Page 15 of The White Dragon Revealed

“Do you remember the phrase, ‘religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people?’” Illarion asked. “Or as most people summarize it: religion is the opiate of the masses?”

“Karl Marx. Why?” Esme asked.

“In the beginning, I allowed the Faith into my territory. They worshiped the Spirits and the Dragon Spirits above all, so it seemed harmless. Perhaps even useful,” Illarion said as he took a swig of his coffee.

Caden stilled. He had never considered the Faith as a mover in any of the bad things that happened in the world, but now they were seeming more and more suspicious in his eyes. Yet if he thought of the group his mother was a part of, they had always seemed harmless if slightly silly. The dressing in white and singing--God, that song about him and Iolaire!--was so disarming. Could they possibly be behind a worldwide conspiracy to… to do what? Create disasters so that more Spirits emerged into the world?

For one moment that caused him to pause. He had looked up what Iolaire’s name was associated with after Wally’s reaction to it. It was the name of a yacht that had sunk in 1919 with great loss of life. The yacht had struck rocks just yards from shore and yet 201 out of the 283 people on board had died. It was a disaster. The crowning sorrow of a war. A beautiful yet strange name to choose. Unless it had other meanings.

He looked at Iolaire. The White Dragon Spirit was once again snoozing. Illarion bored it completely. He supposed that it was good that Iolaire was not scared of the Green Dragon. Then again they could will Illarion back to human form at any time they wanted. Well, he hoped that was true. Maybe it had only worked so well because Illarion had not expected him to be able to do that. Maybe now it wouldn’t work since he was aware of the possibility or it would be a lot harder to do it.

Esme put her teacup down on its saucer. “Has the Faith done anything in your territory, Illarion?”

“Of course not! I would stamp out any such--such perfidy!”

“And yet, you’re bringing it up,” Esme pointed out.

Illarion leaned back and shrugged. “There might have been some… small unrest. People claimed that the Spirits wanted to come in, but the Veil had to be pierced.”

“Veil had to be pierced?” Esme lowered her head and stared at Illarion hard.

“Do you not know what they believe?” Illarion looked disbelieving.

Caden knew what he was talking about. His mom had babbled often enough about it that he had absorbed most of the Faith’s beliefs. One of which was that there was a Veil between this world and the world that the Spirits inhabited. Crises, disasters, tragedies, great acts of heroism or villainy pierced the Veil and allowed the Spirits to come through.

The Faith tracked down as many joinings as they could in order to determine if there were patterns. What they found was that there were more joinings in times of war, starvation, the horrors of slavery, murder and so on and so forth. Tragedies caused clusters of joinings.

But I never thought that the Faith would take that conclusion and try to create more disasters!

“They believe that the Spirits are crying out! They want to find human bodies to inhabit in order to uplift this world!” Illarion let out a bark of laughter. “I suppose it is true, but not in the way that these religious people believe.”

“No, I imagine not. Your idea of paradise is not theirs,” Esme said tightly.

“Do not act like you want to live in their crazy world!” Illarion waved a hand through the air as if he would topple over a line of crazed cultists.

“No, I do not.” She nodded.

“I stamp out one flare of their insanity, only to have it flare in another place and then another and another! No matter what I do--nomatter how hard I crack down--they keep coming back!” Illarion slammed his hand against the table again and the cutlery danced.

“The harder you come down on them--the more martyrs you make--you’ll only increase the amount of people against you,” Esme said sadly. “You cannot use force to end this.”

“And what would you have me do? Speak nicely to them? Give them gifts? Accede the demands?” Illarion snorted. “Well, perhaps I will accede to some of them.”

“What are their demands?” Esme asked.

Caden wondered that, too. Since the bombing there had been no one claiming credit for it. And that didn’t make a lot of sense. Acts of terror were to create, well, terror. Do this or we will kill more! But no one had said anything about what needed to happen to stop the violence.

Illarion gave her a razor-blade smile. “They want a war. A war to end all wars.”

HELLFIRE

“Chione, get Mei and bring her to my throne room,” Valerius growled. “I did promise her a pyre of her robots.”

And that we would roast her upon it! Do not forget that part,Raziel muttered, its red eyes glowing like coals in the dark.

“It will be done,” Chione said with a quick nod and she hustled out of the doors to his room, already contacting the security personnel over her tablet to find out exactly where the Red Dragon Queen was.

“Simi, is the robot still in the dungeon?” Valerius asked.

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