The Last Goddess

by C.E. Stalbaum

  ***

   

  Night had fallen by the time Rook finally groaned and slowly stirred back into consciousness. Selaste hadn’t expected him to come to for a few hours yet, so she quickly set down the skinning knife and moved to his side. She placed a hand against his bearded cheek as his eyes gradually blinked into focus.

  “Don’t rush it,” she warned softly, helping him lean up against the makeshift bed she had cobbled together from dirt and leaves.

  “Where…?”

  “We’re still in the forest. And before you ask, the others are fine. I checked up on them not long ago. They made it past the Wall, just like you wanted. We should be able to meet up with them in the morning.”

  He blinked a few more times as he struggled to take it all in. “How long have I been out?”

  “Six, maybe seven hours,” she told him. “Night fell not long ago.”

  He nodded and swept his eyes over their surroundings. After running full bore for probably at least two miles, she had eventually set up camp beneath a huge oak and its mighty branches. The forest had gotten dense very quickly; moving horses or anything else large through this area would be a non-trivial task.

  “They might see the fire,” he commented.

  Selaste shook her head and sighed. “They’re not coming.”

  Rook frowned. “Why do you say that? Did you remember something?”

  “That’s really the first thing that pops into your head?” she asked sharply, pulling back away from him. “No, I didn’t remember anything. They aren’t coming because if they were, they would have caught us by now.”

  He pursed his lips and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry, I guess that did sound a bit accusatory.”

  “It’s all right,” she murmured. “You just woke up, and I’m sure your head is pounding.”

  “To put it mildly,” he groaned, leaning up the rest of the way. He abruptly reached down to his leg as if he had forgotten about his wound. “How…?”

  “I took care of it. You’ll be limping for a day or two, but after that you should be fine. The spell does tend to knock people out, though. I’m surprised you woke up this quickly.”

  He stretched his leg experimentally and reached his fingers in through the shredded fabric of his leather pants. “Neat trick.”

  Selaste shrugged. “You were in the army. Didn’t you have healers?”

  “Yeah, but I was lucky and never needed anything serious. And I know not many of them could patch up a wound like this so easily.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call it ‘easy,’ but I guess you said your magi can’t kill Faceless, either.”

  “You definitely seem to have that down.”

  “I don’t know why it’s supposed to be so difficult,” she said. “You all act like it’s this big amazing thing, but it’s not much harder than starting this fire or healing your leg.”

  Rook smiled. “I don’t think you appreciate how funny that sounds to a regular old torbo.”

  She flicked her hand dismissively and sat back down. He remained silent for a moment, his damnable brown eyes appraising her as coolly as ever. 

  “I wasn’t complaining,” he added after a moment.

  Selaste drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Half a day spent with only her own frantic thoughts as company hadn’t done her mood any favors. She just hadn’t realized how edgy she was feeling until he woke up and started talking. But it wasn’t fair to take out her frustrations on him—he couldn’t answer the endless questions any more than she could.

  “Just a little frustrated,” she grumbled, sliding back over to the skinning knife and continuing her work building something resembling a spit.

  “It’s all right,” he soothed. “So you set all this up and managed to catch a vretarg?”

  “I wondered if that’s what this thing was. But no, I didn’t really do anything. It came out of the bushes and looked like it was going to attack.” She grimaced as she inspected the charred remains. “I figured all the rations were with the horses, and we probably wanted to eat tonight. Unfortunately…” she tossed the knife into the ground. “I have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m pretty sure it’s fried well past the point of edibility.”

  “Their meat is really tough anyway,” he said. “I think we’ll manage.”

  She pushed over the makeshift spit with her foot and sighed. “Well, now you know I’m not much of a woodsman.”

  “I’m not, either. There are certainly worse crimes.”

  She bit her lip. “You never get angry, do you?”

  Rook cocked an eyebrow. “When there’s something worth being angry about, sure. Right now I’m pretty happy to be alive and in one piece.”

  “I really want to be mad at something,” she said softly, shaking her head. “So, are you hungry?”

  “Like I said, I’ll manage.”

  “I know, but are you hungry?”

  He looked at her curiously for a long moment. “A little.”

  She crawled over next to him and slid her fingers underneath his shirt. He instinctively flinched but relaxed a bit when he saw her hand glow as magic coursed through it. She held it there for a few moments before slowly pulling it away.

  “Better?”

  Rook nodded slowly. “Yeah. You didn’t just…feed me or something, did you?”

  Selaste snorted. “No, I just suppressed the hunger pangs. Even magic can’t create food out of thin air.”

  “You say that as if it’s obvious.”

