Tales of the Zodiac - The Goat's Tale (17 page)

And that is not the worst of it. How much of what he has told me is true? I had long suspected that there was an unwritten rule forbidding me to leave. I had suspected it from the first moment I stood in front of ‘Our Saviour’. His wrath at my suggestion that he should accompany me home told me as much. As did Gemin’s talk about the failed explorations of his people.  This is why I had lied so deeply on my second meeting with Our Saviour.

But the wine? Is it just some drunken nonsense? Or could it actually be true? Perhaps he was just talking metaphorically? I could quite imagine, for instance, that a man like Morrigan might die, in some sense, if deprived of alcohol.

Nevertheless, the very idea chills me to the bone. How can it be? This, much the same as setting fire to an innocent slave, is not the act of a benevolent god. It seems to me a dark and evil thing. Is it real? Is this really what God would want? Or is ‘Our Saviour’ just some malevolent shaman inflicting pain upon the world? Whatever the answer to these questions, it would be foolhardy of me to try to leave before finding out the answers. I resolve to remain here until I know these things for certain. Slowly, I feel myself dropping off to sleep.

I awake the next morning to a loud rap on Morrigan’s door. Both Morrigan and I are still in the same chairs that we fell asleep in. He remains unconscious, head slumped forward, snoring monstrously. My head is pounding and I don’t think to respond to the knock on the door until there is another one.

“Ser Gruffydd of the Green!” is the accompanying shout. It does not sound like a particularly friendly request and my immediate instinct is that of alarm. This could be trouble. Why else would someone be looking for me here?

My next instinct is to hide. I could let Morrigan answer the door. But, no, that might place him in a difficult situation. If it turns out that there
is
trouble, he could find himself with a difficult decision to make. I don’t want that – not for me or him. Besides, it
could
be nothing. He’s not stirring anyway. Tentatively, I rise and move towards the door. My head spins as I do so; I am still dizzy from the wine.

I am just about there when Morrigan, suddenly alert, stops me with a sharp whisper. He silently signals that I should leave through the other door, the door that leads to the rest of the building. I don’t protest. My body fills with hot blood as I realise that if Morrigan thinks there is something wrong, then there probably is.

Behind me, I sense Morrigan stirring to his feet, yawning and stretching. I enter the hallway leading from the main chamber and hide alongside the door frame. There are several doors opposite me and down along the corridor. There is another knock on the door just before Morrigan answers it.

“Morning, chaps,” he says casually, speaking the Bright-tongue as though it were his own “What’s going on?”

“We are here to arrest Ser Gruffydd of the Green, Lord Morrigan.”

“Oh, I see…” he replies. “He was certainly here last night. I was drinking with him. I haven’t seen him this morning though. I’ve only just woken up. Gruff?! Gruff?! Where are you?!”

“Yes, we know he was here last night. We are told he is still here.”

“He should be, I suppose. He has nowhere else to stay yet,” he replies coolly before shouting my name again “Gruff?! Gruff?! There’s someone here to speak to you! What has he done, out of interest?”

“He is a heretic. As for why? Only Our Saviour and the man himself know the answer to that question.”

“Then it must be so,” is his considered reply. “I hope that he burns in the lowest level of hell. Gruff?!”

“He will be tried for heresy. If guilt is proved then he shall be burned.”

“And rightly so. It is the will of God,” he replies. I alone am privy to the flippancy of his tone. Masked beneath translation, his words can only be interpreted as sincere by these gold men. But this is scant consolation; I know that all he can do is buy me some time.

I pad as quickly as possible across the corridor and through the door opposite. From the musty smell and disordered bedclothes, I can only assume that I have entered his bedroom. The window, across the room from the door, seems to be my only option. It looks a tight squeeze but I trust myself to move quickly. The hot blood, coursing through me as if I were in battle, takes over. This sensation makes me realise that I have forgotten my sword, my shield and my armour. I know now that they are lost to me.

One cautious glance out of the window is all I need to know it is safe to leave. It overlooks a small back alley leading to the market square around the front. The alley has a few people passing through but not, as I had feared, any guards. From the second floor of the building, the jump could quite easily be fatal. Instead, I look upwards and decide to take the risk of climbing to the roof above. Instinctively, I feel that this is a better option than the ground; it should be easier to hide up there. I clamber up quickly, almost possessed by the instinct to survive.

The next decision is to hide or to move. If I move, I might never be able to return to this part of town. If I hide, there is a good chance that they will eventually consider the roof. Ultimately, the fact that it is a poor hiding place is what swings it for me; there are several higher buildings around which I can tell that I will be clearly visible from. I have no choice but to keep moving.  I jump onto the roof across from me, moving further away from the market square.

