Chapter Fourteen

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative.

One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come.

I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

The Apocryphal Teachings of Tanno Spiritwalker Kimloc The Decade in Ehrlitan Chaur held out the baby as if to begin bouncing it on one knee, but Barathol reached out to rest a hand on the huge man's wrist. The blacksmith shook his head. 'Not old enough for that yet. Hold her close, Chaur, so as not to break anything.'

The man answered with a broad smile and resumed cuddling and rocking the swaddled infant.

Barathol Mekhar leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs, and briefly closed his eyes, making a point of not listening to the argument in the side room where the woman, Scillara, resisted the combined efforts of L'oric, Nulliss, Filiad and Urdan, all of whom insisted she accept the baby, as was a mother's responsibility, a mother's duty and a host of other guilt-laden terms they flung at her like stones. Barathol could not recall the last time the villagers in question had displayed such vehement zeal over anything. Of course, in this instance, their virtue came easy, for it cost them nothing.

The blacksmith admitted to a certain admiration for the woman.

Children were indeed burdensome, and as this one was clearly not the creation of love, Scillara's lack of attachment seemed wholly reasonable. On the opposite side, the ferocity of his fellow townsfolk was leaving him disgusted and vaguely nauseous.

Hayrith appeared in the main room, moments earlier a silent witness to the tirade in the side chamber where they'd set Scillara's cot. The old woman shook her head. 'Idiots. Pompous, prattling twits! Just listen to all that piety, Barathol! You'd think this babe was the Emperor reborn!'

'Gods forbid,' the blacksmith muttered.

'Jessa last house on the east road, she's got that year-old runt with the withered legs that ain't gonna make it. She'd not refuse the gift, and everyone here knows it.'

Barathol nodded, somewhat haphazardly, his mind on other matters.

'There's even Jessa second floor of the old factor house, though she ain't had any milk t'give in fifteen years. Still, she'd be a good mother and this village could use a wailing child to help drown out all the wailing grown-ups. Get the Jessas together on this and it'll be fine.'

'It's L'oric,' Barathol said.

'What's that?'

'L'oric. He's so proper he burns to the touch. Or, rather, he burns everything he touches.'

'Well, it ain't his business, is it?'

'People like him make everything their business, Hayrith.'

The woman dragged a chair close and sat down across from the blacksmith. She studied him with narrowed eyes. 'How long you going to wait?' she asked.

'As soon as the lad, Cutter, is able to travel,' Barathol said. He rubbed at his face. 'Thank the gods all that rum's drunk. I'd forgotten what it does to a man's gut.'

'It was L'oric, wasn't it?'

He raised his brows.

'Him showing up here didn't just burn you – it left you scorched, Barathol. Seems you did some bad things in the past' – she snorted – ' as if that makes you different from all the rest of us. But you figured you could hide out here for ever, and now you know that ain't going to be. Unless, of course,' her eyes narrowed to slits, 'you kill L'oric.'

The blacksmith glanced over at Chaur, who was making faces and cooing sounds down at the baby, while it in turn seemed to be blowing bubbles, as yet blissfully unaware of the sheer ugliness of the monstrous face hovering over it. Barathol sighed. 'I'm not interested in killing anyone, Hayrith.'