But she
persisted, trusting him not to harm her, and when she had quieted him
sufficiently, she finally took hold of his halter and walked him over
beside the landslide.
One look had already informed her that no savage beast, no matter how
enormous, would ever dig down through that mass of broken rock and
great tilted slabs of flat slate to violate it's sanctity.
She knelt there, and prayed to the Invisible God, beseeching him to
welcome this lost soul into whatever comfort or rest he might be
pleased to grant.
Fitly was she garbed in black, the better to meet this unforseen hour.
She remained kneeling there throughout the entire morning, bowing
often, weeping in fits and starts, as she pondered the events that had
led her to grieve over this common foot soldier, whom she had never
known. This, so soon after losing Habrunt.
This poor man had obviously secretly admired and imitated Si'Wren's
beliefs, what little he could learn of her without arousing the
suspicion of his comrades-at-arms, without her ever even knowing of it,
and for only this, upon being finally discovered or found out somehow
in the matter, he had been miserably and wretchedly set upon without
her knowing of that either.
Now he lay buried under a monumental cairn of broken slate, the
enormous flat slabs of irregularly-shaped rock heaped up over his
mortal remains as by the hand of the Invisible God himself, never to
know with what grief that she, who had once been his shining example,
his supreme inspiration and witness before the Invisible God, or with
what intense longing and remorse that she, the one whom he had adored
from a distance, would eventually suffer as a result of his decision to
follow her in her beliefs.
Pages:
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355