Rites of Passage (11 page)

There was a time, in his youth, when he resented the fact that his brother would inherit the farm, that he would have to practise a profession other than that of a farmer. But, as the cycles passed and he grew older and wiser, he came to thank the tradition that would force him to leave home and fend for himself.

He set off along the path, brushing against the yail plants and knocking from them the intense fragrance of  pollen. He passed a threshing platform, with its troupe of labourers led by Jarrel.

His brother smiled down at him, called him a lazy lox as always, and added, “Hurry, can’t you! The folks are wearing their Blacks.”

He stopped and stared up at Jarrel. “Their Blacks? So soon?”

“You graduated, didn’t you? Your future needs discussing.”

Yarrek hurried home. Tradition among the farming caste had it that discussion of matters of destiny between parents and children necessitated the wearing of black gowns. It was a ritual of the Church that Yarrek took for granted, despite his friend Yancy’s irreverent ridiculing of religious orthodoxy.

He had foreseen his parents’ wearing of their Blacks, but had assumed they would leave it a brightening or two before they broached the subject of his future.

He took a jug of yail juice from the cooler, slaking his thirst. His mother and father would be on the Edgeward deck, as ritual decreed. He made his way up the two narrow flight of stairs to the third floor and paused on the threshold of the deck, nervous now that the time had come to tell his parents of his plans to enter the offices of an architectural firm in the capital, Hub City.

They had their backs to him, staring out over the flat central plains towards the mountains of the Edge – though the Edge was so distant that it could not be seen by the naked eye. It was an act of obeisance they performed every dimming, this turning towards the Edge – and one which Yarrek too, despite Yancy’s joshing, often found himself performing, albeit cursorily.

They had heard his creaking progress through the house, and his father gestured for him to step between them and sit on the stool positioned before the rail.

Solemnly, he did so.

They were grave-faced, unsmiling. His father was fingering his Circle of Office: he was a part-time pastor of the Church and he took his duties seriously.

“Son,” he said in greeting.

His mother said, without smiling, “We have heard. Congratulations. A second grade. No Merwell for five generations has attained better than a third.”

His parents had always been distant. They were loving in a remote, stern kind of way, solicitous for the welfare of their sons, but wary of showing emotion, still less anything so exhibitionist as physical affection.

Unlike Yancy’s parents, Yarrek thought, who showered the girl with such gestures of love that he found their displays embarrassing, not to say impious. But then Yancy’s folks were from the Hub, where tradition was lax.

“The time has come,” his father said, “to speak of what lies ahead. For so long now the future was college, and the attaining of success in your studies. Now that you have achieved more than we could ever have hoped, together we take the next step.”

Yarrek swallowed nervously. “I have considered my future,” he said. “I thought perhaps... well, I’d like to study to become an architect.”

Silence greeted his words. His father’s grim expression did not waver; his thin face might have been carved from wood.

His mother said, “Of course you have
dreamed
, Yarrek. Such boyish fancies are to be expected, and are excusable. But as the Church says, one’s destiny is often beyond the scope of the individual: there comes a time when the experience of Elders must shape the course of disciples.”

Yarrek bowed his head. “My plans are more than dreams, mother. I’ve heard that architectural offices in the Hub are crying out for skilled draftsmen–”

“Yarrek,” his father said, in a tone that stopped him dead. “Hub City is a den of vice, the playground of the heathen. No son of mine will venture there.”

“But,” Yarrek said, resenting the note of desperation in that single word, “you know yourself that I am pious. I attend regular church. Why, to deny me the right to go to Hub City suggests that you think me weak, your instructions insufficient.”

His mother stared at him. “My son, we of flesh are forever weak. Do you not consort with the daughter of the Garrishes?”

“Yancy is a friend,” he began, angry at the disdain his mother had loaded onto the word
consort
.

“She is the product of the Hub,” said his mother, “and the thought of your being surrounded by crowds of such people...”

Yarrek stared from his father to his mother. “Then where else might I study to become an architect?”

His mother allowed herself a minimal smile.

