The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  Ipid could only gulp at the memory of that release when it had finally happened. In honesty, that was part of his problem. How could anything so terrible feel so good? “I . . . .”

  “Stop,” Eia demanded. She stepped away and went to lean on the desk. “I do not need to console you. You do not need to feel guilty for experiencing pleasure like you have never known or for giving me some share of it. You are a grown man. Your emotions, your passion are gifts from Hilaal. You should never apologize for them. You should apologize for all the times you have kept them from me. They are part of you, and I want everything you can give me.”

  “Is this how you . . . I mean with your other lovers?”

  Eia laughed again. “How long have you been wanting to ask that? The problem is your silly counselors and their obsession with this Order that they have made up in their minds. They tell you everything you should do, everything you should feel. But you are not a dog or a rabbit or a fly that should mount its mate and deliver its seed as quickly and efficiently as possible. You were gifted by Hilaal with emotion, with freewill, with the ability to feel and choose. Each person is different. Each lover brings something different, and I accept them as they are. I ask only that they do not hold themselves back from me. With some it is slow and gentle and constrained such that when we reach our climax it is like the storm in the desert, more violent and complete for all the time it has waited. Some others wear their emotions like clothes. And those emotions are expended as quickly and violently as the ripping away of those clothes. Others still, have no idea how to feel, have never known real emotion, and can do little more than what you did prior to last night.

  “That is where I feared we were to go and it upset me because I know that you are a man of deep emotion no matter how constrained they may be. You have felt pain, have known heartache and anger. I understand that you must bottle those during the day, but until you could tap them, our sex had no hope of being anything more than the same tired exercise as an animal releasing its seed. That is why last night was a revelation. It was the first time you let me see the real person, let me experience what is inside you, let me feel who you truly are. Your emotions run so deep, have been constrained for so long that they are like nothing I have ever known. I think that if we ever tap them fully, I will never be satisfied by another lover as long as I live. I may be forced to join you in fact.” She laughed at her joke.

  “But . . . .” The real person? What is truly inside? Who you truly are? Ipid could not fathom the horror of that being who he truly was. The thought so overwhelmed him that he barely heard a word she said after. Certainly, the joke didn’t stand a chance.

  Eia approached and put her hand over his mouth. “Shhh. I don’t want to hear the preaching of your counselors. It is for us to decide, not them. For us, using the freewill that Hilaal has given us. You can hold back all you want when you are out here, but when you are inside me, I want to feel your emotions. I want you to flood me with them. I want you to overwhelm me. You cannot hurt me, but I promise if it is too much, I will tell you.”

  To his horror, Ipid felt his anticipation rise at her words and proximity. Could what she said be true? Could that really be what she wanted? Could he possibly do it again? He desperately wanted the answer to be no. No matter what Eia said, that monster from last night was not who he was, not who he ever wanted to be. At the same time, he had to admit that the release that ended it had been something that he had never even imagined was possible. If Eia felt the same way, was it really wrong? If it was what she wanted, why should he deny her . . . and himself?

  “Not now,” she said and backed away. “I need to recover. Even I can only take so much. When the time is right, it will happen. For now, we can be as we were. I still long to be with you, still want to sleep beside you. Everything else is the same. So can you stop with the dramatics and kiss me?”

  He did. He kissed her for a long time like teens hidden in the trees before they were joined, but nothing more than that. At least for now.

  Chapter 49

  The 40th Day of Summer

  The sun was barely peeking over the horizon when Valati Lareno shook Dasen awake. He woke slowly, stiffly and looked at the robed man standing above him. For a moment, the valati’s brown robe was black, his misshapen face wrinkled with age, his dull brown eyes black with malice. Dasen shot from the bed, clasped the valati’s thin wrists, and fought to tear them away. He felt his mind clear and search for the unholy energy from the battle. He found nothing. Even the man he held in his crazed clutches showed no fear or surprise, seemed to dispel rather than create the energy that Dasen sought.

