Lector Herod

— Herod, Enclave —

They were gathered for a "revelation," but none was forthcoming. Not yet. Over a thousand people gathered in the plaza beneath the holy balcony, waiting for their Hierarch to appear and, through her Voice, tell them something new.

Herod held his little sister's hand while she held a sack with her few cherished possessions in the other. Lately, they'd had problems in the lectors' apartments with people breaking in and taking things, usually food, or vandalizing their writing supplies and cutting up Irina's clothes. She was to enter school soon, alongside prospective priests and intensely proud practitioners. Their lack of connection to any family of note placed them at the bottom of the social order, but at least Herod was somewhat protected by his position in the library. True, he was the lowest sort of lector, without any students to teach except those who sought to use the library properly, but his title meant something. Irina had no such defense, and Herod worried for her welfare in Enclave's classrooms. But an Enclave education was worth a lot, nearly every penny he earned, to be exact, and any connections she formed would be useful to her future. Father had died in debt and left everything in Herod's hands. Herod was doing the best he could with the mess.

Herod smiled around his long canines but kept his tail under control. Soldiers had the Head Librarian, Head Seminarian, and Head Healer by the elbows, marching them by force into the plaza. Those three formed a triumvirate of disrepute if even half the stories Herod heard were true, and he knew first-hand how little they respected the holy mission of Enclave. They cared only for themselves, and seeing them almost dragged into the plaza made his tail tip want to sway and swish in delight. But, he kept the petty impulse under control.

Enclave had become more dangerous in the last year. It never was as great a place as its reputation, not in the five years Herod had been there, and he'd long heard from the old-timers that Enclave was a shadow of its former self. He'd put that down to the perpetual nostalgia of the old. But then, Brother Phillip showed up and dragged the falsity of Enclave's records into daylight. The child disciple was in Enclave for all of a week, yet he sparked an internal war.

On one side were the Hierarch and her truth-seekers, who went through all the original reports and tried to set the records straight, re-tabulating summaries that had grown, year by year, so far of the mark they represented a fictitious Tenobre. The world was not as well as they believed. Populations were declining, monster attacks were rising, plagues were handled poorly, and trust in Enclave was waning.

On the other side were Dean Katerina, most disciples, their hangers-on, and some members of Leadership. Herod didn't understand them at all. They had big ideas of power and righteousness and Heritage, yet they were somehow impervious to facts. Truth was whatever they wanted to believe, and no outside authority needed to be consulted if it disagreed with them. If Enclave said cursed monsters didn't exist, then it didn't matter how many thousands of witnesses claimed to see them. If Enclave wanted Tenobre's population to grow, they had only to declare it so; never mind the national censuses that said otherwise. The Five Families held divine favor for themselves; everybody else was dirt under their shoes. And they hated, hated Phillip the Younger.

The forces of fact were unprepared for a battle where truth needed no foundation. The practitioners quickly gained the upper hand and put their dark stamp on everything in Enclave. They started with the books, purging or rewriting whatever made them feel uncomfortable. First Family students wore special pins to identify themselves, and anyone without one was automatically a second-class denizen of Enclave. The deans even went to war against the tribes of southern Kravikas, with the odious goals of killing and enslaving every person they could lay their hands on. Even that was a mere side effect of their campaign to stamp out Nexus and kill every person associated with them. It was madness, but the few truth-seekers remaining in Enclave kept their heads down and said nothing. Even with the disciple corps and half of the healers gone, Heritage supporters held the upper hand. They were willing to hurt, and there weren't enough people on Herod's side willing to hurt them back.

But now the Hierarch had spoken. She seldom used her authority, but Enclave took the matter seriously when she did. If she said to come to the Plaza, even Dacian soldiers bent to her will. Buildings were searched, and their occupants rousted. The jolly Head Priest of the basilica was found and laid out with his three young drinking buddies. Servitors found lounging in a pub just outside the second gate were rounded up and hauled over in a vegetable cart pulled by an ancient appalon. Students discovered smoking janweed furtively by Saint Dymphna's buttress strut-weaved their way into the gathering crowd, goaded along by dire-faced veterans. All eyes turned toward the balcony and the curtained doorway beyond.

