***
The arch vicar stomped into the priory. The project was taking too long. He prowled the rows of brothers, pausing to glance over their shoulders as they stared at the screens. On each screen glowed a map of a region. On each map blinked a cluster of dots. A brother in the center found a match and punched a few keys. Another dot vanished.
The prior paced in the last row, hands folded in the small of his back. He stiffened when he noticed the arch vicar.
“Holiness, the brothers need sleep. They’ll make mistakes if they’re too tired, and we’ll have to start over.”
The arch vicar glared at the rows of gray friars. Too coddled over the centuries. Alone among the clerical class, they embellished their dress with preening accessories, the crimson sash and red skull cap. Now their skull caps lay next to their screens, and sweat glistened on their tonsures.
Wizards of temple magic. He’d learned more in the archives than any of them, and his youthful obsession was about to bear fruit. Not even the priors knew the systems as well as he. Not a one of them could devise this plan.
He counted on the young people’s resourcefulness. Every communication device on the network displayed as a white dot on the dark screen. If they carried an unsanctioned device as he suspected, it would show as well. He ordered the brothers to check each dot against the records. When they’d exhausted the list, these so-called seekers of truth would stand out like a beacon in the night.
A brother on his right extinguished another dot, but too many still remained.
He whirled around to the prior. “No sleep for anyone. No sleep until only the unsanctioned device remains. Then you may sleep as much as you wish, and my work will begin.”
***
Thomas forced his eyes to stay open, terrified the nightmares would return. His dreams of the darkness lingered but they’d evolved since leaving the keep. At first, his mind conjured up caves and fast wagons, flying at incredible speeds, but recently the images had changed. The wagons became hunters, and he was their prey.
He dug his nails into his palms to stay awake, but as the sun grew warmer and the air softened, he drifted off.
When the dream began, he struggled to name the fear, but a sense of expectancy raged. Then the wagons came at night with eyes of fire. He tried to flee, running away until a chasm loomed ahead. With nowhere to turn, he skidded to a stop. In no time, the largest of the beasts set upon him, and a door like the mouth of a snake opened and swallowed him whole.
Inside the belly of the beast, the darkness returned.
***
The middle of the night. Orah led them on a path with tree trunks encroaching on either side, too narrow for fast wagons. She’d become more cautious as the days progressed, always moving, never stopping on roads. They posted in fewer towns, more widely dispersed. They ran, they slept, they hid.
Why didn’t the people rise up? What was taking them so long? She prayed they’d rise up soon, because she’d grown tired of risking the lives of her friends.
When the whining came, it sounded like an animal in pain. As it became louder, she sensed their approach, and then she smelled them, a pungent stench that burned her nostrils. In the distance, she saw lights through the trees. Ten, twelve, more each second, moving faster than the three of them could run.
Fast wagons. The vicars had come.
“Run deeper into the woods.”
Nathaniel and Thomas hesitated only briefly. They’d learned to trust her and obeyed, but this time her judgment had failed.
She steadied her mind, trying to think as she ran. “Split up. Go in different directions.”
When they were three steps ahead and fading into the dark, she slowed to remove her pack. Still moving at a jog, she groped for the device, and then stopped to make sure she’d grabbed the right one. Six weeks to the blessing—too far away—but she had no choice. She took a deep breath and flipped the lever. The red light glowed. She scanned the trees and picked one with a crook in its branches. Stretching on tiptoes, she nestled the device in its cradle and then sped off to her fate.
The whine became a roar. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted wagons unlike any she’d seen in the keep, smaller and narrower, with two wheels and a rider balancing on top. These could follow wherever they went.
The pursuers split up as well, swinging wide to form a circle around them. The glow of their lights pointed at her and her friends. They’d become the hub of a wheel whose spokes were beams of yellow made foul by smoke and dust—she could taste it on her tongue. The roar swelled so she had to resist covering her ears, and the lights inched forward, tightening the trap.
She whirled to the crack of a branch, and caught Nathaniel dashing toward her. By the light of the machines, she noted his clenched fists as he advanced on a rider.
She grabbed his arm, arching her back to add weight. He spun on her, easing off only when he recognized her. She shook her head until his arms went limp and fell to his sides.
The riders herded them to the road. Minutes later, a larger wagon rolled to a stop, its lights glaring in the darkness. Front doors swung wide. Several deacons emerged, each taller and broader than Nathaniel. One of them opened the rear door, and out stepped the arch vicar.
He came within two paces of Orah, a smaller man than she recalled, and thrust his face into hers. She held her ground, matching the clergyman’s stare. No high bench between them now.
He signaled for one of the deacons to fetch her pack, and skimmed the papers inside. A sneer of delight came over his grim features.
“Orah of Little Pond, whose name means light. Will you still claim you’ve done nothing wrong? The darkness is a disease with no cure. You are sick with it and have tried to infect others.”
Next he found the wire-cutter and a diagram of the temple trees. He fondled the tool, opened and closed it, and studied the diagram. Finally, he grasped the listening device and waved it before her eyes. “You tried too much, when you knew too little. Your arrogance gave you away.”
He locked eyes, waiting for a reaction.
