Matthias awoke again to the sound of a crackling fire. He rose slowly from the floor and wiped the sleep from his eyes to see the woman sitting in front of the fire, warming her hands.
She looked him up and down with weary eyes. "Bad dreams?"
He nodded silently.
"Do you still think my husband was a coward?"
He imagined what it must have been like to face dreams like that night after night after night. "No. No, I don't."
She smiled. He could not quite tell whether it was a friendly smile or a satisfied smirk. She gestured to the fire and spoke softly enough not to wake the others. "We have fire, and it will be some time before it is light enough to travel. Come, tell me about your dreams."
Matthias frowned. It seemed like she was being genuinely friendly. The woman was an enigma; perhaps the trauma of losing her son had done more harm to her than even Brother Anat could heal. Still, there were worse things than an offer of warmth and company on a cold winter morning.
He shuffled closer to the fire. "I dreamt..." He shook his head. "I dreamt of dark things about which you would not wish to hear."
"Only darkness?"
"No. There was..." He sighed. "I saw Galden. My home."
Anya nodded. "The Silver Throne."
"Yes." He stared into the fire, remembering the beauty of it in the dream. He wondered if it had been as beautiful in reality. "Did you ever see it?" he asked.
"Not close to. I was on a caravan that passed the city once, when I was a child. But... you seem sad. Dreams of home should be dreams of joy, or dreams of comfort at least."
"I saw it being destroyed."
"The Throne?"
"Everything. The whole city. So many people died."
"The Shattering," she said, eyes glinting oddly in the firelight. "The death of the gods."
He looked up, looked her in the eye, but he could see no hint of malice there. She might as well have been making idle conversation about the weather.
"We do not know that. Cannot know that."
"How old were you?" she asked. "A child? An infant?"
He shook his head. "Not yet born. My father died that day. My mother said he died saving her. Saving me. She never told me how."
"So you have never known the god you serve?"
He shrugged. "I have never spoken to him, but few did, even before-... before. I know his teachings, and the teachings of his servants. I see his work being done in the world."
She smiled inscrutably. "So much faith, for one who has never seen."
He gestured at the cabin around them. "I did not see this building raised, nor meet the men that raised it. But I can still dwell in it, still repair it, still send a weary traveller here to rest."
She shook her head. "The gods were not just builders; they were the foundation, the root, the heart." She spoke as though correcting a child. "Without them, the building crumbles, the tree falls, and the flesh dies and rots away."
Something about the woman's voice had changed. No, not her voice. Her speech. What was the word? Her... diction. She did not sound like a simple rural housewife.
He tried both to hide his suspicion and find an answer to her retort, and failed; "They... when I..."
"Take your time." Again, he could not quite tell if she was being friendly, or merely condescending.
He breathed in, and gestured to himself and the three still-sleeping cenobites. "The building still stands, the tree has not fallen, and the flesh moves still. Whatever you may think, the reality lies before you."
Something in the woman snapped; she rose from her seat and stepped quickly toward him. She clutched the neck of his cassock and pulled him to his feet, until his head was level with hers. Her eyes burned with an emotion he could not quite place, but wrath's part in it was clear.
"Come down from your cloister and walk among the people, Purgator." Her voice was no less quiet than it had been before, but it seethed with rage. "Come and see your crops wither with blight and cattle slaughtered by black wolves. Come and see your love grow sick and pale and die without a Beneficar in sight. Come and let-..." Her voice faltered for a moment, and at once Matthias knew the look in her eyes. It was that of a mother whose child was all but lost to her.
"Come and lose your child?" he finished for her.
Whatever was holding her upright flowed away, and suddenly she seemed very small. She released his cossack and stared up at him. Now it was helplessness he saw, helplessness and fear, though a spark of rage still burned within those eyes. "Your gods are dead, and they have left us all to die as well."
He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She winced at his touch, as though expecting a blow, and then looked at him astonished at the gesture of affection. He looked her in the eyes and caught her gaze before speaking. "If we can find him, Anya, we will."
"If." Never before had he heard a single word so laden with despair. The woman half-sat, half-collapsed onto the ground. He sat down next to her, his hand on her shoulder as she sobbed into her hands.
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