by Roger Taylor
As they disappeared into the building, Skynner chuckled.
'It seems that Brother Cassraw isn't the only one who's determined to drag the church into lay matters.'
'Well!’ Vredech almost snarled. ‘Standing there all bright and shiny as though he were at a Town function, while everyone else is exhausted and covered in blood and filth.'
Normality beginning to fold itself about him again, Skynner had been toying with another light-hearted comment, but he abandoned it when he heard the deep anger in Vredech's voice. ‘He's not too bad really,’ he said, unexpectedly conciliatory, and laying a hand on Vredech's shoulder. ‘He probably thought he was helping the morale of his men. Keeping up appearances and all that. It's been an evil day. I doubt any of us are thinking straight.'
Vredech closed his eyes and nodded slowly. His anger at the officer faded as quickly as it had grown, in the face of Skynner's plea.
He looked across the empty square again. Unfocused now that the officer had gone, his thoughts wandered. ‘Nertha's changed,’ he said irrelevantly.
'Been away a long time,’ Skynner said, glad of the harmless conversation, but immediately jumping into a spiked pit. ‘She's a fine woman. You should've married her instead of letting her go wandering off to foreign parts.'
Vredech's mouth dropped open and his head jerked forward in shocked disbelief. ‘What?’ he exclaimed, turning slowly to his impromptu counsellor.
Undeterred, Skynner made to repeat himself. ‘I said you should've ...'
'I heard you. I heard you!’ Vredech blasted back. ‘I'm a celibate Preaching Brother, for pity's sake. And she's my sister.'
'No, she's not,’ Skynner answered, as if surprised that Vredech did not know this. ‘She's not related to you at all. And your celibacy's voluntary.’ He pursed his lips knowingly. ‘I'd bleach and iron my gloves if I thought it'd make her look at me the way she looks at you.'
Just as the High Captain had been minutes earlier, Vredech was completely lost for a reply in the face of this bizarre turn in the conversation. Eventually, he pointed a prodding finger at Skynner. ‘You're right, Haron,’ he said, his eyes alternately wide and blinking. ‘Absolutely right. None of us are thinking straight. Shock, that's what it is. You're delirious. I'm going to look for my horse and go home. No, to the Sick-House. I'm going to the Sick-House to see how my sister's getting on.'
Watching Vredech stalk across the square, Skynner sat down again on the ledge and leaned back against the gatepost. That was a brilliantly handled piece of work, he mused, with some irony. What in Ishryth's name had possessed him to make a remark like that, even if it was true—especially as it was true? He let out a small sigh of regret. Still, it was a small thing against the background of today's happenings.
Skynner looked up at the Ervrin Mallos. Part of it was bright and clear, rich in subtle colours in the low afternoon sunshine, while the rest of it, turned towards the pending night, was dark and brooding. He screwed up his eyes, then rubbed them. Fatigue? Dust? Tears? He could not tell what was clouding them, but around the bright summit of the mountain he was sure he could see a dark, shifting haze.
* * *
Chapter 25
The consequences of the events in the PlasHein Square rolled back and forth through Troidmallos like a spuming sea wave trapped in an enclosing bay. Privv's Sheet the following day was purple with rhetoric, ill-considered conjecture, and imaginative prose, though, in fairness, even Privv found it hard to exaggerate some of the things he had seen as he walked through the shocked crowds and grim-faced helpers. Unusually for him, he had been obliged to invent very little.
He should have been exhausted by work and lack of sleep as he laboured through the night to produce more Sheets than ever before and negotiated their sale far beyond Troidmallos, but he was riding on a wave of almost ecstatic exhilaration, no small component of which was the amount of money he was making.
Leck was oddly silent.
The Heindral was in a state of uproar, not only because its proceedings had been thrown into complete disarray by the panic, but because the time was rapidly approaching when the Castellans must either commit themselves irrevocably to their policy of expelling resident Feldens and seizing Felden assets, or abandon it and risk not only jeopardizing their position at the next Acclamation, but bringing it closer, so riven with internal strife were they.
Toom Drommel waited in delight and anticipation, though he was meticulous in hiding this from the public gaze. All his public utterances and appearances were marked by a demeanour that was even stiffer and more unyielding than usual, and by tones so measured as to be almost sepulchral.
Nertha worked through the night and into the following day at the Sick-House, sustained by anger and passionate concern and whatever else it is that sustains a healer in the face of such futile waste.
Vredech was there, too, grateful for any task he could turn his hand to, however menial. With prayer or with plain words, he comforted the injured and the anxious as well as he was able. He fetched and carried, mopped and cleaned. He kept moving. Had he been asked, he would perhaps have said that it was his faith that drove him on, though from time to time he found knots of anger forming inside him, not least when he encountered other Preaching Brothers fluttering about, fearful for their pristine robes or flinching away from blood and pain. The anger distressed him.
