Frank Herbert - The Godmakers

Lights waved. Robed figures leaped through the night.

Again, Orne found a trail. It went downhill to his right. He turned onto it, gasping, stumbling. His legs ached. A tight band held his chest. His side ached. The trail plunged him into deeper darkness and he lost the trail. He glanced up to see trees against the stars.

The mob raised a confused clamor behind him.

Orne stopped, leaned against a tree to listen.

“Part of you go that way!” someone shouted. “The rest of you follow me!”

Orne drew in wracking breaths, gasping. Hunted like an animal because he’d momentarily abandoned caution! He recalled Bakrish’s words: “Caution is the brother of fear…”

Almost directly above Orne and no more than fifty meters away, someone shouted: “Do you hear him?”

Off to the left, an answering voice yelled: “No!”

Orne pushed himself away from the tree, crept down the hill, working his way cautiously, feeling each step. He heard someone running above him, footsteps thumping away to the right. The sound faded. Confused shouts, then silence and then more shouts came from the middle distance on the hill off to the left. These, too, faded.

Sometimes crawling, always testing each step, Orne melted his way through the darkness beneath the trees. Once, he lay flat to allow five running figures to pass below him. When they were gone, he slipped down the hill and across another loop in the trail. The wound on his arm throbbed and he saw that he had lost the bandage.

The pain reminded him of the itching sensation he had experienced while strapped in Bakrish’s chair. It had been like the itching experienced when a wound healed—but before the wound.

Orne felt that he had encountered another clue to Amel, but its meaning eluded him. He fell into a fluid rhythm of flight—under the bushes, avoid leaves, dart through the darkest places where trees blotted out the stars. But the trees thinned out, bushes came farther apart.

He felt lawn underfoot, realized he had come down to the last slopes leading into the park area. Dim lights glowed from windows to his right. There was a wall. Orne crouched, hugged himself to still his shivering.

Bakrish had said the Abbod Halmyrach was nearby.

As he thought of the Abbod, Orne felt the vacant gnawing within him ease momentarily, then throb stronger. What did that mean? he wondered. Safe… but not safe? He experienced a driving desire to find the Abbod, to wring the truth from the recognized leader of all Amel.

Why bother with the lower echelons? Where was Bakrish when I needed him? Is this the way a field agent of the I-A operates? Orne felt he had been freed from a dream. Dogma and ceremony! What empty nonsense!

A wolfish grin came over Orne’s face. He thought: I declare myself a graduate of this ordeal! It’s over. I’ve passed the tests!

Footsteps on a path sounded to his left. Orne slid behind a tree, peered around it. Through the thin starlight filtered by scattered trees he saw a priest in white moving along a path which would take him directly in front of the concealing tree. Orne flattened himself against the trunk, waited. Birds whirred and rustled in the branches overhead.

The fragrance of night-blooming flowers crossed his nostrils. The footsteps came closer, passed.

Orne slipped from behind the tree. Four running steps on the soft grass beside the trail, one hand out and around the priest’s neck—pressure on a nerve. The priest gasped once, relaxed, slumped in Orne’s arms.

“What folly!” the Abbod said. “You deliberately told your friend to set the mob on him. And after I expressly forbade it. Ahhh, Macrithy…”

Macrithy stood bent-shouldered in the Abbod’s study. The Abbod sat in the lotus posture on a low table facing the priest. Two fingers upraised in antennae position, knobby knees protruding where he bent across them, the Abbod stared fixedly at Macrithy.

“I was only thinking of you,” Macrithy protested.

“You did not think at all!” The Abbod was terrible in his quietly pained judgment. “You did not think of the human beings who were turned into a mob. Orne could have cast them into eternal hell. He might still do it when he comes into his full powers.”

“I came to warn you as soon as I knew he had escaped,” Macrithy said.

“Of what use is this warning?” the Abbod asked. “Ahhh, my dear friend, how could you have fallen into such error? You see, what is happening right now is the easily predictable consequence of your actions. I can only surmise that this situation is what you really wanted.”

“Oh, no!” Macrithy was horrified.

“When mouth and action disagree, believe action,” the Abbod said. “Why do you want to destroy us, Macrithy?”

“I don’t! I don’t!” Macrithy backed away from the Abbod, made fending motions with both hands. He stopped when his back encountered the wall.

“But you do,” the Abbod said, his voice sorrowful. “Perhaps it’s because I assigned Bakrish to Orne and not you. I know it was an assignment you wanted. But it could not be, my friend. You would have sought to destroy Orne… and yourself. I could not permit that.”

Macrithy buried his face in his hands. “He’ll destroy us all,” he sobbed.

“Pray he doesn’t,” the Abbod said, his voice soft. “Send him your love and your concern for him. Thus, he may come to a fortunate awakening.”

“What good is love now?” Macrithy demanded. “He’s coming for you!”

“Of course,” the Abbod murmured. “Because I summoned him. Take your violence away now, Macrithy. Pray for yourself. Pray for a cleansing of your spirit. I, too, will pray for that.”

Macrithy shook his round head from side to side. “It’s too late for prayer.”

“That you should say such a thing,” the Abbod mourned.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” Macrithy pleaded.

“Take my blessing and go,” the Abbod said. “Ask the forgiveness of the God Orne, as well. You may have caused Him great hurt.”

Orne strode down a narrow street in the heart of the religious warren. He hugged the wall and avoided lights, but not with furtive motions. The priest’s robe hung loosely on him and a little long. He tucked a fold under his belt, hoped someone would find the priest—but not too soon. The man lay bound and gagged with strips torn from his own underclothing beneath bushes in the park.

Now, to find the Abbod, Orne thought.

Keeping his stride even and calm, he crossed an alley. A sour smell of old cooking tainted the narrow passage. The slap-slap of Orne’s sandaled feet made a double echo off stone walls.

Light poured from another alley directly ahead of him. Orne heard voices. He stopped as shadows were projected out of the alley and across the intersection. Two priests came into view. They were slender, blond and benign. Both turned toward Orne.

“May your god grant you peace,” Orne said.

The pair stopped, faces in shadows now, the light behind them. The one on the left said: “I pray you follow the path of divine guidance.” The other said: “If you live in interesting times, I pray the fact causes you no alarm.” He coughed, then: “May we serve you?”