Gather Darkness Page 4

  The fat little priest goggled at him. "What witch, your dread resplendency?"

  "Sharlson Naurya. And you had best be quick about it if you hope to catch her."

  Realization dawned in Brother Chulian's baby-blue eyes. He goggled for a moment longer. Then he spun around and scurried for the door.

  But this time he had to stand aside for others. A meager spindly man in the black robe of a deacon strode with brassy serf-assurance into the Council Chamber, followed by several priests bearing oddly shaped rolls and canisters.

  He planted himself before the Council Table with his entourage of priests. He was a paragon of sallow ugliness, with bulging forehead and jutting ears like three-quarter saucers. Nevertheless, the inscrutable mask he preserved was a painstaking copy of that which confined the coldly handsome features of Goniface. He seemed to enjoy the animosity which greeted his appearance, as if he were well aware that, though his birth prevented him from ever entering the priesthood, he was nevertheless more feared than many an archpriest.

  "And what has your servant Cousin Deth to tell us?" demanded one of the Moderates—not Frejeris.

  The sallow man bowed low. "Your awful, august, exalted unimpeachabilities," he began with acid fawning. "I need make no verbal report. These unprejudiced witnesses will report for me." He indicated the rolls and canisters. "A moving solidograph of all that transpired in the Great Square. A transcription of each word spoken by Brother Jarles, and, synchronized with both, a visigraphic record of the major neuro-emotional waves emitted by the crowd during his harangue. A graphic analysis, made at Cathedral Control Center, of the apparent physical nature of the shell which closed around Brother Jarles and carried him off. A transcription of the words and laughter that came at the end. With the usual supplements." And he bowed again, so low that his black sleeves swept the floor.

  "We care not for your pretty pictures!" cried the same Moderate who had spoken before, face red with anger. "We want your story of what finally happened, Deacon!"

  Goniface noted that Frejeris was unsuccessfully signing the man to keep quiet and not waste their advantage in petty outbursts. Cousin Deth, quite unabashed, looked inquiringly at Goniface, who nodded to him.

  "All went as planned, as the records show," Deth began, the ghost of a cynical smile playing around his slitlike mouth. "At the end a mottled sphere, suggestive of hands, cupped around the priest. It sustained for an appreciable time the full power of the Great God's wrath. We were able to study it. Then it shot off, escaping us by a hairbreadth. For we had angels held in readiness to pursue, as you commanded." And he bowed toward Goniface, without mockery. "We know the quarter in which it vanished, and a search is now in progress."

  Instantly Goniface rose, motioning Deth to approach the table and prepare the records for viewing.

  Now was the proper moment, felt Goniface. Deth's words had angered all of them, but the Moderates most, while the Realists had been impressed in spite of themselves. He addressed the Council.

  "Archpriests of Earth, it had been said: 'As Megatheopolis goes, so goes the planet.' But to turn that aphorism to practical use, we must know in what direction Megatheopolis is going before it goes!

  "No government that calls itself realistic can neglect to answer that question.

  "What archpriest here, saving perhaps you, Brother Sercival, believed that an enemy would openly strike at Megatheopolis itself?

  "I did not so believe. But I wanted to find out. That was one of the reasons for the experiment in the Great Square. "Brothers, you have the answer. Sathanas came.

  "No longer can we deny that our fosterling, the Witchcraft, conceals an enemy—an enemy daring and dangerous.

  "No longer can we deny that, within the debased Witchcraft which we tolerate, there is another Witchcraft, which seeks to use the weapon of fear, not only against commoners, but against priests. There is reason to believe that the members of this Inner Witchcraft may be identified by certain marks on their bodies. They show themselves cunning and resourceful.

  "No longer can we dismiss as some trifling case of mass hysteria the Matter of the Frightened Priests. To give them courage, I told them it might be merely a test we had imposed upon them. But all of you know that three of our Fifth Circle scientists have admitted themselves baffled by those manifestations in the rural sanctuaries."

