Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 86

Clera leaned across to Nona, speaking in a low voice. ‘If any of us do go there we’ll be doing it alone. They say the old girl hasn’t put a toe on the Path for thirty years.’

Nona pressed her lips together, gesturing with her eyes towards Mistress Path.

‘She’s deaf as a post, silly.’ Clera grinned and raised her tone a fraction. ‘Those that can, do – those that can’t, teach. At least in Path. The doers are too valuable to waste on us.’

Sister Pan paused and frowned at Clera, who dutifully faced front and centre. ‘Now, we have … Arabella.’ The nun focused on the Jotsis girl, whose shaved head was spattered with coloured light. ‘A bold stare she has. Hmmm. But what can she see?’ Sister Pan approached and leaned in close. ‘Don’t look away, dear. Keep your eyes on mine. In this place the world sings for us. Can you hear it?’ She took Arabella’s wrist in the gnarled claw of her hand. The nun’s skin was the black of a dusty slate, darker than her habit: Arabella’s fingers looked white as bone in that grip. ‘A three-part song. Life.’ She lifted their joined hands. ‘That which has never lived.’ She moved her stump into a pool of deep red light and followed the shaft of it up towards the window. ‘And death.’ A quick glance back towards the chest. ‘The notes of the song …’ Sister Pan intoned three notes, pure but somehow sad, the start of a melody that Nona wanted to hear more of. The nun released Arabella’s wrist and started to pace before the seated novices. ‘There’s a boundary between what lives and what does not. It runs through all things, and around them. It’s a path that is hard to follow but each step taken is a holy one. When you walk the Path you approach the divine. The Path flows from the Ancestor and the Ancestor waits at the end of it. At the end of all things.

‘We are mortal though. We are flawed. Poor vessels for divinity. Each step is harder than the last, the Path twists and turns, it is narrow and in motion, the power that it gives is … difficult to contain. Sooner rather than later everyone slips from the Path no matter what their heart desires, no matter how pure their faith.