This is the proclamation of the Lord Ah-Ren: “A man says, ‘I love you, I love you,’ in the heat of his loins and leaves you when he is satisfied. His offspring cries out not for you, but only what you can give it. Even your ancestors who gave you life are bound for the grave where their care for you will be interred forever. I alone have a steadfast love that will never leave you, for I alone am everlasting. I alone will remain in the Time After Time. Therefore put your faith in me and I will grant you power over death.”
-Gospel of Lucence, Tract 19, Lines 31-39
Dordreg Region, Grackenwell
“Blessed be the Bringer of Life and the Banisher of Death,” said Beam, “and cursed be every false god who blasphemes against You. Blessed be Your word.” Beam pressed her head down on her scarlet prayer rug.
It was the thirtieth day since they’d left the relative comfort of Claeloch and pressed on into less welcoming territory. Privately, though she could never admit this to her growing flock, Beam was afraid. Several days prior, their journey southeastward crossed the easternmost imaginary border of Claeloch and into Grackenwell proper. They now entered into a region of the kingdom called Dordreg.
The landscapes were not half so picturesque as those of Claeloch. The hilly countryside, babbling brooks, and rolling fields of flowers were replaced with dull, dreary woods. Dordreg was largely flat and low-lying; it made for muddy soil that squelched whenever they walked.
As they journeyed across the Stonish continent, winter became spring, and soon it would be the rainy season when they traveled far enough south. Tents had become a necessity to keep the water from ruining their supplies—or worse, making them sick. But that was the least of their worries.
There was a great deal more water where they were going.
“Good evening, Lady Beam,” Luster greeted her at supper. He poured a steaming ladleful of stewed beans into her cup. “Another day of great progress. How many days now?”
“Thank you.” Beam took a sip and let the hot meal warm her from the inside. “Soon. Four. Maybe five.”
The two of them sat at their private campfire. Throughout the rest of the camp, though, other fires were burning, and other disciples prepared their suppers and set about their evening routines. The flock had grown since Beam’s miracle in Pythe, as she performed smaller, similar miracles along the way. They were now forty believers in all.
“Lady Beam, may I confide something in you?”
She smiled softly. “You can just call me Beam now. You know that, right?”
“Of course.” Luster grinned back sheepishly. “Sometimes, I’m so taken by your beauty that I think my heart assumes you must be highborn. And so when I open my mouth, I can’t help but address you as such for fear of being rude.”
Beam felt uncomfortable when Luster said things like this. It wasn’t that she didn’t also feel the same for him—she did, and she’d intimated as much to him when they were alone. It was just that she didn’t know how to take his compliments. They made her feel too perceived, too scrutinized. “What was it you wanted to say?”
“I have full faith in the Lord Ah-Ren to guide us on our journey.” He stole a glance at the other disciples building their fires, cooking their meals. “It’s the others I’m unsure of. Do you believe they’re all truly prepared to brave the Everswamp in four or five days?”
“Truthfully?” Beam stared down into her supper. “No.”
“I’ve read some about traversing the bog. It’s the toughest terrain—worse than the mountains, even! It’s going to take a lot for most of these people to be ready to make the journey.”
“What they need most is faith.”
Luster furrowed his brow. “How so?”
She set her face sternly, speaking from her heart, which she had given over to Ah-Ren. Whenever she got like this, Luster could never meet her gaze for long. “Faith is the only thing that will bring us to the other side of the bog. Even those who are physically able to make the trek will not do so if they have no faith. It is written: ‘The ways of man are futile, but faith in the Lord Ah-Ren gives us power beyond men.’”
“Yes. I remember.” He nodded reverently. “And the Lord has told you that this is the only way?”
Beam remembered her dream—no, her vision. She often confused the two. Ah-Ren had shown her the way one night when she tossed and turned and sweat profusely. Going north would add many moons to their travels, and it might be near winter again before they could travel back south around the other side of the bog. This was to say nothing of the many slavecatchers who rode through the woods and snatched up unsuspecting travelers.
A journey south through the Zan desert would be shorter but equally perilous. The sand. The heat. Bandits on camelback. No water as far as the eye could see. If her flock hadn’t the faith to boat through a swamp, she knew she could not lead them through the blistering sands either.
All of this was secondary to the Lord’s command. He commanded her to travel as a bird would fly. This is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God, she remembered. My name is Beam. Great are His plans for me, and bold is my purpose. We must go now. We must waste not the passing of another day.