  Goniface paused. The Moderates seemed angrier than ever. Plain talk of danger always angered them. But the Realists were listening. The look in Brother Jomald's face had become one of grudging admiration.

  "To return to the question: 'How goes Megatheopolis?'

  "Brothers, there is only one way to find out. Only one way to discover the true temper of the commoners. The closest observation of them in their normal round of life is insufficient. So are psychological tests. The one sure way, the only sure way, is to foment a sizable minor crisis and study it intensively."

  The angriest Moderate started to get up. Frejeris forestalled him—with a certain unhappiness, as if he realized that they could no longer defeat Goniface by a straightforward attack.

  "One does not fight fire by throwing oil on it," he began.

  "One does!" Goniface countered. "Oil is more penetrating than water. There is a kind of hidden, smoldering fire which only oil can reach and which lacks sufficient oxygen to ignite the oil. Such a fire, Brothers, smolders in the hearts of our commoners. And the force operating against us from under cover of the Witchcraft is another such fire, hidden but dangerous.

  "To discover the secret temper of our commoners, to provide them with the instructive example of a priest blasted for blasphemy—or, in lieu of that, as actually happened, to lure the enemy into the open—I fomented a crisis.

  "And now, archpriests of Megatheopolis, I give you a faithful recording of that crisis, for your contemplation and study, with a view to preventing the truly serious ones to come.

  "After you have seen it, excommunicate me, if you still want to."

  While Goniface spoke, Cousin Deth's assistants had worked a change in the seemingly fleckless surface of the Council table. A circular depression about six feet across had appeared in the center. To one side were grouped smaller depressions, and certain slots had become apparent. The rolls and canisters had all disappeared—been inserted in the appropriate orifices.

  Deth had touched a control and, while Goniface had been speaking, the pearly Council Chamber had slowly darkened, through an imperceptible series of grays. Now came utter blackness.

  With the suddenness of creation a miniature scene sprang into being in the center of the table. Only an occasional mistiness, and a slight blurring when many figures were grouped together, testified that it was only a projection—a focusing of the patterns recorded on multiple tapes whirling noiselessly.

  Pygmy figures in home-woven drab, scarlet-robed dolls of priests, tiny horses, carts, and wares, all complete—a sizable portion of the Great Square, without the surrounding architecture.

  Only now, instead of the Great God, the archpriests of the Apex Council brooded over it.

  Up from the smaller depressions rose stubby columns of light—yellow, green, blue, violet—fluctuating slightly but incessantly in height and saturation of color—indicative of the massed changes in the major neuro-emotional responses of the crowd.

  There rose the hum and babble of pygmy voices, the clatter of tiny hoofs, the squeak of wooden wheels.

  The scene in the Great Square was repeating itself.

  Cousin Deth thrust his now-giant arm into the moving solidograph, momentarily intensifying, then shattering the illusion. His fingers negligently poked at and into two tiny red-robed figures.

  "Jarles and Chulian," he explained. "In a few moments we'll give you their voices in full intensity."

  Goniface leaned back with satisfaction. He was studying the expressions on the faces of the peering archpriests—eerily lit masks seeming to hang against the distanceless blackness beyond the table. But now and then he looked at the solidogra
ph.

  It was at the moment of the first accusation of witchcraft—the violet column concerned with fear, repulsion, and similar emotions had jumped abruptly and gone wan—that he chanced to note her face.

  Almost, he jerked forward and grabbed at it.

  But he caught himself in time and only leaned forward idly, as if it were his momentary fancy to take a closer look.

  It couldn't be.

  But there it was. That little coldly purposeful face, more perfect than any cameo, with its dark, fine-spun doll's hair. Not identically the same, of course, as the one printed in his memory. But if you allowed for the years and the maturing the years would have brought—

  Geryl. Knowles Geryl.

  But Chulian had referred to her by another name—Sharlson Naurya.

  A long-locked door in Goniface's mind groaned and reverberated, straining against the hinges with a formless pressure from the other side.

  He looked across the table toward the yellowish caricature that was Deth's face in the darkness, caught the beady black eyes. Deth melted backward, was gone.

