Priests of Ferris (15 page)

‘Come in, child. Don’t stand on ceremony.

She looked in the direction of the voice, and saw a man sitting behind a desk signing papers. He looked like a headmaster, except that he was dressed as a priest. Ferris bones dangled down his chest and snagged his pen and he pushed them aside irritably. ‘Take your stool,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I won’t be a moment.’

Susan went into the room, with her eyes lowered. She chose one of the stools and shifted it off the mat. The priest’s pen scratched on paper busily. She glanced at him – he looked so tired, so mousy. So ridiculous, rubbing his nose, picking at his chin. She could not believe he was the High Priest. Surely he was only a secretary. The real Priest would come in soon from behind the curtains.

While she waited she studied the room, but it told her little. It was more an office than a throne-room, for the throne and dais were ceremonial while the desk had an array of pens and inks, and piles of documents in in-trays and out-trays, and books that looked like law books and statutes. Beside it was a frame hung with maps and a second hung with diagrams and tables, and an abacus more complicated than any she had seen. She supposed the Temple, and the land, were run from this room. It all seemed dry as dust. For that reason the guards about the wall, with naked swords, seemed out of place.

The man at the desk finished his papers and pushed them aside. He sighed and took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then he stood up and came towards her. She felt like laughing, he was so short: a little man with a roly-poly stomach and skinny legs and watery eyes and a nose dented from his spectacles. He had old yellow brittle-looking bones about his neck. He looked like a retired judge being taken, against his will, to a fancy dress party.

Yet he was the High Priest. He sat down on the stool facing Susan and said in an old man’s voice, ‘So Soona of Stonehaven, you have come to play your flute one last time.’

‘Yes,’ Susan whispered, trying to make her voice like Soona’s. She would tell him who she was, but she wanted to give Soona time to get well away.

‘Ah child,’ said the Priest, ‘I cannot tell you how much your playing has meant to me. It soothes me after the cares of state. No one can understand the burdens I carry.’

She risked a glance from under her hood and saw his eyes filled with tears of pity for himself.

‘I sometimes think no one loves me,’ he said. ‘You do not love me. The people do not love me. And yet I work from dawn till dusk for them. And nobody thanks me. They plot to kill me, Soona. But they cannot. I have my guards and they would die for me. So I am safe.’ He wiped his eyes and gave a little smile. ‘Have you thought of what I said?’

She did not know what that might be, but nodded her head.

‘It would be easy, Soona. There are girls in the villages, girls in the dungeons, who look like you. It would be so easy to put one in your place. No one would know the difference when she fell. And you could live here and play your flute. Play it for me now child, and think while you play. You need not die.’

‘I will not play,’ Susan said.

‘What?’

‘I will not play for a man who murders people.’

She discovered then that she had under-estimated him. She expected rage, a tantrum like a child’s, but his eyes simply widened and grew still. Then his hand shot out, quick as a striking snake, and threw back her hood. ‘So,’ he said, and flicked his fingers, and a guard ran to the desk and brought his glasses. He put them on and studied Susan’s face. ‘Unless I am mistaken, you are Susan Ferris.’

‘Yes. I am.’

‘And you have come from Earth.’

‘Yes.’

‘Fascinating. We must talk about it. But first we must get the other girl.’ He made rapid finger signs to a guard and the man ran from the room. The guards were deaf and mute, Soona had said, so they might hear and tell no secrets, and all their speaking was in finger language. The High Priest made another sign and a second guard searched Susan for weapons.

‘Now, tell me how you came here,’ said the High Priest, but he stopped, and smiled, and said, ‘No, let me guess,’ and his eyes sharpened. ‘Yes, yes.’ His fingers played a message and another guard ran out. ‘Unless I am mistaken we shall find Soona on the Temple wall. Do the stone-silk gloves still work, after so many turns?’

His quickness terrified Susan. She had never met anyone so sharp and deadly.

‘I’ve come to end your religion. It’s all lies,’ she managed to say.

