The Godseeker Duet

by David A Willson

  Bylo's fish made for a wonderful dinner. As they talked and joked around the campfire, feeling content considering the circumstances, Mykel wondered about the announcement ceremony, about Sammy, and the growing distance between them and their home. He looked at Nara, who sat next to him at the fire pit. A nap had helped her recover from her headache, and she cheerily bantered back and forth with Bylo.

  Nara's heart broke for Mykel. He was cursed, he had been carried away from his home and his brother, and he'd had no choice in any of it. She, on the other hand, was with both Bylo and her friend. Although things were far from normal, she had the most important people in her life. Mykel did not. Sammy was far away, and although they had plans to go back, it wouldn't be any day soon.

  Something else nagged at her though. Since leaving Dimmitt, she had thought more often about Dei, her subtle curiosity about the deity swelling to a powerful suspicion that He was much bigger than before. Or much closer, perhaps.

  It seemed as if the talents she had been instructed to keep secret were endorsed by Him. True gifts, like those Father Taylor talked about. As if by saving them, giving her the energy to pour into Mykel, Dei had voiced a blessing upon their lives. The event had convinced her to dispel any worries about her magic being demonic in nature. She wanted to explore her talents further but didn't know quite how to begin.

  Bylo's runes had received a similar endorsement in her mind. Dei had blessed Bylo's efforts when he healed Mykel with the health rune. She dwelled on it a bit. Feeling bold, yet trying to be discreet, she engaged her special sight for a moment and looked at Mykel.

  He glowed with magic, just a touch. He looked different than before the announcement ceremony. Brighter, and with an odd color to him. Oh, it was muted compared to the ceppit, for sure, but much brighter than a normal person. She looked at Mykel's hip, and she thought she could sense the tattoo despite it being under several layers of clothing. She glanced over at Bylo, at his thighs, but sensed nothing. Why the difference? They had both been marked with the magical ink, so shouldn't she sense Bylo's tattoos as well?

  "Nara?" Mykel had clearly caught her staring at their hips.

  "Yes?"

  He raised an eyebrow, obviously wondering what she pondered.

  "Mykel, back at the inn when you saw that pattern in your mind, didn't you say it was hungry?"

  Mykel nodded, and Bylo peered up from his dinner.

  She continued. "Did you feed it?"

  Mykel made an odd expression.

  "The way you described that pattern reminded me of things I've seen. Never mentioned them, I guess." She was having a hard time articulating her thoughts. Feelings like this were not easily put to words. "I guess I didn't pay them much attention, but they've always been there."

  Mykel stopped eating and looked directly at her. "What does the pattern look like?"

  "Not just one. I have seen several, but only when I use my talents. They look like Bylo's designs, at least a bit."

  Bylo stopped eating as well. "You see runes, Nara?"

  "Kind of. I'm not sure."

  Nara paused, her face flushing as they gaped. She scrambled for words to prove this wasn't something she made up. She paused for a moment, then continued. "If I close my eyes when I use my talent, sometimes it's like Mykel said. There's a pattern. I feed it and something happens."

  "Feed it?" Mykel asked. "What does that mean?"

  She struggled to absorb the fact that other people didn't see patterns. They had been apparent to her for so long, part of who she was. She often forgot that she differed from others in fundamental ways. "I guess it's like breathing on it. Or blowing on it. Hard to describe."

  "Mykel. The rune on your hip," Bylo said, putting down his bowl. "Can you close your eyes and picture it again?"

  Mykel closed his eyes.

  "Feed it, like Nara said. Just a little."

  Mykel gave them both an awkward look, then sighed and closed his eyes. Nara engaged her sight and saw Mykel's health rune flare hot and bright then fade back to its normal, subtle glow.

  "Check your finger," Bylo said, pointing at Mykel's bandage.

  Mykel removed the bandage, and the cut caused by the fishing hook had vanished, replaced by a thin pink scar. "It's gone." Mykel stared at his finger for a long time, his expression betraying both fear and amazement.

  Nara wondered what this could mean. Bylo possessed no such ability, but he had been tattooed with strength runes. Was this what happened when a tattoo was inscribed on a cursed rather than a normal person? Would other runes behave in a similar fashion?

  Nara did not enjoy the silence that dominated the rest of the evening. They finished the meal and prepared their bedrolls, but she was afraid to speak of what they had discovered, not knowing what it meant. The others apparently felt the same because few words were exchanged.

  Bylo washed the dishes and Mykel lay down, while Nara sat alone on the top of the nearby rise, watching out over the dark and silent road. She wondered what kind of strangeness would announce itself tomorrow, and what Mykel's announcement really meant.

  Cursed. Was that a word they attached to people like him because they didn't know what else to think? He had done nothing wrong, nothing to insult Dei or the church, so why would they want to execute him? Could it be that he was just special, like Nara, but in a different way? A way they didn't understand?

