The Demigod Proving

by S. James Nelson

  Teirn shook his head and turned away, again. His voice grew brutal.

  “Though I dread the day I do, Wrend, I will win. I will become god. It’s the right thing for me to be god. This is the right way for the Master to choose an heir.”

  The words stung—Teirn had never spoken to Wrend like that. Yet, Teirn’s confidence made Wrend pause, question if he could possibly be right. Rather than cast the possibility away, Wrend considered it. Naresh, the palsied priest with crazy hair, had taught him to do that. Wrend remembered the lesson well.

  He was twelve. One of his sisters and brothers argued over how to sow the fields up the canyon. The brother wanted to plow them one way, while the sister wanted them to do it differently. Most of the demigods stood behind the sister, and in the end, by sheer force of numbers, rejected the brother’s opinion without really considering it.

  Afterward, Naresh casually strolled by Wrend, and with a sly glance at the defeated brother said, “I wonder how he feels about being cast aside like that.”

  A quick comment. A simple phrase. And Naresh moved on, but it made Wrend think about the brother’s point of view. Before then, no one had ever suggested considering others’ perspectives. Not in any of his lessons. It was always just obedience to the Master. Do what he would think best, without any hope of personal glory or elevation. Empathy—if that was the right word—was a novel concept, but it made sense from many standpoints. Since then, Wrend had sought to consider everyone’s perspective. As a result, he’d gained many friends in the Seraglio. Ultimately that didn’t matter much, but he felt good about it.

  And so now, hearing Teirn’s declaration, Wrend couldn’t help but wonder if it were true that this was the best way for the Master. And for the people of the nation. Maybe it wasn’t.

  Teirn turned away from Wrend, toward the door. “I have to go change. I’ll meet you back outside in a few minutes.”

  He gave Wrend a glance as he opened the door, and left without saying another word or giving Wrend a chance to speak.

  Wrend stood there in the darkness for half a minute, trying to understand his new knowledge, how he should respond. The best option seemed convincing the Master to simply grant the inheritance to Teirn, to bow out of the proving. But he couldn’t do that without revealing that he knew the purpose of the test, and risking the Master’s wrath on Calla and Teirn.

  No, he had to get the Master to reveal the purpose of the test. Then he could reasonably offer to bow out.

  And that would be easier if Teirn decided to help him.

  With that new resolve, he moved into his bedroom, past a pitcher and basin on the table at the bed’s foot, and stripped down to his undershorts. He poured water from the pitcher into the white ceramic bowl, and clenched his teeth at the cold as he washed the grime and sweat away from his body.

  Afterward, he turned to his open closet, donned his red doublet—his favorite color—and pulled on some black pants. As all of his doublets, this one had tree branches embroidered from the shoulders down to the arms, in golden thread. He sat on the bed to buckle on his knee-high boots, and at his waist cinched his thick belt with a built-in scabbard for a knife. Not just any knife, though, his sacrificial knife.

  At age twelve, every demigod received a sacrificial blade. Just the blade. The Master then required them to add a hilt, but allowed them to fashion it however they liked. The priests taught that the knife was a symbol of the demigod’s service to the Master: all demigods served, but could do so in the manner that seemed best to them. Within reason, of course.

  The sacrificial blade itself had a double edge and stretched about nine inches long. It was made of an unusual metal, colored the slightest bit blue. Even with his metallurgical knowledge, he had no idea what gave the blade its color. He’d only ever seen the metal on sacrificial blades, as if the Master had forbidden any other thing to be crafted with the steel.

  He’d kept the hilt simple, with a curved guard and a ridged, ebony grip. He’d added an elongated pommel, and considered placing a jewel in the end. However, he’d never encountered a gem large enough to not look silly.

  After sliding the blade into the scabbard, he donned his bracers. He’d made them himself. All demigods made their own bracers, and therefore all were slightly different.

