“So gods change?” Allystaire hesitated. “Is that your point?”
“It is a starting point to many other questions. Do all the gods change? Do we change them with our worship? Do they become what we wish them to be, what we believe they are? Or do we become as they wish us to be? You have told me that the Goddess has alluded to things She cannot tell you, things She is not permitted to do.”
“That last is not a question.”
“No,” Gideon said. “But it leads to one. What prevents a goddess, the Mother or otherwise, from doing as they wish?”
Allystaire sat straight up in his chair, the fatigue in the muscles of his back fading as the questions Gideon raised began to eat at his thoughts. He resettled himself, leaning against the wood of the chair, and bit at his lip. “What are you suggesting?”
The boy shook his head. “Nothing. I haven’t enough information to make any suggestions, really. The only gods I have direct experience of are the Mother, and the God of the Caves. A bit with Fortune, I suppose, but when I touched the power Joscelyn was drawing it felt very,” the boy gestured, searching for a word, “thin. As if it were merely a trickle.”
“And to you, the Mother’s Gift feels how?”
“Like an ocean I can swim in,” the boy replied. “Or at least a lake so large it makes no difference. The God of the Caves was simply a pool. Wide, but not deep, and easily drained.” He shook his head. “These metaphors are too easy, too pat. Still too many questions.”
“Go on,” Allystaire encouraged him. “Think aloud. I find that it helps.”
Gideon nodded, was silent a moment. “Have all the gods changed, over time? Where was the Mother in the past? How did Mol’s suffering draw Her back to the world, and why? Had She withdrawn from the world on purpose? Why and how did She choose this moment and place?”
The questions hovered in the silence that followed, neither Allystaire nor Gideon breaking it. Finally, Gideon stood and looked straight to Allystaire.
“I have to ask Her.”
“She may not answer.”
“I know,” Gideon replied. “But I have to ask.”
“Do you want me with you?”
Gideon thought a moment, then shook his head. “No.”
“Then go,” Allystaire said. “Learn what you can.”
The boy nodded and slipped quietly out of the door. Allystaire watched him go, then stood and walked back to his table of squires. He caught Timmar’s eye on the way, and said, “Make sure, goodman, if you have any chores that need doing, to ask any of the men here. They will be happy to help.”
* * *
When Gideon ascended the steps of the Temple and opened the door, Mol was at the altar, her back to him. It was dim, but not dark within, despite the failing light outside, and the dimness turned her sky-blue robe to something darker, the color of the sky just before the sun set, perhaps.
Next to her knelt a taller figure, dressed in a long, simple undyed wool robe and a pair of old and worn shoes. Gideon didn’t recognize him. As he moved slowly up the aisle, he saw that there was something tied around the man’s head, a bandage or a mask.
He waited and watched as Mol held the man’s hand and helped him stand. When they turned around, Gideon realized that the man must be the blinded veteran who had lately arrived, for the strip tied around his face covered his eyes. Mol kept a light hand on his arm as he walked slowly forward and found a bench, onto which he slipped, nodding as the priestess spoke to him in a low and soothing murmur.
Mol left him and glided towards Gideon, who walked slowly to meet her. The priestess smiled at him and wound her arm through his to clasp his hand.
Gideon stiffened slightly at the contact, and Mol tilted her head to one side.
“What is the matter, brother?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I am still unused to that.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
Again, he shook his head. “No.” He leaned against Mol for a moment. Her embrace felt sisterly and, he supposed, maternal at the same time. Then he pulled his hand and arm free, and said, “I have come to ask some questions.”
“Anything I can answer, Gideon, I will.”
“Not of you, Mol,” he said quietly. “Of Her.”
Mol looked to the altar, the muted orange, red, and gold bands of the stone oval gleaming softly. “She cannot simply be summoned, Gideon. And She may not answer. She has not spoken to me, not as I am used to, since a week after the Longest Night.”
“I must ask, regardless. There is something I think I must do, but before I can I need to at least try and find some answers. I will stay here all night if I have to, and every night until She speaks with me or the world drives me away.”
“That sounds like something Allystaire would say,” Mol replied with a curious smile.
“I’ll take that as praise,” Gideon replied, drawing his shoulders back and walking towards the altar with his jaw set firm.
Mol turned to watch him, whispered, “It was.” Then she turned back to the blind veteran Waltin and took up his hand, helped him stand. “The Will means to hold a vigil,” she murmured. “I will find you a place to sleep. Think on what I have said.” The man murmured something in reply.
Gideon heard none of it, for his attention had fallen on the altar. He circled around it, knelt at the Pillar of the Will, placed his hands over the symbol—which had changed three times, from a flame, to a spring of water, to a sunburst, in the short time he’d looked upon it.
Please, Mother, he thought. Please.
Those were the only words Gideon put to his thoughts for the moment. He let his mind wander. Snatches of music filled it, of the songs Idgen Marte called forth from the lute. Haltingly, and with much cursing, but it was easy to see the fluency returning to her hands. He envied it, for his were slow and stumbling, and the strings still cut into his fingers. She assured him that with time, callous would grow and the hardest fretwork would feel like second nature.