His father said, “Tomorrow at mid-brightness you will take the sail-rail Edgeward to Icefast.”

He echoed, “Icefast,” in horror. The very name of the city filled him with cold dread. The sun would be distant there; the outside temperature intolerable without layers of protective garments; his shadow eerily long.

“And there I can study–?” Yarrek began.

His father said, “It has been arranged for you to sit an entrance examination for the office of the Inquisitor General.”

His mother allowed another smile to crack her features: she could not conceal her pride. His father’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

Icefast and the Inquisitor’s office? His parents’ plans for him were so contrary to his own that Yarrek was unable to grasp his sudden change of destiny. He thought of Yancy, and wanted nothing so much then as the consolation of her arms around him.

“I have no say in the matter?” he asked.

His father reached out and, with a hand as strong as a bailing iron, gripped Yarrek’s upper arm. “It is an honour to be so chosen, as you will come to appreciate.”

Yarrek bowed his head and whispered, “I’ve heard that the methods of Inquisitors are Draconian.”

His father said, “Since Prelate Zeremy came to office, things have changed. He has curbed the power of the Inquisitors, put an end to their worst excesses. Now they truly are a force for good, instead of being a conflicting schism within the Church itself.”

Yarrek nodded. “May I go to my room?”

“Go,” his mother said, “and pack in preparation for your leave-taking.”

He stood and hurried from the deck, making his way through the cool, dark house, and reached the refuge of his room. There he lay on his bed, too gripped by shock even to cry.

For he knew, even then, that he would do as his parents wished; he knew that Hub City was the dream of a juvenile, that his true destiny was in the ice-fields of the Edge, in the office of the Inquisitor General.

The door creaked open. It was his father. He had removed his Blacks, and now stood above Yarrek in his homely farmer’s garb.

“Yarrek,” he said. “Yarrek, I must tell you something.” He sat down on the bed next to his son, and Yarrek stiffened at his father’s unaccustomed proximity.

He stared into the old man’s face, wondering at his father’s nervousness.

And the farmer, pained by a duty he would rather have forgone, told him the truth.

“Twenty cycles ago,” he began in a voice heavy with weariness, “a family in Icefast, a rich and influential family high up in the hierarchy of power, broke the edict of the Church and sired three children.” Yarrek did not yet comprehend the import of his father’s words: the thought of a rich family contravening Church Edict was shocking enough.

“Had the Church discovered the birth,” his father went on, “the child would have been put to death, according to the Law of Conservation. But the family had power, as I said, and managed to spirit this child, a boy, out of Icefast in the depth of dimming and send it with paid agents Hubward.”

His father could not bring himself to look Yarrek in the eye. “These agents arranged for a family to take in the boy, to raise him as their own.”

Yarrek said, “No.”

“The truth, Yarrek, is sometimes almost impossible to bear. But remember this: that truth, duly weighed and considered, makes a man stronger.”

“You...” Yarrek said. “I... I am that child? You took me in? I am not...?” It was too vast a concept to take in. His parents were not his parents? Jarrel was not his brother? He felt the certainty of the world tilt beneath him.

And then his father – or rather the man who was not his father, but had acted as such for twenty cycles – did something which he had never done before: he reached out and took Yarrek’s shoulder in compassion. In a small voice he said, “Your mother had just miscarried. A son. She was grieving. We were poor, then. The farm was yet to prosper. When the agents of aristocrats called and made their offer, we could not refuse. They paid us well, but money was not our motive. We looked upon you, and knew that if we were to refuse, then there was the possibility that you would die.”

His father paused, and went on, “Your progress at college was monitored by the interested party in Icefast, and they arranged for your apprenticeship.”

The irony! He, the illegal third child of aristocrats, was to be seconded into the very arm of the Church responsible for the policing of such edicts!

The hand tightened on his shoulder. “But be assured of this, Yarrek. Despite everything, we love you as our own.”

It was the first time his father had ever spoken such words of affection. With that, his face averted, he stood and left the room.

