Rites of Passage (13 page)

Upon Yarrek’s fifteenth brightening as a novice, the lecturer announced that for the first time they would be allowed outside after lessons. That dimming Yarrek, along with his new-found friend, hired skates and for an hour attempted to remain upright along the Avenue of Creation, before the cold became too much to bear.

The following afternoon, in the great library, he consulted a gazetteer of the city, searching for the official building where he might find a listing of registered births. That evening after lessons he slipped out and skated shakily along the Avenue towards the House of Public Records

He came to the building, like all the others in the metropolis a sheer, towering construction with high slit windows and a massive entrance. He removed his skates and passed inside, only to discover that he had just thirty minutes before the records office closed. He hurried, sweating in the furnace heat of the building, to the room which housed the rows of mouldering ledgers containing the names of all who had been born, lived, and died in Icefast for the past five hundred cycles.

He knew, of course, that his name would not be among those listed, for he had been a third born, and thus an illegal issue. He hoped, however, to come across some clue that might help him in his search for his true parents. He reasoned that if he could find the names of all the families who had sired two children, and their addresses (for he knew his parents to be high-born, and assumed they would have lived in exclusive precincts) then he could furnish himself with a list of families who might possibly have birthed him against the law.

But thirty minutes was no time at all in which to accomplish this mammoth task. No sooner had he found the relevant ledger and scanned the first page, than a dour, cloaked official appeared at the door and announced that the House of Public Records was closing in five minutes.

Skating back to the House of the Inquisitors, with the sun a tiny disk on the horizon, Yarrek told himself that on his next free brightening he would search the ledgers from first light to closing time.

~

T
here was a surprise in store for the novices the following brightening. At the end of the afternoon’s lessons the lecturer, a wizened old vulture known as Dr Kellaway, rapped on his lectern and called for silence. His rheumy, censorious gaze raked the thirteen pale faces of his pupils as he announced, “For sixteen brightenings you have studied hard and completed a series of testing examinations. That phase of your education has now ceased. Your papers have been assessed, your ability established, and it is my duty to announce that just three of you have attained the standards required to be admitted to the Office of the High Inquisitor. The ten of you who have failed will be found posts in the Inquisitor’s halls of administration, which I might add is no disgrace.”

He paused, his gaze moving from face to expectant face, and Yarrek knew that his name would not be among the three who had passed. He could expect to pass his brightenings in dull administration, and the thought of such work in the half-light and chill of Icefast filled him with despair.

Dr Kellaway consulted a list upon his lectern and read out three names. “The successful novices are Burce Madders, Kareen Holgen, and Yarrek Merwell. You will report at first brightening to the porter’s lodge, and an official will escort you to your new study rooms.”

Yarrek hurried to his cell as class was dismissed, wanting neither the congratulations of the failed candidates, nor their recriminations. His only friend was not among the three, and Yarrek knew that his commiserations would be met with stony resentment.

The truth was that Yarrek was amazed at his success, for in his own estimation he had failed miserably to reproduce in the exams even half of what he had retained of the information supplied in the lessons. Could the failed ten have done even worse, he wondered with incredulity?

Thus began a new phase of study for Yarrek.

~

T
he three successful novices attended seminars given by the eminent Dr Bellair in his private suite at the very summit of the House of Inquisitors. Their presence was required only in the mornings, while the afternoons were left free to fill as they desired.

In the mornings, Yarrek absorbed as much information as he thought possible on the abstruse subject of Church edicts. Every third brightening, the novices were expected to read out essays, to which Dr Bellair listened with an air of studious absorption, and then commented upon with clinical acuity. Yarrek came to understand the extent of the revolution that had shaken the Church. The old guard had been replaced, swept aside by Prelate Zeremy and his followers; traditional, Draconian ways had ceded to more liberal codes of practice. Beliefs that had held sway for cycles were now considered legitimate subjects for discussion, and even for reasoned dissent. Yarrek found the sessions with Dr Bellair heady stuff indeed, after the dull lessons of ancient history, and for the first time he thought he might find work in the Office of the Inquisitor to be ultimately rewarding.

