Whistler [A sequel to The Chronicles of Hawklan]

by Roger Taylor

  But others were needed, too. Others better suited to the things that armies traditionally did. He picked up his cloak and toyed with it for a moment. Then he laid it down again. It was not a cold evening, and he would achieve greater anonymity if he walked out openly than if he went about cloaked and hooded.

  As it transpired, there were few abroad to see him anyway. The evening might not have been cold, but it was still too windy to draw people out in leisurely appreciation, and such few as he did encounter were too occupied with their own errands to pay much heed to a passing Preacher.

  As he strode out, the sound of his footsteps beat an unclerical tattoo into the long-shadowed twilight.

  He soon passed through the broad familiar streets that surrounded the Meeting House, directing himself towards the narrow, more unkempt streets that lay to the east of the Haven Parish. They were fringed by older, once prosperous but now derelict properties. Originally built for the gentry of the day, their owners had gradually moved on to better things, and over the years the houses had been bought by companies and individual merchants, either for use as business premises or for the housing of their workers. Now, the notion of the company house had fallen into disfavour, and though still owned predominantly by companies and merchants, most of the properties were rented. Initially this had been to anyone who was prepared to pay what was asked. Subsequently, however, many owners had to choose between taking tenants at whatever rent they could afford or allowing their houses to stand empty. In both cases the result was that properties were neglected. The aura of deteriorated gentility that the buildings exuded heightened the feeling of general degradation that pervaded the area.

  To Cassraw, who had spent some time here when he was a novice but who later would only have come here in reply to the most earnest of appeals, the decay of the place was like the rich smell of fertile ground. It was here that he had already begun to cultivate the shoots that he could see ultimately growing in rank after rank to cover the land. For here dwelt those with the least material possessions and the greatest anger and bitterness. Individuals who, either through temperament or upbringing, looked always to others as the source of their ills and who, by virtue of that same trait, stood always ready to break those restraints that are necessary for the preservation of any ordered society. Individuals who were all too easily manipulated.

  'Not the safest of areas for you to be walking alone in, Brother Cassraw.'

  The voice broke through Cassraw's soaring reverie and made him start. He turned to see a figure silhouetted against the low red sun which was shining around the jagged edge of a partially demolished house. He screwed up his eyes and lifted his hand to shade them.

  'I'm sorry if I startled you, Brother,’ the figure said. ‘I'm afraid we get into the habit of staying out of sight in places like this if we want to see what's going on. Cute as Ahmral's imps, some of the ones you get round here, if you'll pardon the expression.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I'm Keeper Albor. Can I escort you anywhere?'

  Cassraw had recovered his composure. ‘No thank you, Keeper,’ he replied. ‘I'm just on my way to see one of my flock.'

  'Might I ask who that would be, Brother?’ Albor inquired, inadvertently professional in his manner.

  Cassraw ignored the question. ‘Albor ...’ he muttered thoughtfully. ‘Ah, I remember. Weren't you the officer who found the body of that murdered lad the other week?’ Flattered at this recognition by the famous, Albor forgot his own question.

  'Very nasty business that,’ Cassraw continued. ‘Are you any nearer finding out what happened?'

  Albor shook his head soberly. ‘I'm afraid not, Brother. We found out who the lad was.’ He looked around. ‘Lived not far from here actually,’ he went on, pointing vaguely. ‘Bit of a rascal, between you and me. Shouldn't really say it, but he was no great loss. It was his friends who came asking about him, oddly enough.’ He faltered and looked a little embarrassed. ‘They said he was out looking for a woman, I'm afraid, Brother.'

  Cassraw grimaced and gave a sigh that was almost a growl.

  'It's the way of young men,’ Albor shrugged, hastily deciding not to report the fact that, judging from the state of the man's clothing, he had found one immediately prior to his murder.

  'Some young men,’ Cassraw corrected sternly. ‘Most are capable of controlling their baser instincts until such activities can be sanctified by marriage.'

