Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [152]
His pack was lying beside his bedroll; he dropped to his knees beside it and struggled to open it, his hands shaking as he attacked its ties and clasps. Soon, he promised himself. Soon. Thinking of what was inside and the peace that it would bring, he could barely manage the patience required to get the damn thing opened. Then the top flap was open at last and he spilled his possessions out onto the ground, all of them in a pile. With feverish hands he sorted through the pile, having no concern for any item other than the one he sought. Buried, it eluded his searching fingers for long, painful minutes. He drew in a deep breath and started again, this time moving each item to a new pile as he searched beneath it. Clothing, first aid, toiletries ... It wasn’t there. No, he thought. Not daring to believe it. He searched through the pile again, this time less neatly, and when he was done the interior of the tent was littered with his possessions. Still the small bottle eluded him. He began a desperate search through the pack itself, forcing shaking fingers down into its deepest pockets, squeezing the lining to see if anything had fallen down into it, madly searching even the straps—
“Looking for something?”
The voice stopped him cold. The straps of the pack fell from his numbed fingers as he looked up from the ground to his visitor’s face, scanning robes that were all too familiar. God, please, he prayed, spare me this humiliation. But no simple prayer was going to make the Patriarch go away, no matter how heartfelt it was.
“I removed the drugs from your pack en route to Mordreth,” the Holy Father said quietly, “and I gave them to the Serpent. I assume that’s what you’re looking for?” When Andrys didn’t answer, he nodded slightly as if reading confirmation into his pained expression. “What you did with your life before this point is your own business, Mer Tarrant, but now you no longer live for yourself. You live for all of us. And I will not have my Church’s dreams compromised by a handful of pills, or by your willingness to parade your addictions in front of my people.”
Shame rose to his face in a hot flush; he tried to stammer some kind of protest, but couldn’t get the words out. Had the Patriarch known all along what Andrys carried with him? Was it a vision that had betrayed him, or some more human source? “I wouldn‘t—” he began. Then shame caught in his throat, and even those words failed him. “You don’t understand,” he whispered.
“I understand enough to see what would happen to my people if they perceived such weakness in you. Before tonight it might have meant little, but now, after all their vows ... you have a responsibility, Mer Tarrant, and it’s my job to see that you live up to it. Painful though that might be.”
He hung his head, and thus didn’t see what the Patriarch was doing as the wool robes shifted. He didn’t see what the Patriarch removed from his pocket, not until the man cast it down in front of him.
A bottle.
“It’s from Jaggonath,” With numb fingers Andrys picked it up; the velvet black pills of a blackout fix tumbled one over another as he turned it in his hand, incredulous. “The founding fathers of that city, in their wisdom, declared that no man should ever have the right to burden others with his intoxication. They ordered that all mind-altering drugs be combined with a paralytic, so that the user must suffer its effects in the privacy of his own soul.” He gestured down toward the bottle. “If you perceive such a desperate need for comfort that you would be willing to risk a period of paralysis, then here it is. You may do whatever you like in private, so long as you remember that your public life is no longer your