Priests of Ferris (3 page)

She ran on, scrambling over rocks. The walls bent over, shutting out the sun. It seemed no time since she had been running from Odo Cling and his Bloodcat. A hundred years, and nothing had been gained. It made her cry out with rage.

‘Come on Sue, don’t get frightened now.’

‘I’m not frightened. I’m just so mad at them. We gave them a chance.’

‘We shouldn’t have bothered. Come on, Limpy’s getting ahead.’

But the boy had stopped and was staring back, and when they turned and looked where he was pointing they saw the first of the dogs loping up the gorge. It had them in sight and was running silently. A second came through the fern, and a third, and each gave a single bark, and set out after their leader in a bounding run. They went from sight, reappeared, in the rock-strewn gorge. Others came, and the whole pack was there, flickering, black against the stone. They seemed to flow like water.

‘There,’ Limpy said. ‘Climb.’ He pointed up. Halfway to the sky, a fissure showed in the rock. Narrow handholds angled down from it. Someone had cut them long ago but now they were smooth. Susan started to climb and found her hands and feet sliding out.

‘Don’t fall,’ Nick said. ‘If you fall we’re done for.’

She kept her body pressed against the rock and climbed like a crab, trying to think only of what she was doing – hand, foot, hand, foot. She watched her fingers and her bright-red sneakers. Two, three body-lengths off the ground – now she was out of reach of the dogs. But Limpy had said some of the priests carried cross-bows. They would shoot them down like wooden dolls in a fair. She kept on steadily, as fast as she dared, trying not to think of the drop below. Then she heard a hideous yelping, a scraping of claws on stone. The dogs were at the base of the rock, leaping frantically. She had an impression of a black sea writhing at her feet, and teeth, eyes, red mouths, flashing in it like fish. Nick was safe behind her, but Limpy, was he all right? She risked looking down, and saw him slash with his knife at a dog that had caught the edge of his cloak. The animal fell back howling, and Limpy pulled himself another step up. He put the knife in his belt. ‘Go on,’ he yelled.

They edged towards the fissure twenty metres up from the gorge floor. Susan came to it and heaved herself on to a lip of rock at the opening. She reached back and helped Nick. Limpy ignored her hand and pulled himself up beside her. He wiped dog saliva from his cloak. ‘How deep is this cave?’ They went into it, but it ran back only twenty steps and ended in a rough wall. They felt it with their palms, and felt their way back along the walls to the mouth. There was no way out. Again Susan felt she was caught in a bottle.

‘Someone lived here once,’ Nick said. He had his foot on stones, football-sized, making a rough fireplace on the floor. Dead ashes lay in it and animal bones were strewn about. ‘Men, not Woodlanders.’

‘Men hid here from the priests,’ Limpy said. He was at the cave mouth, looking down the gorge.

‘We can use these stones. Throw them down. We can hold out quite a while.’

‘Some will climb. Others will cover them with cross-bows,’ Limpy said. ‘Here they come.’

They went to his side and looked where he was pointing. Half a dozen figures were running up the gorge, leaping nimbly on the boulders. Each held a dog on a leash, and they ran as silently as dogs, accompanied only by a clicking sound. They seemed like skeletons, all dressed in white.

‘Your priests,’ Limpy said.

‘They are not mine.’ They were figures from a dream, they seemed to float along without the use of limbs.

‘They’re Priests of Ferris.’

‘Then,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell them to go away. I’ll tell them who I am,’

‘They won’t believe you.’

‘Why?’

‘It happens all the time. There’s always some crazy girl claiming she’s Susan Ferris come again.’

‘What happens to them?’

‘They are taken to the Temple.’ He gave a strange smile. ‘They are given a chance to prove it.’

‘How?’

Limpy shrugged and turned away. ‘Those are girls from the villages. But the ones who run are quarry for the dogs. The priests will not give us the chance to prove anything.’ He looked at the animals standing patiently at the foot of the wall. ‘They know. They can wait.’

‘I’m going to try anyway,’ Susan said.

‘She can show them her birthmark,’ Nick said.

‘They all have the Mark. They burn it on themselves,’ Limpy said.

The priests saw them standing in the cave mouth. They slowed and walked quietly to the dogs, which sank on their haunches.

