“Yes,” Stephen said.
The Darkness coiling around Yoshana oozed forward to the man on the throne, surrounded him. Entered him.
Liquid began to seep from his pores, drops, then rivulets. It congealed into a white, oily mass as it coated the gilded chair and dripped to the floor. I abruptly recognized it as liquified fat.
In two years mining garbage I had never seen anything that sickened me more. Behind me several of the guards gagged noisily.
Stephen stood. The skin of his arms and face didn’t hang empty, but clung to his frame in the image of muscular health.
“I am strong,” he breathed.
“You were always strong,” Yoshana said. “Now your body matches your will.”
“Your will,” Prophetess said to the Overlord, but the words were so soft that only I, and perhaps Grigg, could hear them.
Stephen looked out at us, flexing his hands, a wide smile on his face. “We have seen the truth revealed,” he said. “You may go, little girl, and tell them in Our Lady that God’s strong sword has come to the Source.”
Tears trickled down Prophetess’ cheeks. She opened her mouth one more time but no sound came out. Then she turned on her heel and walked away.
Grigg gave me a sad little smile as I followed her.
12. Another Such Victory
“I didn’t sign up for this!”
Four of Stephen’s guards had said words to that effect as they threw down their spears and followed us out. With the sick taste of bile in my mouth, I couldn’t help but agree.
More soldiers joined us as we made our way back to the Midwalls, accreting to the first group of deserters like raindrops flowing together. By the time we had collected the rest of our group and passed back through the gate into the territory controlled by Yoshana’s troops, our ranks had swollen by over a dozen.
It didn’t matter. The Darkness Radiant was flooding the administrative district. The siege was over.
“What happened?” Dee demanded, over and over. I didn’t answer. Neither did Prophetess. But Stephen’s men were quick enough to babble out what they had seen.
“Not even a damn stick,” I muttered.
Prophetess turned to me. “What?”
“At least your God gave Moses a stick. He didn’t even give you that.”
And then, to my everlasting shock, her face cracked into a smile. “He gave me what I needed.”
“How did he possibly do that?”
“He gave me you, to stand between me and death. And gave us Grigg’s heart, when he stepped in front of us. What more could I ask for?”
“Maybe something that would have let us win? Let all of this not be for nothing?”
“But he did. I did what he asked of me, and we won.”
I was dumbfounded. “How can you call that a victory?”
“How can you not? We faced Yoshana and lived. We proved there’s a choice beyond bowing to her or being destroyed by her.” She swept Stephen’s guards with a gesture. “They saw that. They’ll bear witness.”
“Another such victory and I am undone,” I grumbled.
“Pyrrhus,” Dee said later. “Very good.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “We dragged ourselves halfway across the continent to stop Yoshana from taking over the Source. Yoshana took over the Source anyway. Now Prophetess is saying her prophecy is fulfilled. If we’d died, she’d have gasped out ‘my prophecy is fulfilled’ with her last breath. How do you argue with someone who can’t be proved wrong?”
“That’s faith for you,” Dee said.
“That’s a big, steaming pile of… if God is all-knowing and all-powerful, how do you square that with his prophet getting her butt kicked when she’s doing his work?”
“Ah, the problem of evil.” Dee rubbed his hands together.
“I’m going to regret asking this,” I said.
Dee smiled wickedly. “Why does God allow evil? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did God create mosquitoes? These are all questions that have vexed believers for centuries. The easiest answer is that his ways are not our ways, and we can't understand his plans. But I prefer quantum physics.”
“What?”
“I am a philosopher, Minos. I told you that you know a bit too much, and understand a bit too little. Where God and nature come together is where truth is found. The Universal Church tells us that man has free will, not so?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “But how can that be if God knows all? Doesn’t he know what we will do? Isn’t the universe like a great clock, and he knows every movement that has been, and every movement that will be?”
I shrugged.
“But the ancients discovered that when you come to see the smallest building blocks of the universe, you can know where they are, or where they are going, but not both. The act of observing changes that which is observed. What a wonderful thing! God created the universe in a way that it is unknowable, and so - free will! And the freedom to choose right or wrong. Stephen chose wrong. But the chance to choose right remains.”
The chance to choose right. Prophetess’ gray eyes, dancing with light. Her smile as she offered gentle encouragement to the men who had joined us, to the refugees we passed on the road. Her tall, straight figure at the head of our column, brown hair streaming behind her in the breeze. Had I chosen right? I hoped so.
Snow was falling outside the rectory at Our Lady. Father Juniper found me sitting on a bench, watching the Ermel Clock. The hour hand stood at six, where the circles touched.
“Ah,” he said, “Transition.”
I nodded.
“The question is,” I said, “whether we’re passing out of darkness, or into it.”
Book Two - Flight from Darkness
“Evil is the form which God’s mercy takes in this world.”
Simone Weil
1. Marking Time
“Ow! Son of a -!” I bit off the last word, remembering where I was.
