Emissary- Beasts of Burden

by Silas Post

  “Speak!” I yelled. “Before I stand on your knee instead.”

  “It’s us or them,” the guard said. “And it sure as hell won’t be us.”

  “For what purpose?” I asked.

  “To build,” he said. His fingers drifted from my foot toward the shackles he stored at his hip. I kicked him under his jaw, snapping his lower teeth sharply against the uppers. He lay still after that.

  “They don’t plan to kill,” I said, “not yet. They came for labor.”

  “They came for slaves,” Jarah said. “That’s what the cargo ships are for. We are to be their cargo!”

  We three rushed forward, into the plaza that had held loud and colorful festivities just moments ago. Now, cyclopean men and women lay shackled in the streets, their ankles and wrists bound in black metal that flashed an occasional gleam. They struggled to resist or break free, but they could not.

  The village had devolved into mayhem. Royal guards continued to billow through the village arches wielding manacles and swords. Others threw the restrained bodies of Jarah’s people into heaps on the hard wooden slats that lined the village’s central square.

  Victor.

  “Rikki,” I said. She was already reaching inside her top for Redelia’s soul. The crystal that housed that perfect model of the goddess’s form, a hundredth her size but exact in every detail from her exquisite charcoal skin, to the brilliant white eyelashes on each closed eye.

  “Goddess,” I said, peering into her diminutive face. “The battle has begun. This will be our victory, we need only allies to battle—”

  “Stand down,” Redelia said. Her order threw me off balance.

  “Greenloft will destroy Jarah’s entire civilization,” I said. “We cannot idly allow them free rein of the island.”

  “You will do as I say, emissary,” Redelia said. Her voice was insistent. Her miniature soul stood firm. “Your task is to dedicate a temple, and that task doubles its importance with what I witness here. The village is lost. We cannot lose the island with it.”

  “What good is an island without its people,” I asked.

  “I have not abandoned its people,” Redelia said. “I have chosen to save who I may. Stand close.”

  We did as the goddess asked, huddling tight despite the frenzy surrounding us in the plaza. The crystal that held Redelia’s soul pulsed with white light, each burst extending further than the last until Rikki’s hands were bathed in constant white, then our arms and torsos, our legs. We were painted in total illumination.

  “I capture the light that lands upon you,” Redelia said. “I bend its reflection before I return it outward. No one will see you or the ground on which you stand. Pause here and you will be safe.”

  “At the center of a violent frenzy,” Rikki said.

  “While we do nothing to help a single soul?” Jarah asked.

  “I am a single soul,” Redelia said. “Your patience assists me in a time of utmost need.”

  Men and women cried out around us, unprepared for the onslaught of guards with their enchanted shackles. The powerful frames and long limbs of the cyclopean people were no benefit against their attackers; the human soldiers subdued them deftly without the need to touch them directly. A simple aim and toss of those corrupted cuffs inflicted an inescapable incapacity.

  Tears streamed from Jarah’s oversized eye.

  All around us her people suffered and begged, but we stood in our close circle, forbidden from interfering in the enslavement of an entire race. We stood at the epicenter of a tragedy whose magnitude we could scarcely fathom.

  Redelia winced inside her crystal. “My power wanes in the face of it,” she said. “Agony. Confusion. Uncertainty. I can see the pain written across their faces and it depletes me. They know not the horror Greenloft has in store, but they suspect grave and terrible things. They despair.”

  “Look away, goddess,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I will suffer the truth. But tell me this, why do the people of Okkor’s Isle lay still as if in surrender? Are they so averse to fighting they would give their bodies and their futures away unchallenged?”

  “They are bound,” I said. “The army wields shackles that propel themselves, locking without warriors clasping the cuffs by hand.”

  Redelia’s shape stood still within her crystal, but the glow of the amulet around my neck intensified.

  “Much like the vein of power housed within Prince Wick’s sword, I cannot see the shackles at all,” she said. “I can, however, sense their emanations. The energy they radiate bends the natural light around them. They churn with misery and vice. There can be no doubt in my mind now.”

