Collected Short Fiction, page 195
He had never tried that trick before, and he had no idea of what pent-up gases from exploding gunpowder could do. His hand was numb, and the pistol was ruined, but the door swung open of its own accord.
There were two acolytes in the narrow hallway. Waving his useless pistol, Norvis ordered harshly, “Shoot them!”
The acolytes had just enough time to look startled before bullets ripped into them. The small group of sailors moved on into the darkened hallway, heading toward the dungeons. At the front of the Temple, the frantic assault continued noisily.
XIX
In the blackness of his unlighted cell, Kris peKym Yorgen stood just beneath the air chimney that led to the roof of the temple, his head cocked to one side to catch the sounds that drifted down from above.
What in the Name of the Light was going on up there, anyway? An occasional crack! of rifle fire was recognizable, but the murmuring and rumble in the background was hard to make out.
A mob again? It didn’t seem likely. With all that damning evidence marshaled against him and his guilt proven beyond doubt, it wasn’t likely that any of the people would still be on his side. The people all knew he had framed the Earthmen; why would they help him now?
The idea that Norvis might be storming the Temple to rescue him seemed just a little fantastic, but it was the only explanation he could think of. If it were Norvis, he thought, then there wasn’t much chance of a rescue. A surprise move might have done it, a quick lightning swoop—but it sounded as though the populace had been aroused, and, if so, the few remaining loyal members of the Party would not last long against their fury.
He cursed bitterly. If only he could get out of this cell!
He heard noises reverberating faintly through the bronze door, and whirled quickly. If there were someone coming to rescue him, the priests might think it wisest to kill him now, instead of waiting until morning.
He walked quickly to the door of the cell and felt around. The cell was just narrow enough for what he wanted to do. A shorter man might not be able to manage it, but Kris thought he could.
Bracing his feet against one wall and his shoulders against the other, he began working his way up the rough stone wall. Once he was above the door, he turned and put his back against the wall over the door, keeping his feet and shoulders against the side walls. He was ready for anyone who came in. Die he might, but at least one priest would go down with a broken neck.
The noises in the hall were faint, but they kept up. And still no one opened his door. What’s going on? Kris wondered again. His shoulder and leg muscles were tiring rapidly. By the time he finally heard the bar of his door being lifted, he was so cramped that he was ready to drop.
The door swung outward. There was a discordant burst of sound, as though there were many men in the hall, and a blaze of torchlight glittered in the room. Kris poised himself to leap.
“Kris?” a voice said. “Kris, are you in there?”
Kris said: “Marja!” Between the cramping of his muscles and the surprise of hearing her voice, he lost his brace against the walls, toppled outward, and collapsed in a heap at the girl’s feet.
He stood up gingerly, grinning.
“I guess nothing’s broken,” he said, rubbing his leg. He glanced around at the group who had filed into his cell. “What’s happened?”
She told him quickly. “And when we got down here, we couldn’t find which cell you were in. We’ve released all the other men.”
“Good going.” He glanced at Norvis, who stood behind Marja holding a torch. “Let’s get the men together and get out of here.”
The news had been good—astonishing, even. So the Elder Grandfather was dead? Didn’t that prove that the Great Light was on the side of Kris peKym Yorgen? He smiled.
“Up the stairs!” he yelled. The men followed him out of the dungeon level and upward. Just as they emerged on the top of the stairs, a tremendous crash echoed through the building, followed by the savage roar of a raging mob. The doors of the Temple were down!
“Out the back way!” Kris snapped. It was a good feeling to be in command of his men again. “That mob’s blind. It would just as likely kill us as anyone!” He charged down the hall with over a hundred men at his heels. There was a priest in the hall, but at sight of them, he dropped his peych-knife and fled wildly.
There was no one firing from the roof as the men poured out the back door. Ganz peDel was at the window of the pottery shop.
“We were about to come in after you,” he called. “The priests who aren’t dead have deserted the roof and gone below!”
