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.For Hephaestus, there remained only unrelenting and simmering anger, and most of all, the dragonsconsciousness growled at the thought of not being able to exact revenge on those who had so ruined the beast inlife.While Yharaskrik thought of times to come and how to shape the wider path, and Crenshinibon considered theremaining five and whether any repairs were called for, the dragon only pressed, incessantly, for an immediateassault on Spirit Soaring.They were not one, but three, and to Yharaskrik, the walls separating the triumvirate that was the Ghost Kingseemed as impenetrably thick and daunting as ever.And from that came the illithids inescapable conclusionthat it must find a way to dominate, to force oneness under its own commanding will and intellect.And it hoped it could hide that dangerous ambition from its too-intimate fellows.CHAPTER NINETEEN: PRIESTS OF NOTHINGWe are nothing! There is nothing!” the priest screamed, storming about the audience hall in Spirit Soaring, accentuating every word with an angry stomp of his foot.His point was furthered by the blood matting his hair and caked about the side of his face and shoulder, a wound that looked worse than it was.Of the five who had been with him out and about the Snowflakes, he had been the most fortunate by far, for the only other survivor had lost a leg and the other seemed doomed to amputation—and only if the poor woman even survived.“Sit down, Menlidus, you old fool!” one of his peers yelled.“Do you think this tirade helpful?” Cadderly hoped Menlidus, a fellow priest of Deneir, would take that advice, but he doubted it, and since the man was more than a decade his senior—and looked at least three decades older than Cadderly—he hoped hewouldnt have to intervene to forcibly silence the angry man.Besides, Cadderly understood the frustration behind the priests rant, and didnt wholly dismiss his despairing conclusions.Cadderly, too, had gone to Deneir and feared that his god had been lost to him forever, as if Deneir had somehow simply written himself into the numerical maze that was theMetatext.“I am the fool?” Menlidus said, stopping his shouting and pacing, and tapping a finger to his chest as he painted a wry smile on his face.“I have called pillars of flame down upon those who are foes of our god.Or have you forgotten, Donrey?”“Most surely, I have not,” Donrey replied.“Nor have I forgotten the Time of Troubles, or any of the many desperate situations we have faced before, and have endured.”Cadderly appreciated those words, as apparently, he saw in looking around at the large gathering, did everyoneelse in the room.Menlidus, though, began to laugh.“Not like this,” he said.“We cannot make that judgment until we know what this silence is truly all about.”“It is about the folly of our lives, friend,” the defeated Menlidus said quietly.“All of us, and do look at us!Artists! Painters! Poets! Man and woman, dwarf and elf, who seek deeper meaning in art and in faith.Artists, Isay, who evoke emotion and profundity with our paintings and our scribblings, who cleverly place words for theeffect dramatic.” His snicker cut deep.“Or are we illusionists, I wonder?”“You do not believe that,” said Donrey.“Who believe our own illusions,” Menlidus qualified.“Because we have to.Because the alternative, the ideathat there is nothing more, that it is all a creation of imagination to maintain sanity, is too awful to contemplate,is it not? Because the truth that these gods we worship are not immortal beings, but tricksters promising useternity to extract from us fealty, is ultimatelyjarring and inspiring despair, is it not?”“I think we have heard enough, brother,” said a woman, a renowned mage who also was possessed ofsignificant clerical prowess.“Have we?”“Yes,” she said, and there was no mistaking the edge to her voice, not quite threatening but certainly leading inthat direction.“We are priests, one and all,” Menlidus said.“Not so,” several wizards pointed out, and again the bloody priest gave a little laugh.“Yes, so,” Menlidus argued.“What we call divine, you call arcane—our altars are not so different!”Cadderly couldnt help but wince at that, for the notion that all magic emanated from one source brought himback to his younger days in the Edificant Library.Then he had been an agnostic priest, and he too had wonderedif the arcane and the divine were no more than different labels for the same energy.“Save that ours accepts the possibility of change, as it is not rooted in dogma!” one wizard cried, and thevolume began to rise about the chamber, wizards and priests lining up against each other in verbal sparring.“Then perhaps I speak not to you,” Menlidus said after Cadderly locked him with a scowl.“But for us priests,are we not those, above all others, who claim to speak the truth? The divine truth?”“Enough, brother, I beg,” Cadderly said then, knowing where Menlidus was going despite the mans temporarycalm, and not liking it at all.He moved toward Menlidus slowly, wearing a carefully maintained expression of serenity.Having heardnothing from Danica or his missing children, Cadderly was anything but serene.His gut churned and histhoughts whirled.“Do we not?” Menlidus shouted at him.“Cadderly of Deneir, above all others, who created Spirit Soaring onthe good word and power of Deneir, should not doubt my claim!”“It is more complex than that,” said Cadderly.“Does not your experience show that our precepts are not foolish dogma, but rather divine truth?” Menlidusargued.“If you were but a conduit for Deneir in the construction of this awe-inspiring cathedral, this library forall the world, do you not laugh in the face of such doubts as expressed by our secular friends?”“We all have our moments of doubt,” Cadderly said.“We cannot!” Menlidus exclaimed, stamping his foot.That movement seemed to break him, though, a suddenweariness pulling his broad shoulders down in a profound slump.“And yet, we must, for we are shown thetruth.” He looked across the room at poor Dahlania, one leg gone, as she lay near death.“I begged for a blessingof healing,” he mumbled.“Even a simple one—any spell at all to alleviate her pain.Deneir did not answer thatplea.”“There is more to this sad tale,” Cadderly said quietly.“You cannot blame—”“All my life has been in service to him.And this one moment when I call upon him for my most desperateneed, he ignores me.”Cadderly heaved a sigh and placed a comforting hand on Menliduss shoulder, but the man grew agitated andshrugged that touch away.“Because we are priests ofnothing!” Menlidus shouted to the room.“We feign wisdom and insight, and deceiveourselves into seeing ultimate truth in the lines of a painting or the curves of a sculpture.We place meaningwhere there is none, I say, and if there truly are any gods left, they must surely derive great amusement from ourpitiful delusions.”Cadderly didnt have to look around the room at the weary and beleaguered faces to understand the cancer thatwas spreading among them, a trial of will and faith that threatened to break them all
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