by J. C. Staudt
He gave her a hard look. “Mercy? What is mercy? It rides with the weak, and slumbers with the slothful. It quickens the chaste and drapes the pawn in fanciful colors. Any man who stands between me and my daughters will learn the truth of that.”
“Father,” said Draithon, “you’ve always taught us to—”
“Forget everything I’ve taught you. Everything, save the chill of cold steel in your hand and the bitter taste of a spell on your tongue. They alone are how one survives an age like ours. Nothing else will win you the fortunes of this life or the fear of men.” His eyes rolled back, and for a moment he lost consciousness.
“He needs a tourniquet and some bandages,” said Axli, coming over to take her sons from Draithon.
“I’ll look below,” said Alynor. “Draithon, stay here with your father. Make certain he doesn’t fall asleep.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Alynor opened the companionway hatch and descended belowdecks. She sang the first few sigils of her light spell before remembering it wouldn’t do any good. She’d grown used to being in the dark without a torch or a lantern, and it saddened her to realize she’d come to rely on the mage-song for things she now took for granted. Her elven blood afforded her faint eyesight in the dark, so she forged ahead.
After stumbling half-blindly down the passageway, she came to the barred door leading to the cargo hold. She slid the bar out of place and went inside. She didn’t have to go far before a stack of folded rags caught her eye. They were resting on a high shelf about halfway back through the hold. She was on her way to them when she heard a noise behind her.
A figure emerged from the shadows behind a stack of barrels. Two bare bony arms seized her in a violent embrace. She screamed, but a hand clamped over her mouth and wrenched her head back. That was when she felt the steel at her throat, sharp and cold.
The man spoke to her in a voice rough with age, so close his breath tickled her ear. “Hush now, little lady. Hush. We wouldn’t wants us to get our froats slit, now would we?”
Others were emerging from the shadows now. Not Ralthian corsairs, though.
Not Ralthians at all, in fact.
These men were of Dathrond.
Chapter 17
Forandran’s walls stood twelve fathoms high beneath the watchtowers flanking the eastern gate. Maaltred and Norne met the road and followed it to the wide arched entrance where solicitors clustered to entreat the travelers and traders passing by. Some were begging for food or coin. Others called out the names of their gods while waving holy symbols and proclaiming news of great deeds and mighty blessings to all who lauded them with a donation. The larger the donation, the larger the blessing.
“Welcome to Forandran, City of the Gods,” said a man in purple robes and a tall pointed hat.
Another man stood on a wooden box and shouted at the top of his lungs. “Come one, come all. Come one, come all, to Hallowfaire.”
“What’s Hallowfaire?” Maaltred asked.
“The holy market,” said Norne. “A place to buy and sell items of a spiritual nature; baubles and trinkets from every faith represented in temples throughout the city. The holy market is the only place in Forandran where such things may be bought or sold; it is forbidden to deal in symbols of the faiths within a temple of any kind. Lord Chancer believes it too easy to trade illicit goods beneath the cloak of charity, so he set up the market to appease both pilgrims and would-be merchants. It is a way for the city to regulate trade without disaffecting members of the faiths. One of his few rules.”
Maaltred didn’t understand the point, exactly. Then again, lords and vassals knew far more about commerce than he did. He hoped parchment and ink weren’t considered spiritual items round here. His spells were wet again, and likely ruined. He’d enlist Norne’s help remembering them again so he could make fresh copies. He doubted he’d ever put them to use back home, but they’d serve well enough as mementos of his time in the king’s service.
“The first walls around the city’s center of holiness were built nearly a thousand years ago by Pontiff Ludevic of Faranion,” Norne explained, “with the most recent additions built over top of the existing structure to buttress the city against incursion. Space within the walls is scarce these days, and thus demands a premium price. When we pass it in a few minutes, you’ll notice how many structures are built against the outside. It’s the closest many will ever come to living within.”
“Very interesting,” said Maaltred, “but I’m not in the mood for a tour.”
