Vampire in the Banyan Tree

Father Toll

Approaching the capitol, the first thing a traveller saw was the citadel that dominated the city. Like a low island on the horizon, looming above a haze of smoke, a distant mountain rising out of an ocean of alternating patchworks of marsh, field and canal. It was called, locally, the Embracarion. It had been carved from a solitary rock, that had been dropped, without explanation, into the flat marshlands like a gigantic pebble. It had been carved, it was said, by giants, in the ancient times, before the flood. The legend was easy to believe. No human strength could have carved this colossus. The Embracarion was not a product of mortal imagination, but of a brilliant and alien madness.

Despite its solidity, its uncanny form seemed to draw itself upward, into the sky, as if it were a great cloud of fantastical stone, carved into a thousand, fluid, asymmetric shapes. As it rose, it sprouted and divided into towers and promontories, each strange and asymmetrically unique. Some were solid, having no interior spaces, but most of the Embracarion was hollowed with cavities and intestinal tunnels, all carved, fluted and polished to the same unnatural finish, like an apple that had been riddled by depraved, yet artistic, worms. The sheer size of these cavities - not one tunnel was less than fifteen feet in diameter - supported the giant theory. The vast amount of stone and rubble excavated had, apparently, been dumped into the marsh below. This had been colonised with vegetation and new soil and, eventually, formed a conical hill, on which the vast structure seemed to rest. In ancient times, before the invaders had come from the sea, people had camped and settled on this hill, sheltering in the shadow of the monstrous thing, probably worshipping it. Gradually, the encampment had become a settlement, then a city and spread out onto the flat. in those times, people had probably not known the thing had many interior cavities. It was only in later centuries that smooth sides had been scaled and the interiors discovered and, eventually, occupied by people who had tunnelled out an entrance, appealing half way up its flank, (today called the Floodgate) and then, slowly and laboriously, carving out the causeway that looped, around its sides, descending to the land below.

The Embracarion was a wonder, entirely unique. It was also impregnable, but that could be a double-edged sword. There had been numerous occasions, in the swampland's history, where some new conqueror had merely bottled the old rulers up in their invincible, but inescapable, refuge and waited for them to starve while he got on with the business of running the country.

So Father Tol first saw it, as he jolted on the backboard of a small, donkey-drawn cart, its wheels chuckling and cracking in the ruts of the great eastern trunk road. There was some traffic, both rural and 'city people', readily identifiable by the more modern style of their clothing. By unspoken agreement, the lower types would give way to the higher, but Tol, holding that the almighty was supreme, and all men below equal, refused to budge off the track when some conveyance of the new commercial optimism challenged him for the ruts, and it was usually the other coachman who gave way to Tol's glare.

Tol was a sparse, middle-aged man with the frank air and square build of a dockworker. Though his hair was lined with grey, his grip was strong and he had the restless stamina of a reformer. He habitually carried a leather documents case, which he often stroked with an air of threat, as if it contained a bomb he had a mind to throw. His black robe was already baking him in the low sun. Besides him, on the swaying board, his pudgy hand gripping the side to avoid being occasionally pitched out, was his colleague, Father Rhroarthse. He was jowley as a boar, well-upholstered and reinforced by the mandate of heaven, a perfect exemplar of country priesthood. Driving the rick was Joiliry , a straw-haired, solid-boned teenager from the district, who gave an ox-like impression of amiable usefulness.

They had begun the final step of their journey in the first shadings of morning, in the hopes of making the gates before the sun was up. They'd made it, but had run, unexpectedly, into a great queue of wagons and impatient, fuming people, and saw that something was slowing entrance to the city.

         'What's all this?' Toll called to a wagoner.

         'Them horse's pricks - sorry Fa'ther, me expression - them cunts, I mean, what they call redleathers, the King’s new army - is choking off the gate' replied the man. 'Asking questions, looking through produce and so on. It seizes up the road some.'

         'Asking questions about what, in God's name?'

         'Everything. Looking for spies, they say. Spies! Who would spy on this shitting country? Shit-eating donkey-fuckers. Pardon me again Fa'ther.'

         'You have a rough tongue, my son.'

         'Lord help me Fa'ther, it's a curse. But it's good for working off the humours.'

