Read 4 City of Strife for Free Online

way to various shrines. Most of them bore small tokens purchasable from vendors outside and inside the walls. There was a metal rose that indicated a woman had the blessing of Saint Agnetha, supposedly good for fertility. There was a daub of crushed rose paste in the centre of the forehead to indicate that a couple had been praying for the blessing of children.
    A soldier went past with his scabbard bound in the black threads that showed he had been at the shrine of Alteres, who had been a soldier himself before being martyred by the Children of the Moon. According to those who sold the thread, a blade drawn from a scabbard so wrapped would never break or lose its edge. It was supposedly as good as any dwarf-forged weapon.
    Merchants walked past, fingers playing with strings of gold painted wooden beads that showed they had made offering at the shrine of their patron, Saint Krasus. They were hoping for prosperity in the coming years. It was a reminder too of how often commerce and sanctity met on the roads of the Sunlander kingdoms. Indeed, the selling of blessings, charms, indulgences, and relics was seen by many as a form of commerce in and of itself.
    The priestly district occupied its own walled off area within the city precincts. The unfinished Cathedral loomed gigantically over all. Even in the cold men worked away on the scaffolding surrounding it, chipping away at stone angels intended to beautify its exterior. He had been told that it would take a hundred years to build this colossal holy place, and that they were only halfway through the process. Most of the people here would not be alive on the day it was complete. Perhaps only a few of the altar boys and the youngest choristers might live so long. It was a thought at once inspiring and depressing.
    Kormak passed inside the Cathedral itself, remembering the last time he had been here, hunting the killers of the dead girls, men who had sought to perform a blasphemous ritual within the holy precincts. He recalled the struggle amid the scaffolding and through the underground cellars. He had killed four men here, on holy ground but what had been the alternative—let them corrupt this place with the power of Shadow?
    Of course there were those who would say it was already corrupt. In the huge central space, in the shadow of the colossal painted pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling, priests went about the business of the church, selling indulgences, and relics, and blessed threads and inks and clothes, shards shaved from the bones of the saint which miraculously restored itself every high holy day.
    How was it possible that people were so credulous, he wondered? In his heart of hearts, he already knew the answer. They were not. They did not believe so much as want to believe. They hoped that the promises of salvation made to them were true, because what was the alternative?
    He told himself not to be so cynical. On many of the faces about him were written wonder and awe and reverence. And they belonged not only to the penitents and pilgrims. They belonged to the fraters and the priests as well. In the alcoves around the walls, men and women knelt in sincere prayer before the statues of saints, and the symbol of the Holy Sun.

    At the sight of it, he felt a faint stirring of his old, long-diminished faith, in the idea he had been entrusted with a sacred mission, that he had been sent out into the world to oppose evil and do good, that the oath he had taken still meant something. It was hard to reconcile that with the image of himself taking off a man’s hand in a street brawl.
    He smiled at the strange complex of emotions passing through his mind, a compound of guilt at his own doubts, hope that there was still a Light to be served, and disgust at his own naiveté and need to believe, in himself, in what he did. He had walked through darkness for so long, it was sometimes difficult to see the Light.
    After every night comes the dawn, he repeated the words of the