A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

Where was the punishment
for crimes committed, retribution for wrongs enacted? There is, in this, no moral compass. No need for one, for every
path leads to the same place, where blessing is passed out, no
questions asked.
    The cult of the Redeemer . . . it is an abomination.
    She had begun to understand how priesthoods were
born, the necessity of sanctioned forms, rules and
prohibitions, the moral filter defined by accepted notions
of justice. And yet, she could also see how profoundly
dangerous such an institution could become, as arbiters of
morality, as dispensers of that justice. Faces like hooded
vultures, guarding the door to the court, choosing who
gets inside and who doesn't. How soon before the first
bag of silver changes hands? How soon before the first
reprehensible criminal buys passage into the arms of the
blind, unquestioning Redeemer?
    She could fashion such a church, could formalize the cult
into a religion, and she could impose a harsh, unwavering
sense of justice. But what of the next generation of priests
and priestesses? And the one after that, and the next one?
How long before the hard rules make that church a self-righteous,
power-mongering tyranny? How long before
corruption arrives, when the hidden heart of the religion
is the simple fact that the Redeemer embraces everyone
who comes before him ? A fact virtually guaranteed to breed
cynicism in the priesthood, and from such cynicism secular
acquisitiveness would be inevitable.
    This loss was not just a loss of faith in the Redeemer. It
was a loss of faith in religion itself.
    Her prayers touched a presence, were warmed by the
nearby breath of an immortal. And she pleaded with that
force. She railed. Made demands. Insisted on explanations,
answers.
    And he took all her anger into his embrace, as he did
everything else. And that was wrong .
    There were two meanings to the word 'benighted'.
The first was pejorative, a form of dour ignorance. The
second was an honour conferred in service to a king or
queen. It was this latter meaning that had been applied to
Seerdomin, a title of respect.
    There was a third definition, one specific to Black Coral
and to Seerdomin himself. He dwelt in Night, after all,
where Darkness was not ignorance, but profound wisdom,
ancient knowledge, symbolic of the very beginning of
existence, the first womb from which all else was born.
He dwelt in Night, then, and for a time had made daily
pilgrimages out to the barrow with its forbidden riches,
a one-man procession of rebirth that Salind only now
comprehended.
    Seerdomin was, in truth, the least ignorant of them all.
Had he known Itkovian in his life? She thought not. Indeed,
it would have been impossible. And so whatever had drawn
Seerdomin to the cult arrived later, after Itkovian's death,
after his ascension. Thus, a personal crisis, a need that he
sought to appease with daily prayers.
    But . . . why bother? The Redeemer turned no one away.
Blessing and forgiveness was a certainty. The bargaining
was a sham. Seerdomin need only have made that procession
once, and been done with it.
    Had no one confronted him, he would still be making
his daily pilgrimage, like an animal pounding its head
against the bars of a cage – and, disregarded to one side,
the door hanging wide open.
    Was that significant? Seerdomin did not want the
Redeemer's embrace. No, the redemption he sought was of
a different nature.
    Need drove her from the bed in the temple, out into
Night. She felt weak, light-headed, and every step seemed
to drain appalling amounts of energy into the hard cobbles
underfoot. Wrapped in a blanket, unmindful of those she
passed, she walked through the city.
    There was meaning in the barrow itself, in the treasure
that none could touch. There was meaning in Seerdomin's
refusal of the easy path. In his prayers that asked either
something the Redeemer could not grant, or nothing at
all. There was, perhaps, a secret in the Redeemer's very
embrace, something hidden, possibly even deceitful. He
took in crimes and flaws and held it all in abeyance . . .
until when? The redeemed's death? What then? Did some
hidden accounting await each soul?
    How much desperation hid within each and every
prayer uttered? The hope for blessing, for peace, for the
sense that something greater than oneself might acknowledge
that hapless self, and might indeed alter all of reality
to suit the self's desires. Were prayers nothing more than
attempted bargains? A pathetic assertion of some kind