No one could answer that. Only Sir Eardale had seen what was happening in Brothe. His observation was, "You can't predict what a madman will do."

Father Clayto asked, "Does it matter if Sublime can carry out his threats? A better question is, will he try? I'm afraid that, unfortunately, the answer to that one might be yes."

The Duke asked, "Do you find all this amusing, Charde?"

"Yes. In an irreverent fashion. Though no less frightening, for all that." He explained how a Maysalean could see God as a cruel practical joker in this. Once he finished explaining, he asked, "How will the Emperor react if Sublime launches a crusade against the Connec?"

"Excellent question," Sir Eardale said. "We expect to take that up with the Emperor himself. He'll certainly be interested now that his soldiers have disposed of those assassins who wanted to kill Immaculate."

Brother Candle was intrigued by the incident at Viscesment. Immaculate's defenders must have been forewarned.

Dainshaukin were notoriously quiet and sternly withdrawn from everyday life. Within their own dwindling communities they considered themselves an elder race, the first masters of the transition between the Age of the Gods and the Age of Man. The Dainshau at the table showed a palm.

The Duke identified him. “Tember Remak wishes to speak."

The Dainshau said, “Tember Remak has a question. Where does the Collegium stand in this? Does the Patriarch have their support?"

"They elected him," Father Clayto said.

"That would be a function of bribery and political persuasion. That would mean nothing in the time of the Festival of Hungry Ghosts. We have seen no evidence that Sublime fronts for the Tyranny of the Night. He is a great blusterer living in Bad Dog Village, not the sweet lord of Once Glance Great Fortune."

Though couched in unfamiliar terms from Dainshaukin parable, the questions were important. If the sorcerers of the Church did not support Sublime his ambitions would be curbed. In particular his intelligence efforts would suffer. Espionage was one area where an alliance with the Instrumentalities of the Night could be very profitable.

"Is there any way to know?" Tormond asked. He peered at Brother Candle.

Brother Candle replied, "Our familiarity with the night is considerably exaggerated, Your Lordship. The fact is, Seekers After Light reject the night when we pledge to follow the Path. That's why we're called Seekers After Light. Some of my colleagues here, though … They probably do roast Chaldarean babies and run naked under the full moon with demons from the Pit." He could not keep a straight face. Father Clayto had denounced the Seekers After Light for those very things.

One by one, each religious leader denied any involvement with the Instrumentalities of the Night. Mostly with good humor.

"So we're blind," Tormond said. "So we have no choice but to sit here and take whatever Fate hands out."

That earned him a clutch of scowls. There was no "fate" involved in the Will of God.

Brother Candle said, "Isn't it always that way in the Connec? Time and fortune have been generous. Never compelling us to bend the knee to the tyranny of the night."

Brother Candle received scowls himself. There was no "fortune" in the Will of God, either.

It was a strange convocation. No one demanded war. Almost everyone pled for peace – while making it plain that there would be no acquiescence if Sublime chose to make war.

The gathering broke up before Brother Candle fully understood what was happening. He suspected that Tormond and Isabeth wanted it that way. The religious leadership was prepared to fight the agents of darkness and forces of oppression. Without Tormond himself having committed passionately to any particular course.

Vacillation and procrastination were Tormond's best-known traits. In the slow-moving world of the Connec doing nothing often proved to be the best way of handling problems.

Brother Candle was sure today's troubles would not fade away. Unless God chose to introduce Sublime to heaven's reward early.

11. Great Sky Fortress, Realm of the Gods

There was no time in the Hall of the Heroes. There was only horror without end.

Shagot wakened and slept, wakened and slept, ten thousand times, or less, or more. Each time he wakened he found himself in the same place in the same black-and-white world filled with the same silently screaming dead.

This was not the Heroes' Hall of legend. There was no roistering. The Daughters of the All-Father, when they could be seen, looked more like Eaters of the Dead than Choosers of the Slain. They walked but looked more like crones who had starved to death than the voluptuous maidens of myth.

Shagot never expected much of the Choosers of the Slain. Not even to see them, ever, fair or foul. Even so, he was disappointed in the Hall of the Heroes.

The dead heroes were heaped in there as though just dropped. Not even stacked. As they had died, faces contorted in agony, limbs missing, guts spilling, wounds open.

But there was no decay. There were no carrion bugs or birds. No worms. And no odor of death.

Shagot sensed nothing to convince him that he had died and gone to heaven.

Shagot did not spend much time awake but after a few decades of tiny slivers of consciousness, he concluded that a different destination had claimed him. Perhaps something as bleak and terrible as that burning pit those Southron girlie missionaries had insisted would be the destination of the wicked and those who did not believe in their weird god.

Not once did his view change. He saw nothing of his companions on the road, nor anything of the fake fishermen who had brought them here and then abandoned them. The Choosers of the Slain turned up once in a while, evidently bringing in new clients.

Only sleep kept insanity at bay. Vast sleep and the fact that he was not an imaginative man.

Then, on his ten-thousandth, or twenty-thousandth, or thirty-thousandth day of imprisonment in Paradise, Shagot wakened from eternal fog to find his view of heaven changing.

He was being moved by the Choosers of the Slain. He caught glimpses of their shrunken-head shriveled faces as they carried him by supporting him under the armpits. His feet dragged. He tried to help. Feet and legs would not cooperate. They just slipped and flopped.

Feeling began to return. He felt his heart try to beat, something he could not recall happening at any time since the boat. The Choosers' bony, hard fingers dug into his flesh. He felt the numbness and pain that spring up in muscles long unused.

He tried to speak.

Nothing but a gurgle emerged. But, at least, he was breathing again.

It was a long journey to wherever those horrid women dragged him.

His vision expanded and improved. He was able to lift his head for seconds at a time. He found himself being hauled into a part of the Great Sky Fortress that, despite vast emptiness, seemed more humanly comfortable. Not in the sense that it was anything like anywhere he had been before but because what he saw now fit in with what he had heard about the Eastern Emperor's palace at Hypraxium, from old-timers who had followed the amber route south to serve in the Emperor's lifeguard. That was something the old adventurers always mentioned. The unoccupied vastnesses of the Emperor's house.

Shagot's hearing began to return. He wished it had not. The Choosers of the Slain argued bitterly in a tongue that sounded a lot like Andorayan. Shagot understood about a third of what they said.

Ah! They used an ancient form of Andorayan.

Language had been a gift of the gods a long time ago. It stood to reason that that language would have been their own and that men would have corrupted it over time.