The body of the shirtless man lay broken amid the debris.  The man’s head was smashed in a puddle of wet brains and blood—it had become an open wound.  Vel trembled as he stared at the body.  My God, he thought.  What’s happened?  The man in the overcoat had not fired a crossbow, he had simply pointed something at the other man, and now that drunk lay broken on the floor.  Vel felt a sick fascination, and his mouth became very dry.  What had he just seen?

     “My name is Justice Hillor!” the man in the black overcoat growled.  His was sharp.  It rolled out in a low bass, shaking the walls. “You all know who I am.  Attacking a police officer is an offense that brings severe punishments.”  Hillor touched the motionless body with the tip of his boot.

     “Hey!” one of the men closest to Hillor said. “This isn’t your court!” The man indicated the mangled body. “He didn’t get much of a trial, did he?  What the hell is this?”

     The crowd seemed ready to respond, to strike again.  Hillor rammed his knee between the man’s legs.  The man groaned, and as he dropped, the dull end of Hillor’s black device caught him across the back of the neck.  The man slumped, collapsing to the ground.

     “Any of you attack,” Hillor said, and he pointed his device into the face of a young girl nearby, “and she dies first.” The girl was in her late teens.  Everyone remained exactly as they were. “Anyone moves, and her head turns into a piece of meat.”

     Vel heard his pulse loudly in both ears, his legs beginning to tremble.  Hillor was the head of the police force, second only to the King of Hope in terms of the military.  He was also the chief magistrate, which meant that he approved sentencing.  And those hangings Vel had glimpsed—bodies with writing carved and burned into their pale skin—they had been Hillor’s work.  He was responsible for enforcing the city’s laws and maintaining discipline within the police army.  He also had one of the thirty seats on the Executive Council, meaning that he had been elected by the people of whichever of the thirty districts he lived in—which meant that he helped to create the laws as well.

     Hillor scanned the room carefully—he saw Vel.  There was a kind of recognition, but Hillor frowned, as if unable to register what he saw, and he looked away.

     “Now,” Hillor said to the crowd. “This bar will be closed for the rest of the night.  I want everyone here to disperse.”   

     The group responded, silently filing outside, while the owner rushed in with a team of buckets.  Vel touched his forehead gingerly where pieces of broken glass still clung to it.  Ponce approached behind him.

     The girl in black was gone.

     “Never seen that before,” Ponce said. “What the hell just happened?”

     Vel glanced through the wreckage—Jak was missing as well.  Several of the police were speaking with Justice Hillor near the far wall, and Ponce mixed with the others, heading out.

     “Come on,” Ponce said. “What’s wrong with you?  We’ve got to get out of here.”

     Vel looked back a final time. “Did you see that girl?”

     “Who, Jak?”

     “No,” Vel said. “She had dark hair, dressed in black.” They slipped out, returning to the cold city streets.  Vel said, “What was that the Justice had?  Is that what they pass down—what each Chief Justice keeps?”

     “It didn’t look much like a gavel, did it?”

     “What was it?”

     Distantly, a slow song played faintly.  A woman’s voice sang with it from the near-distance, barely discernable.

          “And we’ll believe,

          Sometime we’ll believe,

          That things are not,

          What they mean.”

     “I don’t know what it was, Vel.  Never heard of anyone doing something like that before.”

     “God’s magic,” Vel said, and he forced an uncomfortable smile as they wandered away from the Watchman, onto a side street. “You think that was magic, like what they talk about in Church?”

     “Thought you didn’t go to Church.”

     “Come on, Ponce, seriously.”

     “Seriously?  Seriously, I don’t know what the hell it was.  A new kind of crossbow probably.”
     Vel knew something of the Church teachings, of the sin of pride and of learning and reading.  The blessing of fertility.  But he had also heard of God’s fire striking down the wicked.  Darden would know more, Vel thought.  Wherever the hell he was.

     Heading through the streets, they passed a different corner of the cemetery again.  People danced in the streets, and a woman passed them, offering her body for forty crowns.  The summer festival continued, ignoring the weather.  They moved for the river.

     “What’s that book of scripture called?” Vel asked.

     Ponce sighed. “What?”

     “It’s by Blakes, right?”

