One of the dozen or so black-uniformed men—the subthane’s personal militia—threw another rope around the bad priest’s neck, then quickly backed away as the thing tried to lunge at him. Its immobile face seemed to take on a lunatic quality, the flat round scan-cells that formed its eyes blazing unnaturally. Its ringers curved and clawed at the air.
One of the quarry-workers, an enormous man with coarse black hair plastered to his forehead by the ram, stepped up to the constellation of men, ropes, and wildly thrashing machine.
The stone-cutter carried a huge pickax cradled in his hands. He and the militia captain conferred for a few seconds, and then the captain gave a signal to the others.
The man pulled tighter on the ropes, pinning the bad priest against the wall of the quarry. Its body arched as it fought against the restraints. The stonecutter stepped between the taloned hands straining to sink into the flesh of the man’s arms.
He swung the pickax and buried its point in the machine’s chest.
A small noise, metal against metal, and then the bad priest’s arms slowly folded and swung towards the ground. The scan-cells went blank. Rain gathered in the cavity and ran in rivulets along the wooden handle of the pickax.
The crowd of villages gathered at the quarry gates was silent now. Daenek watched as they cleared a little pathway among themselves. A group of priests, headed by the local bishop, came slowly through the crowd towards the gate.
The old bishop, taller than the other priests and clad in a white robe embroidered with gold threads long tarnished with age, planted his spiral-headed staff in the mud around the gate.
“We have come,” it called, its harsh voice loud enough for Daenek to hear, “to take our own back with us.”
One of the subthane’s men opened the gate and the priests filed into the area. They drew the ropes away from the metal body and, last of all, pulled the pickax from their fallen brother’s chest. A new robe was wrapped around the dead machine and they carried it away, disappearing beyond the massed villagers.
Is there a Dark Seed for priests, too? wondered Daenek. Something that loves death? He crouched on the little rock ledge, unconcerned with the rain pelting across his back. He had heard before of priests going bad, suddenly tearing off their robes and becoming frenzied killers of men. There were new stories every year of other villages suffering with one or more of them. The renegade machines’ own ferocity made them incautious, though, and easy to trap, if still dangerous to approach. Does everything have to break down? thought Daenek. Will all priests become murderers someday?
After a few more minutes, Daenek climbed down from the ledge. The villagers had all returned to their own homes. He hoisted the pack higher on his shoulders and started down the road.
Before he came upon the foot of the trail leading to the house, he overtook the group of priests. They ignored him as they trudged slowly through the mud, heading for their monastery a long ways off in the hills. He stepped into the middle of the silent procession and walked close to the ones carrying the body of the bad priest. A few feet away, the old bishop walked, the point of its staff dragging unnoticed on the wet ground.
“There is no time,” said the bishop suddenly. It halted and turned around, transfixing Daenek with its expressionless gaze. “Or there has been too much of it.”
“Sir?” said Daenek. He had never talked much with priests, having only seen them in the village.
“I recognize you.” The bishop held its hand before it, as if trying to clear away the drizzling rain. “The thane. But you’re so young—you’ve changed. It won’t help. It’s too late, there’s no time now, you must know that by now.”
“I don’t understand,” said Daenek. He suddenly felt very cold, uneasy in the midst of the priests.
The bishop turned away, the angle of its head somehow exuding an air of infinite sadness and regret.
It started its slow walk again and the priests followed, passing on either side of Daenek.
The last one stopped for a moment and laid its cold hand on Daenek’s shoulder. “The bishop is old,” it spoke softly. “Soon it’ll rest. Like your father.”
“What do you mean?” Daenek reached for the coarse brown cloth of its robe, but it was already too far away. He somehow knew that it would do no good to run after them, that no answers would come to his questions. He stood in the road long after the priests had finally disappeared.
Chapter V
The Lady Marche was becoming old. Time, the last two years especially, seemed to diminish her, leaving a smaller, grey figure in her place. Daenek went to the village market-place each week, to spare his mother the long walk down the hillside. The villagers still glared in hatred at the sixteen-year-old youth, but accepted the coins from his hand readily enough.
Sometimes, on his way back from the village, he would stop in the middle of the fields and watch the silent white cylinder of the house. She’ll die soon, he knew. And then I’ll leave.
A month before his seventeenth birthday, he began to think the end was very near for the old woman. He did no more overnight wandering out in the hill range, but stayed in the house and listened to her moving restlessly about through the long, dark hours. Something seemed to be haunting her, consuming her grey, stooped figure from the bones outward.
Once, Daenek came down in the first light of dawn and found the trunk she usually kept locked sitting with its lid flung back in the middle of the floor. One of the shimmering veils, dull and lusterless now, was ripped in two. He found the Lady Marche in an exhausted sleep with her head buried in her arms upon the kitchen table. Her face was fever-hot and damp with perspiration. Daenek carried her up to her bed—he was dismayed at how light she seemed—and brought her soup when she was awake. She refused it, but beckoned for him to bend down closer to her. “Forgive me,” she whispered into his ear. Her mind’s going, thought Daenek as he slowly went down the steps with the bowl of soup that had finally grown cold. He passed the night, and the next, sitting in a chair beside her bed. Sometimes he would fall asleep for a few moments, but would awake to see the old woman’s eyes gazing up at the dim ceiling. His eyes closed before hers did, and his head sank to his chest without waking him.
Noises outside the house. Voices. Daenek opened his eyes to a thick shaft of late morning sunlight sliding into the room. He glanced at the bed. The Lady Marche seemed to be asleep, her eyelashes motionless above her hollowed cheeks. Pressing the heels of his palms into the sleep-stiffened muscles of his face, he arched his back, cramped from sitting all night in the hard wooden chair, then stepped to the wall’s transparent panel. His heart tensed as he saw, gathered in front of the house, a score of the subthane’s black-uniformed militia, mounted on their nervously moving equines. The men were laughing and calling to each other, throwing a leather-covered bottle back and forth among themselves.
They’re waiting for something, thought Daenek. But what?
Suddenly, the men below fell silent and the bottle was flung into the weeds with a spray of brown liquid. The subthane’s grossly-fleshed figure, looking almost wide enough for two equines rather than just one, was ascending the narrow trail up to the house. His militia captain rode to one side of him.
Daenek drew away from the window. Asleep, the Lady Marche moaned softly. The villagers were always saying it, thought Daenek grimly. He stood in the doorway, clenching the frame in both hands. That they’d come for me some day. He glanced at the old woman in her bed. She knew, he realized. Tomorrow I’ll be seventeen years of age. Or would have been.