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 wisdom, 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, for 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 ones 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 her 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 owes us all!'
'I have tried—'
'I will help you,' insisted the merchant. 'I will show him our desire to mend our ways. To accord the Benighted the proper respect.'
Others nodded, and the merchant took this in and went on, 'We will help. All of us here, we will stand with you, Priestess. Once he is made to understand what is happening, once we confront him – there in that damned tavern with that damned Tiste Andii he games with – how can he turn away from us yet again?'
But what of fairness? What of Seerdomin and his own wounds? See the zeal in your fellows – see it in yourself, then ask: where is my compassion when I stand before him, shouting my demands?
Why will none