Read Online Beyond The Tomorrow Mountains by Sylvia Engdahl - Free Book Online

as long as you are honest,” Stefred assured her. “The point at issue here is your motive for helping Noren. To have helped him simply because you love him is one thing, but to have done it because you held heretical beliefs yourself would be something else. So you see I must determine whether you really do love him. If you do, it would be impossible for you ever to believe that he’d done what I suggested. He hasn’t, of course. I did not say he had; I merely said if .”
    Talyra’s tense face relaxed into a faint smile. “You’re very wise, sir. I just can’t think you’ll really lock Noren up for the rest of his life! He—he was always honest, too; doesn’t that count for something? He was wrong, and he’s admitted it—but he believed what he said. Would you have wanted him to lie? Would you have wanted him to repent not having lied?”
    “Certain things have inescapable consequences,” Stefred said quietly. “Noren is to be confined within the City permanently and nothing can change that; it is the consequence of heresy. But you don’t really know much about the City, after all. Has it occurred to you that life inside may not be so terrible? The Technicians live here; I live here myself.”
    “But not as a prisoner, sir!”
    “No? Have you ever seen a Scholar outside the City?”
    She shook her head, confused. “Yet you could go outside if you wanted to. You could do anything you wanted to.”
    “Why is it,” said Stefred, sighing, “that people so often think that those above them can do anything they want? It works the other way, Talyra. I have a good deal less choice than you do. If Scholars did whatever they liked, Noren’s suspicion would have been all too accurate; they would be unworthy guardians.”
    To Noren’s relief, Talyra’s expression showed that she was thinking, and the new thoughts didn’t seem unduly disturbing. His concern had been groundless, maybe; he’d feared that the process would be more painful.
    There was a short silence; then Stefred began an innocuous line of questioning quite evidently designed to lead directly to the decision. “Is there anyone outside the City for whom you care more than for Noren?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Not even anyone in your family?”
    “I love my family, but I was planning to marry Noren. Now I’ll never marry anyone.”
    “What are you going to do, then? Do you really want to be a nurse-midwife?”
    “Yes, I like the work at the training center.”
    “Yet you turned down the appointment when it was first offered.”
    “That was because it meant delaying our marriage.”
    “Why was getting married right away so important? Were you eager to have children?”
    Noren held his breath. He and Talyra had never discussed that, for it had been assumed as a matter of course; in the villages a woman who bore few babies was scorned. The rearing of large families was considered a religious virtue. He did not know whether a family was important to her for its own sake, but if it was, she should not enter the Inner City, and Stefred would undoubtedly send her away.
    “You don’t understand,” Talyra said. “Noren and I were in love .”
    Slowly Stefred continued, “I do understand. Suppose, Talyra, that you had to choose again whether or not to help him; would you do the same thing?”
    “Yes.”
    “What if it meant that you would suffer the consequences of heresy even though you yourself had not incurred them? What if it meant that your family and friends might never learn what had become of you?”
    Talyra met his eyes bravely. “I’d do it.”
    “Then you’re as unrepentant as he is? You still love him, and you won’t ever be sorry?”
    “That’s right, sir.”
    It was going to work out, thought Noren joyously. In a moment Stefred would tell her, and the ordeal would be over… .
    And then he saw that the true ordeal had not yet even begun.
    *   *   *
    With Stefred’s next words, Noren knew what the Chief Inquisitor was going