Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains Read Online Free PDF Page B

you left the jail, wasn’t she?” Brek had said. “After watching her at the trial, I guessed she would, though I saw why you couldn’t trust me enough to say so.”
    “I’m the one who should be asking your forgiveness,” Noren had muttered, recalling his unfounded suspicion that a trap might be laid for Talyra also. “Yes, she gave me clothes and money, too, in spite of believing that to aid an escaped heretic was sinful.”
    Talyra was very devout; they’d quarreled bitterly when he had first told her of his heresy. She had broken their betrothal then, declaring that she would marry no man who did not revere the Mother Star, and when at his trial he had denied the Star’s very existence, she had been genuinely horrified. But she had grieved for him, knowing that he would not back down to save himself, and had gone counter to all she’d been taught in order to help him. “Talyra believed every word of the Prophecy,” he’d remarked to Brek, “and she was right! I just wish I could tell her that.”
    Brek had looked at him, frowning. “Without telling her why? You were both right, but she would still think you’d been wrong to question! And anyway, she may well have heard that you recanted.”
    “She didn’t hear,” Noren had said grimly. “She saw. She was there, and she must have thought what you thought when you were shown the films.” In anguish he remembered the pain that had filled her eyes when the public sentence was passed upon him. The harshest consequence of heresy was that one could not comfort one’s loved ones.
    To be sure, a reunion might be arranged at the price of permanent Inner City residence for Talyra, but Noren had told Stefred that he would prefer separation. Talyra had her own life to live. After his arrest she had accepted the Scholars’ appointment to the training center where she was preparing for the semi-religious and highly respected vocation of a village nurse-midwife. Though that appointment had been made partly so that her disappearance from home could be explained if she chose to share his confinement—a fact of which she herself was unaware—he couldn’t ask her to make the sacrifices entrance to the Inner City would entail. It was better that she should suppose him broken and condemned to prison.
    Noren dropped his head in his arms, too disconsolate to turn back to the normally fascinating study screen. All thought of seeing Talyra again was foolish in any case, for the decision was not his; a villager not convicted of heresy could gain entrance to the City only by requesting audience to plead the cause of someone who was imprisoned. Stefred had seemed to think Talyra might do that, but Noren knew she would never question the rightness of the High Priests’ decision.
    There was a knock at the door; hurriedly Noren opened it and stepped into the corridor, greeting in a low voice the man who stood there. He did not want Brek disturbed, not when the ordeals of the previous day had been so great and when other demanding things lay ahead.
    The man, a casual acquaintance, had merely stopped by with a message. “Stefred wants to see you,” he told Noren. “Right away.”
    “Right away? That’s funny; yesterday he said not till I’d gotten Brek initiated into our routines. We had the whole schedule planned.”
    “I wouldn’t know about that, but he spoke to me at breakfast and asked me to send you over to his office. It sounded urgent; maybe it’s something to do with tonight’s meeting.”
    “What meeting?”
    “You haven’t heard? I suppose not, if you haven’t been downstairs yet, but there’s a notice posted. We’re to assemble right after Orison—all Scholars, even the uncommitted—in one general session. And from the look of the executive council people, I’d say something important’s come up.”
     
     
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    Noren was always glad of a chance to talk with Stefred, who, as head of recruiting and training, maintained close