In the Ruins

Smoke stung his face as the wind shifted. He fanned a hand to drive it away although in truth it made no difference.

“The Horse people are our allies, Burchard,” he said.

“Your allies,” said Liutgard.

“Mine,” he agreed, “and thus, for the moment, yours, Cousin. I pray you, Liath, go on.”

“I pray you!” cried a voice from the back, that damned servingman again. “You speak of the lives and empires of the heathen, yet you have not said one word about the blessed Daisan! Do you even believe in God?”

“Hush!” said someone else in the crowd.

“Let her speak!” cried another, the words echoed by a chorus of “let her speak” and “yes” and “shut your mouth.”

“Else we’ll be standing out here in the damned cold all night and freeze our hands to what they’re scratching,” finished a wit.

“Well,” said Liath, raising her voice as the others dropped theirs. She slid easily into the silence. “All here have heard told the life of the blessed Daisan and his chief disciple, Thecla the Witnesser. This we know and believe, that the blessed Daisan revealed to all of humankind the truth of the Circle of Unity, of the Mother and Father of Life, and our belief in the Penitire.” Her gaze had a peculiar way of going flat when she quoted from memory, as if she looked inward, not outward. “‘The blessed Daisan prayed in ecstacy for six days and on the seventh was translated up to the Chamber of Light to join God.”’

Her gaze sought the heckler, and perhaps it found him, because she paused for a moment with a fixed stare, then smiled just a little as a bully might, seeing his prey flinch. The man had by this time moved so that his body was hidden to Sanglant’s line of sight.

“What matters to the story I tell you tonight is that the belief in the Circle of Unity and the Word of the blessed Daisan spread outward on the architecture of the old Dariyan Empire.”

“More than that!” interposed Sister Elsebet indignantly.

“Ai, God! Spare us these interruptions! I’m still scratching!” cried the wit.

Sanglant sighed.

Sister Elsebet stepped forward and glared her audience into silence. “None of us can speak as if this war is ended.”

“Which war is that?” asked Liath. “I thought I was speaking of a war.”

Elsebet pounded her staff twice on the ground. “I will listen, but I will not remain silent on this matter. I pray you, Your Majesty!”

He was caught, and he knew it as well as the cleric did. “Go on, Sister. What is it you must say?”

“That the woman has knowledge of sorcery and history I can see, and perhaps respect. But the war that afflicts those of us who live within the Circle of Unity is never ending. It is impossible to speak of the blessed Daisan without speaking as well of those who have sought to corrupt his holy teachings.”

“Have we time for this?” Sanglant asked Liath.

A foolish question. She was interested, and entertained. She could go on in this vein for hours. “You speak of heresy, Sister Elsebet, do you not?”

“As must we all! Alas!”

“Then I pray you, educate us.”

Once offered, quickly taken. Sister Elsebet did not strike Sanglant as a fussy, troublesome woman, nor had he in their brief acquaintance been given any reason to believe she was one of Hugh’s adherents.

“Go on,” he said, giving her permission.

She came forward. Liath did not, in fact, make way or give up her own place standing on a conveniently situated rock that elevated her a bit above the rest, but she did drop her chin and, between one breath and the next, efface herself. The shift was astonishing. Sanglant had never seen her do such a thing before, as if she doused the radiance that made her blaze. Before, she must command the gaze; now, she was only a woman standing on a rock listening as a cleric spoke of the holy truth that sustained them.

“This is the truth! Heed me! Many heresies have troubled the church since the living body of the blessed Daisan was lifted up into the Chamber of Light. But in these dark days there are two we must guard against most assiduously.

“The first is known as the Redemptio. This is the belief that the blessed Daisan was martyred by the Empress Thaissania, She of the Mask. That only after his death by flaying and his supposed resurrection did he ascend to the Chamber of Light. This heresy was eventually squelched and forbidden. As it deserved!

“The second, and greater, heresy concerns the constitution of the blessed Daisan himself. The elders of the church ruled that the blessed Daisan was no different than any other human, claiming only a divine soul made up of pure light trapped in a mortal body admixed with darkness. The adherents of the greater heresy claim otherwise and declared that the blessed Daisan alone among humankind was half divine and half mortal. In the year 499, the Emperor of Arethousa turned his back on the skopos in Darre and abandoned the truth because of his belief in this half divinity. So was the holy word of the blessed Daisan wounded by the Enemy’s sharp arrows.”