LITMIR.BIZ

       THREE

      Hugh was more aware of impressions than of anything else during the time that followed his being summoned into the Chamber. He had no idea who the messenger who came to fetch him was, for the man was robed in black from head to toe, every vestige of individuality that might have identified him concealed from view. The passageway through which he led Hugh towards the Chamber was equally black and featureless, with not a single glimmer of light to relieve the darkness, so that Hugh, clutching the man’s elbow and following him closely and with extreme caution, wondered how the fellow could possibly find his way without bumping into anything. He would discover later that there had been nothing to bump into, that there had been no passageway at all and that the serpentine, disorienting twists and turns they had taken had simply followed lines laid out on the wide floor of a single, black-painted anteroom. His guide had simply kept one hand on a black silken cord that led him unerringly towards his destination, the larger Chamber beyond.

      Hugh knew they had reached the end of the passageway when they stepped through an unseen doorway into another place, for the silence there, though equally profound, had a different feel to it, a quality of spacious airiness. His guide stopped walking abruptly, and Hugh, following closely behind, walked right into him, striking him with his shoulder and almost unbalancing both of them. As he pulled himself to attention, holding his breath in his eagerness to hear anything that might be there for the noticing, a tiny gleam of light sprang into view far above them and grew steadily brighter and larger until it cast the faintest nimbus of light into the darkness that filled the Chamber. Hugh did not move his head to look about him, for he had done so on both of his earlier visits to this place and had been rewarded with pain for his temerity as his guide on each occasion had pierced his side with a goad of some kind, drawing blood both times. Now he merely strained to see and hear anything he could.

      There were people here, he knew. He could sense them sitting or standing nearby, and that, too, he was familiar with from his previous visits, but this time it felt as though there were far more people out there than there had been on the first two occasions. Deprived of all sensory evidence, he had no true way of gauging how many people surrounded him. His mind was merely registering impressions, he knew, and those impressions must be influenced by his own knowledge of the numbers of people assembled for the Gathering.

      He gritted his teeth, flexed his fingers, and forced himself to breathe deeply, seeking calm within himself and determined to allow the current of whatever events were scheduled here to carry him where he needed to go. It was, he thought at one point, the most difficult task he had ever assumed, for every aspect of his education and training demanded the exact opposite of what he was doing, and yet his father and grandfather had both been insistent that he needed to be passive now, and must simply let himself go along with whatever developed, ignoring the disciplines of his training and the fact that he had been taught to question everything he was told, and to fight against every effort made by anyone to manipulate him or to force him to do anything against his own good judgment. Float, he told himself now, float!

      Someone approached him and stood close enough for Hugh to smell the heavy but not unpleasant sweetness of his breath, and began to chant in a language that Hugh had never heard before. It was a long incantation, and whatever it signified, as it progressed it seemed to Hugh that the air in the Chamber grew steadily brighter, so that he was soon able to see the shape of the man in front of him, and the dim outlines of others, many others, on the edges of the blackness around him. He saw, too, that his black-clad guide had vanished soundlessly from his side, no doubt at the moment when the cantor had stepped forward and claimed Hugh’s attention.

      At the conclusion of the opening chant, matters began to move more quickly, and Hugh was able to recognize, with more and more frequency, elements of what he had been learning for months. Throughout, he was conducted and led about by a succession of robed and hooded figures, to be positioned in various spots and then catechized by people whose differing, highly stylized modes of dress—defined in the darkness by shape and by bulk rather than detail—led him to believe they must be officers of the brotherhood. And still, continuously but infinitely slowly, the light in the Chamber continued to grow brighter. The single light source remained unaltered, a sole speck of brightness high above the assembly, but Hugh soon came to believe that it was being lowered, in infinitesimal increments, as the rites progressed, for he could increasingly see the outlines and shapes of individual people in the rows of seats surrounding the open floor of the Chamber, and although it was still far too dark to discern any of their features, he could clearly see the shadowy outlines of the alternating black and white squares in the floor.

      Then, at the conclusion of a response that was one of the longest he had had to learn, he was forced to his knees by two men who held his wrists and pressed down on his shoulders. Kneeling thus, uncomfortably aware that he could not have resisted had he wished to, he was required to swear the most horrifying and baleful oath he could ever have imagined, calling down torture, dismemberment, death, and disgrace on himself and his loved ones should he ever recant and betray the secrets he was about to learn. He swore the oath, as required, and was allowed to rise to his feet again, surrounded by a number of men who laid hands on him and steered him gently towards what he could only believe to be a far corner of the Chamber. There he was turned again, and positioned with his chin raised towards the single source of light above, noticing that it was now framed between two high pillars that appeared to form a doorway or portal, and a new voice, stronger and more sonorous than any other he had heard, spoke in a language unknown to him.

      He was aware of bodies pressing closer to him, and then there was a sudden scurry of movement in the surrounding darkness and several things happened at once, the worst and most unexpected of them bringing his heart leaping into his throat in terror. Some unknown man standing ahead of him suddenly broke away from the group and bent quickly, as though to snatch something up from the ground, then came rushing directly towards Hugh, raising a heavy club over his head and swinging it at Hugh’s. As that happened the light went out, and Hugh felt himself being grasped from behind, hard and tightly, by many hands that held him rigid as they jerked him back and away from the murderous blow, pulling him down and lowering him helplessly, hard, towards the floor as the blow landed obliquely on his temple, hitting with a muffled thump rather than a bone-splintering crash. Stunned and disoriented, unable to move against the iron clutch of so many unseen hands, his heart pounding with breath-stopping fear, Hugh felt himself being lowered farther than he would have thought possible without meeting the floor, and then being pulled and tugged, turned one way and then another with no possibility of resisting, and for a disbelieving moment, he felt as though they were wrapping him in something.

      So quickly that the speed of it unnerved him more than ever, all the gripping hands left him, all sounds and movement stopped, and the silence became absolute again. Terrified beyond anything he had ever known, Hugh lay motionless, holding his breath, his eyes clenched tightly shut as he tried to gauge what had happened to him. He knew he ought to be dead, for he had seen the size of the club his assailant had swung at him, and he had felt the impact of the blow, but no pain. And now there was nothing: no pain, no feeling at all, no sound, no light, nothing except the pounding of his own heart, reverberating in his chest and thudding in his ears. Could a dead man yet hear such things, or were they merely memories of life? Where was he now, if not in some anteroom of Heaven or Hell, awaiting the arrival of a judge?

      Slowly,

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