  His bracers curved at the wrist, so a good portion of the bottom his wrist lay exposed, but the top remained covered. At the elbow, they extended to a point. He’d stitched on ornamental lengths of leather with red thread, and had sewn on little metal loops to help with the lacing. As did all Novitiates, he used red lace to tie it, a reminder that although the bracers were white, and he was a Novitiate, someday he would become a Caretaker, and later the Master would spill his blood for the good of the people.

  As a child, one of the first things he’d learned was to lace and tie the bracers with one hand. He could remember seeing the older children with the bracers and being jealous of them, wishing that like them he could wear the symbol of his dedication to the Master. Now, he looked forward to the day when he could fashion red bracers.

  But if he became god, would he still wear bracers?

  He examined himself in a metal mirror on his nightstand, and remembered Rashel’s admonition regarding his hair. If he was going to be proven, he might as well heed her advice.

  As he did so, he heard the door to his house open. Footsteps as someone came in. Then the door clicked shut.

  “About done,” he said, assuming Teirn had gotten impatient.

  No one responded, but he poured some water from the pitcher into the basin, wet his hand, and rubbed the hair on the back of his head. As he leaned over to pick up the comb, he heard footsteps behind him.

  Pain blossomed in his head, and everything went dark.

  Chapter 10: Confession

  The first time I saw a soul, I understood that our bodies are not who we are. They are merely husks that hide our true identities.

  -Athanaric

  Athanaric stood over the broken body of a Caretaker, Ricken, considering the names of the cultists this son had given him. He simply couldn’t trust the list—for his own sake, and for Teirn’s and Wrend’s.

  A candle sat at the foot of the table between Ricken’s feet. Its steady orange glow cast odd-shaped shadows over the rough walls. Athanaric could see fine in the light; over the centuries he’d refined his vision with Ichor so he could see perfectly well in little light.

  Ricken groaned. He twitched against the many ropes securing him to the table, which stood on twelve-foot legs so Athanaric didn’t have to stoop or bend. The table’s surface glinted in the candlelight; Athanaric had ordered it polished and lacquered centuries before, so it wouldn’t absorb blood.

  Not that he often brought people to this room deep in the Wall. Only every century or so, whenever a group of people or demigods—or both—thought to overthrow his authority. It occurred regularly. He’d grown used to it over the two millennia of his reign. Nearly a hundred and fifty years had passed since the last rebellion, which only he knew about—at least, if the priests and demigods had done their jobs by removing all record of it. He didn’t want his people to know there was a precedent for rejecting his laws, ceremonies, and punishments.

  The only evidence that any rebellions had taken place hung on one wall, in the form of a tapestry woven nearly sixteen hundred years before. Red colored most of the surface, broken by the bodies that had spilled blood. They lay in an extensive field, cut to pieces and mangled and twisted by those who’d executed the second rebellion against him. More than one priest had asked to be excused from cleaning or entering the chamber because of the tapestry.

  But Athanaric kept it. For a remembrance of what could happen if he didn’t hold to his method. If he didn’t raise his children and teach his people properly.

  He reached to the table behind himself, to a supply of breads and fruits, and plucked up a loaf of bread. He began to eat it like a roll. He had to consume as much food as possible, to generate the
Thew Ichor necessary to sustain his body, and to keep himself immortal.

  He turned back to Ricken, one of the demigods that had attacked him in the Courtyard of the Wall, and touched his son’s cheek. The sheen of sweat glistened on the boy’s brow—man’s brow, he had to remind himself; he always thought of his children as young no matter their age. He passed his fingers over the forehead, to wipe the film away.

  “Son,” he said, still chewing, “why did you do this?”

  Ricken looked up at him with wet eyes. His lips quivered. A sorrow passed over his face—the sorrow of the penitent or the damned, Athanaric couldn’t tell. He wished he could. He longed for the omniscience of the old gods. It would have made things so much easier. Then he could have saved his little ones at the nursery.

  As Ricken spoke with visible effort, blood dribbled down his cheek from the corner of his mouth.

  “You . . . tyrant. You torture . . . the entire country . . . with your . . . laws.”

