Among the Fallen

by NS Dolkart

  Ptera was staring at him silently, her expression inscrutable. He wished he knew what she was thinking.

  “I don’t know what’s going on right now,” he admitted, “and if you want to know what I think, it’s that we’ll never really know. If Ravennis swallows Elkinar, there’ll be no way to know for sure that They weren’t the same God all along. I think Mother Dinendra is right to be wary of my prophecy. Our Gods might be united, but They also might be fighting in a life-or-death struggle as we speak, in which case Elkinar can’t afford for His own high priestess to give up on Him. She can’t trust me; she’s doing the right thing for her God.”

  He could tell that Ptera didn’t agree with him about something, but about what? Why wasn’t she saying anything?

  “I don’t know,” he sputtered on, unable to stop talking. “Maybe it’s over already. Maybe They weren’t the same God before, but They are now. The thing is, if it is a fight, and the fight isn’t over, this could get really ugly. Even if Ravennis can shield me from other divine powers, an independent Elkinar might be able to tell Mother Dinendra the truth – assuming for now that the truth is different from what I said it was.”

  At this, Ptera finally spoke. “Stop doubting yourself, and stop doubting our God. Ravennis doesn’t lie, Narky.”

  He shrugged. “Ravennis made the world think He was dead, then wormed His way into Magor’s territory and started undermining Him from within. He made me shoot a man in the back, or at least rewarded me for doing it myself. You can say that Ravennis doesn’t lie, but what do we know? No straightforward, honorable God would have chosen me for His high priest.”

  To Narky’s surprise, Ptera caught his face between her hands and kissed him hard. With her hands still firmly on his cheeks, she said, “I love you, Narky, but you don’t understand yourself at all. I’m sure you have all sorts of flaws, but dishonesty isn’t one of them! Whatever His reasons, Ravennis didn’t choose you because you’re a good liar. What man in your position would admit to his wife that he doesn’t know what’s going on? What high priest would speculate that his God chose him for nefarious reasons? You can’t even hold your thoughts inside you for long, let alone mask them in deception. The truth shines through you.”

  “Thanks,” Narky said. “Are you going to let go of me now?”

  “No,” she answered, and kissed him again. There was no more talk of Gods that night.

  In the morning, however, the work began. Ptera was right, after all: it wouldn’t do for Narky to doubt his own God. Even if the prophecy wasn’t strictly true yet, Ravennis would want him to act as though it was.

  So Narky called a festival in honor of the prophecy he had been given, and sent Ptera to spread the word throughout the city. The priests of Elkinar were caught flat-footed – they had apparently not settled on a response yet, nor had their God given them any visions to contradict Narky’s prophetic words. As such, Narky was able to spread his message of the Gods’ unity for two full days without any story competing with his. That was perfect: without disagreement from the priests of Elkinar, people assumed that Narky’s version of events must be true. When they asked him what would become of the two separate priesthoods, Narky demurred magnanimously, saying that the One God had yet to guide him on such political questions. The priesthoods need not merge overnight.

  As for the people’s everyday practice, Narky told his followers to dedicate all future prayers and sacrifices to “Ravennis, who is Elkinar”. He defied the priests across the way to find a reason for complaint – after all, wasn’t he doubling the number of prayers and sacrifices directed at their God? Of course, it was quite possible that Ravennis and Elkinar had always been one. That was what Ptera thought. But if there was a struggle in the heavens, he meant to win it for Ravennis.

  The next time he and Ptera visited, Father Sephas was furious. “What is this you’ve been spreading while our backs were turned? We were to coordinate our teachings!”

  “I’m sorry,” Narky said, “I thought you were just waiting to see if Elkinar struck me down. He still has time to, you know. I’m sure if He smites me tomorrow, the people will reject my teachings without any argument.”

  Ptera was right – he was terrible at concealing his thoughts. That had come out far more biting than he’d wanted it to, and exactly as biting as he’d meant it.

