Jack Chalker - Lilith - A Snake in the Grass

“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I asked him. “You think I should just settle down here and read all the books and raise a family and say to hell with it, don’t you?”

“/ didn’t say that,” Bronz replied in a tone that implied exactly that.

“I can’t,” I told him. “I’m just not made that way.”

“We’ll see.” Father Bronz sighed deeply. “I’ll start the wheels in motion. May God have mercy on your soul.”

It all came together so easily and quickly that I was almost suspicious about it.

The witch’s village seemed to have changed not at all from the last time I’d been there, although now I was far more sensitized to the entire Warden environment and everything looked a little new and different I felt a mild, discomforting dizziness that I couldn’t really put my finger on. Father Bronz explained to me that he’d felt it from the first visit, an after-effect of the process by which Sumiko O’Higgins stayed hidden from the outside world.

“They take turns,” he told me. “One of them at Master grade and a coven of twelve others, all satiated with Sumiko’s juice, standing ever vigilant. Nothing short of a planetary satellite photo would be able to see what’s down here, and even that doesn’t seem to work—the place is well camouflaged from the air, and a couple of distorting inversion layers add to the effect. That’s why she chose the place.”

She’d been confident that Artur would not be able to return and find it after his defeat, and she’d been right. Basically, it was a message sent by that particular guardian pack of thirteen to all around simply not to notice the place. It was neither invisibility nor any form of telepathy, but it was a formidable mental barrier all the same.

From what Father Bronz was able to tell me, O’Higgins seemed more than delighted with the idea. She said something about needing a “test piece” anyway. Furthermore, she held particular grudges against Zeis Keep not only because Dr. Pohn was there but also because Artur had killed two of her witches in the attack.

But even though she had replaced the two dead ones, there was still a strong numerical problem in going against Zeis. Many of her procedures were far more effective defensively than offensively, since techniques such as the circle, which I’d seen in operation, and the “mind clouding” were not really much use to a mobile, advancing force. They would be able to take out some of Artur’s forces, but not all; in close quarters her pawns, even amplified slightly, would be no match for Artur’s trained and experienced Supervisors and Masters. Their strength was a group strength. Artur now knew this, having been bloodied, and would take measures to counter it. With perhaps a thousand witches Sumiko was invulnerable, but with a hundred and sixty-nine she needed support.

Again it was Father Bronz, showing a most interesting bent for Machiavellian political manoeuvring, to the rescue. At our final meeting were not only the priest, the witches, and myself but also three strange women wearing colorful, flowing garb. Except for their manners and dress they looked rather ordinary, with common backgrounds of the civilized worlds in their features. Nonetheless, the immediate impression was that these were no ordinary inhabitants of Lilith, not even Masters. They were… something else.

As we sat around eating small, tasty pastries and drinking mild local wine, Father Bronz made the introductions. First Sumiko, then me; then he turned to the three strange women.

“May I introduce Boss Rognival of Lakk Keep,” he said, pointing to the most overdressed of the women, “and her administrative assistant, the Lady Tona, and her sergeant-at-arms, the Lady Kysil.”

Although they were all fighting for their own interests rather than for mine, I never really felt so left out of an operation that would decide my future as I did at this one. I stared at the three women in curiosity not only as to what they were doing here but also because I’d never seen a knight before. Except for the slight fur trim and a small jewel on a headband of some kind, she didn’t look so superhuman. I had to admit, though, that the Warden power burned and shone a little brighter inside her. The map in my head clicked in again, and I saw that Lakk Keep was a very small one several kilometers due west of Zeis—across that formidable-looking swamp.

“Let’s get down to business,” Rognival said sharply, her tone tough and crisp. “We are going to attack and take Zeis Keep. The witch here has her own reasons and some old grudges to settle; the young man over there has ambition, and I—well, let’s just say that Lakk is a very small Keep almost surrounded by a pretty lousy swamp. It wasn’t always that way. I used to have four kilometers square of choice vai cropland on what is now the Zeis side of the swamp. Tiel and Altai took it as well as the pawns that worked it from me over nine years ago, reducing me to the island of Lakk, which though it has several melon orchards and some snark pastureland, is hardly self-sufficient. I became, in effect, Tiel’s vassal, and I’ve hated him for it. Until now, though, I’ve had insufficient forces to attack across the swamp, and I no longer have the clout necessary to get allies. You’re my chance to get back my land, my self-sufficiency, and my self-respect.”

O’Higgins warmed a little to her. I could see Father Bronz’s thinking in all this—a female knight who hated Zeis. Perfect.

Too perfect, I decided instantly. Something smelled wrong about this. Very wrong. It seemed all too convenient, all too pat. I felt uneasily that somebody was setting me up, and that somebody had to be Father Bronz.

Ever since I’d escaped from Zeis and found him, he had been in total charge of my life, a charge he seemed willing and eager to accept. As much as anything the Cal Tremon who sat in the council here was by now a product of Bronz’s own machinations, as was this whole carefully orchestrated exercise. What the hell was his game, anyway?

I’d done what checking I could given my limited contacts with others on this world, and they’d all borne out the image of a roving Master, a priest not merely deposed but defrocked by his church, who had been around as long as everybody could remember. And yet it was that last that bothered me. Nobody ever remembered the priest saying a service or a mass or whatever it was they did, nor carrying out any real priest-type functions at all. I certainly had never seen him do so, nor did we have anything but his word as to his life Outside, his background and reason for being here.

Still, if he were with Boss Tiel and Kreegan and that bunch, why had he gone to so much trouble over me? Why not just turn me in and get on with it? If he was someone high up on- the social scale masquerading as a lowly priest, why make certain I reached the Institute and received the best training and experience possible on Lilith? If he had his own ambitions I would be a threat to him, if not at this point then some time in the future.

But if indeed he was what he said he was, what were his motives? A staunch defender of the system on Lilith, he nonetheless was using its greatest threat, the witches, to put into power a man who hated that system, mainly me.

. I looked around at their faces as they earnestly discussed the coming campaign. I paid only slight attention to what they were saying, as, ironically, I was the least important person at this council of war in terms of the outcome, although of course I would fight. O’Higgins, the possibly Lord-class psychopath with the power to amplify, combine, and direct Warden power at will. Rognival, who wanted revenge for her earlier loss and her territory back. Bronz…