Eventually, when all that could be done had been done, whatever had kept fatigue at bay crashed in on both Nertha and Vredech. Rescue came to them in the form of House, who had wakened to find their beds empty and to hear of the events of the day from her neighbours. Distraught, but grimly in control, she had harnessed the Meeting House trap and driven it through the town to the Sick-House.
'I knew you'd be here,’ she said, affecting a hearty confidence to hide her wrenching relief as she found her charges leaning on their horses, almost too tired to mount. ‘Come on.'
Neither Nertha nor Vredech had any clear recollection of the journey back to the Meeting House, which was perhaps as well, House being a rather intense driver. Several pedestrians and carriage drivers remembered her passing for quite some time.
At the Meeting House, sure in her own domain, she allowed no debate but simply chivvied the two of them to their beds.
At first, though deeply weary, Vredech could not sleep. The time he had spent at the Sick-House had been worse than the time he had spent helping people in the square: there was a leisurely wretchedness about it that had not been apparent in the immediate aftermath of the panic. People had time to think, to burden the pain of the present with the new, uncertain futures that they could see unfolding. And dreadful images crowded in upon him, vying with each other to torment him with their horror. Screams and cries of terror and grief rang in his ears, bloody wounds and white exposed bones floated before him, bodies pressed in upon him suffocatingly, jerking him upright, gasping for breath. Gradually, however, the needs of his body prevailed and, almost in spite of himself, his mind sank into the darkness.
Yet there was no darkness. He was moving. Shapes and colours danced and hovered about him, shifting and changing, growing and shrinking, shattering silently into glittering cascades and jagged streaks, gliding like bright-eyed hunting-birds, rushing and swooping like feeding swallows, flitting frantically to and fro. They merged with and twined around the sounds that were there, too. All manner of sounds: high-pitched shrieking and malevolent cackling carried on moaning winds ... rumbling, crushing thunders ... snatches of conversations, now near, now distant ... laughter ... sobs ... strange animal sounds and sounds that could not exist. The whole moved and shifted to an indiscernible rhythm, shot through with fear and hatred, love and joy, hissing fragments of every conceivable emotion.
And at the heart of this turmoil hung a nothingness that was formed of the darkness itself. A nothingness that was diamond-hard and glittering sharp. A nothingness that was the awareness of Allyn Vredech.
Where is this?
I am waiting.
I am lost.
It was not right to be lost here. Something was missing. A guide? The question had no meaning. He was what he was. He was entire, and he was here. This place was his and his alone, surely. He was not afraid. No other could exist here...
Yet there was a lack. And a paradox. For all that this was his place, many others intruded. This swirling chaos was of their making.
How could he know this with such certainty?
He was changed.
Why was he changed?
How was he changed?
The memory returned of a chilling touch as a dark red liquid had become water. There was the answer, but it told him nothing.
Where is this?
Full circle.
He was drifting.
He was still.
Then he was in the PlasHein Square, confusion and fear pervading him, darkness and noise all around, pressing in, choking, crushing. And again. And again. Over and over. Yet the fear was not his, he was both outside and inside, he was the watcher and the watched.
This was the dream of another, beyond any vestige of doubt!
Indeed, it was the nightmare of another. A tormented soul reliving in sleep the horror it had experienced in the waking daylight. Yet Vredech could not help. It was not in his gift to help; all he could do was observe.
But he could not accept.
'Have no fear,’ he thought. Then, for no seeming reason, ‘These are but shadows. A great and ancient strength protects you.'
There was a flickering of pain easing, of peace.
And he was drifting again, floating motionless yet hurtling onward. One after the other he touched dream upon dream; passed through fleeting, elusive images; tumbled uncontrolled.
Then, he was held. All was still.
Nothing else had ever been save this stillness.
Here was truth and certainty.
Here was the centre of all things.
Around him was Troidmallos and all its people—and more.
Yet these things were nothing. A collection of artefacts, cunning devices and painted constructs made for his amusement...
To break, to rend.
Vredech shivered in the coldness of the mind he had become. He should not be here. This place was diseased and awful. Yet he was powerless to flee.
Blood filled him.
Sacrifice.
Endless sacrifice.
That was the true purpose. All was to be laid on the altar, His altar, in blood and terror, so that...
Something tore Vredech away before he could form the scream that he must utter in the presence of what was emerging.
He was wide awake and upright. His hand shot out and struck a small bedside lantern into life, but even before its dawning glimmers had reached into the dark corners of the room, his senses had desperately drawn in the realities of everything around him, and wrapped them about him like a shield wall.
Yet, washing behind him, in the wake of his desperate flight, came the gaping, bloodstained images that reflected the fate of all that had been chosen for...
He put his hands to his head in denial as the images beat themselves against him. Then he tore back the sheets, swung himself off the bed and doused the lantern in a single move. The darkness in the room was only momentary, for the daylight immediately made its presence felt even through the drawn curtains. He yanked them open roughly and stood, arms outstretched, in the cleansing light.
Where had he been? Into what abomination had he just stumbled?
He was allowed no time for further thought, however, for even as he stood there, bustling footsteps along the passageway alerted him to another, more benign assault. There was a faint knock on the door, which then opened before he could give a reply.
