“Then we will hear them. You will come with Parlingelteg and me?”
“Perhaps we should take doctors with us.”
Chubsalid smiled. “We shall be able to stand against him, I trust, without the aid of doctors.”
“Surely we ought to try and compromise,” said Asperamanka, looking wretched.
“We shall see if that is possible,” said Chubsalid. “And thank you for saying you will accompany us.”
The day dawned. Priest-Supreme Chubsalid put on his ecclesiastical robes and bade good-bye to his colleagues. One or two he embraced.
The silvery man shed a tear.
Chubsalid smiled at him. “Whatever happens this day, I will require your courage as well as mine.” His voice was firm and serene.
He climbed into his carriage, where Asperamanka and Parlingelteg waited. The carriage moved off.
It made its way through silent streets. The police, at the Oligarch’s command, had cleared onlookers away, so that there was none of the cheering which usually greeted the appearance of the Priest- Supreme. Only silence.
As the carriage ground its way up the treacherous paving stones of Icen Hill, the presence of soldiery was all too noticeable. At the gates of the castle, armed men stepped forward and fended off those priests who had followed behind their leader’s carriage. The carriage passed under the ponderous stone arch. The great iron gates closed behind it.
Many windows looked down on the front courtyard, enforcing silence with their oppressive dead shine. They were mean windows, less like eyes than blunt teeth.
The party of three was led unceremoniously from the carriage into the chill of the building. Their footsteps echoed as they traversed the great entrance hall. Soldiers in elaborate national uniform stood on guard. None moved.
The party was shown to the rear, to a dingy passage where the skirting was scuffed by innumerable boots, as if a tormented animal had tried to fight its way to freedom. After a wait, a signal was given their guide and they ascended by a narrow wooden stair which wound up two flights without a window by way of punctuation. They emerged into another passage, no more congenial to tormented animals than the first, and halted at a door. The guide knocked.
A voice bade them enter.
They came into a room which displayed all the festive cheer for which the Oligarchy was noted. It was a reception room of a kind, lined with chairs on which only the most emaciated anatomies could have found rest. The one window in the room was draped in heavy leather curtains, evidently designed to be capable of repelling the onslaughts of daylight.
The niggardly proportions of the room, in which the height of the ceiling was matched only by the depth of gloom it engendered, was reinforced by its lighting. One fat viridian candle burned in a tall stand in the middle of the otherwise empty floor. A chilling draught caused its shadows to stir wakefully on the creaking parquet.
“How long do we wait here?” Chubsalid enquired of the guide.
“A short while, sire.”
Short whiles were of long duration in such a room, but eventually inner doors opened. Two uniformed men with swords dragged the doors apart, allowing the party to view a further room.
This further room was lit by gas flares, which imparted a sickly light over everything but the face of a man sitting berobed in a large chair at the far end of the room. Since the gas lights were behind his throne, his face was cast into shadow. The man made no movement.
Chubsalid said in a clear voice, “I am Priest-Supreme Chubsalid of the Church of the Formidable Peace. Who are you?”
And an equally clear voice came back. “You address me as the Oligarch.”
The visiting party, although they had prepared themselves for the encounter, were silenced by a momentary awe. They shuffled forward to the door of the inner chamber, where soldiers barred their way with naked swords.
“Are you Torkerkanzlag II?” asked Chubsalid.
Again the clear voice. “Address me as the Oligarch.”
Chubsalid and Asperamanka looked at each other. Then the former spoke out.
“We have come here, Dread Oligarch, to discuss the curtailment of traditional liberties in our state, and to speak with you regarding a recent crime committed—”
The clear voice cut in. “You have come here to discuss nothing, priest. You have come here to speak of nothing. You have come here because you preached treason, in deliberate defiance of recent edicts issued by the State. You have come here because the punishment for treason is death.”
“On the contrary,” said Parlingelteg. “We came here anticipating reason, justice, and an open debate. Not some sort of tawdry melo-dramatics.”
Asperamanka set his chest against one of the drawn swords and said, “Dread Oligarch, I have served you faithfully. I am Priest-Militant Asperamanka, who, as no doubt you know, led your armies to victor}’ in the field against the thousand heathen cults of Pannoval. Did you not— were not those armies destroyed on their return to your domains?”
The unmoved voice of the Oligarch said, “In the presence of your ruler, you do not ask questions.”
“Tell us who you are,” said Parlingelteg. “If you are human you give no evidence of it.”
Ignoring the interruption, Torkerkanzlag II gave the guard an order: “Draw back the window curtain.”
The guide who had led the three into the stifling chamber creaked his way across the floor and grasped the leather curtain with both hands. Slowly, he pulled the curtain back from the long window.
Grey light filtered into the room. While the other two turned to see out, Chubsalid looked back towards the Oligarch. Some of the light filtered even to where he sat motionless on his shadowed throne; some- thing of his features was revealed.
“I recognise you! Why, you’re—” But the Priest-Supreme got no further, for one of the soldiers grasped him unceremoniously by the shoulder and swung him to the long window, where the guide stood pointing downwards.
A courtyard lay beneath the window, surrounded entirely by tall grey walls. Anyone walking down there would have been crushed by the weight of disapproving windows ranged above him.
In the middle of the courtyard, a wooden cage had been built. Inside the cage was a tall, sturdy pole. What made this arrangement remarkable was the fact that cage and pole stood on a slatted wooden platform, which was built over piles of logs. Tucked in among the logs were bundles of brushwood. Bunches of twigs and kindling skirted the brushwood.
The Oligarch said, “The punishment for treason is death. That you knew before you entered here. Death by burning. You have preached against the State. You will be burnt.”
Parlingelteg spoke up boldly as the curtain was pulled back over the window. “If you dare burn us, you will turn the religion of Sibornal against the State. Every man’s hand will be against you. You will not survive. Sibornal itself may not survive.”
Asperamanka made a run for the door, shouting, “I’ll see to it that the world hears of this villainy.”
But there were soldiers outside the door who turned him back.
Chubsalid stood in the middle of the room and said soothingly to him, “Be firm, my good priest. If this crime is committed here in the centre of Askitosh, there will be those who will never rest until the Azoiaxic triumphs. This is the monster who believes that treachery costs less than armies. He will find that this treachery costs him everything.”
The unmoving man in the chair said, “The greatest good is the survival of civilisation over the next centuries. To that end all else must be sacrificed. Fine principles have to go. When plague’s rampant, law and order break down. So it has always been at the onset of previous Great Winters—in Campannlat, in Hespagorat, even in Sibornal. Armies run mad, records burn, the finest emblems of the state are destroyed. Barbarism reigns.