The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (131 page)

Bad training, on the other hand – he followed further this path of thought – was like impure lusts, when a man slept with a woman without seeking to purify his act through a priest's blessing. Selfish training, where the teacher cared more for his own self-importance than for the progress of the pupil, was far worse: it was like twisted lust, a terrible parody of purified love. Such twistedness in teaching, Prosper was coming to recognize, had begun to destroy even that which was at the center of his vocation as a priest: his ability to train priest-pupils. It would have destroyed his abilities as a teacher in the end if he had not been fortunate enough to be placed under the curse.
Smiling at this paradoxical thought, Prosper said, "You have done very well indeed during the past three months. It is time that your father saw how you have progressed. I'll go home with you tonight, both to apologize for your lateness and also to show your father—"
"No!"
The boy's cry was so deep that Prosper felt the reverberation of it through Orel's body, which was pressed against his. Prosper tried to turn his head to look at Orel's face, but the boy had his face pressed against Prosper's shoulder.
Orel said, "No, you shouldn't bother him; he's very busy at the moment. I think it would be best to wait until you've finished training me. That way he can see the complete results—"
"Orel," Prosper said, and at that single word, the boy fell silent. Faintly through the window where dusk was drawing its shade upon the world came the sound of feasting, but Prosper scarcely noticed it. His mind was on the boy snuggled against him.
He said slowly, "You came to me the evening that you were to ask your father's permission to train with me. You told me that evening that you could train with me. But you did not tell me: Did your father grant you permission to do this?"
Orel was silent a moment. Prosper could feel the warmth of his breath making its way through Prosper's shirt. Then the boy burst out, "He wouldn't understand! If I'd told him, he would never have let me come, and he'd have been watching me to ensure I didn't come near you. It didn't do any harm to tell him Huard was giving me extra catechism lessons—"
"Orel." Prosper's voice was hard this time. There was an aching arising in him that he could not fully understand, but he dared not give thought to it – his thoughts must be on the boy at this moment. "You are speaking as a child. Where is the discipline that you have received in these lessons? Remain silent a moment, then reply to me as you would if explaining why you had not completed a lesson I had given you."
The pause lasted a long while. When he finally spoke again, the boy did so in a low voice. "Sir, I apologize. It was wrong of me to lie to my father, and it was wrong of me to have let you think that my father had given me permission for training. I not only endangered my own spirit through such an act; I also brought danger upon you and Huard, for my father might have thought that both of you had conspired to help me in this deception."
"Good. That is well spoken." Prosper was having a difficult time keeping his voice level, and he was beginning to think that it might be important to understand why. If only he were granted a moment for silence . . . "You know what you must do now?"
"I must tell my father and ask his pardon. I must follow his command, whatever it may be. Oh, but Prosper, I
can't
! He'll tell me that I must never see you again!"
Orel's face, as he raised it from Prosper's shoulder, was as white as a demon's. He was biting his berry-red lip in an attempt to keep his chin from trembling. Prosper felt the words the boy had spoken resound through his own body as though he himself had spoken them. It was becoming more urgent to understand why the boy's anguish was communicating itself so deeply to him, the teacher.
He knew, of course, what he was witnessing. No teacher of five years, much less thirty-five years, could have missed the signs. It happened sometimes with the more sensitive pupils: an early awakening of love, too early to take the form of desire, whether pure or impure. It was simply the knowledge that another person in the world was of such high importance that the person deserved to receive the sort of worship that would normally be offered up only to the God.
The priests were divided on how such childish loving should be regarded. Some priests, such as Martin, saw it as a godly sign that the boy was developing impulses toward love that would, in the normal course of time, eventually develop into the love a young man holds for the woman he is to marry. During his years of priesthood, Prosper had always taken the opposing view: he believed that children's love could easily lead to impure love, or even – since it was often directed by a boy toward his male teacher – to the horrors of twisted lust. Thus Prosper had always taken pains, whenever he noticed such love developing in a pupil toward him, to discourage it with severity.
