XXV
The lone figure clad in purple robes stood high above his congregation and saw fear in their eyes. That pleased him. He was their high priest and they his followers. Half his face was covered by a dark leather mask to hide his features from his nose up, leaving his thick, near-swollen lips free to speak. He raised his arms up to the heavens once more, and said that the gods and the angels who surrounded them were bringing their wrath down upon the Walled City. It was a certainty that nobody could doubt. And it would be pointless to beg for mercy, he said. They should instead ask for lightning and thunder to fully cleanse the city.
“Our city needs to be purged,” he called to the ceiling above him, as if he was being listened to from there as well. As if he were a native of the Walled City himself, rather than having come to it as a troubled young orphan, years before, witness to the atrocities of a northern civil war. He had learned to talk like a native of the Walled City, though, just as he had learned to project his voice to make it seem it was coming from several angles at once. As he had learned to find passages in the scriptures of the ancients that made some sense of the horrors he had witnessed. Reinforced his belief that people were being punished for being sinners. Learned how he could make others believe it too.
“The foolish citizens think their walls will protect them from the plague that ravages the Earth, but it only ensures they will receive the full might of the next curse sent upon them. Our city has been saved in order to prove that we are worthy – but we have failed in this. I tell you it will rain frogs and locusts across the city soon, and the armies of the undead will rise and march upon us, sparing only the righteous, who will be marked with the blood of the angel of the ancients.”
He paused and looked down at his congregation. He could see the fervour in their eyes. Their number had grown slowly over many months as more and more of the citizens of the Walled City become discontent with the way the two Houses ruled them. They wanted change. They wanted an end to the uncertainty and fear that had filled the city. They wanted an end to being besieged by the plague without and the whims of the two Houses within. And he willingly fed their need for such change and promised them that only they, his followers, would be spared when the day of reckoning came.
He made a small hand sign to an acolyte by his side who placed a bronze bowl on the altar. The masked priest glared at him and made another short hand sign, not unlike a throat being slit. The acolyte whisked the bronze bowl away and another acolyte lifted a hessian sack up on to the rough stone altar and fumbled with the rope binding it. The sack twisted and turned as the thing inside tried to escape. He reached in and pulled out the lamb by one foreleg, laying it upon the altar. The animal bleated in terror and tried to climb to its feet, slipping as the acolyte held it down. The priest made another sign with his hands and the first acolyte put the bronze bowl back on the altar. The priest glared again and made the throat cutting sign once more and the acolyte removed it and a third passed him a large ornate dagger. The priest raised it above his head and plunged it into the lamb’s heart – as well as into the side of the hand of the acolyte holding the sacrifice. The lamb’s legs went limp and it collapsed to the stone. The acolyte bit his tongue to prevent himself from screaming.
Another short hand sign and an acolyte produced a gold chalice and together he and the priest filled it with the lamb’s blood – as well as that of the wounded man. The priest held it aloft and then dipped his finger in and drew a bloodied cross on his own forehead, ignoring the way it ran into his eyes, leaving them red-rimmed and horrific.
“So shall those who are worthy be spared,” the priest said. “This mark is stronger than any wall built by man, and any who bear it shall not suffer fire nor flood nor plague nor any wrath of the gods.” He descended the stone steps in front of him and his congregation gathered into a close press about him. He dipped one finger into the chalice and then painted a cross on onto an elderly stout man standing before him. Then a young woman beside him. Then a young man beside her. He walked back and forward amongst the crowd, painting bloody crosses onto the foreheads of all who presented themselves to him. “You shall be saved,” he said in soft tones. “As shall you be saved.”
Some fell to their knees in thanks. Others threw their hands to the low ceiling of the vault. Others mumbled prayers they had concocted themselves.
“This mark will never truly be washed off,” the priest said in a loud voice. “It will remain and will be recognised after the destruction of the Walled City. But you will still be tested. ‘Have you burned all your earthly possessions and trappings of vanity?’ they will ask. ‘Have you accepted the need for cleansing? Have you scourged yourself to rid your body of sin?’”
His congregation called back to him the answers that they had, they had, they had, their voices echoing around the cave-like chamber. Torches set into the walls flickered and sent shadows dancing around them. The priest returned to the altar now, where the bloodied corpse of the lamb lay, blood pooling around its still body, and the acolyte was wrapping cloth around his wounded hand.
“A day will come soon,” the purple-robed priest said, “when the blood of the sinners who walk the streets above us shall run red in the gutters like the blood of this lamb. The streets will be full of mayhem and fire and only we chosen few will walk amongst it unharmed.” Another hand sign and the acolyte with the bronze bowl stepped forward, carefully. The priest nodded and he placed it in front of him on the altar. Then he poured in a jug of oil and set a burning candle to it. Bright flames leapt up to the roof of the chamber, singeing the eyebrows of the acolyte. Those closest of the congregation felt the heat of it.
“Artefacts of the ancients themselves will be used to bring down a cleansing fire on the city,” he said. “And this will be the fate of those who disregard the warnings.” And he lifted up the corpse of the lamb. But he did not cast it into the flames and fill the small chamber with the stench of burning wool and cooking meat; instead, another acolyte brought forward a large book and the priest had him open it to a page filled with fine line drawings and coded words, and he smeared the blood of the lamb across its pages. Then he handed the corpse to the bandaged acolyte and took the book and held it above his head with one hand, his other waving back and forward through the flames as if as if taunting the fire to try to burn him.
“This will be the fate of all who have ever followed the false doctrine of science,” he hissed and cast the book into the flames. “Now come,” he said. “Cast your own trappings of doubt and sin into these flames and be spared the fate that awaits them.”