But she also knew that Ah-Ren would not abide unbelievers in the midst of the faithful. Neither would she.
“Yes,” Beam answered him finally. “The only way. But I will give my disciples a choice.”
“A choice? What do you mean?”
She eyed her flock warily, wondering which among them were pretenders. “I will separate faith from fickleness. Only faith can make the journey.”
After they ate, they retired for the night in Beam’s tent, as had been their habit of late. She liked to let Luster lie side by side with her and listen to the voices of the flock dying down for the night. The glow of the fires would subside, and she would hear nothing but the smoldering wood settling, their breathing, and the sounds of the forest. It was peaceful.
Some nights, she almost felt close enough to invite him to do more than just hold her. He never asked, nor did he show the slightest frustration when she would send him back to his own tent in the night. Night after night. He seemed glad just to be there with her.
But she knew that didn’t mean he didn’t want it. Sometimes he got that look in his eyes that she knew all too well, even if he was polite about hiding it.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she whispered to him.
He lay behind her, his arm around her midsection, stubbled chin pressed down against the top of her head. He breathed in suddenly; he’d been half-asleep. “Yes, Beam. Goodnight.” He got up and staggered groggily out of the tent to sleep alone again.
It took her a long while to fall asleep. It was colder without him.
***
Beam leaned a hand against the rough brick wall behind the brothel. Her insides were on fire. Before she could brace herself fully, hot bile came surging up her throat and splashed onto the gravel ground.
It was only a small puddle this time. She was almost in the clear. If she would throw up again, it might be only a few dry heaves or a mouthful of spittle, if anything. She was grateful that relief was near.
But it only meant that the tonic hadn’t worked.
“Are you all right?” It was the kindly young man who frequented the brothel’s tavern. Dannegan was his name. “Brought you a cold towel.” He held it out and she accepted it, dabbing her sweat and wiping the vomit from her chin.
“Thank you,” she groaned.
“The tonic again?” He pointed to the purple puddle on the ground. Then his glance caught the swell of her pregnant belly. “It’s no good. Is it?”
She rubbed her stomach, wincing. “No. I fear for whatever child I do bring into this accursed world. He wants so badly to be born.” She shook her head bitterly. “That’s because he doesn’t know what this world is.”
Dannegan smiled softly. “He?”
She caught herself, couldn’t help but smile back. “Oh. I’m not sure, of course. He feels like a... well, like a he.”
The young man nodded. “Well, he will have a beautifully loving mother. Won’t he?”
Something twisted inside her then. Was her baby angry with her for trying to purge him from her body? She hated herself for trying it—not once but three times. But life had made her envy the dead and those never born, and so she thought it was a kindness.
“Could I ask you a favor?”
“What is it?”
She tried not to spoil their time together by crying. She swallowed her sadness, blinked it away. “Buy me for the night? Just one night? My rate is reduced.” She gestured to her belly protruding under her gown. “Most men won’t touch me anymore anyway. The keeper’s been furious with me.”
Dannegan nodded in a gentle sort of way, but his smile faded. She could sense that she was being a burden to him. She didn’t care—rather, she needed this more than she cared. “Of course. One night.”
They made their way up the creaking wooden stairs from the tavern to the lodging. She ignored the jeers of the other patrons—they mocked her pregnant belly, her clumsiness, the fat accumulating in her midsection and under her chin—but it must have been hard, too, for Dannegan. They ridiculed him for his kindness to her. Since he was four years her junior and began showing up to the tavern the day he came of age, they teased him for liking older women. They even accused him of preferring the company of men, since he was never as lecherous or as mean with the women who worked there, and since he never joined in the mistreatment of the other prostitutes.
In fact, he never paid for a single night with anyone other than her. The strangest part was that he never lay with her, either. Not once. Nor did he seem the least bit interested. She knew from a young age to read the eyes of a man, but she’d become especially adept at this skill from her years in the brothel.
There was never lust in his eyes. There was never even curiosity. What was it, then? What was it that compelled his kindness to her? It vexed her every time they met, and it made her all the more fearful of its absence.
“Don’t listen to them,” she told him when she closed the door. “They’re just mean, miserable bastards.”
“The world can be a mean, miserable place,” said Dannegan. “They only know how to be like the world around them.”
“But not you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not like them. Why?”
