Toll the Hounds

This loss was not just a loss of faith in the Redeemer. It was a loss of faith in religion itself.



Her prayers touched a presence, were warmed by the nearby breath of an immortal. And she pleaded with that force. She railed. Made demands. Insisted on explanations, answers.



And he took all her anger into his embrace, as he did everything else. And that was wrong.



There were two meanings to the word ‘benighted’. The first was pejorative, a form of dour ignorance. The second was an honour conferred in service to a king or queen. It was this latter meaning that had been applied to Seerdomin, a title of respect.



There was a third definition, one specific to Black Coral and to Seerdomin himself. He dwelt in Night, after all, where Darkness was not ignorance, but profound wisdom, ancient knowledge, symbolic of the very beginning of existence, the first womb from which all else was born. He dwelt in Night, then, and for a time had made daily pilgrimages out to the barrow with its forbidden riches, a one-man procession of rebirth that Salind only now comprehended.



Seerdomin was, in truth, the least ignorant of them all. Had he known Itkov-ian in his life? She thought not. Indeed, it would have been impossible. And so whatever had drawn Seerdomin to the cult arrived later, after Itkovian’s death, after his ascension. Thus, a personal crisis, a need that he sought to appease with daily prayers.



But… why bother? The Redeemer turned no one away. Blessing and forgiveness was a certainty. The bargaining was a sham. Seerdomin need only have made that procession once, and been done with it.



Had no one confronted him, he would still be making his daily pilgrimage, like an animal pounding its head against the bars of a cage-and, disregarded to one side, the door hanging wide open.



Was that significant? Seerdomin did not want the Redeemer’s embrace. No, the redemption he sought was of a different nature.



Need drove her from the bed in the temple, out into Night. She felt weak, light-headed, and every step seemed to drain appalling amounts of energy into the hard cobbles underfoot. Wrapped in a blanket, unmindful of those she passed, she walked through the city. There was meaning in the harrow itself, in the treasure that none could touch. There was meaning in Seerdomin’s refusal of the easy path. In his prayers that asked either something the Redeemer could not grant, or nothing at all. There was, perhaps, a secret in the Redeemer’s very embrace, something hidden, possibly even deceitful. He took in crimes and flaws and held it all in abeyance… until when? The redeemed’s death? What then? Did some hidden accounting await each soul?



How much desperation hid within each and every prayer uttered? The hope for blessing, for peace, for the sense that something greater than oneself might acknowledge that hapless self, and might indeed alter all of reality to suit the self’s desires. Were prayers nothing more than attempted bargains? A pathetic assertion of some kind of reciprocity?



Well, she would not bargain. No, she had questions, and she wanted answers. She demanded answers. If the faith that was given to a god came from nothing more than selfish desires, then it was no less sordid than base greed. If to hand over one’s soul to a god was in fact a surrendering of will, then that soul was worthless, a willing slave for whom freedom-and all the responsibility that entailed-was anathema.



She found herself reeling through the gate, on to the road that Seerdomin once walked day after day. It had begun raining, the drops light, cool on her fevered forehead, sweet as tears in her eyes. Not much grew to either side of the road, not even the strange Andiian plants that could be found in the walled and rooftop gardens. The dying moon had showered this place in salt water, a downpour the remnants of which remained as white crust like a cracked skin on the barren earth.



She could smell the sea rising around her as she staggered on.



And then, suddenly, she stumbled into daylight, the sun’s shafts slanting in from the east whilst a single grey cloud hung directly overhead, the rain a glittering tracery of angled streaks.



Bare feet slipping on the road’s cobbles, Salind continued on. She could see the barrow ahead, glistening and freshly washed, with the mud thick and churned up round its base. There were no pilgrims to be seen-perhaps it was too early. Perhaps they have all left. But no, she could see smoke rising from cookfires in the encampment. Have they lost their way, then!Ts that surprising? Have I not suffered my own crisis of faith?



She drew closer, gaze fixed now on the barrow.



Redeemer! You will hear me. You must hear me!



She fell on to her knees in the mud and its chill rippled up through her. The rain was past and steam now rose on all sides. Water ran in trickles everywhere on the barrow, a hundred thousand tears threading through all the offerings.