Tolf laughed. He had rapped me solidly on the knuckles with his staff. It was bitterly cold outside, which made the blow hurt even more. The wind swept in off the Ice Fields to the north, scattering snowflakes and biting at my skin. I was younger, bigger, stronger, and faster. The guardsman still abused me when we sparred.
“Tomorrow I’m going to knock that pin right off you,” I said.
“Why do you have to be like that about the pin, Minos?” he asked plaintively. “You were there with her too.”
And that was the point. I had been there with Prophetess from the beginning, long before Tolf and the rest of the Order of Thorns got involved. When she had faced Yoshana, I had been beside her. Not the Order. I had stood between her and the Darkness. And I had done it without the promise of heaven or the threat of hell pushing me.
Now she was a hero. To at least some in Our Lady, she was a prophet not just in name. The Order of Thorns had sprung up within days of our return from Stephensburg. The pewter pin Tolf wore was its symbol, a circle of roses nestled within spines - the sharp edges defending the blossoms. It was a sign of their faith, and therein lay the problem - it was a faith I didn’t share.
“Ah, I’m just getting a little stir-crazy,” I said. “Tess may think we won a round against Yoshana because we lived and neither of us wet ourselves, but Yoshana’s spent three months building her armies and we haven’t done squat.”
“We’ve got nearly a hundred in the Order and more every day.”
I looked across the snow-covered field we called a drill yard, shimmering white under the perpetually gray sky of winter in Our Lady. From the elegant dome and spires of the rectory and basilica at the north end to the sprawl of buildings at the south, it measured nearly a quarter of a mile long and several hundred feet wide. The complex enclosed within the walls was huge, dozens of massive structures of cream-colored brick and stone, wrapped in ancient vines. It could house tens of thousands. The religious community numbered less than fifteen hundred, and few of them were under arms. Whole buildings stood e
mpty. We had room for an army - but we didn’t have one. Tolf’s hundred men would be lost in this space. But not the enemy’s legions.
“Yoshana’s got thousands of veterans in the Darkness Radiant alone, not counting all of Stephen’s troops. She’s got Stephen convinced he’s going to rule the world. You should have seen the look on his face. If she gets him to turn all of the Source’s production toward war… imagine ten thousand men with repeating rifles all answering to her. They’d roll over us without even knowing they were in a fight.”
“They wouldn’t dare attack Our Lady…”
“Maybe. I’d bet that depends on how much of a pain Yoshana thinks we might be. And if there are no survivors, who’s to say what happened?”
“You’re a real ray of sunshine.”
I picked up the staff I’d dropped, shaking off the snow that had stuck to it. “That’s why you all love me so much.”
There was a particular bench in the rectory, facing the Ermel Clock. Most days I would spend time sitting there, watching the hands trace their slow circuit. It was like no other clock I had seen - it showed the hours on two eccentric circles, joined at six o’clock, the hours of the night on the smaller circle inside the hours of the day on the larger. If I got up early enough, I could watch us pass out of darkness. Mostly I watched us pass into it.
Sometimes Father Juniper would join me, and the old, bearded priest would sit and puff on his pipe, and maybe say something profound.
This time I was joined by Father Roric instead. His title was Advocate for Justice, which suggested the medieval Inquisition. His bearing and temperament were less welcoming than that.
“You’ve been exercising,” he observed. I was probably still sweaty. I tried to make sure I didn’t drip on the bench.
“An unpleasant pastime. I try to avoid it.” He smiled, which put me in mind of a wolf examining a particularly helpless sheep.
He was thin as a whip, and sharp as one. If he didn’t exercise, he must not eat much. Maybe it was hard to find babies to devour.
“Quarterstaves with the guard?” he asked.
“I’m flattered you know me so well. I think.” Terrified was a more accurate word.
“You’re worth observing. Intelligent, honest, and the center of this whole matter of… the Prophetess.” He rolled the word around in his mouth like a lump of phlegm he badly wanted to spit out, but whose appearance would revolt him if he let it emerge.
“And yet, no…” he twirled his finger at my chest. I followed his meaning well enough. No pin. I wasn’t a member of the Order of Thorns.
“You know I’m not a Universalist, Father.”
His predatory smile widened. “And yet, you were her closest companion. You traveled with her for what, three months?”
“More like two.”
“Two. Still, in all that time she failed to convert you. That’s a rather extraordinary thing for a prophet, wouldn’t you say?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Father. I’ve never known any other prophets. Unless you count Yoshana.”
The grin vanished. “Very amusing. Well then, you’ve met them both. Which did you find the more impressive?”
“I certainly found Yoshana considerably more terrifying, but is that really the criterion we’re looking for?”
If that was the standard, Roric had Prophetess beat hands down, although he was a poor second to the Overlord.
The smile spread slowly across his face again. “I enjoy our little chats, Minos. You’re a stubborn creature, but I find you enlightening.”
“I believe Father Juniper once compared me to a hickory stick.” I nodded at my staff.
“Mm. He probably meant it in some sort of positive way. He’s a kindly soul.”
I had never imagined a priest could make kindly sound like a bad word.
There was no clearer sign of my malaise than the fact that I sought out Doctor John Dee. The pretentious occultist was a fountain of non-stop babble on every conceivable subject, a walking cure for insomnia.
