Teirn was safe. Another Novitiate must have been in the courtyard. But who?
The Master towered over the wagons as he jostled past them. After only a few steps, he bent and reached down. When he straightened, he held a male demigod as a man might hold a disobedient two-year-old.
Wrend gaped in surprise.
The demigod wore red bracers. Not white.
He was a Caretaker, a demigod that had successfully navigated youth to prove himself worthy of a life of service to the people. Once demigods reached that milestone, they always lived to age fifty, when the Master sacrificed them to the people. Wrend had never heard of the Master otherwise killing a Caretaker.
Yet, the Master placed a hand over this demigod’s head and twisted. Even at the distance, Wrend heard the crack as the head came off.
“What,” Teirn said, “in the name of the Master’s fury is going on?”
Wrend shook his head. His mouth gaped.
The Master tossed the Caretaker aside. He placed a hand on the roof of a wagon and jumped over it. As he landed, he reached down again. This time as he stood, he yanked the head off of a flailing demigoddess.
Another Caretaker.
Down toward the Wall, someone shouted, “We’re discovered! Kill him now! Loose the kiranas!”
Throughout the courtyard, more than a dozen Caretakers rose into view over the wagons. It was like they were puppets, and some unseen person in the clouds had lifted their strings. Wrend had never seen anything like it. They hung there for a moment as they drew swords or long knives, then surged at the Master like they’d pushed off of a wall.
With a calm face, the Master swiveled his head to evaluate the converging attack.
“Come, my children,” he said. His deep voice rumbled through the courtyard. “Let me end your betrayal and put your souls at rest.”
The draegon, still near the trees, reared up on two legs and roared. The volume made Wrend’s ears pound.
Screams filled the courtyard. The two women to Wrend’s left turned and fled toward the forest. The serving girls on the boardwalk scrambled for a door. Others began to scatter away from the impending fray.
The Master didn’t wait for the demigods to reach him. He bent, spread his arms wide, and grabbed the ends of a wagon. With no apparent strain, he stood, rotated his body, and threw the wagon. It creaked and twisted in the air, heading for two attacking demigods as they flew toward him.
But in mid-air, their paths shifted. Wrend blinked in surprise. Usually an object moving through the air followed a predictable path based on the angle and speed at which it left the ground. Yet the demigods’ paths changed in mid-air. They moved aside to avoid the wagon. It was like they’d pushed off of something invisible.
The wagon descended, rolling over the roof of another wagon and slamming into another. They both shattered and toppled, nearly crushing a fleeing priest.
“We have to get out of here,” Teirn said.
“To the forest,” Wester said.
They’d both stood and turned toward the trees, but Wrend moved the other way, to help the Master. He drew his sacrificial knife—the only weapon he kept on himself at all times. The steel of the blade had a slight blue hue.
“Where are you going?” Wester said.
“To help,” Wrend said.
A demigoddess jumped from the top of a wagon, slashing at the Master’s throat with a sword. He ducked under her blows and swung his fist upward at her. Like the other demigods, she dodged in mid-air.
Ichor, Wrend realized. She used Ichor to alter her path. In fact, the Master and his attackers all used Ichor to magnify their abilities.
Wester grabbed Wrend’s arm and began to pull him away.
“Come on!” Teirn said.
Wrend yanked his arm free. “I’m going to help!”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Wester said. “Look around you. No one else is running to help.”
Wrend glanced through the courtyard. Wester was right. Everyone that Wrend could see was either attacking the Master—swarming in the air around him with blades flashing—or fleeing. Only the paladins atop the Wall didn’t move. They just stood still, facing the outside world.
“Why isn’t anyone helping?” Wrend said.
“They’re not stupid,” Teirn said.
“Because,” Wester said, “he’s god. He doesn’t need or want help—especially yours.”
Wrend faltered, looking from Wester and Teirn to the Master.
The draegon leapt into the fray. It smashed past wagons and snapped its teeth at a demigod approaching the Master from behind. The demigod dodged the bite and turned to face the draegon.
