Her fellow-scholar was a plump little priest of Anathei of the Purifying Flame. He was certainly a full priest, and might even (from his cultured accent) be a higher prelate, yet he wore only the same soft, dark brown, unornamented robes of the least of his order's acolytes. He was clean-shaven and quite bald, and his cheerful brown eyes seemed to regard everything and everyone with the openhearted joy of an unspoiled child. No straitlaced ascetic, he -- he and Tarma had been trading rounds of good wine; tonight reds, last night whites.
Tarma looked even more out of place seated across from him than she did with her sorceress-partner. She towered over him by a head, her every movement proclaiming she knew very well how to manage that sword slung on her back, her hawklike face and ice-blue eyes holding a controlled intensity that could easily have been frightening or intimidating to a stranger. With every article of her weaponry and earth-brown clothing so precisely arranged that what she wore might almost have been some kind of uniform, and her coarse black hair braided and coiled with militant neatness, she looked as much the priest or more than he -- half-barbarian priest of some warlike order, that is. She hardly looked as if she could have anything in common with the scholarly little priest.
She hardly looked literate. Certainly no one would expect erudite philosophy from her lips, not with the warlike accoutrements she bore; yet she had been quoting fully as many learned tomes as the priest -- to his evident delight and Kethry's mild surprise. It would appear that service as a Sworn One did not exclude knowledge as a possible arena of combat. Kethry had long known that Tarma was literate, and in more than one language, but she had never before guessed that her partner was so erudite.
Kethry herself was staying out of the conversation for the moment. This evening she and her partner had had an argument, the first serious disagreement of their association. She wanted to give Tarma a chance to cool down -- and to mull over what she'd said.
Because while it had been unpleasant, it was also, unfortunately, nothing less than the truth.
'You're not going out there alone, are you?' Tarma had asked doubtfully, when Kethry had voiced her intention to prowl the rather dubious quarter that housed the gypsy-mages. Kethry had heard that one of her old classmates had taken up with the wanderers, and was looking for news of him.
'Why not?' she asked, a little more sharply than she had intended.
'Because it's no place for a woman alone.'
'Dammit, Tarma, I'm not just any woman! I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself!'
'Look -- even I can get taken out by a gang of street toughs.'
'In the name of the gods, Tarma, leave me alone for once! You're smothering me! I can't go anywhere or do anything without you rushing to wrap me in gauze, like a piece of china -- '
She'd stopped then, appalled by the stricken look on her partner's face.
Then, like lightning, the expression changed. 'You're imagining things,' Tarma replied flatly.
'All right -- have it your way.' Kethry was too tired to fight with her. 'You will anyway. Any time you hear something you don't like, you deny it and shut down on me -- just like you're doing now.'
And she had turned on her heel and led the way into the inn's common room, ignoring the fact that Tarma looked as if the sorceress had just slapped her.
The voice of the little priest penetrated her musing.
'Nay,' he said. 'Nay, I cannot agree. Our teaching is that evil is not a thing of itself; it is simply good that has not been brought to see the truth. We hold that even a demon can be redeemed -- that even the most vile of such creatures could become a blessed spirit if someone with time and patience were to give him the proper redirection.'
'Always supposing your proselytizer managed to keep from being devoured or ripped to shreds before he got a single word out,' Tarma croaked wryly, draping herself more comfortably over the edge of the worn wooden table. 'He'd better be either agile or one damned powerful mage! No, I can't agree with you, my friend. Aside from what Magister Tenavril has to say about them, I've dealt with a few demons up close and on a quite personal basis. I have to side with the Twin Suns school; the demonic beings must have been created purely of evil forces. It isn't just the Abyssal dwellers that are bad clear through, either; I've known a few humans who could pass for demons. Evil is real and a reality in and of itself. It likes being that way. It wouldn't choose to be anything else. And it has to be destroyed whenever a body gets the chance, or it'll spread. Evil is easier to follow than good, and we humans like the easy path.'
'I cannot agree. Those who are evil simply don't know what good is.'
'Oh, they know, all right; and they reject it to follow pure selfishness.'
'I -- ' the little priest blinked in the candlelight.
'Can you give me even one instance of great evil turned to good once good has been pointed out to it?'
