"Here," Geri said, motioning him into a tiny kitchen. "It's warmer in here than anyplace else. Have a seat; Henrick's asleep, but don't worry about waking him. He could sleep through a war and a tempest combined. Do you want anything to drink? Beer? Tea?"
"Tea, please," Alberich replied, and watched with interest as Geri moved efficiently about the tiny kitchen, heating water in the pot over the hearth and getting mugs for both of them. "I don't know why I haven't come here before, instead of making you come up the hill."
He said that, because the kitchen smelled right. Those were Karsite spices he could taste faintly in the air, and a uniquely Karsite black tea that was steeping in that kettle. There were sausages hanging up in the corner of the hearth—both for further smoking and because the smoke kept insects away—sausages Alberich would bet tasted like the ones from the inn where he'd grown up.
"So what is on your mind?" Geri asked.
"A great many things," Alberich replied, now fully relaxed, with Geri's good tea on his tongue. "Tell something, though. What do you think about Myste?"
"I like her, but she's deceptive. I don't mean that she lies, I mean that her appearance is deceiving. She looks and sounds harmless, but she's a hunter," Geri said instantly. "She won't let anything stand in her way once she's on a scent. Though I'm not sure what quarry she's stalking. Probably a lot of things, one of them being answers."
"Ah, but to what questions?" Alberich replied.
"She's stalking those, too. Why do you ask?" Geri responded curiously.
"I'm not sure. Now that I'm not having to browbeat her into training properly, and she's a full Herald and Elcarth's Second, we're peers, so we're no longer in conflict with one another; she intrigues me, I suppose. It must be that instinct, one hunter recognizing another. She's the one who sent me here tonight, in fact." He took a sip of tea and savored the flavor. It was the right flavor, the one from his childhood although the flavor from his childhood was a diluted version of this. "I'm hunting answers myself."
Geri regarded him with a somber gaze. "You, of all people, ought to know that you aren't going to find many of those here. Questions, certainly, but precious few answers. Ours is a faith, Alberich, not a map or a guide, and certainly not a set of certitudes. At least, that is the way it should be—"
"Not what it has become." He said that sadly, and once again, he was back in childhood, with that kind, yet stern priest, who tried to show him in ways a child would understand, just what the Sunlord was and was not. "We are the mirror of Valdemar—"
"More like the twin. Or we were, before things disintegrated." Geri sighed. "I've had this discussion with Henrick, actually. He is of the opinion that the long slide began with a will to power. I think it's more complicated than that. I think that the priesthood was corrupted by the congregation."
Alberich blinked. "How, exactly?"
"The laity wanted absolutes, answers, and the priesthood finally elected to give them answers, the simpler the better," Geri replied. "The Writ took second place to the Rule, and a poor second at that. The answers took away all uncertainty, and what is more, took away the need to think."
Alberich frowned; not for nothing had he spent so much of his childhood under the tutelage of a priest who knew—and lived—the old ways. "Above all, the Writ demands that a man—or a woman, for that matter—learn how to think."
Geri nodded. "You see? The old ways require that each person come to the Sunlord having thought through everything for himself. The current Rule requires that men become sheep, herded in one direction, following one path, pastured in one field, ever and always, so will it be."
"Sheep." It occurred to Alberich that it was probably no coincidence that the Sunpriests of Karse had taken to calling their congregations by the name of "flock."
"Sheep don't have to think for themselves, do they?" Geri made a face. "The Sunlord was reshaped from the Unknowable into the remote but predictable Patriarch, from the Whirlwind to the windmill that grinds—exceedingly small. Do this—you are gathered unto His bosom. Do that—you are cast into the outermost hells." Geri shook his head. "Answers are terribly seductive. The simpler they are, the more seductive they become."
Alberich turned that over in his mind, and found it certainly matched some of his own experience. "But that isn't the whole of it," he objected.
"Of course not. I just suggest that this was where the corruption started," Geri replied. "Then came the power, power that came from giving people what they wanted instead of what they needed, and power is just as seductive and even more addictive than any drug. Now—I don't know, Alberich. I don't know how it can be fixed. Or even if it can. It would take the Sunlord Himself in manifestation, perhaps. And someone as the Son of the Sun who is willing to hold to the hard course and be disliked, even hated."
"And loved."
"And loved," Geri agreed. "At one and the same time, and probably by the same people. Because when you demand that each situation be considered separately, and not responded to with the predigested Answer, you are always going to anger someone since you're always going to disagree with someone. Probably even someone who agreed with you the last time, and now takes this new response as a betrayal."
Alberich smiled sourly. "It would take the Sunlord Himself to protect someone like that."
"I fear so, and I am very, very, glad it isn't me." Geri drained his cup and poured himself another, then smiled. "So, since I am not going to give you any answers, what can I do for you?"
"Give me an opinion." He outlined, as best he could, what he was doing with his four putative agents. "They have seen the very best that Karse is, in the form of Father Kentroch, my protector and teacher, and if I'm reading them correctly, they have warmed to him just as I did, and more importantly, responded to his ideas of responsibility and honor. We're just about up to the point where I first learned I had a witch-power; I suppose each of them will have a similar experience, but the witch-power will be his or her own Gift in real life."
"If you're wondering if you have somehow betrayed your vow to protect the people of Karse, let me tell you now that both Henrick and I are positive you are doing nothing of the sort," Geri said firmly. "If anything, you are going to put four more protectors in place, just as you had hoped. Did you know that all four of them have been coming down here for practice in the language? Or so they say."
Alberich shook his head, surprised.
"Well, they have—and what Henrick and I figured out after the first two visits was that they didn't want lessons in Karsite—their accents are impeccable, by the way—but an understanding of how our version of the Sunlord differs from what they're going to encounter in Karse."
Something about the way he said that made Alberich stare at him. "Oh, no—" he said, feeling his heart sink. "Please do not tell me that they want to convert."