Paul Park - Starbridge 03 - The Cult of Loving Kindness

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ISBN: 1-930815-50-6

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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and locales are either the product of

the author’s imagination or used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism.

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The Cult of Loving

Kindness

The Starbridge Chronicles: Book III

By Paul Park

ElectricStory.com, Inc.

For JMC

Part 1:

Mr. Sarnath

A man had been arrested at the port of Caladon. His disembarkation papers had been smudged with

sweat. Further investigation had revealed a false bottom to his suitcase.

Sulky, unimpassioned, he stood on the veranda of the customs shed, where the deputy administrator sat

behind his desk. Around them the dark night was full of noises. Insects buzzed around the lamppost in the

yard.

The deputy administrator leaned forward in his chair. He balanced one pointed elbow on the blotter of

his desk, and with the fingers of one hand he combed delicately through a pile of small copper

medallions. Each one was stamped with the image of the shining sun.

Under the desktop light they seemed to glow. The deputy administrator rubbed his eyes. It was the fourth

hour after sunset; behind him in the shed, the senior deputy director was already drunk, asleep and

snoring. At intervals his liquid grunts would seep out past the curtained doorway, mixing with more subtle

forest sounds.

“Please sit down,” said the deputy administrator. He indicated a wooden stool and the smuggler sank

onto it, his knees spread apart. His fat face held no expression. His hair, plentiful upon his neck and

hands, was thin on top. His scalp was slick with perspiration.

Next to the pile of medallions a small statue was lying on its side. It was the second part of the smuggler’s

consignment; the deputy administrator lifted it in both hands and set it upright underneath the lamp.

Though only nine inches tall it weighed several pounds, a copper statue of St. Abu Starbridge standing

erect, his hand held out in front of him. The tattoo on his palm was inlaid with a plug of solid gold.

The deputy administrator was a judge of craftsmanship. He ran his fingers over the folds of the saint’s

copper cloak, admiring the work. “Jon Blox,” he said. With his left hand he turned over the pages of the

smuggler’s passport.

The man nodded. A mosquito had landed on the crown of his head. The deputy administrator watched it

drink, and swell with blood, and drift away.

“Do you have anything to tell me?” he asked. “You must admit you’re in an intricate position.”

The smuggler stared at him briefly and then turned his head. He looked out over the wooden balustrade.

Something was scrabbling in the bush on the other side of the yard. After a moment a badger waddled

onto the perimeter and pressed its naked face against the fence.

The deputy administrator rubbed his eyes. These devotees were hard to break, for they were buttressed

in their faith by the example of their saint, who never spoke to his tormentors even when the fire was

around his feet. “You could make this simpler for yourself,” he said. “Simpler and more complex. But as

it is, you have neglected to fill out any of the proper forms. These items, though proscribed for the general

public, nevertheless may have legitimate artistic and educational uses. I have seen a statuette just like this

in the cultural museum in Charn.”

A tremor of interest passed over the smuggler’s face. He turned back toward the light. His voice was

low—“What do you mean?”

“I mean that there’s no reason for despair. This case may be more complicated than you understand.”

He had the man’s attention now. The soft pucker of a frown appeared between the smuggler’s brows.

“What do you mean?” he asked again.

The deputy administrator took a paper from his desk. He read a few lines from the back of it and then

looked up. “You are accused of smuggling these items of religious contraband,” he said, indicating the

pile of medallions and the statue of the saint. “But perhaps we might consider entering a lesser charge,

under the right circumstances. For example,” he continued, “Customs Regulation 412ao forbids the

export of all artifacts without a license from the Bureau of Antiquities. If you prefer, Regulation 6161j

forbids the use of precious metals in the decorative arts. It is a question of a modest fine.”

The smuggler shook his head. “I know the penalty for what I’ve done.”

“I’m suggesting you may not. Your offense may be more trivial than you suppose.”

Five wooden steps descended to the yard from the veranda of the customs shed. Two soldiers slouched

on these, their backs to the administrator. Occasionally as they turned their heads, he could see the glow

of their marijuana cigarettes and catch flickers of their conversation. Now one got up. He ambled over to

the perimeter and knelt down by the fence.

“What do you want from me?” demanded the smuggler, his face suddenly alive, contorted with disgust.

