Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [216]
“Such were the questions I asked myself as I saw this Evil growing. Such was my torment of faith that nightly I prayed for guidance. While all about me temples fell, blood was shed, the souls of my people were made black by intolerance.” He looked pointedly at the handful of soldiers who had been involved in the temple riots, and he saw them flinch as the accusation struck home. “The man in me longed to respond in kind to this Evil. The leader in me knew the cost of such action.
“Will You let Your people perish? I asked God. Is it truly Your will that mankind surrender to this darkness, rather than risk one transgression of Your Law? Would You rather we die now, blindly obedient, than survive to serve You?
“Then one night, I saw a vision. Say perhaps that God sent it to me, responding not to one man’s prayers but to the pain and the fear of all His people. Or say instead that it welled up from the depths of my soul, from that secret place where conscience resides. What I saw was a creature of light, so bright and so beautiful that it hurt my eyes to look upon it. Its voice was not one voice but a choir, and as it spoke, its words echoed in my soul with a power that made me tremble.
“The Lord God of Earth and Erna is perfect, it said to me, but the world of men is not, nor are the creatures who inhabit it. Therefore are human choices uncertain, and full of strife. If given a choice between one man’s sin and the destruction of a nation, what leader would choose the latter? But remember this if you choose to transgress, it warned me. Like the father who steals bread for his child, knowing it to be against the law, you must be prepared to pay the price for your actions. Thus alone can you save the child and still uphold the Law.”
He lifted up to his hands toward the heavens in an age-old attitude of prayer; futures flitted about his head like restless birds, bright and agitated. “Hear me, oh, my God,” he prayed. “Hear me, Lord of Earth and Erna, creator of humankind, now made King of this Forest. In order to serve my people, I have trangessed against Your greatest Law. I have committed bloodshed, and sanctified violence, and encouraged in my people a fever of destruction which runs counter to Your every teaching. Let the sin be mine alone, not theirs. If any soul is to suffer corruption, let that soul be mine. Forgive these people, repair their spirits, replenish their souls’ inner strength, make them as innocent in their faith as they were before my call urged them to violence. On my head and mine alone is the fault for any wrong we have committed. On my soul sits the weight of your judgment, my God.”
All eyes were upon him, unwavering. He could see in their depths a ghost of doubt now, a quiver of fear. Good. Let them question what they had done here and they might yet be saved.
“In acceptance of Your Will,” he drew out a slender knife from his sleeve, turning its blade so that it glittered in the sunlight, “and in recognition of the righteousness of Your most holy Law, do I offer You this sacrifice.” Quickly he placed the knife against his palm and cut downward with it, hard. There was little pain, for the blade was sharp, but something stabbed his heart as the blood began to flow free. Fear? Regret? Those emotions had no place here, he thought fiercely. He raised up his hand in a gesture of benediction, so that all might see what he had done; a thin crimson waterfall splashed down into the river, and it seemed to him that the fae itself was stained red as it coursed outward from him.
“May You cleanse this land forever of the darkness which once ruled here,” he prayed. Thin streamers of red were unfurling in the water, reaching toward the stunned men and women who stood upon the opposite