     “Called Rebirth, Vel.  Blakes’s Rebirth.  Even I know that.”
     “So what’s it say in there about the relics—the artifacts the Church has?”

     “I don’t know,” Ponce said. “You’re going to convert now, right?  After you saw Hillor use his magic crossbow.”

     That wasn’t a crossbow, Vel thought.  There were no arrows.  Small and black and it had spouted fire and opened that poor drunk’s face.  What if it had been God’s power in the bar?  Because Justice Hillor was appointed by the King, and the King was blessed by the Church.  That meant Hillor was doing God’s will, even though his job was independent of the Church swa.  Church law and civil law were the same, except that the Church relied on Hillor and the police to enforce their teachings.

     Lord Denon—the head of the Church of Hope—was on the Executive Council was well.  Whatever passed in the Executive Council had already been proven in Blakes’s teachings or—logically—it would never have passed in the first place, as God would not have allowed sinful rules to come into being.

     “Did Justice Hillor get that thing from the Church?” Vel said.

     Ponce stopped walking. “Knock it off.  What’s wrong with you?”
     “You don’t wonder what we just saw?”
     “I wonder, but so what?  What are you going to do, ask the Justice where he got his magic crossbow?  You going to ask the Church what they’ve got locked in their vaults?  I’ll tell you what they’ll say—they’ll say they got them from God, Vel.  And the Justice got his from the Chief Justice before him, and that Justice got it from the one before him, back to when the good Lord—forgive me if he exists—dropped our great-great-grandfathers on this rock.”

     Vel said, “You’re right.”

     “Damn straight.  And I sure as shit hope God doesn’t exist, because then we’ve got bigger problems that the Pox.”

     Vel grinned. “At you know what the inside of the Cathedral looks like.”

     “Ah, but you forget what else I’ve seen the inside of.” Ponce loosened his belt and then paused, pretending to suddenly realize something. “Gosh, Vel, you’re right.  This really is important, isn’t it?”

     Vel chuckled and tapped his scabbard. “You want my sword to see the inside of your face, keep it up.”
     “Save it for the ladies—I think it’s time we converted.  Right now.  Let’s go to the Church and ask them to take us in.” Ponce pretended to walk toward the river again, in the direction of the Cathedral. “Maybe we can still be saved.  Do they do two for one specials?  Maybe they have a bargain day, like at the market, when there’s—“

     “All right,” Vel said, and he punched Ponce lightly on the shoulder. “I won’t ask anymore questions about anything.  You satisfied?”

     “So, what’s the address?” Ponce asked.

     That girl in black knew my name, Vel thought, and wondered why he hadn’t thought of that before.

     “You can go home, Ponce.”

     “You want me to throw you in the river?  Come on, I’m not going to get any sleep knowing you’re on the verge of heading to the Cathedral.  It’s my job to keep you honest.  Where’s Jak?”
     Vel reached blindly into his pocket and took out a wrinkled paper.

     Vel was my son—

     No.

     It was the wrong note.

     He wadded that paper up, putting it away again.  Why haven’t I gotten rid of it? Vel thought.  Why haven’t I read the damn thing?  It was the last thing his mother wanted to say.  What if it was important?
     “What was that?” Ponce asked.

     “A suicide note,” Vel said. “My mom’s.”

     A part of him, something Vel didn’t understand, told him to forget his mother’s note.  It told him to still his curiosity.  To shut off the urge to read the note.  He silenced it.

     Vel felt the emotions pushing . . . and he was again inside his house, and his parents . . . Ponce was waiting.  Again, frustration raged inside his chest, aching.  I can control this, he thought.  Thinking about it won’t help me.  I won’t think about it.  Vel’s hands became fists, and deliberately he looked away, shielding his face from Ponce.

     “Here’s the right one,” Vel aid softly.

     He would never see his mother again.  Flashes of her.  Sunken, pale limbs.  Blood flowing onto her hands and forearms.

     No.

     He felt the other paper, smaller than his mother’s note and took it out, unfolding the material.  Ponce leaned over his shoulder to read.

     Turn Tables: A Place to Call Home

     63 West End Street

     “’A place to call home,’” Ponce said, and he continued talking, but Vel wasn’t listening.

     They headed for the end of the street.  Someone watched them from an alleyway, and they continued.