  “Be careful,” Father Taemon said. “The Gods can work through men as well, and this is still Elkinar’s city.”

  Narky’s stomach clenched. Oh Ravennis below, why hadn’t he thought of that? If Narky was beaten to death here in the Great Temple of Elkinar, who would deny that his teachings had proven false? Could he make a break for it if he needed to?

  Mother Dinendra smiled innocently at him. “I’m sure Narky didn’t mean to offend us. He is young, and has yet to learn tactful speech. He was not raised to be High Priest of Ravennis, but had the position thrust upon him.”

  “Yes,” Narky said, sizing up the room. “I apologize.”

  Without Mother Dinendra, who was old and frail, there were still five priests of Elkinar and only Narky and Ptera to face them. What’s more, the door behind him was closed – he doubted he could get it open and slip out before they were upon him, and of course, there was Ptera to consider too. And even if they did escape, where would they flee to? The very act of running would be seen as a defeat for Ravennis, a proof that Narky’s teachings had all been lies. There was no way around it: he was at the priests of Elkinar’s mercy.

  “We have a theological quandary here,” Mother Dinendra said. “I have discussed it with Father Sephas and we see two distinct possibilities: either Narky’s words the other night were truth, and Elkinar and Ravennis are one, or else Ravennis is attempting to usurp Elkinar’s place in the heavens even as He festers in the world below. If I had to guess, Narky, I would say that you were operating under the latter assumption.”

  Narky gulped. “I considered the possibility.”

  “And yet,” Mother Dinendra said, “you are as ignorant of the truth as we are. Without Elkinar’s word on the matter, we can’t know whether the right course of action is for us to join our priesthoods together or, if you’ll pardon me Narky, to kill the two of you immediately.”

  “Ravennis doesn’t lie,” Ptera said, but her voice shook with fear.

  “Well,” said Mother Dinendra, “therein lies the quandary. If our Gods are truly one, then to kill the two of you would be unspeakable blasphemy. Elkinar may well do to us what Karassa did to Tarphae. I would rather not risk it, which is why I had suggested that we take a week to sort out the truth. By spreading word of the prophecy, however, Narky has forced our hand.”

  “If you guess wrong,” Narky warned, “it’ll mean the death of your people.”

  “If I guess wrong on the other side, it’ll mean the death of my God.”

  Narky fell silent. His talking wasn’t helping. He hadn’t thought that Mother Dinendra was especially attached to her God – she had told him once that she had only joined Elkinar’s priesthood as a way to keep herself and her children out of politics. Only now did he realize how little contradiction there was between that fact and the possibility that she might take her role as high priestess of Elkinar seriously.

  “What are you going to do?” Ptera asked.

  “Barring an answer from the heavens,” Dinendra said, “I’m going to have to devise a test. Luckily, just such a test has presented itself.”

  “It has?”

  The old priestess smiled. “Oh, yes. I received word today that General Magerion of Ardis is on his way here with a hundred men. Apparently, he wishes to take Narky back to Ardis with him. Ravennis has proven quite well that He can take advantage of His followers’ deaths, but if He is truly one with Elkinar, He will also be able to sustain their lives. So I propose that you go with Magerion peacefully, and see what happens.

  “I do not enjoy being rushed, Narky, so let me be clear and precise this time: today is the seventh day of the eighth month. If in a
year or more you come back to Anardis and give a sacrifice on Elkinar’s altar, then it will be proof that our Gods are one.”

  26

  Bandu

  The Ardismen never recovered from Bandu’s ambush. Though their general had escaped, their army did not reform, and after two days in pursuit, Criton turned the people northward again. By now, a steady trickle of refugees was joining them, bringing news of the second army’s movements. Criton did not think it would take long to catch them.

  He was wrong. The second army managed to slip by them and hurry homeward, and Criton was left trying to chase them down with no real hope of catching up. Belkos said they should march straight down to Ardis and besiege the city. Bandu begged Criton not to try.

