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The mocking tones stopped the major for an instant. "I was cashiered from the CoDo Marines because I happened to be caught in some political power moves. Bad timing's my only crime. And at least, Anders, I don't make grandiose claims based on ignorance and incompetence."
Pressing the attack, Reverend Castell told Anders, "Your presence I ca
"Precisely," Anders said. "And the church neither begins nor ends with you, Castell. Leadership's not an inherited quality."
For an instant there was silence. Major Lassitre left the room. The acolytes tensed, offended by Anders. Others in the room, from Tate and the other newcomers to more of the Chosen, watched without comment as the two leaders stared at each other across the pit of glowing coals.
That's when Reverend Castell's eyes rolled back into his head. I saw it and got ready to catch him, thinking perhaps the heat or the strain afflicted him, but he neither swayed nor buckled.
Standing, he stepped over the rim and entered the fire-pit, his bare feet crunching down on glowing coals. I gasped along with the other acolytes, and no one else in the room made a move or a sound. All gazes fixed upon Reverend Castell; his mouth bore a hint of a smile.
He walked out onto the coals in the fire-pit and stood at its center.
Whisps of lazy smoke rose up from the hem of his robe, and I thought I saw small hairs on his legs withering, puffing into nothing. Then his garments burst into flame, and he raised his arms.
I cried out, terrified. Tears coursed down my cheeks. There were shouts of alarm and warning, and a few people stood and backed away from the pillar of fire. Raising my hand, I blocked the heat coming off Reverend Castell, and as I did so I glanced at Anders and saw the look of utter awe on his face.
Reverend Castell's beard and hair flashed, then crisped. His clothes and hair fell from him in ashes that wafted lazy on stray currents of rising air. With that final burst of flame, the light dimmed again, revealing the man at the heart of the fire. He stood naked, hairless, his body luminous in the faint glow of tallow lamps. It was as if he'd been reborn. He opened his eyes and glared again at Anders, and this time the interloper quailed.
"Peace is ours to offer," Reverend Castell said. His voice boomed. His eyes flashed. Every soul in that room felt stinging heat and electric thrills. "In concert is harmony's power found, and in harmony all shall thrive." Raising a hand, Reverend Castell pointed at Julian Anders. His fingers traced a staff in the air, then added eight symbolic notes in a scale.
Anders gaped. His flask lay dropped, leaking brandy onto his lap. He quivered. His eyes remained wide, but a new look came upon his features. And then he laughed.
In the silence it was a strident sound, and no one joined in. A sharp edge of hysteria cut the laugh short.
With an inhalation of breath that seemed to go on forever, Reverend Castell stood so straight and tall that he seemed to grow before our eyes, and in an even, singsong tone that broke each word into its component syllables, he said,
"Anger is the enemy, "Act with thought, "Strike no false note, "Harmonize with all forces, "Resonate with all events, "Sing with all beings, "Be still "as the silence "at the heart "of the song."
With that he pitched forward, sprawling amidst hot coals.
Ashes swirled, confusing sight for a time. Sparks flew and some people swatted at their garments in terror.
Moving forward, I circled the pit and leaned inward. By stretching I reached the reverend's right hand and grasped it.
Leaning back, I pulled, dragging him through the embers.
Other acolytes helped by pulling on me, until another could snare the reverend's other hand. Intense heat had my, eyes watering. I gasped for breath and inhaled ash and smoke.
When Reverend Castell's head came up above the fire-pit's clay lip, he shouted, "Help me, please."
A woman standing near grabbed a tea pot and hurled its water at Castell's face, raising blisters.
He shrieked and then bellowed, "Help me, damn you."
It was then that I noticed his eyes. They were staring upward, through the hole in the roof. His gaze followed the smoke and ash upwards, and I shuddered, because I knew then that he was demanding help not from us, but from his father.
A doctor rushed in and at once applied a salve to Reverend Castell's blistered face, which looked small now without the beard. After a quick examination, the doctor said, "He's not burned, not even his feet. The water boiled and blistered him, but the coals and flames did nothing."
Anders stood and left the room, taking Tate and several newcomers with him. I noticed a few of the Chosen following, too, as people crawled from the room on hands and knees in a childlike herd.
We would soon discover that Anders kept going when he left the meeting, taking eight hundred souls with him into Haven's wilderness, each carrying as much as possible in the way of provisions and equipment. The loss, echoing the first desertion when we Chosen first arrived, affected us little as the remaining three thousand or so integrated themselves to our ways in the warm glow left by Reverend Castell's flaming renewal of our faith in him, his cause. Whether pla
Flopping back, I rested until my breathing evened. I found myself gazing upward through the smoke-hole. I could see only Haven's wind-scoured sky.
VI
Reverend Castell thrust out his hand, in which was a crumpled ball of paper. His face, bare since the fire-pit a few months back, contorted in frustration and impotent rage. "We've been on Haven barely two Earth standard years, Key. There is constant discord over living space, provisions, supplies, equipment, and even over the simplest elements of doctrine, since the four thousand arrived."
I looked at the paper in his hand. Paper was a fairly rare item. I owned none myself, other than my copy of the Writings. Only a few standard months earlier, one of our artisans had produced the first new paper on Haven, using rice and ancient Japanese methods his grandfather had taught him. To crumple such a precious commodity was almost blasphemous because it tempted waste to begin a melody all its own.
These were to have been the expansions to our town," the reverend said. "Improvements, such as birthing pits dug deep to increase the air pressure, even as mine-shafts in South Africa did on Earth. I drew up the plans myself." He grimaced. "No doubt the miners can help with this."
"Shall we strike a chord of harmony?" I asked, seeking a solution as well as trying to console him.
He appraised me with mockery in his gaze. "You can't mean that we're lucky, even as Anders said." He shook his head. "No, Key, Ke
Hanging my head, I waited for his storm to pass. His rantings lasted longer these days, I noticed. They produced less determination, cleared less mental air, too.
Reverend Castell had been raging ever since Major Lassitre, who had stayed on Haven, brought word from Splashdown Island that Ke