In the Earth Abides the Flame (48 page)

In an instant his new servant stood at his side. The loyalists recognised the man as the Arkhos of Sarista's secretary, and his presence here confirmed the news of Saraskar's death. As if Furoman read their minds, he favoured them with a smirk both irritating and insulting. Our executioner, the loyalists realised.

'Bind these men,' Deorc instructed. With the Wordweave, the loyalists heard their deaths pronounced.

The Arkhos of Piskasia could stand it no longer. 'Please,' he said, stifling a whimper, 'could you tell me some more about the new Faltha you have planned? There might be something I can do to help.' Fear-forced tears coursed down his cheeks, but he was past caring about humiliation. A life of plenty on the wide, fertile Piskasian plains had not prepared him for this extremity.

Perfect, Deorc gloated. This will hind the Council to me more effec-tively even than fear.

'You wish to recant?' he asked the miserable Piskasian, who could only nod with relief.

'You will serve a probationary period undergoing correction. If you prove yourself apt to teaching, you may be reinstated to the Council. However, if you betray us, we will deal swiftly with you.' 1 hold absolute sway here. Perfect obedience to my every word may see mercy extended to you. But, if mercy is denied, you will die like a rat in a sewer, without ceremony or lament. He paused, gauging the effect of his Wordweave. The three remaining loyalists looked on their fellow with a mixture of pity and scorn, while Deorc's allies, though trying to remain impassive, could not hide their respect from the Wordmaster. He had them in the palm of his hand.

The daily assembly at Foilzie's basement did not remain unobserved by the authorities. The Hermit realised early on the third day that the gatherings were being watched. Members of the Instruian Guard had been posted at either end of the narrow lane, and would stop and question people at random. Fools, the Hermit thought. If you were to come down hard on us now, you might prevent what is to come. But caution and ignorance have bound you, and despite yourselves you too serve the will of the Most High.

Vigilant as the Instruian Guard were, they missed the escape of Achtal, the Bhrudwan warrior.

Some time on that third morning he slipped away. With all that was going on, the Company did not see the need to search for him, nor could they have compelled him to return with them had he chosen not to. He's served his purpose, and that not very well, Perdu reflected. He can't do us any harm now. Vaguely he wondered how Hal might feel about the Bhrudwan's desertion, but thought about it no further than that.

To Stella, these days were better than holidays or Midsummer, more exciting even than the seven-year gathering when the whole of the North March would meet in the old walled town of Vapnatak. At last, she considered, everything was beginning to turn out all right. Leith and the others were gone, and the hurt of their desertion clawed at her deeply; but every day she met new and exciting people from all over the Great City, and with a pride she could not conceal she found herself at the centre of it all. The story of the Roofed Road was told again and again, and Stella delighted in the fact that many people found comfort and strength in the tale. It didn't seem to matter to them whether it was true or false - occasionally she overheard the story being told with gross exaggeration - because the value of it seemed to lie in its ability to inspire faith in its hearers. 'Imagine!' they would say. 'Just a wisp of a girl, and she knocked a great warrior into the river!'

The Hermit began to speak to the crowd on a nightly basis, and his messages were mystical but direct. 'The days when you conceived of the Most High as an invisible god are over,' he would announce, and the people would quieten down to listen. 'This is a new season, the dawn of a whole new day. For two thousand years the descendants of the First Men have laboured under a deception, having been taught the Most High had abandoned them. This served them well, for they did not have to consider his claims on them; they could continue satisfying their own desires without interference. This I considered during the many years I have spent alone in contemplation, learning to hear his voice. And this is what he says: "Soon, very soon, you shall meet me face to face. Only do not close your heart to me, do not whisper words of unbelief, as those who remain unconvinced will be left behind. They will be swept aside as I, the Most High, come to establish my kingdom. But those who remain faithful will find themselves administering that kingdom. Instruere will once again be my city, and I will dwell here, just as I dwelled in Dona Mihst of old. Only open your gates to me! Prepare me room!'"

Gradually the people were coming to accept this teaching. The signs appeared to bear witness to the Hermit's message. The city was certainly in a time of ferment, and the guard was everywhere, but a number of the old Arkhoi were no longer seen in the city. 'We've got a new man,' some said; and it was true, confirmed by the most reliable of sources, though no one had yet seen him.