  Albor held his peace.

  Then, in unconscious imitation of Drommel's plea earlier, Cassraw added, ‘But still, grave though it is, fornication's hardly a sin that demands a life for expiation. And you have no idea who might have done such a deed or why?'

  'None, Brother,’ Albor replied. He lowered his voice. ‘We've spoken to the women who trade in that area, but they know nothing. In fact, they're all scared half to death. They think as Serjeant Skynner does, that it was a madman who did it, and that he'll do it again sooner or later.’ His face became pained. ‘He was terribly cut, that young man. Never seen anything like it when we stripped him off. Physician says he was stabbed a lot after he was dead. Frenzied, he said.’ He shuddered and ran his hands down his tunic as if trying to wipe something from them, and it took him a moment to recover. ‘We've put extra men on patrol round there, of course, but we can't do that for much longer. Nothing much else we can do now except hope, I'm afraid, unless someone takes it into their mind to confess or a witness turns up.'

  Cassraw nodded sympathetically and laid a sustaining hand on Albor's arm. ‘You have a difficult task, Keeper Albor. We are all in your debt.’ His manner became determined. ‘I will help you. I will speak on this matter at my next service. Who knows, a person who would do such a thing may well indeed be very precariously balanced.’ He tapped his head. ‘A word from the pulpit might topple him into the realization of what he's done and bring him forth.'

  Albor gaped openly and a gamut of emotions ran across his face. It was a peculiar enough experience discussing such an event with a Preaching Brother, but the prospect of it being mentioned in a sermon had, frankly, shaken him, and he was a man who took a strong Keeper's pride in the fact that he was not easily moved. But, Ahmral's teeth! A Meeting House was no place to be talking about a murder, still less the murder of some scapegrace on the roam for a prostitute. The church didn't get involved in such matters!

  Then, with sudden and appalling vividness, the terrified look on the victim's face filled his mind. It was as if he were standing in the alley again, with the fine damping rain falling all around, streaking the lamplight. This had happened several times since that day and at night he was sometimes almost afraid to close his eyes when he lay down to sleep. He flinched inwardly. No one deserved a death like that and, he supposed, anything that might stop it happening again was worth a try. For happen again it might well—Skynner was invariably a shrewd judge of such matters. But, the church? He'd never heard the like. The opportunity for Keepers’ gossip arose to dismiss the young man's phantom. Wait till he got back to the Keeperage and told the others about this! He looked at Cassraw shrewdly. This was quite a man, coming out with ideas like that. A man to get things done. Not something he normally associated with Preachers.

  He made a resolution to attend the next Haven Meeting House service.

  'Is something wrong?’ Cassraw asked.

  'I'm sorry,’ Albor stammered. ‘You took me by surprise. It's not usual for the church to get involved in such matters.'

  Cassraw's face darkened momentarily and Albor regretted his assumption of informality. But no outburst came. ‘He is involved in all things,’ Cassraw declaimed. ‘It is not for us, His servants, to decide what we wish to do. We must follow the words of the Santyth, must we not?'

  Albor found himself nodding in reply to this unexpected and forceful catechizing.

  'It may not have been so in the past,’ Cassraw went on. ‘But many changes are coming, Keeper. Many changes. Be ready. Be with us.'

  Before Albor could make anything of this last remark, C
assraw was suddenly brisk and hearty. ‘But I must let you get about your duties, my friend,’ he announced, slapping Albor's arm manfully. ‘I don't want to get you reprimanded for being late on patrol, eh?’ Then, after another resounding slap and a brief wave of his hand, he was striding off.

  Albor stared after him, as bewildered by this abrupt end as he was by the whole encounter. He lifted his hand, about to call after him, but let it fall almost immediately. He shouldn't really let the man go wandering about alone here. But he was behind on his patrol, and Cassraw was not walking like a man uncertain of where he was or where he was going. Still less did he look as though he needed or would appreciate an escort.

