Roger Taylor - Whistler

He had set great store by reason and would bring it to bear formidably on any problem foolish enough to cross his path, but he had been neither a bigot nor a proselytizer for his beliefs.

‘You need to use your head all the time, lad. Knowledge is always your greatest protection.’ He would strike his chest. ‘But your faith’s what you find in your heart. It’s beyond reason and thus debate and it’s to be held in silence, not prated from a pulpit. Most of these people use what they call faith as an excuse for straightforward lack of clear thinking. Laziness, that’s all their faith is. Laziness. I’ve no time for it. It’s blasphemous.’ It was a conclusion that used to make him laugh heartily.

His words still resounded about the room for Vredech.

It had been a source of disappointment to his father that his only son had turned to the church, and, unusually, there had been some unpleasantness about it at first. However, sure in the knowledge of what it was that he really valued, he had, in the end, stuck by his own creed, wished his son well, and supported him when he could, even through the doubts that must assail anyone following such a vocation. They had been friends up to the end and thus his support had continued after his death.

Resting now in the shade of his father, Vredech began talking to himself. It was a conscious aping of the old man. ‘Gets those tricky thoughts to the forefront of your mind, those little swine lurking about below the surface, getting ready to ambush you at some dire moment.’

‘Cassraw’s my friend. I don’t think I’m jealous of him.’ Vredech said, dragging out his most reprehensible concern. He tapped the Santyth. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have wanted the Haven Parish. Dowinne, maybe.’ He cast a look about him at this, even though he knew the house was empty. ‘I know he can be a pain, but more often than not it’s he himself who really suffers. And I was glad to see him back safely off the mountain, for all he was… odd.’

The black clouds loomed into his mind again.

Judgement Day.

Not right.

Not right.

Vredech swore and stood up. The sudden action made him giddy, and he sat down again, his head back in his hands. ‘Get hold of yourself, man,’ he muttered. ‘Relax. Take it easy for an hour or so. You’ve had a queer couple of days and a bad night.’

This reminder of the previous night only brought him upright and tense again, for where he should have slept deeply, following an afternoon’s activity the like of which he had not known in many years, he had found himself wide awake, his body agitated and his mind tormented. He had twitched in and out of sleep repeatedly, for the most part unable to tell which was which, as memories of the day buffeted him relentlessly. Cassraw suddenly there beside him, strange, commanding – mesmeric almost – and now lying still and silent, yet somehow, Vredech sensed, alert and listening. And, terrifying, dancing black shadows that had brought with them that truly awful presence, searching into him, discarding him. Had it been real, or was it just some trick of the light and the circumstances that his body and senses had misunderstood? It had felt real enough, but where did that leave him? If it was real then what awful thing was it? And what had happened to Cassraw, who had presumably been nearer to the heart of it? And if it was not real, then what was the matter with him, that he should suffer such a vivid hallucination?

He leaned back in the chair, stretched out and closed his eyes, with the intention of ordering his thoughts once and for all. Almost immediately, he was back in the Debating Hall, with Cassraw staring at him across the long table – the old, familiar Cassraw. Waiting for his approval… his support? And still there was a wrongness about the scene, though he could not identify it. A wrongness that slithered away from him tantalizingly, its very movement illuminating Cassraw’s face with the jaundiced light that had emanated from the sinister black cloud under which all this strangeness had occurred. Indeed, Vredech saw, Cassraw’s face was the light. And too, he was the cloud, vast and overwhelming, looming over the entire land and beyond, eyes penetrating, face marked with the arrogant indifference of supreme power. Vredech wanted to fall to his knees in mortal fear before this manifestation, for he knew that though he was insignificant beyond imagining, yet his every thought was known and understood, and he was deeply unworthy. Nothing could stand against such might, nothing be hidden from it. His obedience, his obeisance, was demanded. But he would not yield. It was an abomination; it had to be opposed. He wanted to cry out against it, raise his fist in defiance, however futile.

‘You are but a man, Cassraw,’ he bellowed into the echoing vault. ‘Frail and flawed as are we all.’

Laughter came back to him, scornful and crazed. ‘Frail, old friend? Frail? God is come for me. Follow me or…’

‘Leave me,’ Vredech said.

‘Follow me or die. Die and be doomed forever. I am the Judgement Day. All things are to be weighed. Mine is the new Word.’

Cassraw’s face filled Vredech’s vision.

He felt his chest tightening, his shoulders throbbing, as if the sky itself were pressing down on him.

‘You’re only a man,’ he gasped.

‘ You are the man.’

The face grew larger still, until it was but a single eye, its black iris like a huge, dead moon.

Vredech stared into it, scarcely able to breathe. Then, black against the blackness, an army of shadows was about him, wheeling and dancing, full of mocking, horrible sounds. He flailed his arms as if to fend them off but to no avail. They were there and not there. Inside and outside him. Growing. Growing. Louder and louder.

Then all was silence, terrible and total, as it had been on the mountain in that fearful moment before Cassraw had reappeared.

Vredech waited, his breath frozen within him.

A hand closed about his shoulder.

Dowinne and Cassraw travelled back from the Witness House in one of the church carriages, Cassraw’s own small trap being returned by one of the servants. Dowinne’s pale blue eyes were fixed relentlessly on her husband, and her hands were twitching restlessly. Her shoulders were raised and tense. Cassraw, by contrast, was staring calmly out of the window, watching the valley scenery move slowly up and around them as the carriage descended the mountain road.

The sound of the wheels changed as they moved through the gates at the end of the road and turned on to the public highway. The change prompted Dowinne to speak.

‘Well?’ she asked.

Without turning from his vigil, Cassraw raised a hand as if to fend off the question. Dowinne leaned forward and slapped it aside none too gently. Cassraw turned to her sharply, making her start, but she held his gaze.

‘Well?’ she repeated, more insistently. His look became quizzical. ‘That’s the second time you’ve done that,’ Dowinne said, as though answering an unspoken question. ‘And I didn’t like it very much the first time. Now tell me what’s been happening. Everything. Right away.’

As she drew a breath to continue, Cassraw smiled and raised his hand again. ‘When we get home,’ he said simply. The smile was captivating but his voice was an odd mixture of command and concession, and Dowinne’s resolve faltered. ‘When we get home,’ he repeated.

‘Very well,’ she said emptily, her brow furrowing as Cassraw turned again to stare out of the window. The carriage was travelling quite slowly now, not because they were moving up yet another of Troidmallos’s many hills, but because they were passing through a part of the town that was dominated by the workshops, offices and warehouses of Canol Madreth’s larger merchanting companies and the streets were very crowded. Apart from pedestrians and riders there were all manner of carriages and carts jostling for position in the wide streets: light traps used by the PlasHein messengers, ornate and dignified company carriages, jangling public carriages with their noisy drivers, and even some of the great six-horse wagons that hauled timber and cotton and kegs of oil and wine and all the other commodities that served Canol Madreth’s trading needs. Cassraw’s eyes moved leisurely over the scene. Occasionally, from amid the bustling crowds, a hand would be raised in greeting which he acknowledged with an inclination of his head and a small but definite movement of his hand.