“Aach, I know your kind. Bureaucratic parasites!” He brought some saliva into his mouth as if to spit,

then paused, then swallowed it again. He leaned forward on his stool, placing his fat fist upon the desk.

“Let me tell you now, I have no information. No addresses. Not even a name.”

At the fence, the soldier reached into his pocket and brought out part of a candy bar. The badger stood

opposite him on its hind legs.

The deputy administrator shrugged. “You misunderstand me. But I appreciate your fears. Perhaps you

are familiar with certain worst-case scenarios. Perhaps involving relatives or personal friends.” He

smiled—a wasted gesture, for the lower part of his emaciated face was covered by a veil.

“Let me explain,” he said. “Some members of my department do what they can to discourage certain

activities, which they interpret to be linked to superstition and idolatry. They feel the truth of man’s

condition can be better understood through reason than through faith.”

Again the smuggler’s face seemed to have shut down, and settled into stolid impassivity. The deputy

administrator tried again: “Let me explain. Our function here is not only to prosecute. It is to inform.

These objects”—here he waved his hand dismissively at the pile of medallions—“these objects have no

meaning. They are the relics of a bankrupt church.”

On the steps, the remaining soldier slapped his neck and swore. And at the fence across the yard, his

comrade got up from his knees. He was looking up into the sky.

The lights from the compound overwhelmed all but the brightest stars. But now the moon was rising, its

pale edge gleaming among the tallest trees. The smuggler studied it in silence until the arc of its great rim

rose unimpeded over the forest canopy. Then he bowed his head and stared down at the floor between

his knees. “I guess I’ll never leave this place alive,” he said. The new light gave his face a new

composure.

The deputy administrator rubbed his eyes. “Your position is more favorable than you suspect. You have

not begun to think about your options.”

The smuggler made no reply, only stared at the floorboards underneath his boots. No man is so stupid

that he cannot learn, reflected the administrator. But it takes time; he clapped his hands. “We are both

tired,” he said. “And I am explaining myself badly. Even so, please think about what I have said. And I

will speak to my superiors.” He looked down at the appointment book upon his desk. “In the meantime,”

he said, “I have you scheduled tentatively for next Friday. That’s the thirty-fourth.”

* * *

The soldiers took the man away. In a few minutes one of them returned to the porch bearing

refreshments—crusts of bread and cheese, and a tin basin full of water. He deposited them on the desk

and then withdrew.

After he had gone, the deputy administrator sat by himself for a long time. He switched off the small light

upon his desk. Now the moon was rising, showing its silver belly in a sea of darkness.

He left the food untouched. He sat listening to the mosquitoes and the cautious stir of animals beyond the

fence. In the distance, at the limit of his senses, he could hear occasional noises from the port—steam

whistles from the packet boats and once, the clang of a buoy on the gentle sea. Occasionally the air was

stiffened by the smell of salt. Behind him in the customs shed, his director had turned over and was still.

A gekko lay watching a spider on the balustrade near his right hand. Tendrils of flypaper, twisting gently

in the humid air, hung from the ceiling of the porch. On one of them a moth had lighted and was stuck.

It was a luna moth, with iridescent wings as big as a man’s hand. The deputy administrator sat back in his

chair. He admired the composure of the creature, how it declined to hurt itself in futile struggles against

fate. Its great wings scarcely moved. In a little while he took a pair of scissors from his desk and stood

up behind his chair.

For several minutes he did nothing. From his changed position he could no longer see the moon directly.

It was cut off by the overhanging roof. But instead, he could observe its entire shape reflected in the basin

on his desk. The light spread over the plane of his desk, and fell especially on the image of the saint, and

touched the star-shaped plug of gold upon his palm.

The statue depicted an episode from the saint’s later life: how he calmed the mob below the Harbor

Bridge when Chrism Demiurge was lord of Charn. His sad copper smile was full of wisdom and

compassion.

The insect rustled its bright wings next to the administrator’s head—the faintest susurration on the

midnight air. How long did it have to live? Not long, not long, even in the best of times. He raised the

scissors. Holding the cartridge of the flypaper in his other hand, he stretched it tight, and with

single-minded care he cut the insect loose, amputating its five feet next to the glue.

