The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (126 page)

"Indeed." Huard's voice came through the darkness disembodied, as though he were the God. "Self-examination is one danger; prayer is another. Prosper, the easiest way to allow the demons victory over you is for you to pray to the God."
Prosper's eyes flew open. "But—" He stopped, stilled not by any understanding, but by a warning look from the priest.
While Prosper's eyes had been closed, Huard had changed into the formal robe of the evening service. The robe's gold edging glittered in the last shimmer of the day's light and in the glow of the single prayer-light that remained lit. The priest now held in his hand the purification lamp, unlit. Prosper, staring at it, felt a word welling up within him.
The priest nodded as though Prosper had spoken the word, though of course the word was reserved for use by priests. "I am sorry to say this, Prosper, but I fear that you have been neglecting the discipline of silence. You have all the signs of a man who has talked and talked and talked, whether to his fellow spirits or to the God, and has done no listening for many years. That, more than anything, explains your condition. The demons abhor silence, and they love a mind filled with speech and thoughts and even prayer, provided that the prayer is not balanced by moments of silence when the petitioner awaits the God's response.
"And so the second discipline I place upon you – a harder discipline – is that you do not pray during the coming year. You should speak as little as possible, confine your thoughts to the duties I placed upon you a while ago, and engage in the silence as many times a day as you were planning to talk to the God."
Prosper forced himself to wait before answering. He found himself straining his spirit to do so, like a priest who has forgotten long-ago lessons in the changing vowels of the ancient tongue. He held back until his spirit was beginning to shake from the strain; then he looked up at Huard. In the diffident voice of a pupil to his tutor, he asked, "If I do this, do you believe that I have the strength to drive out my demons so that I can re-enter the God's presence and return to the priesthood?"
Huard was a long time returning his answer. His gaze was upon the shadows on the floor, as though he were judging the moment at which he must enter the sanctuary. Finally he looked up and said, "Do you remember the shortest sentence in the catechism?"
Prosper nodded slowly. "'Trust the God.'"
Huard's hand touched his shoulder briefly, and then the priest was gone, leaving Prosper to the silence of the coming evening.
 
CHAPTER TWO
"Mystery."
The sacred word, whispered in the ancient tongue, carried to the far reaches of the sanctuary. In the dark, the only sound to be heard was the clinking of the chain of the priest's lamp as the purifying light from it touched the faces of the kneeling worshippers, along with the crackle of the sacred flame burning behind the man-sized God-mask hanging behind Huard. The priest himself, outlined between the God-mask and the darkness of the sanctuary, could barely be seen. His whisper and the lamp were the only evidence that the God's representative stood in this chamber.
Prosper, hidden in a black corner where the purifying light could not reach him, tried to bring his mind to silence. After three months, he still felt uneasy at these services. Partly this was because Huard practiced the modern custom of mixing the sexes at services. Partly, though, it was because he could not rid himself of the feeling that he was breaking the God's Law by being here.
"But I am forbidden to attend services!" he had cried in the early days, when he was still struggling to adopt the discipline of phrasing his protests as questions and requests.
Huard did not admonish him – could not admonish him, by the God's Law – but said only, "In our days together in the training school, I was never able to accept your desire to read more into the God's Law than is found in the text itself. The law on exile says that a God-cursed man may not be purified or give participation at worship. I take this to mean that you cannot recite the names or the prayers. But the first part of the service, the silence, is different. I believe that you would benefit from sharing silence with the other tribal folk."
A good notion, Prosper thought to himself – momentarily slipping in his discipline against passing judgment on Huard – but it would have been easier for him to keep the silence if he had not been attending services with women and children. He let his eyes open momentarily to identify where the distracting noise was coming from. It was not hard to guess, for it came from the same direction every time: in the rows nearest the altar area, where the children knelt.
Today, the front row was filled with four boys wearing identical tunics, clearly of the same family. Prosper – standing rather than kneeling, for this was the only way for him to keep outside of the purifying light – could see the children quite clearly: two boys just above weaning age, a third boy slightly older, and a catechism-aged boy.
