A Handful Of Men - The Stricken Field Part 6

"Don't looka"it's very nasty. " Mearn meant not to look inside, of course. "He was half-witted to begin with, " she said sourly.

"It happens. Will he recover?"

"Probably not. Of course!" she added aloud. "Just takes a little time."

Not necessarily. Jain would certainly never forget his own visit to the Defile, nor the many sleepless nights that had followed. He had gone in with six companions and come out with five. The biggest, toughest-looking novice in his cla.s.s had died of fright. Admittedly that was unusual. The sneer on Mearn's face showed that she knew what he was thinking.

She turned to regard the third youth. "However, I think Novice Woom may have gained some benefit from the night's activities."

Woom was old enough to show that he had missed shaving. He had been sitting with his arms on the table, staring fixedly into a mug of coffee. Now he raised his head to send Mearn a stare of calculated dislike. He was holding himself under very tight control, so that his whole body seemed clenched. His eyes still bore the wildness of eyes that had looked on unimagined horrors. His lower lip was swollen where he had chewed it. He had also torn the palms of his hands with his nails and was keeping them hidden.

"Do you enjoy subjecting people to that?" he inquired hoa.r.s.ely.

"Normally, no," she said quickly. "Sometimes, yes. You were an obnoxious streak of slime yesterday. Today you know that there's more to life than poking your betters in the eye."

He flushed, but he held her gaze a long moment before speaking again. "I can go back to a clean slate?"

"Absolutely."

"Good." He returned to his brooding.

Mearn radiated a burst of satisfaction. "See that? He's ten years older than he was last night!"

"Would you go through what he did if you could be ten years younger tomorrow? "

"Of course not. Stupid question."

Woom looked up again, frowning. "Where's Novice Mist, ma'am? Is he all right?"

Mearn primped up her mouth as she so often did. "And concern for others now, see? He had what I call the panic reaction," she said aloud. "He'll run himself to exhaustion and probably pa.s.s out. He'll feel better when he wakens. I'll go and track him down shortly."

Woom's lips writhed into a mawkish smile, while his wild eyes did not s.h.i.+ft their expression at all. "And did you make a man out of him, also, ma'am?"

Jain suppressed a grin. Nicely done, lad!

Mearn did not flincha"she had been processing adolescents for longer than a mundane lifetime. "If I give you my opinion, will you keep it to yourself?"

Woom blinked, then nodded.

"I think Novice Mist broke in the kiln. I don't think there were the makings of a man there to start with."

"So what do you do with the pieces?"

"We send them home. He'll find some sucker of a woman to care for him. Perhaps his descendants will be Gifted. The worthwhile ones we keep, and let them help us."

Woom blinked again, and then looked down at his coffee again. "Thanks," he said quietly.

"One out of foura"that's well above average," Mearn sent. "And this one has real promise."

Her paean of self-satisfaction was interrupted. A clap of thunder in the ambience announced the arrival of Novice Mist alongside the table. He was standing on his feet, but at an impossible angle. Mearn made an occult grab to stop him falling. Jain jumped up to help, and they lowered him onto a chair.

A quick glance of hindsight told Jain that Mist had been dispatched from the Thaile Place by Archon Raim himself. He shuddered at the implications. Things just kept getting worse, and it was almost noon.

4.

The archon had told Jain he would be summoned and there was no denying the summons when it came. While he was helping Mearn restore Novice Mist to jittery consciousness, the world seemed to open under him. He plunged into cold darkness. He staggered, seeking sure footing on uneven, spongy ground.

His first thought was that he had gone blind and deaf, but that was only because the ambience was now closed to him. All his power had been taken away. He felt bereft and vulnerable, because he had come to rely on sorcerous talents far more than on his mundane senses. After a confused moment he established that he was standing in forest denser than any he had ever seen. Enormous trunks soared up to a canopy thick enough to cut off the noonday sun. The damp, fetid air was heavy on his skin-cloying and stagnant, as if no healthy breezes ever penetrated.

