You believe in the gods, Mycah, but sometimes I fear that belief is more your faith in me than it is faith in them. I wish I could impart on you my experience in a way that would make you believe the way I do. To not simply believe, but to know as fact. Thus far I have limited this text to the spells and advice that should protect you, but I know that I must share with you my past, so that you can finally understand our Cult’s true purpose. We do not, and have never served the Butcher, though it seems so to all within. We serve another god, who one day, shall live again.
I have told you of my childhood. That I was born in Vigil, at a time of great peace, and bountiful prosperity. These details must have come as odd to you. For, when in your life has Vigil had prosperity? When in the last three hundred years, has Vigil had peace? It is because, Mycah, that I was not born a few decades before yourself… I am not a man of ninety-three, as I have said to you.
I was born into the service of a god named Death, three thousand years after her demise, in the city which bore her name, her Vigil, and her legacy. I have lived over five hundred years, a man mortal born, yet who, by luck and circumstance, came to be much more. A god, in my own right, like the lady that I was sworn to.
We were a small group, our Cult of Death, well beyond the edges of the political fringe. We were comprised mostly of family, surviving on scraps of mythos from an age long past. Unlike the gods who ruled our cities and set our laws, unlike the Mother and Just, and the Smith, we had never met Death. We had never seen her, or read her words, or seen any scrap of paper which bespoke her deeds. We had only word of mouth, the stories passed on for generations, and Fate. Our shepherd.
In our stories, Death was not evil. She was not this cold and petty thing the usurper Just has made of her. Death was moral, the great leveler of mankind, the punishment for the guilty and the final banishment for those unworthy of salvation. She was mercy for the sick. Peace everlasting to the sorrowful. Stern, but fair. Powerful, yet beyond the scheming of mortal men and lesser gods. It is her that this Cult truly serves, not the Butcher.
I know this must be a shock, always I have told you of my loyalty to Mystic, a loyalty I have bestowed upon you, but please listen. With context, I hope that you can understand. So let me begin by telling you of our oldest myth.
It is of the curse that Death bestowed upon her foe, at the moment that he bested her… of the curse she put into the world as Just tore out her heart.
It sinks into the soul of us… into the very blood of those who wield magic. It is a slow, pernicious thing, that takes peaceful men and makes them into killers. It whispers, sweet and soothing. It calms in those moments of desperation, it excites in moments of anticipation.
It has ruined the Mother and her empire. It has put children into the ground, and sown the seeds for Death’s rebirth. I speak of the Blood Call, of that sweet disease that stalks the minds of your peers. That sweet disease which fuels this Butcher’s Cult.
The stories say that Death made this curse in the moment she was slain, that she released it upon the world to ensure that her enemy would suffer worse than she. But that is just a story. The Call exists Mycah, not because Death willed it, but because it wills her. It is nature in all its glory, dragging fools like us to fill the void she left behind. The world needs her, Mycah. The birthright needs her. It needs a god of Death, and no matter how hard others might fight this eventuality, they cannot fight against the birthright. It always gets its way.
This, Mycah, is our purpose. To usher in the return of Death.
Null frowned at the page. The words were cryptic, filled with the nonsensical ramblings of the religious, but the description of the disease reminded her of Mycah’s warning. Was this disease the madness Mycah had spoken of? Was it the reason Mycah had made her promise not to kill? Makes peaceful men into killers, she pondered. A shiver ran through her. Could Mycah really have believed all this?
“What are you reading?”
Null nearly dropped the book into her lap as she drew her eyes up to the entrance to the hut. Beda leaned under the flap of hide which covered the exit, her voice urgent and demanding.
“A… a book,” Null said.
“What kind of book?” Beda asked. Her face was empty, but her voice was skeptical. She pushed the hide to one side, straightening as she entered the hut. Without asking, she snatched the spellbook from Null’s lap and began flipping through it.
Null had to suppress the urge to confront her, for although the gesture had been rude and aggravating, there was nothing she could do about it. Null didn’t like Beda going through her things, but she knew that it was not her place to complain. Null’s property was the king’s property, and Beda was one of his generals. Beda had every right to do whatever she wanted with Null’s things, and while Null didn’t like it, she had to live with it.