Suddenly free, the moth folded its wings and dropped tumbling to the desk. It dropped onto its side in

the middle of the basin, troubling the water, scattering the light.

* * *

Now the moon was rising. The deputy administrator stood looking out over the deserted yard. At

midnight precisely, the light from the lamppost was extinguished, and the silver moon washed unimpeded

over the black grass.

After half an hour the deputy administrator untied his tolliban. He stripped the long gauze veil from around

his mouth and head, revealing features that were almost human. That night he felt supremely sensitive to

every sound; leaning out over the porch’s wooden balustrade, he stood listening to the air in the tall grass.

He heard the bell buoy on the sea ring once, twice. He heard the prisoners breathing in their cells, the

sentries sleeping at their watch, the sodden dreams of his superior in the shed.

He wadded his veil into a ball. Turning, he dropped it onto the center of the blotter on his desk. Next to

it, next to the basin and the drowned moth, lay his appointment book. It was a record of interrogation

stretching far into the past, far into the future: thousands of names penciled in at half-hour intervals, the

faded marks glowing silver in the moonlight.

A ledger of unhappiness and waste—the deputy administrator stood with his hand over the open book,

his finger on the page for the next day. Only a few hours away—he had planned to spend the night in

meditation, perhaps dozing for twenty minutes at the end. But now the page felt harsh and rough under

his hand; he closed the book. He lined it up along the edges of the blotter, and then weighted down its

cover with the statue of the saint.

From a cardboard crate on the floor beneath his desk he pulled a change of underwear and two pairs of

socks. These, together with his veil and the untouched bread and cheese, he tied into a bundle, which he

could carry over his shoulder. He picked up one of the saint’s copper medallions from the pile on his

desk.

Due to the success of his department, the market in religious contraband—and especially these emblems

of the Cult of Loving Kindness—was lucrative on both sides of the border. In Caladon the smallest

trinket, for a sweeper or a guard, was worth more than a month’s pay. The deputy administrator, with

this coin, hoped to bribe the sentry at the gate to let him go. Holding it in the center of his palm, he

stalked across the floor and down the steps, leaving his post for the first time in seven months.

The customs compound—six rectangular buildings surrounded by barbed wire—occupied a wooded

ridge above the port, and was connected to it by a metal tram. The deputy administrator stalked across

the yard. The grass was thick under his shoes. Expecting to be challenged, he slunk between two

buildings, keeping to the shadows. But he saw no one. And when he reached the outer gate, the sentry in

the box was fast asleep. So he slid the coin into the pocket of his trousers, and ducked under the

crossbar.

A paved road led southeast from the gate. He followed it for half a mile until he found a bare place in the

trees. Here the road descended sharply toward the port two hundred feet below; from the crest of the

ridge the deputy administrator could see the hands of the breakwater stretching out into the bay, pallid in

the moonlight, each decorated with a single jewel. And there were lights, also, on the packet steamer by

the dock, and a single shining ruby on the bell buoy out to sea. The deputy administrator listened for the

sound—a muffled clanging on the small east wind. He heard it, and heard something else, louder, more

insistent, closer, and he stepped aside into the grass. Below him at the bottom of the hill, the shuttle

started on its hourly circuit from the port to the compound and then back.

He squatted down in the long grass. Soon he could hear the rattle of the car as it labored toward him up

the slope. Soon he could see it—empty, brainless, fully lit, its wheels sparking on the steel rail that ran

beside the road. He crouched down lower as it gained the slope, and he could read the advertisements in

the empty compartment, and smell the singed metal as it hurried past.

Then it was gone. The deputy administrator stood up. For a minute he stood looking back the way he

had come. Then he stepped out onto the road, continuing downhill for another hundred yards before he

turned aside under the trees. A narrow track led away south along the ridge. It was the footpath over

land, due south to the border and beyond, scarcely used now that the packets made the journey twice a

week from Charn.

The forest closed around him after a dozen paces, and the dark was monstrous and loud. To the right

and to the left, beetles quarreled in the underbrush, while high above among the jackfruit trees, tarsiers

grabbed bats out of the air. Furry creatures, stupefied by moonlight, stumbled up against his ankles.

