The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (good novels to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Fletcher Pratt
Book online «The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (good novels to read .TXT) 📗». Author Fletcher Pratt
The mate gave a yell. “I protest,” said the well-dressed ambassador, “against the condemnation of one of our gracious Queen’s subjects on perjured evidence and as the result of the actions of one who is not only himself a criminal, but a provocator of others.”
“Your protest is recorded. We declare the business of this case has been dispatched.” The two Initiates rose as though their muscles were controlled by a single mind, but as the Dossolan rose also and the guards frogmarched their prisoner out, one of them looked at Rodvard. “You will remain, young man,” he said.
IIThey sat down again. One of them said; “Be seated,” and the pair stared at him unmoving with those impassive eyes. The inspection lasted a good three or four minutes; Rodvard itched and hardly dared to squirm. One of them addressed him:
“You bear a Blue Star.”
(It was not a question, but a statement; Rodvard did not feel an answer called for, therefore made none.)
“Be warned,” said the second Initiate, “that it is somewhat less potent here than elsewhere, since it is the command of the God of love that all shall deal in truth, and therefore there is little hidden for it to reveal.”
“But I—” began Rodvard. The Initiate held up his hand for silence:
“Doubtless you thought that your charm permitted you to read all that is in the mind. Learn, young man, that the value of this stone being founded on witchery and evil, will teach you only the thoughts that stem from the Evil god; as hatred, licentiousness, cruelty, deception, murder.”
Now Rodvard was silent (thinking swiftly that this might be true, that although he was no veteran of this jewel, it had never told him anything good about anyone).
“Where is your witch?” said one of the Initiates.
“In Dossola.”
“It will be impossible for you to return there with the case of today’s court standing against you, and the mate of your ship in our detention, by our necessary action.”
“Perhaps, in time—” began Rodvard.
“Nor can you well bring her here,” said the other Initiate. “The practice of witchery is not forbidden among us as it is by the laws of your country. But we hold it to be a sin against the God of love, and it is required that those found in witchery undergo a period of instruction in the couvertines of the Myonessae.”
(A wild wave of longing for Lalette swept across him, drowning the formless regret of leaving behind the Sons of the New Day—a new life—an empty life—“No spirit in it,” the old man had said.) Before Rodvard could think of anything to say, one of the Initiates spoke again:
“All life in this material world is a turning from one void to another, and shall be escaped only by filling the void with love. And this is the essence of Spirit.”
(A jar like a fall from a height told him that he was facing men who could follow his thought almost as clearly as he could that of others, and Rodvard half thought of how the butler at Sedad Vix had said it was possible to conceal one’s thoughts; half wondered what these strange men wanted with him.) The strong, resonant voice went on; “It is not the thought of the mind, but the purpose of the heart for which we seek; for the mind is as material as the world on which it looks—a creature of evil—while the other is arcane.”
Said the second Initiate, as though this matter had now been settled; “What is your profession?”
“I am a clerk. I was in the Office of Pedigree at Netznegon.”
“Here we have no pedigrees. Soil-tillers are needed; but if you lack the skill or desire for such labor, you may serve in the commercial counter which places for sale the products of the Prophet’s benevolence.”
“I think I would prefer the second,” said Rodvard (not really thinking it at all; for tillage and commercial clerkship, he held to be equal miseries, yet the latter might offer a better chance of release).
The Initiates stood up. “We will inform the stylarion at the door, who will find you harborage and instruct you where you are to report for work. You must give him your money of Dossolan coinage, which he will replace with that of ours.”
“But I have no money of any coinage, none at all,” said Rodvard.
The two stopped in their progress toward the door and turned on him faces which, for the first time, were struck with frown. One of them said severely; “Young man, you have evidently been under the control of the god of Evil. Unless this financial stringency disappears, we shall be required to order that you take doctrinal instruction; and it were better if you did so in any case. The stylarion will give you a warrant for new garments and your other immediate needs, but all must be strictly repaid, and within no long time.”
They left. Rodvard thought their final remarks a very strange pendant to the generosity they had otherwise shown; and wondered unhappily whether he would ever see Lalette again.
IIIThe lodging assigned was in a room over the shop of a tailor named Gualdis, at a corner where three streets ran together. The man had a fat wife and three daughters, one of whom brought from a cookshop on the corner a big dish of lentils and greens with bits of sausage through it, from which they all ate together. The girls chartered profusely, curious as so many magpies about Rodvard and how life was lived in Dossola, for they were too young to remember when Prince Pavinius had turned from Grand Governor to Prophet and the Tritulaccan war began.
Rodvard liked the middle one best; called Leece. She had thick and vividly black eyebrows that gave her eyes a sparkle when she laughed, which was frequently. (The Blue Star told him that behind the sparkle crouched a kind of dumb question whether he might not be the destined man, and the thought of being sought by her was not unpleasant to him, but she turned her head so rapidly and talked so much that he could make out no more.)