Something momentous was about to happen. Herod smelled it wafting off the janweed smokers. He saw it in the petty frowns of the three disreputable Heads. He felt it in the void where Deans and disciples should be. The air tasted of anxiety and fear. When was the last time a Hierarch called an assembly, other than a holy day? The question went around the partially filled plaza but found no resolution.

The idle, impatient voices of the crowd turned to cries, and Herod saw some people fall to their knees. It took him a second to realize what they had in common: they were all healers. Instinct made him edge his way to the outskirts of the plaza, pulling Irina behind him. "Climb up," he said and knelt for her. The girl got on his shoulder and steadied herself as he rose, using his hair as reins. She was taller than the last time they'd done this, but she was still a girl and not too heavy. When Irina hooked her ankles around his ribs, he could feel the trembling of her knees.

The crowd's mood turned sour and they called up to the balcony, demanding their Hierarch's attention. After some minutes, word spread to Herod's end of the plaza: all healers had lost their Arts. Herod thought to ask if that was all healers everywhere or only those in Enclave, but held his tongue because the question couldn't be answered. It could be weeks before they had reliable news on that matter. Even then, it was more likely to come from the Nexus sounding boards than an Enclave mouthpiece. There were several discrete places in town where one could pay to listen to the weekly programs, and Herod found the Nexus explanation of events more convincing than Enclave Leadership's.

A chant started up, "Bring the Hierarch Now!" but not so they could receive her blessing. They wanted answers. They wanted action. They wanted to know why she defrocked her healers and when they'd get their powers back. A figure appeared on the balcony just as their voices reached a violent pitch. It wasn't Her Holiness who came to address them, but Guardian Maia. She raised her distant hands for silence, to only partial success, and spoke words Herod couldn't hear over the local chatter. Whatever her announcement was, it angered those nearest to her enough to raise fists in the air.

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It was a moment ripe for riot, and violence would have broken out if something even more outrageous hadn't happened: the dome of Bahram's Basilica collapsed. The tallest and grandest edifice in Enclave, the lone feature dominating their skyline for hundreds of years, the looming presence that signified their religion, crumbled. It started from one side and worked its way to the other faster than a man could run. All the world stood silent against the roar of falling masonry, the snap of a great building's bones breaking, and the whisper of a white dust storm flowing at them through the intervening trees and streets.

"Brother, look!"

"I'm looking!"

"No! Look!" Irina twisted her body and wrenched his head to face a different direction. A gray cloud rose above the plaza's bordering parkland. "The library!"

"Hold on!" With the soldiers gawking at the falling temple, Herod slipped away to where his temple might be falling.

Herod arrived at the Great Library, sweaty and panting, to find an inferno. He put Irina down to relieve his exhausted legs and made for the front steps. Maybe something could be salvaged. The Deans had taken an awful lot, too much to count, but there were still some volumes worth saving. It wasn't all burning. He could see a section of the second floor that wasn't on fire yet …

He tried to go but fell when his feet wouldn't move. Irina had him by the legs, her limbs clenched around him like a vice. She was crying, and scolding him at the same time. "You can't go! You idiot, you'll die! You can't leave me alone, what would father say? Don't be stupid! You do not run into burning buildings, no matter how many books there are! Isn't family more important to you than books?"

She went on in that vein until he promised her he wasn't rushing into the burning library. That moment had passed, and he wasn't going to get himself burned up just to recuse a few volumes of dubious historical value. They held each other tearfully while sparks of incinerated knowledge rained all around them. Lecture Hall One was half-fallen, and the Grand Auditorium's roof caved in. As Herod and Irina watched, servitors ran away with anything they could carry.

"Why is it burning?" Herod turned to face the half-familiar voice to discover Brother Phillip was standing next to him.

"You're here," he said stupidly.

"You noticed." The boy had become a young man in the last year. A very young man, but still. His armor was different now, a scarlet cuirass and pouldrons made from monster shell instead of brigandine. "What happened?" The Nexus Hierarch, or The Great Enemy as the Deans called him, gestured impotently at the grandly burning library. All three wings were fully engulfed. Even if he could stop the fire, not much would be left to salvage.

"I was going to ask you that question." Herod almost added you're the victor here, but Phillip didn't look like he felt victorious. He seemed discontent, lacking in the boundless optimism that had been his animating force.

As if to confirm Herod's suspicions, the young man said, "I should have hit the library first. We could have salvaged something."

