The First Night
Blackspire's great hall had been converted into something like a neutral territory. Banners of both Rhaemond duchy and Lioran's Flamebound stood side by side, and now there was a third added—the white flame of the Church, though not so. It carried no weapons, no war symbols. Just the plain flame of faith.
Three tables had been placed in a triangle, each facing the others in perfect balance. At one Lioran sat, Mira at his shoulder, Renn standing guard though his clear discomfort. At the second sat Kaelen with Torven and some of his most trusted captains. At the third sat Cardinal Matthias, Sister Elara, and a younger priest whose nervous energy seemed barely under control.
The chamber was filled with onlookers—nobles and merchants, soldiers and even some commoners who'd managed to get past the guards. Everyone wanted to see this. The time when three powers that ought to have fought tried something else.
Cardinal Matthias broke the silence, his aged voice possessing unexpected vigor.
"I lived eighty-three years," he explained. "During which time, I watched seven wars waged in the name of purity. Seven crusades against the heretics. And in all those years, never did I see victory bring anything but more war." He stopped, his watery eyes surveying the group of people before him. "I am too old to squander what little life is left to me on another futile war."
A murmur ran through the onlookers. A number of the Church's own envoy appeared shocked.
"Your Eminence," the young priest to his side hissed, "The doctrine expressly states—"
"The doctrine was authored by men," Matthias broke in gently. "Holy men, maybe. Inspired men. But men nonetheless. And men are fallible." He fixed Lioran with a stern look. "You are proof of that fallibility, Dragon Lord. Your being contradicts much of what we've taught. But contradiction is not heresy. It is opportunity for growth."
Lioran sensed the ember to life in his chest, but not with wrath. With something else. Awareness, maybe. Or recognition.
"What do you suggest?" Lioran queried.
Sister Elara rested her elbows on the arms of her chair. "A new covenant. Between the Church, the secular authorities, and those who possess magic that does not neatly fit into our mold. We admit our knowledge is limited. You admit your ability is a responsibility. Together, we create something that benefits the people and not simply preserve power hierarchies."
"That's madness," one of Rhaemond's nobles exclaimed. "The Church has ever been the ultimate moral authority. To weaken that is to invite anarchy."
"The Church has been the ultimate authority because we took it," Matthias replied. "But maybe authority is better gained than taken. Maybe it's better shown through service than imposed through dogma."
Kaelen rose to his feet. "Before philosophy, let's settle on pragmatics. Factions of the Church are still looking to claim the head of the Dragon Lord. There are nobles in my own lands who view this union as a sign of weakness. And commoners who could not care less about it all—they just want to know whether their children will be safe and their fields will produce."
"And then we begin there," said Mira. They all turned to her. She was not nobility, nor warrior nor priestess. Yet in her voice was an authority. "We begin by making the children safe. By making the crops grow. By demonstrating that this new world is better served by this new order than the world was served by the old."
"How?" Renn demanded. "With what means? The northern lands are still rebuilding after war. The Church possesses wealth, yet no means to disperse it effectively. And the Flamebound are fighters, not farmers or builders."
"Then we must construct new ones," Lioran said. He rose and walked over to a big map pinned to the wall—a detailed map of the northern lands and the lands beyond them. "Here," he indicated a group of villages along the border. "These villages were evacuated in the warfare. The earth is good, but there is nobody to till it."
"We have refugees," Kaelen continued. "Thousands driven out by the wars. They require land and protection."
"And we have Church resources," Sister Elara replied. "Seeds, tools, knowledge of farming techniques. We've been stockpiling them in monasteries for centuries."
"So we put them together," Lioran concluded. "Form settlement programs. Church supplies resources, secular government supplies land and protection, Flamebound supply security from bandits. Everyone gives. Everyone gets."
The ember beat, and for once it wasn't calling for destruction. It was. pleased? As if this type of construction appealed to some ancient part of its nature.
...
The Dissent
Not all the hall was happy about it.
A bishop rose from the Church delegation, face aflame with rage. "This is blasphemy! Cardinal, you can't seriously be thinking of sharing our holy resources with—with this monstrosity!"
"Watch your tongue, Bishop Crane," Matthias said quietly, but steel underlay the softness.
"I won't! The boy seethes with unholy flames! He commands beasts that scripture itself names as demons! And now you would have us labor beside him? Eat from the same board?" Bishop Crane's voice grew to a bellow. "This is precisely how the world is sinking into sin! Because those responsible for upholding purity have weakened!"