'The fat man has been put to death in his own dungeon,' some commentators asserted, while this was contradicted by those who claimed he had fled the city ignominiously. Everyone was agreed the truth of either rumour would be a blessing. Nobody could be worse than the Arkhos of Nemohaim. Undoubtedly Instruere was in a state of flux; everything seemed to be up for renegotiation. Perhaps, the gossip ran, it was as the man in the blue robes said: all this was necessary to make way for the Most High!

'What?' the informant would say. 'You haven't heard the blue-robed man speak? You must come down to the basement. The basement, dear. Down a way from the Dock Road Market.

Come with me tomorrow morning!'

As the days went on, the Hermit began to interweave prophecy with his teaching. He would pause, then point a finger into the crowd. 'You there! Yes, you in the brown cloak! The Most High would say this to you: "I see your pain, my son, and I offer you my comfort." You are about to move into a season of great blessing, when everything you have lost will be returned to you tenfold. Do you believe?'

And the brown-cloaked one would inevitably reply: 'Yes, I believe!' The effect was startling, and people began to come from every part of the city to hear the man in the blue robe speak.

The debate within the Company was fierce. 'His words are accurate,' Perdu argued, 'and they bring comfort and encouragement to their hearers. How could they be wrong?'

'That's fine, as far as it goes,' Farr answered him. 'I've got no complaint with people feeling better. But what he says is so general, so cloaked in vague language, that he could say it to anyone and it would be true. I see no evidence that the Hermit is the mouthpiece of the Most High.'

'Yet he was accurate with his words to Leith,' Indrett said, and told them Leith's story. 'I think he hears the truth and speaks it out. Just look at the people coming to the basement! Surely the hand of the Most High is upon us!'

'Of course he hears the truth,' Mahnum said. His opposition to the Hermit's speeches had become consistent and vehement. 'But that does not give him the right to use it like a conjurer.

And when did we make the decision to trust this man to be our spokesman?'

'I am in no doubt,' the bald Escaignian declared. 'This man expresses the wishes and hopes of my people. Open the doors wide! Prepare for his coming!'

Foilzie was not so sure. 'It don't feel right to me,' she said, but could not explain what she meant.

'You're just afraid of change,' the Escaignian said to her. 'So you have chosen to stick to what you know.'

'You might be right,' the old woman agreed reluctantly. 'But surely we should set store by tradition?'

'No!' The man from Escaigne was adamant. 'Tradition is the sterile grave of good ideas.

Escaigne started out as a good idea but became a tradition, ineffective and evil in the end.

Traditions need uprooting, Escaigne needed uprooting. We need uprooting!'

Even as the debate continued, things began happening that put the validity of the Hermit's speaking beyond doubt. He was amazingly effective at picking out the members of the guard infiltrating the crowd and exposing them. His words of prophecy continued to be regarded as accurate. And then, a fortnight or so after the gatherings started, the shaking began.

It started in the front row, where the people were packed in most closely. As the Hermit spoke, people began to shake. It happened simultaneously in two places. Then to the left and to the right others began to quiver, some with their hands and arms, others with their whole bodies. 'Look!' the Hermit cried, his eyes bright with promise. 'Look! It is the fire of the Most High! He comes! He comes!' Some of the women began to laugh, and Mahnum cringed inwardly, for now the Hermit went too far. What had he done? But then he realised that the women were not laughing at the shaking people. Indeed, they shook themselves. The laughter seemed to be part of the whole happening.

'Catch the fire! Catch the fire!' the Hermit cried. 'Open wide the door of your heart!'

'I thought the Most High was coming in the flesh,' said one man. 'What's all this about my heart?'

The Hermit turned on him. 'You are the flesh. If you let the fire of the Most High fall on you, consume you, he will have indeed come in the flesh. He comes to dwell in Instruere, and you yourselves are his houses!'

The bald Escaignian stood in front of the crowd, and he shook from head to toe. 'My friend ...

is right,' he said, forcing the words to come. 'The fire ... has ... fallen! The Most High ... is in me. Don't. .. resist him. Open wide ... your heart!'

Foilzie looked on in dismay.

The phenomenon spread until perhaps a quarter of the gathering, maybe up to a hundred people, were taken to varying degrees by the shaking and the laughter. The Hermit said nothing, merely standing in front of them with outstretched arms as though he was the conduit through which the power proceeded.