  She shrugged. “Thank you for coming back for me, by the way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know I passed out,” she whispered. “I felt completely drained, like…I don’t even know. Like I had just been awake for a month straight. Anyway, you probably could have gotten away if you’d just run.”

  “It seemed like the chivalrous thing to do at the time. Of course then I had to ruin it by getting impaled. It’s getting a little emasculating having you save my life, you know.”

  She smiled despite herself. “How did you wake me up?”

  “I’m not sure I did. I just tried to pick you up. Too slowly, I might add.”

  “It felt like…” she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the sensation again. “Like a cold bath in the morning, but about fifty times stronger. One second I couldn’t even keep myself awake, and then the next…”

  “Did it feel like that before? When you woke up the first or second times, I mean.”

  “Not as strongly, but yes.”

  Rook idly brought a hand up to his beard and ran his fingers through it. “The Flensing can sometimes knock a mage unconscious, but that’s usually a result of the intense pain. In severe cases, it can even leave physical signs—lesions, bleeding, bubbling veins…”

  “I didn’t feel anything like that. It was just fatigue.”

  “Well, I’m not sure then,” he said, pressing his tongue into his cheek. “Back in Haven, I also noticed your tattoos were glowing faintly both times you woke up. I don’t know if that happened this time or not.”

  She glanced down to her tunic. “I don’t know; I couldn’t see them either. What would cause that?”

  “The only thing I can think of is that someone put varium in the ink, but I’m still not sure why it would start to glow like that.”

  “Varium? You’ve mentioned that before, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s a type of crystal that reacts strongly to Fane energy,” he explained. “I’m not sure how or why it works exactly, but I know it can be used to augment some spells. Craftsman can also fuse it into weapons or armor to make them more durable. Faceless armor is typically laced with the stuff, for example.”

  Selaste pressed her lips together. “So the markings could be a part of some spell?”

  “It’s possible. My first guess would be the slumbering spell that kept you unconscious, but maybe it’s more than that. I’m no expert.”

  She softly brushed her fingers across
her tunic. She couldn’t help but feel…violated. First her memories had been taken, and now her very skin had been turned against her…

   Rook let out a deep breath and seemed to brace himself. “One other thing, even though it’s probably just coincidence…but each time you woke up it was right after I touched you.”

  “I don’t see how that would make a difference. You’re not a mage. You’re not even a krata, as you call them.”

  “I can’t think of anything either; I’m just noting the similarities.”

  Selaste nodded idly. She had actually spent most of the last few hours wondering about that, and it was one of the major reasons she was so irritated. Now that he confirmed it, she wasn’t sure how to respond. It had to be coincidence. The thought that some normal man’s touch was restoring her somehow was…well, absurd didn’t cut it. It was impossible.

  And yet…

  She probably shouldn’t have ruled out anything at this point. But even though her memories were scattered and she couldn’t recall her own name, she was certain she had never experienced anything like that before. When she had awoken, it had felt as if her entire body had been cleansed…and there was more he needed to know.

  “For the fraction of a second before I came to, I felt like I could remember things,” she said softly. “It was like a tidal wave of images crashing over me, so many I couldn’t focus on any specific one as they sailed by. And then just as quickly, they were all gone.”

  “Interesting,” he commented. “Well, whether it’s coincidence or not, it probably means those memories will come back eventually. That’s good news.”

  “I suppose so.”

  He stretched out again and winced as he moved his leg. “So you said you couldn’t just summon food out of thin air. How about water?”

  She reached down and grabbed the water skin she’d filled up in a nearby stream earlier. “Does this count?”

  “And you said you weren’t a woodsman,” he murmured, taking the skin and greedily drinking from it. 

  Selaste grunted and drew her knees in close to her chest. She hoped that she had grabbed enough wood to feed the fire for the rest of the night; she had probably made it too big for just the two of them.

  “So maybe this is an odd time to ask,” she said, “but what is it you do, exactly? Rynne said you own several businesses around the city, but you don’t seem like a merchant to me.”

  “Given most merchants I know, I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied with a half-grin. “We do a number of things, including running a handful of small businesses. We also smuggle in antiquities and the like to wealthy collectors from time to time. For the most part, though, I buy and sell information. It’s the most valuable commodity in a city like Haven.”

  “So you sell people’s secrets and blackmail them?”

  “That’s not exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, a bit too defensively. “The Assembly is full of diplomats from all over the world, and those people need to know what’s going on before making decisions that could affect their people and sometimes even the entire continent. Most of them come to me.”

  “Seems like an odd departure from a man who used to be a soldier.”

  Rook shrugged. “I was never a particularly good one. I always had trouble following orders I thought were stupid—which, incidentally, was a lot of them.”

  She thought back to a comment Rynne had made before they left the city. “Rynne said you were married before you came to Haven.”

