The Demigod Proving

by S. James Nelson

  It was as if she’d run in preparation to fly away.

  Could she do that? Could a draegon wearing a human body somehow fly, or had she simply taken a great leap up the mountain using Thew and Flux Ichor?

  He couldn’t follow her. Not with her using Ichor to go faster and further. He still hadn’t replenished his stores of Flux and Thew Ichor since exhausting them during the fight in the Courtyard of the Wall, and when torturing Ricken. No, he couldn’t chase this draegon girl, not while she used Ichor and he had little.

  But how could she use Ichor in the first place? Only his children—direct descendants of Pyter—could use the power.

  The answer was obvious. Of course she could use Ichor: she had the soul of a draegon, and those creatures had used Ichor long before Pyter had arisen from the ranks of humans as god.

  He stood there for a minute, focusing on his senses. He cocked his head to one side and listened to the sounds coming down the mountain, out of the forest. It took a great deal of concentration to filter out the noise from the courtyard behind him, but he could do it. The chatter or scrambling of small animals punctuated the murmur of trees rustling in the breeze that lay over the forest. Here and there, something large moved through the underbrush. But he couldn’t hear a person running or leaping. She’d already gone too far.

  He stayed there for a time. Even after he’d given up hope of finding her, he looked up into the forest, wondering what it all meant and where it would leave him. Maybe she wasn’t a renegade. Maybe he recognized her smell, had met her as a draegon, before. The last draegons he’d encountered were Cuchorack’s mate and pup. He couldn’t remember their smells well enough to know if this was one of them.

  But wouldn’t that be interesting if it was.

  So much was happening. The rebels had murdered his little ones and wives, then poisoned his Caretakers. Wester still roamed free, and more demigods had probably allied with him. Surely some priests and some followers. His two sons—his potential heirs—had begun their proving. Hasuke had become available for the taking. Not to mention that Rashel had become distant in the past two months, and Calla had started to press him to teach her how to use Ichor—as if she could even learn.

  And now this draegon-girl.

  Just that morning, his only problem had been taking care of the cultists when he got around to it. Now the tranquility of his life had shattered, and the peace of his people could fail. But he had to maintain it. That was paramount. That was why he lived: for the peace and comfort of his people until such a time that he would choose to lay down his own life.

  Hopefully one of his sons would prove worthy, and the time of his rest wasn’t too far distant.

  Regardless, he knew that a time of bloodshed had come.

  Part II: In the pleasant garden

  Chapter 20: Seeing forever

  The first time you leave the Seraglio, you understand what an injustice it is that you’ve lived there your entire life.

  -Wester

  Wrend needed to talk with Naresh.

  He came to the conclusion in the morning as he sat atop his blood bay mare with thousands of other people in the Courtyard of the Wall. Ahead, in the front of the courtyard, Caretakers sat on horses in columns. Priests or serving girls sat atop or in the backs of wagons.

  Since the battle the day before, servants had cleaned up the courtyard and procured new wagons and supplies, which made Wrend wonder why the Master even bothered having the demigods do it all in the first place, since apparently he had the servants and resources to have other people do it much more quickly. Maybe he just wanted his children to make themselves useful, and learn the value of hard work.

  The Master sat atop his draegon at the front of the courtyard, wearing his usual black outfit with the lattice of tree roots embroidered on the front. He’d spent ten minutes decrying the cultists and vowing to punish them. Wrend had a hard time paying attention because, behind the Master, the gates stood open; Wrend had seen few glimpses of the city beyond and found himself watching the buildings and street outside the Seraglio more than actually listening to the Master.

  “We will not . . .” the Master said. He paused and shook his head as if to clear his emotions. “We will not be cowed by the cowardly acts of our foes. They can try to kill the body—and they may even succeed—but that is all they can do. They have no power over our souls, save that which we give them. And we will give them none.”

  Teirn sat on his own horse next to Wrend. He leaned close and lowered his voice.

  “Still, I’d rather not have my body killed.”

  Wrend grunted and nodded. Since the banquet, Teirn had acted completely normal, though it felt like they should have been at each other’s throats. Maybe Teirn hadn’t tied him up in the forest. But who else would have done it? Then again, would Teirn really do that?

  Not far behind them, dozens of the Master’s wives—including Rashel and Calla—sat in several ornate carriages. Whenever the Master traveled, he took wives with him; siring hundreds of children a year required daily effort. And since the journey of the Strengthening took weeks to complete, he would need dozens of wives with him.

  Serving girls on horses or atop wagons peppered the area, as did priests. Wrend had looked for Naresh; if he didn’t talk with the priest before the caravan left, and if Naresh wasn’t going on the Strengthening, weeks would pass before Wrend could ask how the priest had managed to break those ropes. If he hadn’t known that only demigods could use Ichor, he would have thought Naresh had used the power.

  Columns of paladins wearing ring mail and masked coifs stood along the outside and back of the gathering. They held body-sized shields and pikes, and watched the event with the empty-eyed detachment of the undead. Outside the city, twenty thousand more would join the caravan.

