Reynard Destain stared into the polished steel; the Bishop of Cove stared back. Satisfied his appearance was suitable, he carefully walked down the steps into main hall of the church, his elderly legs throbbing sharply with gout.
With the slow patience of the old and infirm, he gradually reached the bottom, using his staff as a crutch. The badge of his high office, the polished black wood was engraved with
Domine dirige nos: Lord lead us. It had been a time of unsettling change, as Father Siegfried stamped his own authority on the Covian Chapter of the Avatarian Faith, the familiar church now filled with unfamiliar faces. Reynard sat on a pew, lowering his head as if praying.
No stranger to church politics, Father Reynard had been considering severl ways of wresting back some of his authority from Siegfried, Hugo's replacement. The Bishop was acutely aware of the uncompromising manner of the Templi; a delicate touch would be needed. Sadly, his list of allies was short. The faces were all new, other than Roland Dagorian. But even there he suspected he would find scant support. Already Templi Squire Roland Dagorian had been elevated to Templi Initiate Roland Dagorian.
Reynard heard the doors of the Church creep open, and soft footsteps hesitantly approach. Looking up he espied a young woman sitting on a pew to his left, also praying. Hiding his irritation at the interuption, Reynard approached her.
It all came spilling out. The woman, it seemed, was new to the Avatarian Faith and wished to confess her sins. They were many, and vile, she shamefully assured the stern-faced Bishop. Eager for another convert to the Faith, Reynard advised the woman, Sally, to return the following day to confess her sins and be baptised in the name of the Lord, aumen. She agreed, pathetically relieved.
The following day Sally returned to the Church and Reynard escorted her to the banks of the lake.
Well experienced in dredging forth the sins of others, Reynard had no trouble in convincing the woman to confess, and she revealed that she had murdered her father. Appalled and saddened, Reynard goaded Sally on, to confess further. And he was truly saddened. For a sin such as patricide, there could be but one penance. Death.
He heard a sound behind him, a harsh voice filled with dark promise proclaiming, "Hah, Be damned, Bishop. You are at an End!" Stunned, Reynard turned to see two masked men poised to attack. Even as he prepared to summon the Light, to smite these sneaking assassins with the Lord's Righteous Wrath, they struck, brutally felling the Bishop with several blows and a foul poison. Darkness surrounded him and the pain fell away...
The woman Reynard had known only as Sally expertly filched his belongings and slipped into the woods after her companions. The corpse lay there, and the gulls swooped and wheeled above, eyeing the former Bishop as nothing more than fresh carrion. Disturbed by the commotion, Friar Dagorian left the church and came across the slaughtered remains ...
As he ran to the barracks, the tide came in and surrounded the Bishop, bearing him up and out to sea, the freezing depths to be his final resting place.
Author