by NS Dolkart
He had said that a time of judgment was at hand, hadn’t he? And he had reestablished a priestly line among those who knew the most about the ancient theology of God Most High. He must somehow have been giving them the tools they needed for effective repentance. Hadn’t he even told the islanders that God Most High had grown more forgiving over the centuries?
Before Phaedra even asked Bandu to help her, she should visit Salemica and speak to the high priest there. If repentance was the key to surviving these times, and the establishment of a high priesthood was relevant enough for Salemis to have ordained it, then the high priest of God Most High would be the one to talk to.
There would be traditional prayers of repentance among the Dragon Touched, ones that Phaedra could convert into prayer spells without having to invent and calibrate the wording herself. With guidance from the codex Psander had given her, she could probably maximize the spells’ efficacy without causing any unintentional blasphemy. All she needed was daylight and reading time, and she was sure to have both if she hired someone to drive her to Salemica in a carriage. She was glad she had thought to ask Psander for money. She had been terrified, before she left, of forgetting something vital, but it looked like she had all the tools she needed after all.
She slept fitfully in the hold, and nearly fell out of her hammock twice, so that by the time a sailor woke her to say that they had reached Atuna, she could only stare dully at him and grunt that she would be right up. The sailor looked unduly shocked at her behavior, as if he had expected her to be fashionable and aloof even when awoken from a dreadful night’s sleep. For heavens’ sake. Even a wizard couldn’t keep that up.
The reminder was a good one, though. If she wanted to remain respected in Atuna, it was best to maintain an image of complete poise. It was a lesson she had learned young: a woman’s poise was a proxy for her power.
She was more than presentable by the time she set foot on Atunaean soil. She wore the second of her two Essishan dresses, a magnificence of yellow and purple that covered her from her hair down to her feet. The dress had fit quite well in her satchel: the fabric was thinner than the finest linen. It also caught the sea breezes beautifully. The continent had never seen anything like it, she was sure.
Phaedra had no difficulty in finding a carriage for hire – enough wealth moved through Atuna that the city was well prepared to provide anything a rich person could possibly ask for. She considered paying for bodyguards too but decided against it. If she gave the carriage enough of an air of power, bandits were sure to leave it alone.
By noontime she was outside the city, being driven toward Salemica. The road had its bumps, and Phaedra often had to stop her reading to avoid nausea, but it was still well worth it. She had the opportunity to study Psander’s book, even if it was only a page at a time, and that was invaluable.
Her reading did not turn up anything useful the first day. The codex was not divided into chapters, such that Phaedra was unable to skip ahead, and it built its arguments slowly. The author was thorough, that was for sure: many of the principles of prayer magic were so obvious that Phaedra could scarcely believe he had bothered to write them down at all.
The book advised that one should not cast a prayer spell to one God in another’s territory, and painstakingly explained why it was folly to ask the favor of a God one had not worshipped for years beforehand. Prayer spells should be accompanied by appropriate sacrifices, it said, and one should never mention other Gods besides the one being petitioned for help, even to insult Them. Most importantly – and obviously, Phaedra thought – if one’s prayer spell was not answered, one must never try again. A wizard must never ask a God for anything that could be accomplished without that God’s help, or risk being seen as presumptuous. Apparently, terminal presumptuousness had been a common cause of death for wizards.
None of this was helpful advice for Phaedra, though. Some of it didn’t even apply. There was no territory in this world that didn’t belong to God Most High, except maybe in the boughs of the Yarek, and of the two prayer spells she had cast in her life, neither had been accompanied by a sacrifice, and yet both had worked better than she could have imagined. God Most High, at least, must be willing to accept prayers in the Essishan style, without an accompanying sacrifice. Phaedra had been incredibly lucky in that regard.
They stopped for the night on the side of the road, and Phaedra slept in the carriage while its driver slept on the ground. The carriage driver was a Laarnan refugee, a middle-aged man with white skin and a look of unspeakable sadness worn into his face. He’d asked her when she hired him if she knew the high priest in Ardis. When she had answered that she did, he’d nodded and said nothing.