He’d get none. She’d frustrate this leader before whom others cowered, armed with the knowledge they’d found in the keep. No posturing by this frail old man could change that.
He pulled out her log. “What have we here? An unsanctioned book?”
Orah grabbed at it, but he snatched it away.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Some scribbles with meaning only to me.”
He fanned through the pages. “Then perhaps I might find it engaging.”
He handed her log to a deacon and turned to Nathaniel.
“And so, Nathaniel, you lied to me, never intending to keep your vow.”
Nathaniel tightened his jaw and stayed silent.
The arch vicar dug into Nathaniel’s bag and withdrew the stack of messages. He leered at Orah and flipped the pages for show. Another ritual: read, humiliate, repeat.
He turned one last time.
Thomas collapsed to his knees. “Holiness, thank the light you’ve rescued me. They forced me to come with them, threatening to tell lies to the vicars if I didn’t go. They didn’t trust me anymore and were afraid to leave me behind. Me, their childhood friend.”
A stab of despair struck Orah. She looked away, down to the ground, up to the trees, anywhere but to Thomas.
“Holiness, please, I know the darkness. I know it in my heart. Don’t lock me away again. No second teaching. I know the darkness—”
The arch vicar waved him to silence and signaled for his pack. He found Thomas’s knife. “From this object might grow a weapon if the darkness returns as you wish.”
Thomas shook his head. His whole body shuddered.
Orah tried to forgive. This was no longer Thomas. Thomas had fled, replaced by fear.
The arch vicar found Thomas’s flute. “Music corrupts the soul, and so the darkness has corrupted you.”
He stepped inches from Thomas’s face and held out the flute. His thick hands slid to the ends of
the instrument and squeezed. The blood drained from his knuckles, and he snapped it in two with a crack.
Thomas fell face-down on the ground, his sobs the only sound.
The arch vicar signaled to the deacons. “Keep this one separate from the others. As for these two....” He turned to Orah and Nathaniel. “Bring them to Temple City, where they’ll remain our guests for a very long time.”
As the deacons led her and her friends off, Orah cast a glance to the east. Far off, deep in the woods, a pinprick of red glowed among the branches—a glimmer of hope in the darkness.
Then it vanished, snuffed out by the night.
Chapter 35 – The Trial
Orah contemplated their cell, a space less confining than her prior stay, but with walls just as dreary. Deacons had placed them on a wooden bench at one end of a table—the only furniture in the room—and told them to wait for the vicars.
No. Not a cell, a holding area. A precursor to the rest of our lives. How many decades of dreary walls lay ahead?
She leaned close to Nathaniel while keeping her gaze on the door. “Have you seen a room like this?”
“Never.” His voice sounded raw.
She tried to swallow, but her dry throat denied the effort. “I expected more pomp.”
He turned toward her, but she kept still, viewing him only out of the corner of her eyes.
His lips parted easily with no tension in his jaw. “Pomp is for Temple ritual, theater for believers. It’d be wasted on us.”
“What did they do with Thomas? Back to the teaching?”
“I don’t think so.”
She counted the seconds between his breaths. Normal, not rushed.
“I’m afraid he couldn’t take it again,” she said.
“He’s not in the teaching.”
“How do you know?”
“The teaching frightens only those who believe, not those who’ve learned the truth. The arch vicar found our messages, the tool to disable the trees, the communicator. He knows we’ve been to the—”
Her hand flashed. She pressed two fingers to his lips and shook her head. “They may have ways to listen. Secret places should remain that way.”
Boot steps echoed in the corridor outside. She glared at the door, keeping it shut with her eyes.
When the guards had passed and the echoes faded, she released her breath and faced Nathaniel. “Will he tell?”
“He might. He told before.”
Orah picked at the melting wax from a candle on the tabletop and molded it into a figurine. Before it hardened, she placed her thumb on its head and pressed downward until nothing remained but a splotch.
“He won’t tell,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Why?”
She glanced from the candle to the ceiling and sniffed the stale air. “Because I know him, my friend since birth.”
***
The arch vicar waited for the deacons to bring in the boy. The others had earned the consequences. Not so the boy. His teaching almost a year before had revealed no strong beliefs other than loyalty to his friends. When he had come to the light at last, he was broken. The arch vicar loathed that part of his role, the need to imprint the precepts on the young, but for hundreds of years, such methods had kept the darkness away.
The darkness, always there, always waiting to pounce, to shred the existing order and cast the world once more into chaos. These young people understand nothing of the forces they might unleash.
The door opened and deacons dragged in the boy, supporting him under the arms so only the toes of his boots touched the floor.
The arch vicar signaled to the deacons to release their captive, and the boy collapsed in a heap.
The arch vicar stepped out from behind the desk and stroked the boy’s head. “No one will hurt you, Thomas.” With the tip of one finger, he lifted the boy’s chin until their eyes met. “No more teaching cell, but the Temple needs your help.”
The young man nodded, though his gaze darted everywhere as if unable to focus.
The arch vicar resumed his place behind the desk and waited for the boy to compose himself before using the voice of authority he’d learned in the seminary. “Thomas of Little Pond, where have you been?”
