Hederick the Theocrat v-4 Read online

  Defiance drained from Ceci Vakon. Her youngest son spun around.

  "Mama!" he cried. "Huge bats!" She whirled. "Night hunter bats!" she breathed. Ceci lunged forward to drag her children into the house. But Yellow Eyes and the others easily pinioned their captives. There were eight giant bats-each one seven feet long. Their eyes, some red, some violet like their fur, glowed in the night. They could kill easily with the claws that glittered at the end of their papery wings. They could kill just as deftly with their rapier-sharp, triangular tails. And, of course, like any Krynnish bat, the night hunters had fangs that were deadly.

  "Death to heretics!" Dahos bellowed again at the silent houses of Solace. "Gather by your windows and watch, sinful people. Witness the fate of those who reject lives of holiness offered in the sanctity of the New Gods!"

  Each bat plucked up a human in its claws. Holding their captives by the scruff of their nightclothes, the bats fluted and screeched as they bore away their screaming victims.

  "Take them to the slave trader Arabat!" Dahos shouted over the noise. "He waits on the southern edge of town."

  Mindless of the consequences if the bat dropped her, Ceci twisted back toward the high priest, her nightrobe swirling in the humid air.

  "My husband…" she shouted.

  "… is dead, Madam," Dahos finished for her. "Or soon will be."

  Mendis Vakon heard faint screams as he crouched in the darkness before Erolydon's wrought-iron gate. He was north of Solace, and whatever emitted that caterwauling was headed in the other direction. Small blessing, he thought; the screeching gave him gooseflesh. He scrambled to his feet and stood before the long, solid, white walls of the temple.

  Avoiding the bustle of Solace, Hederick had chosen to build his blessed temple on the shores of peaceful Crystalmir Lake less than a league north of the city. Hederick hated dirt, and cities, even treetop communities like Solace, had a lot of dirt. Hederick also loathed noise- unless he himself was making it, Mendis Vakon thought sourly. Solace had plenty of pandemonium, too. Especially now, with refugees arriving every day, telling their unbelievable tales.

  This wooded place, however, was as quiet as a crypt. Unfortunate thought. Mendis tried to pretend his heart was not hammering like that of a terrified mouse.

  The silver and scarlet moons of Krynn provided some light but little comfort. The humidity, even at midnight, pressed against Vakon, and he caught the scent of his own body heat. As usual for midsummer, the mosquitoes were aggressive. Their droning added to Vakon's tension. He swatted at the insects and looked nervously from side to side. Where was Hederick? The marble of the temple glowed faintly in the darkness.

  The stout wooden inner doors, just behind the ornamental iron outer gate, were shut to the night. There was no sign of guards. All was as Hederick had promised.

  From inside the compound, the scrape of a footstep on cobblestone sent Vakon jumping, and he cursed inwardly. In a short time I will be well away from here, he said to himself. I'll have money to last to the end of my days. And I'll not deal with this madman, or any of his Seekers, again.

  The inner doors swung slowly open. Then the outer gates, the ones of wrought iron, opened. Vakon could not see the hand that controlled the mechanism. He slipped inside. The metal gate locked behind him.

  "Over here, idiot!" came a whisper. "Do you want someone to see you?"

  Mendis Vakon peered toward the shadow of the wall and spied the short, lumpy man whom all Solace had come to fear. Despite the languid heat, the High Theocrat wore a heavy dark cape over his brown and gold-braid robe. His gray hair was unaccountably dark and thick, and Valcon realized Hederick was wearing the ludicrous wig he sometimes donned for state occasions. As always, Mendis marveled that such an unassuming figure could inspire such terror in people. Hederick was in his sixties,

  as near as anyone could guess, with bulging blue eyes that had faded long ago, a spongy, bulbous nose, thin hair, and the mottled complexion that came from imbibing too much mead for too many years.

  Vakon held himself with his most military bearing and strode toward the High Theocrat. He was taller than the religious leader, and he relished the fact that it annoyed the diminutive man.

  "You took your time opening the gate," Vakon complained. "Anyone could have seen me out there."

  "At midnight?" Hederick retorted. "I opened it at the promised time, no sooner and no later." He motioned for Vakon to follow him. They headed between the outer wall and a lower, inner one that ran parallel to it. This was the corridor within which people gathered to witness the executions of heretics and other enemies of the faith.

