Oskalt (6)

The Ecclesia church.

Grown, on the empire’s wholehearted backing, in a single stride to a size without precedent.

They had set out no more than fifty-odd years ago at the very most, and their history, set beside that of the empire’s other churches, was an embarrassment. No thread of connection ran between us, so I had never had cause to get tangled up with them, and it is true enough that I had paid them no particular attention. To me they registered as a new power that had taken the empire’s leadership at a stroke, and not much more than that.

But now.

That assessment had to be revised across the board.

“I am a free knight, but I also serve as a paladin of the Talios church. There are a few things I want to ask.”

The bishop gazed steadily at the token I held out, and in time he smiled.

“This is not a fit place for such a conversation. Would you wait a moment?”

He begged the pardon of the crowd in the cathedral and sent every one of them away. Discontent must surely have been piling up in them, but not one let it show. Nothing could have said more plainly what the cathedral and its bishop were to the people of Oskalt.

He came back before long and showed me into a small room. A priest offered me something to drink, and I shook my head at him.

“What is it you wish to know, Brother?”

I ran through the possibilities in my head. Circle around the question, or ask it outright. I weighed each choice, its outcome and its aftermath, its usefulness and its reach, and came to a conclusion.

This was a thing to be met head-on.

“How is such a thing possible?”
“Such a thing, you say?”
“What else would there be. I mean the blessing.”
“I wonder in what sense you are asking.”
“A miracle that cures the sick at a stroke. That much I can understand as Ecclesia’s authority. But that is precisely what makes it a problem. Do you think it stands to reason to exercise a god’s authority over thousands, or hundreds at the very least, in so short a span?”
“Of course it stands to reason.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it is the god who does it. To doubt a being that is all-knowing and all-powerful is folly. If the god wills to use me as a bishop, then so it is; if the god wills to relieve the townspeople through me, then so it simply is.”
“No. A god isn’t all-powerful. That’s a line only an ignorant clod who knows nothing goes around repeating. You and I are both men who stand in touch with a god, aren’t we? You know as well as I do that even those creatures up above, who play with us like puppets, have things they can’t do.”

“I will not deny it. But it is for that very reason — because I sit in a seat that stands in touch with a god — that I must believe the god is all-powerful, must I not? Ecclesia means to use me. I am bound to believe that Ecclesia will perform an all-powerful work through me.”

“…You’re muddying the point. Do I have to say it twice? I asked how that utterly all-powerful being is doing this at all, didn’t I.”

“And I have only the one answer to give as well. The one who does this is the god, and the god is all-powerful.”

The bishop was a man there was no talking to. He went on talking around it and nothing else, and I got no clear answer out of him on anything.

“Do I have to spell it out? Bringing down a blessing takes holy power. And the citizens of Oskalt who are to receive that blessing come to nearly a thousand. How does one mere bishop handle holy power on that scale?”
“I have already given you my answer.”

“…Now you’re not even trying to talk around it.”

There was no meaning left in any more questions and answers. I pushed back from my seat and walked out of the cathedral. The bishop, for his part, did nothing to stop me.

All the while I walked, his riddling words went circling in my head.

‘This is a work the god does.’

‘It is not the god who does it, it is you. Are you trying to tell me you have become a god yourself?’

‘You are laboring under some misapprehension.’

The blessing is a work the god does. The god is all-powerful, so to doubt the method is folly. Boiled down that far, the bishop’s argument was sophistry and nothing else.

The day had drawn down before I noticed, so I made for the inn in haste. It stood as shabby as when I had left it, soaked in the light of dusk and stained yellow with it. I opened the door meaning to go straight up to the second floor, and stopped where I stood. Kalen was out on the first floor.

“Ah, you’re back.”
“Why are you down here?”
“Well…”

Kalen shot a sudden glance at the innkeeper beyond the long counter. It looked less like minding the man’s mood than telling on him.

“I asked for a splint to brace my arm, and he says there’s nothing of the sort here, so go to the cathedral.”
“A splint?”

Now that I looked, a good long stretch of him, from the right shoulder blade down the arm, was bound up in yellowed cloth. First aid he had managed on his own, presumably.

“Honestly. This city hasn’t so much as a common herb in it. One trip to the cathedral and you’re clean healed — what do you want a thing like that for?”
“No, look here, does that stand to reason? You’re telling me the cathedral heals a man clean up for no price at all, only for showing up?”

Kalen turned to me as though lodging a protest. He seemed to want something out of me, but I was the one at a loss just then, and I had little enough to give him.

“…It’s true.”

“Sorry?”
“I said the cathedral heals people at no price.”

Kalen worked his mouth as though he could not believe it, and in the end closed it. Not until the dusk had come fully down did he seem, barely, to accept it.

“…Er, I’ll go and be back quick, then.”

