'Can you tell me one thing at least? How could any book make a man not listen to his heart?'
She took a deep breath. 'Well. What if I told you that you could live forever, and never be separated from the ones you love. Wouldn't that make you willing to listen, and learn how if you could?'
'Of course! But no one lives forever….. DO THEY?' The gleam in his eyes was unmistakable.
'No one knows, Kalus. And that's why men cling to religion. That, and the desire to do good. But that's enough for tonight, really. All right?'
At first her words had no effect, then. 'Yes,' he answered absently. For his mind was submerged in questions that had drowned far more learned souls than his.
In the coming battle he retained only one advantage. His life had been too hard, the beginnings of his dreams too dearly bought, to be long deceived and pacified by illusions. His feet were too painfully aware of the road beneath them, and his hands too calloused from the Herculean labors of survival.
But this could not protect him from Fear, when cast in this new, metaphysical light.
Chapter 28
Several days, perhaps a week, passed in much the same outward manner. But Sylviana, with her now practiced eye, began to observe a subtle change in him, and this troubled her. Always now when his attention was not required for some physical task, his eyes and mind seemed to rove about him, as if expecting the walls to come suddenly to life and undo him. She began to fear that despite all her caution she had given him too much to think about, too many questions to grapple with. And she wondered what hidden Pandora's box she had opened inside him.
Her concern was well justified, and her guesses not far from the truth. Two things had occurred simultaneously which had made him very uneasy. And in his mind, once more isolated, they seemed indelibly linked, a kind of hard message from the nameless God, which he must unravel and accept.