His feet had sunk to the ankle in soggy moss; his hose were already soaked by clammy, knee-high ferns. The faint chattering noise beside him was coming from Mistress Meam's teeth.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, a vast building came into view before him, a pile so ancient that it seemed to have sunk into the forest and become part of it, or else to be itself a product of the jungle, something that had grown there over the ages. The old walls were cracked and canted, the very stones crumbling under leprous coats of greenish lichens. Narrow windows once inset with gla.s.s were now gaping holes toothed by fragments of columns and tracery. Doors, likewise, had long since rotted away; the entrance archway gawked at him like the mouth of an idiot. The roof must have survived, though, for the interior was even darker than the enveloping forest.

"The Chapel!" Mearn said unnecessarily. "I . . . I did not expect it to be so large." She moved forward, and he hastened to follow. Stumbling on roots and rotten timber, they waded through the drippy undergrowth to the forbidding facade. The building had sunk or the forest had risen; uncertain light revealed a ramp of humus and detritus leading down to the dark interior floor.

Resisting an absurd urge to take Mearn's hand, Jain forced himself to go first. The footing was firmer than he had feared it might be. He paused when his feet reached wet flagstones, and in a moment she joined him, doubtless cursing loss of farsight just as he was. The air was cold and dead. They stood within a vestry of some sort, so black that the forest seemed bright behind them. In the inner corners, two fainter glows showed where archways led through the nave. They advanced cautiously, finding the paving clear of traps or obstacles.

From the sumptuous jeweled church of the College itself to humble rustic shrines, every holy place Jain had ever seen had been designed to ill.u.s.trate the eternal conflict between the Good and the Evil. Always there would be a bright window and a dark window, and a balance standing upon an altar. Even ancient ruins that he had noted in his travels as a recorder had shown evidence of the same basic plan. This abandoned, forgotten place had none of that; it predated the fas.h.i.+on or had been built by maniacs. There was no altar, no furniture at all that he could see, and the framework itself seemed perplexingly lacking in symmetry. The proportions and angles were wrong, the empty arched windows placed at random, no two quite the same height or shape or size. The roof was a dark mystery.

He had just concluded that the crypt was empty when he made out a small group of people standing in the far corner. He pointed at them. Mearn nodded uneasily, then headed that way without a word. Should they go slowly to show respect, or hasten so as not to keep the archons waiting? He let her set the pace and she went slowlya"perhaps she was as scared as he was; perhaps hurry would be impossible in that ominous sanct.i.ty. The flagstones here were dry and bare, but uneven. Each footstep was swallowed by a silence that seemed too solid for mortals to disturb, as if the very air had congealed into sadness.

Eight cloaked figures stood in a rough circle, their cowled heads bent in meditation. All eight wore the same plain garb; Jain could see no significance to their grouping. Obviously they were the archons a.s.sembled. He had been worrying that the Keeper might preside over such gatherings. Archons would be bad enough. At least they were human.

As the newcomers arrived, the nearer figures moved slightly, opening a gap. They did so without looking around, which suggested that their sorcery was still operative. Jain and Mearn stepped into line, closing the circle but staying closer to each other than to the flanking archons.

He glanced surrept.i.tiously around the silent figures, wondering why they did not tell him to stop making such a racket, for his heart was hammering like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r. They continued to ignore him, studying the ground. He saw then that the group was not located, at random, or because the archons had wanted to be in a comer. They were gathered around a particular dark patch of floor, about the size of a bed. Its surface was slightly raised, perhaps uneven and lumpy, although he could make out no real detail in the gloom. After a while, as his eyes continued to adjust, he began to suspect that the patch was wet. A leak in the ancient ceiling would not be exactly surprising. Then the chill creeping remorselessly into his flesh made him wonder if water would freeze here.

And finally he realized that of course the black layer was ice. This was why the Chapel was so sacred. He was looking at Keef's grave, last resting place of the first Keeper. That somber ice was composed of the tears the pixies had shed for Keef over a thousand years. This was the very heart of the College and Thume itself.

For some reason Jain thought then of the name the Outsiders were reputed to use for Thume: the Accursed Place. He had never understood that term and no one had ever managed to explain it to him, but now it seemed oddly appropriate for a realm that would take a tomb as its most revered relic and then hide it away where almost no one ever saw it.