  “Dasen,” the valati said with calm certainty, “it’s me, Valati Lareno. You are at the inn. You are safe.”

  The words cut through Dasen’s fear, brought him to the present, and allowed him to see the valati for what he was. Carefully, he released his grip and brought a hand to rub his sweat-matted hair. “I’m sorry. You surprised me. I must have been in the middle of a dream.”

  “Not a good one, I suspect.”

  “I don’t remember.” Dasen shook his head and looked around the room. Teth’s place on the far side of the bed was empty, the single sheet thrown back, her clothes gone from the hook where she hung them each night. The room was still more shadow than light. The sun was barely up, and she was already gone – or had she ever returned?

  “Did you mean what you said last night?” Valati Lareno asked.

  “Of course,” Dasen groaned. Even through the returning haze of sleep, the images of the camp were fresh and horrifying. He shivered and looked up at the valati again. “That camp is inhuman. I’ll do anything I can to help those people.”

  “Good, then we have a lot of work to do. Get up and shave. I brought a tray of breakfast. Mrs. Tappers is waiting to do your face and wig. It will be another long day, but I think the Order has, at least, blessed us with a cooler one.”

  Dasen looked to the open window and saw the rain dripping from the sash onto the lower sill. A cool breeze blew into the room. He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think my disguise will hold up to rain. The wig will never stay on.”

  “The rain will stop before we leave the inn,” the valati said with certainty. He stood and walked toward the door. “I will have Mrs. Tappers join you in five minutes. Drink the dram I left on the desk, eat everything, and drink that entire pitcher of water. Remember, you are on a hunger strike, so no food while people are watching. You’ll fast until you get back here tonight, just like yesterday. And it’s going to be a long day.”

  “Where is Teth?” Dasen managed to ask before the valati was out the door. “I’m worried about her. She seems . . . I don’t know.” Last night, when he’d returned from the camp, while he was eating the clandestine meal that Mrs. Tappers brought, she had been in near hysterics over what had happened. Eventually, she stormed from the room and had not returned before he was asleep.

  The valati paused with his hand on the latch. “She is doing what she must,” he said without turning. “The battle left her wounded in ways you cannot see and cannot heal. It is up to her to apply the medicine and bind the wound. You need to give her time. Constantly looking under the bandage only makes it worse.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dasen admitted, then remembered what Teth had told him that first morning here. “But I'm not sure it's the battle. I mean that's part of it, but she told me it was something she learned from the Weavers that set her off. I have tried for days to think what it could be. Do you have any idea? If I can figure out what’s bothering her, maybe I can help, maybe I can . . . I can get . . . . I feel like she’s slipping away from me, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Valati Lareno sighed, long and deep, but did not turn. “Give her time,” he said. “She loves you and will return to you when the time is right.” Dasen opened his mouth to ask when that would be, but the valati pushed down on the latch and was gone before he found the words.

  An hour later, Das
en was standing outside next to a wagon. He was wearing a work dress that lacked all the adornment of his previous gowns but kept the long sleeves and high neck. He had a light cloak on over the dress and a wide-brimmed hat though the rain had stopped just as the valati had predicted.

  “We should be on our way, my lady,” the valati disturbed his thoughts. He gestured to the wagon. It was filled with empty sacks. Another followed behind with casks clearly meant for water. The same counselors and initiates from the previous day accompanied the wagons, but past them was another small crowd. A score of men and a few women, most of them young, waited in a clump behind the wagons. As Dasen emerged, they grew silent and watched his every move.

  “What is this?” he asked, eyes shifting from the wagons to the crowd.

  Valati Lareno seemed surprised. “My lady, surely you meant to follow through on your promise? I am sorry to say that the governor has made no food or water available for the people of the camp. Do you still want to beg it from the people of the city?”