“Stand aside!” Kris called. “Open those shutters wider! We’re coming through.”
It took time for a hundred-odd men to get through the window, and more of Megil & peMegil’s pottery went the way of all dishware, but it was no more than a few minutes before the operation was completed. Kris pulled the shutters closed and bolted them. “Up to the roof,” he said. “Maybe we can see what’s happening.”
From the roof of the pottery shop, there was little to see at first. There were unmoving blue-and-yellow-clad figures lying scattered over the roof of the Temple, but there was no sign of life. They could see the far edge of the Square, but it was difficult to tell whether there was anyone moving in the flickering torchlight.
But the roaring screams of the frenzied mob still filled the air.
Suddenly, one of Kris’ men shouted. “Look! Look at the lens!”
The great lens on the roof of the Temple was glowing with orange-red light.
“Torches,” someone said.
Kris shook his head. “Torches? No! Those silly fools are burning the Temple!”
It was true. The glow beneath the lens became brighter, and the howl of the mob changed in pitch and character as they ran out of the building, trampling their way back over the fallen front door. Soon the Square of Holy Light was filled with fleeing people.
Kris felt the way he had felt when the School had burned—helpless. But it was worse this time. He had not wanted to fire the Great Temple—no, not the Temple.
“The lens! The lens! Look at it!” Kris realized it was his own voice shouting.
A black fissure was moving across the huge lens, spreading rapidly, flawing its perfection. Then another and another appeared. The cooling rain dropping on it from above was competing with the hellish fire beneath.
Then, with a sudden roar, like a crack of thunder, the four-thousand-year-old lens, which had brought the beams of the Great Light into the Temple for hundreds of generations of Nidorians to worship, shattered into fragments and collapsed into the inferno of flame below.
XX
Leader Kris peKym Yorgen stopped at the gaping door of the Temple and looked in, as he had every morning for the week since the Temple’s destruction. Norvis, at his side, waited patiently.
The interior of the auditorium was a blackened ruin. The costly drapes, the intricately carved pews, the fine paneling were nothing but ash which lay soggily on the floor, wet by the nightly rains that poured through the opening in the roof that once had held the lens. Now the hole gaped openly like a raw wound.
Somehow, Kris felt that he had lost a part of himself when the Temple burned. The Bel-rogas School had been nothing, actually.
A century ago, it had not even existed.
But the Temple had stood for four thousand years, rock-solid and seemingly eternal. And now it was a gutted shell.
Only the interior of the auditorium had burned; the thick stone walls of the building itself had only been blackened from holding the flames until they burned themselves out. The offices and the meeting rooms were untouched.
“You keep looking at that, Kris,” Norvis said softly. “Are you thinking of cleaning it up, or rebuilding it, or—?”
Kris shook his head decisively. “No. Not yet. Not until the Council has been re-formed and we have returned to the Way or our Ancestors. Only then will we be in a position to rebuild the Temple. It was desecrated by the Earthmen, and the Great Light has cleansed it with lire. Not until we are worthy will we rededicate the Temple.”
He turned and walked to the side door of the Temple which led into the offices and business rooms. The bronze doors that led into the auditorium had been discolored by the heat, but they had held back the fire. Only one of them was badly warped.
The guard at the stairway nodded as they approached. “Hoy, Ancient Leader. Hoy, Aged Secretary.”
Kris nodded curtly and ascended the stair to his office. Norvis followed him up.
Grandfather Marn peFulda Brajjyd was already waiting for him. The priest was seated in the outer office, his fingers rubbing the small lens that hung on a silver chain around his neck. “Bless you, Leader Kris,” he said, smiling.
“And you, Grandfather. What brings you here so early?”
“Eve appointed a new Priest Mayor of Vashcor,” Marn peFulda said. “An excellent young man. And as the oldest living priest of the Clan Brajjyd, I’ve come to take my place on the Council.”