  She took a deep breath and bowed her head, as if defeated by the realization that clicked inside her mind. “The kingdom Greenloft,” she said, “has taken an infernal.”

  Rikki gasped. The color drained from her face, leaving a somber, stricken expression while her jaw began to tremble.

  “This changes everything,” Rikki said. “We must run. We must take your soul to safety and never turn back.”

  “No,” Jarah said. “We cannot leave my people, not now.”

  “Kirsis fought an infernal once,” Rikki said. “That villain nearly ripped the god’s heart from his chest. If it weren’t for his legion of servants… Infernals are as merciless as they are strong.”

  “I had thought we faced an opponent fueled by powerthirst and greed,” Redelia said. “I feared for the good hearts and souls trapped in the warpath of a madman king. For the first time since the dawn of this clash, I fear for myself as well. For my sibling gods and all mankind. The infernals rise again.”

  The hell that surrounded us was a surreal backdrop for this discussion, as bewildering as the topic itself.

  Men in Greenloft’s green tunics and protected by chainmail armor kicked down the doors to houses and dragged people kicking from their homes. Children were cuffed and thrown over guards’ shoulders before being tossed into piles of suffering bodies. Casks of wine and crates of food were broken and toppled as the guards scoured each inch for any denizen of this fair village that still drew breath.

  “What is an infernal?” I asked. “Why does this stop us from aiding these innocent people?”

  “Infernals are failed gods,” Redelia explained. “They sought the divine but strayed from its path, choosing facile power over patient devotion. They cut the journey to godhood short, binding their souls to the destructive forces that oppose the harmony my kind have always aspired to.

  “While true gods grow in power through pleasure, the infernals feed off pain,” she continued. “Infernals are leeches, sucking away at the forces that enliven this world. Most realms would behead their kind and burn their remains far from their cities’ gates. At any time, infernals are far and few between, but where they arise only tragedy follows.

  “This revelation explains why Taron was so willing to slay the goddess of abnegation, and why his father spreads the lie that we are simply witches and warlocks pulling the wool over eyes of man and beast. He weakens the trust people have long placed in miracles freely given and makes our suffering a source of pride for humankind.

  “To kill a god provides great power for an infernal, because the death of a god is a thousand times more painful than the death of a single man. It sends a current of pain and sorrow through the core of every being — man and god alike — with a connection to the slain deity. Anyone that god ever helped, every life they ever touched, suffers a loss upon that death.

  “The weapons King Corrow and his children carry are imbued with a dark and evil force that tethers those weapons to the infernal they pledge their fealty to. When Taron killed the goddess Yuriana, he fed untold strength to the infernal directing Greenloft’s war.”

  “Why would King Corrow and his children pledge themselves to an infernal?” I asked. “What could they possibly gain?”

  “Ultimately, their own ruin,” Redelia said, “but the path to ruin is paved with success. T
hey will amass gold, and land, and renown along the way — until the infernal sees fit to toss them aside. By then, who of my kind will remain?”

  “Gods are not the kingdom’s only victims,” I said.

  “No,” Redelia replied. “Taron dismembered countless forestkind in his search for mythical parts to bind into armor. He applied his blade while those poor creatures lived and allowed them to die slowly, waiting for cloud carriers who would find no coin upon their tongue to prove their worthiness for the life ahead.”

  “Was that not the cruelest part?” Rikki asked. “Those netherlife guides won’t know the measure of a soul’s hard-earned love if no one leaves a token by which to prove it.”

  “Equally cruel as the merciless agony in which they died,” Redelia said, “drawn out to force a deep and lasting pain that would scar their souls for lifetimes to come.

  “It was not infliction for sadism’s sake,” Redelia continued. “Every ounce of torture suffered by your slain cousins at Taron’s enchanted blade fueled the infernal’s power.