After he had been shown to his bed, the usual sleeplessness of a changed condition of life came to him, and he began to examine his thoughts. He felt happy beneath all, and doubting whether he were entitled to, searched for some background of the sense of approaching peril which had held him the night Lalette came to his pensionnario door, and again when he spoke with Tuolén the butler. But it was nowhere; all seemed well in spite of the fact that he was more or less a prisoner in this land. The common report had it that this was not an unusual experience, that Amorosian agents circulated all through the homeland, recruiting for their own purposes especially those with any touch of witchery, and he thought that might be true. The Initiate on the ship had taken him very readily into protection, and if he were like those in the court, must have known that Rodvard bore a Blue Star.
Yet it seemed to him that these Amorosians were so well disposed toward each other that one might do worse to live out a life among them, in spite of a certain unearthliness among their Initiates. Now also he began to look back toward Dossola and to understand why it was that Mancherei should be so hated, most particularly by the upper orders. For it seemed that if he could but return, persuade Remigorius, Mathurin and the rest how the people of the Prophet lived among themselves, the Sons of the New Day might fulfill their mission by striking an alliance in Mancherei. No, never (he answered himself); that would be to set the son above the parent, the colony over the homeland, and politic would never permit it.
Yet was it not cardinal in the thinking of the Sons of the New Day that to hold such a thing wrong was in itself wrong? The evil in the old rule was that it set one man above another for no other reason but his birth. Was not Pyax the Zigraner, with his odd smell and slanted eye, entitled to as much consideration as Baron Brunivar? Why not then, up with the standard of Mancherei and its Prophet? For that, what had Pavinius found so wrong in this place that he had deserted the very rule he founded?
Rodvard twisted in his bed, and thought—of course; I have been slow indeed to miss the flaw. For though there were no episcopals here, the Initiates surely filled their office. If freedom from tyranny were won only by making episcopals into judges, then it was only a viler slavery. Was life, then, a question of whether spirit or body should be free? But on this question Rodvard found himself becoming so involved that he went to sleep, and did not wake till day burned behind the shutters.
Leece brought him his breakfast on a tray and wished him a merry morning, but when he would have spoken to her, said she must hurry to her employ. (Her eyes had some message he could not quite read; if the Initiates were right, it would be a gentle one, and kindly.) His mind was more on her than on his new fortune as he went forth, and he missed a turning in the streets, so that his task began badly with a tardy arrival.
The building of his toil, like so many in Charalkis, was new and of brick, with mullioned windows along the street front and a low, wide door at one side, through which carts passed empty to pick up bales at a platform within. Rodvard entered to see a row of clerks on stools sitting before a single long desk and writing away as though for dear life. A short, round man paced up and down nervously behind them, now and again speaking to one of the writers, or hearing a question from another.
This short man came over to Rodvard and looked up and down his length. “I am the protostylarion,” he announced. “Are you Bergelin, the Dossolan clerk? You are in retard by a third of a glass. The fine is two obulas. Come this way.”
He led down to the inner end of the desk, where under the least light stood a vacant stool. “Here is your place. For the beginning, you have the task of posting to the records of individual couvertines from those of the general sales by ships. Here—this is a ship’s manifest from a voyage to Tritulacca. Three clocks from the couvertine Arpik, as you see, have been sold for eight reuls Tritulaccan. You will open a sheet for Arpik, on which noting this fact, one sheet for each couvertine, then place a mark here to show that the matter is cared for, not pausing to translate—yes, Ivrigo?”
The interrupter held his ledger in hand and diddled from foot to foot, as though being held from a cabinet of ease. “Oh, Ser Maltusz, I crave pardon, but I cannot carry through this posting according to system until I have a ruling on where falls the sea-loss in such a case.”
“Hm, let me see—why, stupidity, look there! It is plainly stated that no offer had been made on the said lost bales. They were therefore couvertine goods still, and not regarding whether the loss were caused by piracy or not, it must fall there.” He turned back to Rodvard. “Do not try to translate into our money, for that is the function of another. You are expected to finish this manifest by evening.”
“I have never done this—”
“Work is prayer. There is the lamp.”
19TWO CHOICES
The stern-faced mattern’s name was Dame Quasso; she told Mircella to show Lalette to a small brown room angled by a dormer, where a bed with one blanket, a chair and a chiffonier were the only furniture.
“The dress-room is down here,” said the servant, pointing. “The regulation is that all demoiselles stir themselves together at the ringing of the morning-bell, so that the day’s tasks may be assigned.”
“Why?” said Lalette, sitting down on the edge of the bed (so glad to hear a voice without malice or innuendo in it that the words hardly mattered).
The eyes were round and the mouth was round; a series of rounds. Said Mircella; “It is the regulation. . . . You must dress your best for evening. It is the day of the diaconals.”
“Ah?”
“Oh, some of them are quite rich. We will have roast meat for supper. Wouldn’t it be nice if one
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