Crown of Shadows (39 page)

He knelt before the ancient symbol of faith, feeling the vast emptiness gathering around him as he shut his eyes, preparing his soul. He wished that any words could ease the tightness in his chest, or dull the sharp point of his despair. He wished mere prayer had that kind of power.

God,
he prayed,
I have loved You and served You all my life. Your Law gave meaning to my existence. Your Dream gave me purpose. In Your service I grew to manhood, measuring myself against Your eternal ideals, striving to set standards for myself that would please You. I live and breathe and struggle and Work—and accept the inevitability of my own death—all in Your Name, Lord God of Earth and Erna. Only and always in Your Name.

He sighed deeply. The weight of centuries was on his shoulders, past and present combined into a numbing burden. If he died here and now, with this prayer upon his lips, there would be a kind of justice in that, he thought. And an easement, that he had been spared one final test.

He knelt a moment longer, head bowed, soul aching. The pain of despair was sharp within him now, and when he rose up to leave, it stabbed into his flesh with brutal force as if trying to bring him to his knees again. Trying to put off that most terrible moment, which beckoned to him like a spectre. He bore the protest silently, without complaint, knowing that it was a kind of communion with his conscience, and therefore the most perfect prayer of all.

Slowly he walked back down the length of the aisle. At the end of the sanctuary he paused, and he fingered the opening to the offering receptacle, the protective flap which would allow departing worshipers to commit a coin or two to the Church’s coffers, without giving them access to the offerings of others.
Human nature being what it is,
he thought grimly. For a moment he fingered the flap without thought, moving it back and forth along its hinges. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope.

For His Holiness,
it said. Only that. He held it in his hand for a minute, trembling slightly, and then slid it beneath the flap. He could hear it fall to the smooth metal bottom of the offering case, and then there was silence. It would wait until the next well-attended service, when an attendant would take it up and deliver it. By then, he hoped, he and Gerald Tarrant would be long gone.

His formal resignation in its place, Damien Vryce began the long and lonely walk back to his apartment.

Her children
were coming.

She sensed their presence as she brooded within her sanctuary, and wondered at the sudden stirring of activity. Most of her children never bothered to look in upon her once they were set free in the world. They preferred to make their own fates, and she had no argument with that. It was what she had intended so very long ago, when she had brought the first of them into existence.

But now they were coming here. All of them. The ones who could speak to her, and the ones who could not. The few who could share her memories directly, and the hundreds who were all but unaware of her existence. They were coming because several of their number had defied her, coming to see if she would accept their transgressions, or punish them ... or what?

What indeed, she thought.

She had made rules for them so that they might live and learn and grow, and ultimately serve her purpose. For a thousand solar cycles those rules had gone unquestioned. That was as it should be: a mother giving life had every right to define what paths her children would take, and to eradicate those few who failed to accept her guidance. But what about a child who did understand, but who consciously chose to defy her? The concept was so alien to her that she could scarcely comprehend it. It would never have happened in her homeland, that was certain.

She had given them orders. They had disobeyed. She had set forth the laws of their existence, which was her right as their creator. They had chosen to ignore her.

They should die.

It was her right, without question. Some might have argued that it was even her duty. Certainly her first family, who had accompanied her to this place, would have been quick to condemn any of their own number who defied her will so openly. But these new children of hers ... these wild, defiant infants ... might they not have something to teach her, before they died? Had she not sent them out into the world for precisely that purpose?

They are only half mine,
she reminded herself. Remembering that act which was neither passion nor pain, but simple desperation. So many matings. So many failures. She had thought once that by choosing the right mate she could ensure a successful brood, but that plan had gone awry so often she despaired of ever making it succeed. In fact she had lost nearly all of her hope, nearly all of what little strength remained to her ... until now.

Her children were coming! So many, all at once. They had never gathered together like this before, not for any one purpose. Would it make a difference? she wondered. Would there be a power in the sheer mass of their gathering, a force born of their limitless variety, that might shed a ray of hope into the void of her despair? If she killed the disobedient ones now, she would never know. They would disperse again, the strong ones and the weak ones and the ones so distant that it seemed none could speak to them at all. What would it take to bring them together again after that? What kind of tragedy would she have to invoke? It was far easier to withhold her punishment now, she thought. Far easier to let them all come here first, and then cleanse the family as tradition required.