Dannegan shrugged. “It doesn’t feel right to me. I’ve been harsh with others a few times in my life. Always gave me guilt afterward.”
“Even when they harass you like that—you never consider joining in on their fun to placate them?”
He scoffed and shook his head. “No. Never. I’m a scrawny lad and not much for fighting—I’m no savior who’ll stick up for the people they pick on. But that doesn’t mean I have to be one of them.” He collapsed onto one of the hard beds with his hands behind his head. “Besides, it’s not like I’ll have to put up with them for much longer.”
Her stomach twisted again. Was it the baby this time, or something else? “Won’t have to put up with them much longer—what’s that supposed to mean?”
Dannegan looked up, his jaw dropping as if realizing he’d just said something terribly offensive. He frowned remorsefully. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. I’m engaged to be wed. I leave next moon for Grackenwell proper.”
She was deeply wounded at first, but then she decided that he must have been telling a joke. She chuckled. “Engaged to be wed? Really? And what would she think of you frequenting a brothel?”
“I’ve told her everything,” he said with a straight face. “She knows about you. About your situation. She understands there’s nothing... intimate between us. But it’s time I move on and start my life with her.”
She chuckled again, scoffing. “Dannegan, that’s enough.”
“I’m telling you the truth.” He gave her a sad smile, his eyes half-lit, and in that moment, it all fell into place in her mind.
“Why buy me for a night—tonight or any other night? You’re not getting anything out of it. You leave at first light every time! Why do it at all?”
He sighed, unable to contain his frustration. He got like this at times when she demanded to know what they were to each other. “Because I care about you—”
“Then take me away from this place. With you. Whisk me away from this wretched life that made me want to make myself barren, for the sake of any poor child I might be forced to conceive. Will you?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I’m pledged to marry someone else!”
Her eyes dampened. “Not as a wife. I can be a servant! You don’t need to pay me, just a bed to sleep in—I can do the rest! Your wife to be already knows, doesn’t she?”
Dannegan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I... Listen, I would if I could, but you have to understand—”
“You don’t care about me,” she cut him off. “You feel sorry for me.” His silence, the slow way he averted his gaze, was all the proof she needed. “And you know what? That makes you worse than the other men who buy me for a night. At least they’re honest about what I am to them!”
“Really? I’m worse than them?” He scowled at her, swinging his legs to stand up forcefully from the bed. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“Happy for what?!” She was screaming now. “That you get to go off and do whatever you want with your life—like any other man in this world, while I’m stuck here? Happy that you pity me like I’m some sick animal? What? What exactly do I have to be happy about?”
But Dannegan was already gone, having stormed out of the room and down the brothel stairs. Another brothel patron adjusted his pants in the open doorway of a room. Meanwhile, a fellow prostitute poked her head out of an adjoining room. She laughed when she saw the commotion. “You chased him off in a hurry. What happened? He poke something that oughtn’t be poked?” At this, she threw her head back in laughter at her own joke.
“Never come back,” she whimpered to Dannegan under her breath, slamming the door behind her. “Never come back here ever again.” Part of her lamented not saying a proper goodbye, and already regretted the way she treated him. No matter the reason, he’d still been kind to her at times, and it was more than she could say for anyone else in the hovel where she lived.
But he’d never loved her. In truth, she’d never loved him, either. She only loved the comfort that he provided. She realized that if she truly loved him and wanted the best for him, she would have been glad to hear of his engagement and sincerely wished him the best. But she hadn’t felt that way.
His visit clarified things for her all at once. She knew she truly did love the life growing inside of her that would one day be a baby. She knew she wanted the best for him above all else—him. She prayed that he would not grow up like all the other men of Grackenwell.
But she had no one to hear her prayer.
Not yet.
***
The next morning, Beam gathered her followers in the middle of camp. Some had taken to breaking down their tents and collecting their belongings to resume the journey—she had Luster stop them, had him explain that they wouldn’t be going anywhere that day. She built a central campfire and waited for them to assemble around it. They all arrived one by one, watched her with a mixture of reverence and confusion.
“What’s the meaning of this, Lady Beam?” asked Glimmer. The young barmaid always seemed half her age whenever she asked something of Beam, doe-eyed and looking lost. “Have you had another vision?”
