Book 2 - Lord of the Silent Kingdom Read Free

them."
    "Good for us, too." Because Connectens had served in the Calziran
Crusade they had established certain rights. Though they had won no
honors from the Patriarch, they had helped deliver vast new territories
into the realm of Peter, King of Navaya. King Peter, whose queen was
Duke Tormond's sister, was now a protector of the Connec.
    "Yes. So?"
    "Are you going to preach to me, Master?" Count Raymone was
intimidating. He was tall, lean, dark, and seemed older than his
twenty-four and a half years. He had a long scar over his left eye that
made him look more ferocious than he was. Swollen and discolored, it
was still healing.
    Brother Candle raised a brushy gray eyebrow. "I'd rather you call me
Brother."
    "I have Maysalean evangelists in my family, Brother. I recognize the
light in your eye that means a bout of holy instruction is due to
begin." The Count was known for his sardonic sense of humor.
    Brother Candle's other eyebrow jumped up. Then he chuckled.
    "That won't work, either, Brother. I feel no need to be your pal.
You people are transparent manipulators."
    "Then I bow to youth's need to make its own mistakes."
    "Transparent."
    Brother Candle gave up. Count Raymone would give him no foothold. It
was too late, anyway. Hell's tendrils had been creeping into the End of
Connec for years. Ill-tempered time had begotten evil pups. He was
wasting it trying to stem the cruel tide. His obligation now was to
preserve and cherish what little he could.
    He snorted. A Seeker After Light, a Perfect, did not entertain such
conceits as Hell. Hell existed only in the Episcopal mind. The more
primitive Chaldarean cults, on the far reaches of the world, believed
in an Adversary but not in a Pit of Eternal Torment. Brother Candle did
not know how the Hell concept had crept into the western form of
Chaldareanism. In other strains, as was the case in the ancestral
Devedian and Dainshau religions, all punishment and reward happened
right here, right now, in this world.
    The Deves and Dainshaus should have had the wickedness hammered out
of them by now. Their God and the Chaldareans had been punishing them
forever. "You are amused, Master?"
    "Brother. My thoughts veered to the plight of those who reject the
Path. These days they must believe their gods particularly spiteful
and callous."
    "And no less do they deserve, bending their knees to the Tyranny of
the Night."
    And there lay the paradox of the world.
    God was real, if long unseen. All gods were real. Sometimes they
reached into the mortal world. Every demon, devil, and sprite ever
imagined was real, somewhere. Spirits of tree and river and stone were
real. Things that lay in wait in the dark were painfully real and still
found even in lands where the ruling faith officially denied them. Even
in the End of Connec, which had been acclaimed as tame since the days
of the Old Empire, night things were hidden away. The little ones
remained where they'd always been, in the forests, in the mountains, in
ancient stone circles ignorant people thought had been erected by
giants. They avoided notice because in the End of Connec they were far
from any source of power. They would never grow into anything more
terrible than what they were. They avoided notice because whenever
their presence became obvious Episcopal spirit hunters came to destroy
them.
    Bigger things of the Night were bound into statues or stones and
buried beneath crossroads, or into magical swords or enchanted rings
seldom used because they were inherently treacherous, or into the
tombstones and gateway arches of old-time pagan cemeteries. Such few as
had survived the cleansing unleashed by the sorcerer-captains of the
Old Brothen Empire.
    Once there had been those powerful enough to be accounted gods or
godlings. Those were dead or their power and being had been scattered
in a thousand fragments of broken stone by the conquering world-tamers
of old. The world preferred them scattered and harmless if they could
not be