by Marin Landis
He sat down on a broken piece of wall and propped his chin up with both hands and sighed.
Renward awoke some time later. It was dark though he could hear what roused him. The sound of crying. It was her. He couldn't keep referring to the child as 'her' but he doubted that whatever possessed her would reveal her true name. He thought back to his childhood and a story he remembered loving, of a little girl who who was lost and then led home by a magical sheep. It was a ridiculous story but he'd always liked her name, Bhav.
"Bhav, I'm here," he spoke softly, sitting up, still feeling an overwhelming sense of affection toward her.
His reward was a faint radiance emanating from a point in the air half a dozen feet above the still figure. The weeping ceased and the haunting and echoing voice that he first heard in the Temple again made itself felt.
"Take my hand, Renward," were the words that he felt or heard. It was impossible to distinguish between the two. He might have believed it a fancy but Bhav held her hand out to him. He stood and took her hand.
To an onlooker he would appear to be a simpleton, slack-jawed and mindless. Staring off into space. Insensate.
In the moment that he took the hand of the little girl he named Bhav, the child possessed by the spirit of a God, he was exposed to the mind of a being beyond his ken. He felt like a man who had been locked in a small room for his entire life and then exposed to the entirety of human knowledge all at once. Images flooded his brain, the vast majority of which he did not understand and some he mind did not want to process, some though were familiar.
Aeons, the passing of millennia, earthquakes and floods, the Sun rising and setting, again and again. Apes and dogs and birds looking up at the Sun, bipeds of all hues and variety, sleeping and waking and going about their business. Always the Sun, always the Dawn and amidst the Sun always Mithras. The ever present force behind the warmth and light and nourishment. He was just a man, a nondescript man and he was not interesting. He was though, angry and he had a plan for mankind. The very thought of which terrified Renward and then Renward recognized the man. It was this man before him.
His eyes were open and he regarded the man on the slab. The countless years of images he had just experienced gone. Bhav still held his hand and she was still the avatar of Sehar, he knew that now, as well as the identity of the figure before him. Why he lay here and what Renward should do he didn't know.
"What do you want, Renward?"
He was not expecting that question. He turned to Bhav and hunkered down to be on a level with her. "I want you to be well, Bhav."
"The child is here and I am grateful you have given her a name. She too is grateful." A smile played on the child's face. Combined with the brightly shining eyes it looked oddly unattractive. "Do understand what we are asking of you, Renward?"
"What? No I don't? Should it be obvious? Is this Mithras here? How is that possible?" She was making him uneasy. She knew more than he and he remembered the Dark Day over a score years ago when the Sun didn't appear in the sky. He was a young man then and it terrified him more than anything else ever had. He feared death less than he feared the loss of light. In fact he didn't fear death at all. Every time he healed a plague bearer, every time he removed a black growth from someone's insides, each time he cleared a person's bloodways, he faced death. He knew that one lapse of concentration, one slip and he would become the sick one. The reward for healing others wasn't monetary, nor was it physical, it was merely the prolonging of the light for him. He would keep back the darkness by not allowing it to spread. His healing power came from Mithras and it fed Mithras and now His Handmaiden had led him here. To do what?
"You are His most faithful servant. You have tended his flock and cured the ills of a city. Renward, you have shown humanity what it means to sacrifice."
The terrible truth hit him then. He was ill. He could feel it now. He didn't cure all of those people, he took upon himself their sickness and made them well at his expense. He knew that's how it worked, but he had never felt unwell nor had he felt weak. This revelation combined with the awareness he had gained from being touched by the Maid of the Sunwheel drove home to him his purpose here.
"I will serve," he said and stepped forward to lay his hand on the chest of the supine figure.
She was so very thirsty. She would also be hungry but the smell made her feel sick. She knew she should move away from the body but where would she go? Maybe the scary lady would come back and take her home. The sick man had held her nicely and she missed him. It was his body that lay by her feet, his bodily fluids that had leaked from his dead body made the horrid smell. She didn't confuse the one with the other. The sick man had a strong inside and that had joined with the Bright Lord's inside and made him bigger and better.