  Athanaric didn’t respond to the accusation. He’d faced it many times through the centuries. Instead, as punishment, he bound Flux Ichor to Riken’s left knee and applied the Ichor down, toward Ricken’s foot. With a pop, the ball slipped out of the socket, and the knee became misshapen. Ricken jerked against his ropes, and cried out.

  “Which names,” Athanaric said, “were lies?”

  They’d spent an hour in the room. At the outset, Ricken had named scores of demigods and priests, certainly with the intention of obfuscating the truth. In fact, if Athanaric hadn’t silenced him, the demigod probably would’ve named all three hundred Caretakers and as many Novitiates as he could. He’d probably memorized all the names precisely to confuse.

  The tactic had worked.

  With measured application of Thew and Flux Ichor, Athanaric had tried to convince Ricken to confess which demigods did not participate in the rebellion. Break this bone. Tear this ligament. Crush this internal organ. He had no need to cause blood to flow; he’d learned that during the last rebellion. He could inflict plenty of pain without opening up the body.

  Rebellions—and the accompanying purging of his children, priests, and followers—always saddened him. But this time it also caused despair. He almost wanted to let them succeed, just so that he could have release from his prolonged life. So little in the past two hundred years had given him a reason to live. Life had turned dull and lethargic. Boredom wore on his soul like sandpaper on skin. Waking up each day required strength of will. How many times had he thought to take his own life, to simply end the misery?

  But the memories of how it had been before his rule—back when his brothers and uncles all vied for power and the people suffered the chaos of their whims and vices—kept him going. The common man had endured war after war, famine after famine. Few lived beyond age thirty, and reaching forty was a rare feat. Disease spread through the malnourished and under-sheltered people every year.

  He’d fixed that. He’d brought order. At least to his people. And that kept him pushing through the desire to die.

  “Tell me,” he said between clenched teeth, “which names are lies?”

  “None,” Ricken said in little more than a whisper. “They all want you dead.”

  That couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t be. Based on the information Athanaric had already gathered, at least two of the names were accurate. Perhaps a third. And Wester was still out there. But no rebellion had ever reached scores of demigods, let alone all of them. And this one certainly hadn’t.

  “I can’t trust the list you’ve given me,” Athanaric said, yet again. “Speak the truth, or all of them will die. Your brothers and your sisters. Your priests. All of them. And you’ll be the cause of their deaths and suffering.”

  This rebellion had already caused enough pain and death. Athanaric could imagine the corpses of toddlers and nursing wives filling the nursery—he could not strike the images from his mind, though he hadn’t even entered the room. The imagined scene—confirmed by his priests in the hours since he’d been at the nursery—had burned itself into his mind. Every minute since, he’d seen the torn-open bodies of newborns, the gaping mouths of silent mothers, and crimson everywhere. He couldn’t shake the imaginations. He couldn’t banish them. Yet they weakened his heart. They rent his soul.

  At least the slaughter had ended there. It could have easily been a different story.

  At the start of the torture, Ricken had mocked Athanaric, gloating over the slaughter of all the mothers and Novitiates in the Seraglio. He’d believed that the rampage had not ended with the nursery, but continued down the canyon, with all of the children dying. Athanaric had let him believe it, so he would talk more. Athanaric didn’t say that he’d verified with his own eyes, from the back of his draegon, that no other villages in the Seraglio had suffered the same as the nursery.

  He could only fathom that conscience had overtaken one of the demigods who’d perpetrated the murders at the nursery, and he’d stopped his brothers from moving down the canyon. That would explain the three dead demigods outside the nursery.

  Ricken shook his head. He clenched his jaw, but blood still flowed from between his lips. Tears streamed from his eyes.

  Athanaric balled his trembling fists and fought his own tears. In all his centuries of living, he still hadn’t mastered the flow of tears. They simply came unbidden when great sorrow or joy touched his heart. He could hide his emotions by schooling his face to calmness, but he couldn’t command his tear ducts to stop functioning. More than once he’d destroyed the ducts, which only ended up drying his eyes out and forcing him to repair the ducts with Thew Ichor.

