‘And if there will be no posterity? None to consider it, naught but ashes in the present and oblivion in place of a future? Will you sit scribbling until your last moment of existence?’
She was truly shaken now. ‘What else would you have me do?’
‘I don’t know. Go find a man. Make fearful love.’
‘I must know what has befallen us. I must know why our Lord sent away our greatest warrior, and then himself left us.’
‘Countless fronts, this war. As I have said. I can tell you intent — as I understand it, and let me be plain, I may well not understand it at all — but not result, for each outcome is unknown. And each must succeed.’
‘No room for failure?’
‘None.’
‘And if one should fail?’
‘Then all shall fail.’
‘And if that happens. . ashes, oblivion — that will be our fate.’
The High Priestess turned away. ‘Not just ours, alas.’
Behind her, the historian gasped.
On all sides, water trembled in bowls, and the time for the luxurious consider shy;ation of possibilities was fast fading. Probably just as well.
‘Tell me of redemption.’
‘There is little that I can say, Segda Travos.’
Seerdomin snorted. ‘The god known as the Redeemer can say nothing of re shy;demption.’ He gestured to that distant quiescent figure kneeling in the basin. ‘She gathers power — I can smell it. Like the rot of ten thousand souls. What manner of god does she now serve? Is this the Fallen One? The Crippled God?’
‘No, although certain themes are intertwined. For followers of the Crippled God, the flaw is the virtue. Salvation arrives with death, and it is purchased through mortal suffering. There is no perfection of the spirit to strive towards, no true blessing to be gained as a reward for faith.’
‘And this one?’
‘As murky as the kelyk itself. The blessing is surrender, the casting away of all thought. The self vanishes within the dance. The dream is shared by all who par shy;take of pain’s nectar, but it is a dream of oblivion. In a sense, the faith is anti-life. Not in the manner of death, however. If one views life as a struggle doomed to fail, then it is the failing that becomes the essence of worship. He is the Dying God, after all.’
‘They celebrate the act of dying?’
‘In a manner, yes, assuming you can call it celebration. More like enslavement. Worship as self-destruction, perhaps, in which all choice is lost.’
‘And how can such a thing salve the mortal soul, Redeemer?’
‘That I cannot answer. But it may be that we shall soon find out.’
‘You do not believe I can protect you — at least in that we’re in agreement. So, when I fall — when I fail — the Dying God shall embrace me as it will you.’ He shook his head. ‘I am not unduly worried about me. I fear more the notion of what eternal dying can do to redemption — that seems a most unholy union.’
The Redeemer simply nodded and it occurred to Seerdomin that the god had probably been thinking of little else. A future that seemed sealed into fate, an end to what was, and nothing glorious in what would follow.
He rubbed at his face, vaguely dismayed at the weariness he felt. Here, discon shy;nected from his body, from any real flesh and bone, it was his spirit that was ex shy;hausted, battered down. And yet. .
After a moment raindrops splashed against his helm, stained his forearms and his hands. He lifted one hand, and saw that the rain was black, thick, wending like slime.
The sky was raining kelyk.
She raised her head, and the distance between them seemed to vanish. Her eyes shone with fire, a slow, terrible pulse.
Like the worn ridge of a toothless jaw, the Gadrobi Hills rose into view, spanning the north horizon. Kallor halted to study them. An end to this damned plain, to this pointless sweep of grasses. And there, to the northwest, where the hills sank back down, there was a city.
He could not yet see it. Soon.
The temple would be nondescript, the throne within it a paltry thing, poorly made, an icon of insipid flaws. A broken fool once named Munug would writhe before it, in obeisance, the High Priest of Pathos, the Prophet of Failure — enough thematic unity, in fact, to give any king pause. Kallor allowed himself a faint smirk. Yes, he was worthy of such worship, and if in the end he wrested it body and soul from the Crippled God, so be it.
The temple his domain, the score of bent and maimed priests and priestesses his court, the milling mob outside, sharing nothing but chronic ill luck, his subjects. This, he decided, had the makings of an immortal empire.
