The whole afternoon was spent reading, but as it came time for evening meal, the pony tail woman appeared again. This time, she didn't offer a plate of food, but opened the door and looked in at me. I looked back, uncomfortable but long since resigned to more of the same, wondering what she would say.

She didn't leave me wondering long. "Pal'lud says you can be trusted," she said. "There is an evening meal in the Great Hall. Come, eat."

So I stood and stretched and followed the woman. As I got closer, I couldn't help looking more closely at her skin. While she definitely had scales in places, and her skin seemed tougher than normal in the places where it wasn't scaled, I couldn't help getting the strong sense of human from her features. It was... odd, because I expected her skin to feel lizardlike to my senses. Instead, her scales seemed more like freckles than some kind of animal halfbreed feature.

"Can I ask--"

"You may not ask about my skin," the woman replied curtly. "I don't know why everyone has to comment on it. It's just skin."

I laughed, and she gave me a sour look. "Sorry," I replied. "You're right, of course. I just enjoy learning new things. My name is Ryan. You are...?"

"Chibal." She nodded and offered a hand, which I shook. "I am training with the linked swords. I hope someday to be better than Mattan, but that is a very tall hill to climb. She can wield two full sets at once."

"I have never seen someone use linked swords," I said, hoping that was a polite way to cover for not knowing what the hell she was talking about. I glanced down at the there sheaths on her belt, which like Miana's pair, were linked by some kind of magic.

Chibal put one hand on the hilt at her waist, and suddenly, the other two linked swords lifted out of their sheaths. I could feel a magical tether between the three of them, a sustained cushion of Wind magic, as she positioned one sword as if to run me through, and the other in what was probably a guard pose, for all that it also felt very threatening. "It can be exhausting to use," she admitted. "But I am getting better." The floating swords retreated, and she ran them through a series of exercises that looked vaguely familiar--similar, I suppose, to what she would run a pair of blades through if she were holding them in her hands. Then, they slid back in their sheaths. "Perhaps you will get to see Mattan practice before you go. It is an impressive display."

"I have no doubt." I paused. "How large is a full set?"

"The ones the Temple buys are either two, three, or six swords. I have heard there are larger sets overseas, but we do not make them. The Temple buys many weapons, and the ones we buy are quality, but..." Chibal shrugged. "Even I think that six swords is perhaps too many. I want to use two sets like Mattan just to prove that I can, but I don't think I would use more than three in a fight. If nothing else, it is a lot of steel that one must carry. Three is uncomfortable enough."

We stepped out of one hallway into an exposed area, and I realized that it was cloudy outside. Far to the south, I could see rain in the valleys, but mostly it was just an overcast sky. Not too cold, fortunately, because the wind that blew across the mountain would have sucked the heat out of me if it was. Of course, Chibal would probably endure weather far worse than I could without comment, and not because of her leathery skin. Any of the women here would, I was sure.

This time, as we entered the Great Hall, I made an effort not to study the many racks of weapons--the Records of the Fallen. Even so, it felt strangely like all the dead were hanging around at dinner with the living, for all that I sensed no spirits or soulflame moving through the room. It was simply... that the room felt large and also full, as though there were hundreds of tables, each full of people dining separately. They didn't have to be pressing in on the living, to change them or insert themselves in our lives, though perhaps they might notice what was going on... if they were spirits, locked somehow in the weapons.

I shivered a little and tried not to think about it.

The tables in the center of the room had a couple hundred women sitting there, but the table on the side that Chibal led me to was obviously different. If nothing else, I immediately recognized two faces--Miana and Loi, both people that Pal'lud had said were candidates for Murn's successor, suggesting that Chibal and the two other women were as well. Miana nodded to me respectfully, while Loi gave me a quick smile, her wolfish ears flicking back and forth brightly, but didn't stop chewing the big chunk of bread she was in the middle of.

Dinner was some kind of delicious-smelling spiced stew, with a variety of breads. The stew was not hot-spicy; it was some kind of pungent mint-like herb that seemed like it was close to being uncomfortably numbing, but when mixed with salt and fat and the heat of the stew it felt somehow like... like being bundled up in wintertime. A little chill, but with the promise of warmth and the sense that you'd get through.

"So I hear that you are our mysterious Vicar guest," said the woman who was... if not the toughest, certainly the one who seemed to be. She had the kind of solid body that I expected to see in only the most extremely dedicated bodybuilders, with arms thicker than my neck and easily a foot of height advantage over me. She also had a face that reminded me of a bear's, and a faint white fur all over her body. "Here I suppose to help with the selection process?"

