‘She was out there, down in the basin, on her knees, head hanging, her torso weaving back and forth to some inner rhythm. After studying her yet again, Seerdomin, with a faint gasp, tore his gaze away - something it was getting ever harder to manage, for she was mesmerizing, this child-woman, this fount of corruption, and the notion that a woman’s fall could be so alluring, so perfectly sexual, left him horrified. By this language of invitation. By his own darkness.
Behind him, the Redeemer murmured, ‘Her power grows. Her power over you, Segda Travos.’
‘I do not want to be where she is.’
‘Don’t you?’
Seerdomin turned and eyed the god. ‘Self-awareness can be a curse.’
‘A necessary one.’
‘I suppose so,’ he conceded.
‘Will you still fight her, Segda Travos?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Why?’
Seerdomin bared his teeth. ‘Don’t you start with me, Redeemer. The enemy never questions motivations - the enemy doesn’t chew the ground out beneath its own feet.’ He jabbed a finger back at the woman kneeling in the basin. ‘She has no questions. No doubts. What she has instead is strength. Power.’
‘That is true,’ said the Redeemer. ‘All of it. It is why those haunted by uncertainty must ever retreat. They cannot stand before the self-righteous. Instead, they must slink away, they must hide, they must slip behind the enemy’s lines - ‘
‘Where every damned one of them is hunted down and silenced - no, Redeemer, you forget, I lived in a tyranny. I kicked in doors. I dragged people away. Do you truly believe unbelievers will be tolerated? Scepticism is a criminal act. Wave the standard or someone else will, and they’ll be coming for you. Redeemer, I have looked in the eyes of my enemy, and they are hard, cold, emptied of everything but hate. I have, yes, seen my own reflection - it haunts me still.’
No further words were exchanged then. Seerdomin looked back down to that woman, the High Priestess who had once been Salind. She was naught but a tool, now, a weapon of some greater force’s will, its hunger. The same force, he now suspected, that drove nations to war, that drove husbands to kill wives and wives to kill husbands. That could take even the soul of a god and crush it into subservience.
When will you rise, Salind? When will you come for me?
This was not the afterlife he had imagined. My fighting should be over. My every need made meaningless, the pain of thoughts for ever silenced.
Is not death’s gift indifference? Blissful, perfect indifference?
She swayed back and forth, gathering strength as only the surrendered could do.
Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson
