Gather Darkness

by Fritz Leiber

  There was a stir at the Council Table. Goniface ignored it. He motioned to Deth.

  "Mewdon Chemray, we want facts!" cried the deacon harshly. "First, who is your real leader?"

  "Sathanas."

  "Evasive babble! Let the pain enter the fingers of the left hand."

  With the words came an increase in the tension pervading the gray chamber. Rods of wrath were lifted warningly against the witches. But, eyes closed, they seemed to be repeating inaudible prayers to their dark divinity.

  Then, from the metal shroud, came the faint sound of air sucked suddenly between teeth and tongue.

  But Goniface, World Hierarch, did not hear it, although he was listening intently. For, at the same instant, he felt that the fingers of his left hand, hanging at his side, had been dipped in molten metal.

  With a sudden and supreme effort of will he checked the impulse to jerk his hand upward, to writhe and cry out. With a continuation of the effort that was only less than the first effort itself, he glanced up and down the table. If he had made a betraying movement, none of the archpriests had noticed it.

  "Mewdon Chemmy, who is your real leader?"

  "Sathanas. Sathanas." Rapid, breathy whispers.

  Goniface let his glance slip downward. There was nothing unnatural about his hand, except the white knuckles and taut tendons. Slowly he moved it until it rested on the table. The searing pain was unabated.

  "Let the pain creep into the wrist. Who, leaving aside the one you call Sathanas, is your leader?"

  "He is—Give me strength, Sathanas!" A whimpering gasp. "He is Asmodeus!"

  To Goniface, it was as if he had drawn on a red-hot gauntlet.

  "Who is Asmodeus?"

  "Sathanas, aid me! He is King of the Demons."

  "Into the arm! Who is Asmodeus?"

  "King… of the Demons."

  "We know that Asmodeus is a man. What is his real name?"

  "King—" A choked scream. "May Sathanas burn you forever! I don't know. I don't know."

  "Then Asmodeus is a man?"

  "Yes. No. I don't know. I don't know! Sathanas, burn them as they burn your servant!"

  Goniface felt beads of sweat pricking his forehead, as the invisible incandescence lapped higher, and higher still.

  He must think. Think!

  "Mewdon Chemmy, who is Asmodeus? What is his name?"

  "Don't know… don't know!"

  "Have you ever seen him?"

  "Yes. No! Yes! Mewdon Chemmy, Sathanas! Your faithful servant."

  "What did he look like?"

  "I don't know. A blackness! A blackness… and a voice."

  The beads of sweat were trickling down Goniface's forehead in nervous little rushes. Only a little longer and the witch would break. And this impossible pain must have a source. Think!

  "Very well, Mewdon Chemmy. We will leave Asmodeus for the moment. Where in Megatheopolis are the headquarters of the Witchcraft?"

  "I don't—Where you captured us."

  "That was only a meeting place. You know I don't mean that. Where are the real headquarters?"

  "I don't—There are none."

  "A lie! You know something, for you twice started to conceal it. Where are the real headquarters? Where is the scientific armament kept?"

  "In the—There is no such armament. Sathanas does not need—"

  "Into the shoulder!"

  Agony groping upward, scalding. Think! Think! A commotion of some sort at the far end of the chamber. The high doors opening. And from the kneeling witches, a low, murmuring supplication, rhythmic, intense, like the beat of a muffled drum. "Sathanas, aid us. Sathanas, aid us."

  "Mewdon Chemmy, where are the headquarters? You are in the Great Square. You are going to the headquarters. You are walking toward a street. You are entering it. What street is it?"

  "Of the Wea—No! No!" A whimpering scream.

  "You are walking along the Street of the Weavers, Mewdon Chemmy. You smell wool. You hear the sound of the shuttle. You are walking. Now you are no longer in the Street of the Weavers. You have turned. Where?"

  "No! No! It's Mewdon Chemmy calling you, Sathanas!"

  A group of priests were hurrying from the great door toward the council table, their scarlet robes flapping. Slowly, effortfully, Goniface rose, his left arm rigid at his side, the left shoulder stooped, as if he lifted a great weight.

