"Her mind had been on the suffering of the people. The sickness, the hunger, the violence, the rapes; She felt them all. Each wound carved itself inside her flesh, each hungry child has been like a branding iron; and every boy, or girl, raped sullied her and made her retch. The ringing of blades being drawn, spears sharpened and arrowheads fitted kept her awake at night. She went to her Rehev?mes and beg them to intervene. She told them to go to us, the Balà, for help; asking us for ships and to go to Haven to seek Arcros the master of the forges. He is the one who led the troops to the Dead Lands. She suffered the battles as if they happened upon her body. She bled with the wounded and died with the fallen. She killed with the killers and felt the ecstasy of violence and the exhilarating pleasure of destruction; the release of victory and the tears of joy; and, when it was all done and finished: the nagging deep-rooted shame, universal to soldiers who have survived yet an other battle."

  "She came to the town, She walked the blood soaked dirt of its mean narrow streets. She looked upon the hovels and the crude constructions that stood erect, it seemed only to display the blatant lack of knowhow of its builders. Though her soldiers had disposed of the corpses, the smell of rancid blood was pervading everything, that and spilled guts and bone marrow, sweat and the insubstantial perfume of tears and the salt they contain. The night fell, She stood alone in what they called, unimaginatively, the Charing at the centre of their traumatized community, She stood unmoving under the light of the three moons of the deceivers. They rose and flooded all with their false light and their illusions. They hid the blood stains and the scorching, they painted white the hovels as if they too were corpses; they kept rising and finally they passed their apex and set. It was the darkest hour. The last of the moon had vanished behind the edge of the world. No light, no one awake, silence and motionlessness, She smiled, She knew just what She had to do. The calling is still strong in her, it had spoken the words of love and power and told her how to cure the land and the people. She had been standing like a statue of old on the same spot from sundown to moondown, now, just before dusk, before the first flicker of sunlight She parted her hands and let the power of the One flow from her. She alone, saw with the eyes of one who has seen Anagh herself, the effect of her substance on the dead soil. It was like a bubble ever expanding with her at the centre; it expanded in the ground and in the air above her. It encompassed the nameless town entirely, it touched the water, deep in the wells, it touched the fast clouds high in the sky. And what of the men? Yes, the men were cured, the plague was dissolved and the wounds healed, their spirits were soothed and their hearts washed. As the sun rose they opened their eyes to a new world, where people, were good and trustworthy and long-bladed shiny grass grew all around them, the dead trees sprouted leaves and some even bloomed as if winter was finally over and spring had to make up for lost time. Somehow they knew black rains and dust storms were over and their fields would yield crops like never before. They gathered around her and She touched them and loved them. She taught them how to rebuild their town and they asked for a name so She named their town and told them to build a temple to honor the One who had done this all for the love of them."

  The zealot priest had been talking like this at some length of the campaign led in the Dead Lands.

  We have to come up with a new name for them soon.

  Atacherel thought, his mind wandering from the exalted rambling of the Balà priest. His ilk was new, and the admiral remembered when the first report about this trend had landed on his desk. He had skimmed over it for about one-third before discarding it as folkloric agitation that should concern the White Island if at all. That had been a year ago, since then ships filled with zealots and their followers had berthed in the cove of Canem and been brought up to the city. At first it had been a dozen per quarter and then three dozen and these days it was one, at times two ships, of Elated as they called themselves arriving in the city but most only passed through on their way to the palace town by the lake, where they congregated in increasing numbers.

  They stood in the council room of the governor' mansion. Merorae was walking again these days, sharp as ever and indefatigable. They were getting reports on the campaign when one of the messengers introduced a scrawny man. He wore a simple, clean garb and a large woven shawl, made of linen, on which was painted a crude version of the flower of Mahara?a that remained in the palm of Atacherel's hand. That elegant little design that spread its convolutions on his skin was now being used as a rallying symbol for the, he was sorry to admit so, less savory Balà of the world. Many, most, who came from the Sillaribes had never known the persecutions and the great displacement, they had been born on the islands, by islanders themselves, infants of islander and so on for several generations. They had no claims, or such a little claim for retribution, but for the pain inflicted to all Balà during the healing tower perversion. That event in itself had crystallized the fears and anguish of the small people of the suburbs, those who toiled and never asked questions had woken up one day in a fury of pain cast on them by a power that hated all and any Balà the world over and would see them dead. With the simplicity of their mind they had listened to the Zealots that used to make them smile with their hysterical passion and found that now, in their raving, was the firmly planted seed of truth and that, would they want it or not, someone somewhere was going to wage a war upon them like those told in the stories of old that no one listened to anymore...

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Until now.

  Merorae was dismissing the zealot and the messenger that had brought him in, they found themselves alone with their personal assistants.

  "I saw your mind drifting away from the religious rhetoric of our malnourished friend, Ata, what were you thinking of?"

  He looked at the lined face and felt the care and compassion of the woman he had known for all his adult life, and behind it, behind the seemingly benign question he guessed at the governor that ruled flawlessly the ever expanding city of Canem and had faced all the crises with intelligence and elegance.

  "That I had underestimated this zealot fad, is what I had been thinking."

  "You know there are so many of them in the city by the lake that they have taken to calling the new quarter they inhabit Little Canem."

  "Really? I wasn't aware of that."

  "It's no surprise, since you are taken up with far more important things than the contingency of a constant flow of pilgrims that flock to the palace in the hope to glance Her and faint instantly at each of her apparitions."

  "I'm surprised that she finds time to walk among them."

  "You'd be even more surprised to learn that they have asked the Natabs to teach them the arts of war."

  Atacherel stared at her hoping with all his strength that she had been joking.

  "The first battle ready battalions were present in Archros' army when they besieged the Nameless Town." She added flatly.

  "The last thing we need are fervor crazed newborn soldiers throwing themselves at peasants and civilians for the greater glory of the Emissary..."

  "She refused the honor."

  "What do you mean?"

  "That when they told her they would die in her name she told them to live instead for the glory of their One True God, for she was unworthy of the offering of a single life."

  "If she is unworthy then no one should have died."

  "Cautious Ata, these days that kind of speech could get you into trouble with our famished friend in the antechamber."

  "I am not afraid of a few loonies with oratory talents, why should I be?"

  "Because their leader, probably self appointed, has been to the White's and had been sent back to us with a shawl much like the one our guest was wearing. White woven this one was."

  Stupefaction could be read all over Atacherel's face and in the silence that followed he slowly raised his hand to stare at the flower in the palm.

  "Yes," the governor said, "that could very well be your best and only protection if you decide to go against the will of the zealots and the Whites." Merorae, placing her hand on her aide's shoulder, began to walk gingerly in the direction of the door to her study.

  He watched her leave in silence. There was a storm in his mind. Why had the Whites given into the game of the zealots? Was the Veviensis not enough? Did they know something that he remained ignorant of? Should he enquire? Should he go there and challenge them? Should he take the fleet and sail to the Sillaribes just when the troops from the Austral archipelagoes were about to be landed on Mahara?a with the new fleet? Could he ban the Elated from landing, reroute them away and to where, the newly replenished Dead Lands?

  A White woven shawl, this was the highest honor from Sancto one not of the White could receive, he had to meet that man, talk to him. The door to Merorae's study opened and the young man that assisted her came back into the room and leaning as if bowing he whispered into the admiral's ear:

  "His name is Quercus. He is residing currently by the lake in the new town." The young man reached out to the table to take a densely scribbled square of linen and walked back to the study.