Seventy-Eight: Debate
“Why?” A bishop by Lilith’s side lost his patience. He palmed the floor to push himself up, anger crackling like dry twigs, and threw his question at her.
“Tal, hold it.” The Archbishop waved him back down. Her tone was calm as falling snow. “You’re centuries old and still fidget like a child. Let her finish.”
“You’re right.” The bishop called Tal nodded. Age lined his face like tree rings, yet haste had just lit a spark in him. The Archbishop’s words cooled it.
The other bishops didn’t like what they’d heard either. But they sat, hands quiet on robes, waiting like stones along a riverbank, ready to listen.
“Go on, child.” The Archbishop lifted her head toward Lilith. For the first time, the Little White Dragon felt something besides kindness from that gentle woman—pressure like a mountain’s shadow. It pressed until the Little White Dragon didn’t dare lift her gaze. Yet Lilith sensed the weight wasn’t aimed at her, but at the matter itself. So the Little White Dragon braced like a sapling in wind and began.
“The God of Mountains is eager for Their own funeral.” The Little White Dragon searched for words and found only mist. Even Lilith still couldn’t grasp why They would forsake Their life, abandon those who waited in the high ridges and prayed for Their shelter, and walk willingly into a death swallowed by the world’s forgetting.
Lilith didn’t understand. The Little White Dragon had been ill, mind fogged like a valley in drizzle. Even now, she’d had no clear hours to sift through what that meeting with a god had left behind.
She chose not to puzzle it out alone. She trusted her mind like a sharpened blade, but even blades fail on certain knots. If a year of hard thinking might yield nothing, better to lay the threads out for these bishops and let many hands unknot them.
“I asked Them why,” she said. “Their answer wound like a mountain path. I don’t fully understand Their thought.” Lilith frowned. The Little White Dragon straightened, formal as a bell on an altar. She cleared her throat. “I believe Their core thought is this: the people of Lamter don’t need Them anymore.”
“How could that be?” An elder beside Tal flared up first, voice like a hawk’s cry. “Lamter’s people await Their return. We were born from the forest’s womb. How could we not need Them?”
“I—I don’t know what They think…” Lilith flinched at the elder’s shout, small as a mouse under an owl’s stare. The Little White Dragon muttered, wounded. She wasn’t the God of Mountains, nor a native of Lamter. How could she know the rift between a god and Their own people? Why yell at a passerby for the storm?
“Quiet.” The Archbishop steadied the room like a hand on a trembling cup. The elder was tugged back into her seat. Tal leaned to whisper in her ear, breath a thin breeze, “She’s just carrying words. Why bark at the messenger?”
“I was anxious,” the elder shot back with a roll of her eyes, sparks still in them. Tal’s palm dropped on her shoulder, a firm tap like a gavel.
While she rubbed the sting and hissed, Tal reached toward Lilith with a question. “You don’t know Lamter’s daily life, I get that. But did the God of Mountains give a reason why Lamter no longer needs Them?”
“They did.” Lilith nodded. “They said Their divine authority no longer fits Lamter’s present. They said the people of Lamter have a better choice now. They shouldn’t keep limiting you.”
“What do you mean, a better choice?” Tal’s brows knotted like tangled roots. He struck his own forehead. “You mean the Mali Church? I said from the start that church was trouble. We never should’ve let them into Lamter!”
“Quiet, Tal. Quiet.” The Archbishop’s calm didn’t ripple. Her voice was a still lake. She looked at Lilith, then over the gathered bishops, and let a moment of silence snow over them all.
“Mali Church…” Lilith began, hesitant, eyes dropping as if the Archbishop’s gaze were midday sun. The Little White Dragon ducked her head, voice a stammering brook. “I… I once stayed at the Mali Church for a time. I saw many young Lamter there. Is that why the God said Lamter doesn’t need Them?”
“Hmph! Those youths merely lost their reverence for the divine.” Tal’s snort was a spark in dry grass. “They forget how, when Lamter was still wilderness, the God of Mountains lifted us. They forget the devotion we owe.”
“Tal, if you can’t speak quietly, I’ll ask you to leave.” The Archbishop’s chill cut like frost. Tal’s protest died.
“Sorry. I’ll behave.” The elf clapped a hand over his mouth like a lid on a kettle and sat down.
“Go on,” the Archbishop said, returning her gaze to Lilith, voice as even as a plumb line.
Lilith curled her fists. The Little White Dragon sat by a fireplace warm as a hearth in winter. Kindly elders, faces soft as moss, ate cookies and drank milk, laughter like gentle rain. Her sudden arrival had iced the air, turning the room into a cold cave.
Her question felt impolite, but it had lodged in her like a thorn. She held her ground beneath the Archbishop’s press, and let the thorn show.
“I have an offensive question.”
“Ask,” the Archbishop said with a nod, granting permission like opening a gate.
“If Lamter’s faith had stayed as strong as when this city was founded, why would a god’s most vital thing—their True Name—wash away in the river of history?”
Lilith set her hands on her knees, eyes steady on the Archbishop as she spoke.
The Archbishop didn’t answer. She simply looked at Lilith, gaze deep as a well.
The Little White Dragon felt the air grow colder, frost creeping along the stones.
