“You figured out my movements so easily,” I pointed out, “I wonder why Artur hasn’t?”
“Oh, I’m sure the thought crossed his mind,” Bronz replied cheerily. “I’ve been getting a careful inspection from some of those flyers, and a fellow by here earlier gave me your description and told me how to report you. I wouldn’t worry, though. I’m one of them, son! To them I’m an old friend of the Duke’s, a familiar old face. It might occur to them that you’d seek me out, but it would never occur to them that I wouldn’t immediately fry your gizzard or turn you in.”
I sipped the tea. “But you’re not?”
“Of course not,” he replied, sounding a bit miffed.
“Would I have gone to all this trouble if I were? No, my son, in this bastion of the most primitive age of man on old Earth I’m reviving a two-thousand-year-old church custom for you! It’s called sanctuary. Back in ancient times, on our ancestral planet, the church was a power unto itself, a political power with a lot of force and clout, yet separate from the temporal powers because we owed our allegiance not to kings but to God. Political criminals in particular, but really anybody who was being chased, could run into a church or cathedral and claim sanctuary, and the church, would protect that person from temporal retribution. Well, you’re asking for sanctuary, and how can I, as a Christian, turn you down? I’ve had it up to here with this godless tyranny anyway. And besides,” he added with a wink and a smile, “I’ve been bored to tears for ten years.”
I laughed and finished my tea, whereupon he poured me more.
“Now, then,” he said, settling back once more, “just what do you want to do?”
“I want to restore Ti, of course,” I responded, “but beyond that, I want to complete my treatments and training. They said I was at least Master class, and I want to reach that level badly. I want the opportunity to go as far as I can with the Warden power.”
He nodded. “That’s reasonable. And the fact that you put Ti first—that in fact you vastly complicated your escape to get her out—is a real mark in your favor. But suppose I can get you to Moab Keep, to that crazy group down there, and you get all the power you can. Suppose you become a Master plus —Knight level, maybe. Then what?”
“Well …” I thought about his question, which was a fan- one. Just what did I want to do? “I think, one day, if I have the power, I’d like to go back to Zeis Keep and take it for my own. Then—well, we’ll see.”
He chuckled. “So you have designs on a knighthood, huh? Well, maybe you’ll make it, Cal. Maybe you will… Still, first things first we have to get you to help, we have to get Ti to help, and then somehow we have to get you down to Moab.”
I nodded, looking serious and feeling worse. It was all well and good to spout dreams, but the reality was a naked and mud-caked man sipping tea beside a small fire.
’Til have to put in my appearance ahead, as I mentioned,” Father Bronz said. “I’ve got a little extra here and you should be fairly comfortable for a couple of days. I figure if you can avoid all the traps and patrols to get this far, you certainly can just lie low.”
“And then what?” I pressed, not liking to be so out of control of things and feeling a little helpless.
He grinned. “Once I reach the Keep I can pull a favor or two, send a little message to certain parties. I’ll work out a rendezvous and we can take it from there.”
“Certain parties? I thought this bound-up world wouldn’t stand a resistance.”
“Oh, they’re not anything of the kind,” he replied. “No, indeed. They’re savages.”
Chapter Fifteen
A Dialogue
Two days, longer and worse on the nerves than any since I’d started this trip, I spent doing absolutely nothing near where I’d originally discovered Father, Bronz. I certainly trusted the odd priest far more than I had at the beginning. Not only did I have little choice in the matter, but if I hadn’t seen Artur’s grim face by this point, then Bronz wouldn’t be the one to torn me in. Now the anxiety was mostly that something would happen to him before he could aid me.
I needn’t have worried, though. Bronz held a position on Lilith that, though perhaps not unique, was enviable in the extreme. He went where he wanted and did what he wanted without being answerable to anyone, not even to his church superiors. As a well-known face among the keeps, he was always welcomed and never threatened. As a friend of the Duke and most of the more powerful knights in the east-central region of Lilith’s single enormous continent, he was unlikely to be touched even by the most powerful psychopaths, since they, too, respected those more powerful than themselves. The price of all this, though, was that, though a Master himself, Bronz was simply not a threat to anybody else’s position. As a priest, he seemed sincerely to care for the downtrodden, seeing his role in life as one of the very rare bridges between the elites in their castles and manor houses and the pawns condemned to eternal serfdom. His message of an all-powerful being who promised a heavenly life in the Hereafter to those who were good in this life appealed to the ruling classes, as a major official religion always appealed to such groups. And yet his faith, no matter how wrong or misplaced it might be, was the only rock of sanity for the pawns, their only hope. They suffered under the ultimate tyranny on Lilith: the ruling class was revolution-proof because the masses were born without the ability to use the Warden power.
Bronz returned late in the evening of the second day, looking very tired but satisfied. “All set,” he told me. “We’ll have to do some traveling, though. Our rendezvous is about two days’ ride from here, and that’s exactly how long we have in which to make it It’s pretty hairy with the patrols right now, and they won’t wait. Let’s get going.”
“Now?” I responded, feeling a little rushed after two days of marking time. “It’s almost dark, and you look all in. I don’t want to lose you—not now.”
He grinned feebly. “Yes, now. I have some straw and my bedding, so we’ll be able to hide Ti and, with some difficulty, your giant frame. But you’re right—I am dead tired after doing five days’ ministry in two as well as the usual politicking. That’s why we go now. You can do the driving while I get a little sleep.”
I was startled. “Me? But you drive these damned things by talking to them, Warden-stylet I can’t do that!”
“Oh, Sheeba’s a nice big bugger, she is,” Bronz responded casually. “She doesn’t need any kick in the pants, and once we get to the split down here a ways there aren’t any turnoffs we need concern ourselves with for thirty kilometers or more, so she’ll just plod right along.”
“Why do you even need me, then?” I asked, still apprehensive.
“To stand guard, to wake me if there’s any trouble, and if we are stopped by a patrol, to run like hell—but loudly.”
And it was as simple as that. The huge beetle like creature Father Bronz called Sheeba was as docile and plodding as he said and kept right to the road. The worst problem I had, other than contending with the priest’s snores, was seeing every kind of terrible threat in the shadows. Twice I woke Bronz, convinced I’d seen something large shadowing us, once from the side of the road, once from the air. But after the second, his patience wore thin. “Grow up and be a big boy, Tremon. You’re much too old to be scared of the dark. Listen for the bugs, boy. As long as you can hear the bugs there’s nobody around.”