Toll the Hounds - Page 215/467

Seerdomin could see the logic of that, but logic was not enough. Anyone could reason themselves into a corner, and so justify surrender. It was even easier when courage itself was vulnerable to abuse and sordid mockery. Because, after all, to persist, to live on, demanded courage, and that was only possible when the virtue remained worthy of respect.

Seerdomin lifted his head and glared over at the decapitated corpse. ‘Can you understand any of that, Harak? Can you grasp, now, finally, how the very existence of people like you gives me reason to stay alive? Because you give my rage a face, and my sword, well, it’s hungry for faces.’ It was either that, or the fury within him would devour his own soul. No, better to keep the face he slashed open someone else’s, rather than his own. Keep finding them, one after another. Justice was so weak. The corrupt won, the pure of heart failed and fell to the way-side. Graft and greed crowed triumphant over responsibility and compassion. He could fight that, and that fight need not even be in his own name. He could fight for Black Coral, for the Tiste Andii, for humanity itself.

Even for the Redeemer-no, that cannot be. What I do here can never be healed-there can be no redemption for me. Ever. You must see that. All of you must see that.

He realized he was pleading-but to whom? He did not know. We were put in an impossible situation, and, at least for us, the tyrant responsible is dead-has been punished. It could have been worse-he could have escaped retribution, es-caped justice.

There was trauma in war. Some people survived it; others were for ever trappedin It. For many of those, this circumstance was not a failing on their part. Not some form of sickness, or insanity. It was, in truth, the consequence of a pro«foundly moral person’s inability to reconcile the conflicts in his or her soul. No healer could heal that, because there was nothing to heal. No elixir swept the malady away. No salve erased the scars. The only reconciliation possible was to make those responsible accountable, to see them face justice. And more often than not, history showed that such an accounting rarely ever took place. And so the veteran’s wounds never mend, the scars never fade, the rage never subsides.

So Seerdomin had come to believe, and he well knew that what he was doing here, with weapon in hand, solved nothing of the conflict within him. For he was as flawed as anyone, and no matter how incandescent his rage, his righteous fury, he could not deliver pure, unsullied justice-for such a thing was collective, integral to a people’s identity. Such a thing must be an act of society, of civilization. Not Tiste Andii society-they clearly will not accept that burden, will not accede to meting out justice on behalf of us humans, nor should they be expected to. And so… here I am, and I hear the Redeemer weep.

()tie cannot murder in the name of justice.

Irreconcilable. What he had been, what he was now. The things he did then, and all he was doing here, at this moment.

The would-be usurper knelt beside him, headless in sour symbolism. But it was a complicated, messy symbol. And he could find for himself but one truth in all of this.

Heads roll downhill.

It may be that in the belief of the possibility of redemption, people willingly do wrong. Redemption waits, like a side door, there in whatever court of judge-ment we eventually find ourselves. Not even the payment of a fine is demanded, simply the empty negotiation that absolves responsibility. A shaking of hands and off one goes, through that side door, with the judge benignly watching on. Culpability and consequences neatly evaded.

Oh, Salind was in a crisis indeed. Arguments reduced until the very notion of redemption was open to challenge. The Redeemer embraced, taking all within himself. Unquestioning, delivering absolution as if it was without value, worthless, whilst the reward to those embraced was a gift greater than a tyrant’s hoard.

Where was justice in all of this? Where was the punishment for crimes committed, retribution for wrongs enacted? There is, in this, no moral compass. No need for one, for every path leads to the same place, where blessing is passed out, no questions asked.

The cult of the Redeemer… it is an abomination.

She had begun to understand how priesthoods were born, the necessity of sanctioned forms, rules and prohibitions, the mortal filter defined by accepted notions of justice. And yet, she could also see how profoundly dangerous such an institution could become, as arbiters of morality, as dispensers of that justice. Faces like hooded vultures, guarding the door to the court, choosing who gets insideand who doesn’t. I low soon before the first bag of silver changes hands? How soon before the first reprehensible criminal buys passage into the arms of the blind, unquestioning Redeemer?

She could fashion such a church, could formalize the cult into a religion, and she could impose a harsh, unwavering sense of justice. But what of the next generation of priests and priestesses? And the one after that, and the next one? How long before the hard rules make that church a self-righteous, power-mongering tyranny? How long before corruption arrives, when the hidden heart of the religion is the simple fact that the Redeemer embraces everyone who comes before him? A fact virtually guaranteed to breed cynicism in the priesthood, and from such cynicism secular acquisitiveness would be inevitable.