No fewer than nine Caretakers converged on the Master, each from a different direction. He towered over them, so they had to jump from the ground or from nearby wagons. They moved with unusual speed and strength—leapt higher and moved faster than a regular person could have. As demigods, they looked like normal people, had inherited a normal human size and mortality from their mortal mothers, but had gained the ability to use Ichor from the Master.
A whine arose from the front of the courtyard, like the sound of a thousand hummingbirds. From the very front wagon, a winged creature the size of a dog lifted into view. It had a long neck and a barbed tail.
A kirana. A flesh-eating, lizard-like bird.
It tucked its wings onto its back and dove down among the wagons. At least a dozen more arose from the same spot and scattered into the courtyard, diving and snapping at the fleeing people.
“Cuchorack,” the Master said. “Kill the kiranas.”
The draegon roared and spread its wings. With two flaps and a flexing of its legs, it lifted into the air, passed over the scuffle. It landed in the midst of the kiranas, crushing a wagon. It darted its head side-to-side, nipping at the kiranas, slashing with its horns. The kiranas converged on it. They plunged into its thick fur and came away with chunks of flesh.
“Come on, Wrend!” Wester said.
Wrend stepped backward, nodding that he heard, that he understood he should get out of the courtyard. But he still held his knife. He still wanted to help.
Near the Wall, a wagon tilted upward and lifted into the air, held by a demigoddess. She hovered a dozen feet up, the wagon perched in her hands at an angle. It seemed impossible. Certainly the Master, with his enormous size, could lift a wagon. But a Caretaker no taller than six feet? Wrend couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t have if he hadn’t seen it.
Ichor. It had to be Ichor.
Wrend had known that demigods performed miracles with Ichor, but hadn’t known that the power allowed Caretakers to perform such feats of strength.
The woman hurled the wagon end-over-end at the Master. He scrambled aside to avoid the projectile, and his assailants also dodged. However, before the wagon even landed behind him, a second wagon—thrown from another angle by a different Caretaker—hit him in the chest and disintegrated to pieces. Crates spilled out, dumping ceramic plates that shattered on the flagstone.
Though he stumbled, the Master remained standing.
Wrend halted his retreat. The Master had taken a wagon in the chest and stood firm. What else could he endure?
The attackers fell back among the wagons. A handful of them lifted wagons into the air and tossed them at the Master from several directions.
He jumped up and away. The wagons slammed into each other, shattering in a maelstrom of wood. The Master soared through the air, to the front of the courtyard. Before he landed next to the draegon, his attackers had used their unusual speed to converge near the center of the courtyard. As he hit the ground, the Master caught a kirana by the neck and slammed its body into the ground. Next to him, Cuchorack’s jaw closed over a kirana. Others still swarmed around it.
The Master burst back uphill, throwing aside wagons as if wanting to clear the area so he could fight unhindered. With each swing of his arm, a wagon flipped away. One went to his left. Then his right, then his left. They smashed into other
wagons or flipped up and into the air. The Master roared with each throw.
One wagon tumbled through two others before it collapsed enough to be stopped by a third. Another wagon crunched against the Wall at the far corner of the courtyard, tearing down one of the red curtains as it crumbled against the stone. Yet another wagon slammed through the second-story railing around the balcony of a building not far from Wrend. The next wagon soared onto the parapet of the Wall, taking out three paladins.
The next wagon flew directly toward Wrend.
He turned to run, but he couldn’t move fast enough. The wagon hurtled toward him. It loomed. Every detail became clear: red-tiled roof, a window with blue curtains, and inside a table and chairs upside down.
The wagon hit the ground. It sagged at the impact, but bounced and continued to roll toward him.
Strangely, what he imagined would be his last thought, was that he wished it could have at least been the cheese wagon.
Chapter 5: Seeking Safety
As unpleasant as the task may be, there is no excuse for not considering another’s point of view.
