The high priest waited until just the right amount of tension had built among the assembled priests and monks, then strutted into the room with an air of urgent but dignified purpose.
“Silence!” he commanded, then waited until he had their full attention.
“This is the Day of Reckoning to which we have all been called, the Final Battle when Evil has come to our very doorstep. Every trial, from the day you took your vows, has been in preparation for this day, the Ultimate Pruning of the Tree of Life. Your actions today, your ability to inspire and lead the Faithful in this Holy Cause, will go far in establishing your worth when you knock at the Gates of Paradise.”
He scrutinized their faces during a long moment of silence, finally focusing on one. “Brother Bako, are the bundles of sticks ready?”
“Yes, Holy Father, nearly a hundred, and more coming in all the time.”
“And the oil, Brother Muni?”
“Five barrels, as you requested, Holy Father.”
An elderly hand went into the air.
“Brother
Kado?”
“We anticipate far more Faithful willing to carry the wood and oil than we have supplies.”
The high priest considered the situation, and the answer came to him quickly. “Good Brother Kado, these sticks and oil are commissioned by the Church for a Holy Purpose. They are Sacred Weapons in the holiest of Holy
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Wars. It is only right that the Church be supported for its leadership in dispatching the Great Evil that lurks so near. The honor of carrying the first bundles and oil cans to the Beast’s Lair should go to the Faithful who will support the Church with . . . a great silver piece.”
A rumble of amazement rippled through the room.
“The second positions of honor go to those who will give a small silver piece. And finally, whatever’s left over will go for a copper piece.
“Understand!” he boomed, silencing the murmur, “that when I say Church, I mean all three Brotherhoods of the One True God, who are working together in this Supernal Task!”
Now he stood stoically with eyes raised, but let the priests and brothers talk. He knew that no better situation could be contrived by man or God to reunite the three orders . . . under his leadership.
As the sun approached the horizon on that gloomy autumn day, Kibi, Sata, Rini, and Boro had no difficulty leaving the city.
However, the road into the eastern hills looked like an armed encampment. Fires burned and tents were set up for the priests. Firewood was brought in from many directions, broken, bundled, and stacked. On the back of a wagon, small cans and buckets were filled with smelly oil from big wooden barrels.
The four crew members of the Manessa Kwi observed the scene for a few minutes, as did many other people.
“Well . . . at least we know the grassland trails now,” Boro said softly at Kibi’s side.
Soon a crier started moving among the people.
“Let’s listen before we go,” Kibi said.
They found a place to sit near the city wall and focused on the crier’s voice.
The purpose of the firewood and oil was soon clear.
Rini chuckled. “That’s our ticket for the short way home! The bundles are small, not much extra weight.”
Kibi saw his point, but wore a frown.
“We’d learn more about what they’re up to,” Sata pointed out, “and could tell Ilika.”
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Kibi swallowed several times. “It just makes me sick to give them money.”
Rini nodded agreement. “Ilika felt the same when he had to buy us out of slavery.”
Boro could see Kibi weighing the options. “We have the money . . .”
“Okay,” Kibi said with a sigh, “but I think we shouldn’t be in the first group who pay a great silver. Too conspicuous. Nor the last group, ‘cause they might run out.”
The
others
nodded.
“And the stuff we carry does NOT go under the Manessa Kwi. We leave the trail above the lake, dump the stuff, and circle around from the north. It’ll be completely dark by then.”
Boro nodded. “Good idea.”
The sun set just as the Holy Weapons went on sale.
The four shipmates worked their way closer, but waited until everyone who could pay a great silver had done so. There was plenty left for those of lesser means.
The four friends got in line. The boys received bundles of wood, the girls were handed cans of oil.
They soon found that the hardest part was not carrying a little extra weight. It was listening to the priests goading on the people with promises of divine favor if they completed their missions faithfully, warnings of eternal damnation if they failed.
It was, Sata realized, all about fear. Fear the monster. Fear what it might do. Fear it because it was not like them. Fear the priests and the religious orders. Fear God. Fear each other because there might be unfaithful among you.
