The Awakeners’ most dreaded operatives. Men who could suck the thoughts right out of your head, if the stories were to be believed. Men whose stare could send you mad.
Frey hunkered down further into the bracken.
The Sentinels put the chest down in front of the Imperators, then one of them knelt and opened it. Frey was too far away to see what was within.
One of the Imperators nodded, satisfied, and the chest was closed. The Sentinels lifted it and carried it up the Moment of Silence’s cargo ramp. They emerged seconds later, having left their burden inside. A few words were exchanged, and then one of the Imperators boarded the craft. The other turned to follow, but suddenly hesitated, his head tilted as if listening. Then he turned, and fixed his gaze on the spot where Frey hid in the bracken.
An awful sensation washed over him: foul, seething, corrupt. Frey’s heart thumped hard in terror. He ducked down, out of sight, burying himself among the stalks and leaves. The loamy smell of wet soil and the faintly acrid tang of bracken filled his nostrils. He willed himself to be a stone, a rabbit, some small and insignificant thing. Anything that would be beneath the Imperator’s notice. Some distant part of him was aware that such overwhelming fear wasn’t natural, that there was some power at work here; but reason and logic had fled.
Then, all at once, the feeling was gone. The fear left him. He stayed huddled, not daring to move, breathing hard, soaked in relief. It had passed, it had passed. He murmured desperate thanks, addressed to no one. Never again, he swore. Never again would he go through that. Those few seconds had been among the most horrible of his life.
He heard the whine of the hydraulics as the cargo ramp slid shut. Electromagnets throbbed as the aerium engines got to work. The Moment of Silence was taking off.
Frey gathered his courage and raised his head, peering out above the bracken. The Imperators were gone. All eyes were on the craft. Frey took advantage of the moment, and scampered away towards the hermitage.
By damn, what did that thing do to me?
He could only remember one event vaguely comparable to the ordeal he’d just suffered. He’d been young, perhaps seventeen, and he and some friends went out to some fields where some very ‘special’ mushrooms grew. The night had started off with hilarity and ended with Frey seized by a crushing paranoia, afraid that his heart was going to burst, and being mobbed by hallucinatory bats. That senseless, primal fear had turned a confident young man into a quivering wreck. Now he’d been brushed by it again.
His breathing had returned to normal by the time he got to the hermitage, and he had himself under control again. Shaken, but unharmed. He approached the building from behind, where there were no guards to be seen, and pressed himself against the cool stone of the wall. Security was lax here. He had that to be thankful for. The guards didn’t expect any trouble. They were only here for protection against pirates and other marauders, who might find the idea of a hermitage full of nubile, sex-starved young women somewhat alluring.
Frey cheered at the thought. He’d forgotten about the nubile, sex-starved part. It made his mistake back in Aulenfay twinge a little less, although his cheeks still burned at the memory.
He’d studied the Awakeners in Olden Square and picked Crake’s brains about their faith for a purpose. His idea was to disguise himself as a Speaker, to blend in seamlessly, and thereby move about the hermitage unopposed. Congratulating himself on his unusually thorough preparations, he’d surprised Crake by appearing in full Speaker dress: the high-collared white cassock with red piping, the sandals, the Cipher painted on his forehead in a passable impression of a tattoo.
‘What do you think?’ he asked proudly.
Crake burst out laughing, before explaining to the rather miffed captain that Awakener hermitages were always single sex institutions. Acolytes were allowed no contact with the opposite gender. In Amalicia’s hermitage, all the tutors and students would be female. The male guards would be forbidden to go inside except under special circumstances, and even then the female acolytes would be kept to their rooms. Lust interfered with the meditation necessary to
