“You mean like Bestion did with that dog thing?”
“I mean never make assumptions that turn out be incorrect.”
“Thanks. That’s useful.”
The girl smiled at them and laughed. She said something before reaching out, tapping Silus’s hand and racing away.
“What did that mean?” Silus said.
“I believe,” Bestion said, “that you are ‘it.’ Come on.”
They hurried after the girl and her pet, losing sight of them several times and once going in the wrong direction entirely before they spotted her again, waiting for them atop a dune and gesturing for them to catch up.
Just before they reached her, the girl threw herself down the other side of the sandy slope, rolling over and over with the dog creature still in her arms, giggling hysterically. They were about to follow when what they saw beyond the dune arrested their descent.
There was a vast settlement in the middle of the desert.
As they watched, the girl reached its outskirts, dropped her pet and called out. Soon she was surrounded by a crowd of people, their gazes following the direction of her excited gestures towards where the strangers stood. They stared in silence for a moment before rushing towards them, calling out to others as they came, until there was a veritable tide of people flowing across the sand.
“Bestion, I hope that your assumptions about them being friendly turn out to be correct,” Silus said.
“Yes, so do I.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Emuel had often wondered how it would feel to be back in the arms of the Final Faith. The Church had nurtured him from a young age, ever since miraculous visions had been visited upon him as he toiled in the Drakengrat salt mines. Soon afterwards, word of the devout nine-year-old boy to whom the Lord of All had chosen to speak had reached the seminary at Nurn, and an emissary was promptly dispatched to take the boy under his wing, even though Emuel would normally be considered far too young to enter the order. Not only was he the youngest acolyte that the seminary had admitted, but he also quickly became the youngest priest — breezing through his studies, displaying a level of devotion and wisdom unusual in a boy his age.
It wasn’t long after his ordination that the Faith bestowed upon Emuel his own Drakengrat parish, installing him as an Enlightened One, pastor to a hardy mountain people. But Emuel’s flock came from much further afield than the Drakengrat range. Pilgrims travelled from as far as Gargas to receive his blessing, having heard of Emuel’s wondrous visions, some claiming that the slightest touch from the boy could cure all manner of illness.
The Archimandrites at Scholten cathedral closely monitored Emuel’s progress, and it wasn’t long into his ministry that Querilous Fitch was dispatched to talk to him.
As Querilous described to Emuel the special assignment that the Anointed Lord had chosen him for, the pale boy had grown even paler. After all, what they were asking him to do would radically change him. The use of sorcery to mark and alter his flesh went against everything he believed. But Querilous’s words were persuasive, his arguments cogent and passionately made, and when he laid his hands on Emuel’s head in blessing, the boy heard the voice of his god and knew, with a sacred clarity, that this was indeed the path that had been chosen for him.
Throughout the journey to Scholten Cathedral, Emuel felt the guiding hand of the Lord, and he felt sure that it was this same hand that guided the pen and the blade of the Final Faith surgeon as — accompanied by chants and the burning of astringent incense — he needled and scarified into Emuel’s flesh the ancient elven runics. Every inch of his skin was illustrated; the pain was indescribable. The greatest challenge, however, was yet to come, as the surgeon turned his blade on Emuel’s sex and began the process of emasculation.
Querilous Fitch had been there, through every long hour of the procedure, holding Emuel’s hand and praying him through the pain.
The first night after the operation, Emuel’s body sang with agony. The stitches and scar tissue throbbed with every beat of his heart. But Querilous had taught him that he should listen for the voice beyond the pain; use the purity of his agony to focus his mind so that he could hear the sacred song that underlay everything. And there it had been, very quiet at first, but growing in volume; the whisper of the divine blossoming into a song of stunning, heart-breaking complexity.
When he awoke, Emuel was certain that he was now complete, ready to board the Llothriall and take the Word beyond the Storm Wall for the first time.
But then they had come.
The first that Emuel knew of their arrival was the strangulated cry of the guard outside his cell door. A thin trickle of blood found its way towards where he lay, the lock of the door melted, and Kelos and Dunsany forced their way into his life.
In a matter of hours, Emuel had been spirited away from Scholten cathedral and onto the Llothriall, there forced to sing the song that had only just been revealed to him. The Final Faith’s flagship vessel had been stolen for an adventure that saw the deaths of many and the transformation of Emuel’s world. Yet there had never been a time when he had not heard the voice of the Lord of All. With their blades and their inks, the Faith had made him into something truly extraordinary.
But then the Llothriall had come to Morat — the wondrous city riding upon the crest of an eternal wave — and there the Stone Seers had revealed that the tattoos and the emasculation had nothing to do with whether Emuel could hear and channel the song or not. All he had ever had to do was listen; the sacred music had always been there. The pain and the indignity that he had suffered had been for naught. With the best of intentions, the Stone Seers had completely dismantled Emuel’s faith.
And now he sat before the man who had started him on that journey into spiritual turmoil — Querilous Fitch.
“You used me,” Emuel said, looking down at the restraints that cut into his wrists and bound him to the chair.
“The Lord uses us all, Emuel,” Querilous wheezed. “And you shouldn’t believe everything those apostates on Morat told you. After all, look what happened to them; they knew the terrible judgement of our god.”
“They were killed by the Chadassa.”
“I suppose that you could look at it like that.” Querilous chuckled, and the hollow, dry laugh echoed down the tubes that regulated his breathing. Emuel tried not to look at the foul contraption that kept the mind-manipulator alive, but it was hard to draw his eyes away from the pipes extending from the centre of Querilous’s chest, and the juddering apparatus that crowded the back of his wheelchair.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“The whole peninsula has changed, and some of us have been caught up in events beyond our control. Myself, I met something rather unpleasant in the Sardenne. But, I can assure you that my current situation is temporary. Now, to matters at hand… Yuri!”
A sallow youth shuffled from the shadows and wheeled Querilous’s chair to behind where Emuel sat. Yuri lifted the manipulator’s crippled right hand and placed it on top of the eunuch’s head, where it slipped limply off.
“Damn it, boy!” Querilous snapped. “Do it properly or I’ll have you flogged.”
This time Querilous’s hand was more carefully placed and Emuel shuddered at the cold touch.
And then there was intense pain as Fitch’s fingers sank into his mind.
“Now, Emuel. What happened to the Llothriall? Let’s see what you remember.”
Before, when Emuel had heard rumours of Querilous Fitch’s power, he had dismissed them, sure that the kind man who had brought him to Scholten was incapable of such cruelty. But now he knew better. Everything the Final Faith’s enemies said about them was true; there was no method or sorcery they would not employ in fulfilling the will of the Lord of All, no matter how seemingly heretical.
Querilous’s voice filled Emuel as his last few moments onboard the Llothriall flickered before his eyes.
