The Godseeker Duet

by David A Willson

  “The tapestry! You’re the old woman.”

  “Tell me. Was it close? The girl is perfect, I’m sure. I spent a lot of time on her. But the raven. The puppy. Did I get them right?”

  “Holy Dei! I gotta tell Papa. He won’t believe this!”

  “What’s your name?” Anne asked.

  “Gabriel,” he said. He was in his mid-twenties, with a scruffy face and high eyebrows. “My grandpapa told me about you, old woman. Almost every night at bedtime. Said you would come back someday.”

  “I’m not such a big deal.”

  “Papa said he was crazy. Said they all were. ‘Nobody lives that long,’ he always told me. But grandpapa was sure—and said as much every day till he died. And I always believed. My sister too.”

  “You’re a gem, Gabriel. But, please, take me to it.”

  “Oh. Um, okay.” There was hesitation in his voice.

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll have to show you.”

  As a seer, Anne was accustomed to seeing things that had not yet happened, but those visions were often accidental. Or sent by Him. This one had been different. She had done this one on purpose. For a purpose. But now she worried.

  “Papa and I worked at the monastery for years, cleaning along with the monks. Papa even cooked for them. Family tradition. Grandpapa worked there. And his papa did too. Way back for generations. But the church dismissed most of us.” Gabriel sighed. “I rarely get work anymore. I move things into storage as monks move out, or when they pass. ‘You’re young and strong,’ they say. So, I carry cots and chests into storage. Where they stay. Forever, it seems.”

  From a distance, the monastery walls looked the same as they always did, but such was true of stone. The structure had not changed, and nobody would know from a glance that it was nearly vacant.

  “A shame,” Anne said. “Places of prayer should be filled with people. Nobody in the town worships with the monks anymore?”

  “There’s a church in town, but lots of people have moved away. Ever since the waters changed, that is. They’re not like they used to be, some say.

  The walk didn’t take long, and they avoided the city center where the growing market crowd would have slowed them, instead skirting the edge of the town along the small river that rushed along.

  “Do you want me to carry that pack for you?” Gabriel asked.

  “Nah, I’m fine,” Anne said. She looked over at the river and smiled. “At least, the river still runs strong.”

  “It used to have a blue tint. Long ago. From the glacier that feeds it, I think.” Gabriel pointed high above the monastery to a field of ice and snow. “Freshest, cleanest water in all the Great Land. People used to come from miles around to drink it, even carry it back home. Healing properties, they thought. It’s why so many people lived here.”

  They passed an open cave in the side of a rock face to the right. An old man was kneeling in front of a pile of sticks, striking flint to spark a fire. Beyond the cave, the road opened into a large, flat area, where several fields had once been. Potatoes and grain had been grown here, but now weeds had overtaken the soil.

  “No potato fields anymore?” Anne asked.

  “Not enough monks to care for them. Easier to just buy them at market.”

  “Sad,” Anne said. “I used to enjoy digging in the dirt here. Work is good for the soul.”

  “It is.”

  “How often do they have you working in the monastery, Gabriel?”

  “Couple of times a month, maybe. They don’t even have an abbot anymore. Brother Makin runs things, but he’s often sick in bed.”

  It was sad to hear that the monastery had been largely abandoned, but not surprising. Places of worship required money to support, and greedy regimes often spent those funds on something other than supporting the faithful.

  The trail from Veneti to the monastery was overgrown, with potholes even worse than the ones on the main road into town. Weeds sprouted in the middle of the path and overgrown bushes and birch saplings intruded on the walking area. There was still enough room to walk or ride a horse, but it didn’t seem as if many wagons had been making the trip.

  The monastery gates were open, and Gabriel led Anne straight into the main yard, where pools of water covered many of the worn stone tiles. Mortar crumbled in many of the grooves between the stones that formed the walls, and moss accumulated in shadowed areas. Weeds and loose gravel cluttered the space; added to that were crates and trash stacked in odd places.