  "From the shoulder then—"

  "Stop the questioning!" ordered Goniface loudly, and with such a strained, mechanical enunciation that all stared at him.

  Deth waited a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and motioned to the technicians.

  Relief came to Goniface with dizzying suddenness. An invisible torrent of ice water took his breath away. The whole chamber seemed to rock, and he gripped the table to keep from staggering.

  "What is the matter?" he asked the newcomers, the laboriousness fading from his enunciation as he spoke. "Only the most urgent reason could justify your interruption."

  "The commoners are marching on the Sanctuary!" cried one. "They have left their work. All attempts to halt them have failed. Two deacons opened up with wrath rods in the Street of the Smithies, but were overwhelmed and torn to pieces. A priest of the First Circle who ordered them back was captured and mistreated. He is still in their power. Already they fill the Great Square. They demand to know why we do not smite down Sathanas and end the reign of terror. They cry, 'What about the Witchcraft? What about the Witchcraft?' They shout down any priest who seeks to reason with them."

  An alarmed murmuring flurried along the Council Table. Goniface heard an archpriest mutter, "Warblasts! Sweep the Square!" He recognized one of the newcomers as being from Web Center and bid him speak.

  "News of similar rioting is pouring in from half Earth's cities. It looks like prearrangement. A mob broke into the Sanctuary of Neodelos. They were driven out, leaving many dead behind. From everywhere come pleas for instructions."

  Goniface spoke rapidly. "Unship the parasympathetics in the Cathedral and play them on the Square. By amplifier, proclaim tomorrow a holiday and announce that a Grand Revival will be held. There will be solemn supplications to the Great God, miracles will occur, and the Great God will vouchsafe a sure and infallible sign of the coming victory over Sathanas."

  To the priest from Web Center: "Relay the same instructions to all sanctuaries. Tell them to use all available parasympathetics, including the hand models in the confessional booths. If the crowds do not disperse after the announcement, deluge them with music. In no event must force be employed! If any sanctuary is mobbed, I will count it as a black mark against the incumbent priesthood. Instruct Neodelos, on pain of general excommunication, to hold solemn funeral for all slain commoners and convey home their bodies with the greatest pomp. Contact all sanctuaries, even those not asking instructions, and ascertain conditions. Inform them that detailed instructions for conducting the Grand Revival will be on their way by nightfall, Megatheopolis time. In two hours return me here a complete survey of the general situation."

  To a clerk: "Fetch me the records of all previous Grand Revivals, including moving solidographs of the last two."

  To another clerk: "Summon the Sixth Circle Faculty of Social Control. The Apex Council desires their advice. Send to the crypts and ask Brother Dhomas to attend me at his earliest convenience."

  To a third: "Inform the Fifth Circle Faculty of Physicists that a telesolidograph shield must be set up around the Great Square. All technical resources are placed at their command. They may requisition any and all apparatus. But the shield must be complete by drawn tomorrow."

  To a fourth: "Make further effort to contact the ship bringing reinforcements from Luciferopolis. If successful, inform it to make full speed."

  To Cousin Deth: "Return our prisoners to their cells. Confine them individually. Each must be watched continuously by at least two guards, and the guards watched in turn. Be prepared for the most fantastic attempts at rescue you can conceive. I hold you sole
ly responsible.

  "There will be a private session of the Apex Council. Clear the Chamber!"

  "Can you still intend not to slay the witches, your supreme eminence?" There was a fierce, though quavering note in the harsh voice of old Sercival. "The testimony of that wicked woman proved conclusively that they are agents of Sathanas. It is dangerous and foolhardy—and an offense against the Great God—to let them live longer."

  "It is essential that we obtain information from them," Goniface answered sharply. "I only interrupted the questioning because there are weightier matters at hand. We must plan the Grand Revival."

  Sercival shook his head. A mad—or prophetic—glint seemed to enter his hawklike eyes. "It were better that we fall on our knees and ask pardon of the Great God for our long years of unbelief, and beg his mercy. Else I see darkness loom before us and doom for all!"