‘So,’ the leader said. He was not even breathing heavily. He was a young man, Susan saw. They were all young, all seven; and two were women. She saw their shapes plainly, under the skin-tight leather of their suits. It was as shiny as vinyl, white and supple, encasing them, covering even their hands and feet. They looked naked standing there. Their faces too were white, the colour of bone.

‘At night,’ Limpy whispered, ‘they turn their suits inside out. Then they are dressed in black.’

‘But their faces …?’

‘White. Always white. They paint themselves. See their eyes. They never blink. It is part of the training.’

The seven pairs of eyes showed no feeling. They had the blankness of eyes in statues.

‘You cannot escape the Priests of Ferris,’ the leader said. His voice made no rise or fall. That must be part of the training as well, Susan thought. Anger began to rise in her that these machine-like creatures, these walking skeletons, used her name.

‘You are not Priests of Ferris,’ she said loudly.

‘Do you challenge us? Then you challenge the High Priest. You challenge Susan.’

‘How can I challenge myself? I’m Susan Ferris.’

The eyes of the priest never blinked. But she could tell he was shocked. There was a shrinking in him, then a swelling of rage. His voice, though, remained the same flat voice. ‘Heresy. You speak heresy.’

‘Heresy,’ said his followers. ‘She has the evil tongue.’ They were like a class of children, speaking by rote.

‘What is the penalty?’ the leader said.

‘Death is the penalty,’ they answered flatly.

‘You can’t kill me for being myself,’ Susan cried.

‘You’re mad,’ Nick joined in. ‘You’re all mad. I’m Nicholas Quinn. I’ve known her all my life. I’m her cousin.’

‘You speak heresy too. You have uttered names only priests may speak. You must die now.’

‘They must die.’

‘Make the chant,’ the leader said.

The priests formed a circle. Each had bones on a leather rope hanging on his chest. They untied them and held them in the circle – bones of every length, some whole, some with broken ends. These had made the clicking as they ran. Now they clicked again as the priests beat them against each other and set up a wailing, like the wailing of cats.

‘The chant of death,’ Limpy said. ‘When it is finished … ’

‘Those things,’ Nick said. ‘They’re human bones.’

‘Yes,’ Limpy said. ‘Ferris bones. No novice is a priest until he has them. The ones that are broken most are the holiest.’

‘How do they get broken?’

‘They are the bones of heretics. Blasphemers. Unbelievers. Every novice, before he graduates, must sniff one out and take him for trial at the Temple.’

‘What sort of trial? What do they do?’ Nick was not sure he wanted to know. The hideous wailing, the broken bones – it could only be horrible.

Limpy said, ‘In the teaching we learn how Susan flew from Deven’s Leap. The sinners are taken there, to the place of the Miracle.’

‘So the trial …?’

‘Yes.’ Limpy spread his arms like wings and gave a bitter smile. ‘It happened to my grandfather. A novice came and sniffed him out and rolled on the ground as though he was poisoned. Those could be his bones down there.’

‘They throw them off?’

Limpy smiled again. ‘If they are innocent they fly, like Susan. So far none have been innocent. And the priests wear their bones.’

Susan had listened, not in any surprise, with a sense that everything she heard she already knew. It was inescapable, a step-by-step unfolding with its start in things she’d done in the hope of saving O. And
this
was the end. She could not escape it, she saw the hideous logic in the story – but she could say no. She could refuse to have any part in it, from this moment on.

‘No,’ she cried, ‘they’re not my priests. They can’t use my name.’

She ran into the cave and seized a stone from the fireplace. She brought it back to the entrance. The dogs looked up, lolling their tongues. The priests clacked their bones and wailed on a rising note, working to a climax. She lifted the stone over her head and hurled it down at them. They had ignored her cry. They had reached the end of their chant and gone down on their haunches, thrusting their bones together in the circle, where they made a pyramid. The stone smashed into it, crushed it flat, sending chips of bone flying about. They flung themselves away from it, crying as though at something supernatural. Then they stood and turned, facing Susan, seven white skeletons with unblinking eyes.

‘You’re not mine,’ Susan cried. ‘I’m Susan Ferris. You can’t have my name. Your religion is finished. I’m finishing it now.’

The leader held the haft of a thigh bone in each hand. He raised them slowly and showed their newly-broken ends. For the first time there was feeling in his voice. He seemed to be grieving. ‘Blasphemer, you have broken my Ferris bones.’

‘They’re not Ferris bones. You can’t have my name.’

