Flesh-&-Bone(94)

“A miracle, Honored One.”

“Yes. It was proof, you see. It showed others that I was indeed the first saint of this church.” They walked through the forest as casually as if the day had not been filled with screams and murder. Two scholars idly discussing a point of philosophy on a lovely afternoon. “And then I found Mother Rose. She was . . . merely ‘Rose’ then. A woman who had lost herself even before the world fell down around her. I rescued her from savage men, heretics who saw the coming of the darkness as an invitation to hurt and humiliate those weaker than themselves.”

“I remember,” said Brother Peter faintly.

“I know you do. And you remember the years that followed, as Rose accepted the darkness into her heart and became elevated as the mother of all.”

“Yes.” Brother Peter could not keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“Those were good days. You were so young and yet so bright. So eager to learn the ways of the blade and the purity that is the darkness. Pride is a sin, but I will accept whatever rebuke is due me for the pride I felt in you. Then and now. You have been the rock on which I built the Night Church.” They walked a few paces. “You, Peter. Not her.”

Brother Peter bowed his head in humility.

“Tell me,” said Saint John, “when you look inside your head and your heart . . . at those times when you are in the depths of prayer and meditation . . . what does paradise look like?”

“Look like?” asked Peter.

“Yes. If you were to paint a picture of what waits for us—what you want to be on the other side of the doorway, what you truly believe is beyond this world—what is that picture? Describe it to me.”

They walked for half a dozen paces before Peter said, “It is the darkness.”

“And—?”

“The darkness is all. The darkness is enough. The darkness is everything.”

Saint John nodded. “That is what I see. That is what I believe is there.”

“But I—”

“And when you think about this world—when you imagine what this planet will be when the last of the heretics is gone, and when the last of us communes with our own blades so that our darkness joins with eternity—tell me, Brother Peter, what does this world look like?”

They were at the edge of the forest now, and they looked out on the vast desert that stretched away before them and vanished into the shimmering horizon. Brother Peter nodded toward the endless sand. “That is what I see, Honored One.”

“The desert?”

“The peacefulness. Empty of human pain and misery. Empty of struggle. Restored to the perfection of nature.”

“And all that man has made and built?”

“It will turn to dust. This world will heal of the infection that is man. The world will be whole and perfect again.”

They stood there for many minutes as they each considered this.

“Do you know,” asked Saint John at length, “that I always knew this day was coming?”

Brother Peter turned and stared at him.

“Mother Rose,” said the saint. “It was inevitable that she would betray me. It was ordained that it happen. Like in the Christian story of Jesus and Judas. The betrayal was always part of the plan. Judas was a good and righteous man for most of his life, but in a moment of weakness, or perhaps pride, he stepped off the path.”

Brother Peter nodded.

“For ordinary people,” the saint continued, “such a thing can be forgiven. It can be ascribed to human weakness. As with Thomas, who doubted, and Peter, who denied. Those are momentary weaknesses, forgivable sins.”

“But not Judas?”

“Not him for the Christians, and not Mother Rose for us. She is not an ordinary person. Neither are you, and neither am I. Why? We have looked into our minds and have seen the true face of our god.”

“The darkness,” said Brother Peter.

“The darkness,” said Saint John. “I fear that Mother Rose has turned away from the darkness and allowed herself to become seduced by the light. By this world. Not the pure world that will come, but the corrupt and infected world that existed before the Fall. I have long suspected that she enjoyed being in the flesh. She has become seduced by its illusion of power.”

“Yes.”

“It is why she has worked so hard to recruit new reapers.”

“But we need—”