He walked almost for half an hour before the border came in sight: a small white cabin set adjacent to the

track. East and west, a strand of luminescent wire sagged off into the trees, interrupted by the cabin and

a wooden barricade. Placards in five languages were posted to this barricade, though only the boldest

headings—PAPERS PLEASE, FORM SINGLE LINE, EXTINGUISH PIPES—were visible by

moonlight.

Officially, the gate was open. But tongueweed licked at the administrator’s shoes as he came up the

track. He stood studying the placards; to his left, a single lantern glimmered on the cabin’s porch.

By its light he could distinguish the gatekeeper sitting cross-legged on a table, his shoulders hunched, his

head bent low, his hands clasped in his lap. It was an attitude of meditation; a kerosene lantern on the

desk in front of him flickered in the humid wind, and it shone upon his narrow face, his naked scalp, his

veil. He was staring deep into the flame.

Standing on the porch’s lowest step, the deputy administrator watched him carefully. He took pleasure in

watching him, in examining his meager arms and legs, for the old man was a member of his own race,

living, like him, in a world of strangers. Old and thin, the man was still quite supple, and his spine still

made a graceful curve. Clearly he had crossed the seventh boundary of concentration, and was beginning

to perceive the essences of small inanimate objects. An inkwell, a pebble, and a leaf lay before him on

the tabletop, grouped around the base of the lantern.

The deputy administrator waited. After several minutes, the old man raised his head. His eyes glowed

bright with comprehension. “Please submit your documents face down upon the corner of the desk,” he

said. “Are you carrying liquor or illicit drugs?”

His voice was creaky and disused. Instead of answering, the deputy administrator climbed the steps until

he stood inside the circle of the light. The old man stared at him with luminous eyes. And then he shook

his head. “Sarnath,” he exclaimed. “Sarnath Bey.”

Mr. Sarnath took his bundle from his shoulder and lowered it to the floor. He pulled a chair up to the

table and sat down. Leaning forward with his hands over the lamp, he indicated the three objects on the

tabletop. “What do you see?” he asked.

The old man shrugged. “Three different kinds of death.”

They spoke in a Treganu dialect, using it gratefully and tentatively after so long away from home. The old

man unwrapped part of his long veil and pulled it down, so that it hung around his neck. “Why are you

here?” he asked.

Mr. Sarnath smiled. With his index finger, he reached forward and touched the stem of the dry leaf. “I

saw a moth drown in a bowl,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“No. It was as if I almost understood. Yet it was enough—I’m going home.”

The old man didn’t speak for half a minute. Then he shook his head, and his voice, when it came, was

softer, clearer, full of sadness. “They let you go?” he said.

“I was a volunteer. And they were all asleep.” Mr. Sarnath looked over the railing of the porch to the

dark forest all around. “You must know what I mean,” he said. “What keeps you here?”

The old man sighed, a melancholy sound. “You have all the luck,” he grumbled. “Yours is the first face

I’ve seen here in a week.”

“A moth was drowning in a bowl of light,” said Mr. Sarnath. “It is not the time or place that is important.”

“Even so,” replied the gatekeeper. He gestured toward the gate. “This can’t be what the master had in

mind when he told us to go out into the world. If I see seven clients in a month, I’m lucky. What can I

learn from them, or they from me? But you had boatloads every day.”

Mr. Sarnath shrugged. He gestured down the track the way he’d come. “They have a vacancy,” he said.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Mr. Sarnath looked away, and calmed himself by studying the effect

of moonlight as it pierced through the forest canopy. This night was magical and rare, for only at rare

moments in the voyage of his life had he ever sensed his forward progress. Now in everything he saw the

traces of a new significance, and it was lurking in the darkness like a delicate and subtle beast, vulnerable

and shy of controversy.

Here and there, bright beams of moonlight fell unbroken to the ground, a hundred feet or more. Insects

spiraled up them as if climbing to the stars; on a sprig of manzanita by the trail, a polyphemus fly arranged

its wings. “I’ll be going now,” said Mr. Sarnath. He rose to his feet and retrieved his bundle from the

floor.

The gatekeeper ignored him and continued to sit hunched over the lantern, staring at the flame. Mr.

