More than half of the soldiers readying their gear stopped then, and Narad saw many setting their packs back down.
Scara Bandaris led his troop away from the camp, riding west to return to the river road. A thin line of additional soldiers fell in behind it. Narad was among them, and he saw, just ahead, Corporal Bursa. Sergeant Radas had remained behind, but he still had her face in his memory. It was dead, and never again would those lips twist, or make the shape of words. Never again would she say ‘ Still hanging limp, Waft? ’ and never again would she rant on in the smoke and fire about all the wrongs done to her and her comrades in the Legion.
It was a dead face he saw, there in his mind, and when he drew back, to hover over her as would a gleeful ghost, he saw how she was sprawled on the stones, her legs spread wide, and blood pooling down there.
The vision should have made him recoil, but instead he felt nothing.
Not by my hand, sergeant.
Scara Bandaris’s words in the camp reverberated through him still. Their scorn comforted him. Their indignation carried the echoes of rightful condemnation, and if Narad himself stung to the lash, well, did he not deserve it?
A short time later, the captain drew up and he and his fellow riders waited for the newcomers. The road was at their backs, the river just beyond.
Scara said, ‘We will rest here for a time. But not as long as I’d like. It may be best if you simply scattered, finding for yourself remote places in which to hide. I will wait in Sedis Hold, and if Silchas Ruin finds me, I will not fight him. I will, in truth, bow to one knee and await his sword upon my neck. By these words I have given you, I trust that you understand that it will not be safe for any of you, should you remain in my company.’
At that, a number of riders swung round to retrace their route.
The scene felt sordid, pathetic.
Then the captain’s eyes fell upon Narad and the man frowned. ‘You I do not know.’
‘This then,’ said Narad, ‘is my only reason for hope.’
Corporal Bursa cleared his throat. ‘We collected him up in the forest, sir.’
‘You vouch for him, corporal?’
Narad felt his spirits plummet. He felt once more that woman lying under him, and heard the laughter making a ring around his clumsy motions, and how it rained down like stinging sleet.
Bursa said, ‘He obeyed orders, sir, and was accepted as one of us.’
‘Very well,’ said Scara Bandaris, his gaze shifting away. ‘The ascent to Sedis Gate is a long climb, and any who approach will be seen from half a day away, thus giving all of you time to flee into the north, on the Jheleck Trail. I am content to meet my fate alone.’
A soldier spoke. ‘We would ride with you, sir.’
‘Until Sedis Hold?’
‘Yes sir.’
Scara Bandaris offered them all a wry, bitter smile. ‘Fools delight in company, my friends.’
‘ High Priestess, make of your worship an unflinching recognition of the unknown, and indeed, the unknowable. By devotion and acceptance of mystery, the chaos that haunts us all is made calm, until the sea itself becomes a mirror content with a placid reflection.’
As the words of her goddess they marked scant scripture, and Emral Lanear felt lost as she sat in her private chamber. She had sent the priestesses away, and was alone with her blurred reflection, sitting so motionless in the mirror. As befitted any adherent, she had pledged her devotion in the frail hope of gifts in return, and while this notion, so crassly expressed, laid bare the one-sided bargaining that was faith, she was no longer in any mood for dissembling. All that was indistinct and imprecise could well remain in the mirror, where every smudge was a blessing, and she would leave it at that.
Still, this face she saw before her was no placid reflection.
There was no end to the irony, if what Anomander had said about Syntara was true. Youthful beauty could bear the revelation of light, while its ageing loss welcomed the darkness; and so these two High Priestesses were indeed well positioned, and if Emral knew bitterness at finding which side she inhabited, there was nothing to be done for it. At least the darkness was eternal in its disguising gifts. In the centuries to come, Syntara might well come to curse what her light revealed.
But now they stood opposite one another, poised to attend a clash neither side could truly win. In the death of one, the meaning of the other is lost. Shall I add this truth to our modest scripture? Perhaps as a note upon the margin, less elegantly inscribed, a thing made in haste, or perhaps regret.
If holy words could not offer up an answer to despair, then what good were they? If the truths so revealed did not invite restitution, then their utterance was no more than a curse. And if the restitution is found not in the mortal realm, then we are invited to inaction, and indifference. Will you promise to a soul a reward buried in supposition? Are we to reach throughout our lives but never touch? Are we to dream and to hope, but never know?