Free Stories 2018

by Baen Books

  Father Avenir would not be intimidated. He trudged onward, muttering the words under his breath,

  “Verbum caro, panem verum

  Verbo carnem éfficit:

  Fitque sanguis Christi merum,

  Et si sensus déficit,

  Ad firmándum cor sincérum

  Sola fides súfficit.”

  He realized that mumbling was not good enough, so he sang the words, loud and defiant,

  “TANTUM ERGO SACRAMÉNTUM

  Venerémur cérnui:

  Et antíquum documéntum

  Novo cedat rítui:

  Præstet fides suppleméntum

  Sénsuum deféctui.

  Genitóri, Genitóque

  Laus et jubilátio,

  Salus, honor, virtus quoque

  Sit et benedíctio:

  Procedénti ab utróque

  Compar sit laudátio.”

  Then he followed it with the twenty-third Psalm, his favorite: “Dominus reget me et nihil mihi deerit, In loco pascuae ibi me conlocavit super aquam refectionis educavit me, Animam meam convertit deduxit me super semitas iustitiae propter nomen suum, Nam et si ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis non timebo mala quoniam tu mecum es virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt, Parasti in conspectu meo mensam adversus eos qui tribulant me inpinguasti in oleo caput meum et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est, Et misericordia tua subsequitur me omnibus diebus vitae meae et ut inhabitem in domo Domini in longitudinem dierum.”

  He didn’t know enough Latin to catch the nuances of the words, but he knew them by heart. The priests had taught him Latin, but perhaps they hadn’t been very well taught themselves, since the great teachers and great books of learning had been lost in the Sundering. His own teachers admitted that sometimes they didn’t understand a particular word. But he knew the Psalm spoke of God walking with him, as he’d walked with David, and setting a table for him in the presence of his enemies.

  How many times had Father Avenir been safe where he shouldn’t be? How had he survived in hostile territory these many years? How, but for the grace of God?

  The geyser field seemed cowed, or was that just his imagination?

  He took heart and trudged forward, shouting, “I bring the way, the truth, and the light. I feel your evil presence here. I smell the lake of fire and eternal damnation, and I am not afraid.”

  He felt the well-smoothed wooden sides of the cross press into his calloused palm. “Face me!” he yelled. “Or are you afraid?” His lips were cracked, and his dry throat burned from the caustic fumes. Water welled up within his stinging eyes, but it only purified his vision.

  Mud pots bubbled like lava on either side of him, but he did not waver in his forward journey. He had remained steadfast in his faith all his life.

  Back in St. Louis, he had argued with the numerous Protestants, defended himself for being a papist, for still obeying the Holy Father in Rome even though no one knew who the Pope might be now. He had been mocked and ridiculed, shunned, robbed, beaten, but he had survived. Each such incident was a trial that God inflicted upon his missionary, and if Avenir had to die while serving his mission, his Lord, then that would only assure his passage into heaven. Martyrdom might, in fact, be the only way a man like him could get to paradise.

  A geyser erupted close to him, startling him. He saw powdery white crystals piled around the crater that looked like a maw in the ground. Scalding water rocketed up and rained down to drench him in a hot downpour. He felt the water steam in his tangled hair, soak his tattered black tunic, but he pressed on, blinking away the distraction. A new hole cracked open in the barren ground in front of him, sending gouts of foul-smelling steam. It was like a thunderstorm of smoke, sulphur, and blisteringly hot vapors.

  Father Avenir stopped, seeing shadowy shapes, twisted inhuman forms, damned wretches cast into hell itself. They lurched up, barely taking shape, looming closer as if to attack him. The priest cried out, but uttered his prayers again in Latin, knowing there was power in the old words. He crossed himself, and the shadows backed away, hiding within the folds of noxious steam that wafted upward.

  But the hideous figures were not avoiding the priest, not cowed by his prayers. Rather, they backed away as if in deference to make way for something far worse.

