Endest Silann. Do not set yourself between two forces, neither of which you can withstand. You may well feel the need, but defy it with all your will. You must not be lost.’
‘Sire, I do not understand.’
But Anomander Rake raised one hand.
And yes, the emanation was gone. Darkness was silent once more. Whatever had come into their world had vanished.
Endest found he was trembling. ‘Will-will it return, my Lord?’
The Son of Darkness studied him with strangely veiled eyes, then rose and walked over to the window. ‘Look, the seas grow calm once more. A most worthy lesson, I think. Nothing lasts for ever. Not violence, not peace, Not sorrow, old friend, nor rage. Look well upon this black sea, Endest Silann, in the nights ahead, To calm your fears. To offer you guidance.’
And, just like that, he knew he was dismissed.
Bemused, frightened of a future he knew he was not intelligent enough to yet comprehend, he bowed, then departed. Corridors and stairs, and not so much at an echo remained. He recalled an old prayer, the one whispered before battle.
Let Darkness receive my every breath With her own.
Let our lives speak in answer unto death Never alone.
But now, at this moment, he had never felt more alone. The warriors no longer voiced that prayer, he well knew. Darkness did not wait to receive a breath, nor the last breath that bridged life and death. A Tiste Andii warrior fought in silence, and when he or she fell, they fell alone. More profoundly alone than anyone who was not Tiste Andii could comprehend.
A new vision entered his head then, jarring him, halting him halfway down the stairs. The High Priestess, back arching, crying out in ecstasy-or despera¬tion, was there truly a difference?
Her search. Her answer that was no answer at all.
Yes, she speaks for us, does she not?
‘He is troubled,’ Salind murmured, only now shaking off the violent cold that had gripped her. ‘The Redeemer stirred awake then, for some reason unknown and, to ‘ us, unknowable. But I felt him. He is most troubled…’
The half-dozen pilgrims gathered round the fire all nodded, although none possessed her percipience in these matters, too bound up still in the confused obstinacy of mortality’s incessant demands, and, of course, there was the dread, now, the one that had stalked them every moment since the Benighted’s abandonment, an abandonment they saw as a turning away, which was deemed just, because none there had proved worthy of Seerdomin and the protection he offered. Yes, he was right in denying them. They had all failed him. In some way as yet undetermined.
Salind understood all these notions, and even, to some extent-this alone surprising given her few years- comprehended the nature of self-abnegation that could give rise to them. People in great need were quick to find blame in themselves, quick to assume the burden of guilt for things they in truth had no control over and could not hope to change. It was, she had begun to understand, integral to the very nature of belief, of faith. A need that could not be answered by the self’ was then given over to someone or something greater than oneself, and this form of surrender was a lifting of a vast, terrible weight.
In faith could be found release. Relief.
And to this enormous contradiction is laid bare. The believers yield all, into the arms of the Redeemer-who by his very nature can release nothing, can find nothing In tlw way of relief,,and so can never surrender.
Where then the Redeemer’s reward?
Such questions were not for her, Perhaps indeed they were beyond answering. For now, there was before her a mundane concern, of the most sordid kind. A dozen ex-soldiers, probably from the Pannion Tenebrii, now terrorized the pil¬grim encampment. Robbing the new arrivals before they could set their treasures upon the barrow. There had been beatings, and now a rape.
This informal gathering, presumably the camp’s representatives, had sought her out, pleading for help, but what could she say to them? We were wrong to believe in the Benighted. I am soiry. He was not what we thought he was. He looked into my eyes and he refused. I am sorry. I cannot help you.
‘You say the Redeemer is troubled, Priestess,’ said the spokesman, a wiry-middle-aged man who had once been a merchant in Capustan-fleeing west before the siege, a refugee in Saltoan who had seen with his own eyes the Expulsion, the night when the advance agents of the Pannion Domin were driven out of that city. He had been among the first of the pilgrims to arrive at the Great Barrow and now it seemed he would stay, perhaps for the rest of his life. Whatever wealth he had once possessed was now part of the barrow, now a gift to a god who had been a man, a man he had once seen with his own eyes. ‘Surely this is because of Gra-dithan and his thugs. The Redeemer was a soldier in his life. Will he not reach out and smite those who prey upon his followers?’
