“Religion, Slider,” he continues, carefully, “is quite possibly the most dangerous of stories. A man or woman will put faith before their own families if it’s hammered into them at an early enough age. It was one of the most difficult stories to overcome for those who founded Crache.”

“How did they do it?” Dyeawan asks, though she’s already gleaned the answer.

“They created a new religion, one they could control.”

“The God Stars.”

“Yes. As I said, they were very wise men and women. The stars are the first gods of all people, you see. When our ancestors, far back, first crawled out from some dank cave and looked to the sky for the first time, they immediately adopted that magnificence as their higher power. How could you not? There’s something… visceral in us all that reaches back to that first sense of wonder and awe and is humbled by it. So… my predecessors created a new religion around it, one… flashy enough, shall we say, to supplant the religions that came before. They used the God Stars to wean the people off their old deities and faiths.”

“But worshipping the God Stars is abolished in the Capitol.”

“In all Crache,” he corrects her. “Well, it wasn’t needed anymore. It did its job. And as I said… religion is the most dangerous of stories. It’s a wondrous method of control, to be sure, but who possesses the reins of that control? A priest? A church? What happens when people believe in that more than the state? What happens to the mind of the priest who realizes they’re seen as a living god? No, religion… it just breeds monsters, as do monarchies. We’re far better off without them.”

“I think I understand,” Dyeawan says, and she does.

She decides to keep her further thoughts on what he’s just told her to herself.

Edger seems satisfied, even pleased with her reaction.

“I’d like to show you something, Slider. Would you follow me, please?”

Dyeawan nods, pressing her arms over the tender’s paddles at the ready.

He leads her past scores of other relics, more books and art and statues. It’s impossible to commit it all to memory, or even take it all in, but Dyeawan is determined she’ll return here and study it all, every piece, up close and at length.

Eventually a clearing opens up amidst the claustrophobia of the tightly packed artifacts, and Dyeawan finds she can still be surprised, even in a cavern full of forgotten wonders.