Well, in that he failed. The poor, misguided fool.
But there was some irony, she decided, in that she now found herself walking into Neret Sorr, and that fell keep looming above it.
Dear Father. I bring word of hidden temples where your soldiers confess their crimes. I stand before you, a much-used priestess, carrying in me a soldier’s plaintive cry for absolution … well, a few hundred soldiers and a few thousand plaintive cries. They have lost their faiths, you see. All of them, barring the renting of my flesh, thus relieving us all with assurance that, in coin, at least, one kind of faith remains secure.
This is how the power of the bargain wins out against all other powers. Tell the High Priestess to pay heed. Invite confessions amidst handfuls of coin, to ensure that the believers understand how this deal gets made. They’ll grasp the notion quickly enough, until every temple is sheathed in gold.
But tell her, also, to do nothing with such confessions. Mouth the proper words of absolution, if she must, but set out no course of hard justice, or proper retribution. Dead sinners are no longer generous, after all, and no longer impelled to rent for a time the easement of their guilt. Take it from a whore, dear Syntara, it’s about renting, not purchasing.
She walked through the town. Frost limned the muddy ground, the walls of buildings. Overhead, the stars ever in their place, forever silent, eternally witnessing. She had grown to appreciate their remoteness. Whore as goddess and goddess as whore. Oh, how confused your worship, yes? Never mind. It all works out in the end – I saw as much in that soldier’s eyes.
* * *
There had been a smithy below the keep’s hill, but its owner had died. The house, sheds and outbuildings had been torn down, along with flanking houses, to make room for the new Temple of Light. Hunn Raal was amused when he thought of the scorched earth awaiting the foundation stones, the heaps of ash, clinkers and cinders; the ragged tailings and sand-studded droplets now hard and brittle as glass.
Few understood the manifold expressions of the sacred that so cluttered the world on all sides. Few had the wits to see them. Kurald Galain, after all, was born of fires, of forges and vast forests of fuel awaiting the heat and smoke of industry. Pits in the ground, veins of ore, streams of sweat and dripping blood, the straining struggles of so many men and women to make of life something better, if not for themselves, then for their children.
Fitting, then, to raise a temple upon such holy ground. Not that Syntara would ever comprehend that. She was intent, he now understood, upon a narrowing of the sacred, threateningly surrounded by a wild, chaotic proliferation of the profane. Once all such potential threats were eliminated – indeed, desecrated – then, why, she would hold within her embrace all that was sacred.
Religion, Hunn Raal decided, was the marriage of holiness with base acquisitiveness, self-defined and purposefully delineated to eliminate natural worship – worship lying beyond the temple walls, beyond the rules, the prohibitions. Lying beyond – more to the point – the self-pronounced authority of whatever priesthood arose to manage, with grubby hands, the sacredness of things. And, incidentally, getting rich on the proceeds.
Well, he understood High Priestess Syntara. It wasn’t difficult. He even understood the Deniers, and the threat they posed, with their open faith – with the way they made all things in their lives holy, from whittling down a tent stake to singing and dancing under the light of full moons. Even the Shake temples saw those forest-dwelling savages as a threat to whatever privileges the monks and nuns claimed as their own. Which was, if one considered it, ridiculous, since those savages of the wood were, in fact, the Shake’s congregation, their blessed children.
Oh, that’s right. Their blessed children. Real children, that is, the ones they could steal, I mean. Never mind the mothers and fathers. Just the children, please, for our blessed ranks.
He took another mouthful of wine, swirled it through the gaps in his teeth, then pulling it back to flow over his tongue one more time, before swallowing. Thus. He understood Syntara and her pious High House of Light. He understood the Deniers, too, and the Shake.
But not Mother Dark. Not this empty darkness and its unlit temple, its unseen altar and invisible throne. Not this worship of absence. Dear Emral Lanear, I do sympathize. Really. Your task is nigh impossible, isn’t it, whilst your goddess says nothing. In that despairing silence, why, I too might decide to take to my bed as many lovers as I could. To fill up all those empty spaces, the ones inside and out.
Well, Urusander old friend, you can have her. If you can find her, that is.
Rest assured, Syntara will bring light to the scene. Enough to expose the conjugal bed, at least. She’ll wave a hand and deem it a blessing. As if you two were children who would only fumble helplessly in the dark.
Wed the two, then. Urusander’s fiery bright cock. Into her unlit cunt. Maybe that union was always holy, now that I think on it. A man’s raging light, a woman’s purest dark. We men, we do have a thing for caves, and other comforting places. Our womb, from which we were so ignominiously thrown out. To then spend a lifetime trying to crawl back – but what is it that we truly seek? Sanctuary, or oblivion?
Glancing down, he pushed the maid’s head away from his crotch. ‘Oh, give it up, will you? I’ve drunk too much tonight.’
She glanced up at him, just a flicker’s worth of eye contact, and then she rolled on to her side.
‘Amuse yourself,’ Hunn Raal said.
Now, dear Syntara, let’s discuss the notion of murder, shall we? Shall we paint your temple blood red? Or should we wait a few generations first? At the very least, set the engineers to fashion ingenious gutters to channel a flow you would wish endless.
And yet, you decried my seeming thirst. Border guards, Wardens, Deniers. The Hust. I am indeed soaked with blood. All necessary, alas. We’ll save the Shake for later. The nobles need humiliating first. Anomander and his brothers brought to their knees. Draconus sent packing – although, between you and me, Syntara, I admit to some admiration for the Consort. Now there’s a man unafraid of darkness! So unafraid as to climb back into the womb and make of it the finest palace of delight!
It’s no wonder his nobleborn kin so envy him, enough to foment abiding hatred. Yes, of course we’ll make use of that, given the chance. Still … poor Draconus. No man deserves your fate, to be twice cast out of the womb.
Lying beside him, back arching, the maid made moaning noises, and gasps. But the ecstasy sounded forced. This lass would have done fine as a priestess, I think. Too bad.
Oh, Syntara, we were speaking of murder, weren’t we? And all the paths to and from its grisly gate. And here is my promise: when we’re done with our task; when at last Lord Urusander stands beside Mother Dark, the two wedded … do not expect a third throne, Syntara – not for you and not for your church. If we can scour out the wretched Deniers and the Shake – if we can burn them into ash and cinders – do you imagine we could not do the same to you?
By fire, this gift of light, no?
He had explored the newfound sorcery within him, with far greater alacrity than he had led Syntara to believe. Enough to know that the woman pleasuring herself beside him in this bed was nothing but a husk. And this in turn amused him greatly, as the secret spark within the maid – Syntara herself – now struggled to bring life back into that body’s benumbed carcass.