Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [121]
Unto my dying day I will serve Your Will, obey Your Law. No matter how much it hurts, my God. No matter how hard it is. That was the vow I made so many years ago, when I first came into the Church; that’s the oath I serve today.
He knelt a moment longer, head bowed, soul aching. The pain of despair was sharp within him now, and when he rose up to leave, it stabbed into his flesh with brutal force as if trying to bring him to his knees again. Trying to put off that most terrible moment, which beckoned to him like a spectre. He bore the protest silently, without complaint, knowing that it was a kind of communion with his conscience, and therefore the most perfect prayer of all.
Slowly he walked back down the length of the aisle. At the end of the sanctuary he paused, and he fingered the opening to the offering receptacle, the protective flap which would allow departing worshipers to commit a coin or two to the Church’s coffers, without giving them access to the offerings of others. Human nature being what it is, he thought grimly. For a moment he fingered the flap without thought, moving it back and forth along its hinges. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope.
For His Holiness, it said. Only that. He held it in his hand for a minute, trembling slightly, and then slid it beneath the flap. He could hear it fall to the smooth metal bottom of the offering case, and then there was silence. It would wait until the next well-attended service, when an attendant would take it up and deliver it. By then, he hoped, he and Gerald Tarrant would be long gone.
In Your Name, my God. Only and always in Your Name.
His formal resignation in its place, Damien Vryce began the long and lonely walk back to his apartment.
Twenty-seven
Her children were coming.
She sensed their presence as she brooded within her sanctuary, and wondered at the sudden stirring of activity. Most of her children never bothered to look in upon her once they were set free in the world. They preferred to make their own fates, and she had no argument with that. It was what she had intended so very long ago, when she had brought the first of them into existence.
But now they were coming here. All of them. The ones who could speak to her, and the ones who could not. The few who could share her memories directly, and the hundreds who were all but unaware of her existence. They were coming because several of their number had defied her, coming to see if she would accept their transgressions, or punish them ... or what?
What indeed, she thought.
She had made rules for them so that they might live and learn and grow, and ultimately serve her purpose. For a thousand solar cycles those rules had gone unquestioned. That was as it should be: a mother giving life had every right to define what paths her children would take, and to eradicate those few who failed to accept her guidance. But what about a child who did understand, but who consciously chose to defy her? The concept was so alien to her that she could scarcely comprehend it. It would never have happened in her homeland, that was certain.
You don’t know what’s driving them. You cannot judge.
She had given them orders. They had disobeyed. She had set forth the laws of their existence, which was her right as their creator. They had chosen to ignore her.
They should die.
It was her right, without question. Some might have argued that it was even her duty. Certainly her first family, who had accompanied her to this place, would have been quick to condemn any of their own number who defied her will so openly. But these new children of hers ... these wild, defiant infants ... might they not have something to teach her, before they died? Had she not sent them out into the world for precisely that purpose?
They are only half mine, she reminded herself. Remembering that act which was neither passion nor pain, but simple desperation. So many matings. So many failures. She had thought once that