Three (The Godslayer Cycle Book 3)

by Ron Glick

  On the other hand though, Nathaniel was looking back at a point in his life where he could actually change what this young man did experience. Nathaniel realized that he had come back to a point before the priestess had arrived, before his mother had been assailed, before the greatest tragedy this young man had yet experienced would come to pass. It was within his power to save his mother's life - and shelter his younger self from the tragedy altogether.

  The Eternal had warned him that the past could not be changed, that Fate would prevent it. But Nathaniel could not accept that. No matter what happened, this opportunity could not be passed by. He was here - and his mother was here. And no matter what happened, no matter what the Eternal might believe, the chance to change his own future for the better was now in Nathaniel's own hands. And this was not an opportunity the man out of time would ever have again.

  Nathaniel reflexively reached for the hilt of his sword, assuring himself that his God-crafted weapon still rested between his shoulders.

  One way or another, Nathaniel would save Maribel Goodsmith's life, the Eternal's predictions be damned...

  * * *

  Erias shifted her weight in the saddle. She so disliked traveling by horse. It was much easier when she could do so by carriage. But her present mission for the church required that she journey into the Wildelands, and no horse-drawn carriage would ever have made it through some of the narrow passes where she wished to go.

  Zantel's church was perhaps the greatest in all the land, if for no other reason than the God of Merchants controlled the very coin that so many of the other Gods' faithful sought to coax from their faithful. Zantel's church was actually a bank in and of itself, so it controlled fabulous amounts of wealth - even that which had not been clearly contributed to the church's purpose. With such monumental resources at their disposal, how could they not be the greatest faith in all the land? Even if one did not openly claim to be the faithful of Zantel, commerce was its own religion that everyone in the civilized world practiced - and the God of Merchants oversaw all commerce.

  This had been the most appealing aspect of Zantel's faith to Erias when she was a young girl - the idea that priests of Zantel never wanted for anything. They always had money, and they never had to do any menial chores to obtain it. Erias' mother, Gerelda, had been a barmaid, her father some traveling vagabond who had not stayed long enough to see his own child take her first breath. By contrast, the church was paradise on Na'Ril.

  Erias had been raised poor, often going hungry if her mother's patrons had not seen fit to offer her any gratuities for her service. Her employer, the wretched innkeep who owned her mother's work deed, was a miser. Sometimes he would pay Erias' mother, other times he would find some fault or another to penalize the woman with as an excuse not to. Had Gerelda been required to pay for her lodging, she would never have been able to afford it - she barely fed her daughter.

  Gerelda had been a good mother in every way she could. She had never been overly abusive with young Erias, and more often than not, she would go without food herself so that Erias could eat. But the sheer poverty in which the two were forced to live left young Erias bitter and resentful. And it had made her ripe for being culled by the church.

  When a priest of Zantel had come into the inn where her mother worked, Erias had been spellbound. When the priest learned of Gerelda's plight and that of her daughter, he offered the innkeep a gold pence for the barmaid's child. Gerelda had refused, but her employer sold the child all the same. And it would be the last day Erias would ever see her mother. Not that the child protested much past being taken from her mother's presence that first day.

  Erias had not missed her life with her mother for long. That evening, she had gone to sleep clean and with a full belly. And never a day after did she go hungry nor want for any comfort. She readily embraced her new life and never once regretted her separation from the barmaid, Gerelda.

  Now in her twenty-third year, the woman was a rising power within the church. Her commitment to spreading her God's faith was unparalleled, and the number of those she converted to Zantel's faith was a marvel. Her beauty was a large factor, certainly, since more merchants and aspiring business people were men than women, but there was also a compelling presence that Erias had about her that could inspire followers, even if she had worn a mask.

  People called her charismatic; Erias felt that the divine moved through her. Whichever was true, she was seen as a rising power within the church, and few could claim her stature.

  Her only genuine failing, if it could be seen as one, was her rigidity in her beliefs. More than once, she had been chastised for her heavy-handed approach to the few who did resist her charms. To her mind, none had a right to refuse Zantel's blessing, and more than once, she had ordered a man beaten in the street for daring to challenge her whims. In her short time, she had even committed ten souls to being branded as heretics, casting them forever from the blessings of church and society.

  This fault had earned the young woman a reputation for being merciless. To Erias, it was a sign of her devotion. And anyone who could not see that deserved whatever punishment she could envision.

  Some might have thought Erias to have ambitions for leadership within the church. But this was simply not true. Erias gained more pleasure out of her power over the people than she ever could have within the hierarchy of Zantel's church.

  Of course, with her rising influence, there had also been the rising need for Erias to carry Zantel's good works to the faithless reaches of the land. As unbelievable a concept as it seemed to her, there were still regions of the world who had not yet accepted Zantel's graces - and she would gladly accept any challenge to prove that her life's devotion was the greatest in all the land.

