Where Hearts are Tried
Twenty-First Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC
Benedict had not been born to noble blood and high history, not even the sort that you could find staining less than fine sheets. The little village on the banks of the Inswater, not far from Ashford, had been filled with modest and Faithful folk. Faithful to the Seven, of course. Benedict had not even known that there were other sorts of gods, nor folk who worshiped them, until he practically fell off the back of a cabbage wagon onto the streets of Oldtown. The sheen had come off his faith in those days, fleck by fleck, like one of the tiny golden threads from the High Septon's robes that he had found glimmering in the muck one day as a boy. Yet here he was in palaces of the mighty and the great, following the train of Marwyn whose eyes always saw too far and too deep, staring down at the pit of wrath and despair beyond any fiery sermon, all writ in flickering colors and pretty symbols of glamor craft.
Randyll fucking Tarly wanted to fight Hell and the Pit, and Gods knew what else with sword in hand... The new-made marshal did not know if he should laugh or cry, and he feared he was worryingly close to doing both. With shaking hands he took a handkerchief from his pocket and brought it to his lips to muffle any sound.
"We speak not of a mortal war here, Minister Tarly." The voice of the Imperator sounded far
far away, as though from an echoing pit, and it was all Benedict could do to make sense of his words. "This is not a war of nobles, where one meets in a field to fight over who owns what strip of land. It is not a war of traders, where ships on the sea harass each other over trade routes and gold. They care not for land. They care not for gold. They care not for us. For them, we are nothing more than ore dug from the ground. Something to be taken, purified, and cast into a shape that serves their purposes. Killing us is not something they do in furtherance of their goals, but it is the goal itself."
Someone was rushing the door now, only to be stopped by the Preatorion guard, and none too gently.
Philario Zyrio, Volantine magister, Benedict's far too fine memory noted, doing its damnedest to think of something, anything other than the horror which had been unveiled before his eyes. Would the poor bastard be handed over to the healers or the Inquisition?
The Impertor seemingly paid the whole affair no mind and instead looked on across the hall as though he could pin each man and women to their places with naught but the strength of his will. "This war is a total war. To live is to fight in it, no matter what it is that you do. Every breath we take is defiance of their designs. Every healer is a soldier, fighting day for day to deprive them of what they want to take from us. Every scholar is a soldier, every scrap of knowledge gleamed a chance to forge another blade against our foes. Every artist is a soldier, beating back the despair and keeping our hopes alive so that we do not fall prey to their blandishments while we yet live."
I can hear my heart all too well, thank you, Your Majesty, and it does not sound like defiance to me, Benedict thought, feeling for the first time anger towards the young man in gold and crimson. It lay like pond scum on an endless well of fear.
Thump...
Thump...
Thump...
"We can fight this war. We can win this war." The word rang loud, but it rang hollow to the mind of Benedict. "To think otherwise is the first step towards defeat. Even as we speak here, we fight this war. Out in the Deep, the Illustrious is being put through her paces while more vessels are worked on in the berths beside her. In the factories, workers labor day and night to fill bombs and shells by the thousands. In Westhaven, soldiers train to hold the line against the onslaught. And there will be more. Weapons greater and more terrible than any man could have dared to imagine. Machines so vast and mighty that even the false gods will learn to fear them."
Slowly, almost too slowly to realize it was happening, the speech started to sink in, he had not been given the task of Marshal without some skill in military matters. For years now he had been telling the fools in Oldtown that the face of war would change utterly... and now this. It made sense in a dark sort of way, the face of war would have to change, for the very ground it trod had changed all unbidden, the stakes were not what they had been.
Thump...
Thump...
Thump...
The beat of his heart slowed as he took in the words and found them to be grounded in the craft he had long labored over. Others were not so calmed. Torro Tollesi, Archon of Saath, rose from his seat, his gold and jade headdress, not quite a crown, jingling in his agitation and he cried, "This is not real, it can't be real! It's some inquisition trick to test our loyalty!"
This time it was too loud, or perhaps the speaker too exalted, for the Imperator to ignore him. "The Inquisition is not in the business of playing tricks and neither am I, and I would sooner jest about my own life and death than about the matters spoken of this day." The words were sharp and stern, almost as much as those spoken to the disgraced Lord Lannister. "
Sit down, Your Excellency."
The man sat silently, as though a weight of lead had just been set upon his shoulders.
If there was no magic in that command it was because he did not need to use it. But then his expression changed and there was a hint of unease to it, and a sigh on his lips. "Above all, you must keep the faith. In the Imperium to protect you in life, and in the gods to do so in death. When we are not united. When we waver in our resolve. When all hope seems lost. That is when they will come to you. Maybe in the flesh. Maybe in your dreams. Maybe as a whisper during your prayers. They will offer you an easy way. They will offer you poison. And if you waver, they will spread it through you."
In the years to come Benedict would never be able to say what had moved him to applaud then, like he was watching some grand performance moving to the heart and the soul. Perhaps it was loyalty, perhaps it was trust rekindled, perhaps it was simply the ragged edge of despair that demanded he do something, anything to prove that he was still alive and warm and able still to approve of this rejection of the dark he did not himself have the courage to speak aloud.
Much to his surprise, applause caught and rumbled for a while thorough the chamber but all too soon it was lost in the echoes again.
"I do asks for your cheers for this, for all I welcome the brave hearts from which they spring," the Imperator said with a smile. "I have burdened you all with this truth because you too must fight it. Because you too are now soldiers in it. I have forged the Imperium not as a throne for myself, but as another weapon against the darkness around us. And it is through your actions and choices that it will be determined if it will serve that purpose. Before this great and terrible truth of the world, all our labors may seem small and pointless, but only if we labor alone for our own gain. But if are united in mind and purpose, we can fight this war. We can beat them back. And one day, true victory might be within our grasp."
I did not make this throne to sit on, says the man on the throne, one final flicker of long accustomed cynicism flashed in the former maester's mind at that, but he knew well that a throne could be a weapon, too. Not for nothing had Aegon the First made his seat of swords. Still, his heart soared at the word victory and in that he was not alone. Even a few of those grim Norherners had tears in their eyes, even the Lord Stark who had asked the first question.
When the Imperator turned to the woman standing to the left of his throne, her wings and armor both daubed black, and asked her to speak instead of the bright spirit to his right, not a whisper was raised against it.
"Know ye, princes and lords of men, all that Minister Iziku spoke with more than the silvered tongue of his breed," the fury said with cadences that sounded oddly archaic in formality as only the harvester devil's words had in the magic of the chamber. "Should I die my soul shall be lost to the winds of the astral and so would those of my sisters... if we are fortunate. As much or more than you, we seek to see this realm prosper and grow despite of all its foes, though long shall be the path."
Then with the eye of an officer if not quite a general, she recounted the state of the spheres, the vassalage of what remained of Heaven to the throne of Hell, Paradise made into a battle ground for horrors amid embattled fortresses and lone towers of silver just as the spirit of fire had recounted Elysium the broken. Men did not weep then, for they were but names in the cold accounting of a fiend, though if one were to glance upon the face of the new lord of Mantarys or perhaps of Justice Chesed, as Benedict did, then perhaps they should have.
"Can we help them then, can we send aid? To these distant fortresses, I mean?" Lord Stark asked into the silence that followed. "Would any aid of ours be enough to help stem the tide?"
What does the Imperator reply?
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OOC: Benedict came very close to going catatonic there but you pulled though more of less intact so far. Not yet edited.