The priest thanked him and looked up the long line of stalled traffic leading up to the eastern gate. The sun was already becoming unpleasant. And now he could smell the city. The Capitol in late summer, with the water at its lowest, and a year's worth of filth and offal building up in the sluggish underrunnings of the pile-built city, was quite a feast for the senses. Newcomers had to throw up a few times, generally when they first encountered it, and got a little unsteady in the legs, but after a day or so, one was generally well. It was like getting over sea-sickness. Tol wasn't the queasy type, but he was glad he hadn't eaten.

One thing was for sure, he wasn't waiting an hour in this traffic.

         'Go around, to the gate' he directed Joiliry. They pitched off the road, and drew around the long, ragged queue of bleating animals and complaining children to the gates, swaying on the rough of the paddock. Here, in the more commutable shadows of the gateway, he found soldiers, of the kind they called 'Redleathers', in reference to the red riding cloaks they wore, but also having a double meaning as an obscene local slang word, blocking the way. The men were arguing with a middle-aged woman with two children in tow and Tol took an instant dislike to their officious polish. Armed men and their arrogance, it was the cause of half the world's trouble. As far as Tol was concerned, the city had a guard, they didn't need Hortenze's toy army getting in everybody's business.

         'We's been waiting an hour already!' the woman was screeching at the soldier, 'You closed the gate last night after pulling the same trick and us the queue, and I had to sleep on the rough, with two children! You're good as murderers, if one of 'em catches fever from it. I hope you're proud. I hope your mothers know what you're up to. I'm going to get your name.'

Tol located the leader, a tall youth with a querulously determined set to his mouth, standing behind his soldiers, with an air of aloof vigilance. He wasted no time in challenging him. 'What's all this?' he demanded.

         'Increased vigilance' said the officer. 'Wait in the line and we'll be with you presently.'

         'Vigilance? Of what? Honest people about their business?

         'The king's orders.'

         'Ha!' exclaimed Tol, this last to the crowd behind him, 'The king! The king, he says!' He turned back to the soldiers. 'Is it his signature on it, or someone else's? Who, I wonder, would presume to speak for our monarch, who was set on his throne by the providence of God? Of God!' he emphasised, pointing back at the crowd. 'Indices thirty one fifty four, 'Let he who surpasseth the king, yet be not alike in honour, be riven, and scorpion made of his tongue'.

         'You tell them, Fa'ther!' yelled the woman.

         'Turn their tongues into scorpions!' yelled some child, not aware of the priesthood's limitations.

         'Get back in the queue!' snapped the officer.

         'And if I won't? Will you clap me in irons?' Tol stood up on the backboard for the benefit of both the soldiers and his audience. 'Will he do violence? As I'm a free man and a servant of God, I'll not stand here and be threatened by some puppet of ambitious men. Get out of my way or turn me into a martyr, but either way I'm going through in the name of the true ruler of this country, King Cutburt the Giant Killer, who never did bar his door to an honest subject.' This last elicited cheers. The mob's ill will was taking enough confidence from Tol's performance to break into open hostility against the soldiers. Tol nudged Joiliry with his boot and the youth cracked the reins. For an instant it looked like the lieutenant and his men might obstruct them or grasp at the reins, but they fell back, and Tol's little carriage pushed through the gates, leaving its frustrated guardians behind.

         'Well done, Father' said Rhroarthse, who hadn't much fancied a wait on the hot road either, but the priest was preoccupied, breathing shallowly through a perfumed cloth that he held to his face. As they had come under the arch of the gate, the stink had hit them like the hot breath of a boiling sewer. It was not a good time of year to be in the city, he thought. In the old days they had had plagues, regular as clockwork. That didn't seem to happen now. God's favour on the reign of the house of Sabertine-Wettling, according to the house of Sabertine-Wettling, or something else, maybe. Tol made a mental note to look into it.

The streets were busy. Tol saw new houses and bridgeworks, and all about rose the hammer of commerce. They passed a public water cistern, fed by a falling stream from a pipe above. Cutburt had built the water network in the first year of his reign, one of his few independent projects. The pipes were fed from the small, cold, unnaturally-pure stream that flowed endlessly from the gate of the citadel, coiling around its descending body with the causeway, until it filled a great brick reservoir below the street of tombs. From there it was distributed out to the city, in a spidery network of wooden water channels built along the rooftops. People were hauling buckets from the cistern's rippling surface, and water sellers, filling their caskets, deliberately splashed and doused the shrieking children that played around its carved base.

