by Garon Whited
“Momma says I hafta read my own bedtime story!”
“You can read,” he pointed out.
“But I want you to!” she demanded. Seldar sighed.
“Do you have time, Sire?”
“Happy to. What am I reading to her?”
“No, no! I meant, do you have time for me to do so, Sire?”
“Oh. Well. Surely.”
“Is he the King?” the little girl stage-whispered.
“Yes, sweetie. Come in and meet him.”
The girl, brown-haired and entering that stick-like growing phase, came in and stood next to her father. I went to one knee to be close to her level.
“I am Halar,” I told her, and extended one hand. She took it, gingerly, and shook it.
“I’m Mellelia.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mellelia. Are you happy here in the Palace?”
“I guess so,” she admitted, not looking at me.
“Good. What bedtime story do you like best?”
“The Magic Horse,” she announced, face lighting up.
“I’m not familiar with that one.”
“It’s a really good story!” she gushed. “It’s all about how a great wizard brought a fountain to life and made it his horse!”
“On second thought, maybe I do know it,” I sighed. I reflected how being a bedtime story beat the daylights out of being the Demon King. “Go along to bed. I’ll talk to your father when he’s done.”
She bobbed a curtsey—a good one, too. I suppose she practiced it a lot in the Palace—before Seldar picked her up and carried her to bed.
I picked the sturdiest-looking chair in the room and lowered myself into it with care. It held me. I waited.
Seldar came back after twenty minutes or so, smiling ruefully.
“She didn’t want to go to bed.”
“Oh?”
“She wanted to ask questions about the King.”
“Ah. Well, if her mother and father are okay with it, I might take her on a visit to my great-granddaughter. She can pester me with questions all she likes.”
“She would like that, I’m sure. I shall discuss it with Carella. What can I do for you, Sire?” he asked, settling in another chair.
“First, what can I do for you? How are Carella and Tallin?”
“Carella is doing well. She retires early or she would be out here fussing. Tallin is in the local Temple of Shadow, studying to be a Banner.”
“Is he?”
“Yes. Forgive me, but he has no calling to your church. It is the best place for him to learn the arts of war and peace.”
“Not the Temple of Justice?”
“They are a worthy organization, but I feel they focus too much on the philosophical understanding of justice. The Lord of Shadow has a more… pragmatic approach.”
“Fair enough. Anything I can do to help?”
“Me? No, I do not believe so. I am quite content.”
“Good. Is there anything that needs doing and seems to fit my powers?”
“Ah, there we have another story, Sire.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Would you have a family issue or a royal one?”
“They’re different?”
“Family is personal,” he explained. “Royal is political.”
“How about both? I’ll see which one is more likely to not suffer from my attention.”
“Eminently fair. First, the family. Liam is progressing well in his studies and shows quite the aptitude for all things in letters and numbers. His martial skills are passable, but unlikely to be his foremost subject. It is difficult to properly train someone whom you dare not injure.”
“Not being trained at the Temple, I guess.”
“His mother would not hear of it. She could not bear to be parted from him in such a fashion.”
“I’m disappointed, but I also understand. Go on.”
“He has, of late, become more interested in the kingdom’s rules of succession. While it is clear—now—that the Queen rules in the absence of the King, it is less clear what happens when the Queen eventually gives up her title. Prince Liam cannot be King. His father is King and his father is immortal. Will he be a ruling Prince? You can, I am certain, see why his interest in the subject grows.”
I sighed. Immortality problems.
“Yeah. I’ll have to be Emperor so he can inherit the kingdom. I’ll handle it when Lissette’s ready to hand it over to him.”
“Very well,” Seldar agreed, ignoring completely the idea I could become an emperor at will. Either he had perfect faith in my ability to do so, or he didn’t take titles any more seriously than I do. I suspect it was the former. Everyone in this world seems to take titles and ranks much too seriously.
“In other matters,” he continued, “there is a priest who is Her Majesty’s… guest, I suppose. He makes a number of claims, few of which have been substantiated.”
“I’ve been hearing about him. What’s with the priest?”
“His name is Stomald, formerly—he claims—of the Church of Light. He is from the Kingdom of Ynar and the city of Iyner.”
“Oh, this sounds good. What does he want?”
“He claims his intent is to restore the Church of Light to the true faith and to repudiate the false god.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My understanding of his god-touched tongue is as limited as anyone’s,” Seldar admitted. “I think his meaning is thus: The Lord of Light is an usurper within the Church of Light. Stomald wishes to cast him out of the Church and restore the true Lord of Light to his rightful place as the venerated spirit of the institution.”
“Well… Stomald’s not wrong about the Lord of Light. Thing is, the original—I presume it was the original—got into an eating contest with the Devourer and lost. At least, that’s what I think happened, so I’m running with it. When the Devourer blew its top at the Edge of the World, there was no one left for the Church of Light to pray to, but they didn’t know it so they kept praying. This new guy then went, ‘Oh, I’ll have that!’ and stepped into the empty place.”
“I have heard none of this, but I accept it as possible.”
“Any thoughts on how Stomald intends to work his miracle?”