  Dasen swallowed hard. He looked at the empty wagon then the rows of houses with their closed doors. Men were moving along the streets, mostly workers heading toward the docks. The people inside those houses and shops would be awake now and preparing for their day. Many of them had waited yesterday for him to hand them a cake of bread. How could he now ask them for food? Then his eyes turned to the young men and women. They murmured to one another like an audience waiting for minstrel to tune his fiddle.

  “And them?”

  “Most of them came from the temple. They saw you last night and want to see how the story goes. Like many of the young, they want to be a part of history. They will be equally satisfied if you succeed or fail. They just want to say they were there when it happened.”

  “I see.” Dasen held his head in his hands. “Well, I guess, we should start. As you said, there is a lot to do.” He turned and walked back into the inn. The crowd erupted into murmurs at his departure. They watched the door uncertain, some of them waved off the young noblewoman and started to make their departures.

  When he returned, they froze. He carried a large bag in each hand. “There are more waiting,” he called to the acolytes standing by the wagons. “Please load them into the cart.” He turned to Valati Lareno and spoke loudly enough for his audience to hear. “This represents the food that I would eat this day. Several of the other guests have agreed to join me in a day of hunger so that their brothers and sisters at the camp might eat. Master Tappers has generously doubled our contribution.”

  While the initiates loaded the bags of grain, beans, and dried fish, Dasen strode across the street and knocked on the first door. The house was the same as the dozen others it stood next to in a solid wall that stretched the length of the block. It was three stories with a shop on the lowest level – this one selling pewter – and a residence above. The windows of the shop were shuttered. The door was firmly locked. But above, the shutters had been opened and windows thrown open to welcome the cooler air that the rain had brought. Dasen looked up in time to see a head peek out one of those windows. It withdrew as soon as he caught it.

  “Good day,” he called to the window. “My name is Deena Esther. I am accompanied by Valati Lareno and several of the most devote members of the Church. We are seeking contributions of food and water for the poor souls starving at the camp outside of town.”

  There was no answer. No sound of feet moving to open the door, no head poking from the window. Dasen felt his anger rise at that. “Children!” He stepped back and yelled up at the window. “Children are starving. They have not eaten in days. They have no clean water. The Wasting Death is claiming them. Their bodies are piled onto wagons and left to the flies. As I stand here, children . . . are . . . dying. Their mothers are weeping. Their fathers are begging the Order for help. They have done nothing to deserve this other than to come here. And it is up to us to help them, to show them that the Order has not abandoned them, to be the Order’s mercy.”

  He paused, took a breath and looked at the windows of each house along the block. They all stood open. He stepped back further to address them all. “I know that your families are hungry. I know that you have little to spare, but the people at the camp, trades people, merchants, people just like you, have nothing. I will come to each of the odd numbered houses today. I ask only that you give up one meal. Give me the food that you would eat for one meal, the water you would drink. Tomorrow, I will come to the even houses and ask the same. You need give up only one meal every two days, but the Order will make it enough to save those people. I have already pledged that I will not eat until the people of the camp have been fed, but I do not ask that sacrifice from you. I will return to the camp each day. I will give them my meals, and if I receive no others, I will hold them, will wipe their brows as they die, and will pray that they are welcomed by the Order for I will know that it has abandoned us here.”

  He returned to the first door in a huff and prepared to knock. The door came open before he had a chance. A woman stood before him. She was in her middle years with a stern face and solid countenance that set Dasen back. “Bring it here,” she called over her shoulder. A boy a few years younger than Dasen appeared at the woman’s side with a bulging cloth held at the corners and a large china pitcher. The woman moved to take the items, and Dasen saw past her to a wiry older man who was shaking his head.

  “We trust the Order here,” the woman explained as she handed the bundle and pitcher to Dasen. He struggled to take them without dropping a corner of the cloth and was saved by a young man in a brown robe, who appeared at his side. “My husband thinks me a fool, but I can’t stomach the idea of the Order allowing children to starve. I have to believe that It means us to help any way we can. That’s not much, but it’s what you asked. We’ll skip our lunch today, and we’ll do so again on Third Day. May the Order protect you, my lady.” The woman nodded, accepted her pitcher and cloth back from the acolyte, then closed the door, leaving Dasen gap jawed on the stoop.

