Pantheon, thousands strong, they seemed like phantoms in the gray. Unlike the wailing, pottery-smashing masses in the lowlands, the folk of the highlands were somber in the face of death, chanting in low voices, their hands ritually smeared with soot. Those who could afford to wore blue, but dyes were expensive in the highlands, so most came dressed in drab grays and browns, their faces daubed in crushed woad instead. The fog made them seem an army of drowned corpses, gathering in the courtyard in the foredawn cold.
The worship hall was dim, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadow without the daylight to illuminate it. What was strange, though, was the number of candles the clerics had set out. There were thousands of them, on shrines and in wall sconces, on silver candelabra standing throughout the room, and covering the dais where the god’s altar stood. Of all the tapers, however, only one in ten were lit. The rest stood whole and dark, no flames dancing upon their wicks. Folk remarked at the strangeness of it, whispering and wondering. Somehow, it seemed wrong.
The bodies lay at the head of the hall, atop three wooden catafalques smothered in smoke from nearby censers. Clad in the chain hauberk he’d worn when he’d stormed the Pantheon months ago was the hulking body of Lord Ossirian, his hands clutching his broadsword upon his breast. On another side, Durinen lay shrouded with a blue cloth to hide the ghastly wound that had killed him, but it was the figure in the middle, clad in full vestments, the sacred triangle painted upon her forehead, that drew the most looks. The former First Daughter had been in Govinna for the briefest time before her death, but the townsfolk grieved for her more than for the two men who flanked her. She had forsaken the church, the empire, and the Kingpriest to help the borderfolk and to bring them the Lightbringer’s healing touch. She had given her life for him, it was said. Ilista had become a martyr, and they wept as they signed the triangle for her.
By the time the Pantheon’s bells tolled the dawn watch, the worship hall was filled with people, pressed shoulder to shoulder on the pews and packing the aisles and apses as well. Still they came, spilling out into the vestibule and down the steps to the courtyard outside. Tavarre and the bandit chiefs stood near the front, their faces hidden by deep hoods, and the folk of Luciel held a place of honor nearest Ilista’s bier. Wentha stood among them, and Fendrilla, and aU the rest who had fled north to Govinna, brigand and villager alike. Only Cathan was absent, and a few folk glanced at one another, wondering where the young stalwart was-until a door opened at the room’s far end and he entered, armored and hooded, his sword hanging by his side. He rested his hand on its pommel, looking over the crowd, searching for signs of danger. Finally he nodded, though his eyes remained narrow as he turned to speak a word to those in the anteroom behind him.
A gong sounded, and a hush fell over the crowd as the procession entered. It began with two young acolytes, dressed in gray and bearing lit torches. After them came an elderly cleric, one of the Little Emperor’s men, swinging a golden thurible that trailed blue smoke in zigzagging arcs as he walked, into the room. Following him were four priestesses, singing a dirge, their voices echoing across the vast chamber. Then two more acolytes, and then the Lightbringer, and the mourneTs gasped as one.
The funerary rites in the Istaran church were clear and had been for centuries. They were specific about many details, among them the garb of the priest conducting the ceremony. He was to wear vestments of blue, unadorned and unhooded, and all the jewelry of his position. Beldyn, however, wore no rings or bracelets, no circlet on his brow. Only his holy medallion, glinting in the candlelight, hung openly around his neck. His robes were white, heretical at such a solemn occasion. It was neither of these facts, however, that made the folk of Govinna stare and murmur in shock.
It was the blood.
The stains were dried now, the color of rust. They covered the front of Beldyn’s robes, stiffening the cloth, and smeared the cuffs of his sleeves. Bloodstains were even on his face still, a smudge on his chin and another on his temple. The clergy had taken pains to clean and prepare the bodies of the dead, but the Lightbringer had not washed since the attack. His long hair hung greasy down upon his shoulders, and the smell of the incense did not fully mask the whiff of uncleanness that rose from him. The silvery glow that shrouded him when he used his powers was a bare flicker now, yet his eyes blazed like blue stars as he took his place by the altar-Cathan by his side-and looked out upon the masses. Folk shifted beneath that terrible gaze, and many had to look away, bowing their heads. His were the eyes of a madman, flashing like lightning in a storm.