And yet he felt no such impulse now – indeed, he felt quite the opposite desire. Was this a godly sign, or was some demon working within him that he had not yet known? Bewildered, Prosper tried to pull himself back from Orel as he said, "Your coming-of-age rite is in the spring; you would have had to have ended your lessons with me then in any case. Perhaps your father will allow you to study the ancient tongue under Huard until that time—"
"But I want
you
!" Orel flung his arms around Prosper, almost strangling him in his embrace. Muffled by Prosper's shirt, he said, "I love you. I love you."
Orel's head was brushing against Prosper's face. He thought to himself that he should at least give the boy a light kiss on the head to indicate that affection between a teacher and his pupil was a natural and indeed a godly thing. And if the boy lifted his face then, perhaps it would do no ill to kiss him on the forehead as well, for surely the boy seemed to require such comfort, trembling as he now was in Prosper's arms. And if kissed on the forehead, the boy would come to no harm if he were kissed on the lips—
It was then that Prosper saw his hidden demon and named it for what it was.
"No!" Prosper jerked himself out of the boy's grasp and rose, stumbling backwards. The suddenness of this rising caused the chamber to swim in his vision. He saw a demon-white boy, and near him a single candle lit against the coming dark.
"What's wrong?" Orel jumped to his feet and came over to hold Prosper's arm. "Are you ill?"
"Don't touch me," Prosper begged in a hoarse voice. He staggered backwards and found himself trapped by the bed behind him.
"Why not? Sir, you
are
ill; let me help you to bed—"
"
No!
"
The cry stopped Orel short, as he was reaching out to touch Prosper again. For a moment the boy remained motionless; then his face changed.
"Oh, no," he said. "Oh, sir, I didn't mean that. When I said I loved you— I don't love you like that, sir, truly I don't!"
He put out his hand tentatively, as though testing the edge of a blade, and as his hand fell onto Prosper's bare arm, Prosper released a groan. The desire was clawing at him now; he could feel the stiff ache of his need. With a wordless cry of revulsion, Prosper shoved aside the bed and staggered toward the door.
"Sir, truly I'm not twisted – truly! . . . Am I?" The final words of the boy's plaintive plea echoed in Prosper's mind as he stumbled out into the coolness of the dying day.
An hour later, Prosper was trying to remember the lessons he had given to priest-pupils about how to kneel on the bare floor for hours without feeling pain.
"Give all the chambers of your mind over to the God," he had told them. "You will find that you have no chamber left for thoughts of bodily discomfort."
Easy enough to say to a healthy young boy, his mind and body at an age when they are biddable to instruction. But Prosper – fifty-seven years old, with a mind cursed with demons and filled with prayers that he was forbidden to speak – was finding it impossible to ignore the pain shooting through his knees or the trembling of his weary legs. He closed his eyes and tried to still his thoughts, but with no success.
The sanctuary was dark but for the flicker of prayer-lights. Tomorrow morning, Huard would randomly select one of the candles, bracket it into his purification lamp, and use it to purify any individuals who had need of it. Then it would be taken to the altar area, where it would be used to light the sacred flame and afterwards to purify the worshippers as a whole. At the end of the service, the prayer-light would be quenched, a visible sign to the worshippers that the Unknowable God had answered a prayer.
Prosper wondered whether the prayer-light he had lit the hour before would be the one Huard selected tomorrow. His increasing fear was that the single prayer he had been pouring forth to the God would not be answered.
He heard the creak of the main sanctuary doors, then a footstep, and then, through his closed eyelids, he saw the glow of a lamp. There was a click as the lamp was set upon the gift-offering table nearby. A footstep fell beside him.
Taking a deep breath, Prosper said without opening his eyes, "Huard, I do not know whether the God's Law permits this, but if it does, I ask you to burn me tonight. I now know that the demons are too strong for me, and I dare not allow myself to live any longer, lest I cause greater destruction."
"Why do you believe that the demons are too strong?"
Huard's voice was colder than Prosper had ever known it. Prosper opened his eyes to see his former pupil standing in front of him, his face as hard as winter ice.
"You know why," Prosper whispered. "You tried to warn me – the God help me, I treated your warning lightly, as I treated all the warnings that Martin gave me during his years of disciplining me. And yet I should have known. . . . I should have known. I have burned so many men and women over the years for twistedness – have heard the horrors of their witness, have given them the only hope remaining to them, the fire of purification."