  “They are so many more than us,” she said, “and they have walls. You can’t win there, but you already win here! They are too afraid to fight you. The plain people are happy without Ardis. We can make a new home for the Dragon Touched here!”

  But Criton would not listen. He was angry because the second army had gotten away from him, and it was no good talking to Criton when he was angry. He stopped listening. Even Delika avoided him for a day or two, and Bandu wouldn’t let him handle Goodweather until she was sure he’d be able to control himself. That made him even angrier, which made her trust him less, and on and on it went.

  She relied even more on Dessa and Vella to help her, since Iona’s time was often spent now taking care of her mother. Partha was getting worse, it seemed. Her balance was bad, and she couldn’t walk so fast, so she rode on a friend’s mule when the camp was moving, and made demands of Iona whenever they stopped to rest. It was enough to make Bandu glad that she had no mother of her own.

  Dessa split her time between visiting Bandu and helping take care of her grandmother, but Vella was available almost every evening. She still seemed scared of Bandu, but at least she was useful. She doted on Goodweather, really, and she also had much more patience for Delika than Bandu did. Bandu was too unkind to her.

  Vella and her husband were not close the way Bandu and Criton were, for all their fighting. They were not friends, and from what Bandu could tell, they spent very little time together. That was the problem with choosing mates the way the Dragon Touched had – parents chose mates for their children not to make them happy, but to keep them safe. This might have worked to keep their neighbors from finding them, but it was too easy to make mistakes and pair children who didn’t like each other.

  It would not always be this way, at least. Dessa had been supposed to marry Vella’s younger brother, but that had been put off when the Dragon Touched went to war. There was no time for weddings and no need to hide now, so Dessa might even get to wait until she was Bandu’s age and could choose for herself. Dessa was very happy about that.

  But then, Bandu sometimes wondered if even that was old enough – sometimes she thought she might have chosen Criton too soon. She loved him, and the two of them knew each other better than they knew anybody, but he was not a good mate – he was easily distracted, he let his worries spill onto Bandu and their daughter, and of course, he had never been good at controlling his anger. His father had broken that in him.

  He wanted to be better, of course – that was why she hadn’t left him yet. He always tried, or almost always, and if he failed… well, it was still his fault, and she didn’t forgive him for it. But at least it was understandable.

  It scared her how little she wanted him sometimes. She had once needed him so desperately that any separation had been painful, but now… well, she had changed. Baby Goodweather needed her more than Criton did, and she took up so much of her mother’s time and energy that Bandu had less interest in trying to fix Criton. Now if he said or did something bad, or ignored her when he should have been paying attention, Bandu just rolled her eyes and went to someone else for help.

  Sometimes she dreamt she had Four-foot back, and could live just with him and Goodweather in the shadow of the Yarek. The wolf and the tree would protect her from harm better than any army could, and they would never make her feel like the pack was more important than she was. That was how life should be. Why couldn’t Criton have given her a life like that?

  She knew why, of course: because he would have been miserable all alone with her. As much as he loved her, being alone with a mate and a child was not his dream. He too had grown up in isolation, but his isolation had been very different from hers, and he had hated it in a way that she knew she would never completely understand. He had always wanted to be part of a big pack that loved and accepted him – he needed the Dragon Touched even more than they needed him. Bandu couldn’t ask him to abandon the people he had been looking for all his life.

  But then, when had Criton ever asked Bandu if she wanted to be part of a Dragon Touched army? If the pressures of being part of this pack were too much for him, serve him right! Maybe if things got bad enough, he’d be willing to try it her way for once.

  She had never felt so powerless as she did now, among these people, with a baby to take care of. It was one thing to choose a mate and then rely on him for support, and it was another thing entirely to have to rely on help from his cousin’s family so that she wouldn’t be overwhelmed. It was one thing to travel with a pack that didn’t always understand her, and it was another to be surrounded by people who called her a foreign witch.

  When she needed reassurance, Bandu looked to the Yarek. It was always visible, at least from here, stretching from the ground to the sky like a living pillar holding up the world. It was her connection to who she was, and it was ready to help her if she called.