  “How many monks still serve?”

  “A dozen maybe.”

  “Do they still have a library?”

  “Of sorts. Most of the books are gone. I helped crate them up a few years ago. Off to Fairmont they went.”

  “A shame.”

  “So why are you here, old woman? I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you. They never told us your name.”

  “Call me Anne. And take me to the library. I don’t know my way around here anymore.”

  “Okay. This way.”

  Gabriel led Anne down a long passageway. They passed a monk in sandals and a long tattered robe pushing an empty cart; he paid them no attention as he passed. At the end of the passageway was a dark stairway. Gabriel grabbed a torch from a wall sconce and led the way, holding the torch high to spread the light ahead.

  Dust billowed up with their footsteps, and Anne coughed as she covered her mouth. At the bottom of the stairs, they turned right. The passage continued into a large, dark chamber that would have to be directly under the yard above. Boxes, crates, and discarded furniture were scattered about with little organization and around the perimeter of the room, one could see empty bookcases bolted to the stone walls in places. No books adorned the shelves.

  “It’s over here,” Gabriel said. After about twenty paces, he turned back to Anne and offered the torch. “Hold this, please.”

  For the next few minutes, he moved boxes, rolled rugs, then a huge pile of trash to create a path. He turned back to Anne, and she returned the torch to him.

  “It’s in the same place it’s always been,” he said. “This way. Right where you left it.”

  “This used to be a grand studio,” she said as they walked. “While reading the books, one could also gaze upon paintings and sculptures. Tapestries and mosaics on the walls. Beauty and learning, in one grand room. Now it’s a trash heap.”

  Like so many old things, this monastery was dying. But it wasn’t just the decaying building that weighed on her heart. She remembered this monastery’s charity efforts. Here they gathered to feed the poor, teach trade skills to the young, and provide medical care. This place wasn’t just about prayer and seeking the divine; it was about serving the living. Humility. Sacrifice. No, the pathos of a failing monastery was not about crumbling mortar and empty rooms. It was a symptom of a nation that was losing its faith… and its heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabriel said. “This is what I meant. They used to treasure the work in here and display it proudly. But the room is dry, so I put everything here, on orders from Brother Makin. They haven’t maintained the rest of the structures, so now the other roofs leak. This is the only safe place.”

  “It’s okay, son. I expected as much.”

  They came to a wall where a tapestry hung, nearly twenty feet tall and twice as wide, dusty, faded, and old.

  “Took me fifteen years,” she said. “I was never skilled at weaving. Kept making mistakes.”

  “Grandpapa used to sit here as a boy when his papa was sweeping the room and dusting the shelves. When I was little, he would tell me the story, passed down from ages ago. About how you came and served alongside the monks of old. How you weaved this every day, and how it seemed to take forever. You told them to keep it right here. Never to move it. We may have let the rest of this place go to dust, but we didn’t move it. Not an inch. I swear.”

  “You did well, Gabriel. And your grandfather too. I think I was close, wouldn’t you say? Maybe the color
of the cobblestones is off—they have faded. And that building on the left. Too tall.”

  Gabriel held the torch closer, and the shapes depicted in the tapestry became clearer. Shops lined a roadway filled with people on their way to market or home. A tailor adjusted a gown in a display window, and a boy sat in front of a bakery, nibbling on a roll. An old woman in the street knelt, offering a cabbage to a little girl who held a puppy on a leash. The woman had a patch over one eye and a pack on her back. On a roof above, a raven flapped its wings, and one could imagine it cawing in protest. In the foreground was the silhouette of a young man carrying a basket of bread.

  “It’s perfect,” Gabriel said. “But why did you come back, after all these years? And why did you make it in the first place?”

  “To hide what’s behind it, of course. Why else?”

  18

  Derik

  Mykel, Nara and the soldiers walked at an agonizingly slow pace for three days. Traveling with over two dozen men from Junn to Keetna was taking forever, and Mykel was having trouble keeping his patience in check. Jahmai insisted that they were making good time, but Mykel disagreed.