  “While Taron’s method was physical pain, Wick’s men came to this shore to inflict a different kind of anguish,” she said. “One that lasts a lifetime of servitude. I—” She winced again, suffering the pangs of pain drawn in by the conduit of her watchful light. “I must see your people freed, Jarah. I must live until that day.”

  “Who is responsible?” Jarah asked. Her voice shook. “What infernal draws life from all this death and pain?”

  “I will require a long study of the emanations that root most directly to the infernal’s soul,” Redelia said. “I must peer into the darkness housed within Wick’s blade and contact the infernal through his own dire artifact. I will reveal his name and put a mark upon his back if it is my last act of divine intercession. Perhaps then another god can take this fight to finish.”

  “We will not allow you to fall against this charlatan god,” Rikki said. “Hold steady, dear goddess.”

  “And what of the blue light that beckoned us to the island, that drew my trust away from Araine and my attention to the mountain ledge?” I asked. “What role does that lively spirit play in this?”

  “I cannot yet know,” Redelia said. Her voice was weak, her closed eyes clenched shut. “I must… focus.”

  For hours we stood in the city’s central plaza, awash in the goddess’s protective aura, shielded from everything except the shame of our own inaction.

  The royal guards were brutally harsh as they trapped and bound the last of Jarah’s people. They sprinted through the trees and down the mountain path to hunt down those who sought to escape. They shot arrows to incapacitate and closed in with manacles to finish the job. They hauled bodies old and young, forced their captives into lines, and marched them from the city with whips and spears to prod them onward despite their torn flesh and weakened limbs.

  Onward they went, leaving behind the trappings of a celebration that finished in tragedy.

  When the last torchlight of the invading force was invisible in the distance, Redelia ceased her divine protection. Jarah collapsed, her face so wet with tears and her lungs so spastic for breath that she could cry no longer. A silent pall hung over the empty village.

  “Thank you,” I said to Redelia’s crystal, still resting inside Rikki’s cupped hands. “You stole the light before it could reach our enemy’s eyes.”

  Redelia’s form lay still within her crystal. Silent.

  “We require your guidance on the path ahead,” I continued. “The island’s peak is yet a day’s climb upward, while Jarah’s people descend the island’s gentler slope toward the slave ships that wait at the shore. Would you have us ascend and dedicate your temple while the ships prepare to sail, or to liberate Jarah’s people and delay dedication of the temple that will renew your strength?”

  Redelia remained wordless, though not expressionless. Her mouth tensed and her legs quivered.

  “Lady Redelia,” I said. “We serve you humbly. We wait only to do what we are told.”

  The goddess who stood inside that tiny crystal shook her head and squinted her eyes shut, a look of fear or pain or defeat contorting the peaceful beauty she normally maintained. She fell to her knees inside that crystal, folding her legs beneath herself as long white locks fell forward to cover her face.

  “What thrilling sight would strengthen you?” Rikki asked. “We will capture it for your holy sight and increase your power to sustain you.”

  “It is energy I need, dear satyress,” Redelia said.

  “Oh,” Rikki said.

  “My power is an amphora,” Redelia said. Her voice was weak, dipping into a whisper several words at a time. “It expands as my soul expands, but I must keep it full to exert my influence. Energy is—”

  “Like wine,” Rikki said, smiling as Redelia’s analogy clicked inside her mind. “You are the amphora, the container for the nectar of life’s rejuvenating energy! You just need a refill.”

  “Yet,” Redelia said. “There is not a drop to drink. The well of life permits only the weakest sip long moments apart.”

  “Then sip doubly,” I said. “When we found your holy building atop the island.”

  “A pleasant thought,” she said. “By morning… Tomorrow’s story is twined of light I will not live to capture.”

  “You must hold on,” I said.

  “My vision darkens,” she said. “I… … … falter.”

  The crystal dimmed as she spoke, filling as if with smoke from the inside, a fog of gray as dark as her charcoal skin that clouded the gem in Rikki’s hand and diminished the gentle light that glowed from its surface.