It only takes several of these jumps before I begin to find myself heading back into the more rundown part of town. Here, there are precious few roofs to climb on and even the ones that do exist are not the kind that one would trust one’s life to. Somewhere in the distance bells ring, and I begin to wonder if they are anything to do with me. Clambering down to the ground, I take a few deep breaths and try to calm my beating heart. I know that now there is little I can do other than try and look like I belong.

By my estimations, I am not too far from the district that I passed through yesterday - the derelict part of town full of the desperate and the dying. My luck could probably be worse. This godforsaken place should be somewhere I can simply melt into. The faces of Brightstone, with the exception of a slightly better sun tan, are equally as varied as they are in Tallakarn.

I walk casually through the broken streets, changing direction the instant that something feels wrong. I do this for the entire day, ultimately losing myself in Brightstone’s underbelly. Throughout this ordeal, it takes all my reserve and self-discipline to control the panic and fear churning inside me. Indeed, the only method of control that seems to work is the repetition of one simple dictum: no one will notice someone who looks like they’re supposed to be there.

As dusk begins to fall, my focus changes from escape to the consideration of my more animal needs. But these are not easily met in this desperate urban scrapyard. Not yet prepared to steal or beg, I am ready to sleep long before I find myself a single scrap of food or drop of water. Nestling down amongst the rubble of a fallen house, I tell myself that it will only take me a few days. After a few days, I’m sure I will be able to return to Morrigan.

The next day is spent scavenging for food and drink whilst trying my best to remain anonymous in the roughest parts of town. This experience humbles me. I realise that my life, one that I had always considered hard, is nothing compared to the plight of the people around me. The few adults that don’t leave early in the morning seem to be merely shells, lingering in the shadows, waiting to die. The children, many of whom must be orphans, spend their entire waking lives trying to find food. The vast majority of them head to the busier parts of town – the markets, the harbours, the thoroughfares – desperate to come upon some scrap, begged or stolen, that will make the trip worthwhile.

The only progress that I quickly make for myself is finding a few puddles that look clear enough to drink from. That done, I follow the orphans for a bit, trying to find an honest way to earn something. As ludicrous as it sounds, I still consider myself to have personal standards that I won’t drop.  My actions on the journey here – dishonesty, theft, murder – were actions forced on me by absolute necessity and, even still, I feel shamed by them. I won’t repeat them until I am certain that there is no alternative other than death.

Perhaps the most honest method of making money that I discover is salvaging. A minority of the orphans spend their time sifting through the rubble of fallen houses or through the waste that has been disposed of in the street. They might discover the odd thing, a piece of metal for instance, that they can then attempt to sell. I spend the afternoon doing this, still being careful to slink out of sight whenever I feel it necessary, and eventually sell enough scraps of fabric to buy myself a small piece of bread.

Almost as soon as I have bought it, I am set upon by an emaciated youth wielding a knife. The poor creature must have been waiting outside for me like a starving hound. He cannot be much older than me but his features are drawn and he has so little flesh upon him that his bones poke through at disturbing angles. Having seen the things that I’ve seen and done the things that I’ve done, I am able put him down without much fuss at all. I take his knife and the coinage from his pocket. Not a single witness passes comment. Desperate or not, he still had a choice. He made the wrong one. That loaf of bread is the single thing I eat all day.

I awake the next morning so weak that it is, in fact, rather fanciful to suggest I have woken up at all. The deathly fatigue that rides through my body reminds me of some mornings out in the frozen waste, those mornings where it felt that the cold had drawn my very essence from me. My mouth is as dry as stone. Nevertheless, in the same manner that I would have done on any other morning, I drag myself from the rubble and stagger down into the street.

My thirst is beyond description. The need for water consumes me and yet, for some reason, instead of heading to the nearest puddle, I choose instead to collapse in the street. My legs give way only an instant before my mind fades, sending me smashing into the dirt track. The last thing to pass through my mind as I drop is nothing more than the recollection of a taste - the taste of wine.

Multi-coloured memories flash through my mind. There is no order to them. Instead, I seem to experience them all at once: the cold whip of a frozen wind, the salty smell of my father’s skin, the greenness of the grass of home, the euphoria of the finishing line at Tallakarn, the searing pain of the arrow in my knee, the bleakness of the frozen sea, Morrigan’s smirk, Shara’s scowl, the pain that comes from killing another person, the magical lights of the sun palace, the distorted voice of God himself, the sour taste of wine, a voice I have never heard before.

