The Stricken Field (9 page)

Eight cloaked figures stood in a rough circle, their cowled heads bent in meditation. All eight wore the same plain garb; Jain could see no significance to their grouping. Obviously they were the archons assembled. He had been worrying that the Keeper might preside over such gatherings. Archons would be bad enough. At least they were human.

As the newcomers arrived, the nearer figures moved slightly, opening a gap. They did so without looking around, which suggested that their sorcery was still operative. Jain and Mearn stepped into line, closing the circle but staying closer to each other than to the flanking archons.

He glanced surreptitiously around the silent figures, wondering why they did not tell him to stop making such a racket, for his heart was hammering like a woodpecker. They continued to ignore him, studying the ground. He saw then that the group was not located, at random, or because the archons had wanted to be in a comer. They were gathered around a particular dark patch of floor, about the size of a bed. Its surface was slightly raised, perhaps uneven and lumpy, although he could make out no real detail in the gloom. After a while, as his eyes continued to adjust, he began to suspect that the patch was wet. A leak in the ancient ceiling would not be exactly surprising. Then the chill creeping remorselessly into his flesh made him wonder if water would freeze here.

And finally he realized that of course the black layer was ice. This was why the Chapel was so sacred. He was looking at Keef's grave, last resting place of the first Keeper. That somber ice was composed of the tears the pixies had shed for Keef over a thousand years. This was the very heart of the College and Thume itself.

For some reason Jain thought then of the name the Outsiders were reputed to use for Thume: the Accursed Place. He had never understood that term and no one had ever managed to explain it to him, but now it seemed oddly appropriate for a realm that would take a tomb as its most revered relic and then hide it away where almost no one ever saw it.

The vigil continued. Eventually the archon on his left moved slightly aside. Jain heard a faint sound at his back and a woman stepped into the gap, wheezing nervously. Her face was only a pallid blur, but he recognized her as Analyst Shole. He edged closer to Mearn, to make the spacing more even. Stillness returned.

He hoped this assembly would do something soon and dismiss him before he froze to death here in the dark, or died of fear.

"May we serve the Good always," intoned one of the cowled archons-Jain could not tell which.

"Amen!" chorused the others. He jumped, wondering if he should join in.

"May the Gods and the Keeper bless our deliberations." "Amen!"

Mearn and Shole stayed silent. Jain decided to take his cue from them-he was only a lowly archivist. And an innocent one, he reminded himself. He had done nothing wrong. He had nothing to fear. It was not his fault.

"Analyst Shole," whispered the same voice as before, deadly and impersonal like a winter wind. "You and Archivist Meam delivered the woman Thaile of a male child. You removed all physical results of that birth. You transported her to the College."

Shole muttered an incoherent agreement.

"Tell us exactly what power you used on her memories." Jain waited for the reply and then knew that there was not going to be one. The archons were reading the answer directly from the woman's thoughts. They were, after all, the eight most powerful sorcerers in Thume-except for the Keeper, who was more than just a sorceress. His flesh crawled.

"You have not spoken to the novice, or used power upon her, since that day?" Whoever was speaking, it was not Raim.

"No, noble sir."

"We are satisfied. You may leave."

"I would have used greater power except you ... except I had been instructed-"

"We know. You may go."

Shole spun on her heel and in seconds her footsteps were lost in the massive, immovable silence.

Jain braced himself. Now it would be his turn! He wished he could make out faces, but they were hidden from him. He could not tell how many of the eight were men, how many women. He was unable even to determine the color of their dark robes.

"Archivist Jain? You received the woman Thaile at the Meeting Place and spoke with her."

Jain thought back to that meeting on the bench-what he had said, and she had said, and what she had been thinking until Mist arrived and how he had then left the two of them . ..

"You have not spoken with her since." That was a statement, but he nodded. He was chilled through and yet sweating. He hoped he would be dismissed then, but now the inquisitor asked Mearn about her meetings with the girl in the past week.

Silence. Surely he would be allowed to leave soon? He was drowning in this icy darkness. He needed warmth and sunshine, and life. This laborious inquisition was not his business!