He thought of the way Mol had embraced him, had taken his hand when he walked in. How he fought the urge to flinch when almost anyone tried to touch him. Bhimanzir had never put a hand upon him except to punish him. An expectation so ingrained was hard to overcome. Why hadn’t he tried to explain that to Mol? He wasn’t sure he could have, really. And it sounded like whining. He’d not told Allystaire either. Perhaps no one noticed, for though he wanted to flinch, he never did.
Bhimanzir had taught him not to.
He remembered an incident of his youth, early in his training, when the other children taken the same time as him had been discarded. How Bhimanzir had casually lifted a hand to slap him across the face for an incorrect answer, and he’d ducked and covered his head with his hands.
For the next year, every time Bhimanzir made to punish him, he’d found his hands bound to his sides by bands of darkly smoldering red power, his back held stiffly in place.
Gideon started, but did not flinch, when a hand settled onto his shoulder. He was surprised, yes, but the warmth that radiated from the touch was the opposite of Bhimanzir’s.
He turned from the altar, and found himself staring face to face with the Goddess, Her skin shed its faint golden radiance, with a single tear suspended from a golden eye, glowing like a drop of water lit by a sunrise.
“I am sorry, Gideon, for how you suffered before you were found.”
The boy shook his head. “I will not mourn for the past when it has brought me to this moment,” he replied. “Bhimanzir had a hand in making me what I am, and though I might wish it had been otherwise, what I am serves reasonably well.”
The Goddess smiled and blinked back Her tear. Gideon felt his heart beat quicken at the sight. “Among My servants, Gideon, you are the most ready to correct Me, and also the most given to understatement about yourself.”
“I do not mean to presume,
Mother.”
“You do not,” She replied, reaching out to take one of his hands between both of Hers. It was a contact that he didn’t think for a moment of flinching from. “Why do you seek my counsel, My Will?”
The boy lowered his eyes and resisted the urge to squeeze the hands that grasped his. “I am troubled by some implications that have arisen as I have come to know more about the gods, Mother. This is one area where my education at the hands of Bhimanzir sorely lacked. The Knowing do not believe in deities, only in power, and so while I learned of the existence of the temples and their politics, I know nothing of the theology.”
“There may be little I can tell you, My Will. I am bound to certain proscriptions.”
“That is my first question. How can that be, Mother? If your power and knowledge are boundless, how can you be bound?”
She shook Her head slowly. Her totally golden eyes were difficult, even impossible to read, but Gideon thought he felt Her hands withdrawing.
“Wait. Wait. Please, Mother. If you cannot tell me these rules, could you at least tell me when I am asking you to break one?”
“No.”
The boy licked his lips and searched Her features. He found it harder to concentrate then, and so dropped his eyes to the floor, which had become indistinct. The Temple was still around him, the warm stone of the altar still in front of him, but all of it had become hazy and indistinct in Her light.
“If I simply speak, without asking questions, you break no rules by not answering.”
“This is true, but how does it help you?”
The boy let out a breath, feeling the risk in what he asked. “It all depends on how you do not answer, Mother.”
Gideon was never sure if the upward lift at the corner of Her mouth was a figment of his imagination, or the merest suggestion of a smile.
He took another deep breath and squeezed Her hand with his own gently. “That there are rules governing your behavior implies that the same rules apply to the other gods. To Braech and Fortune, Urdaran. The elven Green, even.”
Something dark passed across Her eyes when the last word passed his lips, and then was gone as quickly as it came. He tacked away from his most pressing questions.
“There is either an agreement among you or something beyond you enforcing these rules. As far as I can tell it does not matter at the moment which is true.” A pause. “You must act through intermediaries. Through mortals to whom you grant a path to wield your power.”
Her hands, perhaps, squeezed his very lightly.
“There may be hundreds, thousands even, to whom Braech has granted the power to use their will like a crude club, some are granted power over wind and wave, and then there are the Dragon Scales, who seem to worry Allystaire, whose numbers are unknown to me. But a priest of Braech, or even a dozen of them joining their wills together, are no match for me. This is because we number only five; you are able to grant us far more power than Braech may them. The amount you grant is somehow limited.”
She did not respond; Her features remained frozen in radiant majesty, Her hands around his.
“Yet this is a precarious position because there are so many more of them. The very number of worshippers may be a factor in Braech’s overall power, or Fortune’s.”
He paused to search the Goddess’s unchanging features carefully, then dropped his eyes back to his feet and concentrated. “You have told us before that we are not the pawns of fate. That we do our will in Your service. You cannot see all ends. You, like Braech or Fortune, can only grant your Gifts where You believe they will achieve the most good.”
“It breaks no rule for me to tell you that is true,” She said, tilting Her head curiously to one side. “You are only repeating what I have told you.”
“Then I must ask a question, Mother. Why now, why here?”
“Mol’s suffering woke me from a long slumber, Gideon. A child, helpless and alone, crying over the death of her kin and praying for aid, for rescue, for justice? Who would answer Her if not me?”
“Yet there are people all over the world who cry out for the same thing, day after day. Orphans and widows are made by the scores in battle, singly by disease, or by murder on the roadside or the city.”
