Time of the Beast by Geoff Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

bishop and his clergy circled the bed and chanted in Latin, their voices growing louder and their gestures more dramatic, while Oslac lay seemingly unconscious, but restless and groaning in their midst, his features twisted and distraught. Until at last the bishop leaned over him, bringing his face close to Oslac’s as he screamed out:
    ‘ “I compel you, devil, to depart in the name of Christ!” And the priests and monks began to intone these words, their voices rising like one.
    ‘In a moment Oslac’s eyes opened wide, looking huge in his pale, gaunt face as he stared with confusion and terror at the robed and hooded figures that stood gathered around him in the smoke-clogged chamber. His mouth fell open and his breath wheezed as the whole room fell quiet, and every eye was upon him, for at once there was something in his look that seemed to shine with a terrible lucidity. Then he croaked out in a voice so hoarse and strangled it was barely recognisable to me.
    ‘ “ You… are the devils! Who come like thieves in the night to steal away the souls of my people… to defame and defile our sacred customs… and turn our nation’s ancient faith and pride into something which is dark… and guilty… and shameful …”
    ‘As he heard this the bishop’s face grew enraged, and his voice rose like hate-filled thunder to denounce the blasphemy, while the priests and monks rushed forward like a screaming mob to close all about Oslac, shouting holy curses to drown out his voice and silence him. For what seemed a long time this went on. Until there rose above the din a long and dreadful cry. Then there was silence – a silence more awful to me than all the uproar which had gone before it.
    ‘ “The demon has fled, and in Christ we are triumphant!” I heard the bishop say at last. He turned towards us, yet his face was not exultant but desolate. “But I fear the ordeal has been too great for Lord Oslac. His malady has taken him. It is God’s will, and the price of our victory.” Then he moved aside to reveal Oslac, who lay sprawled and motionless, his eyes gaping lifeless in their sockets, his face rigid in a look of dying anguish.
    ‘Behind me I heard the household start to wail and lament. I suppose I did too, although I do not remember it. But in my distress I did not believe it was the bishop who had won. I knew it was rather we who had lost, and broken faith with something deep and old in ourselves – the beliefs and traditions of our people which had served us since time beyond recall. The voice of our past had called to us, but for lack of courage we did not heed it, and so brought its wrath and vengeance upon us. It seemed to me then that in Oslac we mourned the lost spirit of our race. We had dispossessed them both together.’
    Lady Hild fell silent, and her head nodded as she struggled to resist the soporific effect of her potion, clinging to consciousness as her eyes stared with a fierce intensity into the empty gloom behind me. At last she went on.
    ‘For a long while in my heart I would not accept the new Faith, for to do so felt like a betrayal of Oslac’s memory. But as time dulled my grief the world about me became wholly Christian, and gradually I lost the will and the rage inside to resist. So I tried to become a good Christian. But now, at the end, I doubt the wisdom of what I have done. I fear we have denied all that was once powerful and true in ourselves. And so it waits for us, beyond the veil of death, demanding restitution. ’
    Now I understood how she longed in death to be reconciled with the husband she believed she had failed. But he had died an unrepentant pagan and was therefore damned – on this the word of the Church was unyielding. I feared that guilt and remorse now brought her close to a lapse of faith. This was surely the reason she had sent for me.
    ‘I assure you, lady,’ I said, ‘that the heathen deities and ancestral spirits we once revered were never real. They are