  After more than an hour sitting without Mykel, disappointment flooded her. She had hoped he would join her and keep her warm. In his absence, she drew her tunic tight to repel the chill, hugged herself with her arms, then glanced across the landscape again. Such a cold world this was, and she felt it more now than she ever had. They were on the run, fearful, and she could not defend them. Bylo's admonishments about her magic over the years seemed like a handicap now, and she wished she had defied him to practice her powers. If they were pursued by those who meant harm, skill with her magic would help face those challenges. Instead, she had been hidden and told to be quiet, never to call attention to herself. Foolishness.

  She looked out upon the dark landscape. On a nearby hill, a hundred paces to the north, she noticed the glow of another person sitting at the base of a tree. She stood and walked a few steps toward the person, trying to get a better sense of him. A fellow traveler? The glow at once dimmed, and she almost lost sight of it. Odd. She wondered if she should alert Bylo and Mykel, then dismissed the notion; the person was causing no harm, and she shouldn't be afraid, should she? Instead, she thought of the stranger's needs. What might it be like to travel alone, sleeping on a hill in the dark, open wilderness? She was grateful to have companions and considered inviting the stranger to their campfire, then remembered how Bylo talked of pursuers and decided against it. She returned to the camp, found her bedroll, and lay down.

  "Good night, Bylo."

  His only response was a gentle snore. She looked at Mykel.

  "Good night, Mykel."

  More silence. A wind stirred up and whipped through the trees over their heads. Nara sighed, closed her eyes, and waited for the sounds of the night to coax her into a slumber.

  Despite Gwyn's best efforts to suppress her own aura, the girl had still seen her. Was she a watcher, too? The camp remained quiet now, so she clearly hadn't alerted her companions. Either Gwyn was mistaken and had remained undetected, or the girl was naïve to the dangers that faced her. The latter thought invoked concern. The child would be easy prey to anyone who wished her harm, no matter what talents she might have, and getting her safely to Fairmont might be a challenge.

  Gwyn thought back to her entry into the harbor at Junn. Having abandoned her boat on the docks, she had made her way to the nearby street and watched as they carried the young man into a nearby inn. That evening, she had dropped a note to Vorick from the local post office, updating him that they had arrived in Junn. She had written descriptions of the girl's companions but gave no details of their magic or the botched announcement ceremony. Even now, she wondered why she had
left that out; such information would certainly be of value to the minister. Was she feeling protective of these strangers? If so, why? Perhaps it was because they seemed so different from previous enemies she had sought to capture or kill. They weren't royals or soldiers. Not killers or politicians.

  Who would Vorick send to help retrieve the girl? She might be young, but her companions had talents and could be dangerous. She wondered again about the nature of their gifts. Although she hadn't seen the old man flare up since running from Dimmitt, she saw something strange from the younger man tonight. Sitting at the campfire, he lit up briefly, but there was an odd nature to the light. She had never seen a cursed survive an announcement. When they did, which was rare, the church put a quick end to them. Why were they so afraid? It seemed like their only talent was the ability to die on an announcement stage.

  Gwyn ceased her ponderings and pulled a blanket from her pack to nestle under it for the night. Rest would be welcome, for tomorrow would likely bring another long day of sneaking and stalking.

  14

  Asunder

  Fairmont

  Ministry of War and Justice

  Vorick’s recent ambitions to expand the Great Land were reaping chaos, provoking barbarian incursions that grew in both frequency and severity. As he sat at his desk, the minister now wondered how he would manage the challenges. He looked for direction but settled on nothing, both his mind and his gaze wandering about.

  Few decorations graced his cavernous office. The room had been designed with simplicity, allowing no distractions from the three large paintings on each of the windowless walls. The murals depicted major cities in the land: Junn, Ankar, and, on the north wall, Fairmont. The remaining wall featured a single, large piece of glass and a beautiful view of Fairmont’s wealthy garden district. The twin peaks of Mount Fi were visible in the distance—the room had been designed with the view in mind. He often gazed upon the mountain, hoping its majesty would inspire him to reach similar heights.

  Despite the responsibilities of war and politics that required his attention, he was having a hard time focusing on them just now, his thoughts now wandering to the problem that Kayna was becoming. After seeing her with the queen, defiant and manipulative, he knew his control over the girl was slipping. When she was young, keeping track of her was simpler. Nothing about that girl seemed simple anymore.

  Kayna had begun as a great project of a colleague, fifteen years ago. Bartholomew Lar, a renowned knitter, was the chief surgeon at the university hospital. He was an excellent physician and had been paid well for his efforts over the years—wealth that he spent on food and wine, often to excess. His wealth had led to boredom, however, and he had required an outlet for his restlessness.

  Lar learned of a woman in a lower district of Fairmont, an impoverished region of town avoided by nobles and frequented by bandits. The woman was pregnant and anticipated a multiple birth. Her midwife believed the babies were breach, but when she tried to adjust them in the womb, they wouldn't budge. Conjoined, most likely.

  The church viewed conjoined twins as an abomination, but Lar cared nothing for religion, was bored with his success, and held a reputation for trying new things.

  He came to the laboratory while Vorick was performing an autopsy on a young lad who had dropped dead in the middle of the workday. Lar insisted on interrupting Vorick during the procedure, and Vorick cursed him for his audacity.

