Seerdomin lifted his head and glared over at the decapitated corpse. ‘Can you understand any of that, Harak? Can you grasp, now, finally, how the very existence of people like you gives me reason to stay alive? Because you give my rage a face, and my sword, well, it’s hungry for faces.’ It was either that, or the fury within him would devour his own soul. No, better to keep the face he slashed open someone else’s, rather than his own. Keep finding them, one after another. Justice was so weak. The corrupt won, the pure of heart failed and fell to the way-side. Graft and greed crowed triumphant over responsibility and compassion. He could fight that, and that fight need not even be in his own name. He could fight for Black Coral, for the Tiste Andii, for humanity itself.
Even for the Redeemer-no, that cannot be. What I do here can never be healed-there can be no redemption for me. Ever. You must see that. All of you must see that.
He realized he was pleading-but to whom? He did not know. We were put in an impossible situation, and, at least for us, the tyrant responsible is dead-has been punished. It could have been worse-he could have escaped retribution, es-caped justice.
There was trauma in war. Some people survived it; others were for ever trappedin It. For many of those, this circumstance was not a failing on their part. Not some form of sickness, or insanity. It was, in truth, the consequence of a pro«foundly moral person’s inability to reconcile the conflicts in his or her soul. No healer could heal that, because there was nothing to heal. No elixir swept the malady away. No salve erased the scars. The only reconciliation possible was to make those responsible accountable, to see them face justice. And more often than not, history showed that such an accounting rarely ever took place. And so the veteran’s wounds never mend, the scars never fade, the rage never subsides.
So Seerdomin had come to believe, and he well knew that what he was doing here, with weapon in hand, solved nothing of the conflict within him. For he was as flawed as anyone, and no matter how incandescent his rage, his righteous fury, he could not deliver pure, unsullied justice-for such a thing was collective, integral to a people’s identity. Such a thing must be an act of society, of civilization. Not Tiste Andii society-they clearly will not accept that burden, will not accede to meting out justice on behalf of us humans, nor should they be expected to. And so… here I am, and I hear the Redeemer weep.
()tie cannot murder in the name of justice.
Irreconcilable. What he had been, what he was now. The things he did then, and all he was doing here, at this moment.
The would-be usurper knelt beside him, headless in sour symbolism. But it was a complicated, messy symbol. And he could find for himself but one truth in all of this.
Heads roll downhill.
It may be that in the belief of the possibility of redemption, people willingly do wrong. Redemption waits, like a side door, there in whatever court of judge-ment we eventually find ourselves. Not even the payment of a fine is demanded, simply the empty negotiation that absolves responsibility. A shaking of hands and off one goes, through that side door, with the judge benignly watching on. Culpability and consequences neatly evaded.
Oh, Salind was in a crisis indeed. Arguments reduced until the very notion of redemption was open to challenge. The Redeemer embraced, taking all within himself. Unquestioning, delivering absolution as if it was without value, worthless, whilst the reward to those embraced was a gift greater than a tyrant’s hoard.
Where was justice in all of this? Where was the punishment for crimes committed, retribution for wrongs enacted? There is, in this, no moral compass. No need for one, for every path leads to the same place, where blessing is passed out, no questions asked.
The cult of the Redeemer… it is an abomination.
She had begun to understand how priesthoods were born, the necessity of sanctioned forms, rules and prohibitions, the mortal filter defined by accepted notions of justice. And yet, she could also see how profoundly dangerous such an institution could become, as arbiters of morality, as dispensers of that justice. Faces like hooded vultures, guarding the door to the court, choosing who gets insideand who doesn’t. I low soon before the first bag of silver changes hands? How soon before the first reprehensible criminal buys passage into the arms of the blind, unquestioning Redeemer?
She could fashion such a church, could formalize the cult into a religion, and she could impose a harsh, unwavering sense of justice. But what of the next generation of priests and priestesses? And the one after that, and the next one? How long before the hard rules make that church a self-righteous, power-mongering tyranny? How long before corruption arrives, when the hidden heart of the religion is the simple fact that the Redeemer embraces everyone who comes before him? A fact virtually guaranteed to breed cynicism in the priesthood, and from such cynicism secular acquisitiveness would be inevitable.
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?