“Ah. My Brutha. We had looked for you in vain. And now even you are here . . .”
Brutha stopped a few feet away. The moment of . . . whatever it had been . . . that had propelled him through the doors had drained away.
Now all there was, was Vorbis.
Smiling.
The part of him still capable of thought was think?ing: there is nothing you can say. No one will listen. No one will care. It doesn't matter what you tell peo?ple about Ephebe, and Brother Murduck, and the des?ert. It won't be fundamentally true.
Fundamentally true. That's what the world is, with Vorbis in it.
Vorbis said, “There is something wrong? Some?thing you wish to say?”
The black-on-black eyes filled the world, like two pits.
Brutha's mind gave up, and Brutha's body took over. It brought his hand back and raised it, oblivious to the sudden rush forward of the guards.
He saw Vorbis turn his cheek, and smile.
Brutha stopped, and lowered his hand.
He said, “No. I won't.”
Then, for the first and only time, he saw Vorbis really enraged. There had been times before when the deacon had been angry, but it had been something driven by the brain, switched on and off as the need arose. This was something else, something out of con?trol. And it flashed across his face only for a moment.
As the hands of the guards closed on him, Vorbis stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder. He looked Brutha in the eye for a moment and then said softly:
“Thrash him within an inch of his life and burn him the rest of the way.”
An Iam began to speak, but stopped when he saw Vorbis's expression.
“Do it now.”
A world of silence. No sound up here, except the rush of wind through the feathers.
Up here the world is round, bordered by a band of sea. The viewpoint is from horizon to horizon, the sun is closer.
And yet, looking down, looking for shapes . . .
. . . down in the farmland on the edge of the wil?derness . . .
. . . on a small hill . . .
. . . a tiny moving dome, ridiculously exposed . . .
No sound but the rush of wind through feathers as the eagle pulls in its wings and drops like an arrow, the world spinning around the little moving shape that is the focus of all the eagle's attention.
Closer and . . .
. . . talons down . . .
. . . grip . . .
. . . and rise . . .
Brutha opened his eyes.
His back was merely agonizing. He'd long ago got used to switching off pain.