The youngest boys, quite naturally, were fidgetting the most during the silence, turning to look at the people behind them and exchanging nudges. The third was better disciplined: he was still, with his head bowed, clearly attempting to silence his spirit in hope that the God would speak to him.
The fourth boy was different. For a start, he had a more dishevelled appearance than even the youngest boys: his tunic was rumpled and crooked, and his hair was uncombed. From long experience of teaching boys this age, Prosper judged him to be of fifteen years, yet the boy looked far from ready for his coming-of-age. The boy sighed heavily at periodic intervals, scuffed his toes against the stone floor, and swung his arms to and fro, jostling his quieter brother.
Prosper saw a stirring in the second row, where some of the women knelt. A fine-boned woman leaned forward and whispered in the boy's ear. He bit his lip and nodded, ceasing to swing his arms or scuff his toes, but even this admonishment could not prevent him from sighing again as the silence progressed.
Prosper knew how he felt. Closing his eyes, he tried again to still the thoughts that scurried about in his mind like restless boy-pupils. At the front of the sanctuary, the sacred flame continued to whisper forth its secrets, almost hidden by the dark mask that represented the God's unknowability. Only a glimpse of the fire upon the altar could be seen through the eye-holes in the mask.
The sacred flame. It had always been the most comforting object in Prosper's life, serving as it did as a visible image of the God, and also as a reminder of that which remained hidden behind the mask of the God's unknowability. To the God's beloved folk, the flame would one day bring light and warmth; to his enemies, the flame would be a fire that could never be quenched.
The flame was one thing more than that, and increasingly Prosper found his thoughts dwelling on that other use of the sacred flame as the months of his exile continued.
When he had expressed a desire to be burned at the end of his exile if the demons were not exorcised, Prosper had intended the statement as no more than a formal gesture of regret. He had not doubted at that time that he would be able to rid himself of his demons. Now, after three months in which he had made little progress, his breath caught tight within him whenever the flame was lit.
More times than he could count, he had watched as men or women were chained to the stone pillar that was erected in every tribal territory for this purpose. Most of the God-cursed were there for twistedness; some were there for other grave crimes against the God, such as atheism or oath-breaking. Some had been placed there for lesser crimes, when discipline had failed to work: crimes such as murder, abuse of power, or impure love.
Always, when Prosper was present, he had been the one to light the torch from the sacred flame and to come forward to set ablaze the wood beneath the God-cursed person's feet. He never delegated the duty; he considered it too sacred an act. This was the priests' final mercy: their last attempt to save the God-cursed from the terrible fate of entering into the God's light when their spiritual condition was so grave that such light could only be an eternal fire for them.
The purification by fire sometimes worked. On a few joyous occasions during his priesthood, Prosper had heard the dying man or woman cry out words which made clear that the brief but intense pain had brought such repentance to the God-cursed that the demons were forced to flee. When that happened – if the God's Law were to be trusted, as surely it was – the God lifted his curse in the last moments of life and welcomed the man or woman into the light that would now bring eternal comfort to the godly spirit.
Prosper was beginning to suspect, though, that even the men and women who were successfully purified through fire might have had a different perspective than their priest on the sacred act they were undergoing.
Staring at the flame, Prosper became aware that his shirt had become covered with sweat and was now clinging to his body. Hastily, he closed his eyes and tried to still his mind. If Prosper could only hear the voice that the flame represented . . .
"Mercy of all mercies, High Judge above all judges, Commander beyond all commanders, Father within all fathers—" Huard's whisper, breaking into the silence, jarred Prosper like a shout. Sighing inwardly, he opened his eyes and then, as quietly as possible, he slipped through the side door. Behind him, the tribal folk began to recite the many names of the Unknowable God, which he was forbidden to speak.