  With the staff strapped to his back, Mykel walked in the middle of the road. The wagons jostled and shook on the uneven terrain. Quiet conversations between soldiers could be heard, but there were few other sounds. No birds, no animals, and no children. This was a different experience, walking among these men as they were, armed and armored. Perhaps this was the life of a soldier, but it seemed menial and uninteresting, without the excitement he always imagined a martial lifestyle would bring.

  As they encountered other travelers, they were given a wide berth, merchants and couriers stopping as the soldiers passed, or stepping into the trees to avoid them entirely. It was a journey in stark contrast to the exhilarating run he and Nara had experienced when passing through these parts just days before. Worst of all, the monotony of the march allowed too much time for his thoughts to wander.

  He thought of Pop and of Sammy. Of how they would rest in the earth for all time. Sammy would never grow up to have a family of his own, never catch another coney. Never laugh again. Never cry. The loss of his sweet brother would go unpunished if the effort against Kayna failed, and that task seemed all too daunting right now. He thought of how he now marched alongside men who were responsible for crimes against boys like Sammy. And against other villages. These men were the unwitting stooges of powerful people, perhaps, but they still had blood on their hands, and he was their ally. It felt like a betrayal.

  He thought about Nara. His friend was changing. She was no longer the enthusiastic young lady he knew in Dimmitt; neither was she the frightened companion overwhelmed with her circumstances. She was giving orders. Fighting. And she was powerful. Fast like a racer. Strong like a bear. A leader and a thief. A very different person than she had been just months before. It reminded him of Anne’s words so long ago, when she said that Nara wasn’t ready to love him. Not like he wanted. It made sense now. There were bigger things on her mind, and a grand weight on her shoulders.

  He looked ahead to see her. She walked at the front of the group, alone, carrying a pack on her back when she could easily have tossed it into a wagon. What was she thinking right now? He figured the weight of her new responsibilities must have lain heavy on her, and he could do little to lighten it. His job was to protect her, and he would do that to the best of his ability, but how much protection did she really need? She could do everything he could—and much more.

  Mykel glanced at the wagon in front of him. In the wagon's bed rested an archer who had suffered an arrow shot to his leg so severe that he could not walk. Yet the man still wanted to accompany them to Keetna. It surprised him that Jahmai had allowed it.

  Mykel veered to the side of the road to speak with another soldier. “Will he recover?” Mykel asked, referring to the injured archer.

  “Who, Derik? Dunno.” The man scratched the hair on his head, which was meager and graying over the ears. “Jahmai’s nephew, that one. Took him to a knitter, but he said the wound was deep. Hit the bone hard. May not walk again. May not even live.”

  “Why did he want to come?”

  “Same as the rest of us, I s’pose,” he said. “Do something good for a change. Maybe you should ask him.”

  Mykel kept walking, but after a few moments, he hopped up into the bed of the wagon. Derik winced as the bed of the wagon lurched.

  “Sorry. Hurts, eh?”

  “Yeah. Bumps are the worst.”

  Derik was young, no more than twenty. Probably closer to eighteen, actually. Mykel’s age. They’d wrapped and splinted his leg to restrict movement, but the erratic motion of the wagon surely aggravated the injury beyond bearing. He shouldn’t be moving at all.

  “Arrow, I hear,” Mykel said.

  “I deserved it.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m an archer. I shoot arrows all the time. Now I get to know what it feels like to take one. It hurts more than I thought.”

  “Only hurts if you survive it, my friend. Pain means you’re still breathing.”

  “True.”

  Mykel untied the staff from his back and sat cross-legged next to Derik.

  “Tell me about yourself.” He hoped the conversation might distract the man from the pain.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Brothers? Sisters? Where you from?”

  “Little town outside Junn. Uglas. No brothers or sisters.”

  “Fishing?”