‘Of course it is. Of course it is. You don’t have to tell me that.’ He smiled at her. ‘All this mumbo-jumbo. Bones and things.’ He rattled the bones on his chest. ‘Do you know who these belonged to? Odo Cling. Horrible things! The first High Priest had the idea. A wretched fellow! But clever. Oh yes, clever. Superstition, you see. Ritual. Magic. He saw what was needed. He got things in control. Made a religion, and made the state from that. But he left us all this rubbish there’s no getting rid of. Ferris bones. Sniffing out. Well, the priests believe. It keeps them happy. The priests are really my police, you see.’

‘But all the cruelty, all the killing. Throwing people off cliffs,’ Susan cried.

‘Oh, that’s necessary,’ the Priest said. ‘It keeps order. I’ve got to have order. There’s no other way to run the state. And the people like it. They’ve developed a taste for it. It’s fun for them. And it takes their minds off the Temple taxes. Tomorrow will do a lot of good. We’ll be able to keep them nice and quiet for a long time after that.’

‘But Soona will be dead.’

‘Yes. Unfortunate for her. And for you. I can’t have you running around. You understand? I can see you’re a clever girl.’

Susan could think of nothing to say. None of her arguments were of any use. He agreed with them. But the worst thing, she thought, was his sympathy. He meant to have her and Soona thrown off the cliff – and he sympathized. She almost believed he would weep for them; and for himself, for the hard decision he was forced to make. She began to understand that he was insane. He was clever, and logical, and mad.

Soona came in between two guards. She had dressed in a simple shift for her climb. Her face was streaked with tears. A guard brought another stool, and the three of them, Susan, Soona, and the High Priest, sat cosily together like three children at a fire. The High Priest patted Soona’s hand. ‘There, there,’ he said. A guard handed him the stone-silk gloves and he studied them, sniffed them, tried them on his hands. Then he went to his desk and wrote something.

‘They caught me on the walkway. I’m sorry,’ Soona said softly.

‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t say anything about Nick and Jimmy and the others.’

The High Priest came back. ‘I shall send them to my chemists,’ he said. ‘I shall have an army that can climb up walls. Now Soona, you must play for me. I find music soothes me after the cares of the day.’

Susan gave Soona the flute. The fishergirl handled it lovingly, and held it for a moment against her cheek. Then she said to the High Priest, ‘I shall not play for you, or play again until the land is free.’ She took the flute like a stick and broke it in half. One of the guards made a movement, but the High Priest stopped him with a twist of his finger.

‘A pity,’ he sighed. ‘What a great pity. But there are plenty of flute-players – though none as skilled as you. It grieves me Soona that you would not let me care for you. I would have been a father to you.’

‘I have a father.’

‘What, a poor fisherman? I am the High Priest.’

‘You’re a foolish lonely little man. And your religion and your empire will come to an end. I’m sorry for you, even though you’re evil and you’re mad – ’

The Priest made a sign and the guard behind Soona struck her with the flat of his hand, knocking her off her stool.

‘You must not talk to me like that. It is not proper,’ the Priest said. He looked at her sadly. ‘You have disappointed me, Soona. I would have saved you. We could have used this girl, Susan, in the ceremony. Now you must both die.’

‘She’s right,’ Susan said. ‘Your empire and your religion are coming to an end. There are too many lies and too much cruelty. The people are starting to realize.’

‘Dear me,’ the Priest said, ‘how foolish you are. You children simply don’t understand. Lies are part of the system, and cruelty means fear and fear means control. Everything has been thought of. The Temple will last forever. Perhaps you would like to see something. I will show you how well organized we are.’ He signalled and a guard ran out, and a moment later five priests filed into the room, with a shuffle of leather-clad feet and a rattling of bones. They kept their eyes lowered, yet one or two sent darting glances at the High Priest, and one hummed a little tune to himself and scratched his nose with a Ferris bone. At the back of each came a guard with a drawn sword.

‘These,’ said the Priest, ‘are the Candidates. Five of them. There must always be five. Each one hopes to be the High Priest when I am gone.’ He laughed and said to them, ‘Is that not so?’ Watching cunningly, anxiously, they nodded, but never spoke. Even the one who played with his Ferris bones nodded his head.

‘They don’t speak,’ the Priest said, ‘or make any sound, to each other, or anyone, or even look at each other, or anyone but me, because a guard with a sword stands behind, at every moment of their lives, day and night, and if they make one wrong move, or move their lips, the guard will kill them. Now tell me, with that arrangement, how can there be any plot against me?’

