‘You say the Redeemer is troubled, Priestess,’ said the spokesman, a wiry-middle-aged man who had once been a merchant in Capustan-fleeing west before the siege, a refugee in Saltoan who had seen with his own eyes the Expulsion, the night when the advance agents of the Pannion Domin were driven out of that city. He had been among the first of the pilgrims to arrive at the Great Barrow and now it seemed he would stay, perhaps for the rest of his life. Whatever wealth he had once possessed was now part of the barrow, now a gift to a god who had been a man, a man he had once seen with his own eyes. ‘Surely this is because of Gra-dithan and his thugs. The Redeemer was a soldier in his life. Will he not reach out and smite those who prey upon his followers?’
Salind held out her hands, palms up. ‘Friend, we do not converse. My only gift is this… sensitivity. But I do not believe that the source of the Redeemer’s disquiet lies in the deeds of Gradithan and his cohorts. There was a burgeoning of… something. Not close at hand, yet of such power to make the ether tremble.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘It had the flavour of Kurald Galain-the warren of the Tiste Andii. And,’ she frowned, ‘something else that I have felt before. Many times, in fact. As if a storm raged far to the south, one that returns again and again.’
Blank faces stared at her.
Salind sighed. ‘See the clouds roll in from the sea-can we halt their progress? Can we-any of us-drive back the winds and rain, the hail? No. Such forces are far above us, far beyond our reach, 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 wis¬dom, 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, lot 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 bnes 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 hei 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!’