"Her Faculty is extraordinary," murmured another voice, as if musing aloud in the middle of an inaudible conversation.

"It might explain her suspicions," another said. "Just possibly. But not her recovery of the man's name." "Someone has been meddling!" That sounded like Raim, but perhaps only because he had used those words earlier. "She cannot possibly understand," another said sharply. "She must be compelled to enter the Defile tonight." "No," said a spidery voice. "No one has been meddling." The archons turned at once to face the speaker and sank to their knees. Mearn copied them an instant later, then Jain moved so fast he almost overbalanced. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, knowing that the Keeper herself had joined the meeting. Fear tightened icy fingers around his heart. He could not remember ever knowing worse terror, not even the horrors of the Defile itself. He recalled awful stories of Keepers who had wiped out whole armies of intruding Outsiders, and of the deadly, unpredictable discipline with which they ruled the College. Keepers were laws unto themselves, utterly unpredictable, heedless of precedent, devoid of mercy.

The voice came again, a dry inhuman rustle beyond fear and passion and hope. "I warned you that the drums of the millennium were beating, that Evil walked the world. I warned you that we are threatened as never before. You know that this girl must be the Promised One, and yet we almost lost her. The first night she was here, I found her at the mouth of the Defile."

Several of the archons gasped, but none spoke. The cold of the floor bit into Jain's knees like sharp teeth, but deadlier yet was the thought of the Defile in less than full-moon light.

Trembling, but unable to resist the need, he risked a hasty glance. The Keeper was a tall, spare shape, muffled in a dark cloak and hood. She seemed to be leaning on a staff, but he could make out nothing more. He looked down again quickly, at the dusty, uneven pavement, so comfortingly solid and prosaic. Tonight he would tell Jool that he had met the Keeper!

She spoke again. "Raim, you are junior. Can you advise your older brothers and sisters how they blundered?" "No, Holy Lady." Raim's voice was much less arrogant than it had been earlier. "Enlighten us."

"You trespassed beyond the limits the Gods set for Keef, my children," said the Keeper's sad whisper. "You broke her word. You offended grievously against the Good."

"There are many precedents!" Raim protested, his voice quavering.

The Keeper sighed. "Not thus. Analyst Jain, when you instructed the candidate to come to the College, did you specifically warn her that she must not fall in love?"

Jain did try to answer. The answer roared in his head: Not specifically. His tongue was paralyzed, no sound emerged-but that would not matter.

"Archivist Mearn," the Keeper persisted, "you slew the man."

Mearn screamed. "There are precedents!"

"But the babe? There are no precedents for that! Why did you not find a haven for the babe?"

"I was obeying orders!"

"The fault was mine, Holy One," said a new voice, a woman's. One of the cowls sank forward to touch the floor. "I feared the Chosen One's future power, thinking she would be able to seek out the child wherever it might be hid. I was overzealous. Destroy me."

"It will not suffice, Sheef. If you seek to accept the guilt of ten, you must offer more."

Somebody whimpered, but it did not seem to be the Sheef woman.

After a moment, Sheef spoke again. "Pronounce anathema upon me, as Deel did upon Theur. Expel me to the Outside, to wander there a hundred years among the demons, without power and without speech, in the guise of a gnome."

"That may still not be enough."

The woman moaned. "It is too much!"

"Does my suffering mean nothing to you?" the Keeper asked. "Will you bring destruction upon us all?"

Sheef screamed. "Then two hundred years, and let me also be cursed with all manner of ill fortune and fated to a foul and painful death!"

After a moment the Keeper said softly, "It may serve. So be it."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jain registered that there were now but seven archons. The gap where the eighth had knelt was marked by an empty cloak. He clenched his teeth and tensed his limbs, yet still he shivered. He, too, had only obeyed orders! He had not known of the killings!

The Keeper paused as if to give the others time to reflect on the fate of their missing sister. At last the insectile voice began again, dripping words into the silence as water might drip into an ocean of dust.

"You sinned against an innocent girl, against her lover and newborn child. You will be fortunate indeed if Sheef's penalty assuages the anger of the Gods. In Their pity They gave the girl a hint of what she has lost. Do you understand what she did with that hint?"