"Is fire the only answer?" Huard's voice remained cold.
"I don't know." Prosper hid his face in his hands, trying to gather his twirling thoughts into one place so that he could make sense of his reasoning. "Perhaps not; perhaps I was too harsh in my judgment of them. If so, I know why. All these years I have been twisted, feeling secret and demonic lusts for the pupils I tutored. No wonder I judged other men and women too harshly, whether for twistedness or for other crimes against the God. I would not face the fact that I was a greater horror than any of the living spirits I judged."
He raised his face. This time it was difficult to see the priest, for Prosper's eyes were darkened by tears. "The fire," Prosper whispered. "Please. It is the only hope I have left."
"No fire," said Huard. "Prosper, you must listen to me—"
He stopped; Prosper had stumbled to his feet and was backing into the dark corner, his chest heaving from the shock. "No," whispered Prosper. "No fire. You are right, of course. I have been avoiding that knowledge as well – have been avoiding it ever since my first day here. Purification is too great a mercy for me, even by fire. For one such as myself, who has allowed demons so great to use me for destruction, there can be no mercy. It must be an unpurified death. I must dwell eternally in the God's burning flames."
"Prosper, be silent a moment and listen to me—"
"It is all right," said Prosper, his voice beginning to turn to sobs. "I will not seek an unpurified death at the hands of others. I see that would be wrong – to require them to take the guilt of my death upon themselves. I will burn unpurified in any case; it makes no difference. If I cannot serve the God in any other way, I can at least rid this world of my repulsive, monstrous, twisted self—"
As he spoke, Prosper began to edge his way toward the side door, his feet sliding along the stones smoothly as though led by an inner force. Already, Prosper's mind was reaching ahead. The armory was closed for the night. He could use one of Huard's meat-knives, but that would entangle the priest in his death. The river, then; there was an appropriateness to that choice. On a moonless night like this, it would not take long for the dark current to bring his end.
"Corrupt," he heard his voice choke out. "Wholly corrupt, unworthy of purification. How could I return to the priesthood with these demons inside me? I should not even be polluting this sanctuary. I must go to where the unquenchable fire awaits me—"
"Mystery."
The whisper cut through Prosper's words like a shout. On the point of racing from the sanctuary, Prosper felt his body jerked back by the sacred word as though he were on a leash. For a breathless moment, he stood in balance, feeling the demons tug at him. Then long custom took hold of him, and he fell to his knees.
He heard footsteps softly approach him. Then Huard whispered once more, as though afraid that Prosper had not heard him properly the first time,
"Mystery."
Mystery.
He had not been listening during this past hour, as his discipline demanded; he had only been talking to the God. Yet how could he listen now? The God would not speak to such as him—
Mystery.
He had allowed himself to speak again; he must stop speaking his thoughts and remain silent. He tried, but felt images of what had happened between himself and Orel begin to crowd into his mind. He gave an involuntary whimper.
"Listen." Huard's voice was soft as he touched Prosper's bowed head.
Prosper tried again. He could feel the weariness now, the pain beginning to shoot like blades through his legs, the trembling that made him feel that he could not remain as he was for a moment longer.
"I'm tired," he whispered.
"You are allowing yourself to think; remain silent. Listen again."
He tried. He could hear the soft crackle of the prayer-lights; he could imagine the one he had lit being brought forward to the altar, where it would be used to light the sacred flame—
The sacred flame. Purification to the God's beloved folk, torture to his enemies. The God's fire would burn him for eternity; the pain he felt then would be immense in comparison to what he felt now, shaking and sweating—
"You are not listening. Try again."
"I can't. I
can't
!"
"You can; still your mind. Empty it of all thoughts. Await the Mystery."
His eyes were still closed. He could see only darkness. Darkness . . . that was what he sought. Not the flame, the visible sign of the God, but the darkness that represented that which was unknowable. No knowledge he held of the God could save him now; only that which was not known to him, the Mercy of all mercies that lay in the darkness beyond man's knowledge. . . .