Norne was astonished. “Surely you wish to visit the Grand Temple of Yannui while we’re here.”
“What I wish to do is find the Ulther girls so I can be done with this errand and go home.”
“Finding two children in a city of thousands is a daunting proposition at best.”
“Yet the king promises great reward for our success and great suffering should we fail.”
“Careful, Brother Maaltred. Your words are once again edging on treason.”
“And what do you mean to do about that? What did the king give you leave to do if I proved obstinate?”
Norne didn’t answer. His attention was directed down the street, where a crowd was gathered before a young man in pale blue robes infused with burnished silver plates. His long brown hair was tied back; his daggered sleeves swayed with the movement of his hands. “The time of retribution is come,” he was saying. “Even now, Dathrond prepares to drown the whole of the world in a tide of long-sought vengeance. The darkness is spreading, and we must stamp it out. Woe be unto him who would threaten our sovereign right, which Lokutor, in his undisputed divinity, has granted us.”
“Doomsday prophecies,” Norne muttered as they left the seething crowd behind. “Stirring up fear and discontent in the name of the gods was never so effective as here, in their holy city.”
“Lokutor is the god of foresight and divination,” said Maaltred. “When have his priests ever preached anything different?”
Norne gave him a skeptical look. “The promise of impending calamity offers a kind of safe haven for Lokutor’s devout. They thrive on it. It’s an excuse for desperate behavior. Which, by coincidence, is something they often encourage.”
“Fearmongering. That’s all it is.”
“Effective fearmongering, when you’re in the habit of collecting tithes. People are never so generous as when they are convinced of having received divine insight toward the future.”
“For a lifelong priest, you express quite the cynic’s view of the church,” Maaltred observed.
“The church is a hoax. Worship and obedience are personal, not communal. Faith is meant to exist between us and the heavens, not us and the filth-ridden masses. It is the great fallacy of our time that so many have been led to believe any of this matters.” He gestured toward the ornate shrines and temples all around them. “We’ve invested countless riches in a collection of gilded trophies which, at the end of all things, will stand meaningless in comparison to the simplest of our deeds.”
“That’s a broad way of looking at things.”
“Everything about me is broad, Brother Maaltred. Not the least of which is my way of looking at things.”
“Why is it you hold Yannui’s ideals so highly, yet disdain those of the other gods?”
“The goddess is my only truth. She’s the only thing worth my attention.”
As Norne led him toward the center of the holy city, Maaltred began to notice signs of wear upon the great houses of worship. Not in the pristine veneer of their frontages, but along the sides and backs which became exposed as they traversed the alleys and narrow side streets connecting one major thoroughfare to another. Here bits of polished stonework were crumbling; there cracks in the plaster walls revealed wedges of the ribbed latticework beneath.
“Where are you taking me?” Maaltred asked as Norne slipped into an alleyway so narrow they had to remove their packs and turn sideways to fit through.
“To the best place I know
of for finding two lost children in a city full of fanatics.”
Norne descended a shallow stair into an alcove halfway beneath ground level. There stood a wooden door with leaf-patterned hinge braces, a rectangular eyelet, and a graceful carven arch above the frame. He knocked.
The rectangular eyelet slid open, and a pair of feminine eyes flanked by plump cheeks squinted out at them. “Who goes th—” The voice broke off. The eyes widened. “Deacon Norne. Gods bless us. One moment. One moment.”
The eyelet closed.
There was a long moment of fidgeting within, followed by a series of dull thuds. Finally the door burst open. Lucky Norne had taken a step back or it might’ve smacked him in the face. The woman whose shoulder had apparently done the opening was dressed in bright crimson robes and a ridiculous starched headpiece which flared up around her ears like a pair of wings. “Bugger me… if it isn’t the wayward raggabrash returned,” she said, enveloping him in her ample bosom.
“Hello, Sister Wolla,” Norne managed with a grunt.