Salind held out her hands, palms up. ‘Friend, we do not converse. My only gift is this… sensitivity. But I do not believe that the source of the Redeemer’s disquiet lies in the deeds of Gradithan and his cohorts. There was a burgeoning of… something. Not close at hand, yet of such power to make the ether tremble.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘It had the flavour of Kurald Galain-the warren of the Tiste Andii. And,’ she frowned, ‘something else that I have felt before. Many times, in fact. As if a storm raged far to the south, one that returns again and again.’
Blank faces stared at her.
Salind sighed. ‘See the clouds roll in from the sea-can we halt their progress? Can we-any of us-drive back the winds and rain, the hail? No. Such forces are far above us, far beyond our reach, and they rage as they will, fighting wars in the heavens. This, my friends, is what I am feeling-when something ripples through the ether, when a storm awakens to the south, when the Redeemer shifts uneasy and is troubled.’
‘Then we are nothing to him,’ said the merchant, sorrow brimming in his eyes. ‘I surrendered everything, all my wealth, for yet-another indifferent god. If he cannot protect us, What is the point?’
She wished that she had an answer to such questions. Were these not the very grist of priestly endeavours? To grind out palatable answers, to hint of promising paths to true salvation? To show a benign countenance gifted by god-given wis¬dom, glowing as if fanned by sacred breath? ‘It is my feeling,’ she said, haltingly,
‘that a faith that delivers perfect answers to every question is not a true faith, lot its only purpose is to satisfy, to ease the mind and so end its questing.’ She held up a hand to still the objections she saw awakened among these six honest, serious believers.
‘Is it for faith to deliver peace, when on all sides inequity thrives for it shall indeed thrive, when the blessed walk past blissfully blind, content in their own moral purity, in the peace filling their souls? Oh, you might then reach out a hand to the wretched by the roadside, offering them your own footprints, and you may see the blessed burgeon in number, grow into a multitude, until you are as an army. But there will be, will ever be, those who turn away from your hand. The ones who quest because it is in their nature to quest, who fear the seduction of self- satisfaction, who mistrust easy answers. Are these bnes then to be your enemy? Does the army grow angered now? Does it strike out at the unbelievers? Does it crush them underfoot?
‘My friends, is this not describing the terror this land has just survived?’ Her eyes fixed on the merchant. ‘Is this not what destroyed Capustan? Is this not what the rulers of Saltoan so violently rejected when they drove out the Pannion monks? Is this not what the Redeemer died fighting against?’
‘None.of this,’ growled a woman, ‘eases my daughter’s pain. She was raped, and now there is nothing to be seen in her eyes. She has fled herself and may never return. Gradithan took her and destroyed her. Will he escape all punishment for such a thing? He laughed at me, when I picked up my daughter. When I stood before him with her limp in my arms, he laughed at me.’
‘The Benighted must return,’ said the merchant. ‘He must defend us. He must explain to us how we failed him.’
Salind studied the faces before her, seeing the fear and the anger, the pain and the growing despair. It was not in her to turn them away, yet what could she do? She did not ask to become a priestess-she was not quite sure how it even happened. And what of her own pain? Her own broken history? What of the flesh she had once taken into her mouth? Not the bloody meat of a stranger, no. The First Born of the Tenescowri, Children of the Dead Seed, ah, they were to be special, yes, so special-willing to eat their own kin, and was that not proof of how special they were? What, then, of the terrible need that had brought hei here?
‘You must go to him,’ said the merchant. ‘We know where to find him, in Black Coral-I can lead you to him, Priestess. Together, we will demand his help-he was a Seerdomin, a chosen sword of the tyrant. He owes us! He