     Ponce said, “You ever get the feeling that you’re not awake?  That this isn’t real, and sometime we’ll just wake up and be someone else?”
     Vel thought, I am the reason my parents are dead.  The cops found them because of me.  If I had come back earlier, I could have been there.  I could have done something.  Don’t think about it.

     “No,” Vel said. “I don’t.”

Chapter 8

     Lord Denon sat alone on a wooden pew in a cathedral of black stone.  Candles burned from their ornate metal stands around the exterior of the huge room, their light flickering up to the high ceiling.  The candlestands were tall, with metal swas embedded in their stalks midway to the top.  On each candlestick, just below the summit, a strange creature was built into the metal: an animal with a point where its mouth should have been, and broad arms outstretched very widely, grooved with regular curves, ending in more smooth lines, rather than hands.  Its feet were curled talons, gripping two bundles—the first held what might have been a kind of grass strand or branch, while the second gripped a parcel of arrows.  This was a symbol of Hope’s harmony: work tempered with divinely sanctioned law.

     Two rows of pews, with a central aisle, led to the front of the church, where a blue circle was inscribed on the floor in front of an altar set with an elaborate white cloth and more candles.  A black swa filled the center of the cloth, and all of the walls hung with white tapestries—more swas.

     A thick hardbound copy of the scripture of Blakes’s Rebirth sat in the center of the altar, opened to a section near the front.  Beyond the altar, three closed doors were set into the solid stone wall, and overlooking the scene was a balcony—carved out of that wall, thirty feet above the floor—where three empty chairs had been set.

     This main room of worship, where Denon now sat, head bowed in silent prayer, filled the center of the Cathedral.  A set of rear double doors, at the far end of the aisle, led into Reich Hall and some of the living quarters.

     The doors opened, and a young man in white dress with a swa armband and sword hurried down the aisle, bowing at Lord Denon’s side.

     Denon did not move. “Yes?”

     “Dispatches, Lord.”

     Denon held out one hand, palm up, and the young priest-soldier dropped a sealed white paper into it.  When he was alone again, Denon sat up, broke the five-pointed star seal—that meant it was from within the Palace—and he read the brief note.  Finished, Denon methodically tore the paper into strips.  He took the fragments to the altar where he burned the small fragments in the candle flames.

     Distracted, Denon read a line from the opened page of the Rebirth:

          Thus I seize the Spiritual Prey:

          Ye smiters with disease, make way!

          I come Your King and God to seize,

          Is God a Smiter with disease?

     “In public,” Denon said softly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying, and he glared at the altar. “He used his office in a bar.”

     Denon stepped onto the blue circle in the center of the floor.  Desperate, Denon thought quietly, he’s desperate now.  And vulnerable.  But, no action yet—no, he will still find the boy.  And then the Frill may become a factor.  And Blakes.  And Hillor believes that the boy is all of the insurance he needs; leverage against me, to seize the sacred relics.

     Frowning, Denon moved to the altar again to be certain none of the pieces of the note remained.  He read again from the book:

          He bound Old Satan in his Chain,

          And bursting forth, his furious ire

          Became a Chariot of fire:

          Throughout the land he took his course,

          And traced diseases to their Source . . .

     Blakes, Denon thought.  You’re the cause of this.  I see that now.  God has given us this chance so that we might correct the errors of our youth, years ago; when men died in tunnels underground and somehow the boy escaped; when we betrayed the Frill; when I trusted you.

     Denon turned the book to another page, near the end, and he read.

          But now, alone, over rocks, mountains,

          Cast out from the lovely bosom,

          Cruel jealousy, selfish fear,

          Self-destroying: how can delight

          Renew in these chains of darkness

          Where bones of beasts are strewn

          On the bleak and snowy mountains

          Where bones from the birth are buried

          Before they see the light?

            He closed the book.

Lord Denon walked down the central aisle—past the swas that meant Life over Lies—out the doors, into Reich Hall.




Hope's End is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Hope's End
Copyright © 2001 by Stephen Chambers
All reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010

http://www.tor.com

ISBN 0-312-87349-2
First Edition: August 2001

Hope's End available for order on Amazon.com and elsewhere.

Email: schambers@sff.net