In the afternoons, after a period of private study, Yarrek made his way to the House of Public Records, and there pored laboriously over one dusty ledger after another. Over a period of a dozen brightenings he succeeded in compiling a list of fifty names of families of high standing who had sired two children in the cycle of his birth. He stared at the names and wondered if one of them might bear his rightful title.

~

T
he following brightening, as he sat in Dr Bellair’s fire-lit study with his fellow novices, listening to the Doctor describe in detail the Prelate’s position on Church infallibility, a sharp rapping upon the door startled them all.

Dr Bellair, ruffled at having his monologue interrupted, issued a testy summons and a poker-faced porter slid into the room and passed the Doctor a folded note.

Dr Bellair read it once, and then again, and then looked up and across the room to Yarrek, who started in surprise.

“Merwell,” the Doctor said, “you will accompany the Church Guard from this building forthwith.”

Dry of throat, Yarrek climbed unsteadily to his feet. Watched by the incredulous students and a puzzled Dr Bellair, he followed the porter from the room.

He was escorted down the switchback staircase from the twelfth floor to the spartan foyer, where two tall guardsmen, outfitted in the resplendent golden uniforms of the Prelate’s office, awaited him.

“Yarrek Merwell?” asked the taller of the two. “Please, this way.”

Yarrek passed from the building between the two guards. In the ice-canal, a liveried coach-sled awaited them. He climbed into the lavishly upholstered cab and sank deep into a cushioned seat. The lox jockey yelled a command and the sled sped off, the guards standing on running-boards to either side of the careering vehicle.

They turned from the Avenue of Creation onto the Avenue of the Prelate, and shortly after that the sled halted in the shadow of an edifice which stood at the very end of the boulevard, almost enclosed by an impressive backdrop of snow-capped peaks.

Yarrek knew the identity of the building, but did not believe that he might ever be requested to step within its hallowed precincts.

And yet this was precisely what the guards now suggested. On watery legs he climbed from the sled and the guards escorted him up a flight of steps and into the private residence of Prelate Zeremy.

They climbed a winding staircase and paused before a double-door inlaid with lacquered frostwood. Suddenly Yarrek knew then that his identity as an illegal third child had been discovered, though quite why that should entail an audience with the Prelate himself he could not guess.

The doors swung open, revealing a prosaic room filled with shelves of books, and an armchair illuminated by a gas reading lamp.

A small man, seated in the armchair, lowered his book and gazed the length of the room.

Yarrek felt a sharp prod in his lower back, and then he was in the room and cowering beneath the gaze of the most powerful person in Sunworld.

~

“T
isane, or would you prefer something stronger? Yail wine, perhaps?”

The face was avuncular, kindly, and the enquiring tone of voice not one Yarrek would associate with the agency of punishment.

“Tisane, thank you,” he said in a small voice. He perched on the edge of a chair opposite the Prelate and stared at the old man in wonder. He was familiar with Prelate Zeremy’s features from portraits, but oils failed to do justice to the man’s warmth. The Prelate wore the scarlet robes of his office, and his hair was long and silver-grey. His eyes, as he stared across at the awe-struck boy, twinkled with what Yarrek chose to interpret as kindliness.

A footman poured two small cups of perfumed tisane, then quietly withdrew.

The Prelate laid his book on a small table beside the guttering gas lamp. “My informants report that you are excelling at your studies, Yarrek Merwell.”

Yarrek stared into his tisane, at a loss for words. At last he said, “I... I try to do my best, sir.”

“We live in an age when the certainties of the past have been stripped away, Yarrek. Study, in such times, is more problematic than usual. Who to believe; indeed, what to believe? The solid shibboleths of past times, or the fashionable mores of the present?”

“We have been taught both,” Yarrek began, and cursed himself for starting something that the Prelate must obviously know. “Perhaps,” he ventured, “we could not appreciate the Church’s present enlightened position if we knew nothing of its more conservative stance in the past.”