She was about to cry again when a shadow fell upon her. It was the Stone Man. She didn’t know him, but She did. He was stronger than all of them.
He said some words and though she didn’t understand them, she felt better when she heard them. She looked up at his face and she smiled and then paused. Why was he crying? She reached out and wiped a tear away from his enormous face, his gray blue eyes glistening. She buried her head in his neck. So warm and she could hear his mighty heartbeat.
He said some more words and then started walking. Within a minute she slept without dreaming.
CHAPTER THREE
Sehar
“I knew that there were devils, damned souls that denied the Gods. Vile creatures who surrendered their very beings to despair. Lower even than the worshipers of the Dark Mother.” - Bhav
“The longest I was free of Her was the two year period when I married your father and had you,” she smiled.
Melvekior was dumbfounded. His mother alive! He wasn’t going to pretend that he hadn’t hoped or prayed for this to be the truth. Through all the weird half-truths his father had told him he suspected that all was not correct, but this! It was almost unreal. Yet it was definitely her. He remembered now.
They sat on the couch in his chambers, he the Prince of Maresh-Kar. Recently crowned in a hasty ceremony, by High Priest Hestallr, and with the blessing of King Calra Alpre XVII, a man of immense wealth and power whom Melvekior despised. Yet he was eager to dismiss the enmity between them. A desire suddenly more complicated, for his father had lain the blame for his mother’s death on the rulers of the Three Kingdoms. Sunar was now dead, slain by Sjarcu the Talvar, and his throne now Melvekior’s. A conqueror’s due. The last one of the trio, Thacritus, was another matter entirely.
“You seem barely old enough, mother. What made you marry him? He was not a good father nor a good husband. By his own admission.” He felt a similar protectiveness to her as he did towards Janesca. Povimus had reassured him again and again that she was in good hands, but he did miss her. And Povimus! Blind! What a revelation. No wonder he was so odd.
“Your father was, amongst his more unhappy qualities, a very handsome man, you have his look.” Again, that searching stare, almost like she was trying to make up for lost time. “He was the King’s Warlord, a powerful man, and of course he had other qualities…” she tailed off.
“How much did he know, he told me little?”
“He knew what was happening to me and he was permanently furious about it. He loved me, I know that, but Her he hated. It damaged his faith, as it did, does, mine. And you, a Brother of the Hammer? How wonderful. Mithras will serve you well. Hestallr will serve you well.”
“I have much to thank him for, Hestallr that is. He saved me from hanging no doubt and you from being lost. How could Sehar just leave you there, defenseless?” That part of the story had bothered him.
“She has different priorities to us, Melvekior, the Gods don’t think of things in the way we do. They are often single minded in Their ambitions and I was Her vessel because none other suited. Had it been obvious to Her that I would suffer when She left, provision would have been made, but it took Hestallr’s foresight to make everything right.” She uncro
ssed her legs, stretched her arms and crossed them again. She wore sky blue trousers and a similarly colored tunic, the color of Sehar. He wore but a robe, red and shiny. He considered dressing fully, but it was late and he didn’t feel at all uncomfortable. What was surprising to him was that he felt a little subservient to her, similarly to how he wanted to impress Hestallr, but for entirely different reasons.
Flaubert entered with wine. He looked as pleased as a person could be. Melvekior ignored him.
“I hope I don’t sound ungrateful, for seeing you here is the best thing that has ever happened, but why now, what has happened that you have now returned?” He wanted to know. He feared the answer. He didn’t expect what he got.
“Tiriel was released.” She said, sadly even.
“Tiriel, the Blessèd of Mithras?” He drank some wine. “I don’t understand.”
“I will tell you, my Melvekior, but you may not tell another soul. Sehar will know I am telling you, otherwise I could not have returned, but what I am saying is for none but you. Do you swear?” She reached out and touched the Halnir, the necklace in the shape of the Odalnir, that Melvekior always wore. The symbol of his dedication to Mithras and his allegiance to the Brotherhood of the Hammer.
“I swear, mother,” he found the word pleasing and the concept exhilarating. What secrets she must have.
