He has forgottenhis real name because everyone who comes here is rebaptized with thename of one of the martyrs of the Lord Redeemers - and there aremany of them on account of the fact that, time out of mind, everyonethey have failed to convert has hated their guts.

He is not sure and neither is anyone else.

He is perhaps fourteen or fifteenyears old. Standing in one of these corridors is a boy looking out of a windowand holding a large, dark blue sack. There is no change in theway it looks - every part of it looks much the same as every other part:brown, dark, grim and smelling of something old and rancid. No one knows his way round allof it and it is as easy to get lost within its endless corridors that twistand turn, high and low, as in any wilderness. This graveyard is vast, spreading as far asyou can see, so you will have some idea of the size of Shotover and howvery hard it is even to stay alive there. The other half will have left in ashroud of blue sacking and been buried in Ginky’s Field, a graveyardthat begins under the walls. Depending ontheir age when they enter, it may be more than fifteen years before theyleave and then only half will do so. Nor do they look like any prisoner you will ever have seen: thosewho are brought here are all boys under the age of ten. Who are their prisoners, then? This is the wrongword for those who are taken to Shotover, because “prisoners” suggestsa crime and they, none of them, have offended any law made by man orGod. It is a stinking, foul place and no one except the Lord Redeemersgo there willingly. The flour makes the concrete harder than rock and thisis one of the reasons that the prison, for this is what it truly is, has resistedthe many attempts to take it by siege, attempts now consideredso futile that no one has tried to take Shotover Sanctuary for hundredsof years.

The Sanctuary itself is visible for miles when there isno filthy smog obscuring it, which is rare, and is made of flint, concreteand rice flour. The country around it is full of scrub and spindlyweeds and you can barely tell the difference between summer andwinter - which is to say that it is always bloody freezing no matter whatthe time of year. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp isnamed after a damned lie, for there is no redemption that goes on thereand less sanctuary.

The left hand of god by paul hoffman