Rini wondered why this felt so different from the beautiful ritual he had witnessed at the monastery in the mountains. If he ever had to choose, he knew which one he would prefer.
Boro was watching everyone and everything like a hawk. He knew that Kibi was uncomfortable with this option, and that her feelings were, the vast majority of the time, very accurate indicators of what was to come.
As they passed the little farming vale on the road to the hills, Kibi noticed
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that the people who lived there were hiding in their cottages, and that many of their fruit trees and fences had been raided for the wood collecting effort. For a moment, she was sorely tempted to use her bracelet to bring an end to the whole operation, force the priests to give the money they had collected to those they had harmed, and send all of them cowering behind the walls of their orders.
But after a few deep breaths, she remembered that it was not her job, as a crew member of the Manessa Kwi, to undo human follies. It was her job, right now, to get the four of them safely back to the ship.
She took a good look around her at each of her friends, and at the other people nearby, as they began the steep climb over the hills, in the evening twilight, with their silly burdens of wood and oil.
Slowly, bit by bit, Kibi began to slow her pace. With a torch-bearing priest and other people ahead of them, and more people behind, they could not openly discuss their plans.
Kibi noticed a large gap in the line of people below the three men directly behind them. As soon as she heard grumbling from those men about the speed of their march, she stepped off the trail and pretended to be exhausted.
Her friends joined her.
She guessed the priest would quickly investigate if he thought he had slackers, so as soon as the three men passed, she retook the trail.
The priest looked, but seemed satisfied. When he reached the summit, he paused to let all those gather who were counting on his torch light. As they began moving once more, Kibi made sure she and her friends remained at the back of the group.
The long, steep stretch of trail just beyond the summit, on the opposite side of the hill from the fading sunset light, was now utterly dark. Three or four torches spread out along the trail, and a dozen more lit up the area around the little lake.
Nothing but intuition told Kibi it was time to leave the path. She stepped off so quickly and quietly that Rini almost passed her in the darkness, then followed her barely-seen form onto the grassy hillside.
Kibi set down her oil can behind a small bush and held out her hand to
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Rini. He tossed his bundle of sticks and added himself to the chain. Sata came next and cringed when her can rolled a few feet, but no one seemed to hear over the scraping of boots on the steep trail. Boro tossed his sticks and completed the line.
They moved slowly and carefully through the darkness, hand in hand.
About a quarter hour later, their feet found the crest of the next ridge. No word floated up to them that their absence had been noted.
“I think we can talk a little now,” Boro whispered.
“Yes,” Kibi said in a low voice. “Thank you all for following my lead. I’m sorry I couldn’t explain it better before we started.”
“We understand,” Sata assured. “You were great.”
“Nice of them to burn torches around the lake so we can see our destination,” Rini’s voice whispered from the darkness.
Kibi asked sure-footed Sata to lead them down the ridge. Sata felt the way with her boots, more blinded than aided by the torches ahead. Although the slow journey down the dark hillside seemed to take forever, no one complained.
Most of an hour later, the four shadows carefully left the ridge and angled down a slope toward the lake. Its surface reflected the torches of those strutting around. Stern voices in the still night air ordered the stacking of wood in one area, the collection of oil buckets in another.
Finally, with only a stretch of torch-lit grass between them and the ship, Sata looked at Kibi, and she gestured toward a shallow ditch behind some low bushes. They crouched down to watch and listen.
The priests were the only ones approaching the monster with the bundles of wood, and they were obviously afraid for their lives, tossing the sticks from several yards away and running back to the safety of their huddled groups.
The main hatch of the Manessa Kwi was closed and invisible, and the ramp nowhere to be seen.
As the wood under the Dreaded Beast became thick and the supply dwindled, the priests started tossing the cans and buckets of oil into the mix.
Some of the simple monks asked why the Beast made no attempt to move or fight back, but were told to be silent, that it was not their place to question the
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Church’s strategy.
Finally the high priest came forward, surrounded by a semi-circle of priests holding torches. He stopped about twenty feet from the Demon and raised his arms.