Sarnath made a little gesture of farewell. Then he walked down the steps. The gate was a simple one, an

X-shaped cross of wood set in a wooden frame. Mr. Sarnath pulled it open and slipped through.

But he hadn’t gone a half a mile before he heard a cry in back of him. The old gatekeeper was hurrying

after him; he stopped and waited by the track. “Sarnath Bey!” cried the man. And then, when he got

close: “Please forgive me, Sarnath Bey. Please—I wish you well.”

He too was carrying a bundle, a cotton knapsack covered with embroidery. This he thrust into the

traveler’s hands, and then he bent down wheezing, out of breath. “Forgive me,” he repeated, as soon as

he could speak. “My eyes were blind from envy and self-pity.”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“No, but there is.” He wrapped his skinny rib cage in his arms, bent his head, and then continued: “Three

thousand days I’ve lived there. More than three thousand, and I think that I’m as far as ever from

achieving understanding. How long has it been for you? Not long—you’re still a young man.”

He stood up straight and reached his hand out toward the knapsack. “Forgive me,” he repeated. “I was

jealous, I admit. Because I’ve been away from home so long. But perhaps it’s my impatience that keeps

me here. Perhaps if I can overcome that. . . .” His voice, eager and unhappy, trailed away. But then he

shook his head. “I’ve brought you gifts,” he said. He pulled the knapsack out of Sarnath’s hands, and

pulled the strings that opened it.

They were standing in a patch of moonlight. “Here’s some food,” he said. “Sourbread and wine—it’s all

I had. A flask of goat’s milk. Here, but look at this.” He opened a small purse and showed a handful of

steel dollars, each one incised with the head of the First Liberator, Colonel Aspe. “These I confiscated

from a merchant.” He shrugged. “I have no use for them.”

He drew out a cotton sweater and a quilt. This he spread out in the moonlight on the grass, and then he

squatted down. “There’s a flashlight and a pocket knife,” he said. “And look.”

He unrolled a length of fabric. “Look,” he said. He flicked on the flashlight, and in its narrow, intense

compass Sarnath could see a row of bones: the skulls and limbs and shoulder blades of various small

animals, each one covered with a mass of carving.

“These I do in my spare time,” said the old man. “I find them in the woods.” He held up the femur of a

wild dog, cut with scenes from the lives of the Treganu sages and set with precious stones.

The work was exquisite. Mr. Sarnath picked up the skull of a small child. Flowers and leaves were cut

into the bone, and on the broad white forehead was engraved a single sign: the endless knot of the

unravelers. “That one’s for my sister,” said the old man. He pointed to a piece of elephant horn,

decorated with quotations from the nine incontrovertible truths. “For my mother, if she’s still alive. No,

take them all. I have no use for them. Give them to my friends, to anyone who still remembers me.”

Mr. Sarnath shook his head. With careful fingers he separated out the food, the sweater, and the quilt.

“These I’ll take,” he said.

The old man picked up a piece of bone. “Please take them to my friends,” he said. “And this

one—look.”

They were squatting in the grass. The old man held the flashlight in one hand. He dropped the bone onto

the others, and then he pulled a bundle of paper from the last recesses of the knapsack. “This is the finest

one,” he said. “It is my gift for the master. Please.”

Mr. Sarnath uncovered the last bundle. There in a nest of ancient paper covered with ancient spidery

writing lay another skull, with a curiously flat forehead and a curiously bulbous occiput. The eyeholes and

the inside of the nasal cavity were chased with silver, the jaw rebuilt with silver and fastened with a silver

hinge.

“Look at the top,” said the old man. He shone the light along the cranium, so Mr. Sarnath could see that

its surface was covered with new carved figures, the new lines gleaming white against the dull brown

bone.

They were scenes out of the master’s life. “It is my gift to him,” persisted the old man. “My finest

work—the skull I took from an old smuggler—the papers too. They’re valuable—I know they are. The

man refused to tell me what they were, and when the guards came he attempted suicide.”

“It is not valuable to me,” said Mr. Sarnath gently.

