There returned to his memory something that Father Sifans had said to him. “It is not goodness and holiness that lead a man to serve Akha. More often it is sin such as yours.” Which implied that many among the priesthood were murderers and criminals—little better than the prisoners. Yet they were set over the prisoners. They had power.
He went about his duties grimly. He smiled less than he had. He never felt happy working as a priest. The nights be spent in prayer the days in thought—and in trying, when possible, to forge some sort of contact between himself and Usilk.
Usilk shunned him.
Finally, Yuli’s time in Punishment was completed. He entered a period of meditation before going to work with the Security Police. This branch of the militia had come under his notice while working in the cells, and he found within himself the ghost of a dangerous idea.
After only a few days in Security, Wutra’s worm became ever more active in his mind. His task was to see men beaten and interrogated and to administer a final blessing to them when they died. Grimmer and grimmer he became, until his superiors commended him and gave him cases of his own to handle.
The interrogations were simple, for there were few categories of crime. People cheated or stole or spoke heresy. Or they went to places that were forbidden or plotted revolution—the crime that had been Usilk’s. Some even tried to escape to Wutra’s realm, under the skies. It was now that Yuli realised that a kind of illness gripped the dark world; everyone in authority suspected revolution. The illness bred in the darkness, and accounted for the numerous petty laws that governed life in Pannoval. Including the priesthood, the settlement numbered almost six and three quarter thousand people, every one of whom was forced into a guild or order. Every living, guild, order, dormitory, was infiltrated by spies, who themselves were not trusted, and also had an infiltrated guild of their own. The dark bred distrust, and some of its victims paraded, hangdog, before Brother Yuli.
Although he loathed himself for it, Yuli found he was good at the work. He felt enough sympathy to lower his victim’s guard, enough destructive rage to tear the truth out. Despite himself, he developed a professional’s taste for the job. Only when he felt secure did he have Usilk brought before him.
At the end of each day’s duty, a service was held in the cavern called Lathorn. Attendance was compulsory for the priesthood, optional for any of the militia who wished to attend. The acoustics of Lathorn were excellent: choir and musicians filled the dark air with swelling veins of music. Yuli had recently taken up a musical instrument. He was becoming expert on the fluggel, a bronze instrument no bigger than his hand, which he at first despised, seeing other musicians play enormous peetes, vrachs, baranboims, and double-clows. But the tiny fluggel could turn his breath into a note that flew as high as a childrim, soaring up to the clouded roof of Lathorn above all conspiring melody. With it, Yuli’s spirit also flew, to the traditional strains of “Caparisoned,” “In His Penumbra,” and, his favourite, the richly counterpointed “Oldorando.”
One evening, after service, Yuli left Lathorn with an acquaintance, a shriven fellow priest by the name of Bervin, and they walked together through the tomblike avenues of the Holies, to run their fingers over new carvings even then being created by the three Brothers Kilandar. It chanced that they encountered Father Sifans, also strolling, reciting a litany to himself in a nervous undertone. They greeted each other cordialy. Bervin politely excused himself, so that Yuli and Father Sifans could parade and talk together.
“I don’t enjoy my feelings about my day’s work, Father. I was glad of the service.”
As was his fashion, Sifans responded to this only obliquely.
“I hear marvellous reports of your work, Brother Yuli. You will have to seek further advancement. When you do, I will help you.”‘
“You are kind, Father. I recall what you told me”—he lowered his voice—”about the Keepers. An organisation for which one can volunteer, you said?”