Exile's Honor

'Lead on.' Alberich came up the aisle toward the altar. The sanctuary, the entire temple in fact, was a harmonious construction of carved and shaped wood, from the vaulted roof to the parquetry floor. The bench pews were finished with finials carved in the shape of a torch flame, and the Sun-In-Glory was inlaid in very subtle parquetry behind the altar. The several woods used to create it were of shades so near in color that you had to look for the pattern, and know what you were looking for, in order to see it. More patterns, geometric this time, were inlaid in the backs of the bench pews, in the floor, in the altar itself—and these were anything but subtle. Every color of wood possible had been used here, and Alberich reckoned that the artisan in question was either now a very wealthy man, or else was a devoted member of the congregation doing it for the glory of the One God, for it was quality work, and wouldn't have come cheaply.

Geri led him in past the altar and the door behind the altar itself. This was a kind of robing room, with vestments hung up all over the walls. A door in the opposite wall led to the priests' quarters.

'Here,' Geri said, motioning him into a tiny kitchen. 'It's warmer in here than anyplace else. Have a seat; Henrick's asleep, but don't worry about waking him. He could sleep through a war and a tempest combined. Do you want anything to drink? Beer? Tea?'

'Tea, please,' Alberich replied, and watched with interest as Geri moved efficiently about the tiny kitchen, heating water in the pot over the hearth and getting mugs for both of them. 'I don't know why I haven't come here before, instead of making you come up the hill.'

He said that, because the kitchen smelled right. Those were Karsite spices he could taste faintly in the air, and a uniquely Karsite black tea that was steeping in that kettle. There were sausages hanging up in the corner of the hearth—both for further smoking and because the smoke kept insects away— sausages Alberich would bet tasted like the ones from the inn where he'd grown up.

'So what is on your mind?' Geri asked.

'A great many things,' Alberich replied, now fully relaxed, with Geri's good tea on his tongue. 'Tell something, though. What do you think about Myste?'

'I like her, but she's deceptive. I don't mean that she lies, I mean that her appearance is deceiving. She looks and sounds harmless, but she's a hunter,' Geri said instantly. 'She won't let anything stand in her way once she's on a scent. Though I'm not sure what quarry she's stalking. Probably a lot of things, one of them being answers.'

'Ah, but to what questions?' Alberich replied.

'She's stalking those, too. Why do you ask?' Geri responded curiously.

'I'm not sure. Now that I'm not having to browbeat her into training properly, and she's a full Herald and Elcarth's Second, we're peers, so we're no longer in conflict with one another; she intrigues me, I suppose. It must be that instinct, one hunter recognizing another. She's the one who sent me here tonight, in fact.' He took a sip of tea and savored the flavor. It was the right flavor, the one from his childhood although the flavor from his childhood was a diluted version of this. 'I'm hunting answers myself.'

Geri regarded him with a somber gaze. 'You, of all people, ought to know that you aren't going to find many of those here. Questions, certainly, but precious few answers. Ours is a faith, Alberich, not a map or a guide, and certainly not a set of certitudes. At least, that is the way it should be—'

'Not what it has become.' He said that sadly, and once again, he was back in childhood, with that kind, yet stern priest, who tried to show him in ways a child would understand, just what the Sunlord was and was not. 'We are the mirror of Valdemar—'

'More like the twin. Or we were, before things disintegrated.' Geri sighed. 'I've had this discussion with Henrick, actually. He is of the opinion that the long slide began with a will to power. I think it's more complicated than that. I think that the priesthood was corrupted by the congregation.'

Alberich blinked. 'How, exactly?'

'The laity wanted absolutes, answers, and the priesthood finally elected to give them answers, the simpler the better,' Geri replied. 'The Writ took second place to the Rule, and a poor second at that. The answers took away all uncertainty, and what is more, took away the need to think.'

Alberich frowned; not for nothing had he spent so much of his childhood under the tutelage of a priest who knew—and lived—the old ways. 'Above all, the Writ demands that a man—or a woman, for that matter—learn how to think.'

Geri nodded. 'You see? The old ways require that each person come to the Sunlord having thought through everything for himself. The current Rule requires that men become sheep, herded in one direction, following one path, pastured in one field, ever and always, so will it be.'

'Sheep.' It occurred to Alberich that it was probably no coincidence that the Sunpriests of Karse had taken to calling their congregations by the name of 'flock.'

'Sheep don't have to think for themselves, do they?' Geri made a face. 'The Sunlord was reshaped from the Unknowable into the remote but predictable Patriarch, from the Whirlwind to the windmill that grinds—exceedingly small. Do this—you are gathered unto His bosom. Do that—you are cast into the outermost hells.' Geri shook his head. 'Answers are terribly seductive. The simpler they are, the more seductive