The old man squatted on his heels. He looked up into the darkness, and when he looked back there

were tears in his eyes. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

Then he stood up. He left the flashlight lying on the quilt, but he had the purse of dollars in his hand. With

trembling fingers he undid the cord, and then he was throwing handfuls of currency off into the darkness,

until the purse hung empty. Mr. Sarnath could hear the coins clinking against tree trunks and against

stones. He could hear the movement of small animals as they dodged away; then there was silence.

The old man bent down to the ground. And then he was picking up the pieces of old bone and scattering

them into the undergrowth. The small skull of the girl he tested in his palm, and then he threw it with all his

strength against the trunk of a java tree.

“You were always a quick scholar,” he said. “But I’m just an old man. But,” he said, a tint of pleading in

his voice, “you’ll tell the master about me? How I threw these things away? ‘All life is a journey,’ ” he

quoted miserably. “ ‘The more I carry, the more difficult it is for me to move.’ ”

Mr. Sarnath put his hand on the last skull. It lay in the beam of the discarded flashlight, tangled in its nest

of papers, staring up at him with hollow, silver eyes. “This I’ll take,” he said. “A present for the master.

I’ll tell him what you said.”

“No,” repeated the old man. “Leave it. You were right, and I was wrong. It’s eleven hundred miles. Too

long to carry an old bone.”

For an answer Mr. Sarnath rearranged the skull inside its bundle; and wrapped it in the quilt. Then he

took the food, the sweater, and his own few clothes, and thrust them with the quilt and the knife into the

knapsack. Last of all he turned off the flashlight and slipped it into a side pocket of the pack. “Thank

you,” he said.

There were tears upon the old man’s cheeks. “Thank you,” repeated Mr. Sarnath, standing up. The old

man was muttering and mumbling. Suddenly he seemed embarrassed, eager to be gone.

Mr. Sarnath slung the pack over his shoulder. The old man stood in the beam of moonlight, hugging his

frail rib cage. “My master told me to give all I had,” he muttered plaintively. Then he turned away.

“Goodbye,” he said, shaking his head, not responding when Sarnath embraced him, and kissed him with

the kiss of peace.

* * *

Now the moon was rising, and the track wound gradually uphill. Sarnath moved his bag to his right

shoulder. He walked quickly, for his breath was good. And toward three o’clock he broke out of the

trees—a wide, sandy valley stretched away from him, and in the distance glowed the lights of a small

town.

Here the wind was in his face, a cold new breeze. It came to him up from the shore. South and east

between the hills a line of stars dipped low over the bay. It was a constellation known locally as “the

cucumber”; beyond the village Sarnath could already see some lights upon the beach, as the fishing boats

set out to hunt the most elusive of the deep-sea vegetables.

The wind blew up the valley toward him, and brought a mixture of fresh smells. After the dark and

pregnant forest, Sarnath turned gratefully downhill. The air was full of salt, and there was sagebrush all

around him on the valley’s upper slope. And something else: some hint of poison in the soil, some alkali

that kept the trees away.

It was this poison that gave the place its character. A quarter of a mile down the slope the path traversed

another wider way, which stretched east and west into the hills. An ancient monument stood near the

crossroads, the tomb of Basilon Farfetch. He had been the patron saint of travelers before the revolution.

As was traditional in that part of the country, the crossroads was a barren, lonely place. It was inhabited,

according to the local superstition, by ghosts and spirits who had cursed the soil so that nothing grew.

They were the ghosts of all those who had died by violence in that part of the country—after midnight,

travelers were rare. Mr. Sarnath, coming down out of the trees, hesitated in surprise to see a light at the

crossroads, the flicker of a lantern in the wind.

He looped the ends of his veil around his face, concealing his mouth. Almost he was tempted to leave the

track and go down through the bush another way. This area was famous for the depredations of a

highwayman, a man who called himself Lycantor Starbridge—though his real name, Sarnath suspected,

was much humbler. Since the days of reconstruction, when outlaw bands of Starbridge soldiery had

terrorized these hills, it had been the custom for all bandits to wear silk and jewels, and to pretend

extraction from the ancient kings.

Lycantor Starbridge had carried this tradition to extremes. A handsome man, he had treated women with

flamboyant gallantry. But his reputation among men was crueler; a hundred yards from the crossroads

Sarnath paused again.

