Between his legs, Valdemar could feel his body betraying him. She was right, of course, but what did it matter, anyway? If the gods didn’t care anymore, why should he? Why not derive the most pleasure he could while his coin held out? The trip back north would be hard with Winter approaching and he had little to look forward to when he got home. Augmentin had been right: pleasure of the body was the only antidote to the death of the soul.
Two mugs later, he was sitting nervously on one of the upstairs beds, waiting for Annie to join him. His palms were sweaty and his arm pits were dripping. He was still wearing his robe even though she had suggested that he remove it. His room - the place where he would cast aside a cornerstone of his adult life - was dingy and depressing. Aside from the bed, which was unsteady enough that he wondered if it might collapse, there was no furniture. The lone window admitted almost no illumination - not only was it north-facing but the grime was thick enough to blot out the indirect light. Dust was thick on the floor and in the air. With no fireplace, he imagined it would be frigid in here during the coldest weeks of the year.
For Valdemar, this was a break with the only life he had known. His calling had been genuine - of that he was sure. The rejection of the gods, whatever the reason, had negated the meaning of his existence. He couldn’t understand how the temple still functioned, almost as if nothing had happened. Priests still prayed and chanted and ministered to the sick and weary. Didn’t they care? Didn’t they feel the void? Or were they lying to themselves?
Perhaps things were different here. Maybe those who lived and worked in the temple were more concerned about performing duties than understanding the reasons underlying those duties. Annie had admitted that he wasn’t the first priest to have courted her favors. Did being a priest mean something different to Valdemar than to those in Vantok who wore the robes? Was that why Ferguson wouldn’t see him - not because the prelate was too busy but because he knew there was nothing he could to for a rural priest who suspected the truth?
The door opened to admit Annie, who tsk-tsked when she saw that he was still wearing his robe. Without ceremony, she removed her blouse and stepped close enough that they were nearly touching. Even in the dimness of the room, he could see enough for arousal to overcome the anxiety coursing through his body.
“Have you kept your vows until now?” Her voice was husky.
Valdemar grunted. It was the most coherent response he could manage under the circumstances.
“Let’s make it memorable then.”
Several hours later, Valdemar, now a multiple oath-breaker, exited The Wayfarer’s Comfort. His gait was unsteady as he covered the short distance between the main entrance and the stable, where his mule was waiting. It had been raining all day and, although the precipitation was lighter now than when he had arrived, the streets had been turned into muddy quagmires.
His sexual initiation had been less than memorable; his emotions were still a jumble. He hadn’t lasted until he was inside Annie but she had been gentle and understanding, saying it was common with men on their first time. She tried to arouse him a second time but it didn’t work. He felt like a failure. In a way, it seemed absurd: all of that tension, all of that self-denial over the years culminating in such a base physical response, no different in the end from what he could accomplish by himself.
The stableboy, a strapping lad of about 12, was the same one Valdemar had greeted upon his arrival earlier in the day. It was for boys like these, no longer children but not yet having reached their Day of Maturity, that he worried the most. They would grow up in a world without gods. They would never know the comfort of reaching out in prayer and finding a warm, caring spirit at the other end. Their lives would be cold and barren.
Earlier, he had engaged the stableboy in a brief conversation, trying in his clumsy way to convey his concerns.
“Are you a believer, my son?” he had asked.
The lad hadn’t known what to make of the question. “Don’t rightly know. My parents never taught me one way or t’other and I ain’t given it much thought.”
This hadn’t surprised Valdemar. Peasants were often so consumed by worries about day-to-day living that they had neither the time nor the patience for proper pieties. “You may be wiser than us all. I have devoted my entire life to the gods, and this is how they repay me…” He had let the sentence hang. “They have abandoned us. How we have displeased them, I cannot say, but they have turned from us. Devout or infidel, it does not matter. There are no miracles. Prayers are not answered. It has been thus for many years… more than a decade, perhaps as many as two… but it can no longer be ignored. Woe be unto us all. Evildoers will prosper and those who have devoted their lives to the path of rightness will dine on ashes. The gods no longer favor their people.