  Goniface stood up quietly and walked behind the chairs, as though he were tired of sitting. Then he moved away from the table.

  He sensed Deth's presence beside him, caught the thin, bony wrist in his hand, and whispered very faintly into Deth's ear:

  "The woman I sent Chulian to arrest. Sharlson Naurya. Find her. Take her from Chulian if he has her. But find her. Make her my secret prisoner."

  And then, like an afterthought. "Unharmed, mind you, at least until I have seen and spoken with her."

  In the darkness Cousin Deth smiled crookedly.

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  Chapter 3

  For a moment Brother Chulian thought a shadow was scuttling toward him in the deep grooves between the cobbles. He jerked away so that his halo reeled tipsily across the lightless street and his inviolability field bumped that of his companion.

  "I slipped," he gasped unconvincingly. "Some nasty commoner must have thrown out greasy slops."

  The other priest did not reply. Fervently Chulian hoped that he would not mind turning right at the next corner. It was a little longer that way, but you didn't have to pass the haunted house.

  To his relief the fellow turned right without being asked.

  Of course, the house wasn't really haunted, Chulian reminded himself quickly. That would be the sheerest nonsense. But it was such an ugly old relic of the Golden Age and the commoners told such unpleasantly grotesque stories about it at confession.

  Why did the commoners have to have such narrow, twisty streets and why was there such a strict curfew, Chulian complained to himself, as if it were somehow the commoners' fault. Like a city of the dead. Not a person stirring, not a light showing, not a sound. Of course, all those rules were the laws of the Hierarchy, he remembered unwillingly. Still, there ought to be some provision for cases like this—say a law that the commoners ought to listen for priests coming at night and be ready to set out lighted torches. A halo hardly gave you enough light to keep from tripping over things!

  Like twin will-o'-the-wisps the two circular violet glows bobbed through the crazily curving trenches in darkness that were the streets of Megatheopolis.

  Behind rose the glow of the Sanctuary. To Chulian it seemed like a warm hearth from which he had been unfairly pushed out into the cold. Why did they have to pick on him for jobs like this? He was just an innocent clerk, bothering no one. All he asked from life was peace and comfort, a decent supply of his favorite goodies, a chance to lie in bed—at this moment he could almost feel its cushiony softness—and watch his favorite solidographic book read themselves, and now and again a bit of special fun with a Fallen Sister.

  Who in the world could be so cruel as to object to that?

  It all came from his miserable luck at having been paired off with Jarles, he told himself. That sullen fellow! If he hadn't been paired with Jarles, he wouldn't have been forced into this wild plot, which he didn't understand and which seemed to have been designed solely to bring trouble and danger into a world that would go so smoothly if everyone were more like Brother Chulian!

  Even then it would have been all right if he hadn't been so foolish as to mention those extra mark to Goniface. But if he hadn't told, they'd probably have found out and he'd have been punished.

  Witchmarks! Chulian shivered. Almost he could see them burning in the white flesh of that nasty girl. Why did some commoner girls have to be brazen and sulky? Why couldn't they all be gentle and docile?

  Witchmarks! He wished he could stop thinking about them. As part of his priestly education he had read a book about the Middle Ages of the Dawn Civilization and its primitive Witchcraft. A witchmark was supposed to be where a witch suckled her familiar. A familiar was supposed to be a little helper given her by Satan—Sathanas.

  Of course, it had all been nonsense then and was nonsense now.

  But why had Goniface called the girl a witch when he had heard of the extra marks, and sent Chulian to arrest her?

  Chulian didn't really want to know the answer. He didn't want to be a Third Circle priest. He just wanted to be left in peace. If he could only make them understand that!

  His companion nudged him into attentiveness, pointing at a rectangle of deeper blackness in the irregular rubble-and-plaster wall. They had arrived.

  Chulian rapped loudly against the rough wooden door. When your fingers wore the Gloves of Inviolability you could hardly hurt them.

