The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [73]
That seemed an odd digression, but Stephen obliged.
“The Virgenyan captives started a revolt,” he answered.
“Yes, of course,” the fratrex said rather impatiently. “But even from our sparse records we know that there had been other revolts before that. How did the slaves led by Virgenya Dare succeed where the others failed?”
“The saints,” Stephen said. “The saints were on the side of the slaves.”
“Again,” the fratrex asked, “why then and not before?”
“Because those who rose before had not been sufficiently devout,” Stephen replied.
“Ah. Was that the answer you learned in the college at Ralegh?” the fratrex asked.
“Is there another?”
Fratrex Pell smiled benevolently. “Given what you’ve learned since leaving the college, what do you think?”
Stephen sighed and nodded. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, trying to think.
“I’ve never read anything that said it, but it seems obvious that Virgenya Dare and her followers walked faneways. Their powers, their weapons…”
“Yes,” the fratrex said. “But what’s beyond the obvious? The Skasloi had magery, as well—powerful magery. Did it come from the saints?”
“No,” Stephen replied. “Of course not.”
“You’re certain?”
“The Skasloi worshipped the elder gods, whom the saints defeated,” Stephen said. He brightened. “I suppose the saints didn’t help any of the earlier uprisings because they hadn’t yet defeated the elder gods.”
Fratrex Pell’s mouth widened a little farther. “Hasn’t it ever struck you as a little neat, a bit too tidy, that the elder gods and the Skasloi were defeated at the same time?”
“I suppose it just makes sense.”
“It might make even more sense if the Skasloi and the elder gods were one and the same,” the fratrex said.
Stephen gave that a moment, then nodded slowly.
“It’s not impossible,” he agreed. “I’ve never thought about it before because it’s sacrilege, and I still have a habit of avoiding that when I can, but it’s possible. The Skasloi had magicks that—” He frowned. “You aren’t saying that the Skasloi got their power from the saints?”
“No, you lumphead. I’m suggesting that neither the elder gods nor the saints are real.”
Stephen suddenly wondered if the fratrex might have gone mad. Pain, coma, loss of blood and air to the lungs, the shock of being crippled…
He called back his fleeing wits. “But the—I’ve walked the faneways myself. I’ve felt the power of the saints.”
“No,” the fratrex said more gently, “you’ve felt power. And that is the only thing you or I know is real. The rest of it—where the power comes from, why it affects us as it does, how it differs from the power the Skasloi wielded—we know none of that.”
“Again, when you say ‘we’—”
“The Revesturi,” Fratrex Pell said.
“Revesturi?” Stephen said. “I remember reading about them. A heretical movement within the Church, discredited a thousand years ago.”
“Eleven hundred years ago,” the fratrex corrected. “During the Sacaratum.”
“Right. It was one of many heresies.”
The fratrex shook his head. “It was more than that. History is often less about the past than it is about the present; history must be convenient to those who have power when it’s being told.
“I’ll tell you something about the Sacaratum I doubt very much you know. It was more than a holy war, more than a wave of conversion and consecration. At its very root it was a civil war, Brother Stephen. Two factions, equally powerful, fought for the soul of the Church: the Revesturi and the Hierovasi. The beginning of the argument was academic; the end of it was not. There are pits full of Revesturi bones.”
“A civil war within the Church?” Stephen said. “Surely I would have heard something about that.”
“There have been two such conflicts, actually,” the fratrex continued. “In the first Church, the most high was always a woman, following the example of Virgenya Dare. The first Fratrex Prismo wrested his place by violence, and women were split from the hierarchy and thrust into their own temporally powerless and carefully controlled covens.”
Again, the shift in perspective that changed