Priest (Ratcatchers #1)

by Matthew Colville

“Yeah,” Heden said without inflection,

“That’s your cat?” she asked. “Her name’s Ballisantirax.” “What kind of name is that?” “It’s a long story,” he said. She lowered her head and gave him a look from under her eyebrows. “You don’t seem like someone who’d like cats,” she said. Heden shrugged. “I like this cat.”

His skin was a strange combination of flesh and rock. It was supple, it moved and flexed like skin, but a normal sword would spark off it, deflected as though bouncing off armor.

He no longer saw the truth, the awful fetid truth of every man around him. He no longer heard a dozen voices wondering and fearing.

The baron was impressed and looked at Heden as though he were a statue made of gold and she planned on melting him down and spending him.

“I know they were created by the dragons in mockery of men,” he said. Everyone in the room looked at him, surprised.

“Shit,” Heden said to no one and everyone. The horse neighed.

Mysterious horsey senses men did not wot of, probably.

Heden weighed several options carefully, and all in an instant. Calling upon powers beyond the need could have dire consequences for him. Summoning a dominion or assuming the mantle of Cavall could result in Heden being a slave to his god for years and questing through who knows what foreign lands or underground worlds.

“It means a man is better than the worst thing he’s ever done.”

This is a central character theme and a particularly good philosophy.

Heden looked at Taethan and tried to hold his gaze. “You tell that to the farmers who’ve come back from killing the thing. Covered in blood. Can’t speak to their wives, can’t sleep with them, ignore their children. You ask them if the law matters. They’re the ones who had to go out and do it.” He bit the words off. “They still feel like murderers.”

There was a time when he’d have gone to the keep and damn the consequences. But those principles died a long time ago.

“Starfall,” he said in Elemental. His sword flared violet, and the blue sky above turned instantly black, revealing a night sky studded with stars. The urq stopped, some still crossing the river, and looked up in awe at the darkness. It was the last thing any of them would ever see. The stars above began to rain down like small white comets, making a hissing, slashing sound in the sky. Each unerringly struck a single urq. Each urq evaporated from the impact, leaving only a scorched and smoldering crater and the smell of burnt flesh.

Heden pushed her away. He rubbed his temples. This place and these people were going to drive him mad, everything was intertwined with everything else. It was a huge knot. There was no thread he could pull at that could unravel it. Everything he said and did seemed to make it tighter.

“You and I against five thousand urq?” Renaldo pondered the issue. Heden was getting impatient. “I know many withering insults in urqish.” He appeared to make up his mind. “You don’t happen to know three more dependable men? I would feel more comfortable with five against five thousand. It is more…dramatically it has…” The Riojan waggled his hand. “You understand.”

“She told me you were possessed by fear and pain. She said you couldn’t survive in the forest anymore. Your memories take hold of you and unman you. I asked what could do that to a man and she told me about Elemein and Parlance. And a man named Stewart Antilles.”

Taethan looked at him with compassion. “Do you know how I know that?” Heden was having trouble breathing. He nodded. He remembered Taethan crying out the names of Idris and Isobel. “Because you felt the same way,” Heden said thickly. Taethan nodded, smiling ruefully at Heden. Something opened up between the two men, some shared pain or grief. It was powerful and Heden didn’t like it.

She looked about his age, and was beautiful. It was her eyes. They were golden brown and danced with wit and intelligence. She had dark copper hair, almost brown.

Heden looked at the doorman. The doorman looked back and forth between the priest and the watchman, and then realized something was expected of him. He sniffed the air dramatically. “Think I smell a pie with my name on it,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a moment, watch the door for me, Teagan.” He walked down the stairs past Heden.

“If we see only what we wish to see,” she was saying, “how can we say we are not blind?”

Mór, less a man and more an agent of a power, felt some impenetrable field around the priest. No god projected it. It was the man’s reality. His sense of self pouring out so strong that Mór could not approach him, could not judge him. The man was judging himself with an authority greater than any the forest could muster. Making Sir Mór irrelevant.