  “For fun and for dinner, but not for money. My dad would never have approved. He always told me to work and work hard. He was a logger. Cut big trees. Huge shoulders, always sharpening his saws, moving, lifting. Couldn’t sit still. He worked at a mill for a while, with my uncle.” He pointed back over his shoulder, then winced with the movement. “Captain Jahmai. He’s my uncle. He quit the mill and joined the army when my parents died.”

  “How did they die?”

  “Rockslide took ‘em. Mom liked picking berries in the fall. Wrong spot that year, I guess.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay. Uncle kept food on the table when I was young, but he left a lot. Long trips. Months, sometimes.”

  “Yet, you still wanted to be a soldier. Like him.”

  The wagon lurched when a wheel hit a pothole, and Derik winced, then breathed hard for a moment.

  “You’re hurt,” Mykel said. “You should be in a hospital. Why are you here?”

  “Same as anyone. I want to matter,” Derik said. “Cutting trees like my pop—well, that might feed me, but I wanted to do something more. It didn’t work out as I hoped. When you two showed up, well, I thought we were all dead. Then I thought maybe I’d join up, get my chance to do something different. Something better.” He looked down at his leg. “That may not happen.”

  “It might heal,” Mykel said.

  “I’m hopin’.”

  “Knitter worked on it, right?”

  “Yeah, but he’s bad at fixing bone, so he just did the muscle and skin. Bone is broke. Broke bad. Hurts a lot.”

  Mykel nodded. “Wish I could help.”

  “It’s okay. Your girl, though. Wow. She’s the fastest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard of racers and what they can do, but I’ve never heard of that. Caught my arrow and threw it back even harder than my bow. More than a blessed, they say. Dei must really love her.”

  “She doesn’t think so.”

  Derik’s eyes went wide. “What? Why not?”

  “She lost her pop,” Mykel said. “Um . . . and someone else. Someone special. We both did.”

  “Heck, I lost my parents, but that doesn’t mean Dei did it. He’s magnificent,” Derik said, looking around at the mountains on either side of the road. “Look at what he created!”

  It surprised Mykel to see the faith of this man, but it also puzzled him he would have taken part in such crimes against the people of the Great Land. What made good people do bad t
hings? This soldier wasn’t a villain—or didn’t seem like one. It put Mykel at ease, experiencing a feeling he almost didn’t recognize. Hope.

  “She’s gonna fight the Queen, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can she beat her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “She has you, though. And you can fight.” Derik glanced at the staff lying on the floor of the wagon bed.

  “Yes, I can. I hope I’m enough.”

  “Couple dozen of us here to help, but you don’t even need us.”

  “If we get a hundred of you, that’ll help.”

  “They’ll come,” Derik said. “I know they will. When they hear. More soldiers. Farmers too. Simple folks. What the Queen is doing, it ain’t right. People are mad. That’ll bring a bunch. Not the family folks—no, they won’t come. But younger ones like me and you.” He smirked. “Well, not like you.”

  “I hope so, Derik. I really do.”

  The wagon lurched on a dip in the road, and Derik winced again.

  Mykel leaned over to speak with the driver. “Can we take a break? This soldier is having a rough time with his leg and could use a rest. Just a few minutes.”

  The driver whistled and Jahmai came near, pacing alongside the wagon from atop his horse. He spoke with the driver and then raised his hand to call a halt.

  “Take a break. Right here.”

  Mykel looked down at Derik.

  “Thank you,” Derik said, smiling.

  Mykel nodded. “Heal up, Soldier. We’ll need you at fighting strength. And soon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nara sat on the side of a high hill, looking down on the soldiers who rested on the road below. Mykel took a seat next to her.

  “How’s he doing?” she asked.

  “He’s hurt bad. Shouldn’t be traveling at all.”

  “Femur?”

  “I dunno. The big leg bone,” he said, tapping his leg. “Arrow.”

  “I know–I was aiming for his heart.” She couldn’t believe that she just said that. What was happening to her?

  “Can you heal him?” Mykel asked.