  "Open in the name of the Great God and his Hierarchy!" he commanded, his reedy voice amplified by the silence.

  "The door is not barred. Open it yourself," came the quiet, muffled, gently mocking answer.

  Chulian bristled. Such insolence! But then they had come to arrest the girl, not to teach her manners. He jerked the latchstring and pushed.

  The room was dimly and unevenly lit by the flickering of a thrifty fire. Faint coils of smoke, escaping from the fireplace, writhed about lazily, some of them eventually finding their way through the tiny square air hole in the low ceiling. Chulian's companion coughed.

  Before the fireplace a shuttle was moving busily through the threads of a large loom, weaving some darkly figured fabric.

  Its uninterrupted, snake's-head rhythm made Chulian uneasy. He hesitated and shot a quick glance at his companion. Side by side, close together, they moved forward until they could see the other side of the loom and Sharlson Naurya.

  She was wearing a close-fitting dress of gray homespun. Her rapt eyes seemed to be looking not so much at her work as through it, though her busy fingers never hesitated. Was it only cloth she was weaving, Chulian wondered, or something else—something bigger?

  With almost a guilty start, he realized of whom she reminded him. Only a suggestion, of course—Still, there was in her face the same dark strength, the same sense of hidden yet limitless purpose, as he had just seen, and cringed before, in the archpriest Goniface.

  After a moment she turned her head and looked at them. But there was no change in her expression—as if they were merely part of that bigger, invisible fabric. Without haste she tucked the shuttle into the warp and stood facing them, folding her hands at her waist.

  "Sharlson Naurya," Chulian intoned solemnly, but a trifle jerkily, "we come, inviolable emissaries of the Hierarchy, to do the bidding of the Great God."

  Her green eyes smiled at that, if eyes can smile. But what Chulian wondered was what those eyes saw when they looked past him. Brazen girl! What right had she to take this so calmly!

  He drew himself up.

  "Sharlson Naurya, in the name of the Great God and his Hierarchy, I arrest you!"

  She bent her head. And now there was something twisted and evil about the way her eyes smiled. She suddenly spread her hands outward from her waist.

  "Run, Puss!" she cried with an almost mischievous urgency. "Tell the Black Man!"

  A glittering talon ripped at the waist the gray homespun of her dress—
from within. There was a rapid disturbance of the cloth. Then through the slit something wriggled and sprang.

  Something furry, big as a cat, but more like a monkey, and incredibly lean.

  Like a swift-scuttling spider it was up the wall and across the ceiling, clinging effortlessly.

  Chulian's muscles froze. With a throaty gasp his companion lunged out an arm. From the pointing finger crackled a needle of violet light, scorching a zigzag track in the crude plaster of wall and ceiling.

  The thing paused for a moment in the air hole, looking back. Then it was gone, and the violet beam spat futilely through the air hole toward the black heavens, where one star glittered.

  But Chulian continued to stare upward, his slack jaw trembling. He had got one look at the tiny face. Not when the thing had moved, for then it had been only a rippling blur, but when it had paused to glance back.

  Not all the features of a face had been there. Some had been missing and others had seemed telescoped into each other. And the fine fur had encroached on them.

  Nevertheless, where the features had showed through the fur, they had been white, and, in spite of all distortions, they had been a peering, chinless, noseless, hellish, but terribly convincing caricature of the features of Sharlson Naurya.

  And the fur had been of exactly the same shade as her dark hair.

  Finally, Chulian looked back at her. She had not moved. Still stood there smiling with her eyes.

  "What was that thing?" he cried. It was much more a frightened appeal than a demand.

  "Don't you know?" she asked gravely.

  She reached for a shawl hanging from the end of the loom. "I am ready," she said. "Aren't you going to take me to the Sanctuary?"

  And pulling her shawl around her, she walked toward the door.

  It seemed darker than ever outside, and dead still. If any commoners had heard the disturbance, they had not come out to investigate. Of course, that was the law, but Chulian wished that some commoner would break it—just this once. Or if only they would meet up with a patrol of deacons!