Page 82 of Crucible of Chaos

‘Thus ends the trial of Isola Sombra,’ he said, and together with Imperious, set off across the causeway, the last living beings to have trod upon that once holiest of isles.

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 44

A MAGISTRATE AND HIS MULE

When dawn rose upon the waters near the western shores of the Duchy of Baern, the ocean was slumbering like a newborn babe. The Margrave of Someil’s forces had fled, the former monks of Isola Sombra already begun the long pilgrimage back to their homes, or perhaps to some new place to seek the divine. If any had doubted the gods would return to Tristia, their belief was now restored. Their faith, however– that would be a different matter altogether.

Estevar stood at the water’s edge, listening as Imperious munched on a patch of muddy grass he’d taken a liking to. He knew he should begin the journey home to Aramor, but whether because his wounds ached or because he couldn’t imagine how he was going to explain to the First Cantor that he’d gone to the Abbey of Isola Sombra to settle a petty theological dispute between monks and left it sunken beneath the sea, he couldn’t find the will to leave. The truth, of course, lay in neither of those conundra, but in the far simpler dilemma of not knowing how to say his goodbyes.

Venia, we were never more than acquaintances, you and I, and for the first time, I regret that oversight. We shared a fascination for the occult, but you abandoned the self-restraint demanded of magistrates and priests alike. Perhaps if I’d embraced your offers of friendship, I might have reminded you that ours is not to shape the world according to our desires, but to defend those who would be powerless against such tyrants.

Estevar unbuttoned his coat and reached inside for his notebook with the sketches of Venia’s complex sequences of sigils. He tore out those pages and tossed them into the sea. Should he ever again come across a copy of theSacrificia Purgadis, he might find himself hard-pressed not to violate the King’s Law against the destruction of books.

As the gentle currents engulfed the pages, Estevar contemplated a small prayer. He’d never been a religious person and his days on the now-sunken island of Isola Sombra had not inclined him to piety. Yet there was one particular deity to whom he dearly wished he could be closer.

‘Alas,’ he said to Imperious, who had nearly finished devouring his little patch of grass, ‘she will have all but forgotten us by now.’

‘Who dares blaspheme so against the divine?’ demanded a youthful and entirely too irreverent voice behind him.

Caeda was looking very much like a pretty, if otherwise unremarkable young woman. She’d even, he noted, found some clothes better suited to the weather and to modesty. The hem of the storm-grey coat trailed behind her, picked up by the breeze. Estevar wondered whether she’d recovered it from some abandoned tailor’s shop on the island or manifested it through divine will.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Will you not kneel before your god?’

‘You promised never to ask that of me,’ he reminded her. ‘In the infirmary, remember? Besides, you should know by now that Greatcoats don’t kneel to anyone.’

She shot him a cross look. ‘I haven’t decided how vengeful a deity I’m going to be, Estevar. Don’t you think you ought to be a little more contrite when faced with a god who could strike you down at a whim?’

He walked up to her, boldly took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. ‘As a matter of fact, that is precisely when it’s most importantnotto kneel.’

She laughed, taking her hand away. ‘You are a mad devil, Estevar, and given the creatures you and I have encountered, that’s saying something.’

‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

‘Strange. . . though I’m not sure how a god issupposedto feel. When I fought the abomination that Venia had become, the blows weren’t physical– not really. It was more like we were. . . tearing away from one another the faith from which we were both made. After a while, he just. . . collapsed in on himself. The forces of his creation had nowhere to return to because the island was breaking apart, obliterating the veins of mystical ore. Now what remains of all that faith is. . . in me.

She hugged herself, which Estevar found to be a most disquieting expression of anxiousness in a being imbued with the power of two gods.

‘I’m ill-formed, Estevar,’ she said at last. ‘I should never have been brought into being. It should have been someone else. Someone more—’

‘No,’ he said, cutting her off, because no matter who or what she was now, Estevar Borros remained a Greatcoat, and it was not his habit to allow untruths to be spoken in his presence. ‘Whatever Venia’s faults and crimes, despite the madness and despair that plagued him, he made one decision for which I believe with all my heart this country will forever be grateful. He choseyou, Caeda. Out of all the priests, monks, knights and scholars he met, some part of him sensed that the god we needed should come from the most curious, wild, free– the mosthuman– person he’d ever met.’

The new god tried not to smile, but she couldn’t keep the gleam of amusement from her eyes. ‘You really are a soppy old romantic, aren’t you?’

‘Indeed.’ He patted his side, where his broken rapier was sheathed. ‘And I shall eagerly await any god or saint who says otherwise in the duelling circle at their pleasure.’

‘Careful what you wish for,’ she said. ‘I can’t hold onto the rest of this godly essence I took from Venia forever.’ Her expression turned mischievous as she snapped her fingers and a bolt of lightning appeared out of the blue sky to strike the ground barely ten feet away from them. ‘Though a most appealing– one might argue,divinely inspired– idea is coming to me as to its bequeathment.’

‘I am content in my current profession, Madam.’

‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking about you, Estevar. You’re a lovely fellow, and an outstanding teacher in the art of investigation, but you’d make a terribly boring god.’

‘Well, no more storms, at least, if you please,’ Estevar said, walking over to Imperious to comfort the terrified beast. ‘My faithful companion has had rather a rough introduction to the life of a Greatcoat.’

‘Forgive me, brave Imperious,’ Caeda apologised, blowing the mule a kiss. He brayed angrily in response and she laughed again. ‘How am I supposed to rule over my worshippers when I can’t even get a truculent mule to genuflect before me!’

‘Have you decided on your. . .’ Estevar fumbled for the word. ‘I suppose, your dominion?’

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