“Here is a rock that was melted by the Enlightener’s thunderbolts—only five
duodecs. Own your own miracle rock. Miraculously preserved cuttings of discarded
angels’ wings, guaranteed to keep demons from the house—seven duodecs.
Angel-light pots, complete with sacred inscriptions; lengths of holy cords;
pieces of heavenly flying-vestments; stones from the sermon hill, and lots more.
Every item guaranteed to have been brought direct from the scene of the
Enlightener’s coming.”
A small group of unkempt, rough-looking idlers had stopped in front of the cart
and was watching him curiously. Behind them a few people were looking on,
apparently apprehensively, but most were continuing on their way, their eyes
fixed solidly in front of them, or turning their backs to hurry away. Sallakar
frowned. This wasn’t at all the kind of reception that he’d anticipated. “Come
on then, how about you, sir?” he said to the nearest of the ruffians in front of
him—an ugly-looking character with a lot of unsmoothed, red-tinted facial
plating, a soiled and torn jerkin, and a navigator’s hat pushed jauntily to the
back of his head. “A special price for this one only—three duodecs for this
piece of Meracasine rock. An excellent talisman and warder-away of evil
influences, oh yes. Brings good luck and protects your health. Do I hear an
offer?”
“You’re outta your mind,” the sailor commented sourly.
“What are you trying to do—get yourself fizzed too?” one of the others asked.
“Better lay off that kind of talk and just be grateful there aren’t any guards
within earshot,” another advised.
Sallakar gave them a puzzled look. “Didn’t he show up here, then?” he asked
them. “The whole city was supposed to have been converted by now.”
“Who?” the sailor asked.
“The Enlightener. He was supposed to come here and call miracles down from the
sky.”
One of the band laughed. “Oh, he showed up all right, but the miracles didn’t.
The priests will be throwing him off the cliff before bright’s end. Where else
d’you think everybody’s going?”
“Convicted as a blasphemer,” another one said.
“And he might not be the only one, from the way you’re carrying on,” a third
commented. “But don’t mind us—you go ahead. Two fizzings for the price of one
would really make the day.”
“And we’d better be on our way,” the sailor said to the others. “Or we’ll miss
even the one.”
Sallakar watched them walk away muttering and laughing among themselves, then
turned round and hastily took down his sign and pulled the cover back over his
cart. He stood thinking hard for a while and frowning perplexedly to himself.
Then all of a sudden a glint came into his eyes. He took a piece of marking
stick from inside his robe,
turned the sign over, and slowly and deliberately wrote on the back in large
letters:
BLASPHEMER SOUVENIRS AND RELICS
BROUGHT BACK BY THE ARMY HE TRIED TO CORRUPT
GET YOUR EXECUTION MEMENTO HERE
Nodding in satisfaction, he rolled the sign up again, tucked it beneath the
cover, then grasped the handles of his cart and moved away to join the general
drift of the crowd toward the southern outskirts of the city.
In a dungeon in the lowermost levels of the prison behind the Palace of the High
Holy One, Groork sat on his rough bed of mill-swarf and lathe-turnings, staring
forlornly at the bare ice floor. The nightmare, he had at last accepted fully
and finally, was really happening. After dedicating his life unswervingly to
upholding the Lifemaker’s faith, denouncing its enemies, and taking scrupulous
care never to permit an utterance that might be taken as contradicting the
Church’s teachings or denying its doctrines, this was the bitter end to which it
had all brought him—convicted and condemned to die the death of a heretic and
blasphemer.
The injustice of his reward for ceaseless vigilance and untiring devotion was
causing him to question seriously the whole foundation of his belief system for
the first time ever. He had believed, and he had trusted; he had remained
faithful in the face of adversity; he had never wavered. And now Frennelech, the
High Holy One whom he had served selflessly as the Lifemaker’s true worldly