“I see this has little meaning for you, my son.”
The stableboy’s response had been straightforward and without guile. “It’s just that I can’t see how things will be different for me without the gods.”
A sad smile had crossed Valdemar’s features. “I can understand how one so young and isolated might feel that way. But without the gods, who nurture this world and all its creatures, balance will erode. Even one in your position will eventually feel the sting of life in a gods-less existence. I have no answers, my son. I am traveling the whole of the land, seeking solace - seeking evidence that there might be some small group among us that still has favor among the gods. At every stop I have made, there is nothing to encourage. What grievous sin have we committed that has caused the gods to look away?” He had wrung his hands in frustration.
For the stableboy, that conversation had transpired only a few hours ago. For Valdemar, it had been as if in another lifetime. Now, as he accepted the reins from his mule’s temporary caretaker, he pronounced an unusual benediction: “Take care of yourself, my son. None other will.”
After leaving The Wayfarer’s Comfort, Valdemar departed Vantok by way of the main thoroughfare, which eventually became the North-South Road. The trip home would be long and grueling, demanding nearly four weeks of travel. The southernmost leg was the least difficult, with inns catering to travelers dotting the road at regular intervals. Valdemar made use of their comforts, at least for as long as his coins held out. Each night, he spent several hours nursing a mug in a common room followed by an encounter with a whore in his rented room. By the third or fourth time, he was able to last long enough to consummate the act, although none of the women showed the enthusiasm and generosity exhibited by Annie. He knew he would remember her for the remainder of his days; she would be the woman against whom all others would be measured.
Eventually, Valdemar ran out of money and had to spend his nights in barns and stables, since no one would turn out a priest to sleep in the cold alongside the road. As the path wound ever northward toward the imposing Broken Crags mountain range, inns and waystations become scarce, forcing Valdemar to use his priestly status to beg shelter from isolated farmsteads and those in stopped caravans. By day 17 out of Vantok, the priest entered the ominously titled Widow’s Pass. With the weather worsening and flakes of wet snow mixing with the rain, Valdemar know it would be a treacherous crossing.
Widow’s Pass was the only way through the mountains for hundreds of miles in any direction. Forged by magic many centuries ago to provide a direct trade route between North and South, it was showing its age. Originally, it had been intended for a wizard to provide routine maintenance on the pass, but magic had died out nearly a millennium ago, leaving Widow’s Pass to slowly disintegrate. Several dozen men perished in the pass every year, often victims of carelessness but occasionally targets of foul play. Widow’s Pass was a good place to kill someone and make it look like an accident. Deaths in the pass were never investigated and no guards patrolled the narrow, winding trail.
Valdemar hated the pass. He felt dwarfed by it, with the fractured mountain peaks rearing high above to either side, blocking direct sunlight. Even in High Summer, it was a place
of shadows and cold. On the doorstep of Winter, only those desperate to get home risked its perils.
Home: was that Valdemar’s destination? Did that single word have meaning now that the creeping dread had been revealed as the truth? Where did his duty lie? Was it to return to the seclusion of the past few years and continue to pretend the world was as it had once been? Or was it to shout his new understanding from the rooftops, allowing his words to spread a firestorm of distress and despair - things that fueled his own internal inferno.
By now, he had sampled the pleasures of the flesh from The Wayfarer’s Comfort and Annie to the daughter of a merchant behind a wagon. While there was release to be found in those things, there was no solace. He could drink himself senseless but when he awoke, the empty ache returned, stronger than ever. And, even though there were no gods to judge him, the weight of an irrational guilt pressed down on him. He had broken his vows and, even though the ones to whom he had sworn had turned away, Valdemar still felt shame and a powerful sense of being unclean. “Sin isn’t a state of the body,” Ferguson once preached. “It’s a state of the mind.” By that definition, he was living in a state of profound sin, yet there was no one who could offer absolution.
