The Heretic (General)

2

Two days later, Abel got dressed in his room, in the house he still shared with his father these eleven years in Hestinga. He was up early, even earlier than Joab, for he had arrangements to make. As always each morning after dressing, he took the lock of his mother’s hair from its keeping place, wrapped in thin papyrus inside a small reed chest. He carefully unrolled the papyrus and gazed at the silken strands.

She was everything to me. She didn’t want to go away. It wasn’t her fault.

It was Zentrum’s fault.

He carefully returned the strands to the wardrobe drawer where he now kept them.

When he left the house the sun had not risen and the predawn brightness was just blowing to the east.

Did some planets spin in the opposite direction? Abel wondered. Are there places where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east?

Normally it is entire star systems that spin in the same direction due to the angular momentum of the rotation of the system itself, said Center. But sometimes planets within a solar system have their directional spin changed due to a cataclysmic event. In the original solar system from which humanity came, Venus is such an exception. And in the Duisberg system, this planet is itself an exception. This is a west-east oriented system. This anomaly, along with the three moons in eccentric orbits, suggests that this planet has been subject to enormous cataclysm in the past, and will likely experience another such event in the future.

The very rising of the sun tell us that Zentrum’s Stasis cannot last, Raj said.Humankind on this planet must be ready to escape or defend itself.

Abel exited through the door and quietly let down the rope latch so as not to disturb his father. The door could be opened from the outside. There were no elaborate rope and wood locks in Hestinga the way there were in Lindron.

He walked toward the military compound as the sun rose. He passed trees that he knew were both native and imported from off world in some distant past. Both seemed entirely part of the landscape now. There were the date palms and sycamores, pomegranates and flowering prickleweed. The air smelled fragrant and clean, not as humid and laden with scent as it would be later in the day. The dirt street was wide enough for two wagons and two dak teams to pass abreast, but no one was out quite yet, so instead of keeping to the side Abel walked directly down the middle of the street. A breeze whipped up dust around his sandaled feet. As usual, it was blowing out of the south, off an ocean he had never seen except in visions provided by the calculating machines he believed, had to believe or else he was insane, inhabited his mind and were at war with another broken calculating machine that sought to farm men like grain.

But today Zentrum was burning his heretic, just as he had foretold. And, maybe for the first time, Abel believed not merely in his mind, but in that place in his heart that had been holding out, that all of it was true. He wasn’t crazy. Wasn’t listening to nonsense made up as a child to shield himself from his mother being so suddenly yanked away from him. It wasn’t delusional. He had a task.

And, perhaps for the first time, he reflected that he was damned lucky. Most men were given no such calling, but had to stumble through the world trying to figure out what to do next. At least he would always know what he was supposed to do, if not precisely how.

When he was done making preparations at the garrison, the sun had fully risen and life had come to the streets of Hestinga. He walked toward the temple compound. The temple compound and the garrison had been built as anchors for the village, or perhaps the village had grown between them like two poles of a magnet. Center would know, but Abel had learned long ago that there were some questions he didn’t really want to get the answer to. Perhaps he could imagine his hometown forming both ways: as an orderly arrangement, on ground laid out with military precision and then sanctified by priests; and as a chaotic blooming of trading stalls and houses, growing more from a desire of the people who lived in the country and worked the Land to have something to do on Thursday afternoon after Law class than from any careful plan.

The gates of the temple compound were open today, and people had already arrived to get a good position from which to view the proceedings. Abel walked through and made his way past the armory to the main courtyard, surrounded by the Temple of Zentrum on the eastern side, and the temple offices to the west. The temple smith shop stood silent, dark, its fires banked. It seemed almost an edifice in shame.

Behind and to the north of the offices was the nishterlaub storehouse where the prisoner was being held. There was now a company of ten guards at the door—more to keep anything from happening to the prisoner before the appointed time than to keep the disgraced priest from escaping.

Abel was about to find his own place among the spectators, when a figure beckoned him from the entrance veranda of the temple offices. It was Prelate Zilkovsky, standing alone. Abel walked over to join him.

“Hello, Dashian,” said the prelate.

“Your Excellency,” answered Abel. “It’s early yet.”

“Yes,” said Zilkovsky. “I wanted to come and test myself.”

“Sir?”

“To see if I can bear it.” He nodded toward the great heaping bonfire built in the courtyard center, the huge post—perhaps the largest willow trunk Abel had ever seen—rising in its center. “They’ll chain him to the post. Has to be metal bindings. Rope would burn. He showed the underpriests how to forge them himself.”

