Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

duel or otherwise striking like he intends to kill. It is vital to my honor that I abide by the standards of duels, and vital to my worship of Weltyr that I abide by the contractual agreements into which I enter. There can be no intercession from you in the actual duel.”

Her features once again serious, Valeria fell in line with me.

“Very well, Rorke,” she said, searching my face with a sternness of her own. “But if this duel takes a turn against you—”

“Now, Valeria…” With a somewhat wry grin at my own brash nature, I patted her cheek. “What are the odds of that?”

In part, I joked; but in greater truth I held in my heart a glowing confidence in my future success. To say such things aloud was to invite an ill fate—at the very least to lose friends. After our discussion, Valeria understood the root of my confidence and the importance of the change that had begun within me. Even with that intimate understanding between two loyal servants of the divine, however, there were secret things that could not be expressed.

Before we left, I hovered by the dresser. The Scepter, still in its silk wrapping, lay upon its surface.

This was the object for which I’d journeyed so long. That very same for which I willingly enslaved myself and risked my very life.

Here it sat.

There was something infinitely sorrowful about the thought of submitting it to the Order—not just because it marked the end of my journey, but because it may well have marked the end of my relationship with that very same society of honorable knights into which I once hoped to be inducted.

This was the dream of an entire lifetime—what I’d thought I wanted since being old enough to want. The acclaim and glory that came with being one of Weltyr’s anointed paladins was incredible, to say the least. Zweiding might stroll through the streets of Skythorn and, by the time he had traveled twelve blocks, would have been offered several gold ounces’ worth of goods and services. Not to mention the praise of women and admiration of children! It was an enviable existence, to be certain.

But my Master had all but informed me that there were worthier occupations in his name—and that immobile institutions could not contain the full experience of his truths.

To whom do you owe your fealty?

The question returned to me so many times! The answer had been simple at first, but the more I pondered it, the more I found it steeped in complication.

Weltyr was the answer, and the only answer. But since those first raven-eyed glints of memory through the darkness of pre-existence, the Church that clothed and fed and educated me had also taught me that Weltyr’s word was only knowable through the outlet of its institutional teachings. I had been educated in an infinite number of examples of men who came forward claiming to know better than the Church.

The result, each time, was the same. Inevitably, a new religious cult would be founded. Time would pass, and the group would either dissolve or grow to a competing faith. Weltyr’s word would be woven through all of it, but nothing would be as true as the Church’s word.

So I had been taught, at any rate.

But, were it possible to spread Weltyr’s faith without the superficial structures of Church or cult, such esoteric truths would resemble those very witchcrafts the Order sought to stamp out. Independent soothsaying and magical prayers were not just considered a danger to oneself when engaged outside of the Church. They were in fact regarded as a greater threat to society. They were gateways to radical thought and to certain alienation from the only divine truth.

And there was I, walking the dark streets of Skythorn with my heathen durrow beloved, about to end my engagement to the Order.

I had grown certain of it. The notion had turned itself over and over in my mind, transforming from a possibility to an inevitability. I would not back down from the duel, so the consequences would be great one way or another. No matter how I arranged the events in my mind, I could not see Zweiding accepting me into the Order. Not with the duel; and not with Valeria.

She who was foremost among my beloved companions bore the Scepter with me through the city streets. I felt too unclean to touch it then. My acceptance of what was about to happen to me made me somehow forget those parts of my sacred experience wherein my worthiness was assured.

However, no matter how I tried to rationalize the teaching of the Church with what had been told to me, I could not help but fear that I did the wrong thing. Was I mad, or simply stupid? At the gates of the Temple, while Valeria marveled about her from beneath the edges of her hood, I paused before the threshold to say a prayer. The guards at either side of the gate looked respectfully away, paying no mind to myself or my companion.

What did I pray before entering the site of the duel?

That Weltyr might send me a sign—a true sign that it had indeed been he who visited me. That I was right to follow these declarations coming to me from outside the jurisdiction of the Church.

Then, with Valeria at my right hand, I entered the Temple gates for the last time.

The halls were quiet with reverence for a new day, though monks and priests and soldiers of all stations already moved about. Fresh incense sweetened the air and soft prayers filled my heart with longing. This was the home of my childhood, Weltyr, where I first learned to love you! Was I really meant to leave all this behind?

But I chided myself as we mounted the same staircase Elishta-bet and I had taken to the Rectory Hall. My attachment to the Church was nothing more than that—attachment. Attachment to youth, to nostalgia. It was a longing for the innocent