“From what I piece together, he has come here to preach the true word of the Lord of Light and so begin a new Church, one that reveres the correct deity.”
“Okay…” I trailed off, thinking it over. “Not impossible, I guess; merely improbable. Why here? The place has the Demon King in charge, if not in residence. We allow all sorts of faiths to flourish here, but not them. Their religion is the one that carried the whole vampire-hunting madness to other worlds. They don’t play well with others, so they can’t use my monkey bars.”
“Which is why he has come. We do not permit the Church of Light here. We are the only kingdom in the world to forbid their entry, much less their worship. Anywhere else, his heretical notions will be viewed as an internal matter of the Church of Light. Any avengers from their ranks will burn him alive without interference.”
Sometimes, it’s easy to remember why I hate the idea of being a king.
“And he’s sure we won’t?”
“No, he is not. He states that your… that this kingdom is his only hope.”
My comment involved excrement.
“And he’s sure his deity can be resurrected?” I added.
“No, he is not. He asks for help and says—”
“If he says I’m his only hope, I may go Darth Halar on him.”
“—says he has faith.”
“Oh.”
I thought about it some more. Seldar was respectfully silent. I’ve never met the original Lord of Light. I’m prejudiced against him because of his followers and the replacements. He might not be a complete bastard. The present holder of the title certainly wins no prizes. True, the original was the prime mover behind the purging of nightlords from Rethven a millennia or three ago, but it’s gen
erally a good idea to keep up a steady campaign against rapidly-reproducing bloodsuckers. They’re as bad as some types of zombie horde.
A few questions remained on my mind. Could a defunct deity make a comeback? If so, how? And Stomald, himself. The present Lord of Light is promoting a massively addictive ritual to gain and maintain his following. If Stomald is a priest, how did he come to the conclusion it was wrong? And how did he resist the compulsion to indulge? Most heroin users don’t go cold turkey and rat their supplier out to the police.
“Excuse me a moment, Seldar.”
“Of course.”
I closed my eyes and directed my prayerful attention toward my not-me self.
You there?
Yes, he replied, faintly.
Can we talk?
Holy ground, he whispered, and went silent. It’s easier to directly communicate on his holy ground, even if I’m not using the smoke signal. Oh, well. I’d ask him about the ecclesiastical engineering later.
“All right,” I said, looking at Seldar again. “I think I want to talk to Stomald.”
“Really?” he asked, eyebrows rising.
“Yes. I have questions for him,” I said. Seldar rose from his seat and gestured toward the door.
“If you’ll accompany me, Sire.”
Stomald was in the Palace, quartered, possibly imprisoned, in one of the towers. Someone took pains to keep him either contained or safe or both. We went through no less than four heavy doors, complete with pairs of guards. The door to his chamber—indeed, the chamber itself—had extra detection and warding spells, as well as a pair of Shields from the Temple of Shadow.
I noticed the religious knights in the secular palace and raised an eyebrow at Seldar. He gave me an inscrutable smile and knocked on the door. He had to knock again before the door unbolted and swung inward.
Stomald was a swarthy man, either from the southern sun or built-in. His hair was dark and worn long, in three braids, but his eyes were a deep, dark blue. He rubbed sleep from one of them as he regarded us.
“Yes?”
“Stomald, I present His Majesty, Halar the First, the Undying, King of Karvalen and Lord of Night. Sire, this is Stomald.”
Stomald finished waking up with commendable speed. Both eyes opened wide and he stepped back. I took it as permission to enter.
“Good evening. No need to bow. Sit. I have questions.”
Stomald sat on the bed. The room was spacious, taking up a quarter of that level of the tower, so I dragged the heaviest chair over to face him. I sat; it held. I was satisfied. Seldar and the two Shields followed me in. One of them closed the door and bolted it.
“I understand you quit the Church of Light—excuse me, the false Church of Light—and want to start the true Church again. Something about a false god pretending to be your Lord of Light.”
“Yes.”
I waited. He didn’t go on, only sat there and stared at me. Well, when you’re the Demon King and a banished nightlord returned through the Gate of Shadows, I suppose you tend to be a bit discombobulating.
“If it helps, I give you permission to speak without being spoken to.”
“Your Majesty?”
“Fine. You’re still not quite getting it. I’ll help. Why are you here?”
“As you said, to reform the Church.”
“Normally, I like short, to the point answers. Not tonight. Explain to me how you came to dislike the current Church of Light, what led you to rebel against it, why you came here, what you hope to accomplish, and how you plan to go about it.”
“That… is a lengthy discourse.”
I settled more firmly in the chair, extended my legs, crossed my ankles, and made a show of getting comfortable.
Stomald required encouragement, but he did talk. He wasn’t the best speaker, which I considered odd for a priest. Maybe he spent his time making sacrifices. There isn’t much speechmaking and sermonizing involved in cutting an animal’s throat. It’s all about focus and recitation of the proper formula.
According to him—and I kept an eye on his spirit to gauge his level of truthfulness—he considered the actions of the current Church of Light to be an abomination before the true Lord of Light. I think he was overstating the case, but a priest can’t exactly admit he had doubts about his Church, if not his god. Because of this, he spent several days in fasting, meditation, and prayer, besieging the local heaven for a miracle of revelation.
