“More like the twin. Or we were, before things disintegrated.” Geri sighed. “I’ve had this discussion with Henrick, actually. He is of the opinion that the long slide began with a will to power. I think it’s more complicated than that. I think that the priesthood was corrupted by the congregation.”

Alberich blinked. “How, exactly?”

“The laity wanted absolutes, answers, and the priesthood finally elected to give them answers, the simpler the better,” Geri replied. “The Writ took second place to the Rule, and a poor second at that. The answers took away all uncertainty, and what is more, took away the need to think.”

Alberich frowned; not for nothing had he spent so much of his childhood under the tutelage of a priest who knew—and lived—the old ways. “Above all, the Writ demands that a man—or a woman, for that matter—learn how to think.”

Geri nodded. “You see? The old ways require that each person come to the Sunlord having thought through everything for himself. The current Rule requires that men become sheep, herded in one direction, following one path, pastured in one field, ever and always, so will it be.”

“Sheep.” It occurred to Alberich that it was probably no coincidence that the Sunpriests of Karse had taken to calling their congregations by the name of “flock.”

“Sheep don’t have to think for themselves, do they?” Geri made a face. “The Sunlord was reshaped from the Unknowable into the remote but predictable Patriarch, from the Whirlwind to the windmill that grinds—exceedingly small. Do this—you are gathered unto His bosom. Do that—you are cast into the outermost hells.” Geri shook his head. “Answers are terribly seductive. The simpler they are, the more seductive they become.”

Alberich turned that over in his mind, and found it certainly matched some of his own experience. “But that isn’t the whole of it,” he objected.

“Of course not. I just suggest that this was where the corruption started,” Geri replied. “Then came the power, power that came from giving people what they wanted instead of what they needed, and power is just as seductive and even more addictive than any drug. Now—I don’t know, Alberich. I don’t know how it can be fixed. Or even if it can. It would take the Sunlord Himself in manifestation, perhaps. And someone as the Son of the Sun who is willing to hold to the hard course and be disliked, even hated.”

“And loved.”

“And loved,” Geri agreed. “At one and the same time, and probably by the same people. Because when you demand that each situation be considered separately, and not responded to with the predigested Answer, you are always going to anger someone since you’re always going to disagree with someone. Probably even someone who agreed with you the last time, and now takes this new response as a betrayal.”