The Heresy was a gentle creed. Traditionalists found its social notions more disturbing than its religious absurdities. In a time when senior churchmen lived more grandly than princes, the Maysaleans preached – and lived – lives of poverty and service. Their property ideals were communal, as had been those of the Founders of the Church. Their attitudes toward the sacraments were relaxed, particularly as regarded marriage. Though the Perfect abstained from the pleasures of the flesh. If one yielded to their temptation one fell from Perfection.

There were not many young Perfect.

Old Juie Sachs, the carpenter, told Brother Candle, "Sounds like a slow curse upon the world you got there, Master."

Puzzled, the Perfect said, "Please explain."

"It's a mathematical thing. If only the best people become Perfect and escape the world, then, each time one does, the world will get a little darker."

Jhean, the carpenter's son, said, "Maybe that's why me permanent snows get deeper and the winters get longer and colder. Maybe it don't have nothing to do with the wells of power."

Brother Candle was a fine missionary. When he explained the Maysalean Heresy it sounded obvious and inarguable. He had won countless converts. It was a harsh world even in good times. That made it easy to assert that life was a toy of darkness rather than a gift of light.

"We inspire the will to do good works by doing good works. The soul of the newborn does not bring with it the burden of sin accumulated in its previous life. In the beginning we stand equal before the Light, a book not yet written."

That did not answer the question posed, however. And now he was on difficult doctrinal ground. There were several points of view on the clean slate.

"Life starts as a blank tablet," he said. "Character is created and written each day. Meaning that there will always be more good people coming up."

That was an idea difficult to embrace. Common sense said some souls were so black that they could not become better if they went around the Wheel a million times. Even devoted Episcopals offered Sublime and the Bishop of Antieux as examples. The Bishop had taken ecclesiastical corruption into previously unknown realms.

One of the young men announced, "There's another Perfect on the way."

The old men in St. Jeules' little church eyed Brother Candle. It was time for him to tell them why he had come to their village. "All the Perfect who can are going to gather here. They'll come by the most remote and obscure byways."

The announcement caused no stir of excitement.

"We won't presume upon your charity. We'll pay for food and drink. And we'll help in the fields."

Someone asked, "How many Perfect Masters are there?"

"Forty-five," Brother Candle replied, though he had no real idea. "But they won't all come. Most are too far away."

The Maysalean Heresy did well wherever the Church was its most corrupt or oppressive. The ugliest accusations retailed by the Episcopal priesthood convinced no one that the Perfect were evil or out to harvest souls for the Adversary. Nor could the Church obscure the fact that most of me Perfect had been successful men before they donned the white robe.

So the bishops and priests of the Brothen rite peddled tales of devil worship and sexual license in secret, remote places. Credulous folk in cities and foreign places willingly believed anything wicked of anyone different. And neither accusation was an outright lie. Maysaleans did not worship the Adversary but they did believe that it was not me Evil One who had been cast out of Heaven. Nor did they believe in proprietary rights to the flesh of any individual, even in marriage.

Brother Candle said, "No more than twenty Perfect should turn up."

The old men wanted to know why the Perfect were gathering. There had been no Maysalean synod in more than fifty years.

"The Usurper, Sublime, intends to send selected priests to the Connec to destroy our beliefs. Some will belong to the Brotherhood of War. Some will be armed with writs granting them extraordinary powers. Bishop Serifs will be in charge of spiritual affairs throughout the Connec, with permission to use any means necessary to expunge our faith."

Old men spat. Young men cursed Serifs. The women offered prayers for me Bishop's disgrace and ruin.

"He'll be able to get away with anything as long as he claims he's doing it to suppress Those Who Seek the Light."

A key tenet of the Maysalean Heresy was a conviction that its followers were the true Chaldareans. Although that stretch was extreme, in truth, modern Episcopal dogma bore only a lip service resemblance to the gentle, egalitarian, communal doctrines of the Holy Founders.

The Episcopal Church survived on size, inertia, and the staying power of vested interest. It had survived challenges more serious than the Maysalean Heresy. The Borgians of the previous century had been more critical of the establishment and more militant in their defiance and disdain for all temporal power. The Borgians wanted to rid the world of all priests except part-time village clerics, and all nobles, period.

The Borgian dogma was naive. It required an already indifferent God to make sure no new hierarchies established themselves. It counted on that lazy deity to ensure that no savage invaders descended upon the pastoral Borgian realm, that no bandits took advantage.

The fatal flaw of the Borgian fallacy was that it assumed all men to be good and empathetic at heart, endowed with an innate drive to harm no one who would not fight back.

There were no Borgians anymore.

The Maysalean Perfect were pacifist but not blind. A man just had to glance around to find villains willing to eat him alive, then sell his bones.

Maysaleans were worldly enough to distinguish between ideal and real.

The second Perfect was the Grolsacher, Pacific. His speech was heavily accented and strong with dialect. Two more Perfect arrived before sundown. Brother Bell had made his home in Arcgent before he put the world aside. Brother Sales hailed from Cain, in Argony. He was in the Connec on a pilgrimage of personal discovery. His dialect was impenetrable.

That night St. Jeules went to sleep certain that momentous decisions would be made in their shy little village.

THE SYNOD OF THE PERFECT BEGAN FORMALLY MIDWAY through the second week of Mantans. Twenty-four Perfect had gathered. Their presence was a strain on the village. The people grumped about the disruption while pocketing startling amounts of money and taking advantage of the free labor.

The Perfect baffled the Episcopal faction by treating the female Perfect as the equals of men.

Equality had been part of early Chaldarean practice but had fallen to revisionism even before me founding prophets left the world.

The non-Maysaleans of St. Jeules were disappointed by the absence of orgies. Nor did the Perfect hold midnight masses where they celebrated their love for the Night.

The great difficulty for the Brothen Church in the End of Connec was that everyone there had friends or neighbors or cousins who were heretics. Everyone got an occasional glimpse of the truth. Maysaleans truly were Seekers After Light. And their gentle witnessing drew purses away from the established Church.

Sublime and Bishop Serifs were correct.

The Church was losing the Connec.

If the Connec went, the spread of heresy would accelerate. The Grail Emperor might profess it simply to seize a new weapon to wield in his squabble with Brothe.

The Maysalean Heresy was dangerous in ways that only a few of the Perfect understood. Which was one purpose of the gathering at St. Jeules.

The Seekers had good friends in Antieux, close to Bishop Serifs. They had friends in Brothe itself. And Sublime had numerous enemies willing to befriend the Seekers for as long as he survived.