“A reading from the Book of Counsel.”

Sitting in his pew, Zephyrin watched as the priest held up a gold-gilt tome before the Director of the lyceum. Father Director Guerinus leaned in to kiss Selena’s words, then read them aloud to the assembled student body and faculty in a voice that had surprised Zephyrin the first time he heard it. Deep and carrying, it was incongruent with his soft face and babylike features. Zephyrin closed his eyes, hearing but not listening to the readings, which in any case were given in the archaic language of the ancient Fidenate Republic.

A week had passed, the Grand Prefect had acknowledged his request to absent himself from the lyceum like most of the other boarders, and it was now the day before the commencement of the winter holidays. Palpable in the air was the thinly restrained ebullience of a student body that knew itself a scant few hours away from shaking off its fetters, and though for a very different reason, Zephyrin couldn’t help but partake in the sense of anticipation. By this time tomorrow, he would be in the inner city, making the acquaintance of a woman who had lived through the birth and demise of two of Gaulyria’s kings.

Zephyrin rapidly did the math, and marveled that from the end point of his first life to the beginning of Mademoiselle Huron’s, there existed a span of almost exactly one and a half centuries. Even if his little investigation turned up nothing, conversing with her might yield some useful information about the era. Meanwhile, if Father Athand wondered at his sudden closeness with Foudris and desire to pass one of the holiest feasts on the liturgical calender at the residence of an ex-courtesan, he had made no mention of it.

Zephyrin had been sorely tempted to ask the priest pointblank whether his father had been definitively withdrawn from the academy or if his absence was merely temporary, but the image supplied by his imagination, that of the Grand Prefect giving him an odd, quizzical little smile—the most polite but impervious ‘what business is it of yours?’ one could expect to receive in one’s lifetime—made him subside at the decisive moment. No matter; there would be other opportunities, and more forthcoming administrators.

But for now, a sermon. At least, as soon as the Father Director, smoking thurifer in hand, finished incensing the altar. Nearly bald and of a modest stature rendered more diminutive by the flanking presences of Father Athand and a third priest, the celebrant gave the chain a few limp-wristed jerks, kissed the altar, then descended two carpeted marble steps to quit the sanctuary and ascend the chapel’s ornate wooden pulpit. When visible once more, the priest extended his right hand vertically to trace a clockwise circle over his heart, then reversed the motion to complete the solilunar sign. “By the Eternal Sun and Moon, amen.”

Zephyrin and his fellow students mirrored the gesture as the Father Director’s gleaming brow creased ever so slightly, then regained its habitual smoothness as he rearranged a page of his text. He cleared his throat, then opened his mouth. “‘No man saves himself alone.’ A word taken from today’s reading. Today, my dear pupils, I will tell you of the desert-dwelling Nykhrizomachroic tribesmen of the extremo oriens, who owe their descent to the former masters of Lôst Tiril. According to our missionaries in that region, of which there are but few, these nomadic people have to contend with sandstorms of uncommon ferocity. Charged with aether that still lingers in the atmosphere after the collapse of Lôst Tiril millennia hence, a storm can vent its fury for days, if not weeks, grievously afflicting their caravans.”

“To keep their formation intact and life and cargo whole, one tribe, the Rhōdakīn, adopted a certain practice, consisting of each member of the convoy tying a thick rope through his belt, which joins him to his traveling companions. Simple but effective, this guide-rope ensures that no mount will wander astray, lest its disoriented rider be lost in the inhospitable wastes that his people are constrained to call home. Therefore each member of the caravan, we may fairly say, is tethered.”

A pause. The Father Director regarded his sheet of paper with an unfocused gaze, then seemed to come back to himself and looked down at his young congregation with a twinkle in his eye. “I say tethered, but there are those who disagree. They would say, ‘shackled’, or perhaps, ‘enchained.’ But is this not absurd? To be bound can be a punishment, certainly—the punishment given to a malefactor, for instance. But who will not desire to be bound when it is a matter of saving his life?”

Ah, so it’s this type of sermon.

“The answer seems obvious: were we travelers in that same desert, we would beg the caravan leader to join us to him through the guide-rope. Otherwise, we would assuredly die of thirst, perishing most miserably. A fool is he, then, who after seeking counsel in his heart, decides to make the journey alone, even as the desert threatens to swallow him alive.”

Zephyrin saw a boy whisper something into the ear of another; a prefect strode over and unceremoniously yanked him up by the arm and dragged him to the back of the church. Imperturbably, as if he had seen something no more consequential than the swatting of a fly, the Father Director continued, “But my dear children, this author of his own folly and demise… is he not we ourselves? For are we not all in a whirling storm, buffeted by cares as numerous as there are grains of sand? Though voyagers seeking the oasis of eternity, the paradisaical caravansary where we shall rejoin and abide with our relations and friends, never again to know separation, do we not strive on our own against a relentless and cruel onslaught?”

A dramatic pause ensued, and Zephyrin had to admit it was judiciously employed. Slowly, in a breathy tone, as if to evoke the dryness of the desert with his voice, the Father Director pursued his exhortation. “Yes, we walk alone. There is no guide-rope; we must confess this. Our tether—the only we once possessed—is gone now. Severed… at the moment of our birth. How!”—a sweeping motion of the hand, all the more striking for being the first since the sermon’s start—“How shall we reestablish the bond once it has been severed?”