“Fine!” Kris said. “Let’s go inside my office and figure this thing out.”
“Your Announcement of Purification was a great stroke, my son,” the Grandfather said as he followed Kris into the inner office. “It saved the life of a good many priests. Perhaps even I might not be alive today if you hadn’t told the people that all those who were still under the influence of the Earthmen were dead.”
They entered the office. Norvis said, “I’ll go to my own room, Kris. I have a great deal of work to do.”
Kris nodded. “Go ahead. There’s plenty to be done.” After Norvis was gone, Kris waved the priest to the chair facing his desk. “Sit down, Grandfather. We’ve got a little figuring to do. Nidor is still in an uproar. I’ve put the whole world under Peace Law—my men are acting as Peacemen, with the regular Peacemen under them. But that’s not the Way of our Ancestors; we must return to the Way.”
The priest nodded without speaking.
“There are nine of the original Council left alive after the fire,” Kris said. “With you, that makes ten. We’re six short.”
Marn peFulda nodded. “And with the records destroyed, we have no way of actually knowing who the oldest priests of each Clan are. It may involve a little guesswork before we’ve filled the Council again, and”—he paused and smiled slyly—“I don’t know how we’ll ever decide who the Elder Leader will be.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kris said decisively. “We’ll fill the Council somehow. And—you are hereby appointed Leader of the Council yourself, until the emergency’s over. You’ll take rank over all present and future members. They’ll obey your orders.”
“Excellent,” the priest agreed. “It’s a drastic measure, I’ll admit—but these are times that require drastic measures.”
“Right. There are a few other things to take care of, too. The old Council found me guilty of sacrilege, treason, and blasphemy. Ah—that decision must be set aside, since the Great Light has shown that I was right.”
“Naturally,” said the priest smoothly.
“There’s only one other thing. Technically speaking, I hold no position in the Government at all. I think it might be wise to see to it that I have some sort of official standing.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed in thought. “There’s no office I know of that . . . wait a minute!” He stood up, walked to the bookcase in the back of the office, and took down the Scripture and the Law.
He flipped the sacred volume open, riffled through the pages, and selected the passage he wanted. “Here it is,” he said. “Seventh Section. ‘And it happened that in the days of Dmorno the Holy, the Great Light sent a blight over the land, for the people were unrighteous. The clouds that shielded the world from His angry radiance were dissipated and became thin, and the crops were withered and great storms raged. Being without food, the people suffered greatly.
“ ‘Now, at that time there lived a man of great wealth in Gelusar who had stored away vast quantities of peych-beans for his own subsistence, and the Council declared that he had much more than he needed, and that food from his warehouses should be dispensed to the poor and the needy. This he refused to do.
“ ‘Thereupon, the Council appointed an Executive Officer, a pious and strong man named Lordeth, who was given command of Peacemen and who went forth to the rich merchant and took from him his warehouses and distributed the food to the people.’ ”
The priest closed the book. “There you are. In emergencies it is perfectly proper to appoint an Executive Officer.” Then a frown passed over his face. “I hope I can get the Council to agree.”
“They’ll agree,” Kris said cheerfully. “If they don’t, they’ll wish they had. We must return to the Way of our Ancestors!”
The priest smiled. “You’ll be the first man to hold that office in three thousand years, Kris peKym. You have a great responsibility, my son.”
In a nearby office, Norvis fingered a writing pen in his hand as he spoke to little Dran peDran Gormek.
“Now, do you follow me, Dran peDran? Not a word of this to anyone.”
Dran fidgeted. “Not even to the captain?”
Norvis pursed his lips. “Kris does not want it known that he even suspects there still are Earthmen on Nidor. It would weaken his position, you see. If I’d selected anyone but you for the job, I’d have told them that Leader Kris doesn’t even know about it. But I can trust you. Never even mention to him that you know anything about this—understand? That’s the way he wants it.”
Dran nodded. “I doesn’t quite understand, but if the captain says so—he says so.”
