They walked about a quarter mile towards the Cathedral, which loomed over the smaller buildings just as the Duke's Palace loomed over the city itself. They both paid careful attention to each preacher for at least a few minutes at a time; usually a few minutes were enough to get the gist of what each was saying.
Gradually Kestrel began to get a sense that there were three kinds of preachers, and each set shared a common style and a set of messages.
The first kind were the wild-eyed, unkempt street preachers he was used to seeing in every city or town he had ever found himself in. Dressed in strange assortments of tattered and layered garments, they exhorted the crowds passing with wildly waving arms and hoarsely shouted diatribes. They were fairly incoherent, contradicting themselves from sentence to sentence, and full of dire prophecies about the "Second Cataclysm." He'd always thought they were a little mad, and he didn't see any reason to change that opinion now. Interestingly, these men had only the same sort of audiences they got in other cities; people as mad as they were, gawkers, and adolescents who got a great deal of amusement out of making a mockery of them.
But the adolescents making mock were uniformly ruffians, rather than the mix of ne'er-do-wells and ordinary youngsters that usually tried to give these poor old men a difficult time. And the authorities, in the form of the City Constables, ran the youngsters off with warnings, and not the preachers, who would elsewhere have been considered nuisances.
So these days in Gradford, even the lunatics come in for a smattering of respect. Kestrel wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it himself.
The second variety of street sermonizers was a type he normally saw only during Faires: country-fellows who were not ordained Priests and supported themselves through what they could collect on their own. These were men who would say, if questioned, that they felt "called by The Sacrificed God" to preach the Truth as they, and not the Church, saw it. They generally leapt at the chance to preach restraint to a crowd bent on celebration. Their motives were simple enough; perhaps move some of their listeners to moderation, or at least, through a bit of passing guilt, charm a pin or a coin out of their pockets and into the collection plate. Kestrel thought of them as a different form of busker, for they used the same venue as buskers. Their messages were along the line of "repent of your sins and be purified," and "do not waste your lives on short-term pleasures when your energy could better be spent in contemplating God." They urged sacrifice, with the veiled hint that a sacrifice tossed in their direction would find favor with God. More often than not_at a Faire at least_this kind of preacher would manage to "save" some fellow who'd been a chronic drunk all his life and had just hit bottom; having "saved" the fool, the preacher would parade him about like a hunter's prize. And the former drunk, having found a new addiction that made him the center of attention, would perform obligingly.
There were at least two with reformed drunks in tow on this street. And although these men were normally ignored by Faire-goers, who often parted around them like the water in a swift-moving stream avoiding a rock, here their message was falling on more appreciative ears. More than one listener looked both attentive and impressed. Interesting, but not unexpected.
Then there was the third class of preacher_a type that Kestrel had never seen preaching in the street before; real Priests, in immaculate robes, who clearly did not need to be out here and in fact had no collection plates at their feet. These men_they were always men, even though women could aspire to the Priesthood as readily as men_were clean, erudite, and well-spoken, pitching their trained, modulated voices to carry their words over the heads of the crowds.
It was this third type of preacher that had the messages that were very disturbing.
"_ come from God are alone pure and righteous," the first of these was saying, as they came within hearing distance. He had a very well-trained and sonorous voice, and he already had a crowd three deep around him. He was brown of beard and hair and eye; his well-kept robe was a dark brown, and he should have blended in with his surroundings. But he didn't_he stood out from them, as if he was a heroic statue, the focus for all eyes. "No matter what the ignorant and unholy will tell you, all things called 'magic' are inherently evil. Magic can only be the tool of demons and false gods; there is no truth in it, and none in those who practice it."
He looked around at his audience; Kestrel was very careful to school his features into a semblance of sober interest. This man was no fool; any show of resistance to his words would cause him to single that person out for special attentions and special messages. The onlookers would notice. Things could become very awkward, very quickly.
"Perhaps you have heard somewhere that there are mages within the Church itself, but I tell you that this is not true. Whoever has told you this has lied to you," he said, lying gracefully and believably. "Magic is deception; magic only counterfeits the real and holy powers granted only to Priests by God. Those powers practiced within the Church come directly by grace and blessing of the Sacrificed God, and they are nothing like magic! And only those within the Church, within the ranks of the ordained will be blessed with those powers. Those who claim to achieve the same ends through their magic are false, deceptive, and evil. They seek to mislead you, seduce you to muddled thinking and questioning, and then to lead you astray down the paths of darkness."
