by NS Dolkart
And just like that, she was gone.
26
The Blasphemer
Sephas and his disciples sat in the gardens of Orona’s estate, arguing over how much to panic. That was what it came down to, really. Twin emissaries had come from Ardis and Salemica to demand that Sephas be handed over to that loathsome boy-priest Narky, and now his inner circle feared the worst.
Narky was no longer a boy, of course, but Sephas hadn’t seen him since his insolent and repulsive teenage years and, truth be told, he preferred to imagine him that way still. It was better than buying into the myth of the mysterious and prophetic Black Priest. To his dying breath Sephas would refuse that child respect.
“You should leave the city,” Tarax urged. “The council isn’t eager for war, especially when they have more to lose than to gain. Ardis and Salemica are too far inland to be ruled, and the risk of loss is bigger than the reward in plunder. Ardis has had over a decade to recover from their losses, and the Dragon Touched never lost a battle even when their numbers were small. The High Council will give in, I know they will. Please. Flee to Parakas for now. Come back after this blows over.”
“And who do we have in Parakas?” Orona asked. “Nobody. With our support, your teachings have been gaining influence here. Leave now, and the city will be lost to the Laarnan degenerates.”
Sephas nodded. Yes, Orona would say that. The man would never be as concerned for Sephas’ safety as he was about the corrupting influence of Ravennis’ first people, and that stance was in many ways more valuable than all his material support. He had his priorities straight.
In the days when Sephas was still Second Priest in the Great Temple of Elkinar, the city of Ardis had gone to war against Laarna, the city of Ravennis. They had sacked Laarna and slain its famed oracle, but the devil Ravennis had more than survived. He had risen to slay both Magor and Elkinar and usurped Their thrones. Now, through His lowest servants, He was working His evil in Atuna as well.
Orona would not let that stand, bless him. He was Sephas’ main benefactor here, one of Atuna’s wealthiest patriarchs, and he had been horrified when his friends on the council voted to take in the refugees of Laarna. After years of furious and unsuccessful work trying to persuade the council to change its policy, Sephas had presented a glorious opportunity and a change of strategy: to turn the Atunaean populace against Ravennis and force the council’s hand.
Sephas signaled to Hindra for his cup to be filled and cleared his throat. “My God is dead; there is no fear left in me. Elkinar can return only through the power of our faith, and be thus reborn into greater divinity just as His usurper has claimed such ability. The cycle of death and rebirth is not to be feared: if Atuna chooses to bow to the inland cities like a dog to its masters, let it. I will make my stand here.”
Tarax bowed his head. “You are an inspiration. I apologize for suggesting the path of weakness.”
Sephas raised his cup so that Hindra could fill it, and said, “Don’t apologize. Your concern is touching and appropriate. I cannot say what the council will choose to do, but Ravennis will be driven out of Atuna long before I am, I swear to that.”
His followers fell to a hushed reverie as he wet his dry throat, thankful for Orona’s hospitality. Sephas drank boiled water, not wine – luxury was obscene for one whose God was dead – but even so he felt like a king. Who would ever have expected that he would find more respect in a place like this, far from the city of his birth, than in his God’s own great temple? But such was the cycle. The faith was dead now in Anardis; it must be reborn elsewhere.
His own High Priestess had betrayed him, betrayed their God. She had accepted the boy-priest’s survival as a sign that his God and Elkinar were one and the same, despite all theological arguments to the contrary, and her rank-and-file had followed her into the cursed Church of Ravennis almost to a man. Disgusting. She would not be reborn.
He sent his followers to redouble their ministrations and sat awhile, watching the sun play on the leaves. Orona’s gardens were a lush green despite the dryness of the season – such were the benefits of having slaves and servants to send for water even for one’s plants. Orona was the one follower who had never converted and never abandoned luxury: he was supporting Sephas to protect his beloved city, not out of faith. His shrine to Atun still stood proudly in the center courtyard.
Days went by, and the council made no decision. Orona was well-connected, though, and Sephas received thorough reports on their deliberations. As time went by, the faction that supported giving Sephas to his enemies was gaining ground.
“What will you do?” Tella asked. The girl was Orona’s granddaughter, and she and her twin had their own history with the boy-priest. They had been only six when they knew him, but they still remembered his cruelty. Children did not forget such things.
“Pray for a miracle and steel myself for the opposite. I will not go with them, nor will I flee. If this city will not stand its ground for me, then I must embrace my rebirth.”
“They… they won’t do anything to Grandpa, though, right? They’re his friends.”
“Of course not. They won’t harm any of my followers here. The High Council may give in and banish me, a foreigner, but they would never harm their own citizens to appease some other city. If the demands came to that, they would happily go to war.”
His words reassured the girl. “I’m surprised the Dragon Touched sent someone to support Ardis,” she said. “Narky was terrible, but I thought Criton was all right. He saved that other girl from Mayar.”
“Men rarely hesitate to make friends with terrible people,” Sephas said. “It is one of our strengths, and one of our weaknesses.”
