In the cavernous desolation of the girl’s mind, Pellin searched for her wellspring, the source from which the river of memory flowed for any soul walking the earth. At his feet, a pitiful trickle with a few solitary black strands flowed past him and disappeared only to reappear a few seconds later, the implanted memories that had turned the girl into Cesla’s tool. Each time it completed its cycle, he followed it a bit farther upstream until he found its source. He hadn’t told Mark this had been tried before. And before.
And before.
He did not require Custos or any other historian to tell him that failure waited.
He had tried it himself.
During the Wars for the Gift of Kings, as Agin and his kin ravaged the north, it had been Pellin’s duty to heal those volunteers who had fallen just short in their quest to become dwimor. He had taken the task upon himself. Even now, centuries later, he could still remember the bone-aching weariness that had come with the labor, how he’d forced himself to stay in the delve longer than he’d ever dreamed in his misguided attempt at healing.
The stream with its black threads bubbled forth from the girl’s wellspring, and he sighed. He would have to destroy the memories Cesla had implanted in her mind while simultaneously releasing the chosen set of memories from his construct. He knelt, his hands poised on either side of the source of the girl’s identity and waited.
When those black memories bubbled forth, he grabbed them, held them in one hand as he thrust his other as deep into her wellspring as he could. With a thought he slashed those memories of hatred and injustice and opened the door in his mind, letting the replacement memories stream forth, living her life again. Against reason, he hoped the swap would be enough to destroy her vault, but it remained.
Her name had been Cerena Niwe, a girl from the northern part of Aille, near Treflow, when Pellin had been new enough to the Vigil to carry his years as any other man. In truth, Cerena’s memories carried slightly more chance of success than any other. When Pellin had delved her, the victim of a cleric’s unwanted attention, he had yet to master his gift. In his zeal he’d absorbed far more of her memories than he should have. That single delve had been the only one he’d been able to attempt that day. In the long years since, he’d learned to refine his search, to focus his gift to an edge sharper than any healer’s scalpel so that he only need absorb the memories required to determine innocence or guilt. In the first days of his service, he’d been a broadsword.
He loosed the memories of a girl who’d been dead for nearly seven hundred years, pushing them as deep into the assassin’s wellspring as they could go. When the last memory flowed from his mind to hers, he closed the door within his construct and released his hold.
He blinked against the light of the room, his eyes still remembering the phantom darkness of the girl’s empty mind. Allta and Mark looked at him, waiting, he supposed, for some sign of success or failure. The girl lolled in her chair, her body limp against her restraints.
“The memories are deep within her wellspring,” he said. “It will take a while for them to come forth.” He sighed. “Her name is Cerena. Cerena Niwe.”
Mark looked at the girl, his expression so still it might have been mistaken for indifference had Pellin not spent nearly every waking hour with him for the past few months. “Shouldn’t we know more about her? So we can be her friends?”
Pellin had been about to say “It won’t matter,” but Mark’s earnestness stopped him, filling him with an obscure sense of shame, as though he’d surrendered in the face of evil. This girl, whoever she had been, was a victim of evil’s deception. Who was he to say that finding her, an incredible unlikelihood, had not been arranged by Aer? Even if the threefold God hadn’t set their paths to cross, this girl sat as a living metaphor for the entire continent, a land being force-fed evil until it succumbed.
“She’s from a village near Treflow,” Pellin said. “Aenwold. Her father was a grain merchant. When he died, the local priest offered to take her on as his secretary to help her family. It was rare in those days for anyone outside the priesthood to know how to read or write.”
Mark nodded. “You said she was a victim. Let me guess, the priest had other interests besides her clerical skills.” He shook his head. “The church.”
Pellin felt the stab of the boy’s disgust, recognized that emotion by his own long familiarity with it. Unlike his apprentice, Pellin did not believe Aer was indifferent to suffering, and he had an answer for this. “To some people the church, then and now, offered easy access to power, Mark. They joined her ranks out of the desire to exercise that power or to obtain some measure of wealth.” He shook his head. “It is the same with any organization, though it is most often associated with the nobility.”
“Then the church should cleanse itself,” Mark said without taking his eyes from the girl.
Pellin nodded. This too was an argument he knew well. “And many agree with you—I, for one. But remember what the church is, lad—a collection of lost souls who have recognized their plight, many of whom can no more heal themselves of their moral disease than a man or woman can cure themselves of the wasting sickness. They come to Aer, Iosa, and Gaoithe for that healing. Some receive it quickly while others struggle with their weaknesses their entire lives, carrying that fight all the way to their grave.”
Mark opened his mouth to object once more, but Pellin held up a hand. “But in this case, your desire for justice was fulfilled.” He pointed