The crowds closed in. They passed under dripping pigs heads, a butcher's row of stinking offal, a little red stream running down the streets middle groove. The air was so thick with flies it was like a fog. In the side streets, among the press of business, people jammed shoulder to shoulder, trying to push past each other. There were shouts and curses. The city was on edge, anticipating the rains, and yet the heat held, day after day, under the uneasy sky.

         'It'll rain soon,' he heard one woman say, as they halted to survey an impenetrable press ahead of them and figure the best way to work the cart through. 'It's so long since we had fresh air, I'm afraid I'd get quite giddy on it.'

         'Well I know what me and my man'll do once the weather breaks' said the younger one, 'We'll go out in the rain and make a baby in it, same as they used to do in the old days. A boy made on the first day of rain is always lucky and a girl, as pale as the moon.'

         'Ah, they say.'

         'Because it's true!'

         'Well truth or superstition,' said the other with a shriek of laughter, 'that's one custom worth keeping up! Sorry Fa'ther', she added, seeing Tol.

         'Where is the street of Surreptitious Dealers, my good and Godly women?' Asked Tol.

         'Oh they bricked it up, Fa'ther, with the surreptitious dealers inside. You need to go all around to Madkotter's way to get to the Corrillian, if that's where you're headed.'

They found the street and pressed along it, the row of buildings on the eastern side were leaning alarmingly into the street, as if subsiding on their pilings, pressing the sky into a narrow strip above them. Tol was relieved to get through. When they come to the larger cross-street, they saw the Corrillian. The magnificent 'ten year project' (it was already fifteen in the making), Pusp's folly, the planting of faith's standard in this devil-haunted wilderness. Only it's first tier had been built, a great curving wall, like a sea shell, crusted along its length by workman's scaffold. The temple was supposed to have been completed in a decade, a laughable estimate that the church had given to the king to persuade him to fund it. Tol had always thought it oddly placed in the city, in the perpetual shadow of the unearthly citadel. It was not wise to have the devil's superficially impressive works in contrast with man's. Still, the Corrillian was going to be a magnificent building, and Tol, despite his lack of illusion as to the human suffering gone un-succoured by the wealth that was flowing onto those beautifully masoned stones, could not help but feel his spirits rise at the sight of it. When the Corrillian was layered around its inner core with choruses of singing men and women, the voice of the faithful would revibrate through the city. Let the old devils linger in their thickets then, and fade away. This country would have been claimed. After all he thought, What's the point of being a priest, if you can't be occasionally optimistic?

They rattled into the shadows of the wooden complexes of sheds and warehouses that lined the construction's flank and Joiliry took charge of the animal and the stowing of the carriage. Tol gave him some money and told him to wait at the stables until he sent word that they were staying.

         'The city's pretty full, father,' said the manager, 'but you can sleep here in the hay if you need to. Only knock after the seventh, if you get back late, because we lock up against the dark, you see.'

         'We won't be staying, probably. It's the High Holy I want to see, and my business will be brief.'

         'Oh he's not here, Fa'ther. Went to the citadel, half an hour ago.'

         'But I saw his carriage?'

         'Being repaired, Fa'ther. Sprung a crossbar.'

         'He left without his carriage?' asked Tol, astonished. Pusp could barely make it from his dinner table to his toilet. 'Do you mean on foot?'

         'I offered to find him a replacement, but he wouldn't wait at all. In a hurry. Off he goes with two stewards to lean on.'

         'On foot? They do say we are living through a time of miracles and strange portents. Half an hour ago, you say?'

         'Yes.'

Tol paused to calculate. It shouldn't be hard to run down the High Holy on foot, in this city, working against an uphill inclination. But he had to catch him before he gained at the safety of the citadel.

         'Please tell Father Rhroarthse to remain here until I return. I'm going to the citadel, I should be back soon.' Tol hurried out the door.

Tol set off, trying to determine the shortest route to the Avenue of tombs, knowing that Pusp wouldn't be taking the scenic one. But the High holy had made better progress than Tol expected, and it wasn't until he had gotten within sight of the base of the Avenue, where a great, wrought-iron gate broke the ring fence that penned the hill, that Tol saw him, battling the crowds, like a hapless walrus in white, trying to break through the waves to the open ocean. If Pusp got to the gate he would be beyond reach.

Tol accelerated, running briskly down several side streets until he could lay an ambush for his superior at the corner of an alley way and a dyer's yard.