Hope. It was almost an alien concept to her now. She savored it, reflecting.

And waited.

They came
by ones and twos, and then—as the day progressed and they gathered courage and friends—in small, fiercely bonded groups. The Patriarch met with them all. His advisers protested that by doing so he was only encouraging people who would feign great faith in order to stoke the fires of their own self-importance, and—to be fair—they were not entirely wrong. For every genuinely faithful man there were half a dozen whose only purpose in coming was to brag at a later time that they had been in the presence of the Holy Father. For every truly devout woman there were half a dozen whose friends fluttered around the doorway to his chamber like anxious birds, their only purpose being to serve as witnesses that this unique honor had really taken place. But though he heard the truth in his peoples’ warnings, he chose to disregard them. There was no other servant of the Church who could see into these people’s hearts as he did, and therefore no other one who could choose. It was that simple.

At times his visitors were exactly the type he would have predicted: coarse and simple men, whose faith was as rough-hewn as their manner, whose innate preference for a world divided into clear domains of black and white was uniquely well suited to this enterprise. He didn’t doubt that among those faces were many that had been seen in the pagan quarter at night, and indeed several of them seemed familiar to him from his brief appearance at Davarti’s Temple. Those were the men he had expected his proclamations to draw, and he welcomed them in a manner that was sure to secure their loyalty. Others were more surprising. There were more women than he would have expected, for one thing; given that gender’s lesser propensity for organized violence, he had expected that few would sign on for such a venture. But he had underestimated the symbolic power of the Forest in the minds of his female congregants, and the depths of their hatred for the Hunter. Some claimed that they would give their lives in order to bring that demon to his knees, and he did not doubt for a minute that it was true.

There is the kernel of a warrior in all of us,
he thought grimly, as he watched the futures that swirled madly about each applicant.
God give me the strength to control it, once I have encouraged it to dominance.

He judged them each individually, one after another, with his eyes and his new Vision both. With some it was instantly clear what manner of support—or danger—they might provide. With others he was forced to unravel a tapestry of potential so tangled, so volatile, that it took all his self-control to maintain a human conversation while trying to make sense of it all. It wasn’t under his control, this new power, but swept him along in a flood tide of prescience that threatened, at each moment, to drown him utterly. Did his advisers suspect the weakness in him? Did they sense how fragile his grip on sanity was now, how easily he could lose his purchase and be lost to them forever?

Calm. That was the answer. Perfect, unshakable calm. It was a front that he cultivated as he interviewed dozens—or was it hundreds?—of would-be warriors. Calm, that most precious illusion, that kept his inner torment from being expressed and so kept it from being reflected back at him one, ten, a thousand times, in the mirror of others’ souls. A stillness so absolute that Nature had no equivalent... save at the heart of a storm.

The hurricane bore down on him. Housewives. Craftsmen. Stevedores. Journalists. They came from all walks of life, some for reasons of faith, some for reasons of pride, a few out of sheer boredom. He could See the strength of their courage, or their lack of it. He could See which of these fledgling crusaders would accept the yoke of his leadership and dedicate their energies to the common good, and which would threaten the ranks by continual disruption. And he assigned them each a role in the coming war by virtue of that assessment. There were roles enough that all could serve the cause, and he was diplomat enough to make each offering sound like a unique honor. Fund-raisers would be needed, purchasing agents, advance men sent ahead to Kale and Mordreth to prepare for the army’s passage; there would be crew chiefs to organize labor at the fringe of the Forest, where a vast swath of landscape must be cleared in order to contain the cleansing fire which would be their final effort; there were med ics needed, and veterinarians, and seamsters, and messengers, and even envelope stuffers ... so many duties that there was always a niche to be offered, hopefully one suitable enough that it was received with a nod of gratitude, not a glare of resentment.

What amazed him was how fast it was all coming together. How tempting it was to thank God for that, and ignore the role Vryce’s demon had played in making it happen!
But there’s no shame in that,
he told himself, as he waited for yet another warrior-applicant to present himself before the throne of God.
Using evil to destroy evil is a blessed enterprise. Didn’t the Prophet teach that?
Clearly the world was ready for such action. The Forest had been a threat for too long. And there was no other organization on the face of this planet, religious or otherwise, with the courage to attempt such an assault, and the skill to make it succeed.