Abel shook his head in wonder. “Golitsin is a funny man.”

“He was like a son to me,” said Zilkovsky. “He was out of the orphanage in Mims, where I was subaltern to old Chang. Just a servant, but he impressed me. So bright. I found him a place in the letters class, and he took to it, like I knew he would.”

“He told me had been an orphan.”

“I don’t know about that,” Zilkovsky said. “His parents are probably still running around somewhere if the ague or the carnadons haven’t gotten them. Most of those orphans were simply abandoned. Someone gave up on them.” Zilkovsky took the hem of his robe, touched an eye. “Now yet another parent is giving up on him.”

“So free him, Prelate,” Abel said. “You know he’s not a bad man.”

“I cannot,” Zilkovsky said. “I was told to do this, in no uncertain terms.”

“By Zentrum himself,” Abel said. It was not a question. “Praise Law and Land,” he added perfunctorily.

“Yes,” answered Zilkovsky. “There was nothing I could do, nothing I could offer, to change things.”

Abel looked at the priest. His corpulent body was shaking like a bowl of gelled sweetmeat. After a moment, he got his sobs under control.

“Your father and I have been talking,” Zilkovsky said after a moment. “Treville is very dangerous for you now.”

“How do you mean?”

“You are a victim of your own success, my friend,” said the prelate. “One misstep, and it could be you up there.” He nodded toward the prepared bonfire. “Those breechlock muskets were very clever. I know Golitsin was brilliant, but I do not think he discovered their principle alone.”

“Perhaps not,” Abel said.

“I have shielded this knowledge carefully in my mind,” said Zilkovsky.

“Thank you.”

“Joab and I think that now is the time for you to be reassigned,” the priest continued. “Away from here. Away from trouble for a while.”

This was news to Abel. It took a moment for the import to hit him. “To another Scout regiment? Where?”

“Not the Scouts,” Zilkovsky answered. “It’s time you moved past that.”

“I’ll always be a Scout.”

“Be that as it may, the assignment will be in Lindron.”

“The district?”

“The city.”

There were no Scouts within the city of Lindron. Then Abel realized what Zilkovsky was implying. “You’ve found me a place at the temple?”

“Yes. You are to take a cadet position in the Academy of the Guardians.”

“The Academy?” Abel said. “But that’s for…second sons of First Families.”

“Your mother was a Klopsaddle.”

“But I hardly know that side of my family.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Zilkovsky. “You are more than qualified.” He stiffened, turned his face away from Abel. “You will leave immediately after the execution,” he said.

“But…my Scouts,” Abel said.

“They got along pretty well before you came along,” Zilkovsky said. “They’ll get along without you now. Besides, Joab will still be here. He’ll find a suitable commander.”

Abel could not argue with this point. Everything had seemingly been arranged. Still, there was the doubt.

“Why?” he asked. “You admitted it yourself. It could just as easily have been me on that stake. Aren’t you afraid of spreading heresy to the very heart of the Land by sending me?”

Zilkovsky did not look at Abel, and Abel only saw his great, jowly profile. But he believed he detected the trace of smile spread upon the older man’s face. “Afraid of it?” Zilkovsky said in a low voice. “I’m counting on it.” He nodded toward the bonfire stake. “You’re my revenge.”

* * *

Observe:

Center once again split Abel’s awareness and provided a bird’s eye view of the scene. Abel, not for the last time, wished he was not capable of viewing such a perspective. But since he was, he knew he could not resist and look away. He saw it all.

Late morning, and the sun had risen full over the Land. It was a hot day, fifty days after first harvest and getting toward second planting. The Blaskoye, which had been all that could be talked of or thought of days before, seemed almost a distant memory.

The Land abided. It was ever thus.

But today there was to be something different, and it was the sight of a lifetime.

The burning of a heretic.

The temple courtyard was packed. Men had brought their wives and children. There were water sellers and bread vendors milling about in the crowd.

But when they brought out the disgraced priest, there was a gasp. They had bound him in chains, metal chains.

He was the very embodiment of nishterlaub, and the crowd instinctively drew back.

Which gave Abel a chance to push through and find a place in the front row. When someone frowned at him for stealing his place, Abel turned and spat at his feet, giving his best scowl in return. He felt like fighting. He would have welcomed a fight. But the other backed down.

Drums were beating. The Regulars were putting on quite a show at Joab’s command.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s consult the Protocols and do it right,” Joab had told his commanders.

