“The prophecy says that Darvezian shall be brought low by spider’s fang and by spider’s path,” Dion declared. “We have hunted out the mother of spiders, an obscenity that makes this creature seem a mere catcher of flies in contrast, and we have wrested from it the venomous fang that I intend to drive into Darvezian’s Dark chest, but this creature is needed to guide us by secret ways that will let us reach the Dark Lord without trying conclusions with every monster and Doomsayer and Ghantishman between here and his tower.”

Abnasio actually chuckled at that. “I applaud your fervor, my sister. I give you all tribute, as she who has made our work possible. You must know, however, that the spider’s path is merely a reinforcement of the fact that by the spider’s fang shall Darvezian die. It is not a separate requirement. Gamograth himself has said this, and in doing so he was following Innazi’s On Prophecies and the teachings of Meflo the Bright.”

Dion’s face took on an odd look not before seen by Lief, although he guessed that this was because he had never happened across her when she was at debating class in the seminary. It was a rather arch and patronizing look, but one very specific to the face of a person of education about to show another person of education how wrong they are. “It is, however, written in the Divinatory Epistles of Chalcy that every word of prophecy is like a rare pearl with its own import, and Blessed Armes would not lower himself to merely repeat in one line a message already given in another. It is therefore for us to correctly interpret every intention of the divine. As you are failing to do.”

Abnasio drew breath in through his nose, an audible dismissal. “You will be familiar with the Edicts of Fargalon where the sage Nieth recounts that Armes is well aware of the frailties of human comprehension”—and somehow he had turned that phrase into a direct attack on Dion’s intelligence—“so that oft times, when the message is as vital as in this case, the truth must be repeated twice or even more. Alas, for more general comprehension, Armes did not give us a third repetition, that even you could not argue with.”

There was the sort of murmur among the monks that Lief would have expected after a particularly vicious blow in a bar fight. For his part, though, while this was presumably the theological grudge match of the century and he could probably have sold tickets to it across Armesion, he had never really taken to settling arguments by way of three falls and an inarguable philosophical truth. Instead he had been working for some time on the ropes, using a peculiar flexibility inherent in his joints and the benefits of long hours of practice. Already he was mostly out of them.