“Centuries ago, before, but not much before, the birth of the Three Kingdoms, there was war. War amongst the Gods, amongst the Var and amongst our people too. Not to mention all the other tribes of creatures that live scattered throughout the land. It was a time of war, that much should be said.” She drank wine now, her tone not as light and her words heavier.
“Would you prefer to finish tomorrow, mother,” he said, savoring the novelty of being able to say it.
“No, but I would like you to sleep once I have finished. You have much to do if what I hear about Maresh-Kar is correct.” She let out a small laugh. Almost mocking, but not malicious. “Tiriel is one of the Anaurim, humans who transcended alongside Mithras many millennia ago, the chief of whom, Sehar is known to you. There are four others and they count among His closest and most powerful allies, save one. Apset. You know of him through the Church dogma of course, but the truth is known only to the True Elders of the Church, Hestallr, Ushatr and Gravandr. Apset was once Mithras’s ally and servant.”
“There is nothing about this in Church doctrine or in the Maru of Hestallr. And who is Gravandr?” Melvekior wouldn’t dare to sound suspicious of this information but it was hard to swallow.
“This information couldn’t be trusted outside the Church. You can be trusted, but do you think Magret the cook from your Father’s home could be trusted with such information? How would she react? She would lose faith.” Her face changed then, not dramatically, but she scowled, “Our people must never lose faith.”
“No matter if we employ truth or falsehood to bolster that faith?” Melvekior did sound skeptical at that, a little taken aback.
Bhav laughed again, the same laugh as before. “I regret that you cannot see your own face, my son. You have my scowl and when it faces back at you, you do not like it.”
“I’m sorry, this is a little confusing and although I’m eager to hear it all, you might have to tell me it all over again tomorrow.” The wine was a mistake, he realized.
“I’ll keep it as brief as I may. Gravandr, we will discuss in depth another time, but he is the shadow. Hestallr, the stone, Ushatr, the flesh and Gravandr, the shadow. He works in the North, spreading the Word of Mithras amongst the Malannites. With great success it must be said.”
Melvekior nodded, keeping a mental note of that. He meant to travel there before being thrust into his current role and he knew his wanderlust wouldn’t be so easily satisfied as to end his adventures less than a score of miles away from his birthplace.
“The Anaurim carry out Hestallr’s instructions throughout the world, the tasks that are beyond mere mortals and even mortals so powerful as Hestallr and Gravandr. Tiriel had a task, those centuries ago, that was of the utmost importance to Mithras and he failed. How we did not know and roughly two score years past Sehar took on the bounds of flesh to seek the answers. My flesh. When you secured the release of Blessèd Tiriel he was able to report that his mission had failed. Mithras’s fury was terrible to behold, pent up as it was through imprisonment and betrayal. He means though to return Tiriel to his original path. Therein lies a problem, one that I fear greatly.”
“What fear, mother?” He perked up and leaned forward closer to her, suddenly worried and awake. “Now you have returned, surely all will be well.”
“I have returned before and She has taken me without a warning. Three of the Anaurim are as yet unaccounted for. It is believed that their brother, Apset caused them to be bound in a similar way to Tiriel and Mithras Himself. Sehar will no doubt search for them and then I will be taken again.”
Never had he felt so instantly hopeless. “No, it cannot be. I will discover them. Then there will be no need for her to take you.” He found himself standing, his fists clenched.
“I pray that it could be possible. I do not know if it can. I feel almost like a child, Melvekior. I have not had even your tender years in my own body and in control of my own actions. And still I am so very tired.” She half stood and then thought better of it and sat back on the couch and patted her knee. “Come rest upon my lap, my darling son and let us talk of such things no longer this evening.”
Melvekior could not resist her command, for no other reason than he had been wanting to go to his mother since she had come. Fearing rejection or something other than he had remembered as a child with a handful of years. When she put her arms about him and ran her hands through his hair he forgot that he was anything other than her child and lay his head in her lap. Sleep came quickly to him, but not to her. Fearing that such a moment could be stolen from her at any moment, she forced herself awake until dawn’s light convinced her that the harsh Mistress she feared was otherwise engaged.