         'Your Serenity!' exclaimed Tol, leaping out of cover like Segumund's ghost and nearly sending the High Holy direct to his maker via heart attack.

         'Father Tol!' gasped Pusp, in horror, 'what a pleasure!' Pusp was straining, even with his two carriers. It seemed gravity had him in a brutal grip, and was trying to drag him back down the hill. Sweat soaked his collar and beaded on the rolls of his unhealthy flesh.

         'Your Serenity' said Tol, 'they told me you had left the Corrillian and were going to the citadel. How fortunate that I have this opportunity to speak to you, in a rare interval in your busy schedule.'

         'Perhaps, you could wait a short while-' panted Pusp, 'and we can-'

         'Unfortunately, I return to the district today, and the matter is pressing' said Tol. The High Holy looked like he was fearing a seizure and the ground was barely beginning to rise. As they got to the gate, Pusp would be in such misery as to agree to anything to get Tol's voice out of his ears. Pusp waved his acquiescence, miserably, and Tol fell in besides him.

         'As you might know, the Red River district and regions north of the dike have been plagued, in the recent year, by a chain of unsettling events. The problem, your Serenity is, frankly, witches. There is one old woman who is a known sorcerer, and yet she is unarrested, and flaunts the priests daily. Numerous others, of similar repute, have taken up residence, some even in the townships themselves. The people rely on these old women and cunning men for medicine and succour, going to them for folk remedies which frequently cross over into open magic. The church took a great leap here, in the aftermath of the Serpent Queen's assault. There was a national revulsion for vile congress and the empty promises of the devil. The wizards and charm dealers were thrown out, but we are now losing this ground because of the drift in central authority. The capitol and the south prospers while the northern regions languish. We send out tithes inward and what comes back? Promises.'

         'You must preach harder, father Tol' panted Pusp. 'The straight way is steep, and suffering in its cause is just in the eyes of God.'

         'That's all very well, but try telling that to a woman with a sick child. When the church shuts its door on these people they go to the 'wise' woman. if the capitol were to release funds to hire doctors, or give more succor to the poor-'

         'One cannot buy salvation.'

         'I notice one can buy a lot of other things. '

This flippancy was a little too close to insubordination. Construction of the great temple had absorbed enough wealth to pay a thousand doctors. Pusp gave the priest a look, finding his face, however, guileless and humble.

         'These are the superstitions of simple people,' said Pusp, trying to sound unconcerned and dismissive though his laboured breathing. ' Devils jumping out of dirt circles, witches flying on wooden rails, does any of this seem plausible to you? Have you yourselves seen such phenomena?'

         'No, because the events cease when authorities arrive. Whoever is behind this, and I think it is organized, is clever enough to not attack the church directly. They fade away at our approach, making us out fools. We are blind and we need specialists help to uproot this conspiracy. And we need political pressure on the local aristocracy. The laws are useless without a will to enforce them. These areas are controlled by local strongmen, some of which are half-pagan. In areas where the chieftains are pious there is good suppression but, in most, people worship the true God by day and placate the old ones by night.

         'My friend, this is a delicate time. The King is- ' Pusp hesitated.

         'Is the King in poor health?' asked Tol sharply, like a crow pouncing on some peckable delicacy it had spotted crawling in the grass. The High Holy's eyes bulged with incipient panic.

         'Certainly not!' Pusp puffed, 'His majesty is fully in control of- of- of the situation. He is daily appraised of developments by his councillors and advisors and is involved in all levels of, all levels of, of, of policy. I mean that the King's priorities are first with ensuring the, the- smooth continuance of governmental authority, given the vulgarities of state-' he realised he was babbling, but Toll had a way of staring at you until you dried up.

         'My suggestion is that the temple officially commission a witch finder for Redriver and environs, and empower him with warrants of investigation that the local magistrates will have to enforce. I suggest Vising Chellmort.'

         'He's a mad conraverian!' said Pusp, horrified. 'Isn't he the one who yells at people from street corners and has fits?'

         'He's got zeal' countered Tol, 'that's what's needed.'

         'He'll get stabbed, or hung if he tries that business out there,' said Pusp, thoughtfully, 'God forbid.'

         'There's every chance he will be gloriously martyred,' replied Tol, seeing this was a selling point, 'but such is Brother Chellmort's passion for the Truth.'

         'I think not, father Tol. We have no need for witch finders in this day and age, and that sort of thing antagonizes people. You have the Vigilance Officers. Use them.'