“A spellbook,” Null grated, trying to keep her voice calm.
Beda was already flipping through the pages, her mouth moving silently. Null closed her eyes, dreading the moment she got to one of the more heinous passages. Surely, Beda would take the thing and burn it, and then probably stone Null as a witch.
“Does the king know of this?”
“I… I imagine so,” Null said, swallowing as she watched Beda’s eyes scan the pages. It wouldn’t be so bad if the book were destroyed, she certainly didn’t enjoy reading it, but the Atheists didn’t need any more reason to despise her. Or Mycah. “The queen was there when Mycah gave it to me.”
Beda nodded. “I have not seen much of what you and Mycah do.” Beda continued flipping through the pages, pointing to words and pictures that Null could not decipher from where she sat on the cot. “Teleportation… a fog that can hide an entire army… healing wounds and illness.” She looked at Null with a look Null couldn’t read. “Can you truly do these things?”
“Yes…” Null paused, wondering how much of their conversation would get back to the spymaster. She settled on a vague response. “Only some, but not enough.”
“There is much good here.”
For a moment, Null was stunned. Beda hated magic; she was as much Tyvan’s pet as any Atheist, and several of the passages were absolutely gruesome. “You…” Null hesitated. “You do not hate it?”
“A tool is a tool,” Beda shrugged.
“But… but what of the Atheists?” Null had meant to say, ‘What of the spymaster?’ Knowing that her punishment would inevitably come from him.
“I do not follow the Atheists, I follow Lock and he was not a fool. If he believed in this Whore, and in this… magic, then he had good reason.”
Null paused. She had a question she wanted to ask, but feared the answer. She forced herself to continue.
“And… what of me?”
“You serve the king,” Beda said.
“But… you’re not afraid of what I’d do with that knowledge?”
Beda frowned. “Of course not, as I said, you serve the king, and you have a better understanding of that than most.”
Null was bewildered. From Beda, that was answer enough to be a compliment. It seemed, miraculously, that the commander’s crisis of belief had ended in Null’s favor.
“Did you convince him?” Beda asked.
It took Null a moment to realize that Beda was changing the topic. “Mayor Durahl?” Null asked. “No… no, he will not listen.”
“A shame. You should have tried harder.”
“Maybe if you try, he will listen.”
Without turning from the spellbook, Beda waved the suggestion aside. “No,” Beda said. “He has made his choice, if it kills him that is his concern.”
Beda’s tone made Null squeamish. She didn’t know how Beda could dismiss a life without a second thought.
“We should send our own messengers to the farms,” Null suggested. “If Sylvas will not warn them, we should do so.”
“It has already been done.”
“Already done? What, did you not think me capable?” Null asked.
Be
da shrugged. “I have worked with Sylvas before, I knew he wouldn’t budge.”
Then why tell me that I need to try harder? Null wondered, afraid to voice the question. The woman was near insufferable.
“Come,” Beda said, slamming the book shut and setting it on the table. “We must speak to the Vandu consul.”
Beda walked to the exit and held open the flap, waiting for Null to proceed her. Null did so nervously. What would Beda say to the spymaster? Beda may have reacted calmly, but if Tyvan learned that Null had a book which described in detail how to poison one’s foes without raising suspicion, he’d likely burn down another of Null’s huts, with Null in it. Why hadn’t Beda done so herself?
Null grimaced as she exited the hut. Compared to New Luddahn’s neat rows of houses, the Vandu camp was a shamble. Tents and huts were placed randomly, and fire pits dug wherever convenient. Null’s hut was three disorganized rows from the consul’s, within the cluster set up for the New Guard’s arrival.
She and Beda walked in silence, accompanied by the bleating of sheep from the Vandu pens. From the corner of an eye, Null studied the other woman. Beda’s words had been almost… accepting. But… but Null had never known Beda to be anything but the spymaster’s favored. In the palace, if Beda was not at the king’s side, she was at Tyvan’s. But the way she had dismissed the Atheists… Null’s eyes wandered to the woman’s arm. She had to stifle her surprised gasp; Beda was not wearing her Atheist armband.