As far as Stomald knows, The One True Lord of Light appeared in a vision, praising him for his faith and laying a holy task on his shoulders. I don’t know the objective truth about what happened, but Stomald believed everything he told me.
With the divine revelation of the true nature of his Church, Stomald immediately had breakfast—never start a holy quest on an empty stomach, I gather—grabbed his gear, and walked away. He traveled overland from Iyner, took ship from the city of Salacia, in Praeteyn, was nearly killed in a pirate attack when they navigated the Straits of the Fang Rocks, and finally made it ashore in Carrillon. Here, he preached against the Church of Light by advocating the First Church of Light—or maybe the Church of First Light; the actual Rethvan translation isn’t terribly exact—until our local religious figures fingered him for the law.
“And thus I have remained here these past weeks, answering whatever questions are put to me,” he finished. “May I ask some?”
“I’m the one doing the interrogating,” I countered. “Maybe later. First, this bit about priests of the false Light dishing out pleasure and bliss on command. You participated in these ceremonies?”
“Of course.”
“Why aren’t you jonesing for another hit?”
“I do not understand.”
“Repeated doses of undifferentiated bliss have an effect on those who get them. They tend to become more and more dependent on having that feeling again and again. There comes a point they’ll do anything at all if they can do it one more time. You participated in these ceremonies. Why aren’t you climbing the walls trying to get another dose? Or do you just do it whenever you feel like it, being a priest?”
“I know the lure of divine pleasures,” he agreed. “Indeed, I wondered, at first, about the religious ecstasy the god distributed so freely. Later, I ceased to wonder, merely enjoy. I did not question the holy feeling of unity, of happiness, with every ceremony. I would be there still were it not for word of human sacrifice in the name of our false god—”
“Hold it. Human sacrifice?”
“Why, yes. The Crucibles of the Sun have heretics and blasphemers in them constantly, from sunrise to sunset. This sacrifice has never been asked before, and now it is common, even constant. This was the keystone that crumbled, bringing my faith in the false god down in a heap of rubble. The true Lord of Light would not use the Crucibles for any mortal. Those who live not in the Light must be shown the way, not killed out of hand!”
I recalled a slave-chain from Zirafel and thought hard about the name of the place they were going.
“Was this in… Hazard’eyn? Or Zaddivos?”
“There is kingdom of H’zhad’Eyn, yes. The capitol is Zhadivos. The temples of Light are growing in power in that kingdom. It has not yet forsworn its monarch, but the day is soon to come when it shall follow Praeteyn and Ynar into the false god’s service.”
“Out of curiosity, what about Kamshasa?”
“Irreligious bitches,” Stomald spat, then caught himself. “I mean to say they have little enough reverence for any of the gods, being more concerned with their immediate and personal power. The usual spreading influence of worship within a kingdom does not progress well there.”
“I can see that. Male deity, lots of male priests, and a lack of general piety.”
“Exactly.”
“Another question. Why are people being sacrificed in H’zhad’Eyn? Why not in Praeteyn and Ynar?”
“These sacrifices continue in all three kingdoms, in every Temple with a Crucible,” he corrected. “H
’zhad’Eyn has many who curse the gods for their afflictions, making conversion of the people as a whole more difficult. I would presume those who are most vocal in their anger are silenced in this way. Prisoners from there are taken to other temples to feed the Crucibles. Each sacrifice is a powerful offering to the false god.”
“No doubt. What ‘afflictions’ do the people of H’zhad’Eyn blame the gods for?”
“Many are born deformed,” Stomald told me. “There are any number of strange, even hideous malformations. It is said the gods flip a coin at every birth to determine whether or not to strike the child with disfigurements. Even those born without flaw seldom reach great age. Those who dwell in H’zhad’Eyn often find their flesh consumes itself from within, or strange growths form, swelling out or in. It is most pronounced in the south, near the Burning Desert—every kingdom with a border along that curséd strip of land reviles it as a place of poison and dying.”
“Then why not simply leave?”
“Who would accept such people?” Stomald asked, puzzled. “Where would they go?”
If I was right about the radiation from the sun, close proximity could cause mutagenic and carcinogenic effects. To be fair, there might be effects from magical radiations, too—I haven’t studied it, but it’s possible.
“I see. Thank you, Stomald. You’ve just given me another piece of a puzzle I didn’t know I was solving.”
“I am happy to help?”
“Good answer. We’ve sidetracked a bit from my original question about the addictive qualities of bliss, however. You started to question when you found out about the human sacrifice. How did you beat the need to be blissed out on a regular basis?”
“I did not.” His thought roamed far away as he remembered. “When I began to examine my faith and seek wisdom in prayer, I locked myself in one of the meditation chambers of the temple in Iyner. For three days, I meditated, prayed, and fasted. At last, I achieved contact with the true Lord of Light. He showed me His glory and His will. He cleansed me of all things displeasing to Him and gave me His blessing, sent me out into the world, away from the false god.”
I glanced at Seldar. He nodded.