         'The only thing they are vigilant for is an opportunity to profit of their office. It's not a proper ecclesiastical arm, since the temple never took it seriously it has never been staffed with reliable agents. Half of them are fools who would accept a wooden penny to let a grand warlock out of jail. I had to dismiss several for drunkenness and two more for taking money from diviners and card readers. Yet another, upon being dispatched to interrogate a certain Madam Cutt, a notorious local conjurer, was discovered subsequently by bailiffs, naked, and in bed with the subject of his investigation.'

         'Father Tol! Please!'

         'I'm sorry your Serenity, but you must appreciate what we are up against. Cutt is now in the jail at Brem Ciryl, but it is certain that no local will come forward to bear witness against her for fear of her so-called powers. As for the magistrates, none of them want to cross the gentry - who seem to obey or disobey the laws as they like - and quite rightly, knowing that they are not chastised by the authority of the king, although, I'm happily assured, fully appraised of developments. Several officers of the court have been directly threatened themselves. The scion of Frogmort is trapped in his reliquary, each night, by unseen beasts that prowl about his fence, roaring, yet in the day no tracks can be found. One man, a Master Wdelius, a Clerk of the court at Red River, was set upon by invisible assailants and beaten badly.'

         'Invisible assailants?'

         'He was chased all the way from the public house at the junction to the threshold of Bell Mey, nearly dead from his exertions and covered with bruises.'

         'A public house', interjected Pusp, in a desperate attempt at humour, 'did these imps that beset him come out of a wizard's circle or a beer barrel?' But Tol remained grim

         'This is no laughing matter, your High Holiness.'

         'Hearsay!' said Pusp. He stared at the gate. It seemed to be crawling closer by inches in defiance of his efforts. By all that was holy, how long did it take to get to the end of a street? A hundred paces now. No more than that. God grant him strength.

         'I know my congregation, your High Serenity' said Tol. 'They have a number of strange ideas and, not uncommonly, a tangential trajectory to the straight path, but they are not overly burdened with imagination. There are forces abroad, and not just in Red River. We have reports form Ulst and Brisckt too.'

         'Itself perfectly natural. These superstitious scares have a way of, of, um, reinforcing themselves, if you will. Shadows on the wall. You're an educated man, Father, perhaps you have forgotten that a great number of your congregation are not.' Finally, Pusp had come to the gate at the base of the hill. Beyond, ascending in a straight, steep path, flanked by trees and cluttered statuary was the Avenue of tombs.

         'Your Serenity,' replied Father Tol, 'this is the sort of thing that happened at the start of the War of the Serpent Queen. Forgive my frankness, but if some new menace is stirring, does it need to march an army of bog-preserved corpses to the gates of our towns before the authorities take it seriously?'

         'If some new menace is stirring, Father, I, I hardly think it will turn up first at Red River.'

         'Why not? I think your Serenity forgets how uncultivated much of the country still is. There is hardly a road or manor house between our parsony and the mountains. We have wolves in the winter, bear and wild boar in the spinneys. There's hardly a road that doesn't go under in spring and hardly a settlement that -'

         '-doesn't rejoice in the diligent care and piety of our stalwart priesthood' finished a voice, smooth as arsenic in cream. To Tol's genuine astonishment, Malefluent himself had appeared from the shadows on the other side of the gate, flanked by two redleathers. Behind him could be seen citadel servants with a carrying chair. Tol gaped, momentarily too astonished to see Satan's emissary standing in direct sunlight to recover his train of thought. 'Your concerns are well noted, father,' oiled Malefluent, 'but surely you understand that the state has limited resources to divide amongst competing priorities. Since you have alluded to it, I shall be frank with you. The Corrillian is indeed absorbing a vast quantity of resources and will need more to complete, I affirm so without shame. How, you think, can we justify that, with our hardy priesthood labouring against the idolatry and ignorance in the provincial regions?'

         'I-' said Tol, but the High Councillor rolled over him.

         'Well, I'll tell you. This is a war, and, in this great temple, we faithful build a mighty fortress that the dark one will have a hard time uprooting.'

         'Quite right!' affirmed Pusp.

