He sat back and let the somnolent lollop of the lox lull him into slumber, as the cart left the town and took the elevated lane through fields of golden yail.
“Yarrek Merwell, your stop!”
The cry of the lox jockey yanked him from sleep. He hauled himself upright and jumped from the coach. As the lox were prodded into motion, farting and lowing in protest, Yarrek stood at the end of the path and stared out over the land that was his father’s, and which in time would be passed on to Yarrek’s elder brother, Jarrel, as was the tradition among the farmers of the central plains.
The Merwell estate stretched for as far as the eye could see, a vast golden patchwork of yail fields in various stages of ripeness. Ahead, like a galleon becalmed, stood his family’s ramshackle farmhouse. The timber had been parched by the sun for countless cycles, warped cruelly by the merciless heat that prevailed this close to the Hub. For all its ugliness, a part of him loved the place. He would find leaving it, and his family, more difficult than he cared to admit.
There was a time, in his youth, when he resented the fact that his brother would inherit the farm, that he would have to practise a profession other than that of a farmer. But, as the cycles passed and he grew older and wiser, he came to thank the tradition that would force him to leave home and fend for himself.
He set off along the path, brushing against the yail plants and knocking from them the intense fragrance of pollen. He passed a threshing platform, with its troupe of labourers led by Jarrel.
His brother smiled down at him, called him a lazy lox as always, and added, “Hurry, can’t you! The folks are wearing their Blacks.”
He stopped and stared up at Jarrel. “Their Blacks? So soon?”
“You graduated, didn’t you? Your future needs discussing.”
Yarrek hurried home. Tradition among the farming caste had it that discussion of matters of destiny between parents and children necessitated the wearing of black gowns. It was a ritual of the Church that Yarrek took for granted, despite his friend Yancy’s irreverent ridiculing of religious orthodoxy.
He had foreseen his parents’ wearing of their Blacks, but had assumed they would leave it a brightening or two before they broached the subject of his future.
He took a jug of yail juice from the cooler, slaking his thirst. His mother and father would be on the Edgeward deck, as ritual decreed. He made his way up the two narrow flight of stairs to the third floor and paused on the threshold of the deck, nervous now that the time had come to tell his parents of his plans to enter the offices of an architectural firm in the capital, Hub City.
They had their backs to him, staring out over the flat central plains towards the mountains of the Edge — though the Edge was so distant that it could not be seen by the naked eye. It was an act of obeisance they performed every dimming, this turning towards the Edge — and one which Yarrek too, despite Yancy’s joshing, often found himself performing, albeit cursorily.
They had heard his creaking progress through the house, and his father gestured for him to step between them and sit on the stool positioned before the rail.
Solemnly, he did so.
They were grave-faced, unsmiling. His father was fingering his Circle of Office: he was a part-time pastor of the Church and he took his duties seriously.
“Son,” he said in greeting.
His mother said, without smiling, “We have heard. Congratulations. A second grade. No Merwell for five generations has attained better than a third.”
His parents had always been distant. They were loving in a remote, stern kind of way, solicitous for the welfare of their sons, but wary of showing emotion, still less anything so exhibitionist as physical affection.
Unlike Yancy’s parents, Yarrek thought, who showered the girl with such gestures of love that he found their displays embarrassing, not to say impious. But then Yancy’s folks were from the Hub, where tradition was lax.
“The time has come,” his father said, “to speak of what lies ahead. For so long now the future was college, and the attaining of success in your studies. Now that you have achieved more than we could ever have hoped, together we take the next step.”
Yarrek swallowed nervously. “I have considered my future,” he said. “I thought perhaps… well, I’d like to study to become an architect.”
Silence greeted his words. His father’s grim expression did not waver; his thin face might have been carved from wood.
His mother said, “Of course you have dreamed, Yarrek. Such boyish fancies are to be expected, and are excusable. But as the Church says, one’s destiny is often beyond the scope of the individuaclass="underline" there comes a time when the experience of Elders must shape the course of disciples.”
Yarrek bowed his head. “My plans are more than dreams, mother. I’ve heard that architectural offices in the Hub are crying out for skilled draftsmen–”
“Yarrek,” his father said, in a tone that stopped him dead. “Hub City is a den of vice, the playground of the heathen. No son of mine will venture there.”
“But,” Yarrek said, resenting the note of desperation in that single word, “you know yourself that I am pious. I attend regular church. Why, to deny me the right to go to Hub City suggests that you think me weak, your instructions insufficient.”
His mother stared at him. “My son, we of flesh are forever weak. Do you not consort with the daughter of the Garrishes?”
“Yancy is a friend,” he began, angry at the disdain his mother had loaded onto the word consort.
“She is the product of the Hub,” said his mother, “and the thought of your being surrounded by crowds of such people…”
Yarrek stared from his father to his mother. “Then where else might I study to become an architect?”
His mother allowed herself a minimal smile.
His father said, “Tomorrow at mid-brightness you will take the sail-rail Edgeward to Icefast.”
He echoed, “Icefast,” in horror. The very name of the city filled him with cold dread. The sun would be distant there; the outside temperature intolerable without layers of protective garments; his shadow eerily long.
“And there I can study–?” Yarrek began.
His father said, “It has been arranged for you to sit an entrance examination for the office of the Inquisitor General.”
His mother allowed another smile to crack her features: she could not conceal her pride. His father’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
Icefast and the Inquisitor’s office? His parents’ plans for him were so contrary to his own that Yarrek was unable to grasp his sudden change of destiny. He thought of Yancy, and wanted nothing so much then as the consolation of her arms around him.
“I have no say in the matter?” he asked.
His father reached out and, with a hand as strong as a bailing iron, gripped Yarrek’s upper arm. “It is an honour to be so chosen, as you will come to appreciate.”
Yarrek bowed his head and whispered, “I’ve heard that the methods of Inquisitors are Draconian.”
His father said, “Since Prelate Zeremy came to office, things have changed. He has curbed the power of the Inquisitors, put an end to their worst excesses. Now they truly are a force for good, instead of being a conflicting schism within the Church itself.”
Yarrek nodded. “May I go to my room?”
“Go,” his mother said, “and pack in preparation for your leave-taking.”
He stood and hurried from the deck, making his way through the cool, dark house, and reached the refuge of his room. There he lay on his bed, too gripped by shock even to cry.
For he knew, even then, that he would do as his parents wished; he knew that Hub City was the dream of a juvenile, that his true destiny was in the ice-fields of the Edge, in the office of the Inquisitor General.