"I have every faith that the Goddess will decide... wisely and of her own accord" I said, feeling a little lame that I had to correct myself mentally twice. First, I was going to say 'decide her replacement', then 'decide Murn's replacement', and then realized that I could be overheard by other people of the Temple and shouldn't be at all specific. "But I suppose my perspective is useful in some ways."

"Can you explain the challenge of bearing great weight?" Miana took a big spoonful of stew after speaking, as though she didn't intend to continue, but did almost immediately anyway. "I do not understand how you were unaffected. It seems to be a difficult challenge to overcome."

"That..." I looked around the table. The eyes that were looking at me were not unkind, but I had to say, they didn't seem like they understood. I took a spoonful of stew and tried to think about it. "It's just... a lot of responsibility. The kind that can crush you."

"No offense," said Loi, "but you don't seem like the kind of person who has seen more hardship than we have. You do have a strange air about you, but honestly, you're just a little man with some strange powers. You aren't ready for war and you aren't a part of a large religion, or at least, we've never heard of this God of Eyes. So how come you can bear the burden when we can't?"

We? I wondered if Pal'lud had gathered the candidates and subjected them all to her test. Nevertheless, it was hard to answer that question without giving away secrets. If there was any secret that could be given away, though... "I'm an offworlder," I said. "so I am actually somewhat older than I look. I was... given a new body when I was reborn into this world."

The five women at the table share a series of glances and mumbles to one another that didn't include me, and I let them talk while I continued to eat. The table was self-serve, and I knew if I didn't eat, the others would finish it off before I had my fill. I tried to think ahead and be ready for any questions that followed, but...

"So why did a god choose you, then? This mysterious god of eyes?" The last woman I didn't know was a catlike halfbreed who I could tell was definitely the agile/climber type. She had a small stature, but she gave the impression just sitting there that she could climb the walls and probably hang off the ceiling, as long as her claws could find something to latch onto. "All I know of offworlders is they cause problems. Sometimes very big problems."

That was not how Alanna had presented them to me, but... "The God of Eyes is a being with a very different perspective," I said, probably a bit too defensively. "I'm not here to cause problems. I didn't even..." I wanted to say I didn't want to come here, but I had kind of agreed, hadn't I? "...I didn't come here on purpose. I was dying, and I was given a second chance."

The others exchanged glances. "What does any of that have to do with bearing a great weight?" asked Loi. "It felt odd, too. Like it was... something very old."

"He told me that it was Truth," said Miana. "But I do not understand. It simply felt like weight, though it was odd."

"It is not force on your body," replied Chibal. "I could feel it with my magic. It is like a torrent of thoughts and feelings, perhaps from the goddess herself. But..." she grimaced. "I cannot imagine that the Lady would subject us to such a thing in her service."

The women turned to look at me again, and I swallowed a spoonful of stew quickly. "You will become closer to the goddess than you can possibly know," I said quickly, trying to keep a neutral expression, and finally spending a fleck of flame to keep me from keeping things out of my surface thoughts that should not be there, so I could remain focused. "Vicars are tied to their gods. You are to be the Lady's hands and voice in this world, and if you are crushed by the weight of her soul, you will not be able to hear her voice." I paused. "Certainly some Vicars cannot, but if you wish to do right by the Goddess, you must be able to bear the burden that comes from being close to her." That seemed like an entirely justifiable string of lies, one close enough to the truth to be useful.

"I thought that we would be close to an Angel, not the Goddess. A champion of the goddess from the past," pointed out Loi. "Is that not the case for you?"

I deliberately let my face fall. "Angels are many things, but they are dead," I said, and I felt a kind of hush fall over... the accumulated spirits from the weapon racks? Odd. "They love you, and love the goddess, and remain in the world clinging to you, but they are not living. Within them is a spark of the god... goddess. They retain something of their life, but it is not life." I looked up at the weapon racks, feeling a great sadness that hung over them, a sadness concealed by the accumulated love and acceptance that this room held. Did Tammy feel the same? She must, I decided quietly. She had wanted to live, too. "...it is better," I said after a pause, "than to go from being a warrior to being helpless, harmless, lost. To be an Angel is to still have a place and purpose when your time is passed. But they are a shadow of who they used to be, because our lives are not mere memories, and memories are all that they have left."

"Life, I said after a deep breath, "is always about the future. Both the Goddess and your Angel bear the weight of their own past--their regrets, their sadness, and also their joys and loves. But you who are living must always look to the future. You must never let your eyes wander, never be trapped in the past. You are here--one of you is to become the goddess' hands, and not to be held in place by things that can no longer be changed." I paused, and glanced at Miana, and then the others. "If you face that test again, do not fight to free yourself from the weight. The only way to do that would be to separate yourself from the goddess and from your angel. You must accept the weight and move on ahead in spite of it."