         'You captains of piety,' continued Malefluent, 'despairing at evil's machinations, see the battle from the perspective of the field commander. By necessity, your calculations are those of men fighting day to day for this hilltop or the next, charging and withdrawing. Why, you ask, cannot our command send more men, more armaments and material? Well, because those who's heavy responsibility it is to govern the course of the war must be strategic in their choices. Tactical losses must sometimes be endured so that strategic goals can be attained, as hard as that fact can be to bear to those who cannot see the great plan from the ground. Today, a divergence of funds from the construction of the grand temple might assist you worthy brothers in the service of virtue, but what of tomorrow? And the next year? What, indeed, of the next hundred years? For the general in this war must think in terms of centuries, even as our adversary does. As for your service and sacrifice, certainly no faint thanks of mine will do it justice, but is not your reward in heaven? Is not each bruise and weary sorrow, got here on the profane earth, not another glory reserved for you in the city of God? And you speak of money! As for your congregation, they will not come to virtue through bribery, but in the example you yourselves set. Be glad then, for each hardship, and be glad also for the pillars of this great temple of the true faith, which will stand after we are all dust, a lighthouse above the storm, a bastion against ignorance, sailing from age to age. Be heartened, father. The lives of men are short, but glory is eternal!'

         'Quite right!' said Pusp, again, collapsing, with vast relief, into the palequine chair. 'Lead by example, that's the thing!

         'And for my part', continued Malefluent, 'I think you'll find all this nonsense about witchcraft is just wind and rain when you get right down to it. Behind each bagaboo is little but a sharecropper's tale. Nerves and superstition and things that go bump in the night. Let faith be your shield and your sword, and there is little the devices of the darkness can do, for its threats have no more force than its promises.'

You'd know, thought Tol. 'That's all very well, esteemed Councillor,' he said 'but-'

         'And as for your spirit-beset clerk,' interrupted Malefluent, 'I've no doubt that he, a suggestible soul, as these educated types so often are, bowed by long hours of diligence in the responsibilities of his office, was afflicted by a sudden onset of hysteria, and in that state, became convinced that he was under attack by supernatural forces. No doubt the wild rumours circulating had preyed on his mind and formed the catalyst to his personal crisis, giving rise to a hallucinated army of invisible assailants.' How can hallucinations be invisible?' wondered Toll, but The High Councillor was on a roll. 'I have little doubt, ' he continued, 'that the bruises and abrasions he suffered were sustained in the course of his flight.'

Such was the strangely reasonable music of Malefluent's voice that Tol found it actually swaying his conviction. The truth was that these wild stories, tracked like mud into the genteel presence of lettered men by a rough priest of the country, seemed faint in the light of day, even embarrassing. Witches and ghosts and magic spells.. were they sober people or superstitious peat cutters, muttering over a fire on some marsh island, starting at every noise out in the dark?

         'Of course,' said Tol, bowing humbly. 'Well, thank you Your Serenity, for your patience in indulging my concerns. And you too, High Councillor, for your wise perspective.'

The gate was closing. In a moment, Pusp would be safe from further persecution. He smiled in relief. 'Of course, Father Tol.'

Father Tol's boot stepped out, blocking the gate. 'Only I can't help but think, your High Holyness, that if you could just authorize a witch finder to examine Red River's disturbances, which, as I think we all agree, are a mere figment of public's credulity, it would go a long way in dispelling their fears. I have the commission papers here, your High Holiness. All it requires is your signature.'

         'Father Tol, I hardly carry pen and ink about me-'

         'I have that too, your High Holiness' said Tol and produced a well and quill from his vest. A moment and it is done.'

Pusp stared despairingly sky above Tol's head. If you're real, he thought, to God, kill this man right now. But Tol stood, smiling and offering the papers, unstruck. The sickening glare of early morning was in Pusp's eyes, heating his robes unbearably. The thick air was like struggling through water. He could smell the city, warming up to the full power of its daytime stench, and felt desperate to be away, lofted up the causeway to the cool shadows of the citadel. Anything to rid himself of this turbulent priest. Pusp took the quill and signed.

         'And here, Holy,' said Tol, helpfully. 'Ah thank you. I'll go most swiftly to Redriver to implement your orders.'

         'Go as swiftly as you can, Father Tol,' said Pusp lifting into the air as his chair bearers took up the weight.

         'Thank you, your Serenity' said Tol, 'and please have a care going up the Avenue. You are our moral compass in this far region, it would be a poor lookout for us strivers to have that compass lose its footing and roll down the hill like a Mistral Pudding. These times are complicated enough.'