  My pendant darkened as well, its resplendent gleam becoming nothing more than the faintest glow.

  “Goddess,” I said. “Redelia! What are we to do?”

  Panic overwhelmed me, body and soul. The goddess of captured light had too thoroughly depleted her store of heavenly energy protecting us from Greenloft’s slavers. We were missionaries questing in the name of a divine woman whose very divinity was failing her.

  “It will take a day to reach the summit,” Rikki said. “Does she really lack a day to hold her strength?”

  “Hundreds have been taken from this village alone,” Jarah said. “We must go after them, wait for the guards to swap their shifts and sneak my people to freedom. How many villages must fall in a day? What of my parents, already visiting the shore’s edge with people my family holds dear?”

  “Redelia would know,” I said. “She would ask her sibling gods to read the winds and she would know. How to save us all.”

  “She brought us here to save them,” Jarah said. “We cannot fail in that.”

  I reached toward Rikki. Her eyes were wide with concern. I took Redelia’s soul and held the murky gem toward the sky, but the moon’s light did not pierce the cloud that overtook our lady’s form.

  “My pendant,” I said, swallowing hard to force my heart from my throat and back into my chest. “Its light is faint, but not gone. We can yet revive her, but we must act now. On our terms and no one else’s.”

  “You want us to climb a mountain high,” Jarah said, “in the dead of night, while Redelia perishes slowly and children trod quickly alongside their parents to whatever cruel sentence Greenloft has passed on their innocent souls?”

  “We are battle-worn and travel-weary,” Rikki said. “We have not the light to see by. We should wait.”

  “I will not wait for Redelia to tell me to save her life!” I said. “I am her emissary. I am the one to defy her wishes.”

  “Victor?” Rikki asked. “Her patience is a string with few strands. She is liable to snap when tugged abruptly. We must ascend to the peak, tomorrow, by the sun’s guiding light.”

  “We will not climb this mountain,” I said. Rikki’s tail tucked in between her legs when I made clear my intention. “Redelia’s will would not be done.”

  “So we save my people?” Jarah asked.

  “In due time,” I said. “First, we d
edicate a temple to the goddess of captured light. Right here. Right now.”

  15

  “We can’t,” Rikki said. “She won’t allow it.”

  “She is left with no choice,” I said.

  “Redelia wanted to see Jarah’s people saved,” Rikki said. “This was the premise, to capture the image of their salvation so that she could delight in their deepest relief.”

  “Would she have us abandon that goal,” Jarah said, “if she cannot witness their liberation? Must she view their emotion to care at all for their freedom?”

  “It matters not,” I said. “I will save the goddess’s life, and then we march on the shore. Whether or not she is able to watch on high.”

  “This is a bad idea,” Rikki said. “Greenloft’s army left behind all the food and wine. We should pause to nourish ourselves here, rest in each other’s embrace, and wake with sated bones and level heads.”

  I carried Redelia toward the center of the village plaza, despite Rikki’s protest. The fingers of one hand dug beside a palmwood beam and pulled it from the ground, yanking loose the short wooden spikes that held it in place. Jarah came to my aid, lifting the plaza’s simple flooring and tossing those planks aside until a wide square of flattened dirt lay before us.

  With Redelia still clutched in my palm, I dug the heel of my boot into the dirt and scraped a circular perimeter into the ground, walking backward until the circle met end to end. At twelve feet wide in every direction, it was room enough for a goddess to call home. At least for now.

  I had practiced these words with Redelia many times over the last month. There was a solemn gravity to the ritual, one that required an emissary to align his body, mind, and spirit to the task at hand. Early mornings and late nights, Redelia guided my intonation and the pace of my movements. She taught me to shut aside distractions and devote myself entirely to forging a connection between the earth’s nourishing life force and the deepest thrum of her soul’s power.

  We had honed my mental focus, but only in pantomime. Now was the time for praxis to emerge from theory.