Brother Candle raised a brushy gray eyebrow. "I'd rather you call me Brother."

"I have Maysalean evangelists in my family, Brother. I recognize the light in your eye that means a bout of holy instruction is due to begin." The Count was known for his sardonic sense of humor.

Brother Candle's other eyebrow jumped up. Then he chuckled.

"That won't work, either, Brother. I feel no need to be your pal. You people are transparent manipulators."

"Then I bow to youth's need to make its own mistakes."

"Transparent."

Brother Candle gave up. Count Raymone would give him no foothold. It was too late, anyway. Hell's tendrils had been creeping into the End of Connec for years. Ill-tempered time had begotten evil pups. He was wasting it trying to stem the cruel tide. His obligation now was to preserve and cherish what little he could.

He snorted. A Seeker After Light, a Perfect, did not entertain such conceits as Hell. Hell existed only in the Episcopal mind. The more primitive Chaldarean cults, on the far reaches of the world, believed in an Adversary but not in a Pit of Eternal Torment. Brother Candle did not know how the Hell concept had crept into the western form of Chaldareanism. In other strains, as was the case in the ancestral Devedian and Dainshau religions, all punishment and reward happened right here, right now, in this world.

The Deves and Dainshaus should have had the wickedness hammered out of them by now. Their God and the Chaldareans had been punishing them forever. "You are amused, Master?"

"Brother. My thoughts veered to the plight of those who reject the Path. These days they must believe their gods particularly spiteful and callous."

"And no less do they deserve, bending their knees to the Tyranny of the Night."

And there lay the paradox of the world.

God was real, if long unseen. All gods were real. Sometimes they reached into the mortal world. Every demon, devil, and sprite ever imagined was real, somewhere. Spirits of tree and river and stone were real. Things that lay in wait in the dark were painfully real and still found even in lands where the ruling faith officially denied them. Even in the End of Connec, which had been acclaimed as tame since the days of the Old Empire, night things were hidden away. The little ones remained where they'd always been, in the forests, in the mountains, in ancient stone circles ignorant people thought had been erected by giants. They avoided notice because in the End of Connec they were far from any source of power. They would never grow into anything more terrible than what they were. They avoided notice because whenever their presence became obvious Episcopal spirit hunters came to destroy them.

Bigger things of the Night were bound into statues or stones and buried beneath crossroads, or into magical swords or enchanted rings seldom used because they were inherently treacherous, or into the tombstones and gateway arches of old-time pagan cemeteries. Such few as had survived the cleansing unleashed by the sorcerer-captains of the Old Brothen Empire.

Once there had been those powerful enough to be accounted gods or godlings. Those were dead or their power and being had been scattered in a thousand fragments of broken stone by the conquering world-tamers of old. The world preferred them scattered and harmless if they could not be permanently destroyed.

Permanent was difficult when belief could quicken the most lost from any stray wisps of power.

There were individuals who could pull them back together. Sorcerers hungry for power. Though in the west no man had become that powerful for more than a dozen centuries. Here, men of talent were, inevitably, drawn into the Collegium. Where they endured constant monitoring by others like themselves. Or they perished.

Brother Candle said, "My creed won't let me bless what you do, Count Raymone. And yet, what you do, however ruthless, has to be done to stem the tide of darkness."

Where darkness and the Night were real forces, not personifications of evil. They could not be that. They were neither good nor evil. Not till someone decided and painted the label on, like a caste mark on the forehead. Or until someone used them to evil purpose.

Brother Candle was at peace with his conscience. He had done all that he could do. But he was troubled, even so. More was wakening than just the rage, greed, and lust of mortal men.

TWO DOZEN SOLDIERS DEMONSTRATED SOUTH OF CARON ande Lette, drawing the attention of the mercenaries. Bishop Farfog moved to confront them, contemptuous of their numbers. The villains who remained with him were not bright enough to worry about a handful of men who seemed determined to bait them.

The Bishop himself did not see that – though he was supposed to think these few wanted to lead him into a trap. Count Raymone Garete's clever strategy nearly foundered because his enemy was too stupid to be suspicious.

Inertia and laziness kept the Grolsachers from charging. Plus a dim fear that the defenders of Caron ande Lette, all twenty-two, might fall on them from behind.

While the few demonstrated and the Raults waited, Count Raymone's troops slipped past, out of sight, to the west, taking care to raise no dust. A few passed to the east, too, filtering through the trees along the river's edge. The demonstrators withdrew. The Grolsachers resumed taunting the besieged and dodging the occasional arrow.

The demonstrators reappeared next morning. With two hundred friends. When some mercenaries considered following the example of friends smart enough to take off earlier, they discovered Connecten companies behind them. They watched their pathetic camp be overrun.

There was not much of a fight. The Grolsachers scattered, suffering their casualties on the run.

The Connectens only pursued those who did not flee in the direction they wanted. Back along the river, toward home. Where they found themselves ambushed, pinned down by archers, then set upon by heavy infantry.

That left the river. The Connectens let them be once they entered the water.

Bishop Farfog was one of the few who swam well enough to reach the far bank. Having abandoned his armor and plunder.

Brother Candle arrived while Count Raymone's men were burying the mercenary dead, some of whom had not yet stopped breathing. They had no need to lay down any of their own. The rabble had scattered before the Connectens suffered any damage.

The Perfect Master saw no one who had died of wounds from the front. Many looked like they had been murdered after their capture. Few prisoners had been retained.

Which fit Count Raymone's character. The Count believed that the best way to discourage attacks on the Connec was to obliterate anyone inclined to attack, leaving the corpses to the scavengers.

Brock Rault and his brothers were behind what courtesy was being shown the fallen.

The Perfect Master walked the killing fields in sadness. The mercenaries, refugees and Grolsachers alike, were the poorest of the poor. The dead often even lacked weapons worth looting. They had counted on arming themselves with weapons taken from their victims.

Nor was that new. Grolsach in particular produced poor, would-be killers the way Ormienden produced wines and the End of Connec generated songs, poetry, paintings, and marvelous tapestries.

Grolsachers led by Adolf Black had joined the ill-fated Arnhander incursion that ended with the Black Mountain Massacre. Two years before that, thousands of Grolsachers, again in service to Arnhand, perished in that kingdom's defeat at Themes, when the King of Arnhand tried to enforce his dubious rights in Tramaine.

Brother Candle joined Brock Rault and his siblings, Booth, Socia, and Thurm. Brock and Booth were thoughtful, Thurm unsettled. Socia was totally bloodthirsty. She wanted to put heads on poles facing the Grolsach border.