  "Now, Nikolas. I need you now."

  Vorick suppressed anger long enough to hear Lar's proposition, and the indiscretion lost its sting once Lar was given a chance to explain.

  They left the laboratory and proceeded to where the woman endured a difficult labor. She was young, had no family with her, and they had asked no questions on the matter. This was an experiment and the lack of entanglements was ideal.

  During the surgery that followed, Lar's suspicions were confirmed: the infants were joined at the spine. While each had their own spinal cords, many of the vertebrae were fused, and separation of the delicate bones would be difficult work indeed. Difficult work was Vorick's specialty.

  Vorick cut the woman deeply, deliberately giving her no chance of survival. The subsequent surgery on the twins took hours, even with Vorick's skill, precision cutting that could not have been performed with normal tools. Between Vorick's cuts and Lar's knitting, they stopped the bleeding and repaired the separated tissues, blood vessels, and nerves along the backs of the tiny red-headed babes.

  It would have been heralded as an astounding medical achievement of the age if not for inevitable condemnation by the church, which forced them to keep their elation secret. For months afterward, Lar and Vorick would meet over brandy to discuss the surgery, reliving their accomplishment in secret. It wasn't until several years later that the true consequences would become apparent.

  Immediately following the surgery, a private nurse had cared for the infants in a secluded section of the university hospital until they could be transferred to another facility. It would have been foolish to put identical twins in the same institution with the scars they bore. Even an imbecile would recognize them as having been conjoined and permitted to live in defiance of everything holy. Vorick thought on how the discovery would have invited the wrath of the church, unraveling his own good standing with the archbishop of Fairmont. He had suggested they destroy at least one child to ensure no evidence of their sacrilege. Lar refused, and they sent each to an orphanage: one in Fairmont, the other in the Barony of Took to the southeast. Vorick wondered if Lar was being merciful or simply wanted to preserve his trophies.

  It was later that the trouble began. About a year later, Vorick had attended a summertime dinner party where he spoke with a very drunk cleric. The old priest worked as a scripturalist for the archbishop, engaging in research efforts. The man specialized in the study of prophecy, particularly the book of Cataclysmos. Vorick and he talked about ancient scriptures, and Vorick tried to hide his disdain for religion. But the cleric's words startled Vorick, telling of ancient manuscripts and the illustrations in the margins. How runes changed the meaning of scripture text, something scholars were just beginning to understand in more detail. He spoke in quiet tones about twins, between generous gulps of wine, as if hiding an elaborate secret.

  Vorick's interest was piqued when he learned that the archbishop had borrowed soldiers from the queen to scour the Great Land, gathering up old manuscripts and locking them away until they could understand the ramifications. Apparently, they didn't want someone professing to understand Breshi in a new way, then preaching a gospel different from the message they had practiced. Such an event could spell the end of the church, with splinter sects fighting for control of the hearts and coin purses of the people. The skullduggery of secret searches by soldiers to find potential treasures kept Vorick's attention. Nikolas Vorick collected things of value, and if these old books were sought by the archbishop, they must be precious indeed.

  The conversation with the priest sparked a new interest in Vorick for all things religious. He hadn't found faith or anything so daft, but few things in the realm were able to manipulate human beings more than religion could.

  He acquired manuscripts of his own, although he doubted their fidelity to the originals, and learned of errors in the standard theology of the church. The most profound of these was the well-known prophecy regarding the separation of the twins, found in Cataclysmos. Assisted by the words of the drunk priest, Vorick unraveled that the foretelling pertained to the expected destruction of the twin-peaked mountain southwest of Fairmont. Locals called it Mount Fi, but its official name remained the Mont of Phyili. Named after the Breshi word for twins, it was a central part of the apocalyptic eschatology ever present in church sermons.

  The translation error meant that the separation of the twin peaks of Mount Fi had been misunderstood; the scripture actually pertained to the separation of a human being. At first, the error regarding the twins seemed of little significance to Vorick, regardless of
the scholarly implications. Vorick didn't believe in Dei, Kai, prophecy, or any of that nonsense. But he acknowledged the power of superstitions. Of dreams. He had read the histories, and how seers often guided powerful men through visions.

  As Vorick pondered the surgery more, thoughts of the twins came back in disturbing frequency. Perhaps some in the church had suspected the translation error and forbidden the separation of conjoined twins as a precaution to avoid fulfilling prophecy? Eventually, he suffered his own disturbing daydreams about the mountains and the babes, and the matter began to take on an urgency in his mind.

  He tried to ignore the matter for four years, but the dreams continued and he was compelled to attend to them. It would take little effort to locate two orphaned children, scarred as they were. He started by going to the orphanage in Fairmont where they had placed the one child, only to learn of her abduction by an unknown party more than two years before. He became infuriated with his own delay, and even more angry at the orphanage. They had conducted little investigation and found no culprit, nor any leads he could pursue to find the babe. Apparently, losing an unwanted, scarred toddler was more of a blessing than a nuisance to such a place.