Witches of Kregen by Alan Burt Akers Page B

understood by the congregation to be different.
    It would be different, too, by Krun!
    After the introduction I hurried the next part, although speaking with the sonorous and, if the truth be told, deadly dull intonations of some of the priests.
    “Your own chief priest has been stricken down by Lem!” Well, it was obvious that by now many of the people out there clustered listening to me would have recognized I was not the man they knew. I went on: “He has blasphemed. He is stricken in his own quarters and lies in his own blood. The Name that Must Not Be Spoken has wrought this justice, and has sent me to reveal unto you the truth.”
    The ensuing hubbub died away as, still with my arms raised to create that very necessary aura of power, I towered over them.
    Then: “Listen, devotees! We serve Lem, the Silver Wonder. We have been betrayed by evil influences. We do not do well in this land of Vallia. Our deaths are written in the blood of Lem if we continue.”
    The whole atmosphere was conducive to making a person believe. The incense, the brazier, the tall unwavering flames of the torches, even the unspoken menace of the torturer’s implements, the altar, and the sacrifice herself, all exerted a powerful mesmeric spell. I claim no credit for the deed. What skill at oratory I have — apart from hailing the foretop in a gale — has been used, and I do grasp at the essentials of the art. I bore down on them.
    “I come to you at the first temple in this strange land of Vallia, to reveal the thinking of the Name that Must Not Be Spoken. We shall be destroyed here. We shall be betrayed. This is written. Return to your homelands. Return to the warm embrace of your friends, your lovers.”
    Thus I harangued them, building up a picture of disloyalty, of greed and of vengeance, seeding their minds with the belief that they had been betrayed into hiring on here in Vallia.
    Slowly, I lowered my arms.
    They stood, silent, attentive, yet half-hypnotized.
    With a firm and steady tread I crossed to the cage. The door was unlocked, ready for the ceremony. I opened the cage door, bent and, in a low voice, said: “Lahal, Maisie. Your mother has a special treat for you, and nicer sweets than these,” and with that I took her up into my arms.
    If I fouled it up now, we’d both be chopped...
    The sea of silver masks below moved, glinting in the torchlight. If Helvcin the Kaktu or Movang the Splitter stood there, as, indeed, they must, they might recognize in me the person they had spoken to in The Quork Nightly. But they would be held by the attitude of reverence for authority ingrained in them in Hamal, in Hamal of the Laws. They would reason that I had simply told them I was a Hikdar-majis-ponti so as not to reveal the true altitude of my lofty rank. For, I must be an important chief priest within the hierarchy to be doing what I was doing. Anything else was impossible, was beyond belief.
    Sheer bluff carried me through. Slowly and with enormous dignity I walked through the throng, carrying Maisie, and she just put her head on my shoulder and sucked a sticky sweet on a stick. One false move, one question, one slip... I walked on and I felt the sweat trickling down under that infernal silver mask. On I strode, calm, giving the impression of a figure full of authority. On to the exit from the mine tunnel.On and out into the sweet night air away from the stinks of that blasphemous place.
    When to start to run like hell?
    I had to hold on, to continue that calm and steady progress. Then a thought occurred to me. I stopped.
    I turned about. I lifted my free arm, and the silver-masked throng who’d followed me out halted, silent and waiting.
    In a strong clear voice, I shouted back: “Do not be deceived, fellow adherents. Lem is not deceived. The gold — the gold is false. The Princess Mira gives gold freely with one hand, and her sorcery will take it away with the other when you have done her work for her and she has no further use