“Do you want me to give him a message, the next time I see him?”
“Just… just tell him to pray for me. If the Lord Below sees fit to favor me, I would like to see my wife and children again.”
Phaedra had promised she would tell Narky.
For the second night in a row, Phaedra couldn’t sleep. This time it was not Hunter she thought of, but Psander. Would coming back to this world really mean the wizard’s death? Was there no way for Silent Hall to become a blind spot for the Gods once more? Had Phaedra already spoken to her mentor for the last time?
There was rain the next day, which turned Atel’s roads muddy and slow. Distant thunder made Phaedra fear another skyquake, but none materialized. She whispered a prayer to God Most High and went back to her reading.
The road from Atuna to Salemica was a new one, and there were sections Phaedra didn’t recognize at all. A pair of bridges shortened the way considerably, but their crossing was expensive. They had been built for the many merchants who travelled this route, some of whom Phaedra’s driver had hailed as they passed on the road. Psander’s wealth in coin had been fairly modest to begin with, or at least since her payment to the Gallant Ones. Phaedra would not be returning this way.
When she arrived in Salemica, Phaedra’s first act was to buy a ram for sacrifice. Whatever God Most High thought of Essishan ways, they were foreign to these parts. One did not insult the priests and expect the favor of their God.
They tied the animal to the back of the carriage and proceeded to the temple, where Phaedra parted with her driver after paying him handsomely for the long journey. The priest who came down to help her coax the ram up the steps smiled and said, “I know you. You are Criton’s friend, Phaedra.”
Phaedra gave him a courteous nod, though she did not remember the man at all. He was young and light-skinned, early to mid-twenties perhaps, with a bushy mud-brown beard that entirely concealed his chin and neck. He didn’t look like anyone in particular, though his eyes had a familiar look to them.
“I’m Malkon,” the priest said. “Vella’s brother. I was little the last time you saw me, but you look exactly the same.”
“Thank you,” Phaedra answered, recognizing his flattery for what it was. “I must confess, I did not recognize you at all. You must have grown quite a bit since then.”
The ram was a powerful animal, and it was highly reluctant to come up the steps to the altar. Malkon was young and muscular, but without the ram’s cooperation he had little hope of reaching the altar without assistance. Phaedra did her best to calm the animal, projecting her own feeling of safety and desire to reach the top into its mind, but she did not have Bandu’s way with creatures. Her mind was too different from theirs somehow. Her spell had a positive effect, but it still took all of Malkon’s muscle to coax the ram up the last steps.
When they had finally reached the top and tied the cord that hung from the ram’s collar to a loop on the altar, Malkon sighed in relief and dusted off his hands. “It’s an honor, you know,” he told the animal. “You could have been anyone’s dinner, and gone straight to the underworld. Instead, you’ll rise to the heavens to please our God. You ought to thank me.”
The ram baaed skeptically, entirely unconvinced by his logic.
He patted it on the head and turne
d back to Phaedra. “I was a bit shorter than him, I think, the last time you saw me. And my beard is new since then too, of course. Now is this fellow here for thanksgiving, beseeching, or forgiveness?”
“Thanksgiving, for now. I can do my own beseeching, when it comes time for that. For now, I need to thank God Most High for bringing me safely to this place.”
“Very good. I didn’t figure you’d need forgiveness for anything.”
Phaedra smiled politely, though she found his flirtation tiresome. He wouldn’t have been her type even if she hadn’t loved Hunter. Maybe he thought his sister’s marriage to Bandu would help him with Bandu’s fellow islander. Whatever he thought, he was wrong.
She watched as Malkon bound the ram and performed the sacrifice, taking mental notes on his technique and wording. She was no priestess to be performing such rituals herself, but even the rituals that were inappropriate for a wizard to borrow could be elucidating in other ways. She had spent far more time alone in her worship of God Most High than she had ever spent among His chosen people, learning their ways. She felt she knew far more about her God than she knew about His religion, and that was a significant deficit. The religion had power and meaning beyond any crass magical usage.
