by Ron Glick
“Do you plan to sit in the water all morning yelling like that, or will there be a point you become a man again long enough to pull yourself out and dry off before you catch your death of cold?”
Nathaniel turned from his watery misery to see the so-called Lady Brea standing at the treeline. Perfect, he thought. Abject humiliation on top of it all!
Nathaniel picked himself up, balancing on the slick rocks of the streambed. “Why don't you go bother some other heretic? This one's already suffering well enough without you, thank you very kindly.”
Brea cocked her head. “I truly do not understand you. I cannot begin to imagine the kind of power you must have, yet you sulk around like an infant, throwing a tantrum in the middle of the wilderness!”
Nathaniel's head snapped up. Had she said “power”? She knew. Somehow, she knew about the Avatar power given to him by the Old Gods and she had come after him. The Gods had warned him that sooner or later someone else would learn of his empowerment and seek him out for their own ends. And here was the first – a priestess of one of the New Order, scolding him about wasted “power”. She had come, just as they had warned him she would! But how could the New Order have found out about him so soon if the Old Gods' schemes were truly hidden from them all this time?
“I... don't know what you're talking about,” Nathaniel fumbled. He tried to put force behind the words, but he felt more like a child caught in a lie even before he uttered the words.
“Oh, please,” Brea purred. “I don't need the ability to truth read to know that was a lie.”
Nathaniel slowly sloshed to the edge of the stream. By fortune, he had lost his grip on his boots before falling into the river, which he could see now lying upon the bank. Unfortunately, only one remained completely dry; the other boot's calf had been half-submerged in the water. He ambled onto the bank where they lay, trying to let himself drip some of the water from himself before trying to get the leather garments wetter than the one already was.
“Your feet are bleeding,” Brea commented casually.
Nathaniel looked down, lifting the sole of one of his feet. Sure enough, several lacerations bled freely, as likely from the trek through the woods as his walk in the stream, it seemed. Cursing, he sat down to take a better look at his other foot.
“You certainly do make a show of being helpless, don't you?”
Nathaniel glared at her. “Why don't you just come out and say whatever it is you're after so you can leave me to bleed in peace?”
“I'm not the one playing at games, Nate.” There was that stress upon his name again. “You're the master of that, Nate. You could give me lessons on how to hide your true nature, couldn't you, Nate? You could help me be the best priestess ever to wear the mantle if I could learn at your knee how such deception is accomplished! Wouldn't that be something, Nate?”
“Why do you keep saying my name like that?”
“Why, isn't that what you want to be called? Or would you rather I call you Nathaniel? Or maybe Nathan? Goodsmith, perhaps? Is there one I am missing?” Brea grimaced. “Oh, would you stop bleeding all over yourself already?”
“What would you have me do? Slice a vein to bleed out faster? And what have you got against my name?”
“I have nothing against your name, not your real name. I am Imery's vassal in this world, and I have dedicated my life to exposing the truth. So why don't you share some truth and stop all this pretense? I know who you are. I know what you are. The only thing I do not know is which you are.”
Now even Nathaniel was lost. He had been told by both Airek and Karmel that he was the only Avatar, that none of the other potentials would have awakened because he was the closest to wherever it was this sword was now. Were there more, after all? Were the Gods misleading him about his importance in their scheme? Or did Brea refer to the ones who had also held the potential to become the Avatar besides him? And somewhere, if the Gods' timeline could be believed, somewhere there was a nine year old boy or girl who would have taken his place in six years or so, so who knew how many other nine year old potentials were out there? If he had the Avatar power now, exactly how helpless were those others?
Or perhaps Brea meant whether he was the actual Avatar or one of the potentials in the first place. Were the other potentials in the world being subjected to a similar test by other priests, to test whether one of them had inherited the actual power? Perhaps the Old Gods were far less powerful than they even believed and the New Order had known all along about the swords, and only lay in wait, watching their potentials to see which one became the actual Avatar?
For all the good it did to have that so-called power. So far, all it had been good for was to fill his head with meaningless pictures and draw out fossilized relics that still believed they were Gods!
“Spell it out,” Nathaniel growled, his mind still racing through the possibilities, or what he could do if she intended him harm. Even without his feet ribboned as they were, priests were reputed to have control over real magic. How could he hope to stand against something like that? “What is it you want from me?”
“Your name would suffice for a beginning.”
“You know my name.”
“Humor me then.”
Nathaniel sighed. “If it will send you away, then fine. Nathaniel Goodsmith.”
“No, your real name.”
“That is my real name. What, you want my middle name, as well? It's Aireon.”
Brea scrunched her eyebrows, as though focusing hard to see something. Her eyes never wavered from looking at Nathaniel, though. “Okay, so maybe that is also your name. But I want to know your real name. Not the one you are using as your own now.”
“What are you talking about? I've only got one name!”