  He couldn’t make good on the threat to kill all the demigods Ricken had named. He simply couldn’t. Too many innocent demigods would die—chief among them Wrend and Teirn. They couldn’t be part of the rebellion, could they? They’d been with Wester, but surely that had been a coincidence. Hadn’t it?

  He glanced up at the tapestry, at the mangled bodies.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of one of those two precious sons betraying him. He simply couldn’t bear it. He’d hinged too much hope on them. Of course, one would die soon—but which one depended on them and their actions. Regardless, an honorable memory and death awaited the one who died.

  A half sob, half laugh escaped Ricken’s lips. Blood splattered over his chest. He looked at Athanaric with triumphant eyes, knowing Athanaric couldn’t kill all the demigods. He depended on them too much.

  “We win,” Ricken said.

  In response—in impassioned reaction—Athanaric bound Flux Ichor to both sides of Ricken’s skull and applied it inward. The head collapsed with a crunch. Ricken’s body convulsed.

  Immediately, a gray cloud began to seep from Ricken’s body, almost like smoke rising from a fire. It oozed out of his entire form, from head to foot, and sparkled in its depths. It shifted and roiled like a storm cloud, but it was not a cloud. It was not smoke. It was not even something that most people could see. It was Ricken’s soul. It smelled like a field of wild flowers.

  It hung for a moment over the body, as if saying goodbye. A croak escaped Athanaric’s throat—the beginnings of a farewell cut short by anger. The soul drifted toward the ceiling, and passed through the stone.

  Athanaric watched the place where it disappeared. He remembered Ricken’s birth. He could see clearly the first time Ricken had bowed to him. The first fish he’d caught.

  With a sob, he pulled Ricken’s sacrificial knife from its sheath. He then cut off Ricken’s red bracers and dropped all three items to the floor. The knife clattered in the silence.

  He glanced at the tapestry, then hung his head and mourned for his son.

  And considered what he would say to Wrend and Teirn in just a few minutes.

  Chapter 11: Bound

  There’s no feeling quite as sickening as knowing you’ve displeased your god—unless it’s knowing you’re going to die because of it.

  -Wrend

  Keeping his eyes clo
sed, Wrend slipped into consciousness and found himself falling. Except, something kept him up, prevented him from tumbling forward. His head lolled forward, from side to side, as he tried to understand.

  Another feeling overtook the falling sensation—agony barraging the left side of his face and the crown of his head. He’d never felt anything quite as painful as the throbbing in his brain.

  The tumbling of a waterfall filled his ears and the wet air near a river smelled fresh in his nose. The familiar touch of bark rubbed against his back. His feet dangled in midair. He could swing them back and forth as if he were a child sitting on a very tall chair.

  Off somewhere behind him, a woodpecker hammered away. Something rough—a rope, probably—chafed against his throat as his head lolled forward. He could feel that other ropes dug into his chest and stomach—they were what kept him from tumbling forward.

  A familiar caressing covered the left side of his body and his left leg, as if several fingers ran lightly over his clothing. It was a feeler bush, a harmless plant of supple stalks with a purple flower at the end. Out of each flower came antenna that stretched forward, to feel the warmth of a living thing.

  He tried to lift a hand to feel his face, to understand what made his head throb, but something coarse and biting held his hand down. He struggled to open his eyes, and discovered that the left eye wouldn’t budge and the right eye still viewed things through a haze. The spruces had blurred edges. The feeler bush to his left stretched as far as it could to touch him with its dozens of flowers and antenna.

  Directly in front of him, just a few feet down, the river, swollen and raging with snowmelt, tumbled over a thirty-foot cliff to a jumble of rocks below.

  He recognized the place, half a mile up from his village and a quarter mile into the forest; he’d visited here often. A year before, another Novitiate had fallen over the cliff and died on the rocks below.