That was the real problem with academic magic: it treated Gods as power sources, not deities. There was no worship, only experimentation. It was no wonder prayer magic was considered so perilous if half its practitioners attempted it for reasons defined by their own ambitions and not in the service of the Gods they called upon. She didn’t think Psander had been wrong that there was mortal danger inherent in demanding a God’s attention, but clearly academics had brought additional danger upon themselves by approaching prayer magic from the wrong angle. It was, at its essence, a kind of prayer and not a kind of magic.
The silly, obvious points that Psander’s codex had tried to instill in its readers could all have been obviated by the simple principle that prayer magic should be attempted only within the context of genuine worship. Mura was a perfect exemplar of this principle. How many years had he lived and how many spells had he cast without ever incurring divine punishment? Every spell of his had been a prayer spell, yet his success in avoiding Karassa’s wrath should have come as no surprise: the man had been more priest than wizard. His spells had been worship, and his worship had been spells.
When Malkon had taken the priestly portion and set the rest of the ram alight, Phaedra asked him if his father the high priest was present. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I didn’t flatter myself that you were here to see me.”
He lifted the platter that held the portion of mutton and was about to lead her inside when they heard a cry of “Phaedra!” and turned to see Criton leaping up the stairs toward them. He took them two and sometimes three at a time, and soon held Phaedra in his warm embrace.
“I heard you came in a carriage. Where have you been all this time?”
“I spent a few years in Essisha, but today I came from Psander by way of Tarphae and Atuna. I have a lot to tell you, and none of it is good.”
29
Salemis
It was amazing to witness the Lower Gods recognize, practically all at once, that the Yarek would not necessarily be shattered. One moment They had been fighting and undercutting each other, vying for greater influence on the rebuilt world, and the next moment the heavens were roiling and convulsing with Godly fear. Even for Salemis, insulated as he was by the love of Eramia and God Most High, the feeling was contagious.
The Lower Gods were limited by Their domains; the rumors of what Phaedra meant to do mostly came from Atel the Messenger, who had noted God Most High’s protection of her and spied upon her as best He could. What He had gleaned was that Phaedra meant to eliminate the mesh between her world and the elven one, averting the Yarek’s destruction until after it had the chance to reform. If she succeeded, the Yarek would soon pierce the heavens and resume its ancient campaign of destruction, and the elves too, those arrogant children who had soaked up too much of the Gods’ power, would be released to cause what mischief they could. The fact that God Most High was protecting the wizard despite this plan – or perhaps because of it – terrified the Lower Gods. How many of Them would fall before God Most High chose to confront the Yarek once more?
Salemis observed the Gods’ alarm get mirrored on earth, Their cries for God Most High’s forgiveness pouring from the mouths of prophets, from east of Essisha to far beyond the Calardian mountains, and many stranger places besides. Some, like Prince Tnachti of Ksado, received visions that blamed Phaedra for the world’s end, but few could do anything about it. Tnachti chose to send an armada, led by his esteemed sister Kvati, to convince Phaedra to spare the world. The two rulers filled their ships not only with soldiers but with their families as well, presumably hoping to appeal to Phaedra’s kind heart. Whatever their thought process, the plan never had a chance of success: the voyage was too long to begin with, and then Karassa took offense at the Ksadan people praying to Phaedra’s God for fine weather instead of to Her and blew the ships off course. By the time they reached the western continent, if they ever did, it would be far too late.
Atun or Ravennis might have had a better chance at stopping Phaedra, but Atun was rightly focused on petitioning God Most High for forgiveness rather than trying to kill His servants, and Ravennis… well, Salemis wasn’t sure what Ravennis was up to. His absence from the heavens made it more difficult to monitor His actions. The Crow God had discarded Narky as a high priest, but Salemis had no notion of why. Eramia was just as baffled as he was, despite Her kinship with Ravennis, and if God Most High knew more, He wasn’t saying.