Pusp gave him a sour look as his chair turned away. Tol stepped back, and the gates, finally, clanged shut. Malefluent gave him a smile, perhaps in recognition of a fellow sadist, and turned to follow the High Holy. As they moved away, Toll thought he saw something strange. In the shadow of the trees, near the upper gate of the Avenue, he saw more men moving, and what looked like carriages, several of them, pulled back into the shade of the tombs.

Tol turned and walked away, sliding the papers into his case. Fortunately, his harried superior had not time to actually read what he was signing, because the commission date was set three days earlier. Tol had already dispatched Chellmort to Red River.

Tol was approaching the dyers and little rows of teahouses that stood, crowded, at the base of the hill, and was almost about to lose sight of the avenue in the general press of the city, when he stopped, suddenly, remembering some things the High Councillor had said. '-as you have already alluded to- ', '-your-spirit-beset clerk..' The priest felt a genuine chill go down his spine. He turned to look back. Pusp and the High Councillor were now small with distance, having nearly attained the upper gate and the base of the causeway. How did Malefluent know what we were talking about?

Malefluent was a political agoraphobe. He never left the Embracarion, ever. Control of it, and the royal family, was the linchpin of his power, he who had no noble name of his own and who was hated and distrusted by all. True, he had only come to the lower gates, but it was still unprecedented. Pusp's carriage was being repaired, the stable manager had said. But it shouldn't have taken more than a few hours to replace a restraining bar.

Why was Pusp in such a panic to get back that he couldn't even wait for a replacement carriage? wondered Tol, his gaze wandering up to the impervious citadel.

There was a wooden clatter nearby as shutters were pushed up onto hooks . A heavy woman, her red hair done up in braids, her sleeves wrapped up over muscular forearms, was opening a teahouse front. Tol saw a great kettle, already brewing and some children hauling out benches.

         'Good morning, my child', said Tol.

         'Oh hello, Fa'ther.'

         'Have you been boiling up early?'

         'Oh yes father, we starts before the sun comes up, mostly. If you'd like a cup, it takes a little longer to come in fully, but you can have one now if you don't mind it.'

         'So you've been out on the street tending the kettle?'

         'Oh yes.'
         'Have you seen any unusual traffic gone up to the citadel this morning? Or come down?'

         'Oh you shouldn't ask Fa'ther. That kind of question makes them people up there think you was a spy. Comings and goings at the citadel are private business. Nobody around here would dare to tell you.'

         'Well I wouldn't want to put you in a difficult pos-'

         'Only damn me, father, if they're weren't less than ten carriages go up! All curtained, and the drivers hooded and all. Not bad gear, very fancy.'

         'To the citadel?'

         'No Fa'ther. They stops at the upper gate, then come back down a little, parked in the trees inside the avenue.'

         'Then someone went up from the carriages, from the gate to the citadel?'

         'I couldn't see, but I suppose they would have to. Them as was in the carriages went up. Their men stayed below.'

         'And that's unusual?'

         'Oh, there's all sorts of grand types as goes up. Last week the Prince came out, to go on his progress, and we all saw him. I shouted, Gord bless you, yer 'ighness, but he didn't hear me. And the servants, of course, they go up and down. But not so many carriages at once, and all before cockcrow when there's hardly a soul about. But like I said, Fa'ther, there's spies about, so don't tell nobody what I did you.'

         'I won't. When did they come back down?'

         'They ain't.'

         'They're still up there?'

         'Yes, the carriages are parked up the avenue, in the trees. And that's not all.'

         'No?'

         'No, last night all the staff and servants from the citadel came down. And they haven't been back. The whole palace must be empty. What do you make of that?'

         'What indeed.' said Tol, staring up at the soaring mass of the citadel. 'Did any of them say anything?'

         'They don't talk,' replied the tea woman scornfully. 'In the old days I knew half the people working up there. These days- pah! His people.'

She didn't have to explain who 'he' was. Tol knew.

         'Well, thank you very much.'

         'Bless you Father, I've got a canker that's the murder of me. If you could say a word for it over the altar I'd appreciate it. Tell him it's Mecyrth Jolourt who's got it,' she added, on the chance the almighty needed a name to dispense a cure to the correct recipient.

         'I will,' said Tol, not wanting to get into a discussion about the errors in Mrs Jolourt's theology. 'God bless you.'

