Read Book 1 - The Tyranny of the Night for Free Online

lie. Maysaleans did not worship the Adversary
but they did believe that it was not the Evil One who had been cast out of Heaven.
Nor did they believe in proprietary rights to the flesh of any individual, even
in marriage.
    Brother Candle said, "No more than twenty Perfect should turn up."
    The old men wanted to know why the Perfect were gathering. There had been no
Maysalean synod in more than fifty years.
    "The Usurper, Sublime, intends to send selected priests to the Connec to destroy
our beliefs. Some will belong to the Brotherhood of War. Some will be armed with
writs granting them extraordinary powers. Bishop Serifs will be in charge of
spiritual affairs throughout the Connec, with permission to use any means
necessary to expunge our faith."
    Old men spat. Young men cursed Serifs. The women offered prayers for the Bishop's
disgrace and ruin.
    "He'll be able to get away with anything as long as he claims he's doing it to
suppress Those Who Seek the Light."
    A key tenet of the Maysalean Heresy was a conviction that its followers were the
true Chaldareans. Although that stretch was extreme, in truth, modern Episcopal
dogma bore only a lip service resemblance to the gentle, egalitarian, communal doctrines of the
Holy Founders.
    The Episcopal Church survived on size, inertia, and the staying power of vested
interest. It had survived challenges more serious than the Maysalean Heresy. The
Borgians of the previous century had been more critical of the establishment and
more militant in their defiance and disdain for all temporal power. The Borgians
wanted to rid the world of all priests except part-time village clerics, and all
nobles, period.
    The Borgian dogma was naive. It required an already indifferent God to make sure
no new hierarchies established themselves. It counted on that lazy deity to
ensure that no savage invaders descended upon the pastoral Borgian realm, that
no bandits took advantage.
    The fatal flaw of the Borgian fallacy was that it assumed all men to be good and
empathetic at heart, endowed with an innate drive to harm no one who would not
fight back.
    There were no Borgians anymore.
    The Maysalean Perfect were pacifist but not blind. A man just had to glance
around to find villains willing to eat him alive, then sell his bones.
    Maysaleans were worldly enough to distinguish between ideal and real.
    The second Perfect was the Grolsacher, Pacific. His speech was heavily accented
and strong with dialect. Two more Perfect arrived before sundown. Brother Bell
had made his home in Arcgent before he put the world aside. Brother Sales hailed
from Cain, in Argony. He was in the Connec on a pilgrimage of personal
discovery. His dialect was impenetrable.
    That night St. Jeules went to sleep certain that momentous decisions would be
made in their shy little village.

    THE SYNOD OF THE PERFECT BEGAN FORMALLY MIDWAY through the second week of
Mantans. Twenty-four Perfect had gathered. Their presence was a strain on the village. The people grumped about the disruption while pocketing startling
amounts of money and taking advantage of the free labor.
    The Perfect baffled the Episcopal faction by treating the female Perfect as the
equals of men.
    Equality had been part of early Chaldarean practice but had fallen to
revisionism even before the founding prophets left the world.
    The non-Maysaleans of St. Jeules were disappointed by the absence of orgies. Nor
did the Perfect hold midnight masses where they celebrated their love for the
Night.
    The great difficulty for the Brothen Church in the End of Connec was that
everyone there had friends or neighbors or cousins who were heretics. Everyone
got an occasional glimpse of the truth. Maysaleans truly were Seekers After
Light. And their gentle witnessing drew purses away from the established Church.
    Sublime and Bishop Serifs were correct.
    The Church was losing the Connec.
    If the Connec went, the spread of heresy would accelerate. The Grail