  His entire face seemed to twitch. “Speaking of private information…”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Selaste assured him, waving her hands awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not much of a conversationalist.”

  “No, it’s all right. It was just…unexpected.” He took another drink of water. “Her name was Lurien. I met her a few years after the war. She was an Edehan priestess, actually. She came from a small village just across the Vakari border.”

  “Can I ask what happened?”

  “I think you just did,” he said, smiling faintly. “She was killed during a Darenthi raid on an outpost called Turesk five years ago.”

  She lowered her eyes and realized belatedly she had no idea how to respond. She wondered why she had even asked the question in the first place…

  “It’s…not something I talk about a lot,” Rook added. “To anyone.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Maybe,” he murmured. “But what I can’t figure out is why I want to tell you so badly.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the fire, a vacant expression on his face.

  “You see,” he whispered, “I should be dead.”

  Selaste blinked and then shook her head. “Pardon?”

  Rook glanced up from the fire. “All the civilians at Turesk were kept safely back inside the fortress walls, including the clergy. When the Darenthi attacked, we all expected them to try and kill everything that moved, but they didn’t. The moment they burned the towers and broke our lines, they withdrew. In fact, they made every effort to leave the central buildings intact.”

  “So how…?”

  He took in a deep breath. “I was at the front trying to coordinate my unit when their magi punched through the wall. The explosion hurled me backwards…I don’t know, a long ways. When I came to, I had a spear sticking out of my chest and I couldn’t move my legs. I knew I was dead, and I found myself praying that Van would find a way to stop the Darenthi before they got to the temple. That was when I saw her.”

  Selaste started to reply but forced herself to stay silent. She had only known him for two days, but in that time she had never seen him like this. It was almost like he was in a trance. Finally he licked at his lips and glanced back up to her.

  “Lurien came to me. I don’t know how she made it out of the temple or why the other priests didn’t stop her, but suddenly she was there, standing over me as the fortress burned around us.  She told me that it wasn’t my time, and then she touched me…and the pain went away.” He slowly shook his head. “She kissed me, and told me that one day we would meet again in the Fane. And then she died.”

  On impulse, Selaste scooted over towards him and placed her hand on his arm. It was probably an empty gesture, but for some reason she felt like she needed to touch him. “It sounds like…a miracle.”

  Rook grunted. “I told myself I dreamt it all up, that the blast had knocked me senseless and that when I woke up, I had found her broken body next to me. For a time I think I even believed that’s what happened.” He bit down on his lip and closed his eyes. “But my armor was shredded, and the blood I was covered with was mine. I remember Van asking me later how I managed to get out of there without a scratch…”

  Selaste squeezed. “You said Lurien was a priestess. Was she a mage?”

  “No,” he said. “She came from a poor family of farmers; it was something of a marvel she’d even been taught to read. I have no explanation for what happened. It sounds just as crazy to me as I’m sure it does to you. Things like that just don’t happen without a reason.”

  “Maybe there was a reason,” she told him. “Maybe you just don’t know what it was.”

  He shrugged. “My parents weren’t very pious, and my father taught me to be skeptical of anything I hadn’t seen or touched myself. But that day…” He sighed and smiled tightly. “That day I almost believed. That’s the difference between Van and I, and the reason why when I look at you, despite all the things that seem out of place, a part of me thinks you might be the real thing.”

  Selaste sat with him in silence for a long moment, squeezing his arm and looking at him. She didn’t really know how to respond. Maybe she didn’t need to.

  “Well, anyway, now that I’m done boring you to tears,” he said eventually, “we should probably figure out how we’re going to watch camp for the night.”

  “I’ll stay up,” she told him, sliding away and standi
ng. “I know some spells that should make it difficult for anyone to get close without us noticing. Not that I’m too worried about it.”

  “I don’t mind taking a shift.”

  “You need the rest. I’d rather not have to carry you back to the others in the morning.” A grin slowly crept across her lips. “I think that might emasculate you even more than getting rescued.”

  Rook cocked his head to the side. “Fair enough.”

  “I’m going to have another quick look around the area. I’ll be back soon.”

  She made it perhaps fifty feet before glancing back over her shoulder at him. Given all the things that could have happened when she woke up in that coffin without her memories, she had to imagine that meeting a man willing to take such risks to help her was almost as much of a miracle as what he had described. They might have been stuck out here in the middle of a strange forest after being attacked by a Darenthi war-band, but things could have actually been worse. Much, much worse.

  It might not have been the work of silent gods that had made it so, but she was thankful for it regardless. And somehow she felt like together, the two of them would manage to figure it all out.

  Smiling to herself, Selaste continued off into the woods.