  The silhouette in the steam and smoke approached, a towering muscular figure that towered several feet above Father Avenir’s head. Even so, its back was hunched, as if the thing felt beaten.

  The priest didn’t flinch, but faced the approaching figure that pushed aside the obscuring veils as if impatient to be seen. A coal black, cloven hoof stepped forward, improbably balanced on the rough ground. Its brick red skin was covered with knobs and scabs. The creature had a wide, bare chest, like a blacksmith who worked on a forge of souls. A long, barbed tail lashed from the base of its spine, a terrible weapon. The demon lurched forward to show a monstrous head with black horns, evil slitted eyes, a face that should have been beautiful, but was instead a sculpture of diamond-hard fury.

  “Lucifer,” Father Avenir gasped. “Fallen angel.”

  The devil laughed out loud, a sound like a crack of thunder. The ground rumbled and boiled, and more geysers erupted, belching steam and smoke like a regal fanfare for the king of the damned. “If that is what you wish to call me. I have appeared in this form to comfort you.”

  Avenir was aghast. “To comfort me?” He held his Bible up. “I take no comfort in seeing you, Satan.”

  The thing laughed again. “You take comfort in the affirmation of your beliefs. You see this valley as Hell, and so you expect the devil himself. I am here exactly as you wished.”

  “I wish you to be gone!” Avenir said. “In the name of the Lord God Almighty, I banish you from this arcane world. These lands are not yours.”

  The looming Satan twitched, but that seemed to be the extent of Father Avenir’s effectiveness. The demon boomed out, “But I am these lands. I am the spirit of the mountains, the forests, the rivers. There is also much anger at what has been done to this land, and it manifests here, boiling to the surface. You can see it all around you, priest! With the coming of the comet, the magic was reinforced and released. It made all this possible.”

  Lucifer stretched out his hands, showing fingertips adorned with long, black claws. “The magic here belongs to the land and the people. As does your magic, too. I feel the strength within you—Tatanka, the bull man, he who will not be moved.” The devil leaned closer, and the priest could smell his breath as foul as a long-abandoned abattoir. “You are part of me as well,” Satan said.

  “No!” the priest yelled back.

  “Can you not feel it? The simmering power in this land makes all things possible. The gods of the Native tribes have regained their strength, become real and tangible. None of their shamans can deny what he sees with his own eyes, and neither can you.” His long, barbed tail thrashed with impatience.

  Father Avenir choked. The brimstone smell was suffocating. “You have no power over me. You are subject to God’s power, as am I.”

  The devil back-handed him across the face, striking hard with scaled knuckles that felt like stones. The priest tumbled to his knees, felt blood oozing from a gash in his cheek, but he maintained his grip on the Bible. “Yes, evil is real. I have never doubted it. But that does not mean you can’t be defeated.”

  He pulled himself to his feet again, remaining defiant. He wondered what the Shoshone shaman would have seen if he’d come out to this geyser. Surely Dosabite would not view the devil like this. What would other tribes have seen?

  “I will drive you from this place,” Avenir vowed.

  Lucifer huffed. “I am this place.”

  The priest pulled out his aspergillum and without warning he hurled the holy water at Satan’s chest, as he muttered a prayer in the back of his throat to enhance the blessing. With a bright flash, the steam erupted white and pure, driving away the mists and curtains of steam from the fumaroles, geysers, and exhalations from the mud
pots.

  The devil roared, looked down at his chest in shock, as a great smoking hole ate its way through his chest, devoured his heart, dissolved his stubbly, brick-red body. Satan himself broke apart, shattering into thousands of small dwindling pieces, like a sheet of ice that broke apart and melted under the hot sun.

  Striking down the devil seemed to settle the ground around Father Avenir. The earth ceased its rumbling, the geysers faded, the hot water droplets pattered all around him, and the mists cleared. A breeze whipped away the strongest rotten-egg stench, and he saw a widening slice of blue sky overhead.