Brea jerked back, stricken. She could not understand it. Imery had given her special power, the ability to pierce any illusion or deception, power enough to thwart anything the Old Gods could have mastered. Presumably, when Nathaniel protested about not being a God, the talent should have exposed the truth to her. Instead, everything Nathaniel said came to her as truth. No deception. No illusion. No falsehoods. Except for when she had first challenged him. He had been wary, saying he did not know what she was talking about. Her new talent had told her he did. Yet he dodged her every effort to get at what he really was!
Well, there was one question he could not dodge. Imery had assured her of that. If her special power would fail, she had been told there was one question no God could refuse to answer.
“Who are you?” she asked, uncertainty cracking her voice.
“What? You know who I am!”
“Answer the question,” Brea forced out. Her confidence was beginning to waiver, and with it, she had begun to feel the effects of his charm once again. “You can not refuse to answer it. Who are you?”
Awareness blossomed in Nathaniel's mind, at last. She had it mixed up! He could refuse to answer that question, but a God could not! A God must name himself if asked, Airek had said. Suddenly her comment about having power while acting like a child made sense. As did her demand that he just stop bleeding. Brea thought he was a God! She believed he was one of the Old Gods in hiding! She had somehow stumbled onto his power and drawn the wrong conclusion! Maybe she did not know anything about the Avatar power or its purpose after all. She had just seen a power she did not understand and somehow convinced herself that he was a God made flesh. How ironic, he thought, when I am little better than a helpless pawn!
Nathaniel could not help but chuckle in relief. Maybe he could extradite himself from this...
“What is so funny?” Brea asked, her face flushing visibly.
“You.” Nathaniel tried to hide the smile, but failed. “You think I'm a God, don't you? Me? I'm just a simple man trying to raise a family as far away from you New Order types as I can manage. How does that make me a God?”
Brea felt her breath rush out of her. Everything he had just said was true? How could it be? Imery herself had said h
is power was that of one of the Old Gods, so he had to be one himself! Yet he plainly told her he was not a God at all, and her power had confirmed it!
“Then how...” she stammered. “Your magic...” Her heart raced now with the aching desire to throw herself at his feet to beg for his forgiveness. How could she ever have doubted him?
“What magic?”
“The charm spell you put on me...” Brea blushed deeper at that admission, and her heart raced all the faster, reminding herself of the lust she still carried inside her even with the original enchantment suppressed.
“What spell? I don't know any spells! I'm not a wizard, either!”
More truth! He did not know what she was talking about! He had not only not cast a spell on her, he didn't know any spells in the first place! How could she... How could Imery have been so... wrong?
Brea felt dizzy. “Th-then your feet are really...”
Nathaniel looked again at his feet, now crusted in places with drying blood, most of the cuts having stopped bleeding by that time. “Yes, they really hurt. Thanks so much for the concern.”
Brea fell to her knees in disbelief. Imery had been wrong. Goodsmith was no God at all. And she had made a complete fool of herself over the man she had fallen in love with! Yes, she knew it now, aided by her newly acquired talent. She could not even lie to herself anymore. Magic or no, she was in love with Nathaniel Goodsmith!
Looking up, she saw Nathaniel moving closer to the stream to clean his feet. Guilt overwhelmed her and she rose to rush to his side. “Let me help you with those,” she pleaded as kindly as she could manage.
“You're not going to do anything spiritual like worshiping my feet now, are you? Or perhaps dunking me under water to see if I can somehow not drown?” Nathaniel gave a wry grin. Whatever numbness had blocked the pain before was now completely gone. He had started having serious concerns about how he could make it back without crawling. And he really dreaded the idea of Brea watching him do that! He had just started thinking of how he could get her to leave when she had come over to his side offering aid.
“No, but I can heal them, if you'll let me,” she said, the blush creeping over her face burning at the words. She had probably deserved that and worse for the way she had behaved. More than anything, she wanted to undo the damage she had caused with her wild accusations. But she would have to settle for the time being upon his wounds of the flesh.
“What, like laying hands?” Nathaniel had, of course, heard of such things, but had never given the stories much credence. A spell-like ability of certain priests to be able to heal the wounds of their faithful was something that seemed pretty far-fetched, but if it were true, it would show a new level of depravity for the New Order, to be able to heal the sick and wounded but to choose to reserve that magic for themselves alone seemed inhumane to him. How could a priest walk down a road, seeing the poor and destitute – and in larger towns he understood them to be in such massive numbers as to have weeping sores upon their skin – and to neglect to offer any succor? Men of Gods? What kind of men would follow such Gods if they knew?
“I am not one of your converts and you cannot expect me to become one, either,” Nathaniel said. He felt a sudden vulnerability at the idea of letting this woman care for him in this way. It felt too... intimate, somehow.
“That's not necessary for it to work,” Brea grinned sardonically. She had heard the stories voiced among the masses, too. Only she knew what parts were real and which were not. For instance, she knew that a priest could cause wounds as easily as cure them, though she had no intention of mentioning that aspect to the man at this point in time.