He was also the only other person of my acquaintance not passionately dedicated to one side or the other of the Prophetess debate.
“I can’t take it, Dee,” I said. “We need to be preparing for a war with Yoshana, but all anyone cares about is whether God’s speaking through Tess. I understand this is a religious community, but how is that the most urgent point?”
“Father Roric tracked you down, eh?”
“Are you following me around too? How did you know that?”
Dee grinned. “Well, he got done with me yesterday, so it was logical. And clearly something has you upset. He’s a fascinating man, isn’t he? But I can see how he might be disturbing to a sensitive temperament.”
I narrowed my black eyes and glared at the gangly man, a cowardly assortment of loose limbs animated by an inexhaustible supply of hot air. “One thing Select are not is sensitive.”
He laughed. “Fine. Not sensitive in the least. But you are upset.”
“Tolf’s acting like I should be burned at the stake for not treating Tess like some kind of messiah.” That was a gross exaggeration, but I was venting. “Roric probably wants to burn her and me both at the stake. Again, how is this the most productive use of anyone’s time when a megalomaniacal Overlord is building the army of darkness on our doorstep?”
Dee leaned back in his chair and sucked his teeth. “Let’s go back to a conversation you and I had months ago, Minos. Why is Yoshana dangerous?”
“Because she’s a homicidal maniac who can use the Darkness to flay the flesh off your bones.”
“No!” Dee gave me an exasperated grimace.
“All right, but you weren’t in the room with her when she got mad. You’re saying she’s dangerous because people follow her.”
“Yes. And now people need to decide if they’re going to follow Prophetess the same way. That’s why this matters.”
I sighed. “I guess I understand that. And I feel like if I can’t jump on her bandwagon, I’m undermining her. But I came here following a person, not a symbol. I can’t be part of the Order of Thorns if that means pretending to a faith I don’t have. I thought I wanted to be part of a cause, but now that I am, I don’t think I like it.”
The occultist shrugged. “Maybe it isn’t the right cause for you.”
Weeks passed, and the weather improved. In a way. The training ground melted from hard-packed earth dusted with snow to a clinging mud. The first tentative green shoots began to appear on trees. The golden dome of the rectory shone like a beacon in the sun.
A beacon to what, that was the question. Campaigning season would be upon us soon. No one would besiege Our Lady in the winter. The surrounding townsfolk would just flee with their goods into the protection of the walls, and the attackers would starve, shivering in the abandoned buildings, their supply lines vulnerable to snowstorms and hypothermia.
Soon, though, it would be warm enough to see what Yoshana’s intentions truly were.
That conversation was already making the rounds in the visitors’ dining hall. Of course, “visitor” was an interesting term for the few dozen assorted refugees we had accumulated. It implied we were there temporarily, but our motley crew had been occupying the dormitory for months. There were more than a dozen former soldiers of Stephensburg who had been disgusted by their master’s alliance with Yoshana and joined us instead. Another score of civilians had attached themselves to us as we made our way from Stephensburg back to Our Lady. And then there were the original six - Dee, Hadal, Doral, Loris, Prophetess, and me. All of the able-bodied men except Dee and I had joined the Order of Thorns. I wasn’t a Universalist, and Dee was devoted only to knowledge and saving his own skin. I had never met a man so eager to poke his nose into dangerous places yet so quick to run away from physical confrontation.
The midday meal was served at long tables. A mix of nuns and lay sisters brought food around on trays. It was simple and decent and hadn’t varied much over the winter. The women among th
e refugees helped in the kitchen, cooking and serving before sitting to eat. Prophetess came by with a tray of rolls. Some of her more fanatical devotees were scandalized whenever they saw her cooking, or serving, or cleaning. They spent quite a bit of time being scandalized because she did a lot of it. I was more perturbed that she didn’t spend time in councils of war.
“I’m no soldier, Minos,” she had said. “And God hasn’t told me that I should make war. When the time comes, he’ll guide me.”
She was no pacifist. Sometimes she would exercise with a staff, though I was the only one who would really spar with her. She was quick and strong and had good reach. She was no match for me, much less someone with Tolf’s skill, but she was by no means helpless. But her swinging a stick around wasn’t going to defeat Yoshana.
I had read the classics of strategy and tactics, as almost every Select did. But no one asked for my opinion. Not that I had any brilliant ideas how we could face down a force that was larger, better trained, better equipped, and led by one of the most fearsome generals of our age.
Maybe I didn’t like this cause because it was so obviously lost.
“Roll?” Prophetess repeated, prodding my shoulder with her tray.
I blinked and shook my head, trying to reclaim my wandering thoughts. Only after refusing did it occur to me that I would like a roll after all.
“Haven’t seen you in a couple of days,” I said lamely.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with Father Juniper. And we were out most of yesterday hoeing the north field. And you’ve been busy staring at that clock all day.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “Sometimes I let Tolf hit me with a stick.”
She grinned. “I miss spending time with you. I got used to it after two months walking north together.”
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 20