“Drink, child. Drink so that you do not die. The blood of Our Saviour compels you to live.”

The lady’s voice soothes me. It has a singing, magical quality to it. Alongside her voice is the taste of wine trickling down my throat. The familiar burn that accompanies it is a warm and welcome one.

“Thank you, O kindest and wisest of Gods. This man does not have to die today,” whispers the woman softly.  My eyes open before closing again, scared of the sun blazing overhead. In this briefest of glances, I learn that I am surrounded by a crowd.

“It’s a miracle!” shouts one voice.

“A miracle!” shouts another.

“The Mother brings life to all!”

“He shares his blood with us so that we all shall live!”

“A miracle!”

“O, Mother!”

My eyes open. The noise of the crowd begins to whip up into a frenzy of excitement. My ears are filled with shouts of ‘miracle’ and ‘Mother’ and ‘life’ and ‘blood’. Before I know it, I am being hauled to my feet by the crowd that has amassed. The woman in front of me is obscured from view as hands reach out to touch her from all angles. Through the groping hands, I realise that I recognise her uniform. Although she is definitely much younger, she wears the same as the lady attending to ‘Our Saviour’ in the Sun palace, a blue tunic with a white dress . Embroidered on the centre of the tunic is a turtle. 

I manage to mouth the word meaning ‘thank you’ before she is swept away by the mob that engulfs her. For a moment, I am overcome by this most euphoric sensation. It is a sense of deep reverence, of gratefulness, of excitement – the realisation that I am still alive. It all seems to have happened so quick - from life to the verge of death and back again. I smile.

The smile only lasts for an instant as the seriousness of life drops back down upon me. I remember once again how vulnerable I am, how desperate my situation is. There is no time for useless smiling. The crowd that now surrounds me must surely contain one person who knows who I am. Even the girl herself, my rescuer, may have seen my face under the glare of the Sun Palace. This is a dangerous place to be.

The crowd is dense and growing. A ‘miracle’ must be one of the very few things that these wretched people have to live for. Fortunately, once I have slipped past the first few layers of people, the new arrivals blocking my way aren’t even entirely sure what they are joining the crowd for; they do not know that the subject of the miracle is a fugitive, ducking his way through them. Then a shout goes out from the other side of the crowd.

“Stop the heretic! Stop the stranger! He is the devil! He wears the sign of the Goat!”

This word seems to bubble through the crowd, changing the mood, changing the cries. In an instant, the crowd are baying for blood. Extreme reverence and extreme hate, the two emotions that crowds do best, are not that far apart here today.

“The devil walks amongst us!”

“He was a heretic and still He gave him life!”

“Stop the stranger! He is not of the Brightstone!”

“In His name, stop the heretic!”

Instinctively, I stop in my tracks.

“Kill the stranger!” I shout angrily, turning back towards the centre of the crowd, joining in the cries. The noise, the growing bloodlust, seems to just merge into one angry, hateful roar - truly the voice of the God that has inspired it.

The whole crowd seems to be eyeing each other. People stand on their tiptoes, peering over the shoulders of their neighbours, desperate for a glimpse of the heretic moving amongst them. I try to only shout when other people are shouting, hoping that this will mask my foreign accent. As I peer into the crowd, I catch a glimpse of gold. Then another. Then another. Gold men. Behind me is the same, they are encircling the area.

My options are limited. Move and I attract attention, stand still and they will find me. The rubble-littered street is a tight winding one, as full of people as it is possible to be. Escape does not appear likely. And what if the crowd were to catch me, rather than the gold men? It only takes a look into the frenzied faces around me to hazard a likely guess.

As the gold men move nearer, I can tell that it is not only they who are surging towards me. Others have joined them, presumably the people who witnessed my healing. The only thing that comes to my mind is to turn and move in the same direction, shouting the same things as them, trying my best to look like the hunter rather than the hunted.

This plan works well until I reach the margins of the crowd. Here, it is clear that some of the gold men are simply holding their position, surrounding the crowd and watching it. As I reach the nearest one, I drop to his feet.

“It is me you want. Show me Our Saviour’s mercy. He has saved me once. Let Him and only Him be my judge.”

As I say this, he grabs me roughly by the scruff of the neck.

“I have him!” he cries. “Stand back, only God himself can judge the devil!”

The other gold men all rush towards him to add to his formation. The crowd jeer and heckle, shouting all sorts of abomination towards me, wishing me the cruellest deaths imaginable, cursing me to the lowest levels of hell. Not a single man, however, makes a step towards The Golden Brigade. Not for the first time, I witness the absolute power of these men.