“A thousand pardons. I’m always bungling with that gods-damned door. I would’ve given up mucking about with the thing altogether, only I reckon it’s fitting to let people inside once in a while. Let me have a look at you.” She held him out for inspection. “You’re all wet. What’s happened?”
“We experienced a slight mishap on our way across the river.”
“You’re on the slender side of things too, isn’t you?”
“I’ve been atravel,” Norne explained, “and the food in these parts is far from hearty.”
“Well I’ll be cockered. Deacon Sigurdarsson, back again. Never expected I’d see the day.”
“It’s Vicar, now.”
“Ah, so it be. Come a ways up in the world, haven’t you? And who’s this?”
“Brother Maaltred. One of my order.”
Maaltred leaned into the alcove to shake the woman’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sister Wolla.”
“Not as pleased as I’ll be in short order, I’ll wager. What brings you back, Norney? Was it these precious yams you couldn’t keep yourself away from?” She shuffled forward to give him a salacious bump.
Norne grimaced uncomfortably, arms pressed to his sides. “We’re looking for some children. Two of them.”
“Ah,” Wolla said, backing off. “One for each of you, is it?”
“Not for us. For… for the king.”
She gave him a strange look. “The king.”
“It’s not what you think. The children were stolen from us.”
“From the two of you? My, it’s been longer than I thought.”
“No. You don’t understand. If you’ll just give me a moment, I’ll explain everything. May we come in?”
Wolla stepped aside. She gave him a low whack as he passed by. “Would you look at that backside? Tighter than a bottler’s cork, I swear it. And don’t presume I wouldn’t know from experience.”
“Oh, gods,” Norne muttered.
“Gods is right. I seem to recall more than one heavenward exclamation on both our parts.”
“High praise,” Maaltred teased.
Norne was approaching the color of a spring rose.
“She’s certainly forthcoming with matters of a personal nature, isn’t she?” Maaltred observed.
“And why shouldn’t I be?” said Wolla. “I’ve nothing to hide.”
“I thought because you were a priestess—”
She laughed. “New to the faith, are you? What’s this one on about, Norney?”
Norne paused in a white marble atrium where tall stained-glass windows shed multicolored light on a mosaic of floor tiles. “I should tell you… I’ve moved on. I am no longer a priest of Phyraxis.”
Wolla’s eyes bulged. “Who’s your patron, then?”
Norne looked at the floor. He cleared his throat and mumbled under his breath. “Yannui.”
Wolla spat a string of profanities unlike any Maaltred had ever heard, including words whose meanings he’d never understood until now.
“I know,” said Norne, speaking over her. “I know. I know. Please.”
“Pardon me,” said Maaltred, “but I’ve never heard of a god called Phyraxis.”
Wolla swung her steely gaze on him. “A god? Are you bloody japing with me?”
“Please, Wolla,” Norne tried. “Calm down. There’s no need to—”
“Phyraxis isn’t no god, brother. She’s a goddess, real as these tits. Goddess of virility, fertility, and… agility.” She gave a derisive little laugh.
“You must understand,” said Maaltred, “the king requires we adhere to a strict code of conduct. I think perhaps the tenets of Phyraxis did not align with the king’s, and Brother Norne did what was required of him in order to be accepted into Dathrond’s service. Isn’t that right, Brother Norne?”
Norne hesitated. “To a certain degree.”
Wolla was speechless for a moment. “Is that what you’re doing with your life? You’re a Warpriest for Dathrond?”
Norne straightened, summoning his resolve. “I am.”
“Then it’s true you’ve come a long way. Only not in the right direction.”
“I knew you’d be disappointed.”
“Sure as the shite on your shoes,” she said.
“Should you refuse to help us, I would understand.”
Wolla stood looking at him. It was a long time before the corner of her mouth eased into a smirk. “You know I could never stay cross with you. You and me, we’s gone through too much to let a difference of mind keep us at odds.”
Norne sighed deeply. “Thank you.”
“Say nothing of it. Follow me.”
