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hands groped for his goblet.
The voice, this visitation from Ancilla's Presence, had to be quelled. Hederick tried to speak, but
only dry whimpers emerged. Then the voice returned in full force.
"I turned to slide through the crack ... I was going to escape... and then I saw them. Dozens of them
 no, hundreds! Hundreds of spiders! Black and evil. Insatiable."
Hederick could see that the earlier mood of holiness had left the people. No longer were they
converts awaiting the truths of the Seekers, but children listening to a good bedtime story.
Novitiates, who had sunk to their knees on marble stairs, were also listening raptly. Brown-robed
priests in various stages of shock stood around motionless.
The voice spoke again, hurriedly, breathlessly. "And then ... and then I remembered something.... I
cried out to my father. 'Con!' I screamed. 'Feed the spiders! Feed the spiders!' I moved toward the
voracious insects, drawn as if by a web. I couldn't stop; I drew closer. The spiders reared back to
receive me, to devour me .. . and Con didn't hear me! My own father didn't hear me! Don't you see?
Don't any of you idiots understand?"
Hederick's right hand, unseen under the lectern, touched the mead goblet. He tried to force his rigid
fingers to grasp the stem. The High Theocrat looked wildly around the room. Why did none of his
priests step in? And why wouldn't his fingers do his bidding, by the accursed Pantheons?
He felt the goblet tip, heard it break. The pitcher from which he'd filled the goblet was under the
altar, behind him. Hederick made himself turn and stretch toward it. His left hand found the mead
pitcher and hefted it. It was empty.
Still the voice continued. Even with his back turned, the false voice sounded as clear as the evening
gong that called believers to revelations. Ancilla's Presence, only an arm's length away, cocked its
ghostly head to one side.
"Don't you see?" Hederick shouted. "It was his duty to feed the spiders Con's duty, my father's!
Don't you see?" The voice rose to a wail. "If he didn't feed them, the spiders would find food
somewhere else. And the only thing down there to eat... was me!"
A scream rocked the Great Chamber. To the onlookers, it seemed as though the sound came from
Hederick, but the High Theocrat knew it had burst forth from the Presence.
As suddenly as the spell had taken Hederick, it left. He slumped over the altar, ill with vertigo,
nearly retching. The sounds of the rabble soared around him.
"Did you hear?" "What was that all about?" "That's not like the other revelations." "What does it
mean?" "Is the Theocrat growing senile?" "Perhaps he's a prophet." "Do the gods really speak
through Hederick?" "What do we do now?" "Is it over?" "Can we leave?" Babies cried. A few older
children whined. Hederick forced himself upright. Instead of the Presence, Dahos stood at the top of
the stairs. The Plainsman held out a clean cloth in one hand and a spare chalice filled with mead in
the other.
The crowd stilled amid a chorus of "Hush!" and "There's more!"
Hederick took the tiny goblet, dragged himself to the pulpit, tried to speak, and broke into a
paroxysm of coughing. He rolled the blessed beverage around his mouth, but it was as though his
tongue itself absorbed the liquid. There was little left to swallow.
"Tonight..." Hederick, relieved to hear his own voice again, coughed and tried to speak. "Tonight..."
Dahos was at his side once more, holding out a small object. The Diamond Dragon! Hederick
snatched the artifact. "Tonight, we have been in the presence of something ..." How to describe it? If
he said it were evil, would that suggest that Solace's own High Theocrat was vulnerable to
diabolical forces? "... in the presence of something stronger than us, something holy. It is yet to be
explained, but rest assured that the answer will come. The New Gods will explain all in the end."
The High Theocrat paused to gather his strength and look around the Great Chamber. Ancilla the
lizard-woman was gone.
The crowd remained. All those staring eyes wanting something, demanding something. Why was
it always Hederick's lot to provide? His mind was as empty as a wind-scoured desert.
He clutched the Diamond Dragon to his chest. "So be it," he rasped out. "Tonight's revelation is
over."
Hederick, High Theocrat of Solace, bolted past Dahos, down the steps and out the double doors.
Marya put down the quill and rubbed her eyes. Olven stood in the shadows next to the door of the
Great Library, waiting to take his turn at the desk. He was unsure whether Marya had heard him
enter, she was so still.
At this hour of the night, only a few scribes, all of them apprentices, remained in the Palanthas
library. Those few sat as silently as Marya did, on stools and chairs before desks that held numerous [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]