The boy began to sob.
The arch vicar lowered his voice. “Thomas, can you hear me?”
He nodded.
“Are you willing to defend the light?”
He nodded again.
“Say it.”
“Yes, I’m... willing.” The words trickled out, almost too soft to hear.
“Then tell me where you and your friends have been.”
Thomas’s eyes rolled up into their lids, his body trembled. Not a young man now, but a boy. Not a boy, but a child.
Finally, his eyes steadied, focusing on his boot tops, but his voice quivered when he spoke. “To the keep, Holiness.”
The keep. The muscles of the arch vicar’s jaw tensed and released. How often he’d dreamed about its wonders and the knowledge it might offer, but like the others of his race, he could not be trusted with that knowledge. If he discovered its location, he’d send those too ignorant to be tempted. Let them destroy it, and eliminate the temptation forever.
First, how far dare he go with the boy?
“Thank you, Thomas. I need one more thing from you.” He waited for the boy’s panic to subside. “Tell me how to get there.”
Too much. The boy doubled over as if a deacon had kicked him in the stomach.
Once again, the arch vicar left the protection of the desk and went to the boy. His knees creaked as he knelt beside him. “I’m your friend, Thomas, and will do for you what I can, but you must tell me how to find the keep.”
“I can’t, Holiness,” the boy protested between sobs. “They hid the way from me, blindfolding me at crossroads. No teachings, Holiness, I beg you.” Then, looking around, trying to give anything to save himself, he added, “There was a mountain, a waterfall, a cave. We walked for weeks, maybe to the north or west. No teachings, Holiness. That’s all I know.”
The arch vicar’s brows drooped as he stared down at the frightened boy, the scars from his teaching still all too visible. Enough for now. He motioned for the deacons to take him away.
Had the boy told the truth? He’d betrayed his friends before, and they may not have trusted him. Only one way to be sure. His friends would confirm the story or reveal the lie—the reason he’d kept them apart.
***
The arch vicar strode into the meeting hall, paused at the head of the long table and sighed. A haze filled the air from the flickering fires of the braziers, casting shadows on the expectant faces of his colleagues. He’d struggled against the darkness for forty years, and would keep on until his dying breath, but he wearied of the younger vicars. In varying degrees, they believed in the light, but many cared more for power.
The questioning began before he’d settled into his chair. “Did they find the keep, Holiness?”
“Of course they found the keep. Where else would they obtain such technology?” He cast a quick glance around the table. Someone in this room had betrayed him to the council.
“Will they tell where it is?”
He opened a folder and reread the report but found nothing to change his mind. “Thomas Bradford gave the names of his friends in his teaching. They had reason to mistrust him. The boy is either unstable or extraordinarily clever. He may be the most likely to reveal the location if he knows it, but he seems terrified. The best way to gain the secret from him is with kindness.”
The new monsignor’s hand shot up, but he began speaking before being recognized. Civility was lost on these upstarts. “The keep is the heart of the darkness, Holiness. I’m familiar with these stubborn children from Little Pond. We should use force to learn the location.”
The arch vicar’s black eyes had served him well in exercising authority, and he leveled them now. “Would you violate the precepts to get it?”
The monsignor blinked and backed down, his answer left unsaid, but his intent lay bare for all to see. He’d violate the precepts if he sat in the arch vicar’s chair.
“The Temple is best served by treating him well. I’ll give him the opportunity to work in the kitchens. Of course, my men will supervise him at all times and keep him locked up at night.”
Murmurs of approval and some nodding of heads. Finding the three had strengthened his hand, but a few took notes in the event of a failure.
“What of the others?” the monsignor said.
“The others are believers in the darkness. They’re unlikely to tell.”
“But, Holiness—”
“They’re unlikely to tell, I said!” He raised his voice and added intensity to his glare. “Not with teachings, not with any method allowed under the precepts. No matter. We already possess what we need from the keep. As for the rest, our forebears rejected it long ago. The keep contains nothing more that we want. I’d destroy the place if I could, but what matters most is that no one ever finds it again.”
Hands raised and mouths dropped open. Some even had the nerve to shout out of turn.
The arch vicar struck the table with the flat of his hand, and they fell silent. His eyes burned now, and his thick gray brows hovered over them like billowing smoke. “The keep doesn’t matter. Only the knowledge of the keep matters. If we find it, we’ll destroy it once and for all. If not, the secret will die with them. The two won’t get the chance to stand before their people, and they’ll never see the light of day again.”
***
The chamber remained the same, but the circumstances differed. This time, the arch vicar sat alone behind the raised desk. Orah let her eyes roam up to the peak of the dome and down to the tapestry. The vaulted arches seemed less imposing, and she now saw the battle between darkness and light for what it was—a fantasy to inspire clergy, a nightmare to frighten those who’d be taught.
And Nathaniel stood at her side.
The arch vicar shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk. When he finally spoke, he used the thundering Temple voice. “Nathaniel Rush and Orah Weber, you stand accused of crimes against the light. The Temple relies on its rules, and you have violated many—blasphemy, praising the darkness and inciting others to follow. What do you say in your defense?”
The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) Page 25