Shadow at the temple – Chapter 9

Night has approached, the sounds of bustling crowds diminished and the waves of traders, workers and guards cutting across the streets are not as intrusive, nor visible. The daily clatter which affects plenty of the general populace during the city’s waking hours has dispersed, being replaced rather by the more discreet tones of the dark, where youngsters, elderly and those drawn into early mornings do not roam.
This is not to liken the city to a complete stillness, deprived of people speaking their minds, enacting deals in the dark or taking forth goods which one might not behold in the light of day. No, this time would fly in the face of such astounding morality. For some, it is within this manner of shade that Dezasha sincerely awakens and gives off colors unimagined. In some cities, this blackness covering the streets nearly grant them another name, to be at such a contrast with the day that they do not belong to one another, even if this is not as near to the bone of Dezasha.

Malkiz has during the daytime hours geared herself and Eyren up, and arranged for them to be adapted to a nightly excursion. The pair has donned darker and modest cloaks, heavier boots and she petitioned Eyren to bring solely weapons which could be hid below such outfits. The wherefore would be to blend into the shadows of this gloom in the sky, but likewise to inject themselves between people by the corners of the city without unease. In larger living spaces such as Dezasha, this is rarely an enormous weight to carry, even at night, off the back of the great degree of citizens that roam everywhere and which one may capitalize on. Cruising by unseen doesn’t entail enormous skill, but merely a quick hand and a keen eye for patrols.
More to it, though, Shaim Xil is not a restrictive region for movement nor do the sentries often have to watch the streets for such individuals. The company in charge generally has to strengthen their own capabilities to shift about wares or individuals in the shadows and it’s easier avoiding your rivals if you act on the same level.

Along these streets, Malkiz escorts her partner into a further open area among a conjunction of alleys, where a morsel of hubbub can be eavesdropped upon. A minor stage has been erected, and some manner of preacher has risen upon it. All around the area it’s packed with members reasonably intended as audience, albeit not ones who come off in any sinister capacity. Their clothes and partially-intrigued, partially-upset behavior would bespeak that they’re merely concerned commoners in Eyren’s eyes, and the ones whom the message is aimed at, whatever that subject will be. What the knight-errant can’t judge is whether every single one of them are locals or if there might be travelers or merchants from afar who have joined this little party.

Malkiz slows her pace, swishes with her finger for Eyren to gain on her and whispers.
“Recall that this event is in all likelihood being monitored by the spies of the North River Freight Services too”, she tells her in Goetejul.

“Hmm”, emits Eyren. “Makes sense, I guess. I’d hazard they tap into all of these ‘iffy’ activities whenever they pop up, right?”

“That is exactly it. Nothing escapes their mindfulness; if it did, that would be grievous for their business superiority.”

“How will we recognize ’em, though?”

A glint bulges from Malkiz’s vision, which may hold some minor mockery.
“You won’t. That is why they’re spies, darling Rittmark.”

The northerner condenses her eyes, previous to letting out an annoyed groan.
“…shut your trap.”

The man who is up on the stage is one bearing a couple of canine traits, noticeably in his eyes, the peaked ears above his head which match his dark brown hair in color, and the tail behind him. His skin is a cool light brown, his gaze sturdy and hazel. Malkiz makes a sign at him for her partner to observe, whilst she speaks in soft tones.
“He is the man we’re looking out for, the newest Tenkeeper.”

“That’s Ozdemir?”

“Precisely. Although he has been here less than a year, his headway into the city’s organization has been terribly precipitous. He was quite vigorous in speed to phase out his predecessor, but this in turn generated some…enemies, one might say, among the top of the hierarchy. It’s a wonder they haven’t moved against him up until now, but I suspect this won’t be catered to forever.”

“They’re a lot more indulgent than I’ve seen in Steorshlag or even Ngoyamen, that’s for sure”, says Eyren.

Ozdemir starts off his show with a prayer to the Shades at length, which silences the masses who join him in offering these terms to the sublime colors and all nearby individuals are ones which Eyren would take to be faithful. It’s not as if most of this crowd can foresee the sentences he’s laying out, but they’re fairly obedient in terms of repeating them. To be fair, Eyren is not wholly religiously minded either, and thus everything that is spoken makes to be rather fresh to her as well. She hasn’t joined a heap of sermons or so much as a Temple meeting in several years, nor was that her tendency in her younger years. She only attended whenever her mother brought her to the one in the local town.

In the long term, this Ozdemir heads off from the nonspecific glory to the Shades and homes in on the main point of this gathering, his whole spiel as Eyren might view it.
“My friends, oh ye loyal to the most imposing of godly colors, ye believers of world’s true composition – heed my words!”, he exclaims, ahead of going into a speech which doesn’t differ overmuch from the one that Eyren has minded earlier. There’s shunning of North River, whilst simultaneously a form of reverence for what the Herdbrand represent; a commodity which makes the hair on the nape of the knight’s neck stand on end.

At Eyren’s left, she hears a snort out of Malkiz.
“I have qualms regarding if he would be saying as much should he have beheld the materiality of the Shadow Herd’s taint. Do you not agree?”

“Heh, maybe…”, Eyren whispers in return. “But I find that this is the popular assumption – no one can truly conceive of the affliction until they’ve seen it firsthand.”

“So it is.”

Raising his arms for a hush, Ozdemir rambles on.
“Sadek and his accomplices have caused more than sufficient damage to the very lifeblood of this city! Dezasha bleeds and the Shades mourn its fated passing into the squalor of abjection which will surely come to pass! But can we denounce them for it, when the subjects of Dezasha have done so little to repent and beseech their forgiveness? Not only the condemnable Chairman, but you too must decline to your knees and showcase the purity of your passion for salvation! Come, my friends, let us gather for another prayer to the Shades. With your entire hearts and minds, with your attested souls on the line, speak! Shout and shriek for the Shades’ mercy and deny the darkness which rests in your bosom! Only then will you once and for all comprehend the light which they stand for!”