  There was grim finality in Goniface's reply. "Your reverence's mind is tired and confused. But I shall excommunicate the next priest who talks of failure or implies that there is any supernatural reality in Sathanas."

  From the witches departing under their doubled guards came a monotonous, murmurous chanting, faint yet seeming to fill the whole chamber.

  "Thanks be to Sathanas. Thanks be to Sathanas. Thanks be to Sathanas."

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  Chapter 14

  As Jarles activated the door of his private apartment in the crypts, he frowned at the Fourth Circle emblazonment mistily reflected in its gleaming surface. Goniface had rewarded him insufficiently, considering the importance of the service he had rendered. Still, Asmodeus had escaped. As always, it caused him a bitter pang to remember that Asmodeus would not have escaped had not that other, puerile Jarles managed to seize control of his body and bleat out a warning. But he should consider himself lucky that his hideous slip had not been brought to light.

  Having entered the apartment, his first concern was to reactivate the lock. It irked him somewhat that Cousin Deth had been given sole credit, in public, for capturing the witches. However, as Goniface had told him, it was undoubtedly best that he work in secret for the present. Save for Goniface's private following, no priest had any inkling of his return to the Hierarchy, let alone the awakening of his true personality.

  In any case he had some compensations for this temporary obscurity, he decided, glancing around him. He passed through a second room, as sumptuously furnished as the first, and entered a third, reactivating all locks behind him.

  On a couch, pale face upturned, eyes closed, hands folded as in death, lay Sharlson Naurya.

  He looked at her for a while. Then, with a mild, stimulative beam of antiparalysis quality he dispelled her unconsciousness. Her eyes opened. He read in them a hate that he interpreted half as a compliment.

  She sensed the interpretation. She said, slowly and distinctly, "You incredible, disgusting egotist."

  He smiled. "Not egotist. Realist."

  "Realist!" Contempt gave strength to her utterance. "You're no more a realist now than when you were a blind and stubborn idealist. You're a fiction villain! I suppose that every blundering idealist who hasn't been brought face to face with the hard facts of life carries, at the back of his mind, a sneaking suspicion that villainy is a very dashing and romantic thing. When your mind turned turtle, or when they turned it for you, your new personality was necessarily fabricated out of all your fragmentary romantic notions of villainy—unlimited ambition and conceit, absolute lack of emotion, and all the rest of the super-villain ideology!"

  She paused. Her eyes opened wider, in incredulous loathing. "You like me to talk about you that way, don't you?"

  He nodded. "Certainly. Because I'm a realist. Experience has taught me how close hate is to love."

  "Another cheap romantic fallacy!" Anger made her tremble. "Realist! Can't you understand that you're behaving like a book? Have you no conception of the risks you are running in this game you're trying to play, according to some romantic code of villainy, with men like Goniface? Realist! Look at your insane recklessness in bringing me here. What will happen to you when Goniface finds out?"

  He smiled. "It was necessary to bring you here. There was no one to whom I could intrust you. And who would think of looking for you here? Moreover, Goniface trusts me. He doesn't dream that, while serving him, I plot against him."

  She glared at him. "What if I should reveal myself?"

  "You won't be able to. And even if you could, you wouldn't. Because you'd know it meant instant death for you, by order of the World Hierarch. That's the beauty of the arrangement.

  "Speaking of Goniface," he continued, "why don't you tell my why he wants you killed? You must know something about him that would endanger his position if revealed. Why not tell me what it is? Then we'll be able to drag him down together, after the present emergency is past."

  She looked away from him.

  "Come now, you're being very unrealistic," he continued, persuasively. "Don't you realize what I'm offering you? In any case, you should be a little grateful to me for saving you from so many unpleasantnesses. This morning your former associates were put to the torture."

  He nodded confirmingly. "Oh, yes, and you may expect a bit of a change in your friend the Black Man if you ever happen to see him again. Today he was well enough to be taken to Brother Dhomas."

  "You mean they intend to—" She tried to push herself up.

