Emuel had often wondered how it would feel to be back in the arms of the Final Faith. The Church had nurtured him from a young age, ever since miraculous visions had been visited upon him as he toiled in the Drakengrat salt mines. Soon afterwards, word of the devout nine-year-old boy to whom the Lord of All had chosen to speak had reached the seminary at Nurn, and an emissary was promptly dispatched to take the boy under his wing, even though Emuel would normally be considered far too young to enter the order. Not only was he the youngest acolyte that the seminary had admitted, but he also quickly became the youngest priest — breezing through his studies, displaying a level of devotion and wisdom unusual in a boy his age.
It wasn’t long after his ordination that the Faith bestowed upon Emuel his own Drakengrat parish, installing him as an Enlightened One, pastor to a hardy mountain people. But Emuel’s flock came from much further afield than the Drakengrat range. Pilgrims travelled from as far as Gargas to receive his blessing, having heard of Emuel’s wondrous visions, some claiming that the slightest touch from the boy could cure all manner of illness.
The Archimandrites at Scholten cathedral closely monitored Emuel’s progress, and it wasn’t long into his ministry that Querilous Fitch was dispatched to talk to him.
As Querilous described to Emuel the special assignment that the Anointed Lord had chosen him for, the pale boy had grown even paler. After all, what they were asking him to do would radically change him. The use of sorcery to mark and alter his flesh went against everything he believed. But Querilous’s words were persuasive, his arguments cogent and passionately made, and when he laid his hands on Emuel’s head in blessing, the boy heard the voice of his god and knew, with a sacred clarity, that this was indeed the path that had been chosen for him.
Throughout the journey to Scholten Cathedral, Emuel felt the guiding hand of the Lord, and he felt sure that it was this same hand that guided the pen and the blade of the Final Faith surgeon as — accompanied by chants and the burning of astringent incense — he needled and scarified into Emuel’s flesh the ancient elven runics. Every inch of his skin was illustrated; the pain was indescribable. The greatest challenge, however, was yet to come, as the surgeon turned his blade on Emuel’s sex and began the process of emasculation.
Querilous Fitch had been there, through every long hour of the procedure, holding Emuel’s hand and praying him through the pain.
The first night after the operation, Emuel’s body sang with agony. The stitches and scar tissue throbbed with every beat of his heart. But Querilous had taught him that he should listen for the voice beyond the pain; use the purity of his agony to focus his mind so that he could hear the sacred song that underlay everything. And there it had been, very quiet at first, but growing in volume; the whisper of the divine blossoming into a song of stunning, heart-breaking complexity.
When he awoke, Emuel was certain that he was now complete, ready to board the Llothriall and take the Word beyond the Storm Wall for the first time.
But then they had come.
The first that Emuel knew of their arrival was the strangulated cry of the guard outside his cell door. A thin trickle of blood found its way towards where he lay, the lock of the door melted, and Kelos and Dunsany forced their way into his life.
In a matter of hours, Emuel had been spirited away from Scholten cathedral and onto the Llothriall, there forced to sing the song that had only just been revealed to him. The Final Faith’s flagship vessel had been stolen for an adventure that saw the deaths of many and the transformation of Emuel’s world. Yet there had never been a time when he had not heard the voice of the Lord of All. With their blades and their inks, the Faith had made him into something truly extraordinary.
But then the Llothriall had come to Morat — the wondrous city riding upon the crest of an eternal wave — and there the Stone Seers had revealed that the tattoos and the emasculation had nothing to do with whether Emuel could hear and channel the song or not. All he had ever had to do was listen; the sacred music had always been there. The pain and the indignity that he had suffered had been for naught. With the best of intentions, the Stone Seers had completely dismantled Emuel’s faith.
And now he sat before the man who had started him on that journey into spiritual turmoil — Querilous Fitch.
“You used me,” Emuel said, looking down at the restraints that cut into his wrists and bound him to the chair.
“The Lord uses us all, Emuel,” Querilous wheezed. “And you shouldn’t believe everything those apostates on Morat told you. After all, look what happened to them; they knew the terrible judgement of our god.”
“They were killed by the Chadassa.”
“I suppose that you could look at it like that.” Querilous chuckled, and the hollow, dry laugh echoed down the tubes that regulated his breathing. Emuel tried not to look at the foul contraption that kept the mind-manipulator alive, but it was hard to draw his eyes away from the pipes extending from the centre of Querilous’s chest, and the juddering apparatus that crowded the back of his wheelchair.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“The whole peninsula has changed, and some of us have been caught up in events beyond our control. Myself, I met something rather unpleasant in the Sardenne. But, I can assure you that my current situation is temporary. Now, to matters at hand… Yuri!”
A sallow youth shuffled from the shadows and wheeled Querilous’s chair to behind where Emuel sat. Yuri lifted the manipulator’s crippled right hand and placed it on top of the eunuch’s head, where it slipped limply off.
“Damn it, boy!” Querilous snapped. “Do it properly or I’ll have you flogged.”
This time Querilous’s hand was more carefully placed and Emuel shuddered at the cold touch.
And then there was intense pain as Fitch’s fingers sank into his mind.
“Now, Emuel. What happened to the Llothriall? Let’s see what you remember.”
Before, when Emuel had heard rumours of Querilous Fitch’s power, he had dismissed them, sure that the kind man who had brought him to Scholten was incapable of such cruelty. But now he knew better. Everything the Final Faith’s enemies said about them was true; there was no method or sorcery they would not employ in fulfilling the will of the Lord of All, no matter how seemingly heretical.
Querilous’s voice filled Emuel as his last few moments onboard the Llothriall flickered before his eyes.
“Sorcery, certainly,” Querilous said. “But whose magic interfered with ours?”