All had a place in the proceedings—all except Scouts. They were exempt, and most were needed on the Escarpment anyway for guard duty.

It took a long time to properly chain Golitsin to the stake. Two iron rings had been driven into it, probably at Golitsin’s suggestion, but the guards fumbled with the chains, unused to the feel of metal in their hands. They’d had to climb up on the pile on a wooden siege ladder commandeered for this new purpose, and that had proved difficult for Golitsin, who had no use of his hands for balance. Finally, one of the guards—Haywood, Abel thought it was—had bodily lifted the priest and nimbly carried him up the propped ladder.

The setting of the fire was done with pitch torches. The ten guards had circled the bonfire and held them ready.

That was when Zilkovsky appeared. He and a retinue of priests approached the bonfire and stood looking up at the staked man.

Zilkovsky spoke a familiar Thursday school litany of invocation, then shouted up to Golitsin. “Do you recant, heretic?”

Golitsin just smiled.

“I ask you again,” shouted Zilkovsky. “Do you recant?”

Golitsin said nothing.

“For the sake of your soul, that it may fly to Zentrum and seek forgiveness and not be relegated to the realm of the thrice-damned of the Outer Dark forever, I ask you for the final time: do you recant, heretic?”

Golitsin gazed down at the prelate. A tender expression came over his face. “I recant,” he said. He raised his head and shouted to the crowd. “I recant all! Zentrum forgive me! I recant! Alaha Zentrum! I recant!”

“Very well,” Zilkovsky said. “May Zentrum have mercy upon your soul.”

The prelate signaled to the guards, then turned his back. He quickly walked away, back down the path that had been cleared through the crowd, the train of his heavy priestly garment dragging through the dust behind him, obliterating his footprints, making it appear, to Abel’s Scout’s eye, as if no man had walked this path at all. Or at least, a man who did not wish to be found out.

Then the crackle of the fire as the torches caught at the kindling caught Abel’s attention, and he turned back. The fire grew away from the spots the torches had been laid, and soon the entire base of the bonfire took on the red crackle of flames, visible now even in direct sunlight.

Abel watched. Minutes passed. The fire grew unquenchable.

The stocks of the muskets began to blacken.

The crowd gasped and stifled screams when two of the rifles went off.

Someone neglected to clear those chambers, Abel thought. It wasn’t surprising, considering that most of the Regulars had no idea how the breechloaders operated

Finally, Abel could stand it no longer, and looked up at the staked man.

Golitsin had picked him out in the crowd and was staring straight down at him.

Golitsin smiled when he saw Abel was looking at him. He called out over the fires. “At least we had The Boat on the Water, didn’t we Dashian?”

Abel nodded. “Damn right!” he called out.

“Thrice-damned right,” said Golitsin. “One, two, three. Thrice! And the last one was the prettiest of them all. I tell you she was like water hyacinth and lavender. She was—”

He screamed. The fire had truly reached him now. Their smoke rose, and Abel could barely see his face through the clouds of it. The rifle stocks were beginning to catch now, their dense wood finally giving in to the inevitable flames. Tongues of fire curled around their edges and the oil finish crinkled and blackened.

It was to be as if they, and Golitsin, had never existed.

A shot rang out. It was extreme long range and seemed only another pop, maybe a little louder than most, to add to those emanating from the bonfire. Most present probably thought it was. But in the next instant, the smoke cleared and Abel saw what he’d hoped to see.

A clean hit.

Golitsin had taken the shot in the left eye. A piece of his face had also been blown off from the eye’s boney orbit outward to the ear. Golitsin’s chin instantly slumped down to his chest. He was dead.

Kruso, thought Abel. Best shot in Treville. Maybe in the Land itself.

He’d ordered Kruso to find a spot—likely the roof of the nishterlaub warehouse, for it offered both cover and a good vantage point—and wait until the smoke obscured the priest enough so that those watching wouldn’t be able to tell a bullet had ended his life and not the flames. There were also other Scouts posted about in vantage point, in case Kruso’s shot had missed.

Joab would guess. Probably Zilkovsky. Or maybe they would believe, along with the rest of the crowd, that the shot was merely one of the heretic’s own accursed creations firing, exploding in the last throes of its burning, killing its creator even as it darkened in its own incineration.

The heretic was dead.

The guns were destroyed.

Stasis was served.

Everything could go back to the way it was before. The way it had always been and always would be.

Zentrum was satisfied.