Once they fall into cries of invocations to the Shades, the watching pair stands back and deliberates on their options, hoping not to be bothered for not engaging in this measure on their own. At that juncture, Eyren senses herself shifting towards a tone which arises behind her out of nowhere, boosted enough in volume for her to catch it.
“They speak of the desires of Fate, of its guidance and veracity. Of what men do wrong. Presumptuous, don’t you think?”

Eyren feels how her chest flutters and she blinks. Where did that voice stem from? And…why does it sound mildly familiar to her? She can’t pinpoint where she would’ve heard it prior, and yet there’s a factor in her which assures her she has. Spinning to face the source, she thereby takes in a person stood upon a roof of a minor building at her back. This one is clutching a staff or possibly a spear, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long, sweeping cloak which obscures their face. The visage is similarly recognizable, but she can’t tell the origin of it either. A manner of wanderer, possibly?
“Uh…yeah, perhaps”, Eyren agrees.

“You hesitate”, the wanderer points out, “but have you ever known Fate to be direct? To be sufficiently designated in its sheer whim that it would ever imply a tight-gripped teaching? Is Fate merciful to the point of leading men down a route which does not include inevitable doom? Would Fate ever allow itself to be predictable within such terms?”

Did she accidently bump into a variety of philosopher? Eyren can’t even properly place a gender on them, as it’s too murky. That said, they do harbor some capacity of logic she can’t deny. The knight factors these words in, peering off into the distance for a second. It can’t be overlooked that Fate is, by design, unambiguously unreadable and unknowable, discounting notions of kindness and cruelty, or the concept of a will at all. Especially in Steorshlag where she learnt the furthest of Fate’s fluctuating nature, it was believed Fate can take either side in a conflict, or none of them, for there is ultimately no product it enjoys besides its own. What is then the end which it seeks and discards lives by the thousands for? No one can know, and should you figure it’s worth learning, you’ll probably lose your own time on this world before cracking the case. Fate can be cruelty or salvation, remorse or certainty, unending life or swift death. It is both humanity’s bosom friend and its mortal enemy.

She diverts to address the stranger once more.
“You know, I-” Her words, nonetheless, die in her throat as the wanderer is nowhere to be seen. She takes a look around her immediate position, but no, there is no sign of them. Huh. What a peculiar person.

In moments, on the behest of the mission’s head issuing a finger at her, the duo detaches themselves from the crowd and Eyren rendezvouses with Malkiz once again a slight distance off from the sermon.
“These folks don’t got much of a fighter among them”, the northerner broaches. “Mainly laborers. Can’t be a huge risk, I don’t reckon.

“That may be”, Mal concedes, “but there is strength in numbers. Surely you have spied such effects in the past, no? Rebellions, uproars, mass deceptions…not to mention the news of the Bandit Queen’s movements.”

“Mm, can’t argue with that. To me, though, this talk of…the Shades providing some form of guidance doesn’t sound right. I’ve never found this to be true previously. Not in my experience, anyway. Perhaps that’s purely from a Steorshlagan perspective, but we tend to believe better in harsh realities and the callousness of gods. You can merely hope not to be strung along in whatever madness they’ll get up to.”

“Heh, that does sound as a fairly northern perspective, yes. In Ngoyamen, where I am from, the Shades are more fickle and multitudinous. There is rarely a single approach on how to view gods.
From what I hear, however, in this man’s homeland, the conservatives are a fairly major faction and they hold these ideas as fact.”

“His homeland?”, asks Eyren and glances up at Ozdemir on his stage. “Tsabchuur?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm. Having grown up only some miles from the border, can’t say I feel that point of view is as prevalent around those parts.”

Malkiz protrudes a faint smile.
“Mayhap this is in light of the magnitude of the regions? Don’t forget, he is presumably from the east.”

“Ah, right. You mentioned Vaarnetii, right?”

“Very much so. The Temple’s interior intricacy entails a variety of factions, and the conservatives is the bloc which represent people like this preacher. They have faith that the Shades are not mere passive colors of existence which one must petition for boons, but practically godlike figures with a will and an ideology one must bow to, to find the proper course and be granted a place of honor in Mannaze.”

Eyren arches her brow and browses her companion.
“Sounds like you’ve kept an eye on them.”

“Heh, no, that would not be quite right. But I keep an acquaintance who has studied them and has personal knowledge. She has mentioned that, historically speaking, it’s an exceedingly elderly philosophy, which existed long ago, especially in Tsabchuur. The conservatives, nonetheless, were less prevalent amidst the era of the Ahterilion Empire and have never won any of the Temple’s internal elections since, but in the past few decades, they’ve been rising in numbers. Some say it is a return to the ‘true’ belief.”

Eyren narrows her eyes.
“The true one…or the one they’d like us to believe is the truth?”

“Sharp-eyed, indeed”, says Mal, “and they are in a manner of speaking included in our task at hand.”

“You insinuated this earlier. You presume they’re gonna pull something?”

“Well, it’s quite plausible that they have a hand in what goes down here in Dezasha, in spite of that no testaments have come to light. The fellow I recited earlier, Khaider, is better shrewd than people give him credit for, and he often instructs his minions in how to influence a region’s politics. Ne Jesut trusts that his plotting to a rise in power is his genuine and sole purpose with the Temple. Should he succeeded, I believe you can imagine the devastation.”