just like you. But bringing the word of truth to new people, not just dealing with those who didn't listen to it, that has its attractions.' Gabriella felt the tension ease from her. Maybe it was his explanation, or maybe it was just his touch. She didn't mind either way. 'I was thinking…'
'Now that's what I call breaking the habit of a lifetime.'
Erak laughed, and then lowered his head, a little embarrassed. 'It happens sometimes. Proves I'm not a perfect soldier.'
'Nobody's perfect.' He opened his mouth to try speaking two or three times, but without success. Gabriella sighed. 'There are few Enlightened Ones as enlightened as you, and I don't mean that to denigrate any of the Enlightened Ones. You'll do a lot of good in Solnos, and undo a lot of whatever harm that this Kurt Stoll has allowed to come to pass.'
'I'm sure I will.'
'Thank you, again.'
He grinned. 'My life is yours, you know that.'
She let out a long breath, shaking her head. 'Stoll… I wish we didn't have to do this.'
'Me too. It feels strange punishing one of our own like this. Especially after what he did the other night. Without his directions the archers would never have taken down so many goblins and we'd have had a far worse time of it.'
'At least the Brotherhood have the guts to separate themselves from the Faith,' she said. 'He made his own choice when he started going against our basic vows and principles.'
'Well, if he wanted to meet the Lord of All, he went the right way about it.'
Gabriella thought for a moment and shivered. 'No. No, he didn't, really.' She gestured towards the door back into the church. 'We'd better make sure the equipment still works.'
'We can check the naphtha system too,' Erak muttered as he followed her.
They descended into the bowels of the church, casting an eye over the naphtha reservoir and the pipes and pump that would move it. There were no torches down here, lest they ignite the naphtha, so all light down here had to be either cast by magic, or, as now, by a system of mirrors and lenses that reflected light down from outside.
Erak ran a hand across a turnwheel and his palm came up covered in dirt. 'I doubt there have been many cleansings or offerings made here in a long time. How does it look?'
Gabriella laid her hand on a small table and knelt to check the undersides of the wooden frame of the see- saw pump and the monstrous amphorae that held the naphtha. The wood was solid and well-carpentered, with no sign of rot, while the amphorae were sound with no cracks. 'Looks fine.'
'I bet Stoll wishes he'd let it rot.'
'Probably,' Gabriella agreed
It was a very nice dream. He was in the Golden Huntress, preaching to the townspeople from a lectern made of a girl doing a handstand on another girl's back. For some reason there were horses in the congregation too. He was enjoying himself, giving his favourite sermon, about why the spirit of a law was more important than the letter of it, when suddenly the roof caved in.
Stoll rolled to his feet, dizzy and staggering, wondering if he was concussed. Then he remembered he was locked in his cell. The smile froze on Stoll's florid face. The redness in his cheeks changed hue and he licked his suddenly dry lips. A bearded man in the white robes of a Confessor was looking at him through a barred opening in the door.
'Let's have a little chat,' the Confessor said and bared rotten teeth.
Gabriella was engaged in a contest with some of the local children, skipping flat stones across the surface of the fountain pool. The object seemed to be to get the stone all the way across and onto the ground opposite. Gabriella had just succeeded, and was now congratulating a girl who had matched her feat, when Erak emerged from the church.
He was wearing the blue robes of an Enlightened One, though she could hear mail rattling under the robes.
'It's time,' he said. 'Apparently the confession didn't take long. He was happy to talk. It seems Warrigan was blackmailing him over his Brotherhood tattoo.'
'Stoll is Brotherhood?'
'He says not; that they gave him the tattoo while he was unconscious so they could blackmail him. I believe him. Doesn't matter, though; he still had a choice. He could have reported them, confessed and had a good enough Healer remove the tattoo by magic.'
She rose and accompanied him round to the front of the church. A gibbet was being hoisted onto its pole and ten Knights of the Swords were singing the Hymn of Contrition, as two knights dragged Stoll out.
The cleansing wasn't pretty, or pleasant; not for anyone. As with so many things, an act intended to help and to make things right in the long run was uncomfortable in the short term. Gabriella briefly thought of the foul-tasting medicines her parents had made her take when she was a child and had the ague. They healed her body, but they made her cry with the vileness of the taste.
The cleansing would heal Kurt Stoll's soul, but it would make him cry too. He sobbed as the Knights who surrounded the square stripped him naked; the vestments of the Faith were too sacred to be burned.
As they did this, Preceptor DeBarres read out the proclamation from Scholten condemning Stoll to be cleansed by fire. Then they put him in the gibbet, which had already been attached to the lead piping from below the church.
In the end, Kurt Stoll was screaming his life away even before the liquid fire poured down on him and he fell silent bare moments after it started.
Justice had been done, Gabriella considered. People needed to know that the Final Faith was even-handed, and dealt with its own transgressors as fairly as it did anyone else.
For all that this was a good thing, one matter chewed away at Gabriella's heart. Stoll had signed as witness to her and Erak's pledge. She felt tainted by that.
CHAPTER 12
With the Cleansing over, DeBarres had led his Knights out to search the surrounding area for signs of further goblin incursions. Kannis had formed the hundred or so mercenaries into squads to be dispersed around the entrances to Solnos. They were determined that no goblins would invade this town again
People were steering clear of the church. Whether it was the battle that had put them off or the stink of the burnt Enlightened One that still pervaded the plaza, or just general Pontaine disinterest in the Final Faith, Dai Batsen couldn't tell.
He walked into Solnos for the first time in a few days, his topknot and shaven scalp replaced by a very short but even covering of hair. He had left for his secure hiding place when the goblins attacked, having no interest in a pitched battle.
Now he needed to know whether either DeZantez or Brand had survived their little overnight siege. If they had not, he would collect the fee for the hard work the goblins had done. If they had survived, he now knew what they both looked like, and would carry out the task for which he had been employed.
He walked up the plaza steps, and into the church.
Gabriella had gone across to the Swords' new headquarters at the inn, to make a few requests for supplies and equipment. Kannis was passing through, and Gabriella halted her for a moment.
'I didn't get the chance to thank you for your help with the goblins.'
'You paid up,' the scar-faced woman said blandly. 'That's all the thanks I need.' Her eyes twinkled.
'The Lord helps those — '
'So I heard. Raul used to say that a lot. I see he still does.'