Usually he tried to continue his discipline of silence for the remaining time before the evening meal, but tonight he was too weary and downcast to do so. Instead, rather than let his mind dwell on the discouragements of the day, he busied himself with the tasks that he had volunteered to do as Huard's temporal guest: cleaning ashes out of the central hearth and placing new wood there, scrubbing the cooking pot in the nearby river under the summer moonlight, checking the bedsheets to see whether they needed to be put out for washing the next day. By the time he was through, he could hear the tribal folk emerging from the sanctuary door. As always, Huard lingered in the sanctuary, cleaning behind the altar area and upholding his own discipline of silence.
It was mid-evening by the time he returned. Prosper, who was tenderly carrying an armful of manuscripts to the shelves where they belonged, was careful to say nothing as Huard entered, both because his own discipline demanded it, and because Huard usually preferred to maintain his silence after his return home.
The priest, though, was in one of his chatting moods tonight. "Three confessions from boys," he announced cheerfully. "They always keep me overly long. Oh, to be a boy again and to treat with such seriousness the terrible crime of scuffing one's toes."
The corner of Prosper's mouth turned up; he could guess who had given that confession. "I was wishing tonight that I was a boy also."
"Ah." Huard, pulling off his robe of worship, paused to give one of his opaque looks at Prosper. "Tonight's silence was difficult?"
"As difficult as it has been for the past three months," Prosper said, his voice tight. "I seem doomed to live out all the warnings I gave to you and my other pupils. 'Be sure to practice the ancient tongue daily, for what is learned with ease as a child will be hard to relearn in old age if you forget it.' Do you remember when I said that to you?"
"Quite clearly," said Huard in the ancient tongue, pronouncing his
q
in the exact manner that he had been taught. "So the language of silence is as hard to relearn?"
"After thirty-five years of talking non-stop? The God, Huard – I don't know how to describe it. Such a simple discipline, I thought, and not one that I need worry about overly much. And so, when the silence came, I either kept my mind on the tutors and pupils who assisted at the service, judging whether they were behaving properly, or else, on the occasions when I was the purifier, I kept my mind on the worshippers, judging whether they were all properly attentive. It did not occur to me that I would become incapable of listening myself."
"Ah, well," said the priest. "It will come back as time passes. You are becoming more attentive in listening to others."
Prosper shook his head. "That is hard enough – to pay as much attention to a person's words as I would if it were a difficult passage in the ancient tongue – but this is far worse. No words have come to me yet, only emptiness. The God who reads all hearts knows that I do not deserve to be spoken to, but still—" He looked over to where Huard was adding new oil to the prayer-light that had remained lit since his arrival. The sight of the candle stilled the demon of fear that was beginning to take hold of Prosper. He said more quietly, "Do you have any advice to offer me on this?"
Huard, putting aside the oil ewer, considered the matter for a moment before saying, "The river may help."
"The river? . . . Oh, the God, yes! I had forgotten that image – I haven't used it since my earliest years of tutoring. I'm not even sure I remember it in full."
"Silence is a river," Huard said promptly. "A river at night, black and fearful, carrying unknown dangers. You must not linger on the shore, nor must you try to swim – that will only carry you back to the shore. Instead, you must fling yourself into the water, and trust the God to take you to where his light is. There you may hear his voice."
"A good im—" He caught himself in time and said, "Thank you; that image is helpful to me. I will know next time to let the river carry me rather than try to swim into the silence through my own efforts."
Nodding contentedly, Huard picked up the globular silver vessel in which the sacred flame had burned and began polishing it in a carefully methodical manner that Prosper had begun to know well. Prosper cocked his ear, and after a moment, carried on the hush of a breeze, he began to hear the noise that Huard had heard: the low hum of the tribal folk gathering for the evening meal.
"Supper is beginning," said Prosper, knowing that in this small matter he could be of assistance to Huard. "Let's join the others."
"It is early yet," said Huard, who did not look up from the purifying lamp. The priest's stomach gave a growl of protest at these words.
"Yes, but I am eager to mix with the others tonight," said Prosper, not meaning the words, but knowing that it was the easiest way to make Huard join him at the feast.