Yarrek lay on his bed, staring through the open window at the baleful eye of the rapidly dimming sun. Unable to sleep, he thought ahead to his time in Icefast. Though much of what lay ahead would be a mystery, he resolved upon a course of action that would give his future some purpose: during his time in Icefast he would attempt to track down the people who were his rightful parents.

~

M
uch later he was awakened by a sound.

He sat up quickly, the revelation of his past, and his future, brimming in him like sour wine. He blinked. It was still dark, though the sun had reached the extent of its dimming, and was little by little beginning to brighten.

It came again, the sound.

“Yarrek!” A mere whisper, from the direction of the window. He turned on the bed and saw, beside the nodding dark-blooms that wound in around the window-frame, Yancy’s round face staring in at him.

“Yancy?”

“I heard that you’re leaving for Icefast. Jarrel told me over at the platform. When you didn’t turn up, I thought... Well–” she shrugged “–here I am.”

He hurried across the room and embraced her. She was standing on a thick twist of vine that clung to the façade of the manse. Her presence here, as it did every time she came for him, amazed Yarrek, for Yancy Garrish was blind. Her massive eyes were skinned over with a milky meniscus that only served to accentuate the beauty of her face.

She raised a small flagon. “I’ve brought some yail acid, from my father’s locked cupboard,” she grinned. “Come to the platform and tell me everything.”

She was already shinning down the vine, and he straddled the windowsill and followed her.

He jumped the last metre and ran after Yancy as she disappeared through the yail stalks. Minutes later they emerged at the platform. It stood stark and empty in the umber light of the slowly brightening sun. Full brightening was hours away. He would have plenty of time with his friend, before returning home.

They climbed onto the platform and fell back onto piled sacks of yail. Yancy unplugged the flagon and took a quick slug, then passed it to Yarrek. The spirit burned his throat, filled his belly with strangely comforting fire.

He said, “What did Jarrel tell you?”

She chose to ignore him. “Are the kite-fish swarming?” she asked, her sightless eyes staring in the direction of the brooding sun, and the flotilla of kite-fish that basked in its gentle pre-brightening warmth.

He took her hand. “Perhaps twenty, maybe thirty. Massive ones, mostly male, putting on a show.” He watched the intricacy of their aerial dance. “They’re performing their mating rituals, flying circles around the sun.”

Yancy sighed and squeezed his hand. “And on the other side,” she said. “What can you see there?”

Yarrek narrowed his eyes, peering past the sun and focussing on the other side of the world. Directly above him he could see that side’s Hub City, and radiating from it the web of lines that were the sail-rail tracks, with a great checkerboard of farmland in between. Overland, as his people called it, was a mirror image of the plain on which Yarrek lived; he had never met anyone who had ventured there, though he knew that ships plied back and forth across the frozen seas of the Edge.

So he described it to Yancy in great detail, omitting nothing.

She snuggled close to him, her warmth in turn warming him, banishing his fears.

He asked again, “Yancy, what did Jarrel tell you?”

She was a while before replying. “He said you were to go to the Edge, to Icefast, at mid-brightening. There you had a job awaiting you. A very important job.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t know. Your parents had told him only so much, to prepare him for your leave-taking.”

His silence prompted her question. “Well, Yarrek, will you tell me?”

He braced himself for her ridicule, even her disgust. “I will sit an exam for the office of the Inquisitor General.”

He turned and stared at her broad, pretty face in the light of the brightening. It was as if her features were frozen. Her hand remained on his, though her grip had slackened appreciably.

“Yancy?”

“You’ll be a lackey of the Church?” she said. “And an Inquisitor at that!”

He shrugged. “I have no say in the matter. Do you think I want to leave here, leave you?” And he felt a twinge of treachery at these words, for he had planned to venture to Hub City without her, after all.

She was silent for a long time. He watched the kite-fish perform convoluted arabesques with vast, lethargic grace.

He wanted to tell Yancy that he was not a true Merwell, that his blood family were aristocrats in Icefast – but he could not bring himself to do so.