“I don’t call a band of assassins a government,” Gar grunted. “Mind you, the history books do tell about some assassin bosses who have become warlords, then eventually kings, but no one has ever mentioned the Scarlet Company doing any such thing.”
“At least the local chapter here should be well funded,” Alea said. “I’ve seen a collection box in every plaza.”
“How do they manage the collecting?” Gar wondered. “Do the boxes have hollow posts emptying into a network of underground tunnels?”
“I think everyone’s afraid to look and even more afraid to tell,” Alea said. “Besides, emptying the boxes at two o’clock in the morning would give you quite a bit of privacy.”
“The members of the Scarlet Company would have to be very devoted to get up in the middle of every night.” Gar frowned. “Unless they were awake at that time anyway.”
“Who would be conscious at two o’clock in the morning?” Alea protested.
“Priests and priestesses in around-the-clock vigil.” Gar stood and took up his staff again. “Let’s go find a temple.”
He chose the biggest temple, of course, which was really a toss-up—there were two the same size at the top of the hill around which the town had grown. The locals not having coins, he tossed a shoe; it landed sole-up, so he went into the left-hand temple. Alea sighed with martyred patience and followed.
The interior was a cavern, its roof soaring up above a line of small windows into shadow. At the far side, a twenty-foot-tall statue of a man sat in an ornate marble chair. His face was handsome, grave, and kindly beneath a well-trimmed jawline beard. He wore draped robes and held a curious scepter topped by an onion-shaped bulb with an elongated point. He was old enough to be a father but young enough to be a lover.
“So this is the god.” Gar stood frowning up, as though measuring himself against the statue.
“I suppose men have to have something to pray to, just as women do,” Alea said, somewhat waspishly, “since they’re lacking in imagination.”
“Not lacking in memory, though.” Gar pointed at the scepter. “That’s a lightning rod.”
Alea. stared, then recognized the shape from the entry on Herkimer’s screen.
“Other gods throw lightning,” Gar said. “This one diverts it, shields you from it. He’s a protector.”
“Protectors can become tyrants,” Alea said.
“Not here, it seems.” Gar rested his chin on his folded hands atop his staff and gazed up at the statue, brooding. “He doesn’t hold a shield, either—he’s prepared to protect his people from natural disasters, not from one another.”
Then he’d better learn, Alea thought, but said instead, “Perhaps he leaves that to the goddess.”
“You mean the priestesses might lead the Scarlet Company?” Gar turned to frown at her. “A good thought. How can we test it?”
Alea stared back at him, caught flat-footed but thinking fast. “Find a priest,” she said. “You ask him questions—I’ll listen to what he doesn’t say.”
“Fair enough.” Gar looked up as a middle-aged man in the robes of a priest came out from behind the statue. He saw the companions and came toward them with a gentle, encouraging smile. “There is no ceremony here until evening, friends. Have you come because you are troubled in your hearts?”
“In my mind, rather, Reverend,” Gar said.
“Ah.” The priest nodded, still smiling, and gestured toward a small door at the side of the temple. “Come to a talking room, then, my friends.”
He turned away, not waiting for a response. Gar exchanged a glance with Alea, then shrugged and followed the priest. Alea went along, a little surprised that she was allowed to do so—at home, Odin’s priests would never have allowed a woman to set foot in his temple, let alone an inner chamber.
The room was perhaps eight feet by ten, the longer walls curving with the shape of the temple, whitewashed and hung with tapestries showing the god in his chariot, riding through a storm with lightning being sucked into his scepter. Another showed the temple with the sun rising behind it, and inside the sun the god in his chariot. A third showed a huge tree, its trunk in the shape of the god. Alea caught her breath; in this one form, the priests summed up three of Midgard’s gods.
The priest gestured to two hourglass-shaped chairs and sat in another across from them; at his side was a small table with a tall pitcher and two cups. “I must know first if this is a matter of the heart, for if it is, we should go to the goddess’s temple and ask a priestess to join us. Are you bonded, my friends? Or considering bonding?”
Not “son” or “daughter,” Alea noted just “friends.”
“No, Reverend,” she said, “we are only fellow travelers, road companions.” She felt a churning within her, the sort of apprehension that goes with speaking a lie, but pushed it out of her mind.
“It is wise not to travel alone, either on the roads or in life,” the priest acknowledged. “What troubles you, then, my friends?”
“The sages, Reverend,” Gar replied, and at the priest’s puzzled look, explained, “We’re from very far away, very far indeed, and have no such wise men where we come from.”
“I see,” the priest said slowly. “But what could trouble you about good and gentle people who only lead others into wisdom?”
“The ease with which they advise,” Gar said carefully, “and the people’s quickness to turn to them when they are in difficulty. You approve of them, then?”
“Approve?” the priest asked in astonishment. “It is not something for approval or disapproval—the sages simply are.”
“A force of nature?” Gar asked. “Still, when people are troubled, should they not come to a priest or priestess instead of to a sage?”
“Ah, I see your problem.” The priest’s face smoothed into a smile. “The great crises in their lives they bring to us, the emotional turmoil that knots them up so that they cannot go on with living—but lesser problems they take to their sages, and glad we are to have them do so.”
“The sages relieve you of some of the burden, then,.” Gar said slowly.
“There is that.” the priest acknowledged, “but it is more. We are priests; our concern is religion—worship of the god and goddess, and the ways in which the soul relates to them.”
“Not morality?” Gar frowned.
“A moral life is a continuing prayer,” the priest explained. “The sages, however, seek to understand all the other ways in which people should relate to the world, and to one another.”
Gar still frowned. “Surely they have some concern for the soul!”
“Surely they do,” the priest agreed, “and perhaps of a greater soul, a union of all souls—but only there do we begin to share concerns.”
“You are not jealous, then?” Gar asked. “You do not see them as rivals?”
The priest laughed gently. “Rivals? Oh no, my friend! We are not jealous at all, for we see the god and goddess as containing all souls that strive to do right, whereas the sages see that all souls unite to form a god.”
“You are content with this division?” Gar’s voice was carefully neutral.
“Quite content, for their wisdom differs from ours, and the people bring their everyday problems to the sages, but their eternal problems to us.”
“I see … I think,” Gar said. He gave Alea a perplexed glance, but she could only lift her shoulders in a tiny shrug. He turned back to the priest. “So the sages are not religious, only philosophers and counselors?”
“Counselors, yes—though rather cryptic ones.” The priest’s smile was amused.