  His hesitancy decided his actions for him and as Cassraw's determined footsteps carried him swiftly into the reddening gloom, Albor gave a slight shrug then turned and set off in the opposite direction.

  Cassraw maintained his resolute pace until he was satisfied that a bend in the road had taken him completely from the view of the watching Keeper. Like Albor, he was unsettled by what had occurred. The murder had struck him with unusual force when he had first heard about it, but there had been the inevitable distance between the event and the reporting of it to protect him from too deep a response, and it had soon faded. In truth, his mind had been fully occupied with matters far more significant than the miserable slaying of some fornicating malefactor in a Troidmallos alley. He had shown an interest in front of Albor purely for the sake of appearance and to prevent the Keeper from questioning him, but the brief conversation had disturbed him—brought the corpse before him in all its gory horror—a horror enhanced by the very ordinariness of Albor's description. And what had prompted him to say that he would speak of it in his next service? It was an action liable to cause quite a flutter amongst his fellow Chapter Brothers, for the church rarely involved itself in the ordinary affairs of the people, and never in matters such as this.

  A lamplighter's cart clattered into the street.

  And yet the idea intrigued him. There were opportunities here. He could do it. Already phrases were forming that he could feel had the makings of a fine oration. He must do it in such a way as to avoid controversy. He must link his every word to the verses of the Santyth and he must arrange his arguments so that they could be used to sway Mueran himself. As indeed they might well have to. He watched a sour-faced lamplighter pursuing his trade, muttering to himself each time he came to a damaged lamp. Precious few lights left around here for him, Cassraw thought. Light wasn't in the interests of many of the folk who lived in these peevish streets.

  Then, a surge of confidence. Yes, he would do it. All was change now. Just as this grumbling artisan was using his screeching flints to bring some unwanted light into this place, so he, Cassraw, would bring His One True Light into this benighted land from such small chances. It had been no idle whim that had prompted him to speak to Albor as he had. It had been His will. Such was the subtlety of His ways.

  'Thus let it be. Thus let it be,’ he murmured softly.

  He looked around to see exactly where he was. The light in the street was strange. The purpling sky, flecked with moving clouds, some pink, others darkening and leaden, was bright enough to heighten the darkness of the street, and the street lamps were so few and weak they could only illuminate their immediate surroundings until night was fully here.

  A gust of wind blew dust in his face, making his eyes water. As he rubbed them irritably, the street lamps welled up into hovering discs of light and the shapes of the houses became blurred and indistinct, their darkened windows and doorways resembling the vague dancing shadows that were haunting his night-time hours.

  Then his vision was clear again and the image was forgotten. He saw his destination, but some caution made him wait until the lamplighter had gone further down the street, before he crossed over and slipped down the steps that would lead him there.

  He wrinkled his nose at the stench that greeted him as he reached the foot of the stairs. Cats he recognized. And worse. All hanging in a miasma of decay and dampness.

  He took out his small lantern and coaxed it into life. As with the street lights above, it seemed to heighten the darkness rather than penetrate it, almost as if the light was reluctant to leave the lantern for fear of being absorbed by the very air itself. As his eyes adjusted, Cassraw began to make out the walls of the subterranean passage somewhere along which lay the home of the person he intended to meet.

  Fighting down a momentary wave of nausea, he set off, advancing warily, anxious to avoid whatever might be lying on the uneven paved floor of the passage. Not that it was easy, for, albeit weakly, his lantern was illuminating the misshapen heaps of debris and rubbish that had been stacked along both walls of the passage and in many places they had spilled across its entire width, making impromptu barricades for him to negotiate.

  Just as his eyes adjusted, so did his nose, though mercifully, where his eyes had opened, his nose seemed to close, dimming the stomach-churning effect of the rotting detritus accumulated by the inhabitants of these subterranean dwellings. This place was as far from the Haven Parish as he could begin to imagine.

