Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

in the caravan, where four Saints were gathered watchfully around Elodie’s sleeping form.

They walked through the temple’s shadowed entryway. The outside world grew muffled and more distant than it quite should’ve, as if this building could offer a refuge beyond merely the stones that made up its four walls. It smelled of earth and metal and the white-flowering vines that grew here even in the darkness. The floor was cool, packed dirt, a rich loam that bore no footprints. Hewn pews stretched to either side of them as if they’d risen straight from the bedrock. Directly ahead was the bowl of a low altar. It was empty, except it wasn’t, because what the Unforged God required was not coins and trinkets but souls. It was Tal’s whole self lying in that shallow clay bowl in front of the pews: his past, his imagined future, his relationships, all sacrificed in the name of faith. He’d given everything to his god. All of himself. And what had he received in return, except pain and confusion and cruelty, and now an impending death?

“Do you ever hate him?” he asked Helenia in a low voice.

She snorted. “Oh, of course.”

He blinked, surprise pulling him from his thoughts as he turned to look at her. Her gaze was soft and fixed on the altar, a rueful smile curling at the edge of her mouth. “When Nyx first told me how she planned to free you, I cursed his name. I railed at him for a good few months, actually. Stopped attending prayer services, stopped bothering to argue with Saasha about scripture interpretations…stopped everything, really.”

“I thought you were a true believer.” As I used to be, he thought.

She nudged him with a shoulder. “I don’t know about ‘true,’ but I do consider myself a believer.”

“Even when you cursed his name?”

“I still curse his name every once in a while. I doubt I’ll be over it anytime soon. But anger is not the absence of belief.”

Tal said nothing for a while. He did not sit on the pew, nor did he go to the altar. His god was waiting for him there. “He lied to me,” he said at last, softly.

Helenia tilted her head. “About what?”

For the first time in two years, Tal quoted scripture: “‘I shall say ‘go,’ and you will go, and none shall stand against my victory fulfilled in you. I am the great Smith and you are the tool of my forge, and the purpose to which I will bend you is to mend that which is broken.’”

It was the text he had come back to, again and again, during the months he’d had the repeated vision of pledging himself to the Destroyer. He had seen the scripture everywhere he looked. He’d eventually taken it as a sign from the Unforged God, a personal promise penned in an ancient text just for him. How naïve he’d been, how full of faith and arrogance. And oh, how he’d paid for it.

“That’s Saint Yvetta’s translation,” Helenia remarked. “Did you know the word she translated as ‘victory’ is actually the same word she translated as ‘purpose’ in the next sentence? From my studies of the original language, I believe both iterations should be translated as ‘purpose.’” She glanced over at him and grimaced. “Not, I suppose, that it would make you feel any better. I’m sorry. Sometimes I get carried away when I’m talking about the holy texts. You should hear me and Saasha get into it, we sound like a shed full of cats yowling at each other.”

Tal glanced at her, willing to be distracted. “What do you yowl at each other about?”

For the first time, Helenia’s voice took on an uncharacteristically bitter tone. “Oh, I natter on about historical context and underlying themes and the biases of the authors, and she howls about ‘scripture being plain as day’ and ‘the inerrancy of the holy texts.’ She thinks I am a corrupting influence on your sister.”

“Nyx is fully capable of corrupting herself.”

“Truer words were never spoken.” Helenia sighed, her head dipping. “I do worry for Nyx. She can be so single-minded, and Saasha raised her on those gruesome texts of the ancient Saints’ martyrdoms, on vengeance and victory as the scriptures’ ultimate aim. Saasha completely glosses over the deeper message of how violence is a self-perpetuating cycle. She willfully misses the beautiful core of redemption that the whole of all the texts are rooted in. Nyx doesn’t take any of it very seriously, of course—she doesn’t really consider herself a believer—but her mother’s influence has seeped in. I fear it has affirmed, and even deepened, her…” Helenia searched for the words.

“Natural inclination to violence?” Tal supplied.

“Yes. That. When Nyx does read the texts, she always gravitates to the tales of retribution, of victory coming only through terrible sacrifice. It’s as if she’s only willing to see the things that support what she already believes and wants, rather than—”

“—considering the historical context and underlying themes and biases of the authors,” Tal finished for her.

Helenia made a rueful face and turned away. “I’m sorry. I tend to get worked up when I talk about these things. Please, ignore me. You wanted to come here for your own purposes, not to listen to me preach about scriptural interpretation.”

“Please don’t denigrate yourself. I have always enjoyed listening to you preach,” Tal said. “And I am concerned about Nyx as well.” He hesitated. “Did you…are you aware that she…”

“Swore a metal oath?” Helenia closed her eyes, her face settling into lines of pain. “Yes. She told me.”

Tal was helpless, as he had been helpless against his own oath—only this was worse, because this was his sister, and she had sworn it for his sake. Just as she had poisoned herself for his sake, had undergone torture for his sake, had nearly allowed herself to be murdered by the Destroyer for his sake.

And then, when he’d begged her at the frozen lake, she’d agreed to spare the Destroyer’s life. Once again, for