Melvekior woke up. Dawn had just broken and he knew that he hadn’t had enough sleep, but sleeping wouldn’t achieve his goals. Slowly he extricated himself from his mother’s grasp and for a moment he merely stared, daring to believe.
It was her, there was no doubt. No trickster could fool him in this way, yet some of her claims sounded like the words of a madwoman at worst, a heretic at best. Forsooth she had been possessed by a Goddess for years, there would be some remnants of Divine knowledge. Do not doubt her, he kept reminding himself.
He picked her up, she did not stir and he put her in his bed.
Opening the door a crack, he looked out. No guards. Good, he disliked anyone standing outside of his room. This was different though, he wouldn’t leave her here untended.
He quickly dressed, pulled the “summon Flaubert” cord that he still didn’t quite understand and stood outside of his chambers awaiting his manservant. The odd, yet indispensable, little fellow arrived in moments, as though he had been waiting for the summons in anticipation.
“I trust you slept the sleep of the once-orphaned, Sire?” For once Melvekior didn’t want to immediately banish him.
“You did well to wake me, Flaubert, thank you. Please see a guard at this door and a servant ready to see to her when she awakens. Treat her as though she were the Queen of this Kingdom,” he was trying not to say ‘Principality’, “and would you see that she is watched when outside my chambers?”
“Watched, Sire?” He accepted being questioned by Flaubert for two reasons. The man knew everything and would probably run the country with an efficiency unmatched by any other, his advice should be well considered anywhere. Also, Melvekior didn’t really want to rule anything, especially at this time of his life and especially without earning it. His father, the late Warlord Mikael Martelle believed that a surefire way to failure was to believe yourself always right. Whenever he had the urge to say, “I’m the Prince, do what I say,” he thought of his father.
He was the Prince only because a mysterious person he had known for less than a couple of days slew the previous incumbent in an insane ten minutes of combat that ended with a skeletal Mage summoning forth ravens to consume the dead.
“Yes please, Flaubert. I don’t want anything to happen to her. You can understand that?” He alluded purposely to what he knew of Flaubert’s family life. Until recently Flaubert’s sister had been an unwilling member of Prince Sunar’s harem.
“I do, Sire, it will be done.” He turned and scuttled off.
Melvekior waited until his majordomo was far enough away not to be able to track his movements and started walking down the corridor himself. He walked past his new library, his dressing room, his private dining room and came to a door that was not closed like the rest. It was always open because there was always someone in it. Povimus.
He pushed the door open and was entirely unsurprised to find the Emissary of Mithras for the Three Kingdoms bent over a desk, face close to a parchment, quill in hand. He was almost bald and older than he looked, for he must be at least seventy years old if his mother’s tale was to be believed.
The room he was in was one of the first rooms in the palace that Melvekior had visited. The first was the Throne Room and that was for mere seconds before being arrested and marched to the dungeons. The map room or Cartografica as Flaubert called it was a regular room with a vast map covering most of the floor. It had been coated with a translucent and hard wearing resin so one could walk over it and still read the map. Most of the places represented Melvekior had never heard of, but was eager to one day explore. And maybe here was his chance. An opportunity.
Povimus didn’t look up, so engrossed was he in whatever he was doing. The man was relentless. He barely slept and was determined to name and categorize every man, woman and child in Maresh-Kar, as he had already done in Magnar and Amaranth. Melvekior was happy to let him have free reign over whatever he liked, after all the man outranked him in the priesthood of Mithras, Melvekior himself being a mere adherent, a Brother of the Hammer. Regardless of position though, he was not allowed near a single copper bit of the state’s finances. Melvekior suspected he would have all of it away, so made the excuse that Flaubert dealt with the treasury and that was the way it was going to stay. The position of Prince of Maresh-Kar meant that Melvekior owned all the money in the vault and in the banking system, which made him ridiculously rich. All his dreams of fame and riches, now gone to nought. He was famous and he was rich, but it meant nothing for he didn’t earn it. Mikael had warned him of such and he was right. He did miss his father a little, but only a little. Now his mother was back, he had great hope for the future.