A lamp was guttering untended on the sand. And for the first time Sarnath heard a noise, the sound of

weeping in a woman’s voice, and a high-pitched cry. Then some soft words of command. Mr. Sarnath

hesitated, and then moved forward, reciting in his mind the precept of his master, that fear is an illusion of

the heart.

And in a few steps he was conscious of another noise, a subtle groaning in the wind and the small

clanking of a chain. Wading through the sage, he came down over the last hill and out onto an open,

barren place with the crossroads at its center. The tomb of St. Basilon Farfetch was on the other side,

beyond the gusting circle of the lamp, and Sarnath could see the outline of the stone bulk of the tomb,

and the statue of the ancient saint astride it. The stone stumps of his hands were raised up to the sky.

Behind his head, the moon shone like a halo.

A gallows had been raised along the wider road that led off west toward Charn. Hidden before by some

trick of the shadows, now it was visible, a twenty-foot shaft of wood surmounted by a short crossbar.

The body of a man hung from this crossbar, suspended from a chain around his chest.

Ten yards away under the flank of the stone sarcophagus, a girl lay on her back, her head against the

sand. The lantern cast a flickering shadow against the wall of the stone frieze; as Sarnath came close, the

silhouette resolved itself into two dark bulges, one formed by the girl’s upthrust knees, the other by the

back of someone else who was hunched over her body. The girl turned her face into the light so that her

cheek was flat against the sand. There was sweat on her face, moisture on her lips.

“Easy now, easy,” came a voice. The second humpbacked shadow straightened up. Coming closer,

Sarnath could see part of a face, a mass of long grey hair. It was a woman. “Easy now,” she said. She

was kneeling down between the legs of a young girl.

She was talking to herself. The girl on her back was beyond listening, her eyes turned backward in her

head. Sudden, wild convulsions shook her body, and the middle of her spine arched off the sand.

“There,” said the other as the spasms quieted down. “There now, there, that’s all it is.”

She was an old woman dressed in black. She was crouching down between the girl’s knees, but when

the crisis passed they lolled apart; the woman rose and pulled herself around, so that she could take the

girl’s head upon her lap. “There now,” she said. With the hem of her shawl she wiped the girl’s lips and

wiped the sweat from her face. A small crescent of sand was stuck to the girl’s cheek, where she had

laid her cheek against the ground.

“Hush now,” said the grey-haired woman. The girl’s head rolled loosely in her hands. Since the crisis, all

the girl’s muscles seemed to have relaxed—her knees and arms lay flat against the ground.

“Can I help?” asked Mr. Sarnath. He was standing at the crossroads. Now he came forward and

squatted down next to the old woman, where she sat cradling the other’s head. She turned to watch him

and turned back—a sharp-faced, hard-skinned woman, smelling of kerosene.

She shook her head. “No help,” she said.

By contrast, the girl in her lap was beautiful, with red curls around a delicate, pale face. “No help,”

muttered the old woman to herself. “No help—she’s almost gone.”

With the vague idea of trying to find her pulse, Mr. Sarnath reached out to the girl’s arm, where it lay

near him on the sand. But he stood up when the woman hissed at him and pulled the girl away. “Don’t

you touch,” she said.

The girl’s legs were spread apart. There was a blanket thrust between them, partly hidden by her long

red dress, which had blown up almost to her waist. Embarrassed, Mr. Sarnath stood waiting, and after a

minute the old woman relented, and when she spoke her voice was softer. “Sleeping pills,” she said.

“Poisoned herself, because of him.” She gestured with the point of her chin toward the gallows, where

the corpse hung creaking in the wind.

“Your daughter?”

“No, my sister. Who are you? You’re one of those officers they’ve got up by the border. Hunh—I’ve

seen your face.”

Around them now, the night was full of noises. Sarnath watched a centipede next to his shoe. “I’ll go

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THECULTOFLOVINGKINDNESSCopyright©1991byPaulPark.Allrightsreserved.ISBN:1-930815-50-6PublishedbyElectricStory.com,Inc.ElectricStory.comandtheESdesignaretrademarksofElectricStory.com,Inc.Thisnovelisaworkoffiction.Allcharacters,events,organizations,andlocalesareeithertheproductoftheauthor’simaginationo...

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Paul Park - Starbridge 03 - The Cult of Loving Kindness

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