  But though she drew strength from its presence, she never reached into the earth again to speak to it. She was afraid of what it might offer her. It may have come from Goodweather’s seed, but it wasn’t like a child. The Yarek was dangerous, much more dangerous than people realized. It wasn’t just a tree, and it didn’t really hold up the world. It split it.

  But it was tempting to look toward it anyway whenever she felt misunderstood. Unlike the Dragon Touched, the Yarek was grateful for what she’d done on its behalf. Unlike the Dragon Touched, it did not fear her. And unlike any person she had ever met, it did not fear the Gods.

  Bandu didn’t fear the Gods either, not the way other people did. All her kind worshipped the Gods out of fear, because that was what They wanted. There was good reason to be afraid, of course – Bandu had seen the Gods do great and terrible things – but that only made her angrier about Their meddling. It made her want to stand like the Yarek and cry, You cannot destroy me. You can cut me down and tear me to pieces, but I will always grow back.

  She did not say these things to Criton.

  She wondered if Hessina knew; if that was why the high priestess was so unwelcoming to her. Could she sense that Bandu did not respect her God? Was that why they all shunned her, why they seemed so afraid of her? Maybe it wasn’t her foreignness that bothered them. Maybe it was her fearlessness.

  One evening, when they had all made their camp again and Criton was out with Delika, learning prayers or rituals or something from Hessina, Bandu decided to make Vella tell her what made her so scary. The other girl was playing with baby Goodweather while Bandu arranged the bedding for the night, and Bandu turned on her and asked, “Why you’re so afraid of me?”

  Vella’s eyes widened in horror. She looked trapped.

  “You are always afraid of me,” Bandu said. “I don’t do anything to you, but you are afraid anyway. Why?”

  “You’re a bit intimidating,” Vella answered quietly. Her face was starting to turn red.

  “Then why you come here, if you are so afraid?”

  “I like coming here.”

  Bandu didn’t believe her. “You don’t look like that. You don’t look happy – always you’re scared of me just like everybody else. Why do you come here?”

  “Do you want to see less of me?” Vella asked meekly.

  Bandu made a frustrated sound. “No, I want you to answ
er.”

  “Because you’re so beautiful,” the girl nearly whispered.

  “What?”

  “I said, because–”

  “I hear you; I don’t understand. What do you mean, I am beautiful? Why that makes you afraid?”

  Vella stood shakily and handed Goodweather back to her. “Do you want to hold her again? I have to go.”

  And like that, she fled.

  Bandu stood holding Goodweather for a long time. What had just happened between them? Did Vella want to be Bandu’s mate? She hadn’t said so, but that was what it seemed like. But Bandu already had a mate, besides which, she hardly knew Vella – the girl had always been too afraid to talk to her. It almost made her laugh, though, to think that she had thought Vella could explain why everyone was afraid of her. She had assumed that Vella had the same reasons as everyone else, but that obviously wasn’t true – she was fairly sure the other Dragon Touched weren’t afraid of her because she was beautiful.

  It was a nice thing to hear, that someone besides Criton thought she was beautiful. The thought made her smile. She liked Vella much more now that she knew why the other girl had been shy with her. Bandu thought they might talk a lot more after this, since Vella had apparently said the thing she’d been so afraid to say before. She looked forward to it. It had been so lonely thinking that everyone hated her.

  But she did not see much of Vella for the next few days. Maybe the girl was too embarrassed to see her.

  In the meantime, the Dragon Touched camp moved closer to Ardis by the day. As time went on, Criton was beginning to admit that his plan for attacking made no sense. He had won his battles against the Ardismen by making them run away, but as he said now, no army would run when its city was at its back.

  Not everyone agreed. Sitting in the tent where they held their meetings, Criton’s cousin said that the Dragon Touched ought to march straight to the gates of Ardis and demand that they open, just as the gates of Anardis had opened to the red priest.