When the dirge ended, the stillness that fell over the worship hall was thicker than the fog outside. Beldyn held that silence for several minutes, raking the crowd with his eyes. Then he drew a breath, and his voice rang out like thunder across the hall.
“You have come,” he said, “to hear a requiem, a memorial for the three who lie cold before you, cut down in the night.
You want assurances that they died fulfilling their purpose and therefore served the god’s greater good. You want to know that, even in this dark hour, all will be well.
“You shall not have it. It is not true.”
Again, gasps echoed around the hall. Some signed the triangle, murmuring warding prayers, but the Lightbringer silenced them with a glare.
“For centuries,” he went on, “the church has told you such lies. The time has come for this to stop. I saw the thing that slew Lady Ilista and the others. It was a beast of purest evil, murderous and heartless. I will not simply accept her death was what Paladine intended.
“Some of you, no doubt, are thinking of the Doctrine of Balance that the church has held dear for millennia. We are told that without evil, good cannot exist. Even at midday, when the sun shines brightest, shadows remain. This has always been, the canon says. It always must be.
“Lies! In ages past, the Balance had its uses. It kept Paladine’s power alive in the world, when the dark gods and their minions threatened to overwhelm all. Those days are past. The Queen of Darkness is gone from the world, her dragon hordes fled a thousand years since. We have hunted the servants of evil-the goblin, the ogre, the monster of nightmares-until they are all but destroyed in Istar. We have beaten back the cults that worship sin, yet Lady Ilista is still murdered by a thing of evil sent from the very Lordcity where the god’s light shines brightest!
“Yes,” he went on, as the folk of Govinna stared. “The author of this wickedness is the Kingpriest himself, Kurnos the Usurper. If you doubt it, ask yourself this: who else would send an assassin here? He fears me, fears the righteousness of my claim to the throne, so he does all he can to destroy me- even if it means truckling with darkest sorcery and demons from the Abyss itself!”
He opened his arms, displaying the bloodstains for all to see. “
The light poured out of him then, spraying forth like the jets of some great fountain, arcing high into the air with a sound like the ringing of a great crystal bell. The glow hung in the air, bathing the mourners’ open-mouthed faces, then it dropped again, raining down all over the room. Wherever it fell, it touched a candle, and that candle burst aflame… scores… hundreds… thousands of them, filling the room with their glow. As they did, the shadows they cast grew dim, until at last there was nothing
It began with just one man, surging to his feet halfway to the rear of the hall and thrusting his fist in the air. Then it spread, more and more folk jumping up to add their voices, until finally the whole Pantheon rang with the cry, and the city outside as well, a roar that cut through the morning air as the fog burned away in the sunlight.
“Death to the Usurper!” the folk of Govinna cried. “Life to the Lightbringer! An end to the Balance!”
Amid it all, his eyes twin suns, Beldinas smiled.
The catacombs held the smell of the old dead, a musty, spicy aroma that permeated the air and the stones alike. They were dark, close, and silent, older than the Pantheon, older than Govinna itself, a place harking back to the days when the Taoli were savages, scouring the wild hills with bow and spear and sacrificing their enemies to pagan gods. Missionaries from the church of Istar had dug them as a hiding place, where they could bury their fallen so the barbarians could not defile their bodies.
Times had changed. The church ruled now, and the barbarians had become civilized highlanders, but the dead remained, lying in niches mantled with dust and cobwebs. Each body was meticulously wrapped, from neck to feet, in strips of linen, but their heads remained uncovered, revealing bare skulls with scraps of colorless hair
