Norvis shrugged. "For that, Aged Grandfather, I am sorry."
"I know." Suddenly, the priest put his finger to his lips and winked. "I'd like to have you take a look at this," he said.
He rose and tiptoed to the door, his blue robes gathered up with one hand so they wouldn't rustle. He winked again.
Norvis caught the meaning of the gesture and said, "Very interesting, Grandfather. Very interesting. May I look at it again?"
The priest paused at the door for a moment, then jerked it open suddenly. The acolyte who had been listening at the hinge crack nearly fell inward. He regained his balance just in time, after a half-stagger, and his golden facial hair was suffused with a pink glow of embarrassment from beneath.
"You were told to go about your duties, Gyls peDorf," the priest said sternly. "You disobeyed."
"Yes, Grandfather." The acolyte shrank in on himself in an agony of humiliation. An unsuccessful eavesdropper, Norvis reflected, is a pitiful sight.
"Having disobeyed my order, you must take your punishment. Go to your cell; fast and pray for the next three days. Go, Gyls peDorf."
The acolyte took off down the hall as though all the demons of the Outer Darkness were after him— which, of course, might well have been the case.
Chuckling to himself, the Grand-father closed the door again and returned to his desk. "Thank you, my son; you have a quick wit. My staff is loyal—too loyal, sometimes, I fear. But no one will hear us now."
Norvis gave the priest a half-smile. The cleric had something on his mind; that much was obvious. Ever since he had received the invitation to the Grandfather's office, he had been wondering what it was that perturbed the old priest.
"My son," he began, "it is more than fourteen years since a man has been stoned for blasphemy on Nidor. Before that, no man had been punished thus for over two centuries. You may recall the case. It took place in Holy Gelusar itself, and the man stoned was Norvis peRahn Brajjyd, the grandson of Grandfather Kiv peGanz Brajjyd, the present leader of the Council of Elders."
"I recall," Norvis said, trying to keep his voice calm. Did the priest know? Did he know that the man he was talking to was that very Norvis peRahn Brajjyd, the boy who presumably had been stoned to death the year before the Great Depression began?
"Before that instance," the Grandfather went on implacably, "no one had been stoned because there was no blasphemy—or, at least, none in public. There has been no one stoned since because blasphemy has become almost commonplace. We live in wicked times, my son."
"I quite agree, Grandfather." What's the old man getting at?
Grandfather Marn peFulda said: "We have a problem here, Norvis peKrin. I'll put it bluntly. The Leader of your Merchants' Party— Del peFenn Vyless—is a troublemaker. Ever since the robbery of the Bank of Dimay, he has been implying that we—the priesthood—are behind it."
"You must forgive Del, Grandfather," Norvis said quickly.} "He preaches against the Council of Elders, true—but remember, he is a sailor, and seamen are likely to become acerbic at times."
Marn peFulda shook his. head. "That's not the point, my son. I don't disagree with, what you have to say. I, too, think that the Earthmen are ... ah ... a disturbing influence on Nidorian culture, I would ... ahem ... like to see any such influences removed. But I don't think destroying our Government is the way to do it."
Norvis felt a slight shock. The thought that any of the priesthood would agree with the Merchants' Party program, would have any point of tangency whatsoever, was, to say the least, unusual.
He leaned back in his chair, stroking the downy fuzz on his check. "I don't think I quite follow you, Grandfather."
The Priest-Mayor looked worried and thoughtful. His face seemed somehow gaunt, and the silver of his facial hair looked oddly gray. Moving slowly, deliberately, he leaned across his desk toward Norvis. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper.
"I want to tell you something, my son. I don't want you to interrupt, because, if you do, I may not be able to finish what I have to say. I will speak to you as though we were of the same age, as though there were no difference between us. Forget that I am a priest; remember only that I am a Nidorian."
Norvis nodded. "I will listen, Marn peFulda."
He had not used the formal manner of address, and the priest looked just a trifle surprised for a second? Then he smiled bleakly.
"Thank you, Norvis peKrin. I know that what I say will not go beyond you—but if it does, I will refute it."
"You need have no fear, Marn peFulda." For the second time, Norvis used the familiar address.
"Very Well, then. And, as I said, no interruptions." He took a deep breath, but his voice was still low when he spoke.
"The Council of Elders is blind. When the Great Light told us our duties, immediately after the Cataclysm, he spoke through the great Lawyer Bel-rogas." Marn peFulda tapped the Book of Scripture on his desk. "It is all here, and we cannot disbelieve His Word.
"But Bel-rogas warned us that the Great Light had also spoken of the Great Darkness."
Norvis said nothing. The mention of the Great Darkness was well known, but no one paid any attention to it any more. Norvis, whose theological studies at the Bel-rogas School of Divine Law had been abruptly interrupted, two decades before, by a trumped-up expulsion arranged by the Earthmen, had little love for theology in any event.
"The Great Darkness, according, to Bel-rogas, is the antithesis of the Great Light," the Grandfather said. "It is a being whom the Great Light created as a counterbalance to Himself.
"Of late, we have come to discount the power of the Great Darkness. We have come to think of him as merely a natural phenomenon, as an absence of the Great Light. Through four thousand years of history, we have seen that when night comes there is nothing to fear. The Great Light is not shining upon us at night, but we do not find in darkness a negation of light, merely the absence of light." He paused dramatically, and his voice took on urgent undertones.
"But I tell you that the Great Darkness is a living being, as alive and ambitious as you or I! Through forty centuries, he has remained silent, not obtruding himself upon us, waiting until we no longer believed in him as a personality. And now, his time has come. He is here, among us; he has sent his minions to corrupt our priesthood, our Council, our lives, and the Way of our Ancestors.
"We of Nidor have traveled in the right path, we have moved in the Way of the Light. Why? Because we dared not follow the Darker Path? No. We moved in the Way of the Light because we knew no other way. The Great Darkness had not tempted us from that Way. But now now we have been invited to try the path of Darkness." He paused again and looked questioningly at Norvis. "How do you feel about this?"
"You may be right, Grand fa ... Marn peFulda. But how do we know that one Path is better than the other?"
The priest looked scornful. "Is it better to walk in the light of day, where one can see where one is going, where one can see one's goal, or is it better to walk during the night, when one cannot see what lies ahead of him, when his goal is obscured in blackness?"
Norvis shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He could see what argument the Grandfather was driving toward, but he wasn't quite sure he wanted to agree with it on theological grounds. "Where are you heading, Grandfa ... Marn peFulda?"
"Just this: it is obvious from the history of the past century that we have been diverted from the Way of our Ancestors. And I say that it is the Earthmen who have done this! The Earthmen who came among us and built their School, up in Holy Gelusar, supposedly to teach the Law. A stream of wickedness has come from the School under the guise of Light. The School has changed our world—taking our best minds, twisting them, filling them with words of the Earthmen. The Earthmen are the minions of the Great Darkness!"