Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [60]
Always alone.
He drew in a deep breath for courage and made his way hesitantly into the sanctuary. No one and nothing stopped him. Surely this was just a temporary reprieve, he thought. Surely the One God would sense his purpose in being here, and would rage at his use of the Church for a private vendetta. Could Calesta save him then? Could any demon even enter this place, which the God of Earth had sanctified?
The sanctuary was large, and not yet half full. He chose a seat in the very last row, in the shadow of the balcony. From there he could watch the proceedings without being seen clearly by anyone. It wasn’t exactly what Calesta wanted—the demon had ordered him to “be seen”—but for this first visit it would have to be good enough; he felt too vulnerable to do otherwise. He watched as the priest approached the dais, as his ritual words began the afternoon service. Andrys knew the rites of the Church vaguely, distantly, as one recalled something from one’s childhood. Family rituals had been repeated often enough to carve out a place in his memory without his being aware of the details. Little good it had done his family to dedicate their lives to the One God, he thought bitterly. Perhaps a pagan deity would have done more to protect its worshipers. Perhaps it would have given them some power to stand up against the horror that stalked them, the death that was waiting—
Stop it, he ordered himself. He folded his shaking hands in his lap, and tried to breathe evenly. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead, but it was long minutes before he felt steady enough to raise up a hand and wipe it away. What was the point of this visit? he wondered. Why was Calesta making him endure this? Was there something the demon expected him to do here? And if so, why wouldn’t he just tell him what it was and get it over with?
It was then that his eyes, seeking something to focus on other than the priest, looked beyond the podium at the head of the aisle and fixed on a mural that adorned one section of the upper wall. It caught his attention because of its human subject matter—the Church forbade all but a few symbolic representations of humankind—but then it held his attention, it gripped his attention, because of who and what that human was.
Despite himself he rose to his feet, drawn to the brilliant mural even as he was repelled by it. He was all but deaf to the service going on as he stared at the painting in horrified fascination. It was the Prophet, there was no doubt of that. The figure had no face as such—that was Church tradition—but it glowed with a light that made the absence seem a deliberate artistic choice, rather than philosophical censure. At its feet a creature writhed whose outline was unclear, but it hinted at a form that was at once serpentine and spider-like: black and sinuous, with a large fanged head like that of a snake at one end, and a hint of several dozen smaller heads at the other. The Prophet-figure had a foot on the neck of the greater head and was running it through with a spear that glowed hot white, sun-pure in its energy. Symbolism, Andrys thought, his heart pounding wildly. It was only symbolism. The faith of the Prophet had bound the Evil One to darkness, and rendered it unable to maintain earthly form. The faith of the One God was more powerful than all the evils which this planet had conjured. It was a familiar image, and one that he had seen rendered before in the books of his faith. It was familiar. It was traditional. It should have passed without notice, just like all the other symbolic murals that adorned the inner walls of the sanctuary.
But this one was different.
The figure wore the breastplate. His breastplate! Embossed with the Earth-sun in that unlikely golden color, rays spreading out in just the way that he had drawn them, copying Gerald Tarrant’s own renderings. Andrys felt sick as he looked up at the mural, as the power of its image hit home. Was this what Calesta wanted him to see—that his fear and his shame were emblazoned on the cathedral wall for all to witness? The