After a moment Raim's voice spoke uncertainly. "She did nothing except go to the young man Mist and copulate with him."

"She made sacrifice!" the Keeper snapped, shattering the stillness. Suddenly the Chapel seemed to come alive, as if starting awake from its sleep of centuries. The dread voice rolled around the great building. "She sacrificed herself to the God of Love! She gave her body to a man for the love of another! Fools! Now do you understand?" Her words echoed and echoed in the shadows, finally whispering back faintly from the roof as they died away.

All the cowls tipped forward to touch the floor. Mearn doubled herself over, also, but Jain remained as he was, sitting back on his heels, paralyzed. He stared in rank despair at the edge of the age-old ice over the tomb of Keef. The magnitude of the danger appalled him. Thume's whole existence depended on the Gods' sufferance, the concessions that Keef had won when she sacrificed her lover. He had seen the Thaile girl as foolish and ignorant and of no importance, and she had won a God to her side. She had given her body to a man for the love of another, and the gods had accepted that offering!

He was ruined! They all were!

The Keeper's voice returned to its resigned whisper, sounding as ancient as the Chapel itself, crushed with an unbearable burden of care. "It was the God of Love who restored her memory. Be grateful They have yet done no more! Hope They will not! It is the millennium prophesied. The Promised One has come and you have blundered."

In the long silence that followed, Jain heard some of the archons weeping. He knew nothing of millennia or Promised Ones, which must be lore restricted to the archons, but he could see that he had perhaps been guilty of some errors of judgment, due to his inexperience. He would certainly try harder in future. He would promise faithfully.

At last one of the archons said, "Holy One, what must we do?"

Again the heartbreaking sigh, the hopeless whisper. "Do nothing. If the child suffers more she may yet be taken from us, and she is your only hope. She must give up the man voluntarily, or you are all as doomed as I. Let her be, return to your posts. I shall go and plead with her myself."

The audience seemed to be over. Jain relaxed with a gasp of relief.

The archons had gone. He and Mearn were alone with the Keeper.

"As for you two!" The Keeper's voice burned with contempt and was terrifyingly closer. "You are a disgrace to your training. Look what you have wrought!"

Again Mearn screamed. "Did not Archon Sheef accept our guilt?"

"In the killings, yes. But you have abused your powers and betrayed my trust. You seek to compel what can only be earned, you apply contempt in lieu of affection. Mankin, did you truly expect to win the child's loyalty by torturing her father, or bribing her with things she did not want or even understand? Woman, do you expect your sneers to inspire endeavor? I strip you both of all occult power and banish you from the College forever. Live henceforth as the animals you area Begone!"

Late in the afternoon, Thaile awoke from a doze feeling restored and strengthened. Her hunger pangs had gone. She was familiar enough with sorcery now to recognize its effects and could guess at the meaning. She did not believe she had won. More likely her rebellion was just not going to be tolerated any longer.

She peered out a window. The forest glade was bright with thin sunshine and apparently deserted, but common sense suggested she would have visitors shortly. She treated herself to a hasty dip in the magical hot water of the bathtub, then dressed in a soft green gown and brushed her hair. She took a chair out to the porch and sat down to wait.

Shadows lay long upon the grass and the western clouds were flushing. In a few minutes she observed a tall figure coming through the trees, walking slowly along the Way. It was the apparition she had met on the mountain path. It bore a long staff, although its gait seemed steady enough. Measuring its approach by her own rising fear, she watched until it came to a halt before the steps. Even then, nothing of the person within the dark cloak was visible-the cowl cast an unnaturally dark shadow over the face, and the hand holding the staff was concealed by the edge of the sleeveyet somehow she knew it to be a very old woman.

Thaile could remember strangers calling at the Gaib Place. The visitor would speak first, giving his name and home, then her father would bid him welcome and offer hospitality. But this was no ordinary visitor, and the cottage was the Thaile Place only because it had been given to her by the College-and thus by this very visitor, if it was who she thought it was. And she had no food to offer.