Silas Breaks His Silence

He had not spoken to the eight in three weeks.

He had moved among them, in those three weeks, in the small steady way he had moved among the faithful of Darklume for thirty years; he had performed the small careful motions of the cathedral's daily life — the lighting of the lamp at the eastern wall in the evening, the cleaning of the floor before the morning, the tending of the small narrow garden that ran along the southern side of the building. He had performed these motions without speaking. The eight had, in the first week, spoken to him in the small ordinary ways the faithful had always spoken to him; he had, in the small careful absence of his replies, made it understood that he was not, in this season, taking conversation. The eight had, in the second week, stopped speaking to him.

He had not, in the three weeks, gone into the chapel at the eastern wall.

He had stood, twice, at its door. He had not opened it. The door was the door behind which the small wooden case had been kept under cloth on the high shelf for the past nine seasons.

The case had, in the first week of the three, become cool.

He had, on the third day of the cooling, ceased to look at the case. He had, on the seventh day, ceased to enter the chapel that held it. He had, on the fourteenth day, ceased to speak. The three cessations had, by his small private accounting, been the same cessation in three different forms.

Tonight he ended the cessation.

He had used the three weeks to consider what he had said to the Major in the chapel on the morning after the figure in the tent. He had said the figure was a forgery. He had said the Major had been deceived. Both readings had been true. He had used the certainty of the first reading to substitute for a certainty of the second reading he had not, in the chapel that morning, possessed. He had told the Major to move forward. He had told it with the full weight of his thirty years' certainty, and his thirty years' certainty had been certainty about who the being was. It had not been certainty about what the next correct action of a Major in the field on the eve of an engagement was. He had spoken the second sentence in the voice of the first.

The cooling of the case in the past three weeks had been, on his careful re-reading, the small flat correction the being had at last had time to give him. He had used presence as instruction. The instruction he had given the Major had been the small wrong instruction.

The Major had heard the wrong voice. The Major had hesitated. The hesitation had cost the kingdom three seasons.

Tonight, in the second hour after dusk, Silas walked to the chapel at the eastern wall. He opened the door. He went to the high shelf. He took down the small wooden case. He held it, for a long count, in his hands. The case was, on his reading, still cool. It was the same small steady cool he had been reading for the past three days — the cool of clarification correctly received.

He carried the case out of the chapel, through the small narrow corridor, into the nave, and to the altar, where the eight had been told, by the small careful word he had passed through the eldest of them at the second hour, to gather. The eight were there. They were standing at the foot of the altar, in the small loose ring he had been receiving them at the foot of the altar in for thirty years. They had not, in the three weeks of his silence, been told what tonight was for. They were not, in this third hour after dusk, asking.

He set the small wooden case on the corner of the altar.

He did not open it.

He stood at the altar, in the position he had stood in for thirty years, and he addressed them, for the first time in three weeks, in the small even voice that they had been taught to associate, over those thirty years, with his ordinary instruction.

The eight stood, at the foot of the altar, in the small steady silence the Darklume faithful had been standing in during their priest's instructions for thirty years. They did not, in the silence, look at one another. They looked at him.

The eight did not move. The youngest of them — a woman of perhaps nineteen, who had come to Darklume only in the past summer — drew a small slow breath. The eldest, who was a woman of seventy-one, set her hand on the youngest's wrist.

"Where shall we go, Father."

She used the small old form. He had not been called Father by the eight in nine seasons. He had asked them, on the morning after the Archangel had bowed to him, never to use the word again. The eldest had complied for nine seasons. She used the word now, on his reading of it, not to remind him of the office; she used it because the form was the form a person of her age and her station used to a person of his age and his station when she was about to disagree with him.

She looked at him. She did not, in the look, soften.

"If we go, Father, who will stand at this altar."

He did not, for a long count, answer.

He did not answer. He inclined his head, by a fraction. The eldest inclined hers, by the same fraction. The seven other faithful, taking the cue from the inclining, inclined theirs. They did not, in the inclining, agree. They acknowledged the instruction; they did not, by any of the small old motions they performed at the altar in his thirty years, accept it.

He let the silence hold.

Then he walked, with the case still set on the corner of the altar, to the great front doors of the cathedral. The doors had stood closed against the cathedral's eastern country for the past season, on Silas's instruction.

He set his hand on the inner bar.

He drew the bar back. He drew the bolts on the right door. He drew the bolts on the left door. He set his hand against the right door, and he opened it; he set his hand against the left door, and he opened it. The two doors swung outward, at the slow uneven pace doors of that weight swung at, into the small dark courtyard.

He stepped to the threshold.

The air that came in, on the opening, was too warm for autumn.

He stood in the threshold. He did not, in the standing, allow himself any of the small involuntary expressions a priest of his discipline might have permitted himself in a moment of the kind. He noted the warmth. He read the warmth.

The warmth was, on his careful private reading, the small flat register of something else's attention.

He did not, in the threshold, name what he was reading. He did not have, in his discipline, the equipment to name it. He had only the case at the altar behind him, which was not, this evening, warm enough to be the source.

He stood for a long count in the threshold.

Then he turned, walked back to the altar, lifted the small wooden case, and carried it through the open doors, into the small dark courtyard, to the place at the eastern wall where the cathedral's small narrow garden ran along the lower lawn. He set the case down on the small stone bench that ran the length of the garden. He set his hand on the case.

He waited.

The eldest of the eight came to the threshold of the cathedral after a long count. She did not enter the garden. She stood at the door. She spoke once, across the small dark grass.

He did not, on the answer, turn his head. He stood at the bench in the small flat warm air. He let the eldest's words hold, in the dark, the small careful weight a priest's silence would have given them.

She withdrew. She did not, in withdrawing, close the door behind her. She left the great doors open. The eight in the small loose ring at the altar did not, in the long count after, move.

He stood in the garden until the eastern sky began, very slowly, to lighten. The warm air did not move. It did not, in the long count he stood in the garden, gather into any of the small recognizable shapes a current of that kind would, on his careful reading, have gathered into. It remained, on his reading, the small flat warm presence of an attention he could not yet name.

A faith that opened its doors after closing them was a different faith from the faith that had never closed them.

It was not weaker. It was, on the chronicle's careful reading at this hour, awake.

The cathedral, in the third hour before dawn of this morning, opened. It was not opened to the country it had refused for a season. It was opened to a thing the country had not, until tonight, sent. The case did not, on Silas's reading, register what the thing was. The cathedral stood, in the small flat warm air, with its priest at the eastern wall and its eight at the altar. The thing, on the small flat warm reading the air gave, waited.

It would, in the next dawn, deliver.