis. The way the arrival of the sentinels coincided with me being suddenly overwhelmed. But the emanation is not only powered by auras, it constructs the morphology around them.”

  “And that tells you something interesting?”

  “It tells me the patrol of sentinels formed a localised focus that strengthened the morphology around them.”

  “Oh yes. Silly of me not to have spotted it.”

  Grinning, Jemeryl barged Tevi gently with her shoulder. “You didn’t have to be here, remember?”

  Weilan approached the lectern. “I’ve constructed four Illaniam pentagrams, and infused them with a sixth-dimensional extinguishing sequence in a Basid array. I imagine some of you won’t fully understand all this entails.” He paused. “In which case you should look it up in the library, because I can’t be bothered explaining it. I’ll just show you how it works, then we can all go and do something useful.”

  Tevi could have applauded.

  Weilan gestured impatiently to his assistant, a young woman, who scurried into the middle of the council chamber carrying a canvas sack as long as her arm but only a few inches across. The assistant opened the tie and emptied the contents on the floor. Tevi leaned forward for a better view, although this left her none the wiser. The sack had held five black wooden poles, inscribed with white runes; five orange crystals, each mounted on a strange claw-like fixture; five short silver rods; and a stone talisman.