The vigil continued. Eventually the archon on his left moved slightly aside. Jain heard a faint sound at his back and a woman stepped into the gap, wheezing nervously. Her face was only a pallid blur, but he recognized her as a.n.a.lyst Shole. He edged closer to Mearn, to make the s.p.a.cing more even. Stillness returned.

He hoped this a.s.sembly would do something soon and dismiss him before he froze to death here in the dark, or died of fear.

"May we serve the Good always," intoned one of the cowled archonsa"Jain could not tell which.

"Amen!" chorused the others. He jumped, wondering if he should join in.

"May the G.o.ds and the Keeper bless our deliberations."

"Amen!"

Mearn and Shole stayed silent. Jain decided to take his cue from thema"he was only a lowly archivist. And an innocent one, he reminded himself. He had done nothing wrong. He had nothing to fear. It was not his fault.

"a.n.a.lyst Shole," whispered the same voice as before, deadly and impersonal like a winter wind. "You and Archivist Meam delivered the woman Thaile of a male child. You removed all physical results of that birth. You transported her to the College."

Shole muttered an incoherent agreement.

"Tell us exactly what power you used on her memories." Jain waited for the reply and then knew that there was not going to be one. The archons were reading the answer directly from the woman's thoughts. They were, after all, the eight most powerful sorcerers in Thumea"except for the Keeper, who was more than just a sorceress. His flesh crawled.

"You have not spoken to the novice, or used power upon her, since that day?" Whoever was speaking, it was not Raim.

"No, n.o.ble sir."

"We are satisfied. You may leave."

"I would have used greater power except you . . . except I had been instructeda""

"We know. You may go."

Shole spun on her heel and in seconds her footsteps were lost in the ma.s.sive, immovable silence.

Jain braced himself. Now it would be his turn! He wished he could make out faces, but they were hidden from him. He could not tell how many of the eight were men, how many women. He was unable even to determine the color of their dark robes.

"Archivist Jain? You received the woman Thaile at the Meeting Place and spoke with her."

Jain thought back to that meeting on the bencha"what he had said, and she had said, and what she had been thinking until Mist arrived and how he had then left the two of them . ..

"You have not spoken with her since." That was a statement, but he nodded. He was chilled through and yet sweating. He hoped he would be dismissed then, but now the inquisitor asked Mearn about her meetings with the girl in the past week.

Silence. Surely he would be allowed to leave soon? He was drowning in this icy darkness. He needed warmth and suns.h.i.+ne, and life. This laborious inquisition was not his business!

"Her Faculty is extraordinary," murmured another voice, as if musing aloud in the middle of an inaudible conversation.

"It might explain her suspicions," another said. "Just possibly. But not her recovery of the man's name."

"Someone has been meddling!" That sounded like Raim, but perhaps only because he had used those words earlier.

"She cannot possibly understand," another said sharply. "She must be compelled to enter the Defile tonight."

"No," said a spidery voice. "No one has been meddling." The archons turned at once to face the speaker and sank to their knees. Mearn copied them an instant later, then Jain moved so fast he almost overbalanced. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, knowing that the Keeper herself had joined the meeting. Fear tightened icy fingers around his heart. He could not remember ever knowing worse terror, not even the horrors of the Defile itself. He recalled awful stories of Keepers who had wiped out whole armies of intruding Outsiders, and of the deadly, unpredictable discipline with which they ruled the College. Keepers were laws unto themselves, utterly unpredictable, heedless of precedent, devoid of mercy.

The voice came again, a dry inhuman rustle beyond fear and pa.s.sion and hope. "I warned you that the drums of the millennium were beating, that Evil walked the world. I warned you that we are threatened as never before. You know that this girl must be the Promised One, and yet we almost lost her. The first night she was here, I found her at the mouth of the Defile."

Several of the archons gasped, but none spoke. The cold of the floor bit into Jain's knees like sharp teeth, but deadlier yet was the thought of the Defile in less than full-moon light.

Trembling, but unable to resist the need, he risked a hasty glance. The Keeper was a tall, spare shape, m.u.f.fled in a dark cloak and hood. She seemed to be leaning on a staff, but he could make out nothing more. He looked down again quickly, at the dusty, uneven pavement, so comfortingly solid and prosaic. Tonight he would tell Jool that he had met the Keeper!

