Reave the Just and Other Tales (27 page)

He did not know what I might say if he searched me now. In my worst nightmares, I had not dreamed that he might place us both in a danger so extreme.

And I had given up my strength to Lord Numis. I could not survive by flight or struggle. Scant moments ago, I had tried to envision how I might save Duke Obal. Now I could grasp no salvation for myself.

Despite my despair, however, I was forced to acknowledge the Duke a man of honor, worthy of service. With all Mullior at stake, he meant to place himself in my hands. If I told the truth and was damned for it, he would be damned as well.

When the gathering had fallen silent, he turned to me. At the sight of my huddled posture, he scowled. Glancing toward his son, he breathed, “Help him. He must stand. He must answer.”

Joined by Lord Rawn, Lord Ermine hastened to my side. Together they supported me upright, their concern evident on their faces. Upon occasion they had witnessed my weakness, just as they had benefited from my strength, but they had never seen me so profoundly drained. In me sorrow and dread altogether surpassed my kind’s more ordinary fear of hunger and frailty.

“Hold up your heart,” Lord Ermine urged me. “We will prevail somehow. My father is unaccustomed to failure. And we believe that he has rightly judged Mullior’s mood—and Mullior’s needs.”

He sought to fortify me, but I was unable to hear him. The light seemed to leave me deaf as well as blind. I could not blink my sight clear, or lift my heart.

“My lord,” the Master of Mullior’s Purse whispered to the Duke, “he is too weak for this. Look.” Lord Rawn shook me so I staggered, although his grasp was gentle. “He is prostrate where he stands. If he does not feed, he will collapse before us, and then we are lost.”

“That,” stated Lord Vill through his teeth, “is impossible. If he feeds, someone must die for it. We cannot countenance such an act in front of these pious cowards. They will rise against us. We will be garroted before we can gain the doors.”

That, too, was plain truth. In the name of my vows, and of my debt to Irradia, I summoned the resolve to raise my head. Although I failed to drive the blur of tears from my gaze, I faced Duke Obal and said for the second time, “I will do what I can, my lord.”

He appeared to nod. “Good,” he remarked privately. “I ask only the truth. Grant that, and I will abide the outcome.”

Then he continued more strongly, so that the hall could hear him. “Speak openly, and fear nothing, Scriven. I have named you my handservant. As you restored Lord Numis, so you have also renewed my own life, and that of my son, as well as many others. For yourself, you have drawn sustenance solely from the fallen of this cruel siege. My lord Bishop calls you an abomination, but I have seen no sign of evil in you. I have felt no harm at your touch.

“The time has come for an accounting between us. Scriven, why do you serve me?”

I had said that I would do what I could, but dismay mocked my given word. The compulsion to dodge and feint in the face of peril ruled me. Rather than answering honestly, I countered, “My lord, why do you oppose the High Cardinal?”

The Duke’s eyes narrowed, and a glower darkened his visage. I felt impatience through his urgency. He had not brought me to this hall in front of these witnesses in order to watch me scurry aside. Yet his self-mastery was greater than mine. Despite his vexation, he responded as I had asked.

“All Mullior knows my reasons. You know them yourself, Scriven. I oppose High Cardinal Straylish on both worldly and spiritual grounds.”

In a formal voice, Duke Obal declared, “His Reverence Beatified has made plain that he considers it the province of Mother Church to dictate both law and policy to such states as Mullior. I do not.” Each word he articulated with the force of a decree. “Where the duties of my station and my birth are concerned, I will be no man’s puppet. The soul and its salvation are the proper care of Mother Church. Worldly circumstances are not. It is not the place of Mother Church to judge or control the actions of suzerains. Such matters as whether I form an alliance with one neighbor, or welcome refugees from another, are not resolved by theological debate. And I take it as a transgression—as a personal affront—when Cardinal Straylish commands me to enact laws which restrict or punish those citizens of Mullior who have not entrusted their souls to Mother Church. I grieve when my people do not recognize the light of Heaven, but I will not in any fashion deny them the freedom of such determinations.”

Lord Vill and Lord Rawn nodded their approval, but no one in the hall spoke. All Mullior’s highborn had often heard Duke Obal assert his convictions. They waited restively for the outcome of his peroration.