The next morning, soldiers appeared outside Orona’s estate. All members of the household, all slaves and servants, all Sephas’ followers could come and go as they pleased, but Sephas was officially under house arrest.
After that, the flow of information slowed to a trickle. Orona’s sources would not speak with him, possibly out of fear, more likely out of shame.
“Cowards!” the man fumed. “The western cities haven’t even threatened war, and already they’re bending to their whim! I am ashamed of my city, Sephas. I assure you, come the next elections I will be replacing that coward Gatunra.”
“I appreciate your passion, my friend. What will come will come.”
Come it did. A second quake, a frightful omen, shook the heavens one night, and the following afternoon the soldiers received orders to enter the estate and remove Sephas. The order came at a time when nearly everyone was away at the temples, and among Orona’s family only Tella was home with a summer cold. Sephas could hear her at the gate, arguing with the guards over whether they had the authority to enter. It was a good fight, but Sephas knew there was no hope of Orona’s granddaughter winning it.
He went to the kitchens, where he found Hindra cutting strips of lamb to be transformed, later, into carobs. It was all the rage in Atuna to disguise one food as another, and though Sephas did not partake of Orona’s feasts, he was well-acquainted with Hindra’s aesthetic genius. She would slice the lamb impossibly thin, season the inside with crushed herbs and fill it with a few beads of who knew what delicacy to mimic seeds, then sew the slices together again before browning the outside with fire and spices. He could almost smell the dish already.
It was shameful to prepare a feast for the evening after such a terrible omen, but Orona was a stubborn man when it came to his luxuries.
Sephas reached out his hand. “Your knife.”
Hindra’s eyes widened, but she handed it to him without question. Good. He didn’t want to spend his final moments arguing with a slave.
Father Sephas, priest of Elkinar, would not be tortured. He would not be trotted before his enemies like a prize, humiliated for the sake of that boy-priest’s triumph. He turned the knife inward and closed his eyes. When I am reborn, he thought, Elkinar will reign once more.
He let out a deep breath and p
lunged the knife into his gut.
27
Narky
The first messenger from Atuna brought good news: the Atunaean High Council had placed Sage Sephas under house arrest while it considered the proposal to hand him over, and word on the street was that they were likely to accede to the envoys’ request.
“There,” Narky said once the messenger had left. “Mageris can’t complain about that. If Atuna isn’t going to put up a fight, we’ve got what we wanted without losing anything.”
“And all because we coordinated with Salemica,” Ptera added. “You’d better remind him of that. If he got used to getting what he wanted through diplomacy, it would do our nation a lot of good.”
Narky twisted his mouth and bit his inside lip. “I won’t feel safe saying that until Sephas is in our hands. If the council changes its mind, I don’t want to look like an idiot. That would push him even further in the other direction.”
“Very true,” Lepidos put in, smiling patronizingly toward Ptera. They had a mostly-friendly rivalry, the two of them, which Narky found irritating but tried to stay out of. Openly favoring his wife, though understandable, could only drive a rift in the church between the priests who had come to Ravennis through Elkinar, and those who had converted before the unification. The former group was notably larger.
Waiting for the second messenger was torture. It took so long that Narky suspected the High Council was drawing it out on purpose, letting him and Mageris know that while they took the request seriously, they were not so afraid of Ardis or Salemica that they felt the need to hurry.
A second quake shook the heavens while Narky was still waiting for another messenger to come. This one struck late at night, and it took some time for Narky to wake up enough to comprehend what was happening. By the time he reached the window where Ptera and Grace were already standing, most of the noise had died down. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at the jiggling moon and stars, wondering for the first time since childhood what they were made of. He knew he ought to be afraid, considering the grim implications of a second quake like the last one, but what he felt instead was wonder. This world that the Gods had built, for all that it seemed to be halfway to coming apart, was a beautiful place.
The whole city seemed to be waiting outside the great temple the next morning, demanding to know what was happening.
“We’ve reached a time of reckoning,” Narky told them in his best formal voice – he secretly thought of it as his Psander voice. “Even the Gods in heaven are shaking with fear, but the Lord Below, our eternal protector, is unafraid. Trust in Him. Give yourselves over to Him. Only He can save you.”
Narky wished he could tell them the plain truth: that he had no idea what was going on up there. Was God Most High tossing the Lower Gods around for some reason? Was it the Yarek, with its branches up in the clouds, straining against the barrier of sky until it shook? Unless Ravennis felt the need to tell him, he would probably stay in the dark forever.
He spent the rest of the day reassuring the people that their God could still protect them, his mind still occupied with the problem of Sephas and that nagging question: why hadn’t he heard anything yet? Even if the second messenger only said that the Atunaean council was still deliberating, it would be better than this silence.
In fact, there was no second messenger. Two days later, the Ardisian envoy himself returned from Atuna, empty-handed. It was with dread that Narky answered Mageris’ summons to hear what the man had to say.
