Roger Taylor - Whistler

The idea brought a lump to Vredech’s throat and tears to his eyes but he pushed them away. There was no alternative but to do what he was going to do.

Nertha’s savage exposition about how to use the knife had been cruelly effective, deeply unmanning him, and the images she had conjured kept returning to taunt him. But he was no longer the child who had cried himself to sleep for the gratuitous slaying of a bird. The killing of Cassraw might perhaps cost him his sanity, maybe even his life, but he had been shown, or had imagined, it mattered not, the ravages that would come to countless thousands if Cassraw’s dark and primitive view of Ishrythan were to spread. Reality might well be underlain by beauty and simplicity, but in its workings, in the weaving of this simplicity, it was complex and subtle, full of shifting needs and decisions that required continuously the skills of Ishryth’s second greatest gift, the mind, to judge any course of action. No book, not even the Santyth, for all the wisdom it contained, could hold such knowledge. Still less, could one man. And any man who claimed such knowledge and would seek to impose it, seek to constrain the incalculable spirit of a people into the suffocating limits of his own ignorance and fear, could bring only destruction.

As he was already doing.

Vredech sat down on a bench beneath a broad canopied tree. The bench and the grass about him were still dry. He was calmer now. His thoughts had run so many courses so often that they had finally fallen silent. He reached inside his cloak and laid his hand on the knife.

What are you doing, Priest, even thinking of taking life? he asked himself again. But the question no longer meant anything. Nor did he listen to Nertha’s plea that some other way could be found. Instead he clung to Iryn’s nightmare. He was prepared to take that upon himself if it saved others having to suffer it. That was a priestly duty. It was not avoidable.

And now he must await events. Confine himself to simple practical matters, such as where he might find Cassraw. Would he be at the Haven Meeting House, or was he already assuming his role of Covenant Member and establishing himself at the Witness House?

All he had to do was ask.

But he’d sit here a little longer, in the grey stillness. Think about the sunset he had seen from the hillside with the Whistler playing his meandering flute, and the view across the valleys as he had stood by Nertha.

Appreciate what you have while you have it, then the pain of parting from it would be less.

It was true.

But still he did not want to part from it, nor confront the pain of what he had to do.

His concerns slowly left him as he looked at the shadows of the trees in the misting rain and listened to the steady hiss of its fall and the occasional spluttering rattle as a solitary drop would cause a leaf to shed its tiny load on to the leaves below, and thence to more leaves until finally a cascade of many drops splashed to the ground.

He leaned back against the tree. As he did so, he noticed a movement in the distance. It took him a moment to bring two figures into focus.

They were walking slowly towards him.

Vredech felt a small twinge of irritation at this disturbance of his contemplation. Still, he thought, they’ll probably pass on their way. It was unlikely that anyone would be abroad today other than on some necessary errand. He watched them idly. Both were cloaked and hooded. One, he judged, was about his height and build, while the other was a little shorter but more heavily built.

As they drew nearer, it seemed that they would indeed walk past, but one of them glanced casually at him then stopped and held out a hand to detain his partner. There was a brief conversation then they walked directly towards him. Vredech’s irritation increased but he managed to keep it from his face.

‘Good day,’ the shorter one said courteously. Vredech noted the speaker’s foreign accent with surprise.

‘Good day,’ he replied automatically, standing up.

The stranger bowed slightly. ‘Please forgive me for accosting you like this,’ he said, ‘but I notice from your dress that you are a priest in the local religion.’

Local religion! Vredech felt mildly demeaned, but he replied that yes, he was.

The stranger held out his hand. ‘My name is Darke.’ He emphasized the last syllable. ‘And this is my friend Tirec. We’re travellers… scholars. May we talk to you, or are we disturbing you?’

The man’s gentle assuredness transformed the remainder of Vredech’s annoyance into self-reproach. He ventured a small joke by way of reparation. ‘Not at all,’ he smiled, extending his hand towards the bench. ‘Please join me in my office.’ For a little while at least, he would be able to put aside thoughts about what he had to do. He introduced himself. On hearing his name, Darke looked pleasantly surprised.

‘We’ve heard of you,’ he said. ‘And are honoured to meet you. You’re highly thought of by such as we’ve spoken to.’

Unskilled in receiving compliments, Vredech coughed awkwardly and changed the subject. ‘Sadly, you’ve chosen an evil time to visit our country,’ he said as he sat down. ‘It grieves me to have to say this, but I’m afraid, being foreigners, you may even be at some risk. There is a great deal of confusion about.’

‘Yes,’ Darke nodded. ‘Though the confusion, as you call it, is mainly around Troidmallos, and directed towards those from the west – the Felden?’ Vredech nodded. ‘The further reaches of your land are less troubled and so far all your countrymen have been most obliging to us.’

‘If a little distant?’ Vredech inquired, noting a hesitation.

The man gave a slight shrug.

‘We are apt to be reserved with strangers,’ Vredech explained, smiling again. ‘It’s a national trait, I’m afraid, and one I take no pride in admitting. I hope you’ve not been offended by our seeming coldness?’

Darke shook his head. ‘We’ve travelled through many countries and have learned to accept the different ways of many peoples. We’ve also learned that apparently major differences between communities are often little deeper than the various costumes they wear. Underneath, people are very much the same everywhere.’

Vredech, suddenly feeling very parochial, found himself wholly absorbed in what Darke was saying. It was Tirec who spoke next, however. From his face Vredech took him to be about his own age though, like Darke, who was perhaps nearer Horld’s age, his mannerisms were those of a younger man. ‘To be honest, we’re quite content not to have been attacked in the street after reading this,’ he said, pulling out a neatly folded copy of Privv’s Sheet.

Vredech’s nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘You treat it with more respect than it deserves,’ he said. ‘Screw it up and use it to light your camp fire, or put it to some other simple practical use when you’re away from the comforts of civilization. I beg you, don’t judge us by that.’

Tirec grinned, but Darke’s manner was more sober. ‘We treat it with the respect that all dangerous things warrant: fires, floods, sharpened edges.’

Vredech’s grim preoccupations returned at this last remark, and without thinking, he patted the knife in his belt. ‘Don’t you have Sheets in your own country?’ he asked.

‘We have the printed word and many books, and many ways of carrying the news of events, but nothing like this.’

‘Not when we left, anyway,’ Tirec added.

‘True,’ Darke conceded.

‘Consider yourselves fortunate,’ Vredech said warmly.

Darke looked at the Sheet. ‘We have several of them to take with us for study,’ he said. ‘They seem like a worthwhile idea.’