"With Faith you cannot come to harm."
When the two workers gave the signal, the siluroyne picked up Evanescent, and plucked away his whip and his spear as if taking away dangerous toys from a child.
"With God's word you will chastise your enemies."
As if preparing a kebab the monster threaded the spear through the back of the Brother's armour, and used the whip to bind his arms and legs in place.
"With God's Grace your enemies will be brought down."
The purpose of the two Y-shaped sticks on either side of the woodpile now became apparent. Once ignited, the wood burned as it never ever burned on Masada.
"With all three, the world will fall at your feet!"
The woman and the boy watched as Brother Evanescent was sufficiently broiled, with implausible speed, then Sober, Judge, and the siluroyne opened up the hot parcel of his armour to enjoy a merry feast.
Loman cupped a blue rose, brought it close to his nose, and closed his eyes as the subtle perfume drew him back to his childhood. The pain of thorns penetrating the flesh of his palm was also a reminder, for at one time he had been destined to join the Septarchy and had briefly experienced their bloody discipline. Opening his eyes he surveyed the ordered beauty that stretched far away from him, and blurred into rainbow hues riding up round the inner arc of Hope.
The gardens of the Septarchy were beautiful indeed, which was something Loman always found surprising, considering the gardeners themselves could have little appreciation of the colours; but then perhaps, with the Gift, they saw them through the eyes of others? He turned now to the First Friar and studied the man: he was emaciated, almost as if he suffered some wasting illness; his dark robes, tied close to his thin frame with twists of rope made from human hair, were worn thin and losing their dye through too-frequent washing, but of course the First Friar would not know this, since sewn in the place of his eyes were the ancient memory crystals that once contained the truths of the first colonists.
"They say you construct your gardens by scent alone, and that there is a whole landscape of olfactory meaning that those of us with eyes cannot appreciate," said Loman.
"The power of myth must never be underestimated," replied the Friar.
Loman stared beyond the cropped lawns and intricate stone gardens towards the great colonnaded sprawl of the main Septarchy halls. In their white uniforms the platoons of soldiers, marching in to take up positions around the beautiful white buildings, seemed in perfect consonance. The First Friar and the two young acolytes — with their sewn-up eye-sockets — could not see this, but would know soon enough. Loman glanced around at his bodyguard scattered between the borders and neat shrubberies, then at Tholis — who was Claus's replacement and a man thoroughly aware of the precariousness of his position.
"Subtle," he said, returning his attention to the Friar. "But in the end plain power is what must not be underestimated."
"That is something I never do," said the First Friar, at last beginning to sound worried.
"Why then do you persist in occupying the upper channels with your prayers and your chants?" Loman asked.
"They are offered to the glory of God," said the Friar.
"They were intended to keep Behemoth from taking hold of our minds, and now Behemoth is dead they are no longer needed."
"How can you — the Hierarch — say that prayer is no longer needed?"
Loman sighed and, shaking his head, held out his hand towards Tholis. The man did not need the brief instruction Loman sent him via aug. He drew his pistol and placed it into Loman's still-bleeding hand.
The First Friar now tilted his head. "Why have soldiers entered the Septarchy halls?" He turned towards Loman, and the Hierarch could feel the questioning probes coming through so many channels of his aug, his Gift, He replied with a simple statement:
"One whole quarter of Hope used for your damned Septarchy halls and damned useless gardens."
Now he could feel the spreading noise as people in the area nearby, so accustomed to bloody pogroms, reacted with panic. The Friars themselves were not panicking, accustomed as they were to being above such pogroms. No one had been killed yet, as the soldiers herding the Friars out of the halls and into their gardens were showing greater restraint than they normally showed with other citizens. This, Loman knew, was not out of any respect, but through fear of the power these Friars had enjoyed under previous Hierarchs. It was time, he decided, for someone to die and, so deciding, pointed the pistol just to the First Friar's right and fired four times. Both acolytes dropped: one of them dead before he hit the ground, the other coughing up blood from shattered lungs until Loman fired again, opening a closed eye-socket and blowing out a froth of brains across the close-cropped grass.
"No! You cannot do this!"
Loman carefully clicked the pistol's safety switch across then tossed it back to Tholis who caught and holstered it in one swift movement. The Hierarch was pleased with this new commander of his guard, for the man so quickly anticipated his orders that it almost seemed unnecessary to give them. Already two of the guard were closing in to take hold of the First Friar, even as Loman unhooked from his belt the sculping tool he had taken from Amoloran. The Friar did not have eyes, but he screamed as if he did when Loman cut and gouged the two memory crystals from his head, then continued screaming as the neurotoxin worked its way through the exposed raw flesh of his eye-sockets.
"Release him, now."
With the two bloody crystals in his right hand, Loman stepped back while the First Friar fell face-down and in his agony seemed to be trying to bite the ground. Glancing down to the Septarchy halls, Loman saw his soldiers now needing to use more brutality to get the blind friars out into the open. He sent instructions to Tholis:
"Finish it on their lawns and throw their bodies into the flower borders."
Aloud, Tholis asked, "What are your orders, Hierarch?"
Loman turned and gazed steadily at him, then after a moment relented: it was understandable that the man wanted to hear a direct order witnessed by others.
"I want you to kill all of these Septarchy parasites on their wonderful lawns, and I want you to throw their bodies onto the borders, so that the flowers are fertilized by their blood. Is that clear enough for you?"
"It is clear, Hierarch," Tholis replied.
They first came in high over the inhabited lands: ion thrusters filling the sky with actinic white stars in rectilinear display, on wave after wave of bulky landing craft. Below each wave the flickering of orange lights ignited the sky beyond the edge of the crater, and soon the sound of a distant storm came grumbling down onto them.
"They're bombing something," observed Gant.
"Yes," said Cormac, "let's get our gear together and get out of here."
Out of sight the craft must have turned, because soon the first waves were coming in over their heads — now heading towards the inhabited area of the planet — and Cormac supposed it was too much to hope that the Theocracy would not come to inspect this site where the creature that had destroyed their arrays had come down. As the last line of craft rumbled over, one of them peeled away and descended on the eastern side of the crater.
"Mika, move it!" he shouted, as the Life-Coven woman once again turned on the inspection light she had secured to her temple with a skin-stick pad, and delayed to study some bizarre gory object and cut samples from it. She hurried to catch up, as he stood waiting with his boot resting on the bottom of the slab.