Late that night a few of the Company sat around the fire. The meeting had finished, the assembly had gone home, and the Hermit rested at the far end of the basement.

'What has happened?' Mahnum asked. 'Far from readying us to defend against Bhrudwo, this

... I don't know what to call it... has made us more vulnerable.'

'The Most High has come,' Indrett said. 'What else could it be? He has brought us from the north for this very purpose, and now he returns to his faithful people.'

'But this wasn't part of the quest!' Mahnum argued. 'We have laid aside what we were supposed to do, and have been carried away into selfish indulgence!'

'I would not have believed you, of all people, would have argued against a visitation of the Most High,' said his wife in a voice not without irony. 'All your life you have talked of him as though he was your ally.'

A voice drifted over from the other end of the room. 'This is what the Most High says to you, son of Modahl: "Curb your jealousy. Allow others to experience what you yourself have experienced. Do not keep me to yourself.'"

Mahnum bit his lip and said nothing.

Stella spoke diffidently. 'Remember the night of fire?' she asked. 'Remember the dreams?

Leith and I dreamed about the Most High that night. You dreamed too, I am certain of it. I feel I ought not to speak of it -1 am not sure I would have told you what happened even if I was allowed. Is it the same with the rest of you? Did you dream too?'

Her words were answered by the nodding of heads. No one had forgotten that night. The fact that it had been a shared experience seemed to make it so much more real to them.

She continued, pressing home her point. 'If we were granted the fire, how can we refuse others the experience?'

'That has about it the ring of truth,' Perdu said quietly. 'I suggest we operate on the belief that the Hermit speaks truly, and see where our faith takes us. After all, it is what we have been doing since the quest began, is it not?'

The issue was debated further, but the crucial moment passed. The Company, with one or two exceptions, put their trust in the words of the Hermit.

'The Keeper of Andratan has achieved your first purpose, O my lord,' the small, brown-robed man reported. 'He has the Council of Faltha in his hands, and Instruere with it. The Instruian Guard treat his word - your word through him - as law.'

The hot south wind of Birinjh flicked a lock of jet-black hair into the hearer's eye, and unconsciously he pushed it away from his plucked eyebrow with his one hand.

'We need not worry the Council with this,' Deorc said softly as the Councillors filed out of the Inner Chamber. 'Anything that came before the old Council is now my responsibility, so I will deal with it.'

The relief on the face of the Arkhos of Straux was palpable. A very capable man, he and the Arkhos of Sarista had been overloaded with much of the trivial work of the Council. Now that Saraskar had gone - a source of sadness to the Arkhos of Straux, though he understood the necessity - there was simply too much to do. With the recent campaign to expose and destroy Escaigne ending in disaster, followed immediately by the damage caused by the flood and the disorder that accompanied it, his few resources were fully committed. And now an increasing number of guards were being drawn off to observe - not to intervene, much less terminate - a gathering of disaffected citizens that might - might! - turn into some kind of rabble rebellion. The loss of these guards simply taxed him beyond his limits, and he had seriously considered protesting.

But now he did not have to. Deorc said he would take care of it, and this meant he would have his guards again. There was much cleaning to be done, for example. The longhouse in particular was in a terrible state. As yet no one had been able to get down into The Pinion. It would take weeks for the water to clear from the dungeons, and heaven knew how much longer after that before it would again be usable.

He heaved a sigh as he made his way to his private quarters. The reality of political office was much different to the substance of the dreams of a youth from Straux. The dead weight of tradition and precedent, the seemingly incontrovertible need to continue doing things the way they had always been done, simply swamped the young man he had been. His associates were often unsavoury, people without scruples and with strange personal appetites to support, and everyone had vested interests in virtually everything. His own scruples had suffered, he knew that, and they had been abandoned with a tinge of regret; but his idealism had been subsumed by the pragmatism of the needs of the Sixteen Kingdoms, and by and large he approved of the change. Sixteen Councillors, each one selected by the king of the country they represented, supplied with a small staff and an annual income, which could be altered or withdrawn at the king's pleasure. Because of his king's proximity to Instruere (Mercium was two days' journey southwest of the Great City) the Arkhos of Straux was particularly vulnerable to this, and more than once he had been threatened with replacement.