He seemed not to hear. ‘These were holy bones. I sniffed out a man who had dreamed of the Terrible One. He had dreamed of Jimmy Jaspers, sleeping by the side of a great white bear. There were no bones more holy than these.’

‘They’re not holy. You can’t kill people like that.’

Again he did not hear. He dropped the broken ends of the bones at his feet. One of the dogs nosed them. He took no notice. ‘I must have new ones. All of us must have bones. Until we wear them again we are not priests.’

Nick was at Susan’s shoulder. ‘Now you’ve done it.’ He had gone pale. ‘We’ll have to fight. Watch out for the cross-bows.’

The two priests who carried them unstrapped bows from their backs and levered the strings.

‘Into the cave,’ Limpy said. He took his knife from his belt and crouched at the entrance, shielded from the bowmen by the lip of stone. Nick began to carry the firestones one by one from the back of the cave. Below, the dogs set up a whining. Susan leaned past Limpy and looked down. The leader of the priests was on the steps, already a body-length clear of the ground.

‘Down,’ Limpy cried. She saw the bowmen aiming and leaped back. Two bolts came humming into the cave and ricocheted off the ceiling. Nick saw his chance. He ran forward while the men were loading and hurled a rock at the climbing priest. A shout of pain came up and a yelping of dogs.

‘Got him on the arm,’ Nick yelled. ‘He fell in the dogs. I bet he won’t be climbing any more.’

Limpy jerked him back and a single bolt rattled in the cave. ‘They’ll shoot in turn. They can pin us down. Another one will climb.’

‘And if they don’t they can starve us out,’ Susan said.

They crouched listening, and soon heard the breathing of a priest. They heard the soft scrape of fingers on stone. Two, perhaps three or four, were climbing. Then softly, even more softly, a voice breathed, ‘Follow me.’

‘Who was that?’ They jumped around. No one was in the cave.

‘Follow,’ whispered the voice. It had a distant sound, as though it came from a pit.

‘Where are you? Who are you?’

‘Go to the end of the cave. The door is open.’

‘Are you a Stoneman?’

‘Yes. Now go to the door. The priests are coming. I hear them climb.’

‘Come on, Limpy. Quick.’

‘There are no Stonemen. It’s a trick.’

‘I’ve met them. They’re our friends. Make him come, Nick.’

Nick grabbed Limpy by his cloak and pulled him after Susan into the back of the cave. Where there had been stone an opening showed, waist-high, narrow, leading into darkness. Susan pushed Limpy down on his knees.

‘In you go. Quick.’

‘No.’

‘Do as she tells you,’ the voice whispered. It filled the cave, lapping soft as water. ‘All who run from priests are friends of ours.’

‘In.’ She pushed him and he crawled into the opening. ‘Nick, go on.’

‘You first.’

She did not argue, but crawled into the hole. It led to a tunnel, running level. A deeper quiet – the sound of emptiness, she thought – told her when she reached the other end. She knelt at the opening, looking back. Nick came along, scuttling like a possum, and beyond him, in a square of light, she saw a part of the cave mouth. A priest sprang into it, and stood there, crouched like a wrestler. Another came up beside him. They were white as foam, shining in the light. They peered into the darkness, and came stepping forward, soft as cats.

‘Priests of Ferris, stop,’ said the voice.

The priests froze, and crouched, and peered. One of them spoke: ‘Stonemen, give us our prey. They have broken our Ferris bones.’

‘Your bones are foul. Do not follow into the dark.’

‘We know all your exits. We know your holes. They cannot escape.’

‘Wait then. But do not follow. The world of Stone is not open to you.’

And slowly, without a sound, the tunnel began to close. The band of light grew narrower, and Nick and Susan and Limpy were locked into the dark.

‘Tell me your name,’ Susan said.

‘First let me get out of this cupboard. The light would have killed me.’

She heard stone sliding again, and padding steps with the rubbery sound of suction. Then the Stoneman’s voice came in front of her. ‘We know each other already.’

‘Are you Seeker? A hundred years have passed.’

‘The generations of Stonefolk are longer than those of humans. But I am old. I am ready to die. I have waited only for the fulfilling of the prophecy.’ His voice had the asthmatic wheeze, the hedgehog snuffle, she remembered.

‘Where are you?’ She reached out.

A damp touch came on her arm. ‘Here, Susan. It is good to meet again.’