“Sit!” Chevkija Aim whispered, half shoving him down on one of the barrels in the last row. “Sit and listen! The boy is Tikharein Tourb. He’s the priest. The priestess is Chhia Kreun.”
“Priest? Priestess?”
“Listen to them, sir!”
He stared in disbelief. It seemed to Husathirn Mueri that he had arrived at the threshold of some other world.
The boy-priest made thick strange sounds, horrid chittering clicking noises that seemed much like hjjk-talk. The worshipers before him replied with the same bizarre noises. Husathirn Mueri shivered and put his hands over his face.
Then suddenly the boy called out, in a high clear voice, “The Queen is our comfort and our joy. Such is the teaching of the prophet Kundalimon, blessed be he.”
“The Queen is our comfort and our joy,” replied the congregation, sing-song.
“She is the light and the way.”
“She is the light and the way.”
“She is the essence and the substance.”
“She is the essence and the substance.”
“She is the beginning and the end.”
“She is the beginning and the end.”
Husathirn Mueri trembled. At the sound of that sweet innocent voice he felt a touch of terror. The light and the way? The essence and the substance? What madness was this? Was he dreaming it?
He felt a choking, gagging sensation and covered his mouth with his hand. The basement room was windowless, and the air was close and hot. The musky salt tang of the barrels of dried fish, the gamy odor of sweaty fur, the rich pungent aroma of the sippariu and dilifar boughs on the altar — it was all starting to sicken him. He began to grow dizzy. He knotted his hands together and pressed his elbows hard into his ribs.
They were all crying out in hjjk-sounds again, the boy and the girl and the congregation.
At any moment, Husathirn Mueri imagined, the floor might open beneath him and he would find himself looking down into some vast pit where swarms of glittering hjjks moved in such multitudes that the earth seemed to be boiling with them.
“Easy, sir, easy,” Chevkija Aim murmured beside him.
He watched the boy and the girl moving about now, taking fruits and boughs from the altar and showing them to the congregation, and replacing them again, while the worshipers stamped their feet and made the droning, clicking sounds. What did it all mean? Where had it come from, so suddenly?
The boy was wearing a shining yellow-and-black amulet on his chest, much like the one dead Kundalimon had worn. The same one, perhaps. The girl had a wrist-talisman that was also of hjjk-shell. Even in the dimness these objects gleamed with a preternatural brightness. Husathirn Mueri remembered how the shells of the hjjks had gleamed as they moved on their mysterious rounds through the streets of Vengiboneeza when he was a child.
“Kundalimon guides us from on high. He tells us that the Queen is our comfort and our joy,” the boy called again.
And again the congregation responded, “The Queen is our comfort and joy.”
But this time a burly man three rows in front of Husathirn Mueri rose and shouted, “The Queen is the one true god!”
The congregation began to repeat that too. “The Queen is the one true—”
“No!” the boy cried. “The Queen is not a god!”
“Then what is She? What is She?” For a moment the rhythm of the service was broken. People were rising everywhere, calling out, waving their arms. “Tell us what She is!”
The boy-priest leaped atop the altar. Instantly he had their attention again.
“The Queen,” he said, in that same eerie high sing-song, “is of god-essence, by virtue of Her descent from the people of the Great World, who lived in the sight of the gods. But She is not a god Herself.” The boy seemed to be parroting some text he had learned by rote. “She is the architect of the gateway through which the true gods one day will return. Such is the word of Kundalimon.”
“The humans, you mean?” the burly man asked. “Are the humans the true gods?”
“The humans are— they are—” The boy on the altar faltered. His eyes seemed to turn glassy. He had no prepared text for this. He looked down toward the girl, and she reached out with her sensing-organ, coiling it about his ankle in an astonishingly intimate way. Husathirn Mueri caught his breath, amazed. The gesture seemed to steady the boy; he regained his poise and cried, “The revelation of the humans is yet to come! We must continue to await the revelation of the humans! Until then the Queen is our guide.” He made hjjk-clicks. “She is our comfort and our joy!”
“She is our comfort and our joy!”
They were all clicking in response, now. The sound of it was horrifying. The boy had them under control once more. That was horrifying too.
“Kundalimon!” they cried. “Martyred Kundalimon, lead us to the truth!”
The boy-priest held his arms high. Even at this distance Husathirn Mueri could see how his eyes blazed with conviction.
“She is the light and the way.”
“She is the light and the way.”
“She is the essence and the substance.”
“She is the essence and—”
“Look,” Husathirn Mueri whispered. “The girl’s got her sensing-organ on his, now.”
“They’re going to twine, sir. Everybody here is going to twine.”
“Surely not. All in one place together?”
“It is what they do,” said Chevkija Aim casually. “They all twine and let the Queen enter their souls, so I do hear. It is their custom.”
Numb with disbelief, Husathirn Mueri said, “This is the greatest vileness that ever has been.”
“I have officers outside. We can clear all these hjjk-lovers out of here in five minutes, if you give the word, and smash the place up.”
“No.”
“But you’ve seen what they—”
“No, I said. The persecutions mustn’t be resumed. That’s the chieftain’s express order, and you know it.”
“I understand, sir, but—”
“Then no one is to be arrested. We’ll leave this chapel absolutely undisturbed, at least for now. And keep it under careful observation. How else will we understand what kind of threat we face, if we don’t look the enemy right in the face? Do you follow me?”
The guard-captain nodded. His lips were tightly clamped.
Husathirn Mueri looked up. In front of him the dark shapes of the congregation were rising, moving about, joining into groups. The hjjk-clicking sound could no longer be heard, and in its place came an intense deep humming. No one took any notice of the two men whispering in back. The air in the narrow long room seemed to grow superheated. It might burst into flames at any moment.
Quietly Chevkija Aim said, “We should leave, now.”
Husathirn Mueri made no response.
It seemed to him that he had become rooted in place. At the far end of the room the boy and the girl were unashamedly twining before the altar, and, two by two, the members of the congregation were beginning to enter into the communion. Husathirn Mueri had never heard of such a thing. He had never dreamed of it. He watched it now in terrible fascination.
Chevkija Aim whispered, “If we stay, they’ll want us to do it too, sir.”
“Yes. Yes. We have to go.”
“Are you all right, sir?”
“We — have to — go—”
“Give us your hand, sir. There. That’s it. Come on, now. Up. Up.”
“Yes,” Husathirn Mueri said. His feet felt dead beneath him. He leaned heavily on Chevkija Aim and tottered and stumbled toward the door.
She is the light and the way. She is the essence and the substance.
She is the beginning and the end.