Storm Breaking

Karsite commanders. Now, I can't pretend to tell who was right and who was wrong in those areas where both sides claimed to have been attacked first, or were provoked into attacking, or where magic, sabotage, and assassination were allegedly employed, but I can tell that the Valdemarans never took armies into Karse, but my people certainly waged war up into Valdemar.'

'Very even-handed,' Firesong replied approvingly. 'No side is always in the right. Now, we'll change the subject again. I need a religious opinion from you. What do the Sun-priests have to say about ghosts?'

'As in, what?' he asked. 'Unquiet dead? Haunts? Spirits who return to guide?'

'All of those,' Firesong said, making a general gesture. 'Some religions deny that any such manifestations exist, and some religions are written around them as a form of ancestor worship. What does the Writ of Vkandis say?'

'The Writ says very little.' He frowned, trying to think of what it did say. 'Now that I come to think of it, what it does say is rather interesting. According to the Writ, no one who is of the Faith, whether the purest soul or the blackest, could possibly become a ghost. Anyone born or brought into the Faith will be taken before Vkandis and judged—'sorted' is the word used in the Writ. And the good shall be sorted from the evil; no spirit shall escape the sorting. The evil will be cast into darkness and great despair, into fear and pain, to repeat their errors until they have learned to love and serve the Light of Vkandis. And the good shall be gathered up into the rich meadows of Heaven, to sing His praises in the everlasting rays, to drink the sweet waters and bask forevermore in the Glory of the Sun. That's the actual quote. There's a great deal more about who shall become what rank of angelic spirit, and what each kind does, but I have a suspicion that all of that is a clerkly conceit. I've got an earlier version of the Writ that doesn't have any of those lists in it.'

'Some people even have to have their afterlife ranked, arranged, and organized,' Firesong chuckled. 'I hate to say this, but being gathered up to lie in a meadow sunbathing and singing for all eternity is not my idea of a perfect afterlife. I should be screamingly bored within the first afternoon.'

Karal laughed. 'Maybe not for you, but think about the poor shepherds who were the first Prophets, living in the cold, damp hills of Karse, with rain and fog and damn poor grazing most of the time.'

'I suppose for them, rich meadows and sun forever would be paradise, wouldn't it?' Firesong raised his eyebrows. 'All right, so Karsites can't become ghosts—but what about other people?'

'Well, that's not in the Writ. But there is a tradition that the unblessed dead become the hungry, vengeful ghosts who roam the night. That's why most Karsites won't venture out after dark without a Priest to secure their safety.' But Firesong's question had asked about more than mere Karsite tradition, it had been about what Karal himself thought. 'As a Priest, I can exorcise ghosts, in theory. I'm supposed to be able to send any unblessed spirit to the sorting even if they aren't of the Faith, if they want to go. The Writ is kind of vague about what happens to heathen who have the misfortune to worship someone besides Vkandis. Most people assume that they'll be sent to eternal punishment, even if they are good people, but the Writ really doesn't say that, it just says that they will be sorted and sent to 'their places.' It doesn't say what those places are. For all I know, those places could be right here on earth.'

Tre'valen and Dawnfire are ghosts of a kind, and if what Lo'isha and An'desha have been saying is true, then some of the Kal'enedral are ghosts, too. Or if they aren't ghosts, they certainly aren't physically alive the way Florian and Altra are. So there's no reason why Kal'enel couldn't have 'sorted' them Herself, and decreed that their 'place' was here.

'Well, what about the Avatars?' Firesong asked, echoing his thoughts. 'Do they count as ghosts?'

'If they aren't, I wouldn't know what else to call them,' Karal admitted. 'And even if they aren't 'blessed' in the Karsite sense, they are anything but evil or hungry. They certainly aren't vengeful either, so there's no reason for me to interfere with whatever they are doing.' He thought a bit harder. 'The thing about exorcism is that if you want to be exact about it, there are two kinds. One kind just throws the ghost out of whatever it's possessing and bars it from coming back—it can still go possess something else somewhere else. The other kind blesses the ghost, opens a path for it so it can see where it's supposed to be going, and gives it some help to break the last bonds with the world and send it on its way if it's ready. But it has to be ready. Most Priests combine both kinds, hoping that once the spirit is cast out, it will see the Light and realize it shouldn't be here, but I've also seen reports about spirits that just seemed confused about the fact that they were dead, and in that case, the Priest only used the second kind of exorcism.'

'All very well, but suppose you were to see something that you knew was a ghost—not an Avatar, or anything obviously under the direction of anyone's god. What would you do about that?' Firesong asked. 'Would you feel that you had to do something about it?'

It was a good question. According to some Priests, he would have to try exorcising anything that looked or acted like a ghost, but that would include the Kal'enedral and the Avatars, and he dashed well knew that he wasn't going to even breathe the word 'exorcism' around them! 'Personally, I suppose I would try to exorcise anything that was harmful, send on anything that was ready, and leave everything else alone.'

He still didn't see what relevance any of this had to their current situation, but presumably Firesong had some idea where he was going with all of this.

Firesong appeared to make up his mind about something, for his expression became a bit more animated and less contemplative. 'Look,' he said, 'I've been asking you all these questions because I need your help, yours and Altra's, and there are some religious problems involved. I made the—acquaintance—of some real ghosts, and you wouldn't mistake them for anything else. One of them is an ancestor of mine. Physically, they're bound to a place up north, right up at the northern border of Valdemar.'