DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (173 page)

Chapter 8
 

“T
HE CHILD WILL BE OF FULL CONSCIOUSNESS
,” Y
AKIM
D
OUAN SAID TO HIS NEWEST
gathering of Yatols, most of them from the region just interior to Jacintha. The Chezru Chieftain had chosen the invitation lists to his meetings very carefully, pulling together disparate, often feuding, priests. He didn’t want any secret alliances building, to fester during the time when he would be most vulnerable. Thus, in the small gatherings during which he would give the traditional Transcendence speech, Yakim drew together opposing Yatols, such as Peridan and De Hamman, who would never trust each other enough to form any destructive alliances.

“What does that truly mean, God-Voice?” asked Yatol Bohl, who led a flock at the great Dahdah Oasis, nine days’ journey west of Jacintha. “Will the child be able to speak? Words or sentences?”

Yakim studied Bohl carefully. At thirty, he was among the youngest of the Yatol priests, and he was certainly among the most fit. He ruled Dahdah with an iron hand, Yakim knew, collecting outrageous fees for shelter and supplies from any caravan coming in from the west toward Jacintha, or heading out to the west from the main city. No doubt, Yatol Grysh had been forced to reach deep into his pockets for a needed stop at Dahdah on his way back to Dharyan.

“Full consciousness,” Yakim replied. “The child, of no more than a year, will be able to speak as fluently as you or I. The child will know of our ways, will know of me, his predecessor, and will know of his destiny.”

“Surely a peasant mother seeking to elevate her family could teach—”

“The child will know more of Yatol and the Chezru religion than any peasant could possibly guess,” Yakim interrupted the ever-petulant Bohl. “You will see, you will understand, and you will believe.”

“God-Voice, please do not believe that I am a doubter,” Yatol Bohl said, holding his hands out wide, assuming a posture of perfect innocence.

Yakim Douan just smiled at the pose. He knew exactly that, of course, that Bohl and all the others, except for those most pious, like the poor fool Merwan Ma, held grave doubts about the Transcendence, the mystical hand-off of power to the next Chezru Chieftain. Of course they did—how could they not? For someone to believe that a baby, an infant, would arise speaking fluently and knowing all the secrets of their culture’s wisest priests was a stretch, certainly, a test of faith against logic, of belief against experience.

How well Yakim Douan could sympathize with those doubts! He remembered that time, so many hundreds of years before, when he had first learned of the Transcendence. Things were done very differently back then, for it was not the Chezru Chieftain delivering a speech such as this one. No, the Chezru Chieftain
would die, often unexpectedly, and then the leaders of the Chezru religion would initiate the search.

Yakim Douan, a young Yatol, had been just a bit older than Bohl was now when he had participated in that search those centuries ago. He remembered how full of eagerness, full of great joy he had been at the thought that he was about to witness a miracle, a confirmation of his faith that every man so desires, whether he admits it or not. They had discovered the blessed infant soon after, and full of anticipation and the expectation of extreme joy, Yakim Douan had gone in to witness the miracle child.

And he had found a baby. Not a blessed baby, not a miracle child speaking the words of Yatol, but a normal baby.

The leaders of Chezru, their names lost to him now, had told him and the other Yatols of the “miracles” they had witnessed the child perform, of the words they had heard this goo-gooing infant speaking. Many of the other Yatols had taken those proclamations as proof enough that this was indeed the miracle child, the new God-Voice of Yatol.

But Yakim Douan had known better. He had understood instinctively that this baby was nothing more than a pawn, through which the leaders of the Yatol priests could spend the rest of their days in control of the religion, and thus, of all Behren.

He knew.

And so he understood the doubts and the fears that Yatols such as Bohl must now be feeling in this time of approaching crisis. If Yakim could only hand them enough teasing to hold them in check until after the birth, until they saw proof positive that their faith was not misplaced, that the selected child was indeed the God-Voice, then men like Bohl could become very valuable allies to the next incarnation.

“When I was chosen, I knew as much about the truth of Yatol as I do now,” he told them all. “I could recite the Verses of Propriety as well as I can now …” He gave a little laugh. “No, better, for then my physical body had not begun to fail me, my memory did not lapse as it sometimes does now.”

The gathering of ten Yatols all chuckled at the Chezru Chieftain’s uncharacteristic comedy—all except for Yatol Bohl, who sat staring hard at Douan, obviously taking a careful measure of the man.

Yakim resisted the temptation to call him on that look, and merely smiled disarmingly in response.

“You are human, reasoning beings, and so you hold your doubts,” he said, and there came a chorus of denials, to which Yakim merely looked away and held up his hands. “It is the expected response, my children, for you cannot make logical sense of faith. Who here has seen the paradise of the afterlife?” He paused and let the gathered Yatols all look to each other questioningly. “Nay, you cannot see the spirit or hear the spirit. For you in your current state of existence, only the empty and lifeless corpse remains, and logic would tell you, then, that death is the end of consciousness.

“I know better, and I tell you that this Transcendence will show you, too, that there is more to this existence than what our physical senses can show us. When you look upon the reincarnated God-Voice, when you hear him speak the words of Truth, you will know and you will be content.

“Fear not for those doubts you now harbor,” Yakim went on, trying to hold that fierce edge of passion in his voice, trying not to lapse into the simple recitation of this, a speech he had spoken many times over the centuries. “Fear not that you will be disappointed, and fear not that your doubts somehow mark you as less than true to Yatol. You are supposed to question and supposed to doubt! Else, how will you be certain that you have selected the correct child? Question and doubt everything! When you find the new God-Voice, your questions will catch in your throats and your doubts will vanish so completely that you will be befuddled as to how you ever held them. And then you will know true peace, my children, for then you will understand the truth of your faith. To witness a miracle is to ease the fear of dying itself. Look upon those few living Yatols who remember the last Transcendence! See the contentment in their old eyes, my children, and take heart that you, too, will know that supreme comfort.”

