Profane Rites by PJ Wilson

Author:PJ Wilson [Wilson, PJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The journey back from the temple was mostly silent. Honorata had much on her mind. Yonas tried probing, plainly curious as to what went on in that ancient building. Evidently he felt nothing of the ritual that was performed within. He heard shouting and an argument, but not ever enough that he feared for Honorata’s life. As far as he knew, she was simply in a small room with an old woman. Sensibly, any threats would be coming from the outside, he explained. She was not minded to tell him about Severa’s true nature. It was enough that the ghoul was on the loose and that Shankar was somehow pulling strings with an unknown goal in mind. There was nothing that Yonas could do anyway; he knew nothing of the ways of the Song. He could neither understand the significance of what took place nor do anything to help in a practical sense.

So they walked in silence. A few words exchanged periodically, the polite stuff of strangers sharing a road. Yonas seemed comfortable enough with the quiet in the end, perhaps used to travelling companions with a reluctance to talk for the sake of it.

Honorata used the silence to do exactly what she protested to Severa that she would not do. To meditate upon the mystery of what she had felt. To contemplate what it meant in the grander scheme of things. To question why the world was the way that it was when there was a secret like that hidden just below the surface of perception.

Surely Severa was not the first to discover that power. There was nothing unnatural or heretical about the experience by the way that it felt. Nothing of the profane that Shankar cloaked himself with. Why would the priestesses of Devi reject such a thing? How could they blind themselves to that majesty?

All that she had been taught, a lifetime of education and study, had been but a fraction of the truth. She had spent her adult life, admittedly just a few short years so far, thinking that she was one of the lucky few who knew the real truth, who were blessed with feeling the clarity and serenity of the Song. But she was just as naive as those who heard nothing, who knew nothing about what it was like to channel that power. She had gone from feeling like she had all the answers to feeling like a child again, in awe of her teachers who effortlessly grasped the nature of the world around them.

But if this ritual was truly the work of Devi, then why did the Church forsake it? Why would Severa be forced to practice these things in the middle of inhospitable jungle if the ritual was accepted as orthodoxy by the Church? The very nature of how Severa had secluded herself suggested that this thing was against the teachings of the Church. And Church law was abundantly clear on this point: the misuse of the Song of Devi was a crime punishable by excommunication.

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