Now that he knew the cathedral could close an open wound in an instant, Kalen was off to be treated himself. The bishop I had spoken with sat uneasily with me somehow, but I did not go out of my way to stop him. Doubt it as I might, the cathedral had cured the sickness of a great many of the townspeople, and that was plain fact.

“There’s no need to hurry. They seem to take people in until late at night.”

Kalen cocked his head, but he left the inn all the same.

Far off, the cathedral bell rang faint.

Kalen walked a street gone orange with the falling sun.

Walking alone where there was hardly a soul about, he found himself thinking back to the days of hunting Pindel through Pirberk. That was around the time he had first stepped in earnest into the world of the divine and of churches.

A man can become superhuman through holy power, and further still may come by a body that heals itself without limit. Which would mean the cathedral, too, was using some such unknown power to treat people. That was how Kalen had it figured.

And the figuring had turned to certainty the day he watched the bishop put a severed hand back in an instant. A man with his hand cut off had come running up while the bishop was handing out food in the broad open ground outside the cathedral, and the bishop had healed him without turning a hair.

It struck Kalen that the cathedral bell had rung not long ago. This was the hour of the poor’s evening meal.

“…”

He stood well back from the open ground and watched the poor come crowding in thicker by the moment, and the bishop, and a few priests with him. The pain in his shoulder was fierce enough to hurry his feet along, but Kalen had no intention at all of going up to the bishop. What filled his head instead was a conversation he had had with Roan a while back, and nothing else.

‘What is the Lucseon church?’
‘The church Pindel Morein belongs to.’

Right now, Kalen had a few questions. Hadn’t sir knight been chasing Pindel Morein? Was it possible he had been looking for the man only to have a peaceable talk with him?

No, that made no sense. Sir knight hated the Lucseon church. That much had to be so.

Then why had he said nothing back there?

That bishop — he’s Pindel Morein.

The cathedral’s bishop, there in the open ground handing out food. Beyond any doubt he wore the face of the Pindel Morein that Kalen remembered.

Wasn’t Pindel Morein a follower of Lucseon? And that man is the Ecclesia church’s bishop?

Which meant, did it not, that the Lucseon church Roan had been chasing was the Ecclesia church itself? Had they known it in advance, that one fact would have changed everything the two of them did, from the foundation up. Kalen thought for a moment about why Roan had not told him, and arrived at one conclusion.

…Have I ever told sir knight what Pindel Morein’s face looks like?

The thing so obvious it had been passed over for that very reason. Roan did not know that the bishop was Pindel Morein. He had come face to face with the man, had even sat alone in a room with him, and still could not have known.

It was not that Roan had chosen not to seize Pindel Morein. He had been unable to.

Kalen followed the reasoning that far, and gooseflesh rose over his whole body.

“It has been a while. Soldier of Brus.”

Kalen could hear the bishop’s voice with perfect clarity. Any number of paupers stood between them, and the voice should never have carried to him at all.

“…What have you done?”

Everything around him had gone quiet. The poor in the open ground, the priests, every human being within any distance Kalen could feel.

Oskalt, in that moment, stood still.

“You must have questions you would sooner ask than that one.”
“If I ask, will you even answer?”
“Of course.”

Pindel Morein smiled.

“I won’t be answering. Asking the questions is not your role.”

Kalen felt as though his breath would stop. Every being in his field of vision stood frozen as if time itself had halted, and the sight was grotesque enough for that. Even so, trembling all over, he gathered himself.

“Whatever I do now, I’m in your grip. Isn’t that so?”
“That is more or less the case.”
“Then I’ll keep you company a while. A word or two before I die can’t hurt.”

He had to get as much out of the man as he could. Information was power, and at the same time the thing Roan needed most. Kalen meant to tear it out of Pindel Morein come what may. To add whatever strength he could to Roan’s.

Pindel Morein was silent a moment, then spoke.

“You mean to drag it out, do you? Well, I see no reason why not.”

Kalen drew a deep breath, as inconspicuously as he could manage, and fought to shove the scattered thoughts churning through his head somewhere far away.

“…Are you going to kill me?”

“That depends on the case. Your role is to bring him here. If killing you helps toward that, I will kill you; if it does not, I will not.”
“Bringing sir knight here is my role? Then why did you not lay a hand on him this afternoon?”
“I could answer that I have a considerably strong perfectionist streak.”

Which could be read as meaning he had not been ready to receive Roan that afternoon, and that now every preparation was finished. Pindel Morein had his method of disposing of Roan already perfected, and was waiting for him.

Information he could not deliver was worth nothing. Kalen ground his teeth. There was nothing at all he could do.

“…Do a thing like this and heaven’s punishment will fall on you. Are you not even afraid of the god?”

Pindel Morein laughed out loud, as though he had heard a very funny joke.

“The god, send down a punishment? This is the very will of the god. I am sure the god will be quick to lay a curse upon itself.”

With that last word, every human being that had stood frozen came rushing at Kalen.