As the old tale unfolded Erb Skonarij, watching from the seat of privilege that was his by virtue of his decades as the village’s keeper of the calendars, felt a sudden searing pain within his skull, as though a band of hot iron had been clamped around his brain.
It was a fearful sensation. He had never known such pain.
He began to think that the hour of his death had come at last. But then, as it went on and on without surcease, the thought came to him that perhaps he would not die, that he would simply be forced to suffer like this forever.
And it was, he realized after a time, an agony not of the body, but of the spirit.
Something was striking a knife into his soul. Something was whipping his innermost self with a whip of fire. Something was hammering at the substance of his being with a massive jagged boulder.
He was the sinner. He had brought the fury of the demons down upon the village. He, he, he, the keeper of the calendars, the guardian of the ceremonies: he had failed in his task, he had violated his trust, he had betrayed those who depended on him, and unless he confessed his guilt right here and now the entire village would suffer for his iniquities.
Rising from his place of honor, he came tottering forward into the center of the stage.
“Stop!” he cried. “I am the one! I must be punished! For me, the flails! For me, the whips! Drive me out! Cast me from your midst!”
The music died away in a confusion of discordance. The humming of the choristers ceased. The storyteller’s cadenced voice cut off in mid-phrase. They were all staring at him. Erb Skonarij looked out into the audience and saw the wide bewildered eyes too, the open mouths.
The throbbing in his skull was unrelenting. It was splitting him apart.
Someone’s hand was around his arm. A voice close by his right ear-membrane said, “You must sit down, old man. The ceremony will be spoiled. You of all people—”
“No!” Erb Skonarij pulled himself free. “I am the one! I bring the demons!” He pointed toward the storyteller, who was gaping at him in amazement and fright. “Tell it! Tell it! The treason of the calendar-keeper, tell it! Set me free, will you? Set us all free! I can no longer bear the pain!”
Why would they not listen to him?
A desperate lurch brought him up before the two demons, the Rangda Geyak, the Tjal Goring Geyak. They had halted now in their dance. Erb Skonarij scooped up the flails that they were meant to use at the climax of the ceremony and thrust them into their hands.
“Beat me! Whip me! Drive me out!”
The two masked figures still stood motionless. Erb Skonarij pressed his hands to his pounding forehead. The pain, the pain! Did no one understand? They were in the presence of real sin: they must expel it from the village, and all would suffer, he most of all, until it was done. But no one would move. No one.
He uttered a muffled cry of despair and rushed toward the roaring bonfire. This was wrong, he knew. The sinner must not punish himself. He must be forced from their midst by the united effort of all the villagers, or the exorcism would have no value to the village. But they would not do it; and he could no longer bear the pain, let alone the shame or the grief.
He was amazed at how soothing the warmth of those flames was. Hands clutched at him, but he knocked them aside. The fire… the fire… it sang to him of forgiveness and peace.
He cast himself in.
2
Mandralisca lifted the helmet from his head. Khaymak Barjazid sat facing him, watching him avidly. Jacomin Halefice stood near the door of Mandralisca’s chamber, with the Lord Gaviral beside him. Mandralisca shook his head, blinked a couple of times, rubbed the center of his brow with his fingertips. There was a ringing in his ears, a tightness in his chest.
For a time no one spoke, until at last Barjazid said, “Well, your grace? What was it like?”
“A powerful experience. How long did I have the thing on?”
“Fifteen seconds or so. Perhaps half a minute at most.”
“That’s all,” Mandralisca said, idly fondling the smooth metal mesh. “Strange. It seemed like a much, much longer time.” The sensations that had just gone coursing through him still reverberated in his spirit. He realized that he had not yet entirely returned from his journey.
In the immediate aftermath of the experiment an odd jangling restlessness gripped him. Every nerve was sensitized. He felt the beating of the hot sun against the walls of the building, heard the whistling of the desert wind across the plain of pungatans far below, had an oppressive sense of the thick musky atmosphere of the air about him in here.
Rising, he roved the perimeter of the circular room, cruising it like some caged beast. Halefice and even Gaviral stepped to the side, scuttling out of his way as he strode past the place where they were standing. Mandralisca barely noticed them. To his mind in its currently elevated state they seemed like nothing more than little scurrying animals to him, droles, mintuns, hiktigans, unimportant creatures of the forest. Insects, even. Mere insects.
He had gone down into that little metal helmet, somehow. His entire mind had entered it; and then, in a way he could not begin to comprehend, he had been able to hurl himself outward, like a burning spear soaring through the sky—
Barjazid said, “Do you have any idea how far you went, or where?”
“No. Not at all.” How curious to be holding a conversation with an insect. But he forced himself to pay attention to Barjazid’s query. “I perceived it as a considerable distance, but for all I know it was no farther than the city on the other side of the river.”
“It was probably much farther, your grace. The reach is infinite, you know: there’s no more effort involved in reaching Alaisor or Tolaghai or Piliplok than there is in going next door. It’s the directionality that we can’t control. Not yet, anyway.”
“Could it reach the Castle, do you think?” asked the Lord Gaviral.
“As I have just told his grace the Count Mandralisca,” Barjazid said, “the reach is infinite.” Mandralisca noticed that Barjazid had already learned to be extremely patient with Gaviral. That was a very good idea, when dealing with someone who is very stupid but who has a great deal of power over you.
“So we could reach out with it and hit Prestimion, then?” asked Gaviral avidly. “Or Dekkeret?”
“We might, in time,” Barjazid replied. “As I have also just observed, we do not yet have real directionality. We can only strike randomly thus far.”
“But eventually,” Gaviral said. “Oh, yes, eventually—!”
It was all that Mandralisca could do to keep himself from cutting Gaviral down with some contemptuous remark. Reach out and hit Prestimion? The fool. The fool. That was the last thing they wanted to do. The boy Thastain had a shrewder grip of political strategy than any of these five brainless brothers. But this was not the moment to foment a breach with one of the men who were, at least in theory, his masters.
He considered what Barjazid’s helmet had just allowed him to accomplish. That was more interesting to him than anything these people might have to say.