  Laughing, Father Avenir clutched the Bible against the cross over his heart. And yet, he waited. The Great Deceiver was, after all, exactly as his name implied. He waited to feel an exhilaration in the earth itself, a lifting of the weight of evil, a cleansing of this great scarred valley.

  Instead, the powerful force that throbbed inside of him remained just as strong—and it came from ahead. It tugged on his soul like a magnet, pulling him along. “I banished you!” he said in a hoarse voice, but he still felt the power, the insistent anger.

  A voice resonated in his head, no longer the thunderous male voice of Satan himself, but a female voice that was at once benevolent and deadly, like all the protective mothers in the world speaking in unison. “You banished the part of me that was within yourself, but I am still here.”

  The force tugged at him, and Avenir staggered forward between the now-quiescent geysers, walking along the valley floor. “I want to see you, and you need to see me. You have killed your Satan, and I applaud you. But I am not the same.”

  The voice was tantalizing, and though he fought it, she seemed to put him in a trance. The aspergillum was empty, and he had no more blessed water . . . but he had his Bible and he had his cross. Father Avenir stopped resisting.

  The smell of brimstone was thinner now and he did not feel as threatened, though the female voice that throbbed from the ground and came from somewhere ahead seemed more powerful than even the hulking Lucifer. This, he realized, was his real opponent. The spirit of this valley of fire demons, the vengeful fury of the arcane lands made manifest.

  Up ahead, he saw the flat, circular bowl of a pond, like a shimmering irregular mirror. Exhalations of steam drifted up from the surface of the water, and as he approached, he saw that the waters were absolutely still, not stirred by any wind. This pool was a conduit, the source of the feminine voice, the entity that lived within this large and strange valley.

  The waters were scalding hot—he could sense that even as he came closer. The ground was bleak and barren. The small lake itself was dead, yet full of colors as if someone had drowned a rainbow there. Chromatic rings of blue and copper, bright green with tendrils of yellow spread out beneath the surface.

  “Come closer,” the voice said. “Look into me, so that I may see you.”

  “I will show you the holy cross.” He stood on the shore feeling the heat. He held out his wooden cross and looked down to see his reflection in the perfectly still surface . . . yet the vision went deeper, changing him to a younger man, then an older man. His appearance shifted in the reflection, transforming from himself to Dosabite, then Cameahwait, then numerous other Natives he had seen, then his beloved priests back in St. Louis who had taught him Latin and the Word. He saw his mother, smiling at him and crying when she’d last seen him at the school in St. Louis . . . his father, with bleak blue eyes and firm expression when telling Avenir he was leaving him at the school so he could learn not to be a savage, and a beautiful Native woman he’d loved before he realized his calling was to the Church and celibacy. It was a blur of shapes, memories, figures.

  “Why do you tempt me?” he cried.

  “I remind you, that is all. I need you to understand that I am not evil, merely different . . . just as you are different from the ways and the beliefs here in the wilderness.”

  “I bring my beliefs with me,” Avenir said in defiance. “I was baptized. I am a priest. I bring the word of God.”

  “You were baptized in the civilized world, foolish man. Not here.”

  A stir of ripples circled the chromatic pool. Steam drifted higher, but Avenir leaned over to peer closer, feeling the pull of the shimmering water, the iridescent colors.

  “If you wish to serve in these wild lands, if you are truly a missionary, then you must be baptized here as well.” The heat of the water rippled up, nearly blistering the skin on his face.

  “You would kill me,” he said. “You would trick me!”

  “I have no need of tricks,” said the pulsing voice of the wild. “I know what I am, and I sense the goodness in you, the passion for truth and eternity.”

  The voice echoed in his head and Avenir felt a warm honey drifting through him.

  “I find it exhilarating,” the voice said.

  “I have my mission. You will not sway me from it.”

  “I am trying to help you. You cannot bring your civilized ways out here, and so you must adapt your ways to the spirit of the land. There is evil here, even I know it.” The voice thrummed as if in an undertone of fear. “Before this battle is over, there will be many strange alliances. Are you willing to take the risk, Tatanka? Father Avenir? Will you be strong enough and baptize yourself here as well?”