  So when her patriarch had come to her with a mission to serve as witness to the communities of the Wildelands, she had leapt at the opportunity. Specifically, she was called upon for a three year missionary service to the borders of the Eastern March, as far removed as one could imagine from the center of faith. But the challenge had excited the devout priestess, and she had zealously accepted the mission.

  Now though, as she road sidesaddle upon this gentle mare as she cantered along the wilderness trail, the young woman had begun to wonder whether the trip was worth the gain. After all, where were the benefits of being a priestess if one did not have the people around her on the road to her destination?

  So when the obese man came huffing along the trail that evening towards dusk, Erias had perked up. Here was a man upon whom she could bear witness, who she could share the blessings of Zantel with. Of course, she had no way of knowing that he brought instead an even greater opportunity.

  “Blessings be to you, priestess,” had called the man, stopping in his forward movement, bending over to catch his breath.

  “May Zantel offer his blessings to you, good sir,” responded the priestess.

  The man's face turned up at her words, a spark in his eye that others might have seen as cunning, but which Erias chose to see as a sign of devout pleasure. “Oh priestess, you are divinely sent. For I am a loyal man of Zantel, a merchant who has been so unjustly robbed.”

  Erias felt her spine go rigid. “Robbed, you say? Who would commit such a heinous act upon the faithful of Zantel?”

  The porcine man smiled at this, perhaps a little more than would have represented an honest appearance. But again, Erias chose to see devotion where others might have seen something more duplicitous.

  “I am Ferdinand Lurion, Priestess. And I bring you warning, for there is a town full of thieves barely a half-day's travel behind me. Avoid the fork to the north, for it will lead you to a town known as Oaken Wood. There I sought to trade my wares and bring some luxuries to such simple folk, only to have a card shark rob me of my property and send me on my way as you see me now.” The man spread his arms grandiosely. “Had I argued, they would surely have murdered me.”

  Erias sat up in her saddle, looking to the distance where this
town surely existed. Though she could not see it through the tall trees surrounding her, she imagined what such a town might look like. And she knew that a town of faithless deserved her guidance more than any that might exist along the Eastern March. She had not planned to take a northerly route, pressing on eastward so that she might reach her destination sooner. But with good Ferdinand's words...

  “It would seem my presence has been divinely provided, good sir,” Erias said. “Would you accompany me back to this Oaken Wood, that we might charge those who did rob you?”

  The heavy man bowed his head. “I fear for myself, Priestess. Please, I beg of you, do not send me back where surely they would slay me on sight.”

  Erias could understand the man's fear, and she could not fault him for it. Not everyone - even the faithful of Zantel - could rely upon the shield provided to a true servant of the church. “Of course not, good sir. I assure you that I will travel there posthaste in your stead and bring the word of Zantel to this faithless town. But I will not compel you to return. I bid you journey on, with Zantel's blessing beside you. Rest easy on your way, knowing that Zantel's justice shall be meted upon these infidels in your name.”

  Ferdinand dropped to his knees, piety exuding from his every pore. “Oh, bless you, Priestess.”

  Erias nodded gravely, but said no more before she urged her horse onward. She needed no more information from this man, and there was no purpose served in delaying Zantel's righteous wrath to this community. She fairly brimmed with outrage at the audacity of these faithless scoundrels.

  Had she looked back, however, Erias might have seen the good Ferdinand raise his head to watch her go, a leer of wicked satisfaction pasted upon his face that even she could not have mistaken. He had just sent a vengeful priest to exact revenge upon those who had wronged him, regardless of whether they were the ones deserving of punishment or not.

  Chapter 11

  The palisade surrounding the grotto fairly brimmed with raw power, visible to any entity who might have been looking that direction upon this particular astral plane of reality. The Gods of the New Order were greatly unsettled, and the energy ebbing through the air as crackles and audible pops of discharged energy was the physical manifestation of their disquiet. The unbridled power was so potent, that even the border of their chosen meeting site threatened to dissolve into the aether around them.

  In recent months, the grotto that formed here - the currently chosen neutral grounds upon which the Gods had chosen to meet - was overburdened by the sheer presence of the number of deities present. There were twenty Gods and Goddesses presently represented in the space contained within the palisade, and the manifested locality had never been designed to shelter so many deities at one time. In the entire history of the New Order, there had never been such a consistent attendance at any meeting of the Gods as there had been in the last few months. And the integrity of this locality was beginning to suffer from its overuse.

  Three Gods had vanished. Absolutely. Without any lingering residual power nor presence, not even a soul. If the Lesser God Ankor was to be believed, they had been slain.

  By a mortal. By a Godslayer.

  Corus struggled with that notion. As the God of Knowledge, he knew well the story of the Godslayer. Over five hundred years ago, before the New Order had ever attempted their rise to power, a story had first been told of a man who had turned the table on Gods of old and set out to destroy them. It was a legend from the southern realms, not even one which affected the New Order's dominion. But the tale had found its way north, as all good stories did. And many of the mortals confused the story of the Godslayer with the fate of the Pantheon, even though there was no actual connection.

