Cobweb Empire Read Online Free PDF

far more gently.
    Father Dibue, the village priest, was a
large, ruddy-faced man with straw-colored hair, a jutting chin and
coarse features. The hood of his coat was as usual worn over many
layers of closely wrapped grey shawls against the cold, on top of
the woolen habit, since he was always on the go, and spent so much
time outside, walking from house to house all day long.
    “Good morning, my child,” said the priest,
looking at Percy, and his expression was wary but his eyes not
unkind.
    “Good morning, Father,” said Percy, stopping
before them, since she had been addressed. “And,
Pa . . . and Ma.”
    “Your Grandmother has indeed passed on. May
the Lord have Mercy on her soul, and may she rest in His Bosom and
in all Heaven’s Light,” said Father Dibue with a tired sigh,
deciding not to beat around the bush. “And I am told that somehow
you had something to do with it.”
    “Yes,” Percy said simply.
    The neighbors were watching them. And the
soldiers in the yard had come around to stare, some still holding
chunks of bread and sausage and mugs of tea.
    “Would you kindly explain to me what exactly
you did , Persephone?” Father Dibue continued. “I realize
you’ve been to Death’s Keep, and something happened there. What
does it mean exactly, now, that you’re Death’s Champion? Don’t be
afraid to speak the truth, girl.”
    “I am not entirely sure, Father, but it
means, I think, I can help the dead pass on.”
    “But how? I do want to understand you
better, you can imagine how unusual, how unnatural this whole thing
is—I of course must make certain it is God’s Hand at work here, and
not the other —”
    Percy felt her head filling with remote
cold, and a wave of now familiar darkness. And then, just as
quickly it receded, and she blinked.
    “Well, speak up, daughter!” Niobea said
loudly. “The Holy Father asked you a question, and you must answer
him now!”
    “I am sorry, but I don’t know how to answer.
I don’t know what it is,” Percy said softly. “I only know that it
feels like the right thing to do. I see death’s shadows near the
dead. I bring the two together, that is all. If that is indeed
God’s Will—that the dying be granted peace in one way or another,
even if Death Himself has stopped and cannot do his work here on
earth, and if I have been given this ability, then—then I do not
see how it could be wrong.”
    “Now, you do realize how presumptuous that
sounds, child?” said Father Dibue, after a long pause. “It is
presumptuous indeed for a mere child of your age to presume to know
what is God’s Will at any given moment. While I do understand our
present difficulty—that the world is placed in very strange
circumstances right now—but given such a thing, it is especially
important that we carefully examine this from the proper angle of
faith and righteousness—”
    “There is nothing more to examine, Holy
Father,” came a powerful baritone from the back. It was the black
knight, standing fully dressed except for his heaviest armor plate,
holding a steaming mug in one hand. His head was bare and the top
of his wavy brown hair shone in a soft nimbus, full of golden
highlights in the morning sun. The overnight rest had done him some
good, for, except for a new shadow of stubble, his face was smooth
and composed, without the strain of weariness of the previous
day.
    “The girl tells us she has been given this
ability to ease the dead,” Lord Beltain went on, “and I see nothing
wrong with it, considering what else is going on in the world
around us.”
    Father Dibue bowed his head respectfully.
“True enough, it is not as if the girl is going around randomly
murdering anyone.” And then he glanced momentarily with new alarm
at Percy. “You cannot do that, can you, my child? That is, you
cannot simply kill a healthy person from a distance?”
    Percy frowned. She was at a complete loss as
to how to respond.
    “I would think,” the black knight