“Are you okay?” Beda questioned.
“I am fine,” Null responded, hurrying to pull her eyes from Beda before the woman noticed.
Beda nodded, seemingly content without an explanation for Null’s outburst.
Could the truth of Lock worshipping the Whore have changed Beda so much? Null wondered.
A crowd had gathered in the alley alongside the consul’s tent, but it was not for the consul. The Trellish priest, Twil, stood upon an overturned cauldron, speaking to a gathering of Vandu. His robes swayed with his emphatic hand gestures. Except for a lone woman on her knees, who scrubbed the cauldron on which the priest stood, it was all men in the gathering’s front row. The women clustered a pace behind, a narrow walkway between themselves and the consul’s warriors.
Null’s jaw clenched. She was having trouble adjusting to their shameful ways, even wondered why the king allowed such prejudice in his nation.
“We have forgotten our past,” the priest was saying. His white robes were laced by green fray to match the green eyes of his mask. Aside from the eyeholes, the mask was smooth, rounded, and painted white. The eyes were exaggerated around the openings, the corners bending upward like the wings of a swan.
“The Fields were not always fallow, this land was once a paradise, you know this as well as I. Our legends tell us that we served the Farmer. We served Nikom, and this land once fed the whole peninsula. One nation, with the Vandu at the heart of it, the land of Trel.”
Though the crowd listened, they did not cheer or applaud when the priest paused. Only a few nodded. The rest shuffled under his gaze, looking to one another as if hoping someone would challenge this heretic. The Vandu hated the gods more than the Atheists did – if that was possible – and yet they let this man speak, and even gathered to hear his words.
When Null and Beda crossed into his line of vision, the priest’s eyes followed Null over the heads of his listeners, but his speech continued.
“We hate the Farmer for what he has done to our land,” Twil said. “But we forget that Nikom was not our only patron. There are others who would embrace us, who would love our people in Nikom’s absence. One day we shall kill the Farmer, but we cannot do so without aid. There are those who could make it so. All it requires is remembrance of what we’ve lost, and the desire to reclaim it.”
His words brought an angry murmur from the crowd.
“You would have us farm?” a man balked. By his banded harness, the challenger was one of the consul’s elite.
Twil’s gaze drifted to the man who had spoken; the green fringe and shadows on his hood refolding and shifting as he turned his head. Behind the mask, Null could not tell the man’s mood, but the gaze was unsettling.
Emboldened by Twil’s attention, the man went on. “I will return to the land only when I dig the hole to bury Farmer’s head.”
Two horse warriors clapped the speaker on the back. The small knot of women whispered amongst themselves.
The priest lifted his arms until the crowd fell into silence. “Can I ask your name, young warrior?”
The horsewarrior’s eyes flared as his back straightened. “I am Lilt, son of Slug, nephew to the consul.”
“Slug, son of the old Consul Vermin? I have not seen him around, is Slug well?”
The horsewarrior’s face darkened. His eyes sneered. “Do not think to befriend me, priest.”
Twil shrugged. “Then I shall not try…” His gaze turned back to his crowd. “But as our friend Lilt suggested, I do not ask you to farm. I wish for us to return to our former grandeur. There are those to whom we can turn to reclaim that glory just as when we followed the God Among Men.”
There was a slight pause as the warriors lifted closed fists and pressed them to their brow. “Praise be to Lock,” the crowd chanted.
“Yes,” Priest Twil agreed. “Lock. The Breaker of Chains. He saw the Vandu for our strength and made us the spine of his rebellion. I do not wish for us to return to the land. I wish us to reclaim our strength. We were once the heart of Trel, and of Lock, but in recent years we have lost the respect of our countrymen, have we not?”
A few in the crowd murmured agreement.