  The story said that this man slew one God for taking his wife to bed, and that he slew two more during his quest to defeat the first. This made him a target of the remaining Gods, who came en masse upon the man and sought to slay him. But the man had been prepared, and he fought back, slaying all the deities who came against him, one after the other. As all great epics ended, the hero lost his life in the final battle, and he died side by side with the last of the Gods he battled.

  The story was presumed to tell of how a mortal being had risen to cast aside the Gods, and to establish dominion of mortals over the divine. Gods in the story were conveyed as tyrants who held an unholy dominion over mortals, and the Godslayer was supposed to be the conquering hero of the tale.

  A great fable - Yet whether there was any truth to it? Well, that was a great point of contention.

  There were many flaws which Corus saw within the tale. For instance, the means by which the Godslayer of lore used to actually kill the Gods was never revealed in the story. But being of divinity himself, Corus knew that no mortal could simply slay a God with his bare hands. Magic would need to have been involved in some capacity, either in the form of a weapon or some innate power. Many speculated that the man in the story might have been intended to be a demi-God, a deity-sired child that lived amongst mortals. Yet - with so many tales circulating about demi-Gods already in legend, why would this detail have been left out of the tale if that were the case?

  Either way, the story occurred before Corus himself ever held dominion over knowledge, and therefore it represented information he did not have personal experience with. The story held largely to the same details wherever it was told, which gave credibility to it being at least somewhat true, but whether it was a story retold or historically accurate? Corus had no personal way of knowing.

  More than once, the God of Knowledge had considered opening a dialogue with Elgoth of the Pantheon Gods. Not only was his dominion over knowledge, but he would also have been in power during the period of history in question. Surely, Elgoth - or perhaps even Dariel, Pantheon God of Truth, would know whether the Godslayer story were truth or legend. And yet...

  The war between the rival groups of deities always kept Corus from taking such action. Even the pursuit of knowledge paled next to the ambitions of Gods, and to confess a weakness to an enemy was equal to giving that opponent power over yourself. And none of the New Order wished to concede any advantage to the deities they sought to obliterate from the memory of the mortal plane.

  None of this speculation helped in the current debate, except that it largely eliminated the possibility that this current alleged Godslayer was in any way related to the one of lore. However, in spite of what seemed an obvious deduction, Corus could not escape the fear that a refusal to even consider whether the original tale held any connection to their present crisis was absolutely reckless. Anyone who respected knowledge knew that you did not discard information simply because it held no obvious connection - to do so, left one at risk of repeating mistakes of the past.

  Corus once more looked around the grotto, as he had done so often already, as though some kind of shift might have occurred that would serve the situation. Instead, the powers as they were maintained largely the same, implacable positions they had when this great debate had begun. To a being that existed for the advancement of knowledge, this gathering represented the antithesis of all Corus held to heart.

  Aside from the handful of Gods like himself who stood separate from the debate, all the Gods were heatedly arguing amongst themselves. Some stood on the shore of the grotto, others ignored the principle purpose of the liquid surface and chose to pace back and forth between opponents on the water's surface. The mass of forms was in constant motion, none standing together for long. And therein lay the irony.

  Conflict appeared to be the required rule to proceed under, even against individuals who completely supported the argument being made. For instance, if Kartar, God of War, argued that Ankor should be be held responsible for the deaths of their fellow Gods, Orlicia, Goddess of the Dream, would insist that Ankor be formally charged. And of course, Kartar had to fire back some insensible reason why his argument was the correct one - even if the end result was exactly the same.

  There were really just three arguments being ma
de, after all - though of course, the three factions were all divisive within their own positions so as to refuse to see this, even when others supported what they wanted. There was the position of blame that insisted Ankor was the murderer of their fellow Gods, and that he needed to be formerly called for judgment of his crimes; the position of cooperation that claimed Ankor was innocent and that they all needed to help him uncover the real culprit; and finally the position of denial that said the other Gods were not really dead, only lost. In spite of the fact that every single deity had felt the passing energies of the now-missing Gods, this faction believed this to be too simple an answer. If the missing Gods were indeed dead, their souls would have been found. No souls, to these few, equaled no deaths.

  Corus pinched the skin between his brows. He was only one of three Gods who stood apart from the ruckus in the grotto itself, and there seemed no way to end the infernal debate with only three to force reason upon the collective. Of course, he could not say that the other two standing back from the infighting were inclined to end the debate, either. Faetious was the God of Deception, and was never known for one to prevail upon open and fair discussions, while Urlock, God of Mountains, was simply too stubborn to be budged from his position of neutrality. Like the great granite edifices his domain included, Urlock was implacable and simply could not be bothered with strife and conflict, letting it simply roll over him as the winds did to the spires he ruled over.