“Shouldn’t we be on the road?” asked Hjarsant. “Sun’s already rising as it is. We’re losing daylight.” Hjarsant was a stocky man with a full beard, thick in the gut but broad-shouldered and muscular everywhere else. He always had the air of a man half-drunk or hungover, though it had been many days since he’d had a drop to drink—it was just his natural state to look slightly unkempt and a bit bewildered at all times.
“We will not be going anywhere today,” Beam announced to her flock in a strong voice. “The Lord has revealed a sobering truth: to hasten our journey, we must wait here in this camp for seven days.” Looks were exchanged; someone murmured something. “The Everswamp lies ahead of us. It will take us at least seven days to cross at its narrowest point—that is if we can purchase boats, and if the path is clear, and if we do not lose our way.”
“Take and eat your fill,” said Luster. He ladled breakfast from his iron pot and distributed bowls and hunks of bread to the other disciples. “Take and eat your fill...”
“Why wait here, then?” Hjarsant pressed her. “All the more reason to start now!”
“Only faith can make the journey,” Beam answered him. “And faith is not a trifling matter. Faith must be strong. It must be able to weather the hard times as well as the easy ones.”
“We left behind all we had,” said Torganh, wiping the blond hair from his face. “We sleep in the wilderness. We cook our meals and eat in the open air. What more would Ah-Ren ask of us?”
Several other disciples started to scold him, but Beam held up a hand to quiet them. “This is precisely what I mean. Only faith can make the journey. And the journey will get harder from here. Going north to avoid the bog would put us in winter by the time we circled around the other side. Going south would take us through the heat of the desert. There is only danger ahead no matter where we go—but the Everswamp is still the quickest route.
“This journey will deprive us of food and drinking water. It will tire us down to our bones. We must persevere. We cannot make the journey if there are faithless disciples among us who would slow our progress. Those who wish to go forward... You will fast for seven days.”
“What?” “Seven days?” “Seven days, she said?” The murmurs among the flock were short-lived. The disciples held their tongues, lest they appear faithless.
“Seven days,” Beam repeated. “After this meal, you will be granted water each day. Nothing more. Those who can prove their faith can accompany the rest of us on our journey. Those who fail, or refuse, should turn back and return to their homes as soon as possible.”
Torganh finished mopping up the last of his breakfast with his hunk of bread. For a skinny man, he could eat more, and faster, than most anyone. He discarded the bowl at the fire’s edge. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered as he trudged back to his tent. “I came here to see more miracles, not to deprive myself! I’ve had enough of this. You are making this all up as you go along—and you are no prophetess!”
Luster whirled around to go after him, but Beam took him by the hand, bade him stay. In an instant, his anger was diffused. “Let him go,” she said. “Already Ah-Ren begins to show us the unbelievers. But there will be more. I’m sure of it.”
“You heard her,” said one of her more fervent disciples, a woman she named Shine. “Seven days. The Lord Ah-Ren provides so much—this is the least we can do to prove our faith in Him! Isn’t that so?” Shine was a short-haired woman two or three years older than Beam herself, and she had a way of speaking that resonated with the common man. Her rallying cry inspired some more confidence in the rest of the flock. They ate their last meal mostly in silence after that.
As the disciples finished their breakfast, one more of them, another one like Torganh who never received her name in the faith, packed up her tent and stole away while the others were distracted. The woman followed in Torganh’s muddy footsteps and disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Now they were thirty-eight believers in all.
“Gather all your food and bring it here to the center of camp,” said Beam. “We will tie it all up in bags and hang them over the trees to keep the food safe from the animals, and to keep us from giving in to our temptations.”
The disciples who remained obeyed her. They brought all the food out of their tents—hard breads, cheeses, dried fruits, salted fish and other meats, down to the last nut and green leaf, and even their spices. All of it was loaded into communal bags that were cinched with well-knotted rope. The bags were then thrown over sturdy tree branches, the lines tied to double-secured stakes in the ground.
If anyone broke their fast now, the whole flock would know of it.
But she had other ways of testing their faith, too. She had to—people had a way of earning her mistrust.
***
She hefted the baby girl in her arms, pleading with Sanesse. “Please,” she said. “I’ve been bought for only an hour. I just need someone to watch her. Won’t you help me?”
“I told you to use the sheepskin,” Sanesse chastised her with a wagging finger. “My old madam swore by it. Not a single baby born in eight years!”
“Well, I have one now. Could you just watch her for an hour? Please?”
“I would be happy to watch the little bundle.” Sanesse squinted at the baby cooing in her arms. “Two silver scales.”
