We should say goodbye now, Sir Branson said. Whatever happens next, there won’t be time later.
My tongue suddenly felt thick. My eyes thicker. I couldn’t see Brindle properly as they clouded over but I rubbed his ears and accepted his paw — one last time.
Sir Branson had no paw to accept, and no words could possibly suffice.
Trouble yourself not. I know all that you would say. It has been an honor from start to end. You need not say it for it to be so.
I opened my eyes to share a last look with his blueish spirit. One last goodbye, silent, for I could not bear to speak it. He smiled. My smile was tremulous.
I took a long breath and forced myself to concentrate, closing my eyes again because I could not bear to keep looking.
I knew hundreds of rote prayers of blessing. I said none of them. Nor did I open my eyes when I heard a dull thump behind me and a roar.
If I died, then I would die, and none of it would matter. If I did not die, then this prayer was the most important thing I could do.
I would pray not by rote but from my heart.
Open your hands. It will make it easier.
I held my arms out, palms up.
“Rejected God,” I prayed. Best to stick to the aspect I served. I understood it best. I hoped I had faith — any faith. Was hoping for faith a kind of faith? “Rejected by man, ignored, refused. Do not reject my plea now. I hold to you my open hands. I hold to you an open heart.”
It had better be open. I was trying to make it open.
I focused my mind on holiness, on purity, on rejecting evil, and on being willing to accept whatever the God gave or took.
I was such a small flicker in a vast universe. Such a tiny voice. I hadn’t even the right to make this plea. But the request wasn’t for me. And if I didn’t ask, then all the world could be lost, for evil bred more evil, and what started here would be only the beginning.
I heard a gurgle and I refused to open my eyes. Refused to watch my friend drown himself in holy water. Refused.
Tears wore hot tracks down my face and I gasped and all that came out was, “Please. Please, if you can hear the prayers of men, then hear this one. If you care what happens to this land, then act. Condemn this evil; throw it far from us. Please.”
I had hoped that if he answered me, there would be some kind of indication. A light, perhaps. An overwhelming peace, as the Saints have testified. Perhaps a warm love in my heart for all the world.
I was given none of that.
Instead, there was a sound like something cracking and then a great roar and then light — bright light, too light to look upon, but I opened my eyes anyway. In that moment I saw, or I thought I saw, a great warrior, clad in a light so bright that I could not make out his features or the insignia upon his tabard. In the midst of the brightness, he dragged the demons one by one from the heart of my dog, broke their backs over his knee, and stuffed them into a sack, and last of all he broke the great demon from the ceiling. And when the mouth of the sack was secure, he beckoned with his hand, and out leapt my paladin mentor from within Brindle. He turned and offered me one last wink, and then the warrior slung an arm amiably around his shoulders and then the light was gone, and I was blinking and blinded and all I could see was the warrior and Sir Branson again and again outlined in purple on the back of my eyelids and I thought I heard the echo of a voice in my head and it might have said, “Well done,” or it might have said, “I told you so.”
And I wasn’t sure which it was. But if this was faith, then it was dangerous indeed. Just a flicker was enough to slay me.
My eyes sprang open. And there, beneath the surface of the water, Brindle rested.
“No!” I cried, suddenly unable to breathe.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to end. The dog was not supposed to die! Why would he need to die when the God had come and answered my prayer and taken away all the demons?
Was it not over, then? I paused, concentrated, but no, there were no voices in my mind. There was nothing but my sudden sob as I lunged into the fountain and pulled my bedraggled friend out of the water. His fur was sodden, his doggy eyes shut. He looked so small like this.
“No, no, no.”
There were footfalls racing toward me — one normal stride and one long, heavy stride. I looked up through a veil of tears to see Sir Adalbrand and Cleft racing toward me. And between me and them, a crack was forming in the floor.
Something fell, striking the side of the fountain and breaking a piece of it off that was about the size of my head. When I looked up, I realized it was the head of Sir Coriand’s statue. It stared at me from the ground with one accusing eye.
Only something of great power could hold this place together and keep it from falling apart for a thousand years. And that something had been the demon in the ceiling. A demon that no longer existed.
I hardly cared.
I gathered Brindle up to my chest and stood, lifting him, clinging to him. A hot tear spilled down my cheek and my mind was empty, empty, empty with no Sir Branson to speak into it ever again.