-Wrend
Wester intervened.
He leapt in front of Wrend, ducked under the upside down wagon, and extended his hands over his head so they touched the red-tiled roof. His face contorted in effort, and he pushed.
The wagon lifted into the air, still spinning, and passed over Wrend’s head. It soared into a cluster of pines. Branches cracked and broke as they caught the wagon. Wrend gaped. His blood thundered in his head.
Wester turned toward him. “Don’t just stand there!”
All thoughts of defending the Master disappeared from Wrend’s mind. He turned and bolted for the forest. Ahead of him, Teirn had already passed from the flagstone to the dirt beneath the trees. Wrend followed, pumping his arms and legs as fast as he could, ignoring the continued sound of wood shattering and bones breaking behind him.
“Hurry!” Wester said. “We need to get to safety!”
Wrend followed Teirn into the forest. He didn’t look back. His breath burned in his lungs. He hardly saw where he ran, for in his mind the wagon loomed before him, about to crush him. It filled his head, made his heart pound and his legs weak. As he ran past the trees, pushing branches out of his face, he saw it over and over. The wagon nearly flattening him.
Before he knew it, the sounds of the draegon, kiranas, the Master, and the demigods had all faded, absorbed by the soft dirt and the pinion pines and blue spruces. Wester had passed him and Teirn, ahead, and led them through the dried pine needles.
“Where are you leading us to?” Wrend said, thinking he knew.
“To safety,” Wester said.
“To the Chapel in the Forest?” Teirn said.
Wester nodded. “It’s far enough away from the courtyard that it should be safe there.”
In another ten seconds, they reached a wide stone path that stretched perpendicular to the course they’d been running, and turned left to follow it through the forest. In another thirty seconds, they reached their destination.
Wrend had always liked the Chapel in the Forest. He’d first seen it in the winter, after a blizzard. As he’d approached it, he hadn’t even seen it because of how the ubiquitous white stone blended with the snow.
The pure stone blanketed the ground as it rose in steps up the canyon slope. On each step, a row of white benches stretched in a half circle, so that from the front of the courtyard, where Wrend and his brothers entered, concentric half rings of white bench on white ground stretched up the canyon wall, broken in places by flights of stairs. It took a thousand people to fill the Chapel, and it happened every day. Here, the oldest Novitiates, serving girls, and priests gathered to worship the Master daily, in the shadow of the Enclosure.
Wrend had never climbed over the Enclosure, though like all Novitiates, he’d been tempted to. A few years before, five demigods somehow got over the Enclosure, spent a night outside the Seraglio, and returned. They’d subsequently perished at the Master’s hands.
The Enclosure surrounded the entire Seraglio. It stretched from the Wall at the canyon’s front, up both sides to the very top of the canyon. Constructed of gray and brown stone, it stood forty feet tall and actually leaned inward at an angle that would prevent anyone from climbing it from the inside. Wrend had never seen the opposite side of the Enclosure, but understood that thick thorn bushes grew all along its base and even up its side. Along the top, metal spikes protruded straight up.
Beyond it, steep canyon walls stretched high into the air. They towered over everything. Wrend had never known a day without their presence, watching over him with their swaths of granite stone jutting out in the midst of firs and spruces and pines. How many times had he wished to scale those canyon walls, to see the world beyond? A hundred? A thousand? A dozen times everyday ever since he could conceptualize it?
Wester stopped as they entered the amphitheater, but Wrend continued on, to the first row of benches so he could sit down. Teirn joined him, and they sat panting together, looking back at Wester. He stood just a dozen feet away, near the altar at the foot of the full-size statue of Athanaric.
“What was that all about?” Teirn said.
Wrend shook his head, still barely able to get the wagon out of his head. He couldn’t fathom what he’d seen—the Master’s own children trying to kill him. It had never even occurred to him that the Master could die, though it made sense. There had been other gods in the past—the Master’s siblings, at the least. The Master had killed them to end their tyranny. That meant the Master could die.
