to be acceptable, for the priests are not interested in elevating a Mestra-Skeltir with genuine wisdom. They care only for power, cherishing their petty luxuries and privileges won through the blood and toil of the Hast and these beggared creatures.”
He paused, a reflective smile playing on his lips. “I could have just given them Tehlvar’s answer, or some variation of it that would have satisfied the Great Priest, alleviate his growing suspicion. But I find I enjoy his discomfort far too much to do that. And so I told him. ‘Fear,’ I said. ‘Gods are not born of love, sacrifice, scripture or faith. Gods are born and succoured by fear. Take you, for example. Your service to the Unseen is absurd. You shun the company of women, at least publicly, and spend your days grovelling to something you have never set eyes on, a voice you have never heard. All because you fear the chance it might actually exist.’”
Kehlbrand’s smile turned into a laugh, soft and short. “He surprised me then, little colt. I had expected rage, you see. I had expected, even wanted him to rail at me, call me a blasphemer, a vile heretic. Had he done so, I would have laughed at him for a time and walked away, for I am tired of their rituals. I have long suspected that shunning the priests might provoke discord amongst the Hast, but there are no Skeld who can now stand against me, so what does it matter? But he didn’t rage or rail. Instead he grew very still and pale of face. ‘What causes you to imagine,’ he said, ‘that I have never heard the voice of the Unseen?’
“For a time we just stood and stared at one another. I heard truth in his words, Luralyn. Disgusting old hypocrite he may be, but in that moment he was not a liar. To him the Unseen remains real, as real as you and I. And so I found a new answer to the second question. What is the true nature of a god? Fear is part of it, yes. But also power. The power that comes with belief. The power to render slaves into willing servants through carefully applied kindness, coupled with the fear that it might all be taken away. Power that could bind the Stahlhast to a bunch of grasping old men for centuries through promise of the Unseen’s favour and fear that its loss will bring the crushing shame of defeat. But their power is limited, made pitiful by their failure to realise its potential. To wield such power so that it might change the world, I must not merely believe in a god, but become one.”
He frowned at the troubled scowl on my face and reached out a large, warm hand to cup my cheek. “Have no fear for me. My mind is not broken, merely enlightened. You ask the source of my certainty. This is it. For what manner of god would I be if I couldn’t divine the future?”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The first I found was a girl. No older than fifteen and born to the tor. A lifetime of squalor and infrequent rations made her appear little more than a child. Her head barely reached my shoulder, and her limbs poked like pale, unwashed spindles from the sacking she wore.
“Your name?” I asked her in the southland tongue, receiving only a fearful shake of her tousled head in response. She kept her eyes lowered, rendered incapable of meeting my gaze by a lifetime of subservience. She shuddered as I reached through the veil of matted hair to cup her chin, gently but firmly raising it until the greasy tendrils fell away to reveal her face. It was a soot-smeared white oval, striking in its resemblance to a porcelain-faced doll I had once owned as a child.
“Look at me,” I told her, keeping hold of her chin until, slowly, she opened her eyes. Tears streaked through the soot on her cheeks as she gazed at me, terror plain in the wide, black pupils.
“You must have a name,” I said, and she shook her head once more.
“Girl,” she murmured, soft as a breeze. “They only call me girl.”
“Your mother? Father?”
Another shake of the head, accompanied by a shift in her bony shoulders. “Never knew ’em.”
She spoke just loud enough for me to discern an accent this time, a coarse echo of the dialect native to the borderlands. I saw a tic of annoyance