  "To awaken him to a state of realistic self-interest? Yes. So you see, Naurya, the Witchcraft is done for. Just a matter of time. And that means there's no longer any point in your remaining loyal to it. Surely that must be obvious to you.

  For a long time she just looked at him. Then she asked him, in a strange voice, "Do you ever dream now?"

  For once he did not smile. "No," he said flatly.

  Slowly she shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on him. "Oh, yes, you do."

  "Dreams mean nothing," he said coldly. "They are unreal."

  "They're as real as anything else," she shot back at him. "And they merely mean conscience."

  For a fraction of a second her gaze slipped past him. Suspiciously he turned. Nothing there but the locked door.

  "Conscience is only social pressure," he told her, tense without quite knowing why, "the impulse to submerge your ego in that of the herd, and do what other people want you to because you're afraid of their censure. Realistic self-interest frees a person from the childish restrictions of conscience."

  "Are you sure of that, Jarles? What about your dreams? Conscience may be partly what you say it is, but it's more than that. It's hearkening to the wisest thoughts that have occurred to minds of the human race."

  "Do you seek to persuade me to that shadowy unreality called virtue? Next you'll be talking of ideals!"

  "Certainly I'll talk about ideals! For it's ideals that torment you when you dream. I saw you grow, Jarles. I saw your ideals grow. Maybe they grew too fast for their roots. But though they've been toppled and broken up and shoved down into the depths of your subconscious mind, they're still there, Jarles—a private hell in your own mind, and just a door between it and your consciousness. And at night the door opens."

  In the nick of time, an involuntary sideways wavering of her vision warned him. He dodged and struck out as the little furred horror struck suddenly at him—from nowhere, it seemed. The razor claws slashed his cheek instead of the throat beneath the ear. His flailing arm chanced to catch the thing and hurl it across the room. In the moment before it recovered itself, his wrath ray blasted out and almost cut it in two. There was a great splatter of blood, much more than could have been expected from such a creature.

  He darted over to it, then recoiled from the incredibly frail monster whose big eyes, glazed by death, goggled up at him. For a moment he had the incredible conviction that he had somehow killed Sharlson Naurya.

  He looked back at her. She had struggled up into a sitting position, but there further strength failed her. She was not crying, but her
shoulders were racked by an emotion that seemed mingled of unappeasable hate and a dry, anguished grief.

  "This creature meant that much to you?" he asked sharply. He glanced quickly back at it. A look of sudden, almost incredulous understanding tightened his features. "I think I've got it," he said slowly, more to himself than to her. "Although I'm no biologist, I think I've realized the secret of the familiars. And that will be very welcome news to the World Hierarch."

  "You've killed Puss," he heard her say. The words were like little stones.

  "Your sister, in a sense, I believe?" He smiled. "Well, she tried to kill me, while you held my attention, so that's all square. Don't think I harbor resentment. This discovery will put a new emblazonment on my robe—and another shovel of earth from the grave we're digging for the Witchcraft."

  He looked at her, blood dripping from his cheek. "I rather like your nerve and your ruthlessness," he said. "We'll get along very well together after you've been fixed. Oh, haven't I mentioned that? Well, after the present emergency is passed and we've attended to Goniface one way or another, I'll have Brother Dhomas turn your mind right side up."

  She made one more attempt to rise, and failed. She could only say, each word seeming to choke her, "You dirty, little storybook villain."

  He nodded, smiling. "That's right," he said, and turned the paralysis beam on her.

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  Chapter 15

  Dickon had been gone four days. Wearily, again and again, the Black Man blanked his mind for the message that never came. It was laborious work, for the recent session with Brother Dhomas had made his mind a quasi-chaos, like a planet riven by catastrophic volcanic activity, so that new continents and archipelagoes rise everywhere from the steamy sea, and all the coastlines are changed.

  In a way, his session in the crypts had been a hunt, with Brother Dhomas the hunter and his personality the quarry. And he had won out. His still-weakened physical condition had necessitated a return to his cell to recuperate, before Brother Dhomas had achieved his purpose. But soon the hunt would begin again.