Neat, Jonny thought, admiring the Priest's command of rhetoric, though not his words. Redefine magic as anything that is not performed by a Priest, and then you can condemn it without condemning the Priests.
"Not only is the magic itself inherently and by its very deceptive nature evil," the Priest continued, warming to his subject, "but anyone, anyone who uses it or allows himself to be touched by it is evil! Magic is a mockery of God's powers! God will not be mocked! He will not permit his servants to be mocked! The day is coming when all those evil ones who practice magic will perish, and those who permitted them to work their magic will perish with them! Those who live by magic will die by the hand of the righteous!"
There was more in this vein, although Jonny noticed that the Priest was very careful not to say who would be dealing out this punishment to the "evil magicians." Given the tales that had been spreading of musicians using magic to manipulate their listeners, it was easy to see where this was going. He might not have brought up the "evil musicians" yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Nightingale had been only too right, and so had Harperus.
He felt a sudden sickness in the pit of his stomach, and it didn't take any effort at all on his part to persuade Gwyna away and get out of hearing range. The Priest was still going strong when they left, and as far as Jonny could tell, it was more of the same. No mention, as yet, of musicians. But given the fact that there were no musicians anywhere in sight, perhaps he saw no need to mention them, in his condemnation of every other person who ever made use of magic and mages.
About the only encouraging note in this was that the Priest was losing listeners at a fairly steady rate_perhaps people who had used the services of a Healer, or those who had employed a mage for some minor work in finding a lost object, locating water, or taming a beast that would not respond to normal efforts. It would take more persuasive means than simply saying that magic was evil to convince most folk that it was bad.
After all, most people in their lives saw many instances of the use of magic, all of it hired and completely matter-of-fact. How could any of this be evil? Mages created amusing illusions for parties, rid homes of poltergeists and kobolds_they didn't do anything that a Priest couldn't do. And they generally didn't ask as much in return. Priests were often greedy in their demands when someone turned to them for help; a simple mage could only ask the usual rate, and did not care what god you followed or whether you were up to date on your tithing.
That was what Kestrel read in the faces of those who turned away from the preacher. But there were some who stayed, nodding in agreement....
A very bad sign.
The sun had turned the sky above the city to a glorious crimson as they came into the "circle" of another of the real Priests out on the street. This man had a much larger gathering of listeners, and fewer of them were leaving with looks of stubborn disbelief on their faces. Jonny steeled himself to hear something unpleasant. This one also wore a brown robe, but he was a much older man, the kind that people would instinctively turn to for advice; clean-shaven with snow-white hair. But there was something subtly cruel and hard about his eyes, and the set of his mouth indicated a man who would never accept any opinion but his own.
"If a soul is the image of God, and God created humankind in His image, how can any creature that does not wear that image have a soul?" the Priest asked, his voice rational and reasonable. "It is there in the Holy Writ, for all to read. For God then created them, male and female, in His Own image. Male and female, and human. The soul is the reflection of God, and is in the image of God. Human, entirely and wholly. No creature that is not fully human could possibly be in possession of a soul. The implications of this are obvious to anyone who takes the time to study the Holy Book and think. A creature that does not have a soul cannot be saved by the grace of the Church; it is that simple, and that profound. Only humans can be saved. Only humans have souls."
This Priest had an interesting demeanor; unlike the last one, who clearly preached at his audience, this man kept his voice calm and steady, his tone ingratiating, his expression persuasive. His manner invited his listeners to discover truth for themselves, not just to be told what the truth was and was not. In a village, this man would be the one most would go to for the settling of disputes.
"But there is a much more serious_yes, and frightening_side to this, and one that is not as obvious," he continued, his expression turning to one of warning. "A creature that does not have a soul and cannot be saved by the Church must by definition be evil! Oh, do not shake your heads; only think about it. To be evil is to act against the interests of God. But a creature that is soulless cannot know the interests of God, so how can he act in accord with them? They cannot be anything but evil by their very natures. Nothing can change that, not all the good intentions in the world, for it is bred into them, blood and bone, by their very differences. They are the damned and the doomed, and they will always be the enemies of the Church, for their inmost nature will cause them to resist the guidance of the Church." His expression hardened, and yet became sorrowful at the same time. "Surely you, who are thinking men, can see the result of this. The Church's charge is the safety, spiritual and actual, of humanity. The enemies of the Church must become, sooner or later, the enemies of all humankind, and the enemies of humankind will inevitably seek to destroy humanity."