The Heretic of Ugvar-Zad

5 minutes

General Audience

“They’ll be over the mountains within an hour,” said the warrior, hand unconsciously clenching and unclenching the long, black-pommeled sword that hung from his side.

The high cleric of Ugvar-Zad did not hurry. He leaned back into his throne, quite at ease.

“There’s still time to reconsider,” he said. “To choose trust over hate.”

The warrior’s face, already forever set according to the mold of the visor he wore into battle, did not flinch now.

“Trust is given where it is merited,” he said.

The high cleric smiled. He’d perfected that smile. Smooth words, and sweet gestures; these were the tools of his trade. But they deflected off the man of war like drops of water rolling down glass.

“There’s still a place for you here, Khal-Díd,” said the cleric, glancing beyond him to the warrior-wives and armed children in his train. “No need for you to abandon what you love.”

Khal-Díd’s eyes imperceptibly narrowed. He showed emotion without movement, as if his body did not feel, only pronounced sentence.

“What I loved has been given away, High Cleric,” said the warrior. “Whom I love, I take with me.”

The cleric frowned just a little. He’d meant to say “surrender,” not “abandon.” He thought little miscalculations like that made all the difference. It was an unfortunate choice words; that was all.

“How will you be persuaded to stay?” asked the high cleric, still making the departure hypothetical. “Of what can I assure you? It pains me that my lack own lack of eloquence should be the cause of your future misery.”

The warrior smiled grimly. “Custom required we come when summoned,” he said. “So long as we remained in your diocese. But my people are in the shuttles. We are leaving now.”

He bowed, as if bowing pained him, then turned to go, but not before casting a sympathetic look toward the two guards who flanked the high cleric, men who by lot were duty-bound to stay. The assembly of fighting men turned with him in unison, and marched toward the high arch at the far side of the temple.

The high cleric looked past them, through the great crystal windows, seeing the sky go red from the film that the Grenghi Kull had poured into atmosphere of Ugvar-Zad so that they could live under it. Surely they had come in peace. It would have been wrong to fight them. There had already been too much war. And the great Kull himself had sat with the high cleric; parlayed with him. They were, both of them, eloquent men. Then, for an instant, a white shaft of light pierced through the red, and seemed to land directly on the high cleric. In that contrast, he felt sudden panic, and stood.

“Khal-Díd!” he cried, “Will you abandon your ancestral home? Will you, great warrior, surrender?”

Khal-Díd, last man out of the room, stopped, and turned slowly. From this distance, he was only a silhouette, but a formidable one.

“It was not I who surrendered, High Cleric,” he said.

He did not yell, but his voice carried across the stone floor. The high cleric strained for something to say to that. Khal-Díd turned back, and walked through the archway.

There was silence in the throne room. The high cleric retook his seat. The other clergy wrung their hands, and looked hopefully, one toward another, as if the reassure each other. But the two duty-bound knights gripped their golden spears, and stared grim-faced into the dark masonry at their feet.

Off in the distance, there was a sound of engines firing, and the cleric watched the arks depart, one after another through the crystal windows, until there was only silence. Silence in the temple, and a waiting silence for those who remained on Ugvar-Zad. The high cleric had never done well with silence. He squirmed, needing to pontificate,

“Such an unfortunate choice,” he said, glancing around. “And not, I think, one that becomes them.”

There was no response from his hall of admirers, so he continued.

“Diplomacy,” he intoned. “Trust extended, and received. That is the key to a brighter future.”

But the sky shone red through the windows, and the high cleric looked through them, toward the distant mountains where now, like silent spiders, the Grenghi Kull came over the mountains underneath a red sky.

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