The Candidates nodded wisely, with lowered eyes.

‘I was a Candidate for twenty turns,’ the High Priest said. ‘I lived with a naked sword at my back, and never spoke, and never raised my eyes. But I thought. As these are thinking. And I feared. And I hoped. The strain is great. See, one of these is mad. He was a bad choice. I shall have to replace him. Or perhaps it would be better if they were all mad. I’ve never thought of that.’

It seemed to Susan she was in a nightmare, the sort where everyday things take on a terrible threat. The reasonable ordinary voice of the High Priest droned on, his ordinary little face puckered with concern and decency, and his fingers toyed with the yellow bones on his chest, and the Candidates stood with lowered eyes and naked swords at their backs.

‘When I am dying,’ the High Priest said, ‘I shall choose one of these to be my successor. His first order will be for the death of his fellows.’

‘You’re mad,’ Susan whispered. ‘You’re all mad.’

‘No,’ smiled the High Priest, ‘we are sane. We are the State. We are truth and life and order.’

‘I am Susan Ferris,’ Susan cried to the Candidates. ‘Everything you believe is a lie.’

They made no move, nor any sign of interest. The High Priest laughed.

‘Child, you are helpless. All power for action rests in me. For life and death. For beginning and ending. Shall I show you?’

His fingers made a movement too rapid to follow, one of the guards lowered his sword and thrust, and a Candidate lay dead upon the floor.

‘There,’ said the High Priest, ‘that is power, and that is truth. It could as easily have been you, Susan Ferris. Understand that who you are does not interest me. Tomorrow you will have a small moment in history, and then it is done. But I will go on. The Temple goes on.’ He gave a fastidious shudder – ‘The sight of blood upsets me’ – and signalled again and guards carried out the Candidate’s body and others mopped the pool of blood from the floor. Then, in what seemed the final madness to Susan, a new Candidate was led in and took his place with the others. It seemed to Susan his eyes glowed with satisfaction.

The High Priest took no notice of him, but signalled again, and the guards prodded the Candidates out of the room.

‘So you see, Susan, there is no point in struggle. Resign yourself. It will be much easier that way.’

‘It will end,’ Susan whispered. ‘The Temple will end. A lie cannot go on.’

‘Oh dear,’ said the Priest, ‘you are hard to convince. Perhaps it would be better if I had you killed right now.’

‘Even without me the Temple will fall.’

The High Priest looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what it is you’ve been plotting. It strikes me there is some danger in you. I think perhaps I’ll put a different sort of guard on you. Better to be on the safe side, I think.’ He flicked his fingers, a guard went behind the curtains and a priest came in, leading a Bloodcat on a silver chain. The animal slunk in a cowed way, with ears flattened and belly close to the ground, as if it was hunting. Its yellow eyes fastened on the High Priest and flashed with hatred. But fear was even deeper, and though she was terrified, appalled by the creature, Susan cried out in pity, for it was broken, reduced by some dreadful cruelty. It was a larger animal, better grown, than the one that had hunted her on the Lizard Path. Yet the sinuousness and coiled strength were there, increased and made more terrible by the twisting that had been worked in the cat, its bending to the will of a human master. It was held in some mental vice turned tight by the Priest, and its malevolence and blood lust were increased.

The High Priest reached out and cuffed it on the nose. ‘Nice pussy.’ The Bloodcat sank down and hooded its eyes. Soona had slipped off her stool on to her knees and buried her face in her hands. She could not look at the cat. Susan put her arm around her. Until this moment she had believed Nick and Jimmy might save them. She did not believe it any more.

‘You have seen a Bloodcat?’ said the Priest.

‘Yes,’ Susan said.

‘But not like this. He is the largest ever captured. And the only one we have managed to train. And he is mine, Susan. I have him,’ he tapped his head, ‘up here. I am his master. And now I am going to set him to watch you.’ He made a sign to a guard and the man stepped up to Susan and laid the point of his sword on her throat.

‘He’s not going to hurt you,’ said the High Priest. The guard made a small movement of his wrist and she felt a pricking on her throat, a stinging like a sandfly’s bite. He withdrew the sword and she saw a drop of blood held on its point. The guard went to the High Priest and gave him the sword.

‘Now pussy, a little treat for you,’ the High Priest said.