All he had ever had to do was listen; the sacred music had always been there. The pain and the indignity that he had suffered had been for naught. With the best of intentions, the Stone Seers had completely dismantled Emuel’s faith.

And now he sat before the man who had started him on that journey into spiritual turmoil — Querilous Fitch.

“You used me,” Emuel said, looking down at the restraints that cut into his wrists and bound him to the chair.

“The Lord uses us all, Emuel,” Querilous wheezed. “And you shouldn’t believe everything those apostates on Morat told you. After all, look what happened to them; they knew the terrible judgement of our god.”

“They were killed by the Chadassa.”

“I suppose that you could look at it like that.” Querilous chuckled, and the hollow, dry laugh echoed down the tubes that regulated his breathing. Emuel tried not to look at the foul contraption that kept the mind-manipulator alive, but it was hard to draw his eyes away from the pipes extending from the centre of Querilous’s chest, and the juddering apparatus that crowded the back of his wheelchair.

“You’ve changed,” he said.

“The whole peninsula has changed, and some of us have been caught up in events beyond our control. Myself, I met something rather unpleasant in the Sardenne. But, I can assure you that my current situation is temporary. Now, to matters at hand… Yuri!”

A sallow youth shuffled from the shadows and wheeled Querilous’s chair to behind where Emuel sat. Yuri lifted the manipulator’s crippled right hand and placed it on top of the eunuch’s head, where it slipped limply off.

“Damn it, boy!” Querilous snapped. “Do it properly or I’ll have you flogged.”