‘It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.
‘I am no mother, but I need only look at Hanavat to find the strength I need.’
The words were seared into his memory. In the voice of a childless woman, they left him more shaken, more distraught than he perhaps would otherwise have been.
Was this what they were fighting for? Only one among a host of reasons, surely – and in truth he could not quite see how this path they’d chosen could serve such aspirations. He did not doubt the nobility of the Adjunct’s motivations, nor even the raw compassion so driving her to seek what was, in most eyes, virtually impossible. But there was something else here, something still hidden.
How many great compassions arose from a dark source? A private place of secret failings?
After she had sent Lostara away, Tavore had turned once more to the sword, and after a time Banaschar had stirred from his seat on the war-gear chest, risen and walked to her side.
‘I have stopped running, Adjunct.’
She was silent, her eyes fixed on the weapon in its battered, scratched scabbard.
‘I – I wish to thank you for that. Proof,’ he added with a sour smile, ‘of your gifts of achieving the impossible.’
‘Priest,’ she said, ‘the Chal’Managa – the Snake – that was a manifestation of D’rek, was it not?’
He found himself unable to meet her eyes, but managed a simple shrug. ‘I think so. For a time. Her children were lost. In her eyes, anyway. And that made her just as lost, I suppose. Together, they needed to find their way.’
‘Those details do not interest me,’ she said, tone hardening. ‘Banaschar, tell me. What does she want? Why is she so determined to be here? Will she seek to oppose me?’
‘Why would you think I have answers to those questions, Adjunct?’
‘Because she never left you either. She needed at least one of her worshippers to live on, and for some unknown reason she chose you.’
He wanted to sit down again. Anywhere. Maybe even on the floor. ‘Adjunct, it is said that a worm finding itself in a puddle of ale will get drunk and then drown. I’ve often thought about that, and I admit, I’ve come to suspect that any puddle will do, and getting drunk has nothing to do with it. The damned things drown anyway. And yet, oddly enough, without any puddles the worms don’t show up at all.’
‘We have left the new lake behind us, Priest. No one drowned, not even you.’
‘They’re just children now.’
‘I know.’
Banaschar sighed, nodded down at the sword. ‘She will protect it, Adjunct.’
He heard her breath catch, and then, ‘But … that might well kill her.’
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
‘Are you certain of this, Demidrek?’
‘Demi— Gods below, Adjunct – are you a student of theology as well? Tayschrenn was—’
‘As the last surviving priest of the Worm of Autumn, the honorific belongs to you, Banaschar.’
‘Fine, but where are the gold-stitched robes and the gaudy rings?’
An aide entered behind them, coughed and then said, ‘Adjunct, three horses are saddled and waiting outside.’
‘Thank you.’
Suddenly Banaschar was chilled, his hands cold and stiff as if he’d left them in buckets of ice-water. ‘Adjunct – we do not know if the heart will be freed. If you—’
‘They will succeed, Demidrek. Your own god clearly believes that—’
‘ Wrong .’
She was startled to silence.
‘It’s simpler than that, Adjunct,’ Banaschar went on, the words tasting of ashes. ‘D’rek doesn’t care if the Crippled God is whole or not – if he’s little more than a gibbering fool, or a gutted body with a huge hole in his chest, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you have of him, she wants it gone .’
‘Then …’ Her eyes narrowed.
‘Correct. Listen to her last Demidrek, because he knows when his god has lost all faith.’
‘They won’t fail,’ Tavore whispered, eyes once more on the sword.
‘And if the Perish betray them? What then?’
But she was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand.’
