Mistress of the Night - Don Bassingthwaite [42]
Keph's heart was pounding once more. "A priest?" he asked.
"You have the potential," Variance said again. "It's not an easy path. You need-"
"Teach me," said Keph sharply. His hands were trembling like they never had before. Blood was singing in his ears. His heart felt ready to leap right out of his chest. "Variance, please. Teach me!" He clutched at the symbol of Shar around his neck. "If there's a test… something to prove that I could do it…"
Variance stepped back. "Faith doesn't work like that, Keph."
"I need to know!"
His words echoed from the rough rock walls of the temple. The other cultists turned to stare at them. Variance narrowed her eyes.
"Lower your voice," she hissed.
Keph clamped his mouth shut. She studied him.
"Perhaps I could try teaching you an orison," she said.
Keph nodded and asked, "That's like a cantrip, isn't it? The simplest kind of divine spell?"
"Don't use the words of arcanists to describe the power of faith."
She spread her hands and shadows seemed to reach out to engulf them, screening them from the other cultists. "Kneel," she ordered.
Keph knelt. The stone floor was hard under his knees. He ignored it and focused on Variance.
Her eyes were half closed and she was breathing deeply. Just as he had mimicked Jarull's obeisance to Bolan the day before, Keph mimicked her.
"Good," Variance said. "Now… feel the darkness. Outside you. Within you. That is Shar." She spoke slowly, drawing out her words into a kind of lulling song. "Shar. The Nightsinger. The Dancer in the Dark. The Mistress of the Night, whose heart is the primal void that existed before all else and will exist again once Shar has drawn all creation into her embrace. Shar is more powerful than any of us. She could extinguish us with a word. Only by recognizing that and in accepting her perfection can we hope to draw on even a fragment of her power." She exhaled slowly. "Do you feel Shar's presence, Keph?"
Keph fought back the excitement that Variance's words had stirred in him. He tried to recall the feeling that had driven him to his knees when he had first entered the temple-that sense of a living, primordial darkness, all-powerful, greater, and bigger than him or the puny lights that the cultists needed to…
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I think I can."
"Hold your faith," Variance told him. "Believe in Shar." She reached across her body and made a sign in front of her face. "Mistress of the Night, guide me."
Keph repeated her gesture and her words: "Mistress of the Night, guide me."
Nothing happened.
"Again."
Variance made the sign and spoke the words once more. Keph repeated them. Again, nothing happened.
"Believe in the Lady of Loss," Variance told him. "You speak a prayer, not a command. The words must be felt as well as spoken. Again."
Nothing.
"Again."
Nothing.
Variance remained silent, but Keph repeated the invocation without her prompting. He closed his eyes, concentrating on combining words, gesture, and faith.
Shar grant me this, he begged his newly-embraced deity silently. My heart is true. I've proven myself, haven't I?
Dimly, he heard Variance chanting under her breath. Different words, maybe a new prayer. He tried to put it out of his mind and pour everything he had into the orison. His knees started to ache, cold seeping up into them from the stone. He did his best to ignore the pain. He dredged up every memory of indignity suffered at the hands of his parents, his sister and brother, laying them before the living darkness.
Take all this, he thought, take it and give me your power!
His words became mechanical, his memories a raw sore on his soul, but still the darkness was impassive. Everything he sent into it simply vanished, swallowed.
Until the darkness stirred.
Within him, outside of him-something shifted. Keph's eyes snapped open.
"Mistress of the Night, guide me!" he called.
A force swept through him, cold, deep, and terrible. It was like the blessing that Bolan had invoked over him, but different because it welled up from within his very soul and