It was true enough. Only three Yatols remained alive who remembered the last Transcendence, when Yakim Douan had been identified as the next God-Voice of Yatol, and those three were considered among the happiest of all the Yatol priests. Happy because they had seen a miracle and knew that heaven awaited them. Happy because they understood the value of their lives in service to Yatol.

Happy because Yakim Douan had ultimately deceived them.

When the gathering dispersed a short while later, most of the Yatols left the audience chamber grinning and speaking excitedly about the coming Transcendence. Two notable exceptions caught Yakim Douan’s eye and attention as he watched the departing flock. Merwan Ma sat at the side of the stage, in the shadows, staring at him with a long look upon his face. The man was deeply troubled by Yakim’s expected and hoped-for death, the Chezru Chieftain knew, and was deeply troubled by his own inability to accept that reality, to brush aside his logical fears of mortality and logical sadness at losing a man he considered as mentor and friend.

His posture and his fears did not bother Yakim Douan, though, for he knew that Merwan Ma would rejoice when the God-Voice was discovered. The Chezru Chieftain decided then and there that when they found him, one of his first spoken revelations would be to tell poor Merwan Ma that Yakim Douan was still with him, looking over him and taking pride that his student was performing his ultimately important duties so very well.

The second exception to the common joy troubled Yakim Douan much more, though, for Yatol Bohl left the chamber neither smiling nor chatting excitedly. His face was stern and locked into an expression of deepest reflection.

That one could prove to be dangerous, Yakim Douan knew. He was young and strong and eager and impatient. And he was ambitious—too much so, perhaps, to sublimate himself to a mere child. The one true concern that had followed Yakim
Douan through his centuries of power was the weakness of true spirituality in the face of human emotions. A Yatol priest, for all of his piousness, even heroics, in the eyes of the church, could only ascend so far, could never be greater than the second rank of the hierarchy. Certainly if Bohl witnessed the selected child, the God-Voice who could tell him of the Yatol tenets and codes as well as any scholar priest, then he would be convinced and would put aside his earthly ambitions and human weaknesses.

But would Yatol Bohl show enough patience? Would he wait the nearly two years it would take after Yakim Douan’s death to even find the new Chezru? Or was he plotting a more direct route to install a new leader of Yatol?

Yakim Douan smiled knowingly. The same magic that allowed the deception of Transcendence would soon provide him with practical information.

“W
e are to wait years to be disappointed?” Yatol Bohl asked his guest, Yatol Thei’a’hu, incredulously. “Surely you cannot believe this chatter of a speaking infant!”

“Chezru Chieftain Douan has asked us to trust in our faith, and what is faith without trust?” replied the other Yatol, older than Bohl by more than a decade and seeming worn and thin, with sleepy eyes and a badly balding head, and a jaw that constantly trembled from a disease he had contracted many years before. “Are we to believe in the miracle of Paradise if we cannot hold faith in this relatively minor miracle?”

“Minor?” Bohl echoed with the same unyielding skepticism. “An infant is to recite the tenets of Yatol? An infant? Have you even known an infant to speak in a complete sentence, Yatol, let alone in any manner that makes sense?”

“Minor,” Yatol Thei’a’hu insisted. “If Yatol can fashion Paradise, if Yatol can transcend death, then how can you doubt this?”

Bohl settled back on his comfortable seat, a relatively shapeless stuffed bag, and took a deep draw on the hose extending from a watery tube beside him. “And yet, you doubt it, too, for all of your reasoning now. Else, friend, why are you here?”

Yatol Thei’a’hu similarly sat back on his shapeless chair, staring at his counterpart. Bohl’s words were true enough, he had to admit to himself. His feelings toward this impending Transcendence were not positive at all, and his expression and posture showed that clearly. In truth, Thei’a’hu had never been overly fond of Yakim Douan, and had often privately disagreed with the man. While he accepted the Chezru Chieftain’s unchallenged leadership and obeyed Douan’s commands to the letter, Douan had made several very damaging decisions concerning Yatol Thei’a’hu’s province of Eh’thu, located two weeks to the south and west of Jacintha. Ten years before, Douan had clipped off the northernmost stretch of Thei’a’hu’s province and given it to Yatol Presh, who rode with the nomads of Tossionas Desert, in an effort to settle the often-troublesome nomadic warriors. That ploy had hardly worked, for the Tossionas nomads were causing as much grief as ever, and yet, that redrawing of province lines had cost Thei’a’hu an important
oasis. For all of his faith, Yatol Thei’a’hu could hardly believe that Douan’s decision had been god-inspired—how could Yatol have made such an obvious mistake? That was the most grievous example, but there were others, always gnawing at the reasonable Thei’a’hu’s logic.

“For centuries, we have followed the Transcendence of Yatol,” Thei’a’hu said. “When the Chezru dies, the search begins for the next God-Voice, and that God-Voice will be identified through the miracle of premature knowledge and voice. That is our way, and so Chezru Douan prepares us now for the next Transcendence. What would you have us do, Yatol Bohl? Are we to seize the title for ourselves? Do you believe that the other two hundred Yatols of Behren will accept a religious coup?”

“I have suggested no such thing!” Bohl sputtered in reply.

“Then what?”

“We must be aware and alert,” the fiery young Yatol insisted. “We must insinuate ourselves into the process of the search, to find a child who will be sympathetic to our needs.”

“You believe that you can know such a thing about an infant? You believe that you can find a child who will be acceptable to the other Yatols, if this child is not speaking as Chezru Douan has told us?”

“Do you believe that there will be such a child, a clear-cut God-Voice speaking the tenets as fluently as our present Chezru Chieftain?”