Earthborn Page 0,134

just because you have a difference of opinion with some priest."

Another jab at the Assembly of the Kept. As for donations, Shedemei almost laughed aloud at the cynicism of it. The Kept were mostly poor, and all of them donated labor and money at great sacrifice to pay for buildings and for the teachers in their schools. But they did it because of the fervency of their belief and the depth of their commitment. The Assembly of the Ancient Ways, however, would never get that level of contribution from its common members. Yet they would not lack for funds, because all the wealthy people of business and property would know that contributions to the Ancient Ways would be noticed and remembered by the future king and his brothers. Oh, there would be no budgetary shortages, and the priests who used to be salaried before Motiak's reforms would find themselves with tidy incomes once again. None of this nonsense of priests working among the common people! This would be a high-class priesthood.

Khimin, being young, fumbled a little with his speech, but the audience seemed to find his mistakes endearing. He had been relegated merely to affirming his agreement with all that his brothers had said and then announcing that as soon as the Assembly was well organized in Darakemba, Akma and the sons of Motiak would be traveling to every major city in every province to speak to the people there and organize the Ancient Ways wherever they were invited to do so. Unfortunately, they had no money of their own, and it wouldn't be right to use their fathers' wealth to sustain a religion that they didn't approve of, so Khimin and his brothers and their friend Akma would be dependent upon the hospitality of others in those faraway places.

Shedemei wondered whether they would live long enough to stay a night in every house that would be pathetically eager to take them in. Rich families that would never give a flatcake to a beggar would plead for the chance to show generosity to these boys who had never known a day of want in their lives.

And learned nothing from it, Shedemei said silently.

Among them, the four sons of Motiak had taken only half an hour. It was plain when Akma rose to speak that the people had no idea of what to expect from him. The sons of the king were celebrities; but Akma was the son of Akmaro, and the rumors about him had been mostly negative. Some disliked him because they resented his father's religious reforms. Some disliked him because he had repudiated his father's life's work-which the sons of Motiak had not done, even reaffirming their absolute loyalty to their father's kingship. Others disliked him because he was a scholar and reputed to be one of the most brilliant minds that frequented the library in the king's house-there was a natural suspicion of those with too much book-learning. And others didn't want to like him because they had heard he didn't believe in the Keeper of Earth, which was an absurd position for someone to take when he was about to start a new religion.

Akma surprised them. He surprised Shedemei, for that matter, and she had known from the Oversoul exactly what he planned to say. What Shedemei wasn't prepared for was the vigor in his way of speaking, the excitement in his voice. Yet he used no extravagant gestures, merely looked out into the audience with such piercing intensity that everyone felt, at one time or another, that Akma was looking right at them, talking straight to them, that he knew their heart.

Even Shedemei felt his gaze on her when he said, "Some of you have heard that I don't believe in the Keeper of Earth. I'm glad to tell you that this is not true. I don't believe in the Keeper the way some have talked about him-that primitive idea of an entity who sends dreams to certain people but not to others, playing favorites with the men and women of the world. I don't believe in a being who makes plans for us and gets angry when we don't carry them out, who