Tol walked into the long side streets that ringed the rise. The hill, once the first site of settlement, had been a graveyard since time before memory, a city of tombs, many ancient and overgrown, their inscriptions bearing the names of the cities grandest families, their pride eroded by time and weather until none could read their inscriptions or remember who or what they'd been. A high fence surrounded it. The only way to get in, or to ascend to the base of the causeway, was by the main gate at the Avenue of Tombs, now barred against him.

Tol walked. Here, many sundry traders in textiles, dyer yards and tailors pressed their narrow shops into rows along the streets, creating a secondary ring around the graveyard's border. Tol worked uphill and a little back to his right, trying to find the base the cemetery rise where it met the street. Finally, he found a narrow alley, cluttered and stinking with refuse, he was able to edge along, until he found iron bars blocking his progress. He'd arrived at the great, wrought-iron fence, ancient and verdigris. On the other side, a pressing undergrowth of sage and green holly and the standing slabs of ancient graves.

Tol heard the liquid chatter of falling water. Deep in the green gloom, he saw the shape of the huge, brick-walled reservoir Cutburt had built at the start of his rein. It was fed by the stream that flowed constantly from the gates of the citadel, down a channel that ran with the causeway and the side of the avenue of tombs. There had always been a pool built there to collect it, but Cutburt had destroyed it to found a much greater one, a brick cistern raised on timber struts, feeding a dozen wooden water channels that ran over the rooftops, out into the city below. These supplied public taps and fonts all around the city, making a much more effective use of the peculiar asset than previous generations had managed.

Tol wondered if he could climb to rooftop level and then walk over the fence on one of these. He'd break his neck, probably, and besides, would be visible from the street, so he turned his attention back to the fence. Tall and grand as the wrought iron was, it was too battered by time, and the effrontery of the city on its flanks, not to have its failings and Tol thought he knew exactly who to ask about it. Returning to the main street, he assessed a likely candidate, then reached out an collar a dirty-faced boy of about ten and haul him up short.

         'What's all this I heard from your mother about you and your friends sneaking into the tombs?'

         'What! I never father, that's a lie!'

         'Then why did your friend say you did?

         'He's a liar! He was the one that wanted to go in, I only went in a little bit! That Olpie Bicklmath is a liar and all them Biklmaths are liars, and drunks, and my auntie says they aren't worth what it would cost to haul them to the city wall and throw them out with the rest of the trash.'

         'Why'd he do it?

         'He wanted to impress a girl,' replied the boy, his face showing disgust at the idiocy of such a motive, 'but I tol' him it was full of ghosts. He said of course it's full of ghosts, but they was in their houses during the day. So he said I was scairt, and I said I wasn't, and I said I'd do it even at night. And he said he'd do it too, at night, easy, he said, and I said he wudn't, so then we both had to.' He shivered.

         'Show me where you two miscreants entered the cemetery and I'll tell the authorities it was this Bicklmath child who was the ringleader. He seems a notorious local character, in any case, so if anyone has to take the blame, it might as well be him.'

In a few minutes, his informant had led him down two narrow allotment streets stacked with junk and loose timber, hopping across a little sewer, and to an overgrown length of space between the fence and the walls of the buildings. The indifferent, windowless backs of the row- houses blocked them from the street. The overgrowth pressed through the bars and crowded the space between the fence and the houses, forcing them to press the greenery aside to get along it.

         'There, Fa'ther ', said the lad, 'the bar is loose in the stone, see? You can just pull it out and get through.'

         'Well done' said Tol. 'I'll see to it that this is repaired immediately. Virtue is its own reward, my lad, but here is a penny for your alacrity in impeaching your peers. Now, off you go.'

The urchin disappeared gratefully. Tol, after a quick look about, pulled the bar loose and squeezed through the gap, replacing it behind him, and was inside the fence, hidden in the shadows of the undergrowth, feeling absurdly pleased by his own resourcefulness. From here, Tol could see that the tombs that climbed the hill to the base of the citadel rock were tremendously old. Several had trees growing through of them and were so covered by ivy and holly that they were nearly invisible. No one would see him creep up the hill to have a look at the carriages. They were likely to have some sort of identifying heraldry on them, or else he might recognise one of their mysterious owners when they descended. Spies, the cart man had said. The teahouse woman had used the word too. Strange that the powers that be should get so preoccupied with spying, just as he was planning to do some, but then, suspicion invited suspicion.

There was something going on, and nothing on earth would please Tol more than finding out what it was.