  Mendis hesitated, then spoke warily. "I want my money. Where are you taking me?"

  "To get it, fool. Did you think I would just open the gate and throw it through?"

  "Where is it, then?" Just to be safe, Vakon lingered a few paces back.

  Hederick stepped from the outer corridor, opened a door into Erolydon's central courtyard. Keys jangling, he unlocked a plain wooden portal that was off to one side of the temple's huge main entrance. He stepped into a pitch-black hallway. Vakon stopped just outside the door. "Why aren't we using the main doors, Hederick?"

  The High Theocrat's carefully modulated voice, which had lulled thousands of Seeker converts over the past decades, echoed out of the tunnel. "Mendis Vakon, you have the sense of a mole. Why not just pick up your reward at noon in the center of the temple courtyard, with hundreds of people around? We must be circumspect, you blockhead. Come on." Vakon grunted in protest, but still he followed Hederick into the dark tunnel. "Didn't you order everyone to remain in their cells?" he complained. "The priests and the guards? Who else would be about?"

  The floor was slick, scored with deep striations. Vakon could feel the ruts through the thin soles of his dress slippers. The tunnel seemed to lead gradually downward.

  "Of course, lunatic," Hederick snapped back. "I declared a night of prayer and fasting for priests and novitiates alike. I have ordered all to remain in their quarters tonight."

  "So? We're safe then."

  "That means they'll be confined-but awake-you fool. Now be silent."

  Vakon started to retort, then he reminded himself of the wealth that soon would be his, and held his tongue.

  Mendis Vakon believed in no gods-Old Gods, Seeker gods, or otherwise. The Seekers, true, were manipulative, cunning, and greedy, but so were the leaders of most of the religious movements that flourished on Krynn these days. What interested Vakon was that the Seekers were the biggest group-and the richest.

  And the meanest, he added to himself. He was glad he'd slipped a dagger into a pocket in his leggings when he'd dressed earlier that night.

  Suddenly, Vakon bumped into Hederick and cursed. He stretched a hand to each side and felt only dank air. "Where are we?" he asked apprehensively.

  "Right outside the treasury. Be still." Hederick's keys clanked.

  Just a few more moments, Vakon thought. It's so damned dark. Why doesn't Hederick light a torch while he opens the lock? We're below the temple. Everyone is in their cells above us. No one will see. No one…

  Mendis Vakon turned and ran back the way he had come.

  His slippers skidded on the incline. Hands caught at the back of the knotted cord that belted his shirt. The hands jerked upward, and Vakon crashed onto his knees. He tipped forward. His head hit slimy stone, and he cried out. Then another stone crashed into his temple. Vakon rolled over and felt for his dagger.

  Hederick laughed knowingly. "I already have it, Vakon. I had to learn some such skills in my years on the road, after all."

  The priest was surprisingly strong. Vakon felt himself being rolled across a slight rise. Suddenly the air was not merely stale, but fetid. Vakon sprawled on uneven slabs of rock as a lock clicked behind and above him, then he heard Hederick wheeze, as if from beyond a door.

  Something stirred in the blackness within the chamber. Rats? "The dungeon!" Vakon protested. "You can't keep me in a dungeon! I am May
or of Solace!"

  A breathy chuckle came from the darkness. "No longer. I lead Solace now-thanks in part to you, Vakon." Another chortle. "Ironic, considering that you refused to embrace the Seeker faith, isn't it?"

  Vakon scrambled to his feet and pounded at the steel-clad door. Dimly, he saw a small, barred window and sensed the High Theocrat peering through. Then a torch flared from Hederick's side of the door, and Mendis Vakon found himself eye to eye with the Seeker.

  "Seekerism is claptrap," Vakon hissed. "False miracles and phony revelations. Your Seekerism is a farce, Hederick!"

  "I knew you'd feel that way, Mendis Vakon," Hederick replied. "In fact, I have several witnesses who heard you speak in just such a fashion last night in the Inn of the Last Home."

  "I was in no tavern last night, the Inn or otherwise!"

  "My witnesses say you were. It's blasphemy, you know, to criticize the Seeker gods, Vakon. The Praxis says so. And the Praxis guides my life, as it does that of all truly pious people."