She spoke again. "Raim, you are junior. Can you advise your older brothers and sisters how they blundered?"

"No, Holy Lady." Raim's voice was much less arrogant than it had been earlier. "Enlighten us."

"You trespa.s.sed beyond the limits the G.o.ds set for Keef, my children," said the Keeper's sad whisper. "You broke her word. You offended grievously against the Good."

"There are many precedents!" Raim protested, his voice quavering.

The Keeper sighed. "Not thus. a.n.a.lyst Jain, when you instructed the candidate to come to the College, did you specifically warn her that she must not fall in love?"

Jain did try to answer. The answer roared in his head: Not specifically. His tongue was paralyzed, no sound emergeda"but that would not matter.

"Archivist Mearn," the Keeper persisted, "you slew the man."

Mearn screamed. "There are precedents!"

"But the babe? There are no precedents for that! Why did you not find a haven for the babe?"

"I was obeying orders!"

"The fault was mine, Holy One," said a new voice, a woman's. One of the cowls sank forward to touch the floor. "I feared the Chosen One's future power, thinking she would be able to seek out the child wherever it might be hid. I was overzealous. Destroy me."

"It will not suffice, Sheef. If you seek to accept the guilt of ten, you must offer more."

Somebody whimpered, but it did not seem to be the Sheef woman.

After a moment, Sheef spoke again. "p.r.o.nounce anathema upon me, as Deel did upon Theur. Expel me to the Outside, to wander there a hundred years among the demons, without power and without speech, in the guise of a gnome."

"That may still not be enough."

The woman moaned. "It is too much!"

"Does my suffering mean nothing to you?" the Keeper asked. "Will you bring destruction upon us all?"

Sheef screamed. "Then two hundred years, and let me also be cursed with all manner of ill fortune and fated to a foul and painful death!"

After a moment the Keeper said softly, "It may serve. So be it."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jain registered that there were now but seven archons. The gap where the eighth had knelt was marked by an empty cloak. He clenched his teeth and tensed his limbs, yet still he s.h.i.+vered. He, too, had only obeyed orders! He had not known of the killings!

The Keeper paused as if to give the others time to reflect on the fate of their missing sister. At last the insectile voice began again, dripping words into the silence as water might drip into an ocean of dust.

"You sinned against an innocent girl, against her lover and newborn child. You will be fortunate indeed if Sheef's penalty a.s.suages the anger of the G.o.ds. In Their pity They gave the girl a hint of what she has lost. Do you understand what she did with that hint?"

After a moment Raim's voice spoke uncertainly. "She did nothing except go to the young man Mist and copulate with him."

"She made sacrifice!" the Keeper snapped, shattering the stillness. Suddenly the Chapel seemed to come alive, as if starting awake from its sleep of centuries. The dread voice rolled around the great building. "She sacrificed herself to the G.o.d of Love! She gave her body to a man for the love of another! Fools! Now do you understand?" Her words echoed and echoed in the shadows, finally whispering back faintly from the roof as they died away.

All the cowls tipped forward to touch the floor. Mearn doubled herself over, also, but Jain remained as he was, sitting back on his heels, paralyzed. He stared in rank despair at the edge of the age-old ice over the tomb of Keef. The magnitude of the danger appalled him. Thume's whole existence depended on the G.o.ds' sufferance, the concessions that Keef had won when she sacrificed her lover. He had seen the Thaile girl as foolish and ignorant and of no importance, and she had won a G.o.d to her side. She had given her body to a man for the love of another, and the G.o.ds had accepted that offering!

He was ruined! They all were!

The Keeper's voice returned to its resigned whisper, sounding as ancient as the Chapel itself, crushed with an unbearable burden of care. "It was the G.o.d of Love who restored her memory. Be grateful They have yet done no more! Hope They will not! It is the millennium prophesied. The Promised One has come and you have blundered."

In the long silence that followed, Jain heard some of the archons weeping. He knew nothing of millennia or Promised Ones, which must be lore restricted to the archons, but he could see that he had perhaps been guilty of some errors of judgment, due to his inexperience. He would certainly try harder in future. He would promise faithfully.