  Before long, the Master ended his speech. After a good bit of cheering, he led the crowd out of the courtyard and into the city. It took forever, with the mass of horses and wagons funneling through the narrow doors. During the process, as the crowds and wagons shifted, Wrend spotted Naresh off to the left, riding atop a wagon, holding the reigns and guiding a mare; he was going on the Strengthening.

  Wrend tried to maneuver over to Naresh, but failed. The carts and other horses herded Wrend on ahead, and he exited the Seraglio well ahead of the priest, and again next to Teirn.

  Wrend had lived all of his seventeen years in the Seraglio, starting out at the top of the canyon as all demigods did, living in the nursery with the priests and mothers—in the same building where hundreds had died the day before. As he’d grown older, he’d moved down the canyon one village at a time, all the while learning trades and professions. He would need them when he became a Caretaker, because from age twenty to fifty he would serve the people of the countryside.

  The canyon and his studies had been the entire expanse of his existence. He knew only what the priests, mothers, and the Master taught him. He’d heard of the countryside beyond the Wall and spent a fair amount of time imagining what it must be like. The cities. The mountains and valleys. The rivers. The villages. But now, as he left the Seraglio, he felt small.

  The street outside the Wall undulated in red. Only the two- and three-story buildings kept still. Everything else moved. Women and children leaned out of windows, waving and flapping red banners or sheets. People lined the flagstone street, wearing crimson and waving at the parade.

  But not a single person spoke. No one cheered or called out to the caravan, though some wept and others looked on with solemnity. The snap of flapping cloth mixed with the creak of wagons and the clop of horses’ hooves. When small children spoke, their parents hushed them.

  This was the start of the Strengthening, when the Master sacrificed demigods to the people. The red of the clothing, banners, and sheets signified their blood, which would be spilled and mixed with seeds for planting. The blood would strengthen the seeds, make them strong enough to grow in the harsh Locaran environments. After a lifetime of service,
those demigods merited respect, for even in death they would serve the people. So the people held the silence.

  And so they went. Wrend waved at onlookers when he met their eyes, but otherwise took in the sights of the city: hordes of people, signs above shops, gabled roofs, the marketplace, and much more.

  At the edge of the city, they passed through the gate and the land spread out. The foothills rolled down before him, and a valley opened up, with mountains on the far side. Beyond them, a jagged line of purple rose even higher: more mountains in the distance. The valley stretched to the horizon to the south, where it narrowed into a canyon, and to the north, where a lake reflected more mountain peaks. Until then, he’d never seen more than a mile at any one time, but out here he could see forever.

  He had no idea what it would look like later in the year, but now, in early spring, a barren dryness lay over the valley. The dull tan of dead sagebrush and near-budding greasewood bushes colored the floor of the desert, except where rivers flowed out of the mountains in several places. There, a thin line of green wound across the valley floor, eventually petering out and melding with the desert. In a few places, clusters of buildings huddled near a river, but they were distant and indistinct, just splotches of brown or gray.

  The valley seemed dead in comparison to the canyon of the Seraglio, and even to the mountains that extended in every direction. It was like two different worlds had decided to coexist next to each other: lush alpine forest and dry cold desert. Yet, despite the desolation, he couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly look more splendid.

  Not only did he feel small, but naïve. The world was so big; his had been so small. He understood and knew so little of it.

  Teirn whistled in amazement. “The world is bigger than I ever imagined.”

  Wrend pointed westward at the closest mountains. “I had no idea you could see so far. It must be fifty miles to those.”

  “Or further.”

  Wrend looked at Teirn, trying to evaluate his brother’s mood. “You know, we can talk to him. We can try and convince him that I don’t care to be his heir. You can have it.”

  Teirn, taken by surprise at the comment, raised his eyebrows. “We can’t tell him we know his purpose.”

  “Maybe we can get him to tell us.”

  Teirn frowned as if he hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know, Wrend. Things feel tenuous, at best. I feel like the slightest move could get one of us killed.”

  “If we don’t do something about it, it will happen anyway.”

  Teirn didn’t respond, but seemed to at least consider it.

  The caravan headed down the road of granite pavers, toward the valley floor. At the front, the Master sat atop his draegon. They passed in the midst of twenty thousand paladins lined up alongside the road in columns and rows, with banners and trumpets. They had no horses or even supply wagons, and smelled vaguely salty. As preserved undead, they didn’t need much in the way of supplies or food, and could march alongside walking horses or horse-drawn wagons. After the caravan passed by them, someone called a command, and with no more than the sound of their marching feet, the army took up position in the rear.

  Wrend decided to hunt down Naresh, so he could ask some questions.

  Chapter 21: Not confederate

  Changing the world usually requires two things: patience and subtlety.

  -Naresh

  Wrend found the old man hunched atop his wagon seat, not really gripping the reins, but letting them rest in his hands. His entire manner seemed much the same: inattentive, just a little sloppy, as if the weight of years piled on his shoulders had worn him out. His red mantle, covering shoulders, chest, and arms, had golden praises to the Master embroidered down the arms. It was rumpled, as if he’d pulled it out of the bottom of a drawer. His white robes looked the same, and his left shoe had a hole in the toe. Other priests attended to their clothing with prideful exactitude. They shaved every day and kept their hair cropped short. Naresh probably hadn’t shaved in two days. His hair had started to cover his ears and collar.