The orator exhaled through his nostrils. He raised his head and contemplated the chapel’s ceiling, as intently as if a choir of angels was descending through a rift in the empyreans, then abruptly fixed the congregation with his dark eyes once more. “The answer, of course, is that we cannot. And we should not. For if a man is severed from his earthly mother unto the corruption of death, he is joined to his spiritual mother unto eternal life.”

There was a shift in the preacher’s voice; it became quiet with self-assured exultation. “Yes, dear pupils. The Goddess offers us a tether, a guide-rope, a—let us not blush to say it—a spiritual umbilical cord which binds us to her in a sense more real than we were bound to our mothers according to the flesh. How many years will your mothers give you? Eighty? Seventy? Fifty? Twenty? Perhaps… less.”

Had he not listened to a nearly identical sermon in his first childhood, Zephyrin thought he would have been… not riveted, perhaps, but at least quite absorbed by the priest’s words.

“First the Goddess wept for us, her beloved children—our lachrymation. She foresaw the wrong-doings of the human race, and cleansed us by her grief. Of course she did; she possesses all the divine perfections in their plenitude; she loves more than every earthly mother combined. That is how great her love is. But then, the believer must ask himself: that being so, will she be content with simply weeping for her children? The Eternal forbid!”

Now the priest actually looked angry, as if someone had actually raised a hand, or seemed on the verge of voicing an objection. Regaining his composure at length, he continued more placidly: “Thus we come to the Joining. Some of you will partake in this sacrament on the 14th of December, ten days from now. What will happen then, young communicants, is that the Goddess will unite her essence to your own. As a mortal mother nourishes her babe to strengthen it, so will Selena nourish you to restore your lost immortality and glory.”

“But why, some of you—perhaps most of you—will ask, does the Goddess not communicate her essence directly to us, her poor children? Why not communicate her immortality to us directly through a stream of her own, divine mana, a torrent of life and light that penetrates us to our inmost being, vivifying our nature and repairing its wounds? Why must you instead watch as a doddering old man ambles up to an altar, infuses his mana into a goblet’s contents, and solidifies wine into little crimson crystals?” asked the Father Director self-deprecatingly, almost peevishly.

“The answer, dear pupils, is that our common Mother, no less than the Divine Energies, is fond—very fond— of intermediaries. Just as the mother’s lifeblood passes through the intermediary of her pap to nourish her child, the Goddess chooses to spiritually nourish us through an intermediary, endarkened man. Yet this only beckons another question, one that sooner or later occurs to us all: why wine? A mother nourishes her little ones with milk; it is therefore curious, we think, that wine, apparent symbol of blood, should be mingled with mana to represent her essence. In fact, it was this very thought that provided impetus to the heretical Lacterianist movement of the third century. They insisted on using goat’s milk in their rites…”

Father Guerinus shook his head with eyes shut in horrified disbelief. When he opened them, it was to regard the students in the pews with compassion, as if beseeching them to understand. “Though a mother gives life to her child through her blood, the child would reject that same blood. The blood must pass through an intermediary; it must be converted into sweet, palatable milk, fit for the infant to drink.”

“Now, ask yourselves once more: why does the Goddess not nourish us with her blood? Is it because our Celestial Mother’s blood would have an acrid taste? By no means. The first, obvious reason is that the Goddess does not possess a corporeal form. If she did, one might suppose that in her veins would flow the purest ichor—and yet even then, we have good reason to believe that she would still prefer to feed her offspring by other means.”

The Father Director smiled knowingly at his captive audience. “Is it not possible that, just as the Increate is pleased to use the Goddess as His instrument in our restoration, so too does she use us lesser instruments, flawed though we be? Even an old fool such as I? Is it not possible that like the tribesmen in the desert who are all relayed to one another, she wishes to link all humankind, that we may be saved by cooperation and interdependence?”

“‘No man saves himself alone.’ Dear pupils, we are all of course looking forward to celebrating the Festival of Light—E’Cuèll an Louz—as our ancestors called it—ten days from now. There will be amusements and delicacies, such as sweet fuihlien cakes, so charmingly reminiscent of the full moon.” Father Guerinus looked up from the text of his sermon. “But, my children, in the midst of these rejoicings, mind us that we do not lose sight of the leader of our convoy.”

“Let us therefore keep our eyes trained on the Goddess even in the season of rejoicing; so doing, we cannot want when visited by the days of adversity. Recipients of the Goddess’s tender love, let each and every one of us endeavor to fashion our hearts into lachrymatories, in which we store up the tears spilled for us by our divine benefactress as so many treasures. Where our offenses multiplied, still a greater flood of tears has poured to wash them away, and lave us of our faults. Thus will we arrive at perfect union with she who is perfection. By the Eternal Sun and Moon…” A repetition of the solilunar sign, and the Father Director withdrew from the pulpit to carefully descend its spiraling steps.

The dozen other clerics present rose from the opposing choirstalls and as Father Guerinus mounted the steps of the altar, he was rejoined by the Grand Prefect and other assisting cleric. The three of them approached the dragon-bone lanthorn suspended above the stone cloth-covered altar, which the Father Director would light with his mana to symbolize humanity’s promise of renewed fidelity.

It was a good, if unexceptional sermon. Zephyrin had heard the like dozens of times before, in Eleutheria’s Royal Chapel. If this one had particularly sustained his interest, that was undoubtedly because it was made remarkable by his knowledge that, less than a year removed from this very day, the Father Director would very publicly and unapologetically apostatize from the faith.