“I am keenly aware of all the suffering in the world, My Will.” There was, perhaps, just the slightest edge in Her voice, but Gideon moved forward regardless.
“I know. I do not mean to rebuke you, Mother. I swear that I don’t.” A thin note of desperation crept into Gideon’s voice. “There must be something about the place that drew you. I cannot think what it is.”
“There is,” She admitted. “Look more closely at the place. That is all I can say on that matter.”
Gideon nodded his acceptance. “I am forced to wonder where it was that you slumbered, Mother. I will not ask,” he hurriedly added, as Her hand started to pull away. “I will continue to speculate. I know that even a god may change, with time. The God of the Caves had grown mad with solitude. He could not conceive of the ways in which life had moved on from His gifts.”
“Similarly,” the boy went on, “I have looked into some of the history and it seems that Braech has shifted. His worship always praised courage, strength, pride, boldness—and yet it seems only in the last few decades that it has become so wanton, so bloodthirsty.”
“Short lives, short memories,” she murmured cryptically. “I will not abide what He has become.”
“Then there is Urdaran. He has changed as well, I suspect. I have spoken with Rede; his order are taught their history only to a certain point and it is made clear to them to seek no knowledge of anything before that point. There are books and scrolls within their own vaults that are forbidden to them. This is absurd, and yet it is treated as a command from Urdaran Himself. None are known to have violated it.”
There was no response. She did not seem to need to blink, and there were no irises in Her eyes to look closely at. Her mouth did not twitch. But Her hands did not leave his. He swung his eyes back to the hazy stones that he could barely feel beneath his feet.
“I cannot speculate upon what Urdaran may have been once, or what He is becoming. Then, there is the Green.”
“Mind what you say when you use that word, My Will.”
He nodded faintly. “The Green is more ancient than any of you, as elves are far older than humans. Fewer in number as well. But the Green—curiously it is never called he or she, never given a masculine or feminine principle, which even the dwarfs do with their catalogue of ores—the Green seems to have simply withdrawn from the world. Perhaps other gods we have forgotten have done the same. They grow bored with it, or disgusted. Yet if they can change their minds in one direction, they can move in another.”
Silence hung heavy in the air.
“Even a god may wish for redemption if they judged their exit from the world to be hasty or ill-timed,” Gideon ventured. “I should like a look at the forbidden archives in Rede’s monastery sometime. I have theories they might prove or disprove. It is possible that Urdaran was not always spoken of as He.”
“Or that Urdaran, when He was other than He is now, had a consort. There are many possibilities.” Her reply was something like a whisper. “I have come right to the line of what I may tell you, Gideon. Perhaps over it. I must leave you soon.”
“I have no more questions of you, Mother.” He lifted his eyes back to Her and reached out to clasp Her with his other hand. “Not of that sort. You know of what I proposed to the Wit, and I am sure you know my mind. Could I do such a thing?”
“You are My Will, Gideon.” Even as She answered, Her voice and form were fading. “You may bring almost anything into the world if you but know where and how to bring it forth.”
“How seems obvious enough.” Gideon felt frustration bleeding into his words, causing his voice to rise. The Goddess’s radiance was slowly fading, o
r the world around him was slowly coming back into focus. It was impossible to say which. “Why does where matter?”
“Where always matters, Gideon.”
Before he could make sense of the answer, She had faded completely from his sight. He could see as well as feel the stone beneath his feet, make out the walls of the Temple around him, in the shadows past the dim light the altar gave off.
Gideon stepped back from the altar and walked slowly around it. He took in the shape, the Five Pillars. He tried looking upon the symbols, but rarely saw a single one for more than a few seconds before it shifted. The Wit was a mountain, then a flowing river, a coin, a set of balances, a flask. The Shadow was a thin sliver of moon, a sword, a dagger, a pen. The Voice was a sickle, a mouth, a pair of hands opened in supplication. The Arm was the most consistent, wavering between a hammer and a sunburst.
He stepped back, far enough that he couldn’t see the symbols or be distracted by their shifting.
“Why five?” He murmured the words, crossing his arms over his chest. Suddenly he shook his head. “Numerology is not significant,” he chided himself. “Shadow and Wit are what the poor and the defenseless have always relied upon to shield themselves. A Voice and an Arm are barred to them. This is easy enough to see. Then why a Will?” He shook his head and backed a few more steps away, peering once again at the altar, trying to see it as a whole. An oval of stone, perfectly smooth, unmarked by any tool. Drawn from a pile of loose stones gathered and stacked together by the Arm, the Shadow, and the Voice, then finished when he and Torvul had joined them.
“An oval. Why that shape?”
He stared hard at the altar, tried to fix its measurements and proportions in his mind.
Then he turned on a heel and out of the Temple, throwing the door open a little more forcefully than he’d intended and almost breaking into a run on the steps.
He retained just enough presence of mind not to run into Mol, who was waiting for him just a couple of steps down. He couldn’t make out her expression in the darkness, which had become total since he’d entered the Temple, but Gideon felt he could guess that she was smiling. She typically was.
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