It felt like the manipulator’s fingers were behind his eyes and, for a terrible moment, Emuel was afraid that they would be pushed from their sockets.
“Come on, Emuel, see for me. Show me who stole away your comrades and left you and Ignacio to face the music.”
Emuel was sure that he could hear the plates of his skull shifting; the pressure was unbearable and there was a warmth on his upper lip, a strong salt taste in his mouth. The angry sea seemed to roll all around him. Looking into the storm, Emuel thought that he caught a glimpse of a desert landscape, a brilliant blue sky.
“That’s it, Emuel. That’s it…”
Emuel pulled against his restraints, the straps biting deeply into his wrists. Even though Querilous held his mind, there was nothing the manipulator could do to lessen the eunuch’s hatred for him. Emuel focused on that anger now, and sawed his wrists back and forth until he heard the light patter of blood hitting the stone floor. With one great tug, he pulled his right hand sharply back, the restraint holding his blood-slicked wrist for only a moment. Querilous brought Emuel to the brink of unconsciousness, but the manipulator had once taught the eunuch how to use pain as a focus, and Emuel pulled himself out of the darkness using the anger and hurt instilled in him.
Emuel screamed as he arched his back, the startling sound echoing through the dank chamber. Reaching out with his right hand, he found the tube that connected to Fitch’s chest and pulled.
“Criminal scum!”
Ignacio’s forehead bounced off the wall, but before he could fall the man grabbed him by the hair and threw his head forward again.
“Vermin!”
Ignacio thought that this time his head made a curiously hollow sound as it cracked against stone. He’d quite like to sleep now; he was awfully tired and someone was calling his Ice cold water splashed across his face and, for a moment, Ignacio thought that he had fallen asleep while on duty on the top deck. But he wasn’t on the Llothriall, he was in a Final Faith prison, and the man who had thrown him repeatedly against the wall was standing over him — a bucket in his left hand, his right held out before him.
“Come on, get up. It doesn’t have to be like this, you know.”
“Really?” Ignacio said. “Because it would be nice if you stopped hurting me now.”
“And the pain will end, Ignacio, when you accept the Lord of All into your heart.”
“Oh, gods! No, no, no, no, no! Please, let this not be happening. I had enough of this shit as a child.”
“He will welcome you in, if you put your trust in Him. The Lord of All has need of people like you.”
“Listen, I have encountered the power of the Lord first hand, and, believe me, He’s not the all-loving god you seem to think He is.”
“Oh, but we know that, Ignacio. However, the fact remains that you are an apostate, and you now have a simple choice before you.” The man turned away and fumbled with something that sounded heavy and metallic. When he turned around, he was holding a pair of iron pincers. “You can repent of your sins, commit yourself to the Lord of All and join the Order of the Swords of Dawn, or I can pull your fingernails out, one by one, very very slowly.”
For a while, Ignacio endured the pain. He had been interrogated and tortured before, and he doubted that the Faith could do anything worse to him than the various port authorities he had run up against in the past.
He was wrong. The man of faith worked him with consummate skill and it wasn’t long until Ignacio was screaming for mercy.
And when he was shown the love and compassion of the Lord of All, when he was offered His forgiveness and sanctuary, Ignacio gladly took it.
For a moment, Yuri merely looked on in horror at the hissing air tube and his suffocating master. Then he quickly wheeled Querilous away from Emuel and fumbled with the pipe, trying to slot it back into the connection. By the time the breathing apparatus was re-attached, Querilous was a pale blue. Yuri looked at his master, horror overwhelming him at the thought he might be dead, until, with a shudder, Fitch came round. His eyes rolled madly for a while until they fixed on the eunuch, who was half out of his chair, his left hand still bound.
“Yuri, wheel me in close.”
“What are you going to do, Querilous?” Emuel laughed. “You’re nothing but a helpless cripple, with an idiot for an assistant.”
The idiot of an assistant was stronger than he looked; the blow that connected with Emuel’s head knocked him out cold.
“I had a feeling this interrogation was going to be pointless,” Querilous said.
The door to the chamber opened and Katherine Makennon swept into the room. She didn’t have any of her usual retinue with her. Querilous was especially pleased to note the absence of Jakub Freel, who had somehow managed to wheedle his way into the inner circles of the Faith.
Querilous’s assistant dropped to his knees and averted his eyes as the Anointed Lord came towards them.
“You are dismissed,” Makennon said.
“Anointed One, without meaning to question your wisdom,” Querilous said, “I am somewhat at a disadvantage without Yuri’s aid.”
“I do apologise. For some reason I keep forgetting about the extent of your… condition.”
“May I ask what brings you this far below Scholten?”
“I think, Querilous, that we need to employ a different tactic in our hunt for the fugitives. Have our two prisoners been adequately broken?”
Querilous looked at the unconscious form of Emuel and smiled. “I believe so. And the radicalisation of Ignacio is proceeding according to plan.”
“Then there is a sorcerer who may be able to help us. Although he is getting on in years, he’s one of the most powerful practitioners of magic known to the Faith. What is more, he has offered to give up his life in order to perform one last, overwhelming rite.”
The manipulator said nothing for a moment. The only sound was the hiss and wheeze of his breathing regulator as he stared at the Anointed One.
“What of Brother Sequilious?”
“He is sadly no longer with us. I do somewhat regret my punishment of him. But we all have our off days, do we not?”
Querilous wheezed in agreement.
“You have two days to prepare the prisoners. After that time they will be departing for the Drakengrat mountains with a contingent of the Order of the Swords of Dawn. We will have our fugitives, Querilous, and more importantly we will have Silus Morlader. The Final Faith could certainly use a man of his talents, in these uncertain times.”