An Abyss of Light (The Light Trilogy) (6 page)

A gust of wind whipped across the walls, peppering Rachel’s face with coarse grains of sand. No one moaned, no one moved. A deadly hush had fallen over the square, as though every prisoner held his breath. When would He come? When?

She let her thoughts drift blissfully to Shadrach and the pleasant days of their youth. They’d met in a secret history course taught by the Gamant Underground. Nonapproved classes were condemned by the Magistrates. Teachers and students sentenced to death. From their first argument over the role of revolution in everyday life, he’d drawn her to him like a moth to flame. His sharp mind and gentle touch were balms on her soul. She’d loved that tall man with the sparse beard and amused eyes.

Her thoughts jumped to three days ago in the temple. Her last image of him was standing at the altar, conducting the Sighet celebration. His bronze hair glinted in the light filtering through the shattered walls. There’d been no amusement in his eyes that day. Worry shadowed his face like a deadly shroud.

She shook her head violently, refusing to see the next few moments of the memory.

From outside the high walls came the monotonous churning of cart wheels on stone and the jingle of a harness.

“Do you think they know we’re here?”

She turned weakly to look at the old man. He’d told her his name several times, but still she had to struggle to remember. Talo? Yes, Talo. A big, rawboned man, hairy chested and hard-bitten, his stubble of white beard was reddened with dust. He looked at her through bloodshot sleepless eyes. Beside him, his niece—Myra was her name—stood numbly. Rachel hadn’t heard her murmur a single word in two days. All her hope seemed to have died.

“The people outside, I mean,” he clarified.

“Of course, they know.”

He rubbed a grimy hand over his face. “I can’t believe I’m awake. How can our own people allow us to be tortured this way?” He pinched his cheek so hard a white splotch appeared beneath the sunburn. “This must be a terrible nightmare.”

“So long as they can turn their heads and no one bothers them, they don’t care.”

“For three years we’ve been fighting to keep the old ways, the ways of kindness. And now no one cares what happens to us? Those are our relatives out there!”

As if to reinforce his words, echoes of shod hooves and soft religious singing carried on the wind. Somewhere, a man laughed gaily.

“Are they?”

His eyes roamed her face. “How can you ask such a thing? Of course, they are. Horeb is a Gamant planet. We’re all brothers and sisters.”

“The world has changed since the coming of the Mashiah. The word ‘family’ now only applies to those who follow him.”

“Being here is evidence of that, but—”

“Today, Talo, even cousins turn their heads.”

He fumbled with the tattered hem of his gray sleeve. A stone dove called from somewhere in the burned section of the city. In her mind, Rachel pictured the pearl-colored creature perched precariously on the jagged walls of a ruined building, wind blowing its feathers the wrong way. The bird called again and its lilting mourning cry penetrated clear to her soul.

“Yes, it’s the Mashiah,” Talo agreed. “He ruins their minds. He has some kind of magic that—”

“He’s not a magician. People flock to him because he promises salvation through a new god. Few believe in the old God anymore. He’s abandoned us too many times.”

“That makes me sad. The only thing we have left is Epagael.”

“You still believe?
After this?”

“Of course. Don’t you see? God has to know if we have the faith to conquer the spark of Aktariel within us. It’s a test. We’ve no right to hate God. Like a father punishing his child, every instant of pain has a reason, to teach us something. It’s a sign of love. It hurts God as much as it does us.”

“God is dead!” she spat bitterly. “The God of love, of Avram, Yeshwah and Sinlayzan has been murdered!
Here, this very day!
If He ever existed.” Her heart pounded, listening to herself. Did she believe that? Had the past seventy-two hours trampled her faith to nothingness?

Tears welled in the old man’s hard eyes. “Do you know that this torture isn’t the greatest horror to the old people who still believe?” He waved a hand at the sweltering square scented with carnage. “No, this passes. The greatest horror is the death of God in the souls of the young. I can endure holocaust, but you losing your faith breaks my heart.” He clutched the fabric over his chest.

