generous and kind lot, but our God-given magic cannot be bestowed upon our enemies nor upon heretics."
Brynn tightened her jaw but resisted the urge to scream at him. She knew that she wasn't going to get anywhere, so she turned away, glancing back once to soak in the pitiful image of the wretch on the ground, then moved more forcefully to catch up and pass her companions, striding with grim determination for the palace.
She was the first to stand before Yatol De Hamman, and neither offered nor waited for any formal greetings. "How can you accept this?" she asked.
The man put on a confused look, one that Brynn didn't believe for a moment.
"You are forcing Behrenese to embrace the Abellican Church," Brynn explained. "You wear the robes of a Yatol of Chezru, yet you deny those robes and tenets before this holy place."
A commotion from behind turned Brynn, to see her companions standing calmly behind her, and to see litter-bearers taking in the same man she had seen lying before the feet of Master Mackaront outside the palace. A woman and a younger girl, the man's wife and daughter, obviously, flanked him, holding his hands and crying, while Mackaront moved beside him as well, clutching one hand to his chest, the other set upon the wounded man's injured side.
"Does your desecration know no bounds?" Brynn asked De Hamman.
"Desecration?" the Yatol replied skeptically. "Because we have come to understand the deception of Douan? Because we have embraced friends from the north?"
"Abellican friends," Brynn reminded. "Men who follow a different God, and men who have never been true friends of Behren." She did note a bit of a wince there, and suspected that maybe De Hamman's feelings didn't run quite as deep as his words seemed to indicate.
"Release the hatred from your soul, Brynn Dharielle," De Hamman bade her.
"We live in enlightened times. Better times."
"You throw away everything that gave Behren its very soul!" Brynn argued, but then a hand on her shoulder calmed her, and she glanced over to see Pagonel standing beside her.
"As you embrace the heretic mystics of the Jhesta Tu?" De Hamman retorted.
Brynn let the comment go and forced herself to a place of calm. She understood the error of the analogy, of course - the Jhesta Tu weren't mak- ing any claims within To-gai, after all - and in that understanding, she allowed herself to dismiss the remark out of hand.
"Who leads Behren, Yatol De Hamman?" she asked. "Is it Yatol Mado Wadon? Or has Abbot Olin of Honce-the-Bear stepped forward behind this screen of 'enlightenment'?"
That, too, seemed to sting the man a bit, but then he shook it off visibly and regained his firm posture. "I would be dead now," he replied.
"Without the aid that Abbot Olin brought to Jacintha in her hour of need, I would lie dead amid the bodies of so many good Chezru."
The simple statement did set Brynn back a bit.
"And dead to what heaven?" De Hamman went on. "The one promised by Chezru Douan? The same one that he was too afraid to face through all those centuries when he stole the souls of unborn children to perpetuate his own wretched existence? "
Brynn paused a long moment to digest that heavy remark, to consider the weight behind it. Yakim Douan's deception had been so horrible that it had torn Behren apart and shattered the foundations of the Chezru religion. De Hamman was not unique among the Chezru clergy, obviously, and the weight of war and suffering could do much to convert those less learned in their ancient traditions. With that thought in mind, Brynn glanced back at the curtain behind which Mackaront and the others had disappeared, and noted that no more agonized screams were coming forth.
"Is this friendship?" the woman asked De Hamman. "Or conquest?"
The man's response cut her to her heart, and warned her that great trouble might well be brewing in the kingdom to the east. "Does it matter?"
Chapter 26 Information gathering
"We have at last a king who understands that the sacred gem-stones, as the gifts of God, are the province of the priests who represent that God," Marcalo De'Unnero told an attentive gathering of monks one morning in St. Precious. "With King Ay-drian's blessing, we might go about the task of returning the gemstones to the Abellican Church."
That announcement was received with many assenting nods and even a few cheers - although the brothers in attendance of course knew that De'Unnero and the monks he had brought