  He stopped. How could people live like this? he thought. He remembered the place as it was when he had been an earnest novice, struggling for the first time with the realities of pastoral care in the latter years of his training at the Witness House. Then, he had been almost overwhelmed by compassion for the people obliged to live here. They at least made some kind of effort to maintain a degree of respectability, of cleanliness. The passages, natural traps for rubbish, were swept and scrubbed and occasionally given a thorough clean out. And the dingy damp rooms that stood off the passages were similarly tended. Now, taking the state of the passages as a measure of the homes here and the attitudes of the current tenants, he could feel little more than contempt. These people were not worthy of his compassion. Wilfully allowing such deterioration when all that was needed was a little endeavour, was verging on the blasphemous.

  Knots of anger began to swirl within him. He realized that he was standing with his head bent forward and his shoulders rounded, offended by what might be lying underfoot and oppressed by the low arched brick ceiling above, despite the fact that it was a head higher than he was. The knots suddenly came together and a rush of defiant rage flowed through him, straightening his posture and lifting his spirits above the clinging taint of the place. As he set off again, his footsteps echoed through the passageways as they had echoed through the streets above. Occasionally the rhythm of his progress was interrupted by a clatter as a mighty kick dislodged some obstacle from his path.

  He glanced along each side passage as he came to it and, as if in response to his resolution he noted that here and there were doorways which were illuminated by lanterns and in front of which the passageway was well cleared. ‘"And the flame shall never truly die",’ he said softly to himself, quoting the Santyth. ‘"But shall burn unseen in the dark places of the world until the righteous shall come again"'

  His thoughts cried out in reply: ‘And they are come now. Come to bring the light to all men. Come to sweep away the heretics and sinners. Come to judge.'

  A gust of air struck him and a soft, moaning sigh enveloped him. It was as if the building was breathing, responding to his silent proclamation, and from then the passageway was alive with noises that he had not noticed when he first entered. The low echoing rumble that was the synthesis of all the lesser sounds that permeated the maze of passageways carried in it, occasional and indistinct, but identifiable, the closing of a door, a barking dog, footsteps, voices—the general clatter of people living too close to one another.

  He looked carefully at the next side passage, holding the lantern high. There, decorating the padstones of its arched entrance were two peculiarly ugly carvings—leering sprites, crouching with their knees drawn up high as if preparing to spring on unwary passers-by. Placed there doubtless by some builder with a sense of humour, they were patently not Madren in origin. And, fo
r all their grotesqueness they were fine pieces of work. So fine that Cassraw jumped slightly as they seemed to move at the touch of the light from his lantern. And even as he recovered himself and held the lamp steady so that he could examine them, he thought he saw one of them flickering an eye at him malevolently.

  Guards, he thought, for no reason that he could immediately fathom. He shook off the notion as an idle fancy.

  He was where he needed to be.

  A few paces further along the passage brought him to a doorway on the left-hand side. A rusted and long-defunct lantern hung outside it, and stout timbers and several rows of iron bolt heads bore witness to the fact that the door was heavily reinforced. Cassraw looked at it for a moment, then, as it bore no striker, he struck it with his clenched fist. The door was as solid as it looked and the blows stung his hands. The sound of them echoed back to him from the passage walls and, as if in defiance, he struck again, harder, ignoring the pain.

  He was raising his fist to strike again when the clatter of a bolt being drawn stopped him. Others were drawn, and the sound of muffled cursing reached Cassraw as the door began to open. It opened very silently, Cassraw noted. Whatever else was neglected in this place, hinges were not. Comings and goings were secret matters. It was good.

  Then he was looking at a figure silhouetted, as Albor had been only a little earlier, except now the light was not coming from the setting sun but from the three or four lanterns in the room behind.

  He identified the figure, nonetheless. Taller than he was and well-built, it was a young man, and while his face was hidden, his posture was undoubtedly belligerent. Cassraw's eyes widened with the passion of a fiery conviction and his hand came out to rest on the man's shoulder before he could speak.