The Easting Reach

He sits near the lectern, as is his custom, with his head cocked to the side like a curious dog. Though the reading has entered its second hour he has not stirred. His eyes remain fixed on the speaker, an itinerant from Aglarond's church of Waukeen. He is not familiar with the man's other works, and his desire to familiarize himself is quickly fading. He looks to the window. Selune is rising. One of Pausnodoran's Golden Theorems may predict the inverse relationship between his declining interest and the rising path of the Goddess through the night sky. He breaks his reverie with a sigh - after all, it may not.

The founder of his order had mandated alternating periods of monastic seclusion and worldly travel. Months and years of prayer, inspiration, and research will terminate pointlessly if one does not venture into the secular world to see, to hear, and to learn; to then return refreshed in body and spirit to give oneself back to the rigors of study.

The founder had laid down no hard-and-fast rules as to how long each alternating period should be. It was left to successive generations of humorless, rigid men like himself to erode the meaning of their faith with decree after insufferable decree.

He once read that in the mountains of Turmish shepherds greeted one another by lifting three fingers in the air, though none of them could remember the meaning of this custom.

I am such a man, he thought.

As a child he was chided that the value of knowledge could not be quantified. This was, of course, a lie. Men would not otherwise break their backs in prayer nor gods and demiurges exercise their divinity for nothing. The idea was irreverent. It is simply that when one comes to the age of love and has only books, one must be convincing in his self-deception.