Prelate Zeremy smiled. “Well put, my friend. My informants were not wrong in their assessment of you.”

Yarrek coloured and turned his attention to his tisane.

Zeremy watched Yarrek closely. “You are by all accounts open-minded.”

Uncomfortable, Yarrek made a non-committal gesture.

“You will consider improbable notions and not dismiss them out of hand.”

He felt his heart begin a laboured thudding. What was the Prelate trying to say?

“Five cycles ago, Yarrek, we discovered certain facts pertaining to our place in the nature of existence, facts which threw into doubt the very sanctity and dominion of the Church’s teachings.” He smiled and shook his head. “I, personally, found the revelation shocking. Like you, like everyone in Sunworld,  I knew with absolute certainty the provenance of our world. We lived within the shell of an embolism embedded in the substance of rock and earth which went on forever without let or termination.”

Yarrek found himself whispering, “And five cycles ago?”

“Five cycles ago a discovery was made on the outer edges of the very Edge, beside the frozen circumferential sea. A discovery which changed everything.”

Yarrek’s pulse pounded in his ears. “Why,” he said at last, “are you telling me this?”

“You are a brilliant student,” Zeremy said. “You are the future of the Church, I might also say a future arbiter of the laws that govern Sunworld. As such, it is incumbent upon you to know the truth.”

Yarrek could only nod, wondering if his fellow students would also be vouchsafed the
truth
.

“Five cycles ago,” Zeremy said, “we received a report here in Icefast of a sighting of a
creature
, let’s say, in the marginal lands beyond the mountains. A harl-herder observed a tall figure loitering in a crevice in the cliff-face, whence it vanished. The herder was too frightened to follow, but reported it to his foreman who in turn notified the bishop. By and by the bishop reported the sighting to the Inquisitor’s office. It was not the first such sighting in the area.”

“But what were they?”

“Five cycles ago,” Zeremy said, “I was a Deputy Investigator in the Inquisitor’s office. We convened meetings to discuss the matter. One theory was that we were being visited by beings – sentient, perhaps – from another world, from an embolism in the matter of creation adjacent to our own.”

Yarrek realised that he was staring at the Prelate open-mouthed, and shut it.

“It was decided that Investigators should be despatched to the margins to explore the possibility of other-worldly visitations. Duly I assigned my sons, Harber and Collan, to the task. They were eager and experienced Investigators, and shared my liberal inclinations. I might add that we were opposed by the more traditional elements within the Church council, who feared discoveries which might subvert the traditions – and I mean by that the power – of the Church. Be that as it may, my sons set out to explore the marginal lands.”

Yarrek found himself perching upon the edge of his seat. “And they discovered?”

Prelate Zeremy smiled, and Yarrek thought he detected sadness in the old man’s eyes. “They reported what they discovered to the council, but it was never disseminated for public consumption. The traditionalists had their way, and had the discovery effectively silenced.”

He stopped there, and then went on, “Three brightenings after Harber and Collan returned from the marginal lands, they were found dead in the wreckage of a lox-sled. My Investigators found evidence of sabotage: a rail had been sawn through, turning the sled into a death trap.”

Yarrek leaned forward. “And the culprits? Were they found and tried?”

Zeremy nodded. “Two known criminals did the deed, but they had been commissioned by elements within the traditional wing of the Church.” He smiled sadly. “It could be said that my sons’ deaths propagated the initial stages of what would become the revolution that brought me to power, the overturning of the old ways and the establishment of the new, liberal Church. Gradually, more tolerant views gained sway, and I had behind me a powerful lobby of like-minded bishops and priests. Investigation into the sabotage proved to be the final straw – the traditionalists responsible were rounded up and exiled, though none of this was made public. To all intents, the revolution occurred quickly and without a single objection, violent or otherwise.” Zeremy’s fingers strayed to the circular symbol that hung on a chain about his neck. “I like to think that my son’s deaths were not in vain.” He glanced across the room at the portrait of a handsome, grey-haired woman. “Nor that of my dear wife, who passed on soon after the accident.”