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CHAIN YOUR ANGER IN THE dark, my mother used to tell me, and it will only thrive.
That’s how the Hierarchy operates, after all: the potential of reward ahead, the menace of punishment chasing behind. Even if only one of them is usually real.
My father’s voice, like so often in my life, echoes in my head. The power to protect is the highest of responsibilities, Diago. When a man is given it, his duty is not only to the people he thinks are worthy.
It’s too brief for more than an impression. The purple-and-orange bruise of smoky, lightning-cracked sky. Some sort of impossibly vast pyramid, surface smooth and black and mirrored, its base stretching for miles. The harbour with a vast, lit bridge dividing it, lined by statues that must stand a hundred feet high. Waves, monstrous curling whitecaps, towering over them. Exploding against them. Pain accompanies the sight. Rippling through my body, a burning from the inside out. I’m screaming. Blind. My blood boiling, my flesh peeling, every muscle and joint drawn inexorably, mercilessly apart.
“There comes a point in every man’s life where he can rail against the unfairness of the world until he loses, or he can do his best in it. Remain a victim, or become a survivor.”
“Nervousness means there’s a fear to be faced ahead, Diago. The man who is never nervous, never does anything hard. The man who is never nervous, never grows.”
“I was known as Artemius Sel. I was a traitor to the commandment of isolation. I attempted to gain synchronism and remove the seal to Obiteum during the rebellion of the seventh era after the Rending. I have thus been lawfully condemned to servitude, guiding those who come after.”
THE CATENAN PENCHANT FOR RELIGIOUS holidays has always irked me. In part, I think it stems from there being so many gods. Mira for war, Arventis for luck, Sere for fertility. Ocaria for rivers, Vorcian for metalworking, Ferias for keys and doors. Each has its own domains, its own sacrifices, its own specific forms to follow. Without all these celebrations, I doubt anyone but the priests would be able to remember who they had to pray to for what.