“In the name of the One, True, Holy Church, I, as Avatar of God Himself, command you to remove your Filthy Presence from our Sovereign Realm forthwith, or you shall be BURNED and sent back to the Underworld from whence you came!”
Neither Manessa Kwi Habishu Glinta, deep-space response ship of the Nebador Transport Service, nor Ilika Imni Zalara Sim, the captain, were impressed. Neither made any response.
“SO BE IT!” the high priest boomed, grabbed a torch from one of the priests, strode forward, and thrust it into the wood and oil.
As the flames leapt and crackled under their beloved ship, Rini could feel Kibi trembling. “Remember, Kibi, Ilika could fly Manessa away any time he wanted.”
“I know, but I can’t stop worrying. This isn’t right.” Kibi’s whispered voice became broken. “Ilika’s done nothing but be nice to people ever since he came here.”
“No, this isn’t right,” Rini agreed. “I don’t think the people doing it know or care about right and wrong. This is all some kind of show, but I don’t understand it either.”
Kibi’s face revealed an intense struggle. A moment later she whispered,
“All I can think about is storming out there with my bracelet and putting them all to sleep. Boro, you’re in command.”
He nodded and smiled. “Ilika knows we’re here. We wait. Keep your packs on.”
In other circumstances, Ilika might have just sat tight and let the fire burn itself out and the people get bored and go home.
But he had four crew members hiding in the darkness less than a hundred feet away, and he worried that if the priests and the people became too bored, they might take out their frustrations on anyone they could find.
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He decided a bit of a display was in order, and hopefully the rest of his crew would take the opportunity to slip in.
The fire still burned strong and the high priest chanted threats from a safe distance when a new sound was heard by all, a low rushing that reminded them of a powerful wind blowing through a mountain pass.
“Everybody duck down!” Boro whisper-shouted.
A few seconds later a tremendous blast of air shot out in all directions from the bottom of the ship, sending wood, fire, ashes, oil cans, torches, and priests flying backward away from the little lake.
The blast of air ended as quickly as it started, the main hatch opened, and the ramp appeared.
“Run!” Boro barked even before all the burning debris had landed. He helped get Rini on his feet and pointed toward the ship, then Sata. Kibi seemed to be in a daze, so he grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “I want you in that ship in five seconds, Kibi!”
Kibi knew from Boro’s voice that he was going to throw her into the ship if she didn’t run, so she quickly found her feet.
Boro was the last one through the hatch, and the moment his rucksack cleared the hull, Mati hit the emergency-close symbol.
Deep Learning Notes
The high priest used a variety of techniques to justify his plans and secure the loyalty of his followers. A full understanding of them would require a study of rhetoric and politics. Can you spot any that especially bother you?
When deciding what to do, Kibi listened to her friends, then made good decisions that took into account their ideas and her instincts. How might this scene have gone differently if she hadn’t worked through her wounded ego from the evening before?
The boys got sticks, the girls got cans of oil. What does this tell us about the
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values of those religious orders?
What experience had Sata already had that allowed her to see that much of the activity around her, in the priests and people of the city, was based on fear?
The psychology of human groups is different from that of individuals. A lone priest would never dream of chopping down a farmer’s fruit trees, or tearing up his fences. But in the “fever” of a group project, the rules change, and suddenly the goals of the group, as shaped by its leaders, can override many of the moral and ethical rules we usually live by.
If you were in Kibi’s shoes, and had a mission bracelet like she did, would you have been able to resist the temptation to “make everything right”?
People are social animals, descended from a long line of social animals. This creates a new layer of reality that sometimes works to our advantage (as when we team up for some task that none of us, alone, could do), and sometimes works against us. Assuming the ship really was dangerous, how safe do you think the priests would be by huddling in groups?
If, as Rini speculated, the events they witnessed were some kind of show, who was the audience?
As the fire began to burn under the ship, what did the high priest and Kibi have in common? What did Kibi soon do that made her very different from the high priest?