The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (123 page)

The heat of the day pressed behind him, like the sun riding the northern sky. But he knew that the heat did not come from the sun. In a panic, he spun round.
The illusion had not broken there. Before him lay the City of the Gods.
It was just as he had imagined it as a boy, staring up each night at the walled palace where the Chara lived: light shone forth from the marble-white building, brighter even than the reflected light that had burned from the Chara's palace until the Northern Army's attack doused that flame. The palace before him seemed to dance like a living flame, and all the air was growing brighter by the moment, as though the fire of the palace were filling the world around him.
Below the white heart of the flame were streets lined with neat houses, all wavering in the light as the illusion strove to keep intact in these final moments. Standing on the golden streets was an enormous group of men and women. They were silent, watching him.
His hand moved in an automatic manner toward his thigh; then he remembered that he was no longer armed. He scanned the crowd slowly, trying to read the people's intent from their expressions. With a jolt of blood through his body, he recognized one of the men. He looked at the woman nearest the man; he recognized her too.
One by one, he began to make out the faces. They were all here – all the thousands of men and women he had murdered during his life. And standing at the front of the crowd, with his arms outstretched in welcome, was Gareth.
The whiteness of the palace coalesced into a ball of light, spreading its warmth in the manner of a spring sun. Wordlessly, the light spoke to him, saying, "Here is the fire you feared, son of Quentin-Griffith. Enter into my City."
Still standing in the cool darkness surrounding his body, Quentin-Andrew tentatively put forward his hand until it touched the light beyond the darkness. A sharp pain flashed through his body, more exquisite than he had ever known, as the fire burned out the last of the remaining darkness within him. Then it was gone, and nothing lay within except warmth.
Smiling, he stepped into the light.
And that was the end of the beginning for Quentin-Andrew.
===
Mystery
===
 