  He turned his gaze down the street and saw that counselors and initiates were already standing at every other door accepting bundles and pitchers. The crowd of onlookers were murmuring between themselves and staring. Dasen approached them. “Good day,” he said as they fell into stunned silence, looking like children who had been caught spying on a parent. “Valati Lareno says that most of you have come from the temple. Is that correct?”

  The majority of them nodded. “Then you have been living off the charity of the Church for weeks. You and your families have had a place to sleep and food to eat while your neighbors have wasted away and died. It is your turn to give back. Help us gather the food. Go with us to the camp. Help us stop this terrible crime.”

  They looked at Dasen stunned. “My . . . my lady,” one of them finally stammered. “We . . . we don’t know anything about . . . .”

  “What is there to know? Go to every other house and ask them to give you the food from one meal. If they have not received their allotment, ask for their papers. Collect the food for them and ask for a small portion of it. Either do this or go back to sitting by the temple waiting for your own charity.”

  The onlookers were stunned, then slowly, starting with the man who had spoken, they met Dasen’s eye, nodded, and walked off toward the next block. By the time, Dasen and the wagons had caught up, they were already standing at the doors knocking. When those doors went unanswered, Dasen gave his speech. The response was the same.

  What came after was a blur. Block after block, Dasen gave the same speech. Young men and women knocked on doors and came away with food and water. They took it to the counselors and Valati Lareno, who loaded it into the wagons. Somewhere along their path, two more wagons appeared, then another. And somehow, those wagons were filled. When they came to the last of the houses, they had three wagons full of food and two with casks of water. Dasen stared at them, stunned. The men and women he had compelled into service murmured among themselves, asking each other how
much they had collected, collectively attempting to do the impossible math that would explain the quantity of food that now filled those wagons.

  Dasen did the same math but knew that the sums would never match. They had visited maybe a hundred homes, had received meager bundles from each, yet those bundles had somehow turned into three wagons of bulging sacks.

  “It’s impossible,” one of the young men proclaimed from the crowd. He moved from one wagon to the next, inspecting the bags of bread, grain, beans, and dried meats. “It’s . . . it’s . . . .” He looked toward Dasen in shock. “It’s a miracle,” he breathed. The other members of his group turned as one to Dasen and stared, shock slowly turning to reverence. Their eyes moved slowly from him to the wagons, back to him, to their own hands, and then to the wagons again.

  “I felt the power,” one of them whispered, staring at his hands. “I felt it when I handed the food to the counselors. I felt the bundles growing heavier.” The others nodded, staring at their own hands as if they had never seen them before. The word “miracle” echoed through them, bringing their eyes collectively to Dasen. He felt a cold wave hit him. Then his eyes wandered to Valati Lareno as a smile revealed his yellow buck teeth and made his brown eyes sparkle. Another piece of his plan. Dasen had no idea how he had done it, but he had manufactured a miracle and laid it at the feet of Deena Esther.

  “The Order works through her!” a woman proclaimed.

  “She has come to save us!” a young man added.

  “We all saw it. The Order has made us part of its miracle, but Lady Esther is the one who did it. The Order has chosen her to show us the way. Its will is that we serve her.”

  They bowed. Their heads lowered as one. Dasen felt his stomach churn. The Order had nothing to do with this, he knew, but that was no longer the point. “Please,” he said, trying to sound humble, benevolent, and holy all at the same time. He looked to Valati Lareno. The little man’s smile broadened, and he gestured for Dasen to continue. “We can all see that the Order has been at work here. It has responded to the travesty that has been perpetrated against It. We are, all of us, Its tools. It has shown us the way, now we must see Its will fulfilled. I hope that you will now accompany us to the camp to complete this miracle.”