"There wasn't much left," Herod tried to console him, "Deans took most of the good stuff away and burned it." He remembered giving the young disciple a hard time in their first moments together, only to regret it later. They were both truth-seekers, natural allies in a world increasingly unmoored from reality. He wouldn't have guessed, on that first day, Phillip would set so much into motion. "Did you know it would end like this, that day we met?"

Phillip laughed, remembering a winter afternoon spent revealing Leadership's deceptions, the discoveries that sparked today's final conflagration. There was bitterness, too, and loss. "I thought I would hunt some monsters, heal people, maybe build some town walls or something. I just wanted to help people. But I couldn't ignore the lies, and Enclave couldn't tolerate having me in the world. And here I am." He waved at the burning, blackened, failing building in front of them. "The many ironies are not lost on me. What about you? What did you want?"

"I wanted to explore ruins and learn about the ancients. Back then, I didn't know it was forbidden. The Great Library used to have old records and early church testimonials. It wasn't quite what I wanted, but it was something. At least it was history." His face twisted into distaste. "But Enclave wasn't what I expected."

Phillip regarded Herod with new intensity, a spark of his year-ago self shining through the smoke-tinted air. "What if I told you I knew the locations of at least four ancient ruins, and exploring them wouldn't be forbidden for much longer? And …," he held up a finger for emphasis, "I'm assembling a translation guide for Mi'iri, the written language the ancients used. Would you consider coming to Nexus and taking up a post as Librarian and Ancient Archaeologist?"

Herod's heart stopped. He almost forgot to breathe, except Irina was squeezing his hand too tight to remind him she was there. He looked down at his sister, who held all their meaningful possessions in a simple sack. "I have Irina to think of. I couldn't take her to the desert."

"Oh, hello, Irina." The disciple greeted her in the Nexus way, placing one hand over his heart and then holding his palm out to her. "I'm sorry I didn't notice you. Please don't take it personally. It's been a very hard day."

Bravely, although she was unused to the attention of exalted people and had never practiced the greeting, she imitated him. "It's nice to see you again, Brother Phillip. Could I go to school even though I'm not a practitioner?"

"Of course. All children must go to school, no matter who they are or where they come from. You'll receive all the education you can handle. Children also have a share of the work, no exceptions, so you'll spend part of the day doing chores. Even the sons of Mauls and the daughters of Doyennes have to do their part."

Herod stood bemused while his little sister interrogated the great enemy Hierarch. "Isn't it hot in the desert? Like, really, really hot?"

Phillip nodded. "It's nice right now, but it can be deadly hot in summer. But you wouldn't be living in the desert. You'd be living in the garden of Red Tower, where it's much cooler under the trees, and people rest during the hottest part of the day. And every night, after dinner, the town gets together for a kind of party. There's games, and sometimes music and dancing. And in winter, you'd get to see Sand Castle if you wanted to. It's the biggest garden in the desert and the most exotic market in all of Tenobre." To Herod he said, "Is Irina the only family you'd bring?"

"She's all the family I have." It sounded too good to be true. "How much is the pay?"

"One boraz a month to start. It's more than it sounds because you don't pay for rent, food, or basic clothing. There isn't much to spend your money on because Calique prefer to barter." The young Hierarch watched Herod closely. "You're still uncertain."

"We don't know each other well," said Herod, "this could be a huge mistake. For both of us."

"How do you know it's not a mistake to decline?" Phillip waved away the doubts. "Try it for three months, and if you hate it you can leave. In fact," he waved at one of his spike-haired bulwarks who kept the purse. He flashed signs at her and received two gold coins in return. "If you say yes, I'll give you two crevist right now. It's not an advance; it's yours to keep. Let's call it a recruitment-under-duress bonus. This is enough money to transport you and Irina out of Sand Castle to any other city in Tenobre and start over. You can afford to leave at any time. Just give us three months to prove ourselves."

Herod raised his hand but feared to take the coins. Nobody had ever offered him so much money. There had to be a trap somewhere.

"Brother, I think we should go with Phillip. The people here are mean, but he's nice. I know that's putting it simply, but isn't that important? And you don't have to beg anyone for this job." She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. "He's kind of begging you to take it. And look, we're already packed!"

"Final offer, Lector Herod. Leave with me right now, and I'll let you see the Mi'iri dictionary I've put together so far. Anisca and I are wrestling with the organization. You could help."

Herod took the coins and never looked back.