Dardalion sensed his presence and opened his eyes. The old man looked tired, his eyes red-rimmed and sorrowful.
‘Welcome, Lord Abbot,’ said Dardalion.
‘What have you done?’ asked the old man.
‘My Lord, I am sorry for the pain you feel, but I can only do what I feel is right.’
‘You have sundered my brotherhood. Twenty-nine priests are now preparing for war and death. It cannot be right.’
‘If it is wrong, we will pay for it, for the Source is righteous and will suffer no evil.’
‘Dardalion, I came to plead with you. Leave this place, find a far monastery in another land and return to your studies. The Source will show you the path.’
‘He has shown me the path, my lord.’
The old man bowed his head and tears fell to the grass.
‘I am powerless, then, against you?’
‘Yes, my lord. Whereas I am not against you at all.’
‘You are now a leader, chosen by those who would follow you. What title will you carry, Dardalion. The Abbot of Death?’
‘No, I am not an abbot. We will fight without hate and we will find no joy in the battle. And when it is won – or lost – we will return to what we were.’
‘Can you not see the folly in your words? You will fight evil on its own ground, with its own weapons. You will defeat it. But will that end the war? It may stop the Brotherhood, but there are other brotherhoods and other evils. Evil does not die, Dardalion. It is a weed in the garden of life. Cut it, burn it, uproot it, yet will it return the stronger. This path of yours has no ending – the war merely changes.’
Dardalion said nothing, the truth of the Abbot’s words hammering home to him.
‘In this you are right, my lord. I see that. And I see also that you are correct when you name me “Abbot”. We cannot merely become Soul Warriors. There must be order and our mission must be finite. I will consider your words carefully.’
‘But you will not change your immediate course?’
‘It is set. What I have done, I have done in faith and I will not go back on it, any more than you will break your own faith.’
‘Why not, Dardalion? You have already broken faith once. You took an oath that all human life -all life, indeed – would be sacred to you. Now you have slain several men and have eaten meat. Why should one more act of “faith” concern you?’
‘I cannot argue with that, my lord,’ said Dardalion. ‘The truth of it grieves me.’
The Abbot pushed himself to his feet. ‘I hope that history does not recall you and your Thirty, Dardalion, though I fear that it will. Men are always impressed by acts of violence. Build your legend carefully, lest it destroy all we stand for.’
The Abbot walked away into the darkening dusk where Astila and the other priests waited in silence. They bowed as he passed, but he ignored them.
The priests gathered in a ring around Dardalion and waited while he concluded his prayers. Then he looked up.
‘Welcome, my friends. Tonight we must aid Lord Karnak, but above this we must learn about ourselves. There is more than a chance that the path we follow is the road to perdition, for it may be that everything we do is against the will of the Source. So we must hold in our hearts the strength of our faith and the belief in our cause. Tonight some of us may die. Let us not travel to the Source with hate in us. We will begin now by joining in prayer. We will pray for our enemies, and we will forgive them in our hearts.’
‘How can we forgive them and then slay them?’ asked a young priest.
‘If we do not forgive, then hate will flower. But think on this: if you had a dog that became rabid, you would slay it with regret. You would not hate it. That is what I ask. Let us pray.’
As darkness closed in around them they concluded their communion, and their spirits rose into the night sky.