Along the way, Wolla sidled up to Maaltred and hiked a thumb over her shoulder at Norne. “Your friend here is quite the charmer, I’ll have you know. We’s had us some good times together, we has. Couldn’t keep his bare mittens off me for a wink in those days. I’ve taken my share of lovers, mind you, but I’ll never forget me little Norney. Why, he was barely sixteen when I took his—”
“That’s quite sufficient, Wolla. I think Brother Maaltred has heard enough.”
“Not nearly,” said Maaltred. “Do go on.”
“We ought get back to the issue at hand,” Norne insisted.
Wolla gave Maaltred a wink. “Later,” she mouthed.
Maaltred winked back. “Yes, the issue at hand. Ever heard of a group who call themselves the Servants of the Dusk?”
Wolla thought. “It don’t ring familiar, no.”
“How about an elf-kind named Eril? Erilliamonn Eloriad.”
She shook her head.
Maaltred gave her Blinch and Briynad’s names and descriptions as well.
“Figure I’d recollect seeing a pair like that. Rare I overlook a fellow who’s big in the trousers.”
“Then it’s safe to say they’ve never been here on your watch.”
“Aye, safe to say.”
“Speaking of your parishioners, I’m surprised how empty the place is.”
“It’s nights what brings us our regular guests. Cover of darkness, and all.”
“Appropriate, for a den of iniquity. Would I be right in thinking it’s these guests who may lead us to the girls we’re looking for?”
She nodded. “Some of the fellows what comes in here have an ear for that sort of thing.”
“Would you mind terribly if we put them to the question while they’re here? Same ones we’ve asked you, about the Servants of the Dusk, and Eril, and so forth.”
“You let me do the questioning,” Wolla said. “I’ll be ministering the ceremonies tonight. With a bit of luck I may turn something up. Meantime, I expect you’ll need somewhere to stay.”
“What a relief,” said Norne. “I’ve been so worried about asking.”
“Nonsense. You’re always welcome here. Even if you’re a gods-damned Yannuian. I trust you remember where the guest quarters is located?”
“Sister Wolla, you have no idea how mu
ch this means to us. We’ve had an awfully difficult time of it.”
“What say you’ll owe me one for old time’s sake, ey? Unless of course there’s a lady in your life.”
“No lady, I’m afraid.”
“That’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll hand it over nice and raw, the way you like it.”
“Please, Wolla. I’m embarrassed.”
Her smile vanished. “Make yourselves at home, then. Rooms is empty, beds is clean, water’s in the basin. There’ll be warm bread and bean soup in the kitchen at noontide.”
Norne took Maaltred through the atrium and up a graceful curved staircase to the gallery above. They passed through a side door and took the adjoining hallway to a back staircase. Norne hung back so Maaltred could walk beside him. “The guest quarters are just ahead. I hope Wolla didn’t make you feel uncomfortable. Things were different back then. I was different. Younger. Inexperienced in the way of such things.”
Maaltred couldn’t help but laugh. “You needn’t be abashed. Trust me, I know how it goes. I’ve a wife I haven’t seen but thrice in as many years.”
“Why do you think most priests never marry? When you’re about the work of the gods, everything else must come second.”
“Perhaps. Yet we all have desires. We can’t just tuck them beneath a bushel basket and expect them to vanish as if they were never there. The human need is ever-present. It’s the same for all the races of mankind, more or less. We all want to be loved. To be touched. To be affected in some profound way. At the root of it, that’s the only thing most of us ever want.”
“Not the only thing. I believe we each long for intimacy with the gods. It’s our ability to ponder higher abstractions which puts us on common ground with the divine beings of this world.”
“Do you think they desire intimacy with us in the same way?”
Norne shook his head. “The gods don’t need us, Brother Maaltred. If they did, we wouldn’t need to work so hard to appease them. We are, at best, playthings. At worst, the denizens of a cruel experiment. Haven’t you ever wondered why the races of mankind are so different, yet so compatible?”
“You mean in terms of breeding? I reckon if we weren’t, there would be just as much lovemaking and a lot fewer babies.”