“Very well, then. Now look at the map.” Norvis walked over to a map of Nidor hanging on the wall. “Here’s Gelusar. Due East are the Mountains of the Morning. Here”—he made a tiny cross with his pen—“is the Earthmen’s base. You’ll go by deest to the foothills of the Mountains of the Morning, and then climb on foot the rest of the way. Now, mind you: all you’re to do is look over the base. You’re not to expose yourself in any way. Keep out of sight and you’ll be safe.”
“I’ll do, sir.”
“I want to know how many Earthmen there are, and whether it would be possible for us to get at them if we moved carefully. Perhaps they won’t even be there; they may have deserted the base. But make sure, and don’t go into the base itself, even if it looks deserted. Understand?”
“I understands,” Dran said. “I goes immediately?”
“Immediately,” Norvis said.
The small Bronze Islander left without further word. Norvis waited for him to close the door, then leaned forward and clasped his hands on his desk, looking abstractedly at the inlaid pattern in the wood.
The threads were beginning to come together now. Kris had proven to be three times the leader Del ever was—and the School lay in ruins, the Temple was a husk, Kiv was dead, and the power of the Council broken. Nidor’s downward slide had been checked—maybe.
The whole thing hinged on whether the Earthmen were actually gone or not. Norvis’ mother, Sindi iRahn peKiv Brajjyd, had told him about the base when he was young.
His father, Rahn peDorvis, had run away from the Bel-rogas School for some reason—Sindi had never said why—and Sindi had followed him. Rahn, taking a shortcut across the mountains on his way to Vashcor, had stumbled on the Earthmen’s lair, and Sindi behind him. Rahn had been caught, and by some mysterious magic had had all memory of his visit removed. Sindi, unobserved, had seen all.
Norvis knew his mother had told the truth; the base was out there. It presented a potential threat to Nidor as long as it remained. How could they proceed with the job of rebuilding, if the Earthmen might be still on the planet?
Norvis needed information. Dran, a trained seaman, was observant. He should be able to bring back plenty of information. And it’s information we need, Norvis thought grimly. We don’t know nearly enough about the Earthmen—yet!
XXI
Kris peKym looked out his window over Holy Gelusar and frowned. He had driven the Earthmen from Nidor; he had purified the Council. But the emergency was not yet over; he had much yet to do.
His attention was distracted by a motion at the corner of his eye. It was someone mounted on a magnificent blue-gray deest, trotting across the Square of Holy Light.
He smiled as he recognized Marja geDel. She deserved a magnificent deest; she was a magnificent woman. The rifle-armed guards around the Square nodded deferentially as she passed, giving honor to the betrothed of the Leader. Kris smiled. He had not asked her yet, but there was no question about it.
Or was there? Come to think of it, he’d better make sure. His position on Nidor would be just that much more secure if he were a family man.
The girl cantered her animal across the Square, dismounted before the Temple, and tethered her deest. She hadn’t looked up. It would have been undignified for her to wave at him, or for him to call to her. She entered the door below, disappearing from Kris’ sight.
He returned to his desk and sat down. Within less than a minute, there was a rap at the door.
“Come in, Marja.”
She opened the door, smiling radiantly, and closed it again behind her. “Do you have any more work for me this morning?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Sit down a minute.”
She frowned in puzzlement at his brusque manner. Kris ignored the expression, pulled a piece of paper toward him, and began writing. “Kris—”
“Wait till I’ve finished, Marja.” He wrote deliberately, clamping his lips. When he was through, he lifted his eye and handed her the paper. “Take this list into the market center first. Have the stuff delivered if you can’t carry it. That last item you’ll have to look for—but don’t take anything less than the best.”
She read through the list. “All kinds of clothing—and furniture—and . . . and a housed.” She looked up. “Kris, what is this?”
He rested his chin in his palm and grinned at her. “If you’re going to be Marja iKris, you’ll have to have the best of everything, won’t you?”