  The reins rested in his open palms, and the nag pulling the wagon moved with resignation up the gradual slope, following the wagon directly ahead. Behind Naresh’s wagon, another followed, and the line stretched down the long ridge and then back up another, all the way to the top at least a mile away. Far away to the right, and only a few miles to the left, foothills bubbled up into mountains, which rose level upon level like stairways to the sky. Some still bore snow in their tallest peaks, though a warm breeze touched Wrend in the valley floor.

  Naresh looked at Wrend with an empty expression, as if neither caring about nor knowing Wrend’s identity. This was how Wrend had known him his whole life: the doddering old man who experienced flashes of lucidity. For some reason, those moments had affected Wrend, influenced how he viewed the world—enough so that in a critical moment the night before he’d made a mistake.

  He couldn’t remove from his mind the expression of disappointment on the Master’s face when he’d given the wrong answer at the table. Of all the things he’d seen the previous day, that look of sadness had most haunted his dreams the night before. How he hated to let down the Master. What a mistake. He needed to bring his will in alignment with the Master’s.

  “I’m in a mess because of you,” he said. It came out harsher than he’d intended.

  Naresh raised his eyebrows and looked down at Wrend with tired eyes, as if rousing from sleep. No other wagons or horses traveled down the road next to him; the road’s width did not allow two carts to drive side-by-side.

  “Because of me?” Naresh said.

  Wrend thought of how Naresh had broken the ropes and freed him.

  “What I meant was ‘thank you for freeing me.’”

  The priest nodded and shrugged. “You’re welcome. Although I understand the dinner didn’t go so well. I guess you’re alive though, which counts for something. A little something, anyway.”

  “You know about what happened at the dinner?”

  “Which part? The poisoning? Or the part where you didn’t know how to answer a simple question from your father?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Everyone knows about it. There were serving girls and other demigods nearby. The entire Seraglio knew by morning. Everyone’s talking about it. They all know you think Athanaric should turn soft.”

  “I don’t think he should turn soft.”

  Naresh closed his eyes and tipped his head back to laugh.

  “You don’t even know your father, do you? It’s his way to demand compliance with his will—bless his powers and generosity.”

  He ran one hand down the sleeve of his mantle, invoking the powers of the prayers embroidered in gold from shoulder to wrist. The motion made the nag pulling the wagon look back, but she didn’t change her pace.

  “I’d suggest that you be careful and do everything he wants you to do—think like he wants you to.”

  “My answer is your fault, you know.”

  Wrend said it with a grin and a teasing tone, but Naresh gave him a look of sincere horror, as if one couldn’t accuse him of anything more terrible.

  “My fault? I’ve never once told you to defy your father. I’m not suicidal.” He leaned toward the nag and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “Unlike some people, eh, Missy?”

  “Do you remember about four years ago when you taught me to look at others’ points of view?”

  The old man worked his jaw as if chewing on his gums. He looked out over the valley; they’d nearly reached the crest of the ridge, where the road turned directly south.

  “I merely suggested that the demigod might have appreciated a little empathy. In what way does that indicate you should do anything that might upset your father?”

  “It doesn’t, but—“

  “But nothing.” He grew serious and alert and gave Wrend a piercing glare. “I said something. You interpreted it. That’s the end of it. If you want to keep that si
lly idea about letting people decide things for themselves, bury it deep. Don’t let it show. In all ways, you need to demonstrate obedience and alignment with your father. It’s that simple. You don’t know what you’re up against, boy, and even if you did, it wouldn’t be easy for you to live through it.”

  Wrend didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t even know how to take the warning. Clearly, Naresh meant the last part of what he said, about burying the point of view, but concealing it was not the same as eliminating it, and having an opinion contrary to the Master’s probably wasn’t what the Master had in mind when he’d told Wrend that he had a lot to learn.

  Was Naresh one of the rebels?

  The thought came in a flash, and he immediately doubted it while recognizing its possibility. If his demigod siblings could join or establish the cult, an old priest could certainly join it. The Master should probably know about that.

  Yet, Naresh had only encouraged obedience, and tattling would almost certainly condemn the priest to death.

  Much to Wrend’s surprise, he couldn’t picture himself doing anything that would harm the old man. He felt too connected to him, and far too indebted to him. He was, in a way, Wrend’s friend. The casual, periodic connections they’d shared over the years had affected Wrend, made him view the old man as a mentor to trust and look to. Besides, Naresh had untied him, helped him get to the banquet.

  “How did you do it, last night?” Wrend said.

  During Wrend’s lengthy pause, Naresh had seemed to drift off, again. He opened one eye half way.

  “Can’t you see I’m sleeping?”

  “Last night—how did you break those ropes?”

  He shrugged and snapped the reigns against the nag’s back. “I didn’t break them. I untied them.”