Rachel didn’t answer. Ten feet away, a young girl, perhaps ten, wailed, a pathetically soft and shrill sound. She stood and gripped the feet of her dead brother, trying to drag him to the growing pile of corpses in the far corner of the square. The poor child must have died sometime that morning, for his body had begun to swell miserably in the searing heat. “Move?” the girl begged a cluster of people blocking the way. “Please! I’m not very strong and I have to—”

“Go the other way round. We’re too tired to move.” A big man waved a weak hand.

She struggled to comply, dragging her brother three feet in the opposite direction. But no one there would move either. All paths stood closed. Finally, in defeat, she dropped back to the ground and buried her face in her brother’s dirty shirt to muffle her sobs.

“Yis … yisgadal ve’yiskadash sh’mey rabbo,” Rachel murmured the beginning of the prayer of death. No one really knew for certain what the ancient words meant anymore. Yet still, they comforted.

Beside her, Talo bowed his head. Tears dripped from his long nose to glisten in his gray beard. “Do you … do you say it for the boy? Or for all of us?”

Rachel stared absently. How could he have so much water left after so many days of thirst? It didn’t seem possible. Her own tears had dried up long ago.

“They’re going to slaughter us,” he cried. “You know it too, don’t you?”

“Everyone knows it.”

“We must
do
something. We can’t just let them kill us. What can we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“We have to do
something!”

“Like what? Do you want to try and climb the walls? In our weakened condition and against armed guards who can kill a hundred with a single sweep of their guns?”

“I won’t just sit here and let them …” He blinked back his tears, clamping his jaw to steady it. “I’m going to try. It’s better to die from a rifle than endure this slow agony. We’re not …”

His words were cut short by the hiss of a
samael,
one of the ships of the planetary marines. The black ovoid shape swooped out of the heavens to float ominously over the square, watching. Against the deepening blue of the sky, it seemed a gigantic hovering turtle. Hatred smothered Rachel. Such a strange contrast: The herders and their rickety carts in the streets and this monstrous device of technology. Horeb had never known such science until the coming of the Mashiah. It remained his private reserve.

“Do you think he’s in there?” Talo asked, hope widening his eyes. “The Mashiah. Do you—”

“What does it matter?”

“Maybe he thinks we’ve suffered enough and will let us go. Maybe he’s come to—”

Rachel laughed bitterly. “You think God’s sent him to save us?”

“Yes … yes, that’s it. God has finally seen our agony and—”

“Even God turns his head today, Talo.
Even God.
You’ll see.”

“It’s not true!” he shouted angrily, leaning menacingly close. “We’re his children. He loves us!” But he sounded like he struggled to convince himself more than her.

Rachel’s attention shifted. She squinted at the guards. They’d changed positions. Instead of walking the walls, they stood massed at the far corner. Receiving orders to do what? Behind them, the spires of the mountains shimmered in the heat, the fires of sunset turning them a brilliant maroon.

She closed her eyes. “Be’ol’mo deevro chiroosey—”

“We’re not going to die. You’ll see. He’s come to forgive us.”

Rachel shook her head.

“Rebels?” a voice boomed from the
samael.
“Greetings from the Mashiah.”

“Dear God, let us go!” Talo shrieked.

A din rose in the square, people screaming for mercy, striking those next to them to drive them far enough away that the Mashiah could see their waving arms and repentant faces. But Rachel knew the voice belonged not to Adom, but to Ornias. She’d heard that breathy coo a thousand times. The
samael
dropped lower, gliding slowly over the mob.

“I’ll convert!” a man screamed. “Let me convert to the religion of Milcom!”

“I’ve seen the Truth! I know the Mashiah is the promised Deliverer. Let me …”

Similar wails swelled throughout the prison, people weeping and promising allegiance to Adom Kemar Tartarus if only he would let their children live.