A few other church authorities nodded in assent. The rift Sister Elara had spoken of was now apparent, a crack through the Church's ranks.
Lioran rose to his feet slowly. The ember blazed in his chest, but he suppressed it, forced it quiet. He would not win this debate with power. Only with words.
"You're right," said Lioran.
The hall fell silent.
"I am an abomination according to your standards," Lioran went on. "I am aflame with fire that is not of your god. I formed a bond with a dragon your scriptures refer to as demonic. According to any standard of your doctrine, I am to be exterminated."
Bishop Crane beamed with triumph. "At last, the creature confesses—"
"But your theology is incomplete," Lioran interjected. "Not incorrect, necessarily. Just incomplete. You see fire and conclude hell. You see dragons and conclude demons. But what if fire is merely power? What if dragons are merely creatures, like all others? What if the world is more nuanced than your categories permit?"
"Heresy," Crane sneered.
"Maybe," Lioran conceded. "Or maybe your certainty is the blasphemy. Maybe declaring that you have an understanding of the mind of the divine so thorough that nothing new can alter your mind—that's the true sin."
Matthias was grinning. "The boy has a point."
"He makes apologies!" Crane addressed the other church officials. "Are you all so blind? This is where corruption starts—with compromise, with accommodation, with the erosion of absolute principles!"
"Absolute principles have resulted in seven crusades and rivers of blood," Sister Elara whispered. "Maybe it's time to see if something else works."
The bishop's face twisted into fury. "Then you are heretics with him! I will go tell the High Conclave about this! I will see all of you deprived of power!"
"That is your privilege," Matthias replied quietly. "But while you report back to the Conclave, we'll be here, actually getting our hands dirty and accomplishing good. And we'll see whose methods the divine likes best."
Bishop Crane stormed out of the hall, bringing with him perhaps a third of the Church contingent. The doors slammed shut behind them with a finality that resounded in the room.
"Well," Kaelen said with a dry tone.
.....
The Pact
It was almost midnight when the three leaders were brought into a smaller room—only Lioran, Kaelan, and Matthias, with Mira and Sister Elara as witnesses.
"This won't be easy," Matthias told them. "Crane will do just what he threatened. The Conclave will call for my removal. Maybe excommunication."
"And my nobles will interpret this as weakness," Kaelan put in. "Some will attempt to secede, create independent fiefdoms."
"The Flamebound are already divided," Lioran stated. "Many departed following the death of Kyrris. Others stay only because they have nowhere else to go."
They sat quietly, three men who should have been adversaries, considering the impossibility of what they were trying to do.
"My husband would say," Mira said into the silence, "that the only way to make a change in the world is to begin altering the little slice of it you can touch. He couldn't abate wars. He couldn't eradicate poverty. But he could improve our village, one person at a time. And that must be enough."
"Was it?" Matthias asked. "Enough, I mean?"
Mira's eyes shone. "He died thinking it was. And that belief made the death worthwhile."
Lioran regarded his mother, truly regarded her. He saw the sorrow that still lingered in her eyes, the worry for him, but also the resilience that had sustained her all along. She'd lost a husband, witnessed her village being burned to ashes, seen her son become something she hardly knew. And yet she was still standing, still believing, still attempting to imbue sense into the turmoil.
"Then we begin small," Lioran replied. "We occupy those empty villages. We resettle refugees. We demonstrate that this new order can be done on a scale that people can touch and see and believe in."
Kaelen nodded. "And we defend it. Not by conquest, but by the simple exhibition that safe, fed, free people are happier than conquered, starving, enslaved people."
"It will be years," Matthias cautioned. "Perhaps decades. We may not live long enough to see it work."
"Others will, though," Sister Elara said. "That's the idea, isn't it? We plant trees whose shadows we'll never sit under."
The three leaders regarded each other, then at the same moment reached forward, their hands coming together in the middle of the table.
"To the new order," Kaelen stated.
"To hope," Matthias filled in.
"To trying," Lioran completed.
Outside, in the large hall, there were already others passing on the news of what had just happened. Some would label it treason. Others would label it heresy. A few might label it hope.
But all would concur that something had changed at its very core. The Dragon Lord, the knight, and the cardinal had opted for cooperation, not conflict.
And in doing that, they'd seeded something that could one day become something neither empire nor church nor ancient prophecy had ever dreamed possible.