  A snarl broke the silence in the chamber behind Mertdis Vakon, and Hederick laughed. Vakon flung himself around as the rumbling-halfway between a growl and thunder-reverberated within the stone walls. Whatever lurked in the shadows was dreadfully near.

  "You're a heretic, Vakon," Hederick hissed through the door. "Heretics deserve to die."

  "Then bring me to trial," Vakon spat out, terrified. What stalked him? He heard a rustling sound and felt cautiously around the straw that littered the floor, seeking something-anything-he could use as a weapon. "I have friends in Solace, Hederick," he spat out. "If I disappear, people will wonder."

  "Friends? No longer, ex-Mayor," the High Theocrat rejoined. "Some of your friends are the very ones who were with you when you made those sacrilegious statements in the Inn."

  "I tell you, I wasn't there!" Vakon insisted. "You can't prove that I was. I demand a trial!"

  "As a matter of fact, I am judge and jury in Solace." The growling came closer.

  Hederick continued speaking as though he and Vakon were carrying on a normal conversation. "I found you guilty of heresy a few hours ago," he said, "just before I had your dear family carted off to a slave camp." There was a pause, then soft laughter from the High Theocrat. "I can tell that the sentence pleases my god Sauvay and the Motherlord Omalthea. Just listen to the happy rumblings of Sauvay's pet."

  "No!" Vakon shouted. Nearby, something roared, and fire belched through the dungeon. Sparks ignited clods of damp hay near the door. Vakon's cloak began to burn, and he thrust it away from him.

  Then Mendis saw what awaited him-a lion of sorts, but two or three times the size of that beast. It had enormous eyes and a thick tongue that curved out as though in anticipation toward the terrified mayor. The lion's huge front claws emerged and retracted as it watched its prey.

  "A materbill?" Vakon said in disbelief. "But they don't exist!"

  "They do now," Hederick whispered through the door. "Sauvay sent me one. A birthday present of sorts. Did you know my birthday was in midsummer, Vakon?"

  The flames smoldered and failed in the dampness. Darkness returned, leaving only a fearful afterimage of the materbill burning in Vakon's brain. Then claws clattered on the stones. Another roar split the silence.

  The creature belched more fire as it leaped upon Mendis Vakon. The former mayor of Solace didn't even have time to scream.

  Once Hederick was sure his former co-conspirator was dead, the High Theocrat made his way to a nearby stone column. He held his torch higher and examined a row of marks. Drawing the dagger he'd filched from Vakon, Hederick used the rapierlike point to scratch one more line at the top of a row of similar scrapes. Then he counted the lines.

  "Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight," Hederick murmured with a self-satisfied air. "What a ferocious appetite the materbill has." He smirked as he remembered the terror on Mendis Vakon's unrepentant face. "How fortunate that there are heretics aplenty in Solace to feed him."

  Chapter 5

  At first glance, Crealora Senternal didn't look like a woman who had slain an entire family with evil magic at fifty paces. But these days you couldn't tell about someone by merely looking.

  In Solace, only High Theocrat Hederick seemed to know for a certainty.

  As men and women filed into Erolydon's gleaming val-lenwood-paneled Great Chamber, they stole glances at the tiny woman who stood awaiting sentencing. Her head was bowed, and her hands were clasped so tightly that her fingertips were white.

  At least a dozen guards, swords sheathed but unbuckled, stood at the edges of the room. Six novitiates tended incense burners in a ring around the woman accused of being a witch. A veil of flower-scented smoke hung in the air around Crealora. Few people in the room gazed long at her, but all stole cautious glimpses.

  "Be careful, Gilles," a pregnant matron whispered to her husband as they edged through the crowd to a vacant spot. She plucked at his sleeve. "Don't meet her gaze, Gilles. They say the witch of Zaygoth can ensorcel a man with but a look!"

  Gilles tut-tutted her but kept his voice low nonetheless. "That dried-up old stick? She's nothing but huge eyes and brittle bones, Susta. I've faced far worse monsters than Crealora Senternal, though it's a wonder her poor husband stood her oddities for so long. I've nothing to fear from such as her. You merely grow fanciful because of your expectant condition. I wanted to leave you home, but you'd have had my head if I suggested it."