“Two?!” She couldn’t believe her ears. “Last time, you only charged me one for a whole night!”
“What can I say? Rates change here in the brothel.” The other girl shrugged smugly. “Two scales or no deal.”
The exhausted mother forked over the coins, annoyed, and handed her baby gingerly to Sanesse. For all her faults, at least Sanesse was gentle with babies. In fact, she was the only one who could be trusted to watch an infant for even an hour, the only other woman in the brothel who wasn’t so ruined by drink or entheogens or driven half-mad by her circumstances.
She only needed an hour.
The brothelkeeper had given her simple instructions. The man had bought her for one hour. Room fifteen. Come dressed as she was.
“Good evening,” she said demurely, opening the door. She put on the voice that she always did when tending to men. They craved tenderness, kindness, shyness, and for enough coins, she had learned to pretend for them. She slipped into the room, expecting to see her client waiting for her on the bed. “Hello?”
There was no one. If not for one detail, she would have thought the room was wholly empty. But someone had been there.
A thick book sat on the bed. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt that she was not alone in the room, even though she was. She approached the book with caution and glanced at the spine.
“Gospel of Lucence,” she read aloud. She wondered where her client was. The brothelkeeper had been paid for an hour, and she knew well that her client intended to get his money’s worth, whoever he was. But he was nowhere to be found.
What do I do for an hour? She stood there in thought for a moment, wondering if she should go downstairs and speak to the brothelkeeper. Maybe it was some happy stroke of luck that her latest client had run off after paying—maybe he changed his mind, or maybe he took pity on her like Dannegan had used to, bought her some time to herself. She opened the book on the bed. It was something that would distract her for the remainder of the hour, a much needed rest.
She read from the open page. “He who turns to the Lord Ah-Ren for a day will know a day of fulfillment; she who calls upon the Lord Ah-Ren for an hour will know an hour of peace.”
She blinked. Rubbed the tiredness from her eyes. She brought the book closer to the wavering torch in its sconce on the wall. Had she read that right? She... will know an hour of peace.
Surely an eerie coincidence. She flipped the tome to another random page two-thirds of the way through the text and she read the first words that caught her eye. “The station of a man is no difference to the Lord, for the kings and slaves and killers and soldiers of the earth are the same in His eyes; neither does the station of a woman matter to Him, for the queens and mothers and whores and maidens are all alike in His eyes. All fall short of His righteousness, but He saves the precious few who are worthy.”
She had never heard of this Ah-Ren. There were many gods worshiped throughout the land—gods of folklore, or the Triad worshiped in the Stonish south, in the kingdom called Dridon. She’d heard stories of the Qardish god Eloei, and she knew other nations worshiped other gods. She’d called on half of them in her day to no avail.
But Ah-Ren seemed different. She had never heard the name and now she was curious.
Lord Ah-Ren, she thought. If you are real... then give me a sign. Prove to me that you can hear me call upon you.
She closed her eyes this time, stuck her fingernail between the pages, flung the book open all without looking, and pressed her fingertip against the page on the left. She would read whatever line of text was above her finger. She opened her eyes—her heart skipped a beat.
“Those who cry out to Ah-Ren in their darkest hour, surely they will receive an answer; yea, those who fall to their knees will know that the Lord is near. Faith is the nourishment that feeds the love of Ah-Ren as dry wood feeds the fire.”
At once, she fell to her knees at the bedside. She bowed her head with her hands on the tome—they felt as though they were vibrating, a subtle energy humming through her veins, and she forgot to breathe. I believe. I do believe! I asked and You answered. Lord Ah-Ren, save me from this place!
The tome shook in her hands. She released her grip, and the pages turned all on their own, though the window was shut tight and there was no draft of wind. The first verse of the open page read: This is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God. Your name is written in My book. Great are My plans for you, and bold is your purpose. Go now.
With that, the door of the room opened on its own.
She flinched at first. Was it her client come at last? But when she stood and pulled the door open all the way, she saw that there was no one in the hall. Thump. She turned to see that the Gospel of Lucence had closed of its own accord behind her. “I will come back for you,” she whispered.
But what she had just read, coupled with her intuition, told her something was wrong.
“There she goes!” came the voice down the hall. It was Sanesse. “One... Two sips down the hatch! Oh, be careful.” Laughter and muffled conversation spilled out of the farthest room along with a shaft of torchlight. She stormed down the hall in search of her baby. “One... Two... Three sips down the hatch! She’s a natural!”