Night arrived early in the pass and Valdemar was forced to stop before the sun set outside the mountains. Traveling in the dark was tantamount to suicide. Because so little grew in the pass, there was no fuel for a fire, so Valdemar had to be content with wrapping himself in coarse blankets and hunkering down by the side of the road.
The priest passed a restless night. With the stars obscured by low-hanging clouds, there was no light but it didn’t matter. There was nothing to see and the absolute blackness suited his mood. The only sounds to reach his ears were the moaning of the wind through the peaks, the occasional distant cry of some animal, and the soft noises made by his mule. During those times in the past when he had traversed the pass, Valdemar had mused that this might be the loneliest place in the world. Tonight he believed that more than ever and, for the first time, he lacked even the hope that the gods might be out there watching over him and offering comfort.
Morning came as it always did to the pass: slow and incomplete. There was no sun, just a gradual fading of blackness into an indistinct gray. Cold to the bone and badly cramped, Valdemar rose. He had to lean against the mule to keep from stumbling and falling over. Crossing the pass was demanding for those in the best of health and spirits but for someone like the priest…
It was time to get moving, he supposed. It would take several days to make it to the northern mouth of the pass and every minute he delayed gave the weather a chance to turn ugly. Before mounting the mule, he wandered to the side of the trail where the crumbling edge of the hard-packed dirt fell away into nothing. It was a long way down from here - so far that his eyes couldn’t pick out the bottom in the gloom although he knew it to be several thousand feet.
It was at that moment, gazing into the abyss, that Valdemar arrived at a realization. He hadn’t just lost his faith in the gods; he had lost his purpose, his cause. All that he had been, was, and ever would be was tied inextricably into something that no longer had meaning. Returning to his tiny, well-ordered priestly life held no appeal. The pleasures that had seduced Augmentin were equally dull and tasteless. What else was there?
He acted decisively and, with a grim smile, took a step forward, stepping into nothingness. Thus was he reunited with his gods in oblivion.
The Virgin
This story focuses on a girl of the North named Ponari and sets the stage for her romance with the gallant adventurer Warburm, whom she would eventually marry. The events recounted in this story transpire about 25 years prior to Chapter One of “The Last Whisper of the Gods” and introduce a character who spends all three books in the background, rarely mentioned and even more infrequently being given “page time.”
Ponari was a virgin. The condition, which was to be admired as a sign of purity of body and spirit in girls under the Age of Maturity, could become an embarrassment the longer it persisted past a girl’s 15th birthday. In the northern community of Santimon, a tiny village of no more than two hundred souls, the expectation was that every female would reach her Maturity, get married, lose her virginity, and have a baby (although the order might be different). It was the way of things. Always had been, always would be. But that wasn’t the case for Ponari to the profound dismay of her mother. Why, of all the girls in the village, did her daughter have to be different? It was a source of agitation for the poor woman.
It wasn’t that Ponari was afraid of sex. In fact, she was quite interested in it. The stories told by some of her friends made her curious about what it might be like and she knew about the basic mechanics by having watched the village’s animals. (It seemed undignified but so was cleaning a privy pit or birthing a baby.) But scratching an itch - and that was how she viewed it - wasn’t worth the ultimate price. She wouldn’t succumb to a moment’s relief if it resulted in her being trapped in Santimon for the rest of her life. The instant she opened her legs to any member of the town’s male population, her fate would be sealed.
Ponari was a comely lass and, as a result, had no shortage of suitors. Had she been so inclined, she could have had her pick among Santimon’s eligible bachelors. Some were more assiduous than others in pursuing her, but she rejected them all: young, old, handsome, ugly, strong, weak, smart, dumb... They all lacked the single defining characteristic that was her requirement in a potential mate: wanderlust. Sadly, seemingly everyone currently living in Santimon seemed determined to spend the rest of their lives in Santimon. Except Ponari.