“These are worldly questions,” the Duke continued. “On spiritual issues also I am not persuaded by the service His Reverence Beatified gives to God. Its tenor disturbs me.

“I was taught by the clergy of Mullior, Bishop Heraldic among them”—subtly he undermined the Bishop’s censorious disapproval—“that God is a God of love, that Heaven is a place of joy, and that the task of Mother Church is to teach us to open our hearts to such beneficence. Therefore I believe that the true sign of those who serve Mother Church is that their hearts
are
open. Filled with God, they are neither condemnatory nor cruel.

“Yet the High Cardinal has closed his heart to all who do not honor his dominion. He
persecutes
any and all who do not share his beliefs, or his nature. He does not ask if they are
accessible
to salvation. Rather, he
coerces
them to it. And if he deems them beyond coercion, he seeks their destruction.”

Duke Obal made no effort to disguise his bitterness. “In this His Reverence Beatified does not count the cost. Because he loathes evil, he prefers to torment and maim, to make war, to spill the blood of the harmless like water, and to impose his will by terror, rather than to suffer the existence of hellspawn. Better, he believes, to excruciate and murder an innocent—or a thousand innocents—than to risk letting one blood-beast escape him.

“I disagree,” the Duke pronounced harshly. “I do not believe that coercion and torture are the proper instruments of love and joy. While I live, I will oppose them. If I am wrong, I will answer for it before Heaven. But I will not answer to His Reverence Straylish Beatified.”

There he stopped. He had said enough to demean my evasion, and I was ashamed of it. Yet I strove to conceal myself still. Across the expec-tant silence of the assembly, I answered softly, “And does that not suffice to account for my service, my lord?”

He shook his head. “It does not.”

And Bishop Heraldic echoed behind him, “It does not.”

Their eyes held me. Every gaze in the hall was fixed toward me. Although I could not stanch my grief enough to see clearly, I felt horror and fascination from my witnesses—revulsion accentuated by the secret excitement of proximity to forbidden things.

“Very well,” I sighed. “If I must.”

And still I temporized. Of the Duke’s son I inquired, “May I have wine, my lord? It will not restore me, but it will ease my throat.”

I meant that I hoped it would ease my abasement.

“Certainly,” answered Lord Ermine. He left my side. I heard murmuring, and a low voice asked, “Where is the wine which the Duke requires?” For a reason that eluded me, Lord Ermine was answered by a priest of the Duke’s retinue—he may have been the Duke’s personal confessor. The tension of the gathering grew sharper still. But I gave no heed. I cared only that when Lord Ermine returned he placed in my hands a goblet brimming with the sacred color of deep rubies and blood.

I preferred water, but I drank the wine, praying that it might have an effect upon one of my kind—that it might serve to blunt the edge of my distress, as it did for other men. And if it did not lift my weakness, or soften my woe, perhaps it would sanctify my penance.

With what strength I had, I declared, “I serve you, my lord, because His Reverence Straylish Beatified instructed me to do so.”

My audience reacted with disbelief and indignation, and also with a kind of febrile mirth, heated by alarm. Bursts of harsh laughter punctuated shocked expressions of virtue and rejection. I was accused of “sacrilege,” “Satanic cunning,” and—more kindly—“madness.” However, Duke Obal dominated the response.

“Explain yourself, Scriven,” he demanded. “Are you a spy?”

I shook my head. “No, my lord. You will understand—”

As best I could, I hardened my heart.

Directing my gaze into the red depths of the goblet, I told my tale for the first and only time.

_______

“Like others of my kind,” I explained, “I am commonly homeless. We cannot nourish each other, and none sustain us willingly. We are cursed to isolation. Therefore we wander.

“Perhaps a year ago, my roaming took me to Sestle”—the birthplace of the Cardinal, and the seat of his power. “There I settled to fend for survival as unobtrusively as I could.