As Beda directed Null into the consul’s abode, she let the priest’s words fall away. Within the tent, Settish silk drapes formed a ring, separating the entrance from the rest of the structure. The consul sat on a wolf’s hide in the room’s center, his legs crossed and his back straight. Two torches, wrapped in oil-soaked cloth, burned on the supports on either side of the Vandu – the only wood present. The Consul’s eyes flittered open and then lifted.
“Who comes?” he asked ceremoniously.
“I come,” Beda began. “Commander Stills of the New Guard. Speaker for the king.”
The man rose to his feet and smiled, his teeth sharpened to points to match the animal of the pelt on which he stood. Unlike his warriors, he wore a woolen coat and cloak instead of the leather harness. The cloak was patched at the shoulder with the skull pattern that adorned his tent; a fanged skull with open jaw and red eyes like fire.
“Praise be to Erin,” the consul said. “I greet you, woman, who do you bring?”
Null opened her mouth to answer, but Beda cut her off. “She is none but the king’s servant.”
Null’s mouth twisted. Just when she thought Beda was softening, she used that accursed designation.
His face contorting into an open-mouthed snarl, the consul’s tongue folded back to the roof of his mouth like a worm cowering in a cave. “You bring whorespawn into my home?” he asked.
Null’s stomach lurched. The consul’s fearsome gaze was more disapproving than the spymaster’s. She knew that men like this were fools, but she couldn’t help how her body responded; always in panic and shame, as though she’d done something wrong, even though she hadn’t. It was only stupidity that made others hate her. Foolish, stubborn, stupidity.
She lifted her arm to calm her breathing, but Beda mistook the gesture and grabbed her wrist.
“She was chosen by the king,” Beda said. “I do not question him.” Beda’s hand squeezed, causing Null to squeak in spite of herself. She glared at Beda, but the woman ignored her, her attention trained on the consul.
She realized that she should not have doubted anything; Beda may have been slightly softer, but she was still the same woman she had always been. You are nothing, Null reminded herself. Your purpose is to serve your king.
The consul flipped his wrist to indicate Null. “It is bad enough he sends a woman, but that as
well?”
Beda’s fingers dug into Null’s arm.
The consul sneered. “If she must stay, then she will do so quietly. I will not have my ears sullied by godkind filth.” He pressed his tongue to the points of his teeth. “And, if she dares use her foul gift we will wrap her in linen and let the rot take her.”
Godkind? Null wondered. She’d never heard the slur before – and it was surely a slur from his lips – but she marked it down to Vandu superstition.
Beda nodded, as if the matter had been settled. It most certainly had not, but Erin had asked Null to respect the consul’s wishes. She would obey her king, even though she wanted to wrap the consul in linen and let the rot take him, whatever that meant. She hoped it was as painful as he had made it sound.
“You have not dealt with the courtesan,” Beda said.
The consul frowned. “I have told you already, woman, I can do nothing.”
“Commander,” Beda warned, obviously perturbed by how the consul called her ‘woman.’
Null stifled a laugh. In a way, it was good to see an Atheist treated the way Null was for being a mage – at least at first. As the implications settled in, her thoughts soured; unpleasantness still tasted foul, even against a worthy candidate.
“Command ‘her?’” the consul scoffed. “By the voice, it is a man and I have already commanded him to tone down his words, but I cannot make him stop. Every Vandu has a voice.”
Except for the women, Null thought.
Beda frowned. “But by his voice, he is Trellish. Why do you give him Vandu privileges?”
“He knows our myths and customs. Truths only a Vandu would know.” The consul waved her away. “Enough, we do not speak of Nikom’s fall,” he said. Another Vandu saying; they had as many as the Trellish god of justice.
“Do we march soon, woman?”
Beda gave Null’s arm a tug before she crossed the room and sat on the stool of polished hide stretched by four intersecting legs of bone; the consul’s noble seat. Null smiled and licked her upper lip. She’d always thought that Beda’s blunt, and often rude actions were due to a lack of empathy, but this was clearly spite. Null followed, taking the smaller stool belonging to the consul’s favored wife. She had never before wished that she were more like Beda, but right now she almost did.
Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One Page 40