  The priest shivered, despite the pounding heat all around him. “I cannot,” he said. “I will not forsake what I believe.”

  “I did not ask that of you,” said the presence. “I asked you only to trust . . . as you ask the Natives to trust you, to believe your words. Now believe mine.” Her voice echoed louder. He cringed, but he couldn’t press the sound away. “I did not say that I’m a rival of your God, nor that I am the sole creator. I am a powerful part of creation, though, and you cannot deny me."

  The colors in the chromatic pool were tantalizing. The water itself seemed perfect, pristine, inviting.

  Father Avenir was sore and weary, his hair caked from the smoke, grit, and dust of countless days alone on the trail. “I will need the strength,” he whispered. “I come from the civilized world, but I am part of this one. I don’t ever intend to go back, any more than America can return to the rest of the world.”

  Earlier, when he faced the manifestation of Satan, Father Avenir had felt fear, but this was not so simple or clear. This was dread and uncertainty, as well as longing. He was alien here in these arcane territories, and he knew there were things here that he could never explain.

  But questions were only doubts until they were answered.

  He was like those early apostles going out into the wild tribes. Unless the Bible was wrong—and that was impossible—then in those days, too, spirits and magic had walked the land. Had the Catholic missionaries not told defeated local gods that they were now something else and integrated them into their tales and beliefs? The spirits themselves converted, and a legend of Jupiter became a tale of Saint John, or a story of Diana became the most holy story of Saint Catherine.

  Avenir was not a fool. He understood how that had happened, the Catholic belief encircling and purifying the pagan one. But could he accomplish that unless he accepted it and became part of it himself? His mother was Native. He was part of this land already. Surely he could touch the spirits and make them his own.

  Before he could change his mind, the priest pulled off the tattered black tunic and set it on the ground beside the edge of the hot pool. He set down the Bible and aspergillum, removed his boots, his buckskin breeches, and stood there naked, alone in the wilderness, just as he had been in his first baptism. The only thing he kept was the wooden cross on the thong around his neck.

  The female voice remained silent, but he could feel her presence there. And he looked down at the hot pool, knowing that the water was scalding, almost to the boiling point. It was deadly—yes, it would kill him, just like a martyr being boiled in oil back during the days of the Inquisition.

  He would die, and his body would float here, unseen by the Shoshone or any whi
te trappers. His flesh would be boiled off his bones, which would then sink to the bottom. Father Avenir would be forgotten.

  But, he chose not to believe that. His own faith was strong, just as when he had destroyed the vision of Satan. Had not Daniel walked out of the furnace alive?

  The female voice, the presence of the land of the yellow stone, throbbed up to enfold him, protect him. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. If his faith was too weak, he did not deserve to live anyway.

  Father Avenir fell forward into the hot pool. The shock flashed around him. The water embraced his skin and his hair. He gasped, but fought back his terror. The wooden cross floated around him as he drifted in the hot pool, like a lifeline.

  The water burned and tingled, enfolded him, scrubbed his skin, soaked his hair—but he lived. He drifted there, wrapped in the blanket of his own faith, and of the strength that this land’s magic added to his beliefs. Yes, he was strong enough to do this, and now he would be baptized in the ways of the wild as well as the ways of the white man. His terror lasted only a moment, and then he was cleansed. He was accepted.

  After a long moment, the female voice in his mind spoke, “It is as I thought. I know you now, Tatanka, bull of heaven, rock of all Saints, father of the future. You may go, and you will be remembered.”

  Father Avenir staggered out of the scalding water and stood with steam drifting from his reddened skin. He looked utterly clean as the water evaporated, his skin pink as a newborn’s, his hair fine and soft. He looked back at the rainbow colors beneath the pool.

  He felt he had answers to the strongest mysteries in his heart, while other questions remained—just as powerful, but not quite so urgent. “Thank you,” he muttered, realizing that whatever that spirit was, she also understood the love of God, as he did.