14. The illegal practice of worship
Previously:
Bial, lost to the world, sitting outside the dorm, dreams the dreams of the poisoned.
How did he get the book?
A book that, should anybody find out about it, would have led to his banishment. And this is not the kind of place you’d want to be banished from.
Not the kind of place you’d like to live in, mind, but being banished from it would be worse.
Out into those endless dunes. To await your fate.
The book, the idea of the book, knowing that somewhere, out there, it must exist, tormented Bial. Bored of looking after ugly little girls with no future but that red or white veil, bored of the sand and the dunes and the endless, repetitive food, he went looking for the book.
Somewhere out there, beyond the dune sea, a great white city had banned their gods. Banned their worship.
They’d sent grey men with grey, smiling faces, to strip the temples and the chapels. This had been a monastery once. The walls of the chapel are scarred with the images they removed, the statues they destroyed.
And back then, everybody agreed: it was a good thing. It was the best thing. They had learned the hard way, the histories said.
The one thing they didn’t want in the world any more were these terrible, all-consuming gods.
