would take a rising of Darkness to force the temple’s flint-fist bursars to loosen their purse strings. How many years have they waited to fix the shoddy roof on our barracks?’
‘Oh, they’ll pay! Always have. But for vestments with diamonds. The excuse will pack some pompous chump off east again to remand the delinquent avatar.’
‘A Light’s Hope? For real? You’re joking!’ The speaker snorted, derisive. ‘The high priest at Erdane won’t quell an outbreak of Shadow through mummery! Or waste his devout talent for such a fool’s delegation. The True Sect’s more likely to launch their case to condemn the fair-haired fop the traditionalists still revere as the founder of faith. Who wouldn’t bid to eclipse Lysaer’s power? The high temple conclave’s primed for the opening. I say they’ll depose him, seize his mayor’s seat at Etarra, and build up the warfront with the s’Ilessid treasury. Then watch how fast we’ll break the locked stand-off with Havish.’
‘Light’s own grace! Watch your tongue! Might find yourself wrung by the temple examiner alongside this wretch of a prisoner.’
‘…beyond all doubt the avatar’s abandoned the godhead! That’s if the Great Schism’s not a flagrant myth, and the man ever wielded true Light in the first place!’
‘No myth, boy. Don’t mock history. My grand uncle twice rode as a guard with the Light’s Hope. He’s seen divinity with his own eyes. The Blessed Prince never ages.’
‘You bought the legend for an old man’s maundering in his beer cup? That’s quaint.’
Tarens absorbed the by-play through his daze, too damaged to care about the old controversy that flared between the True Sect and the traditionalists. The tale held that the avatar once denounced his priests and barred Etarra’s gates against his protesting faithful. Pleas to win back his loyalty encountered rebuff. When the Temple’s delegation placed an appeal, the priests were kicked out with their banners in flames and their horses’ tails singed to smoking.
The veteran dedicate shrugged off his peer’s ridicule. ‘Greenhorn, you weren’t by chance signed on as a recruit to redeem your gullible relative?’
Through an indignant chorus, a louder voice prevailed, ‘Don’t cite the accounts in the temple archives. Likely some bored copyist got drunk on devotion and larked off. Who’s to say the lines of early scripture aren’t outright fancy? Nobody’s seen the like of the myth passed down from the siege of Alestron.’
Other voices declaimed, until the stiff-necked officer in charge caught wind of the blasphemous chatter. ‘Since the Schism occurred over two centuries ago, our priesthood defines the sanctity of the canon. Your job’s to defend the Light’s grace from corruption! Clap your lips like a virgin caught out after dark if you want your sweet shot at advancement.’
The grumbler protested from the rear-guard ‘Service in the ranks is rude enough without bending to jiggle the butts of the Light’s inner conclave.’
‘Listen up, bucko!’ the officer snapped. ‘High Temple’s secretive feud with Etarra has seen better men drummed out of their whites in dishonour.’
The freshened breeze blew further chill through the talk, with the mounted procession compelled to rein in to flank the slow roll of the wagon. Another league passed before someone’s laconic check on the captive raised a bark to a lazy subordinate. ‘Flip the tarp off that corpse and shelter this wretch. We’ll catch something worse than a reprimand if he packs up and dies of the cold.’
‘…this poxy assignment!’ someone else carped. ‘It’s still black out here as a witch’s twat! When in the name of the Dark will we see the first glimmer of sunrise?’
‘Spooked by a few clouds, then?’
The round of jeers lapsed as a shouted call from the vanguard halted the double-file column. The oxcart’s wheels squelched to a stop, to more steamed oaths from the duty-bound lancers. Hoof stamps and snorts pocked the frigid air as their curbed destriers tussled the hold on their bits.
Sapped to dulled wits by the strain on bruised sinews, Tarens gathered the pause concerned an unscheduled obstruction. A glow emerged through the felt blanket of mist: some prankster had lit a bonfire from green wood in the midst of the trade-road. The blaze piled up traffic in both directions. With none but the agile, mounted couriers able to surmount the ditch at the verge, an irritable pack of balked carters shook fists and shouted, while their discommoded draught animals coughed on swirled smoke and jostled to evade the whirled sparks chased up by the changeable wind.
The temple man wrestled the oxcart’s reins, swearing, while the fidgety escort of outriders closed their skittish horses into tighter formation around the chained prisoner.
‘This may not be a coincidence. Stay on the alert!’ The lance captain’s next order dismounted the company’s two strongest men and sent them ahead to sort out the confusion.
‘You’ll extinguish those flames!’ he called after them, anxious. ‘Pull apart the smouldering logs, stamp out the piled brush, and back off those carters before their teams pitch a fit and some blighted hot-head starts brawling.’
The nuisance would impose a lengthy delay. At least until the raked coals cooled to ash, with the steep banks of the drain ditches on either side set narrow enough to break wheels, and no burdened draught animal in its right mind likely to be cajoled to tread over hot embers.
Tarens languished in the wagon-bed meanwhile, surrounded by jumpy lancers and the dedicate officer, whose unhappy subordinate paced in tight circles, both hands full, tending riderless mounts. No one passed the time in loose talk, with every man’s nerves primed to face an assault by barbarian raiders, or bandits, or worse: an attempt by Shadow’s collaborators to liberate the condemned murderer. Never mind that the wretch was secured by locked chains, with the temple examiner in sole charge of the key, and the suspect family constrained under guard back at the ransacked cottage.
Bound in supine misery, Tarens suffered the worse. Though the draped tarp cut the edge from the wind, his swollen contusions had stiffened. What marginal surcease he gained from the stillness was undone by his tensioned cuffs as the brisk cold settled through his clammy shirt and wracked his outstretched body to shivering. The torment did not stem his terrified thoughts. Horrors awaited him in Kelsing’s dungeons, put to the question by the True Sect priests.
That pernicious dread colored the disgruntled change, as the two footbound lancers who dismembered the bonfire sprang back from their task with riled oaths. When their outburst cranked into yells of dismay, Tarens strained to see through the slat side of the cart. What seemed like a wind devil whirled aloft. The tempest sucked up cinders of ash and live sparks, gained momentum, then vindictively reversed direction. As the gyre raked over the row of parked vehicles, the lance captain had little choice but to spur ahead and take charge before further mayhem erupted. Two strides out, he cursed, almost thrown as his mount reared, wild-eyed, and determined to bolt. The beleaguered officer wrestled its frothed panic and shouted to warn the fuming subordinate left in charge of the rest of the string.
‘Clear those horses off! Turn the oxcart around and retreat at least one hundred paces. We’ve got fiends!’ Harried as his frantic horse crab-stepped, the dedicate captain vented a gush of relief for the nuisance. ‘No surprise we’re beset, given this lug-headed rash of hysterical upset.’
The volatile mix of flames and raw tempers attracted such bothersome plagues: the energy sprites, known as iyats, irresistibly fed on emotional frenzy. No rank outbreak of Shadow,
