Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

Pezi’s hearty laughter faded quickly when he saw Asher was not laughing with him.

“Why not?” Asher asked frankly, eyes fixed on Pezi’s.

“I—well, of course he would be. Wouldn’t he?” Pezi smiled questioningly.

“There’s a great deal of religious unrest in the land. A priestess from the northern regions has set the Lamathian Dragonfaith astir with her preaching of renewed devotion. Great hosts of people follow her wherever she goes, and always her teaching is the same. Ultimate devotion demands ultimate personal sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?”

“Yes. She prepares her followers for consumption.”

“She gets people ready to be eaten by the dragon?”

“Of course!” Asher snapped. His handsome young face was hard now, his jaw set, his mind far away to the north with Serphimera, the Priestess of the dragon.

Suddenly he turned on Pezi, and spat out, “You, you merchant! You seller of slaves! Surely you’ve fed a few bodies to the dragon yourself, have you not? Lamathian bodies?” Pezi said nothing, for he suddenly found it difficult to swallow. “You don’t think your Chaon soldiers are capable of truly capturing so many, do you?” Still Pezi kept silence, but he remembered now many discussions in various merchant kitchens around the world, concerning the willingness of Lamathian slaves to serve as dragon fodder. The thought sent shivers down his spine. “They want to be eaten?”

“Yes!” Asher thundered, then he looked away, peering through one of the window slits at the street below and the capital city of Lamath beyond. “And now the King wonders and worries about where the ultimate reunion with the dragon is to be, if not in the twi-beast’s belly?”

“And—what about you?” Pezi asked cautiously. Asher’s voice softened.

“I’ve seen her. Serphimera. Weaves a spell around a crowd like a Mari witch over a brewing potion. Touches… smiles… frowns… and they all belong to her. To her and to the dragon.” Pezi thought of the horrible stink of Vicia-Heinox’s combined breath, and wondered aloud, “Has she ever talked with the dragon?”

“She lives still, doesn’t she?” Asher snapped, and Pezi shrugged helplessly. “The day she meets him, she will be inside him. But her people won’t let her go, you see, fearing that if they lose her they will lose his palpable presence with them. So she stays behind and sends others in droves to your Chaon soldiers—and the dragon.” Asher took a bow off the wall and tested the tension of its string absently. “And me? Ah, yes. I wonder too. I’ve watched her move, Pezi. She walks with the liquid motion of a woman who is sure of her lover.” Asher sighed. “But her lover is the dragon, and no man. And me? I’m the one who must stop her.” Asher looked at Pezi. “You shouldn’t think this war with Chaomonous is a fearful thing to me. No, no.

It is a relief! At last I can lead my warriors against the true enemy and spatter Chaon blood on the granite barrier between us!” Pezi gagged a bit at the force of the image; but said nothing. He was imagining how his uncle would manipulate all this information to the profit of Ognadzu, and pleased that he would have so much to share with the cruel old buzzard.

“So tell me, Pezi,” Asher demanded, planting himself astride Pezi’s outstretched legs, “Where can I expect their attack?”

“I, ah, can’t say—”

“Can’t? Or won’t? Well, perhaps a stay in our guest room will help you to recall some more helpful information. Guard!”

“Thank you. General Asher, but I’ve rented some rooms in town and—” A guard appeared at the door, and Asher thundered, “Conduct this merchant to his quarters!”

“Come on, then,” the guard said to Pezi as he swaggered into the office. “It’s a long walk to the dungeon.” Dungeon! Who’d said anything about a dungeon?

Asher had said the guest rooms, not—Pezi was jerked from his seat and dragged out the door, where the first guard was Joined by two others. Soon they were in the lower levels of the palace, and Pezi noticed that down here the walls weren’t marble, but were carved out of the rock. As they slammed a heavy door behind him, one could hear Pezi’s plaintive call echoing down the hallway: “But he said I could stay in the guest room…” They poured down out of the foothills of the Spinal Range, and walked for days just to glimpse her. Wherever she passed, villages went empty, cattle went hungry, plows gathered the dust of spring. Across wide fields, painted yellow-green by the glowing sun, she led her following—and every night beside giant bonfires she lectured on ultimate devotion. Each night the group was watched by Asher’s soldiers. Yet every evening two or three pilgrims managed to slip past the watch, unnoticed, and started the long trek to the south and slavery-hoping. Her pattern took her from one monastery to the next. She slept always in the chapel, before the dragon statue that was an obligatory part of every chapel’s decorations. It mattered little what stream of Dragonfaith the monastery espoused. She visited all in turn—Divisionists and Dichotomists as well as the more orthodox Coalescence mainstream. And there were cassocks of every shade of blue among her following. No segment of the Dragonfaith went untouched by her teaching.

She was always smiling, her long dark hair gleaming in the sunlight. Her own robe was the blue of the midnight sky when it encircles a full moon. Around her neck she wore the white vee, and it draped across her breasts as a symbol to all that, doctrinally, she stood with the Coalescence party. But her mind was never on doctrine, only on the dragon.

Whenever a cloud obscured the sun, throwing its shadow across her, she would toss her hands up to shade her eyes and search the sky for some sign of the flying twi-beast.

Understandably, she and her whole following surged forward with excitement at the news received from a small village in the heart of the Lamathian mainland. The population of an entire monastery had disappeared one day, and a local fanner swore that on that same day he had seen the dragon himself flying over his fields. Then there was the great dent in the earth only a few hundred yards from the monastery’s gates. A number of peasants reported they had heard a loud blast coming from that direction, but laughed at the idea that it had been the sound of the dragon crashing. In fact there was much discussion over whether the notion of the dragon crashing out of control was blasphemous or not.

Serphimera did not participate in the discussion. She sniffed the air at the site of the crater, then went down into it to feel along its banks. She slept that night before the statue in the monastery. When she emerged the next morning her statement was unqualified, uttered with unshakable confidence. “The Dragon was here. Those of this monastery were the first to be found faithful.” Overnight, the empty monastery filled with newly sworn initiates. In the absence of an abbess, Serphimera lingered. Within a week, she decided that here she would make her abode. The name of the little village nearby had never been firmly fixed. Now it took on a new name, one that was whispered throughout the length of rural Lamath. Serphila, it came to be called, home of the Priestess Serphimera. It quickly swelled in size. Perhaps the local farmers were not totally believing—but all found new occupations serving those who came to Serphila to await the return of Vicia-Heinox.

“Amazing,” Bronwynn murmured wearily. “Bushes and shrubs do still exist.” They rode down out of the forest in a line, Pelmen leading the way. Their two-week journey through the Great North Fir was ending. “Seems like it’s been six months,” she grumbled.

“W-where are we g-g-going?” Rosha asked.