'Brother Vredech, are you all right? I thought I heard something fall over.'
Vredech turned, thankful that the bright daylight was at his back. ‘I'm fine, thank you, House. Surprisingly well-rested. What time is it?'
'A little before noon,’ House replied.
Vredech raised a mildly admonitory finger as he saw her preparing more questions. ‘I think I'll get changed then,’ he said firmly. House looked him up and down, dithered for a moment, then muttering something vaguely apologetic, left.
He moved over to the bed and, sitting, looked down at his hands. They were shaking. And his mind was still full of the images from which he had just fled, their cruel intensity scarcely diminished. He needed to talk to Nertha. But he could not show her what he had seen, recount all that he had heard, somehow pass to her his certain knowledge. He could give her only words. She would only see her brother—he stumbled over the word—rambling. Having a recurrence of his ‘brain fever'.
And perhaps, after all, he was ... No!
Vredech thrust the thought away. While he could judge his conduct to be rational, he would cling to his intention of watching and listening. The ghost of his father would sustain him for quite a while yet. As, too, would his faith.
But these conclusions did not lessen the unease that formed in the pit of his stomach as his hands had stopped trembling. Except for the fundamental doctrines of the church, change was the way of all things, he knew, but too much was happening too quickly and he could not avoid a feeling of pattern, of shape, to events, though what it was, how it had come about, and where it would lead, he could not begin to fathom. So far there had been the crisis in the Heindral looming suddenly out of what was, after all, no more than a tragic drunken brawl in a foreign country; two terrible murders; and now this disaster in the PlasHein Square which had left some people dead and others massively injured, and must surely leave many more scarred and distressed for a long time, perhaps even for the rest of their lives. And twisting through all this upheaval, like the winding robe from an unclean corpse, were the Sheets, particularly Privv's, with their lying, their thoughtless, callous rhetoric, their bigotry and complete disregard for the duty that it was originally claimed they would perform: the informing of the people of events that were occurring in and about Troidmallos. They were a desperately dangerous force, Vredech realized suddenly, spreading ignorance and intolerance where they should spread knowledge and compassion, and spreading them with the peculiar vividness of the printed word. They should be restrained. Their very presence changed the things they wrote about. Such power should not be allowed in the hands of people so blatantly irresponsible.
Yet how could they be restrained, and by whom?
Vredech put his hand to his head. It was just another thread among the many that were tangling in his mind. And the Sheets were merely on the surface of what was happening, a scrofulous rash caused by a deeper, more serious inner affliction of the body.
His mind swung back to yet another change that had occurred over the last few months: Cassraw. Was his old friend just playing some game of church politics, or was he in reality slipping slowly into insanity? A coldness came over Vredech. There was a third alternative. Perhaps indeed something had possessed Cassraw. Certainly something more profound than the changing of a fruit juice into water had happened yesterday at the Haven Meeting House, though that in itself he still found deeply disturbing, despite Nertha's scornful dismissal. Something had entered that room. Something corrupt and awful, yet enthrallingly powerful. Something that had passed through and over him, awakening...
Awakening what?
Perhaps no more than your sluggish wits, he tried to tell himself half-jocularly. But the jibe did nothing.
'I heard Him as I travelled the dreamways. He walks among us again ... Ahmral.’ Jarry's words returned to him. Mad Jarry, driven into drink and violence, yet made suddenly eloquent by whatever it was he had seen, or felt. Was that what he was doing now, travelling the dreamways? Or was his mind softening, like Jarry's? Before he could pursue the question, other words came, keen and penetrating: the Whistler's.
'He is evil personified...
'Out of the heat of the Great Creation...
'He wanders the world
s ... A predator ... A parasite, in search of a host ...'
A host.
Vredech could feel unwelcome thoughts rolling towards him. Thoughts that would lead him into who could say what future.
As if to stay their arrival, his body lifted him off the bed and began changing him into his formal day clothes.
'He carries with Him the essence of all that is dark and foul in the human spirit, all that wallows in ignorance.'
The image of the Sheets flitted briefly through Vredech's mind again.
Ahmral does not exist, Vredech forced himself to think. He is merely a representation of the wicked aspects of mankind as a whole; those traits that should be resisted and controlled. But he was on unsure ground, he knew. Ishryth was accepted by the church as a real and sentient force, albeit beyond physical encompassing by any resource in this world. Why not then Ahmral? Could He not be accorded the benefit of the same faith?
Old, old arguments. Arguments that, amongst others, had once been fought over bloodily. Arguments that were not aided by the Santyth, awkwardly ambiguous on the matter. And now the Whistler's scornful words had cleaved through Vredech's ill-judged complacency like a shining axe, cutting into the heart of his world. ‘There is nothing supernatural, Priest. There is only the darkness where your ability to measure the natural ends.'
Vredech stepped out of his room. Emerging from a room opposite was Nertha. She looked at him intently. ‘You should have slept longer,’ she announced.