In the moment of silence that followed, I realized with a sudden surge of embarrassment that the entire room was listening--the Vicar candidates, the Records of the Fallen, the assembled women of the temple (Were they all priestesses? Was that how this place worked, or did they have another name for them?), even the serving girls who were handling plates and food... although the serving girls, to their credit, didn't stop in their work, for all that they were clearly paying attention.

I twisted around in my seat and looked around at everyone. The eyes on me were... normal, I guess. They were curious, but not too much. Many of them seemed at a glance to be a little dull, maybe. I realized as I looked around that, again, education was not a universal truth of life in this world. Many of these women were raised to be warriors and nothing else; what need did they have of history, math, philosophy, other trade skills? Some of their faces were bored or uncaring, while others seemed flat, like they simply didn't think, as a general rule. Others were completely different--some very thoughtful, some sharp, some clever. But they were kind of the exception.

Even among those gathered... Loi's eyes were thoughtful, though the more I looked the more I felt she was hiding something. Miana had some kind of deepness to her eyes that I suspected was a depth she kept hidden, and ...the climbing woman, she had a sharpness to her eyes, and a habit of searching the room, as though constantly paranoid she was missing something. Chibal's eyes showed an inconsistent dimness, and I didn't feel comfortable meeting her gaze. The large woman's eyes showed an erratic nature that I couldn't place, but which made me nervous.

"Sorry," I said into the silence, mostly lost in my thoughts. "I didn't mean to... um..." What exactly could I apologize for? It wasn't as though I had been particularly loud.

"Don't be bothered by him," said Loi, as the one-armed woman stood up to address the room. "He's just easily excited. And the conversation was supposed to be private, so get back to your own!"

I sensed, suddenly, a very peculiar change to the energy of the room. I had given speeches before, and knew that religious speeches tended to generate soulflame, but this was odd because many of those listening were... dead. Although I had not really sensed much in the way of ashen soulflame from the Records, now that I'd spoken I could tell that there was an ashen mist, like there had been on the battlefield--a mist created when people or spirits that yet lived were dying, in some small way, with the hopes of making the world a better place.

I hoped that didn't mean that the spirits were fading in order to make room for the future... but I also couldn't honestly suggest that was the wrong move. If I were living a half-life, stuck in a dream between life and death, would I...?

"Yes," I whispered quietly to myself. "I think that I would."

Loi threw a heel of bread at my head, and it bounced off painlessly. She was sitting again, and the room was getting louder again, a little bit at a time. "Don't space out too much. It's a good speech, but we need to know more. What is it like to be a Vicar?"

That was a good question. Not just what it was like, but what I could say that would be helpful to them? What other tests did Ciel'ostra have in store? What other tests would I devise?

"It's not complicated," I said after a long pause. "It's just a lot of responsibilities. Anyone who doesn't understand that, who puts themselves above the job... will someday be responsible for a tragedy. Among those responsibilities, though, is keeping yourself healthy, and not letting it get to you. Rest when you need to rest, whenever you can rest."

"I've heard that before," said the climbing woman. "They give that speech to elites. You must answer the call, but know how much is too much. If you must choose between saying no and making a foolish choice..." She shrugged.

I nodded to her, and turned my attention back to food--to discover that it was all eaten but for a little bread. I'd had enough, but I was still a little disappointed. It was a marked improvement over army food or the light meals I'd had recently.

"Everyone dies sometimes," nodded the large one. "Being an elite doesn't make you immortal, and I suppose we know that Vicars aren't either. But a Vicar... every time one dies or retires we get a lot weaker. We can't afford that."

I nodded putting a hand to my bandaged, destroyed eye. "I was foolish, myself," I said quietly. "I knew that I might die, but I..." How do I put this any way other than that I was stupid? I sighed. "...I only saw what I could do, and not what was going to happen to me."

"Rookie mistake," agreed Chibal. "You should never have gotten into the army."

"He wasn't," pointed out Loi. "He was in charge of supplies for conscripts from Olesport. But he should still never have come."

"Supplies? He was a paper-man?" The large woman eyed me up and down. "And he survived his first fight? Maybe this God of Eyes is better than I thought. I wouldn't peg this guy to survive within a hundred miles of the front, let alone on it."

"More than that," boasted Loi, "I hear he's the only reason they stayed alive long enough for Murn to get there. Go on," she urged, "tell the story."

The other women looked at me with various degrees of interest on their face. With no bowl of stew to hide behind, I cleared my throat and began retelling the only war story I had to tell, to a group of women who doubtless had far more impressive stories to tell. I just hoped they wouldn't make me feel too foolish about it.