She threw open the door. Sanesse and two of the other prostitutes were smoking herbs from thin wooden pipes. Sanesse had the baby on her lap, her arm wrapped around her with a wineskin in her free hand. “You’re here!” she exclaimed drunkenly. “You’ve been gone for hours. Where were you?”
“I was not gone for hours,” she snapped back. “I was barely gone a few moments! What have you done?”
“Well,” said Sanesse, grinning innocently, “we’ve been playing a little game. I think your little one is teething, so I’ve given her sips of wine to calm her down. They’re not really sips, mind you. I dip a clean finger into the wine, rub her gums, and she’s all better.”
She snatched her baby back gently, supporting her from the bottom with one hand, and used the other to point a finger at Sanesse. “You are never to be left alone with my child again. Wine?! Are you mad, you daft whore?!” Her baby started to cry. “She is a child!”
Sanesse rolled her eyes now, her good mood soured. “Please. It was three drops of wine. You act like I was pouring spirits in the brat’s mouth.” She scoffed and took another smoldering drag from her pipe. “People drink here. She ought to get used to it—and so ought you. I mean, you bring a baby up in a damn brothel, you had better expect—!”
Thwack. She slapped Sanesse across the face, a full, meaty hit square across the cheek. There were tears in her eyes. She stormed out of the room before the others could react.
She spent the rest of the night alone with her crying baby and the Gospel of Lucence, finding she could read it perfectly even in the torchless dark.
***
The third day of the fast, Beam was reminded why she was slow to trust her fellow man. This was because Ah-Ren kept His promises; the same couldn’t always be said for a mortal. Mortals were made of flesh, and flesh had weaknesses.
“What’s happening?” asked one of the disciples. His name was Ioghan, a freckled, red-haired young man freshly twenty years of age. He stumbled out of his tent, doubled over. Ioghan’s lips were smeared with red-purple paste and had already begun to swell, and he couldn’t suppress his belches, nor the drool dripping from his open jaw. “I feel... I feel...” He hunched over the campfire, spewing purple vomit like a dam had broken inside him.
“You ate of the fruit I left,” Beam said coolly, “when I forbade you to eat. Now your sin is known. When you are well again, you will be banished.” Ioghan cared little for matters of faith now—he heaved again and a fresh spray of vomit splashed into the flames.
“Now you’re poisoning people?” asked Hjarsant. He had a wooden bowl of the same purple berries in his hand, though she could tell he hadn’t eaten any. He threw the bowl down and spilled the berries in the grass. “Ah-Ren would have you poison innocent people like us?”
Beam shook her head, disappointed. “He will live. In fact, he will be back to normal in two days’ time. Maybe less. And I did not poison him—in his faithlessness, he poisoned himself. This was the only way to be sure.”
Hjarsant glared at her. “You are... Your methods are...” His eyes were tired, sunken from lack of food. He was irritable, groggy, and weak, but he had not broken his vow of fasting, and he retreated back into his own tent without another word.
Two of the other disciples guided Ioghan back to his tent. Luster watched from a distance, saddened at the loss of another member, but with a nod of recognition to Beam. She knew he trusted her methods even if the others didn’t.
“Seven days is not a small ask for any man or woman,” said Ray. Ray was one of the rare few disciples who were already named in the faith. She was a middle-aged woman, black hair run through with streaks of gray and half-etched wrinkles up and down her placid face. She was a calm presence in the flock. Still, she was unafraid to speak her mind.
“Will you leave like the others?” Beam asked.
Ray shook her head. “No. I can do this through my faith. And I will. But you’re making no friends with this test of yours.”
Beam watched Ioghan crawl out of his tent to throw up again. “It is as you said. Those with faith, can. Those without, won’t.”
“You’re teaching them faith in the Lord Ah-Ren. This is good. But you yourself must develop faith in the people you lead. Without that, you’ll always be mistrustful of them. You’ll see disbelief and treachery everywhere you look. You should know that what you ask is more difficult for some than you think.”
Beam’s gaze caught Luster again, though he was looking away now, dropping a log into the campfire and stoking it. “The journey ahead will be worse than difficult. It will be impossible at times. But we must do the impossible in the name of our faith.” She tasted a memory of Claeloch. “Only then can we be sure of its fullness.”