  "Gilles Domroy!" his wife exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. "If you think I'll miss the biggest spectacle in Solace since the Cataclysm, you're…"

  Susta Domroy's shrill voice drew the attention of the prisoner. Crealora lanced the mother-to-be with a penetrating stare. The prisoner's sapphire-blue eyes glittered, and her colorless lips began to move silently. Her hands shook despite the heavy chains at her wrists.

  "A spell!" Susta gasped and snatched forward the kerchief she wore over her hair, hiding her face. Her right hand shielded her belly, and she raised her left in the gesture that peasants believed averted witchcraft. She dragged the now stone-faced Gilles down onto the bench with her. People on each side quickly slid aside to give them more than enough room.

  Crealora Senternal smiled grimly at the pair, then returned her gaze to the front of the room and the doors beneath the towering pulpit. "If I had magic for spells, would I be standing here now?" she muttered to herself. "Pah! I'd be winging my way across the forests of Ansa-lon." She looked around the room. "All these 'converts.'

  Converted Seekers, indeed! Converted by Hederick's threats and goblins."

  Let the Domroys believe that the long-despised witch of Zaygoth had laid a curse on their precious unborn heir. Crealora no longer cared what the people of Solace thought of her. She knew she had no more witchcraft in her than did the hammered iron links that bound her, supposedly to prevent her from completing the gestures necessary for spells.

  "If one wet hair is out of place on the head of the Domroys' newborn babe, they'll place the blame at my door," she whispered. "Fools! I'll be at the side of my lord Pala-dine before long, and well beyond this farce." Still, she shivered.

  The witch of Zaygoth waited on the subterranean floor of the semicircular room. Behind and above her stretched the packed benches of Erolydon's Great Chamber. Eroly-don's builders had constructed the Chamber in a pit dug deep into the sandy soil at the eastern edge of Crystalmir Lake. The top tier of seats, like Hederick's pulpit, was actually at ground level.

  The burnished vallenwood glowed with a beauty richer than oak. Vallenwoods were sacred trees, and at one time the residents of Solace would never have dared to lay an axe blade to the great trees. No one knew how ancient the towering vallenwoods were, only that some people thought they'd existed on Krynn before any living beings.

  Hederick had overridden that reverence in short shrift. He'd wanted vallenwood for his temple, and that was that.

  Crealora coughed in the incense-choked air. Today was the last day of her inquisition. Today Hederick would pass
sentence. There was no doubt about the verdict: Hederick had never acquitted anyone. The form of the sentence was the only mystery. Despite her fear, Crealora felt a kind of relief.

  Hundreds of voices rose and fell. They throbbed and ebbed behind her like the roar of the ocean waves that pounded the shore east of her native land of Zaygoth, which had been her home for her first twenty years. Then a handsome but godless trader, Kleven Senternal, traveling through Southern Ergoth selling his wares, had glimpsed her and fallen instantly in love. As smitten as he-and bolstered by his oath that he'd not interfere with her worship of the Old Gods-Crealora had left her tiny village of fishers and netcrafters for the trader's home in Solace.

  With her abrupt manner of speaking and her foreign ways, Crealora was always an outsider in Solace, but she'd lived there happily enough with her Kleven for fifteen years. In the early years, before the Seekers had spread their new religion over the land like a poison, she'd been tolerated well enough.

  Then only a few weeks ago, her mate had met the slashing claws and fiery breath of a mysterious beast after a trading run to the east. The creature, by some reports a materbill, had seared Kleven's horse with flames from its gullet and then ate the mount. It scattered Kleven's belongings and left Crealora's husband to bleed to death on the forest path.

  One of the novitiates, a man of about thirty years, approached the witch and waved a curl of incense in her direction, his gaze carefully averted.

  "Idiot!" Crealora snapped. "What can smoke do against sorcery? Were I a witch, could I not snuff a tiny ember, a mere arm's length away? Were I a witch, could I not snuff you just as easily?"

  The man took a quick step backward, but made no response. None but Hederick dared speak to the witch.

  Another yellow-robed novitiate cleared his throat. "All rise to honor Hederick, most reverend High Theocrat of Solace and judge of this holy court," he called. Hearing the shuffling of many feet as the spectators rose behind her, Crealora forced herself to breathe evenly. The High Theocrat would not see her quail.