She had heard all the stories about elsewhere. The great cities of Obis and Syre, the twin jewels of the North, with giant walls and thousands of citizens. Obis - where entering the militia was a rite of passage. Syre - where bare-breasted courtesans were honored above all other women. Then, south of The Broken Crags, were Basingham and Vantok. So many places to visit. So many things to see and people to meet. Santimon was tiny and parochial. She knew it, but it seemed like she was the only one. And it frustrated her. She would have happily spread her legs for a man (or even a woman) who promised to take her to any of those elsewheres. She was smart enough to realize that she couldn’t go on her own. She wouldn’t last two days in the wilderness and that effectively made her a prisoner. A virgin prisoner and a constant source of disappointment to her status-obsessed mother.
At the moment, she was seated cross-legged on the hard-packed dirt floor of the one-room hovel she shared with her family. Her mother, two brothers, and younger sister had all made themselves scarce, leaving her alone with her father, whose normally genial face wore a scowl of disapproval. Ponari knew what this was about. Her outspokenness had once again gotten the better of her. Earlier today, her mother had demanded that she accept the courtship of Bulgari, the only son of one of Santimon’s elite families. With his chubby fingers and beady eyes, he was nothing short of repulsive. Ponari’s ill-considered response had been: “Before I let him inside of me, I’ll fuck Mayor Grunback’s donkey.” It hadn’t been the wisest thing Ponari could have said but wisdom rarely governed her words.
“Your mother is upset,” said Ponari’s father. Debanrack, as was his wont, understated the situation. The last words she had heard from her mother were: “You ungrateful little bitch! We’ll see how much your prized virginity is worth after you’ve spent a few days in exile!” Janelle was prone to hyperbole, but it wasn’t a threat to be taken lightly. Exile from Santimon could be tantamount to a death sentence. Hence Ponari’s decision to stay here rather than run away. She didn’t like life in Santimon but there were other less appealing possibilities.
Ponari nodded glumly.
“What you said was disrespectful, and you know I don’t tolerate disrespect.”
The resulting punishment was appropriate for someone under the Age of Maturity. Ponari lay across her father’s lap as he lashed her five times across the buttocks with a leather strap.
Tears stung her eyes but she refused to cry out, and her father was gentler with this manner of discipline than her mother would have been. When Janelle whipped her, she wouldn’t stop until Ponari whimpered. Even in her pain, however, Ponari’s mind worked. She was being punished for the manner in which she had addressed her mother not because of her continuing refusal to be courted by village boys.
When she had replaced her undergarments and retaken her seat gingerly, Debanrack asked her an unexpected question. “Is it that you like girls?”
It would have been easy to answer in the affirmative. Women with those preferences were accepted and housed together in a single cottage where they could indulge themselves with each other at night while performing duties the benefitted the community by day. They weren’t asked to marry or to bear children. But Ponari wasn’t one of them and joining them in their house would just be another kind of trap. A lie and a trap.
“I like men,” she said. “But not the ones who live in this village.” There - it was out. She had confided in her father something she couldn’t tell her mother because she knew her father would hear her while her mother would have interpreted the words as obstinate.
“I thought so. My daughter through-and-through.” Debanrack hadn’t been born in Santimon. He had spent much of his youth traveling the North with his parents. Debanrack had come to the village as an orphan only two years shy of his Maturity after his family’s caravan had been set upon by bandits. He had been the sole survivor. He occasionally expressed a desire to “go out and explore the world once more” but, like all residents of Santimon, he never went beyond the edge of the farthest field. The village was a lodestone that held its population close. Fear played a large part in it - the same fear that prevented Ponari from setting her feet on the rough road that rambled to the east and south.
“Eventually, you’ll either have to marry or join The Women. One way or the other, you’ve got to earn your keep. If not as the wife of some hard-working man then you can do what The Women require to keep a bed under their roof. Your mother has agreed to allow you to remain with us for another three seasons. By the middle of next Summer, however, if you remain unwed, you must go to The Women. Or face exile.”
The Last Whisper of the Gods Saga: Stories from Ayberia Page 2