The throne room in the king’s palace had changed drastically since the rule of King Magerion. Mageris’ father had taken every opportunity to align himself with Ravennis against the old God Magor and had covered the floor of his throne room with boarskin rugs so that Magor’s sacred animal could be trod on as often as possible. These had disappeared since Mageris’ ascension to the throne, as had the pigskin footstool that had once stood before the throne. The surface now was bare stone, and Mageris sat the throne with both feet on the floor. The tapestries on the walls depicted various scenes of family glory, including Magerion’s coronation and his earlier role in the uprising against the Dragon Touched, but they no longer included the death of the priests of Magor. Mageris still missed the old days, before Narky.
“Well?” the king snapped when the envoy entered and bowed. “What happened?”
“Your Majesty, your Eminence, the blasphemer Sephas is dead.”
“What?” Narky cried. “We didn’t ask them to execute him themselves!” He spared a suspicious glance for the king. “Or did we?”
“We did not,” the king answered. “Explain, man.”
“After long deliberations, the High Council agreed unanimously to accede to our request and sent men to bind Sephas and bring him here with me. But when they arrived, they found the man already dying. He had gutted himself. The Council chose to let his followers make him a shrine in the city and bury him there, rather than send us his body. His followers have standing in Atuna – the councilmen told me that they would not insult their people by letting the man’s body be desecrated.”
“Did you see the body yourself?”
“I did, your Majesty. The man is dead.”
Mageris turned to Narky. “Well? Are you satisfied with that result?”
His tone seemed to imply that he thought Narky’s delicate feelings might be hurt. Narky said, “I don’t like what it says about Atuna, if Sephas had a following there. But it’ll do. He didn’t have much personal appeal, from what I remember. He probably figured his followers would lift him up as a martyr, but if you ask me, he’ll be forgotten in a few years.”
Mageris smirked. “Yes, Your Eminence, I’m sure you’re right. Some people are far less loved than they think.”
Narky bit back his response and left the chamber. It was a cheap blow, and anyway, it was wrong: Narky didn’t think people loved him. He had no illusions that his standing relied on anything other than Ravennis’ decree. More than a decade after his arrival in Ardis, Narky was still a foreigner here.
He walked back to the temple, still deciding what to think about Sephas’ death. It wasn’t the satisfying end he had hoped for, but it still got the job done, didn’t it? The important thing was that it silenced the man, for all that he may have been spared public humiliation. Ravennis had silenced another enemy – what more could Narky want, really?
For once, both Ptera and Lepidos agreed with him. They took the news as an imperfect victory, but an important one nonetheless. “I am glad we’ll be free of his blasphemy,” Lepidos said, and Ptera added, “Good riddance. Did you remind Mageris that he won this victory by allying with the Dragon Touched?”
“No,” Narky admitted.
“We’ll have plenty of opportunities to reinforce that message,” Father Lepidos said. “In any case, Sephas and his blasphemies are gone.”
“Yeah. He left us his buried prophecy and then went and buried himself. It’s almost thoughtful of him.”
“We can all sleep easier now,” Ptera said. “Ravennis is good.”
But sleep that night was not easy, at least not for Narky. He lay with Ptera and Grace beside him, feeling restless and incomplete. He had expected more, somehow. He had expected to see the man die, for one, but it wasn’t as if he doubted the emissary’s word that Sephas was dead, he just… he didn’t know. He didn’t know what bothered him about it, but something told him that for all his recent successes, he still wasn’t done. This had all been easier than he had expected, for all that it hadn’t precisely been easy. Surely Ravennis expected more of him.
A voice spoke in the darkness. “Well done, Narky. You have served well as My servant and My champion.”
Ravennis. Narky tried to jump out of bed and prostrate himself, but his body wouldn’t move. There was a weight on his chest; it took all his strength just to breathe.
“Your body is sleeping,” the God said. “Only your soul is awake.”
Narky lay there, struggling, impotent. All the things he had
ever wanted to say to his God, all the questions he had wanted to ask, escaped his mind in an instant. He was not worthy of this visitation. He wasn’t worthy of anything.
“It is not for you to decide your worth,” Ravennis stated. “I have chosen to raise you up; your doubts are blasphemous.”
I’m sorry, Narky thought at Him. My doubts are a part of me. I don’t think I can stop.
“Your apology is accepted.”
Beside Narky, Grace stirred. How much of the Lord Below’s presence was dream, and how much was physical?
Why are You here? What have I done to deserve Your presence?
“There is a task you must perform. No other task in your life matches it in importance, for the souls of all things are at stake. The living, the dead, the worlds above and below. All rest on this one task.”
Tell me. I am Your servant.
“Your friend Phaedra has returned to this world from the Third Side, the land sequestered and forbidden. She comes to sacrifice the world below to the Yarek. Her allies shield her, yearning for My destruction, never caring that the souls of the dead and the living will be consumed. Your friend, frightened and deluded, will keep you and those you love from tasting My rewards; she will end your eternity. You must kill her.”
Why can’t I just convince her to stop?
“Because you will not succeed.”
The words sank into Narky’s soul with all the gravity of fate itself. There were things Ravennis could see that no human could guess at. Among infinite possibilities, there was no future in which Narky could convince Phaedra to give up her mission peacefully. What a terrible thing to know.
Then please, he asked, why do I need to do it? Why not another servant?