Most of the Gods recognized their powerlessness, and it terrified Them. They had spent centuries acting as if They were the true masters of the worlds, as if God Most High was not silent but dead. Now, with the Yarek threatening to return to its former power, They suddenly realized how dependent They still were on Him. The wise ones begged the Lord Above All for forgiveness and directed Their followers to do the same. As tense as things were, it was extremely satisfying to see so many of the Lower Gods tell Their people to cease praying to Them and turn instead to God Most High.
The Dragon Touched had not needed this extra direction, but they too had been changing their practice. After the most recent quake, they had come to the conclusion that fasting, prayer, and sacrifice weren’t enough. Their high priest had announced that for their prayers to be heard, they would have to also care for the sick and feed and clothe the needy, to purify their nation of selfishness and want. He had called for the poor of the city to come to the great temple, and refused to sacrifice another animal until they all had clothes to wear, homes to live in, and food to eat. Following his direction, Criton had sent messengers across the nation, establishing protocols for every community to clothe and feed its citizens and its strangers. The society’s transformation was a wonder to behold.
Eramia was particularly proud of that high priest, Hessina’s son. She had shielded him and his mother from Magor’s gaze during the purge, nurtured his young mind through the harshest years, and now Her effort was bearing fruit. Salemis could see how Her influence had shaped the man. If not for the fact that She had prepared him to serve God Most High rather than Herself, one might have called Kilion one of Her fingers. Perhaps it was an apt description anyway. Eramia had always been a subtle one, subtler perhaps than even Ravennis. Her finesse always amazed him.
Yes, Salemis and Eramia had prepared their children well. If their survival had been entirely up to God Most High, as Salemis had always thought it would be, he would have felt confident.
But it wasn’t. Phaedra’s plan relied upon the Yarek’s disavowal of the greedy destruction that had caused its ancient war against God Most High. If the plant beast betrayed her and resumed its war, the resulting battle, whatever its ultimate outcome, would tear the heavens and earth asunder. Salemis and Eramia would be lucky if they survived, let alone their descendents.
He had known a reckoning was coming, had even welcomed it, but he hadn’t expected this. He had believed that with enough prayer, enough repentance, humanity would convince God Most High to uproot the Yarek’s seed and pull their world further from the elves’ prison. He hadn’t anticipated this plan to reunify the Yarek and endanger all the worlds at once, to require the Yarek’s repentance and not only humanity’s. How had Phaedra even hatched such a plan? He had not thought her one to conceive of risking the heavens.
But God Most High had endorsed this plan anyway by choosing to protect Phaedra from the Lower Gods. That at least gave Salemis hope. If the Lord Above All intended to give the Yarek its chance to repent, then Phaedra’s mission must have some chance of success. He only wished it didn’t rely on a being so far outside their power to influence.
God Most High had once told Salemis that his people would survive until the end of the world. Not for the first time, Salemis wished He had been more specific.
30
Raider Eleven
When they reached the wizard’s fortress, the sky was so black that only the elves’ skin illuminated the way before them. The stars dangled above, wobbling slightly as they shed their dim light. By ancient elven lore they were torches, bound to the heavenly barrier by Gods who had later abandoned this world in Their selfishness and fear. Raider Eleven had never considered the cords that bound them there to be anything short of unbreakable, but perhaps she had been wrong. Given another quake or two, they might well fall from the sky.
The fortress was more of a ruin than even the dying Castle Goodweather. Half its tower lay beside the gate, itself a useless thing lying wrecked upon the ground. A gaping hole invited them into the wizard’s home, under what remained of the tower. Raider Eleven looked to her new mistress. The queen smiled and waved them on.
Still riding their steeds, the queen’s party entered the gap where once the gate had been. Beyond it, they found Psander.