Rachel gazed down at the soft outline of Sybil’s legs betrayed beneath the hem of her robe. Was her baby dead? Is that why she didn’t move even though a cacophony of shrieks and shouts filled the air? Horrifyingly, she hoped it was so. She didn’t want to see what they might do to her only child. “Better dead than made an example of by the Mashiah.”

“No,” Talo insisted, eyes glistening with tears of hope. “He’s going to save us. I feel it. Don’t you feel it? God has sent him to release—”

“Witness,” Ornias crooned from the black ship, “the power of the Mashiah you have each turned against.”

A blinding flash of violet slashed a six foot wide trench into the red soil by the far wall. The human beings who’d been standing there vanished in a crimson splash. Rachel shielded her eyes as dust and debris blasted into the air.
Thank God … thank God he’s using the ship’s weapons rather than letting the marines use their rifles.
Death under the cannons came quickly, painlessly.

Screams eddied through the square, people shoving to get as far from the deadly beams as possible. A thick, choking veil of dust rose. Rachel didn’t move, afraid that if she reached down to pick up Sybil the child would be dead and she couldn’t bear it. Frightened men and women pushed around her, crowding desperately against the back wall.

In the space created, Rachel saw a boy sitting on the ground next to his dead mother. His eyes stared absently at nothing as he tenderly stroked her stiff hand, murmuring soft words. In the background, guards trotted around the walls, resuming their former positions. Except that this time, their rifles hummed, a slash of sound beneath the wails of terror.

She closed her eyes, every muscle in her body going tense with her last ounce of strength. “Ve’yamlich malchoosy—”

And then the firing began.

The masses panicked, running headlong to avoid the lashing beams of death that panned the square. Several people struck Rachel at once. She threw herself on top of Sybil. People toppled over them and, in horror, Rachel realized the hot liquid drenching her was blood.

The shrill squeals of the rifles continued endlessly, like wails filtering from a half-open door leading to the pit of darkness. After about ten minutes, the bursts of fire went from constant to sporadic. As though anyone living who raised his head became the next target.

Very quietly, Rachel heard Sybil moan, and a wave of relief and despair vied inside her. Alive? Oh, dear God, alive for what purpose? To suffer another two days until the thirst killed them?

“Mom?”

“Lie still.”

“Thirsty … Mommy.”

“You sleep, baby. When you wake up again. I promise, we’ll find water.”
Yes, we’ll find water, if we’re alive to crawl.
Surreptitiously, she patted her daughter’s arm and gazed upward, through the tangled mass of bodies, to the sky.

A few stars poked through the blanket of the heavens. Brilliant suns floating in a vast void of cold. Rachel laid her head on the warm red earth and tried to sleep.

In the darkness before morning, she awoke, her strength partly renewed, and eased her head up to peer around a corpse’s arm at the walls. The desert-scented winds carried the pungency of blood as they brushed her face. In the distance, the moon rose through a dusty haze, a luminous fagot of orange that cast a foreboding light across the peaks. No guards seemed to be present. Perhaps they’d massed somewhere else. Gently, she shook her daughter.

“Sybil? Can you crawl, baby?”

The girl nodded weakly. “Yes, where are we going?”

“To the gate.”

Rachel wove her arms between bodies and thrust upward, creating an opening in the black blanket of dead, then quietly, slowly, edged out and pulled Sybil up. The coolness of the night bathed her.

Sybil trembled as she looked around. Her voice came out a hoarse and dreadful whisper.
“I—I can’t!
I don’t want to touch any … anybody—”

“You have to, sweetheart. If we don’t get out of here, they’ll be back to kill us.”

“No, Mommy! NO!”
she screamed wildly, scratching to get in her mother’s lap. Her frantic fingernails tore Rachel’s neck and shoulders as she climbed up to hug her neck frantically.

“Listen to me,” Rachel said sternly, hugging her close. “Listen to me! Do you want to wait for the guards to come back with their rifles?”