The thought chilled Wrend.
Wester, not even winded from the run, placed one hand on his hip and the other on the metal pommel of his sacrificial knife, belted at his side. His gaze switched between Wrend and Teirn, as if evaluating them. He looked back the way they’d come through the woods, then up at the statue of Athanaric, and spoke with caution.
“The world is . . . different than you think.”
“What do you mean?” Teirn said, echoing Wrend’s thought.
Wester smiled bitterly. “You’ve lived your lives like all of us do at first: sheltered here in the Seraglio, learning only what the Master wants you to know, living as obediently as you can, so that you’re not deemed a fruitless bough, and pruned.”
Gooseflesh made the hair on Wrend’s arms stand. He’d never heard such blasphemy.
Wester continued. “You don’t know any other way. You don’t know any better. But the world is not as you think it is.”
Just hearing the seditious words made Wrend want to take a bath. He gripped the hilt of his knife; he hadn’t sheathed it back in the courtyard. The blue metal glinted eagerly.
“That sounds a lot like blasphemy,” he said.
“More like the first ray of truth shed onto your lives.”
“You’re one of them,” Teirn said. “Aren’t you? You should have been fighting the Master back there. You’re one of them.”
He stood, drew his own sacrificial knife, and assumed a defensive stance. Wrend followed his brother’s example, standing and tightening the muscles of his legs and arms, crouching just a bit. He and Teirn had trained together. They could defend themselves against a normal man.
But normal men did not use Ichor, as Wester surely did.
Wester ignored their daggers, and stared at them with intense eyes as he stepped closer.
“You two are unique. You—of all the demigods—can effect the most change.”
“We serve the Master,” Teirn said. “We want nothing to do with you.”
“Other,” Wrend said, “than to subdue you for the Master’s sake.”
He lunged, slashing at Wester’s stomach. Teirn followed, only an instant behind.
With an amused expression, Wester jumped aside of the blow and slapped Wrend’s wrist, knocking the dagger down. It clattered on the stone as Wester shoved Wrend. He stumbled back and fell on his rear.
Wester dodged Teirn’s slice
and grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the dagger. He twisted it as if to make Teirn drop the weapon, but surprise flitted across his face as if Teirn resisted with unexpected strength. With a shout, Teirn pulled his hand away and didn’t wait even a moment to lunge with his blade again. Wrend had never seen him move so fast. Not in all of the times they’d sparred in practice.
Wrend began to scramble to his feet.
Wester stepped aside of the blow, leaving Teirn with his arm extended and his body twisted. Wester darted behind Teirn and grabbed the hand that held the knife. With his other hand, he shoved Teirn backward, even as he stuck a foot out at Teirn’s ankles.
Teirn didn’t lose his grip on the knife, but he lost his balance and fell backward onto the white stone next to Wrend. The force of Wester’s push actually made him slide half a dozen feet with the dry rasp of clothes on stone.
Wrend had gained his feet and so dove at Wester, trying to tackle him. But once again, Wester stepped aside with inhuman speed. He shoved with both palms held forward. With a thump, they struck Wrend’s chest, and he found himself on has backside, next to Teirn, breathing hard.
In the struggle, they’d reversed positions, so that Teirn and Wrend were near the altar, and Wester stood near the first row of benches. He stared down at them with narrow eyes.
“Well, well, Teirn. You have secrets, don’t you?”
Teirn ignored the comment and leapt to his feet. Wrend joined him, but neither of them advanced. Wrend felt naked without his dagger, but it lay on the white stone close to Wester. Wrend’s chest and wrist hurt where Wester had struck him.
“Your spirit is commendable,” Wester said. “But useless—and ultimately fruitless.”
From the direction of the courtyard came a massive boom. Wester glanced in the direction of the sound and stepped back. He raised his hands.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“Your mere presence injures my sensibilities,” Wrend said.
“I could kill you now if I wanted,” Wester said. “So don’t tempt me.”
The Demigod Proving Page 3