MYSTERY
 
CHAPTER ONE
To Huard, priest of the tribe of the Feasters, under the care of the City Priest, under the care of the High Priest of the Northern Peninsula:
This letter is borne to you by Prosper, who until a few hours ago held the honored position of City Priest. He has now been stripped by the High Priest of his title and of his priesthood and has been placed under the God's curse. The sentence given to him was exile from the Capital Territory and from the God's presence for one year's time.
I know that you will be concerned that I have sent you a demon-filled man. Like all men who have given themselves over to the power of those spirits who are enemies of the Unknowable God, he is filled with impulses toward destruction. For that reason, I will explain what destructive acts led to Prosper being placed under the God's curse, and why I believe that you may be able to help him.
Prosper entered into the service of the God at age thirteen, three years before he would normally have been permitted to take his vows of priesthood, because his father was a friend of the High Priest. He took his vows under the instruction of the High Priest himself, who then appointed Prosper to the title of City Priest when Prosper was twenty years old. Many people are said to have commented at the time how unusual it was that the High Priest would appoint a man still in his youth to so high a position.
I recite these facts, which you know as well as I do, in order to emphasize that, from the beginning of his adolescence, Prosper was supervised only by the High Priest, whose duties require that he spend the majority of his time in prayer to the God. For his first two years as City Priest, Prosper lived in the same house as the High Priest, but thereafter Prosper founded a training school for boys entering into priesthood, half a day's ride from the High Priest's dwelling, and from that time forward Prosper received no spiritual supervision at all except for his quarterly confessions to the High Priest.
You were one of the earliest boys to serve as a pupil at the City Priest's training school, so you know better than I what Prosper was like in those days. My own training was completed only twelve years ago, and by that time Prosper had acquired the reputation among the priest-pupils he trained of being a hard and exacting master – not necessarily a fault, we can both agree, but one which brings certain dangers that may open a person to demons.
Prosper himself was the first to realize that he had begun to turn his face from the God, but by the time he realized this, the demons seemingly had already laid hold of his spirit, for rather than turn for assistance to the High Priest, as he ought to have done, he instead made his confession to me.
I had offered my priestly vows only four months before. Being young and inexperienced, it did not occur to me to question why Prosper had sought one of his former priest-pupils as his confessor rather than the High Priest. I believed Prosper when he told me that he considered the matter too serious to await his quarterly confession.
I may tell you what he told me at that time, for I have been released from my lock of confession. He said that he believed that he had been too harsh and hasty in his judgments of those under his care, and in particular of those who were brought to his judgment in the God's court.
This being a serious matter, I placed Prosper under a discipline combining prayer, silence, and a set of instructions for behavior, the most pertinent instruction being that I required Prosper to delay three days after anyone was charged with breaking the God's Law, before passing sentence upon the prisoner.
Two years later, Prosper removed me from my duties as a tutor at his training house and made me sanctuarian at the nearby government house. I did not question at the time his motives for doing so, but the effect of this change of duties was that I could no longer directly supervise Prosper to see whether he was adhering to the discipline under which I had placed him. The only discipline, indeed, that I could now check was whether he waited three days between charges and sentences in the God's court.
He maintained this discipline for eight years. Then he sentenced a man to burning for atheism two-and-a-half days after the charge was placed against him. Prosper promptly came to me and told me that he had broken the discipline. For that reason, I renewed the discipline but warned him that, if he violated his discipline again, I would have no choice but to place him under the God's curse.
I took the opportunity of our conversation to ask whether he had been maintaining the remainder of the discipline I had placed him under. His answers did not fully satisfy me, so I began questioning the priest-pupils under his care at that time. I learned from them that the situation had worsened since my own time at the training school. Alarmed, I told Prosper that I wished to meet with him weekly thereafter, but he informed me that the High Priest was watching him closely on this matter. Since Prosper was officially under the care of the High Priest rather than myself, I could take no further steps to assist him.
Last night, my worst fears were realized when Prosper placed a charge against a man and then sought to make immediate sentence upon him. (The man has since been found innocent of his charge, so I will not name him here.) I was brought into the matter as a witness, since I was the man's confessor. Hoping to find evidence against the man, Prosper lifted the lock of confession upon me, requiring me to give witness as to whether any person who had made confession to me was believed by me to have broken the God's Law recently. I immediately appealed this lifting of the lock to the High Priest, who was visiting the training school at the time. The High Priest, however, upheld Prosper's lifting. I was therefore forced to charge Prosper with having broken his discipline and thereby the God's Law.
Prosper's reaction was consternation, followed by an attempt to make light of the matter, followed by anger. At last, I am glad to report, he came to realize the truth of the charge made against him and to acknowledge that he had placed himself under the God's curse. For this reason, I recommended that Prosper be sentenced to exile rather than burning. It is my hope that he may thereby drive away the demons within him rather than undergo purification through fire.
I should add that Prosper has expressed the desire that, if he is unable to release himself from the demons' hold, he be burned at the end of the year of exile. In that way, whether or not purification of his spirit is thereby accomplished, he may at least spare those around him from the evils that his demon-filled spirit would cause.
I am sure that what I have told you does nothing to lessen your anxiety about having Prosper sent to your tribe. Indeed, I would be a dishonest witness if I did not add that, in all my years as a confessor, Prosper's is the worst case I have encountered. I have served as confessor to murderers, rapists, atheists, oath-breakers, and other demon-filled people, and though many sought to justify what they did, all were at least aware that they had broken the God's Law. By contrast, until last night, Prosper was convinced that he was one of the most God-loving men in the Northern Peninsula. He has yet to fully name the demons that have bound him: vainglory, arrogance, self-focus, greed, envy, cowardice, and above all, his native demon of judgment which makes it impossible for him to face the full magnitude of the cruel deeds that he has carried out.
By the time you read this letter, matters may have shifted somewhat, for Prosper is still stunned by what he has lost. Only gradually will he come to understand that the curse was not placed upon him by the High Priest last night; rather, he cursed himself many years ago, when he allowed the demons to do their evil work through him.
For a man such as Prosper, who has held the second-ranked title in the spiritual realm of the Northern Peninsula, such a realization is all too likely to lead him to despair and perhaps even to the crime of self-slaying, unless he is given reason to hope for the future.
And that is why I have sent him to you. It seems best to me that he should be cared for by someone who knew him when he was young, and I believe that returning to his native tribe may help him to recover the godly qualities he held as a child – for I do not believe that the High Priest would have named Prosper as City Priest if Prosper had not been a young man gifted with a love of the God.
Obviously, since Prosper has been exiled from the territory that is under my care, I cannot take official notice of where he goes or with whom he has contact during his year in exile, so please do not mistake this letter as a command. It is a request only, based on the debt that you and I, and every priest who passed through the City Priest's training school, owe to Prosper.
I have arranged to have Prosper sent back to your territory by escort; since he bears the mark of the God-cursed, the danger to his life during these first days of exile remains acute. You know better than I do whether your tribe's chieftain is likely to welcome Prosper into his territory. I can only hope that, if the chieftain is inclined to drive him out of the territory, you will intervene on Prosper's behalf. It is always sorrowful when a God-cursed man dies unpurified, and especially so when that man has been a priest.
I am grateful for the time you have taken to read this letter. I hope that all lies well with you and your tribe.
In the names of the unnameable God,
Martin
Formerly Sanctuarian of the government house in the Capital Territory, under the care of the City Priest; now City Priest, under the care of the High Priest
The chieftain lifted his gaze from the scroll he had been reading. He was a short man, slight in build, which made the many battle scars upon his body all the more remarkable. He paused a moment to look around at the men and youths gathered in a cluster to stare at the man who had walked into their camp that afternoon.
"This man," said the chieftain, raising his voice to be heard even by the women and younger children listening from a safe distance, "was a play-companion to my father. My father often told me stories of their days together."
Prosper, covered with dust from the travel and sweating under the early spring sun, felt his body sag with relief. He had remembered clearly the previous chieftain, but he had not known whether the chieftain's son, who had never met him, would acknowledge his link to the tribe. Prosper had once been so eager to rid himself of tribal ties that he had left his home without his father's permission. Now those ties seemed all-important; they were the only protection left to him.
Having been recognized by his tribe, Prosper felt a smile begin to form upon his lips. Behind him, he could hear the sound of water slapping against the crude bridge he had crossed a short while before. The water seemed like a protective wall, defending him from the danger that lay outside.
The chieftain glanced down at the scroll again. When he raised his eyes, they were cold. "My father never liked him, and he never trusted him," he said in the same clear voice. "I am not at all surprised that the High Priest has placed him under the God's curse."
Prosper felt the words like a blow. He sensed at once the change in mood in the surrounding men and youths: the shifting of spear from left hand to right, the movement of hand to hilt, the tensing of muscles in preparation.
The rush of swiftly moving water continued. The border was only a few spear throws behind him. On the point of being seized by the demon once more, Prosper reminded himself that fleeing was the worst possible action he could take. He was thirty years older than the chieftain and many of his men; he could not hope to outrace them. Nor did safety lie on the other side of the border. The tribe there had seen his curse-mark as he rode past their camp.
When that had happened, he had been surrounded by soldiers who were under orders to protect him. But those soldiers had departed, ridding themselves of him as quickly as their orders permitted. Now he was amongst different soldiers, who might be given different orders.
Prosper felt sweat trickle down his chest, under the temporal man's tunic that still seemed so unfamiliar to him. He remembered in time that prayer would avail him little. He tried to still his mind into silence, but failed.