“I cannot tell how others of my kind make their way. I suspect that we are diverse as ordinary men, and that some of us cut as wide a swath as they may, while others covet more timid existence. For myself, I had learned as I roved that places of worship provided congenial feeding grounds. In such places men are plentiful—and careless of their safety, thinking themselves protected by their gods. For the same reason, when a community comes to fear one of my kind, it seldom searches its sanctuaries and chapels. In lands to the east and south of Sestle”—lands which had not been enfolded by Mother Church—“I had lived well and long by secreting myself and selecting my prey within places of worship.

“That was my intention in Sestle. Avoiding the great cathedrals, I chose a decrepit chapel immured among the city’s multitudinous poor, in a region named Leeside, where the worshipers were at once devout and defenseless, and where any number of unexplained deaths might pass unremarked. At first I made my home among the nameless graves in the chapel basement. Later, however, I learned that the chapel’s builders, dreaming of grander sanctuaries, had given the edifice lofts and attics among the high rafters, and there I eventually took up residence. From above I could watch and hear what transpired below me, among the worshipers. This greatly improved the efficacy of my position.

“I believed that I had found a place where I might live for many years and be secure.

“However, its effect was not what I had imagined. From my lofty perch, I watched and heard—too much.

“The congregation I observed comprised little more than human refuse, more ruined than their house of worship, reduced by poverty and near-starvation to the semblance of vermin. And yet the devotion on their faces, the simplicity revealed through their grime and pain, the untrammeled trust of their hymns and prayers—these things touched me as I had never been touched before.

“Must I speak the truth, my lords? Then I will acknowledge that I saw myself in them. My homelessness and wandering, and my ceaseless isolation, had taught me to understand their deprivation. And my kind is always hungry.

“As I watched my intended prey, there reawakened in me a yearning which I had ignored for so long that it seemed to have no name, a longing of the heart to stand among other men, other folk, and call them mine.”

Hearing whispered opprobrium and doubt, I admitted, “I am well aware that I revolt you, my lords. Throughout my life I have known only revulsion. It is the fact around which my existence revolves. Yet the truth remains. In that chapel I ached to join the congregation, and give myself up to be healed.”

Then I resumed.

“As I say, I saw too much when I watched. And when I listened I heard too much. For the first time, I attended to the conduct and attitudes of my prey. Their priest—an old man called Father Domsen—was no less ruined than they, no less tattered and besmirched, no less stricken by want. But he was also no less devout, and his love of Heaven seemed to shine like a beacon in the dim sanctuary. Again and again, day after day, he spoke of love and acceptance and peace, and of an immortal joy beyond the smallest taint of earthly suffering, and in his faith I heard intimations of an ineffable glory. I was persuaded by it, my lords, when I had not known that I could be moved at all.

“The alteration in me was gradual, but it brooked no resistance. At first I was hardly conscious of the change. Then I found that I had grown loath to prey on those who worshiped in my chosen home. This required me to search more widely for sustenance, and to accept more hazard. Nevertheless I gained a comfort I could not explain from the knowledge that the chapel’s congregation was in no peril. And for a time that contented me.

“As I listened to the priest’s kind homilies, however, and to his gentle orisons, and heard the heartfelt goodwill of his blessings, I came to desire a deeper solace. I wished for the more profound balm of standing shoulder to shoulder with men and women who did not abhor me, and of sharing their simplicity.

“So it was that perhaps three months after I had arrived in Sestle I left my high covert in order to join the congregation when it gathered to worship.

“That was difficult for me, my lords. As I say, I had known only revulsion from ordinary men—only hatred, and a lust to see me exterminated. To mingle with folk who would avidly rend me limb from limb under other circumstances cost me severely. My pulses burned with fear, and at intervals my hunger swelled with feverish urgency. Yet I endured. Having entered among the congregation, I could not withdraw without drawing notice. At all times, notice threatens me. And in that gathering to be noticed would block any relief from the yearning which had driven me there.

“I did not know the prayers or the hymns, and the liturgy itself was new to me. But I mimicked those around me until I had secured a rote knowledge of their service. So I avoided the notice I dreaded. Men granted me the same vague nods they gave their fellows, children laughed or squalled in my presence, women and maids curtsied to me without recognition or concern. By small increments I began to feel that I was accepted.”

I gripped my goblet weakly. “This was an illusion. I understood its ephemeral nature. The folk around me did not know what I was.