Nathaniel grimaced at the thought of New Order magic being used on his body, even in a beneficial way. But in spite of the anxiety at the thought, he nodded his approval to try. If it worked, at least maybe he could walk back on his own two feet rather than have her witness his invalidity.
Brea leaned down and carefully took Nathaniel's right foot into her hands. Tenderly, she lowed it into the stream to finish cleaning it, feeling gingerly as she did so for any foreign objects inside the cuts. When at last she was satisfied, she pulled the foot from the water and laid it across the robe on her lap.
Brea closed her eyes and focused herself on the incantation she would need to heal the wounds in Nathaniel's flesh. This was clerical magic, granted to priests for their faithful devotion and adherence to the will of their Gods. It required daily meditations to maintain since the spell itself was in the form of ancient magic runes imprinted on her mind by her Goddess, runes that would burn themselves out of her memory whenever they were used or fade away once she went to sleep.
Somehow, in a way Brea truly did not understand, these runes tapped into the magical energies all around her and directed them to a specific task. The magic did not exist inside her before she recited the incantation. In fact, she could feel the energy flowing into her each time she called upon the magic. The runes existed purely as a tool to draw the energy into her to effect the desired result.
Healing was one of the most basic spells taught to acolytes when they first received their training in the priesthood. The talent to heal, or in counterpoint to inflict, wounds was considered a cornerstone of the priesthood, and most priests practiced committing several such spells, departmentalized separately within their minds, each day to memory. Once a spell was recited, it would burn out the memory of the runes in a priests mind, so it was necessary to learn how to divide the mind, to even learn multiple copies of the same spell, to assure that all runes would not be expunged for the casting of a minor cantrip.
In this respect, the priest would make the decision on which spells he might need each day and then request these of his or her God during morning meditation and prayer. The more experienced the priest, the greater their capacity for spell use and the greater the number – and the more powerful – of spells they could absorb each day.
This spell use differed significantly from the power Imery had given to Brea. That power came freely when bidden without a spell nor incantation and had not faded last night when she was finally able to sleep. She did not really understand that kind of power, either.
Softly, she spoke the ancient words of magic that came to her as she accessed the part of her memory that stored the spell. Immediately, a warm, soothing energy flowed from the air around her into her hands that cradled Nathaniel's foot. He could actually feel his skin moving, stretching to close the gaps and knitting together deep under the skin where the cuts had penetrated. The pain also retreated with the spreading warmth from Brea's hands. In moments, the process was complete and Nathaniel looked down at his newly mended foot, completely healed as though the abrasions had never existed!
Nathaniel looked upon Brea with a new sense of admiration. This was real magic, nothing like the facade of power the Old Gods had inflicted upon him. This was a power that could actually help people. Why then had the New Order spent so much time destroying lives if they could perform such miraculous deeds as this?
Nathaniel's gaze of admiration did not escape Brea's attention when she opened her eyes. She felt herself blush again, now for an entirely different reason. She had helped to create a pleasant feeling within the chest of the man she adored, even if only for a moment. Perhaps there still was hope for her in this man's heart, after all...
Putting aside thoughts of her own self-interest, Brea bent down to repeat the process for Nathaniel's other injured foot.
Chapter Nine
“There is still something you have not answered,” said Brea.
Nathaniel turned to look at her. “I thought we had settled this?”
The two had begun the trek back to Nathaniel's home. They moved at a leisurely pace, mostly set by Nathaniel, who was in no great hurry to return to the confrontation with his wife. Brea's healing had been a great success and he could hardly tell that his feet had been injured, at all. The only discomfort he felt was the itch where his wet boot now rubbed against his leg, or
more accurately, against his pants leg, which was now as equally wet as the leather. It was a fair exchange in his mind, though – to wear a wet boot rather than cutting his feet yet again on the walk back. And besides, he was fortunate to be walking back in the first place.
Upon finishing her healing, Brea had watched as Nathaniel had put on his boots, and then had begun to head back the way she had come. There were many things Nathaniel had been raised to believe in, and even more that he had come to believe in since his mother's death, but he could not in good conscience let the woman walk back alone. Aside from being extremely disrespectful and impolite, especially after what she had done to mend his feet, there was always the odd chance that she could either become lost or become the victim of some wild animal. True, this close to their cabin, that was unlikely, but he knew he would never have been able to live down the fact had she indeed come to harm after leaving him alone. And so he had followed her, and in short order had found himself walking beside her.
Nathaniel looked around to gauge the distance left to return home. The thought of dread at returning home seemed so foreign to him. Before today, there was never once that he was away from his home that he did not pick up his pace as he returned, so overwhelmed with love had he been for his wife. Now he found himself dragging his feet, trying to keep away the inevitable problems associated with his return. Confronting Mari was very nearly the last thing he wanted to do. In truth, he would rather be having one of his seemingly frequent encounters with one of the Old Gods than do this.
And Brea had unnerved him, as well. That she had actually come to believe that he was one of the Old Gods himself was mind blowing, but even more unsettling was that she somehow had discovered he had power, at all. She had struck far too close to the truth for Nathaniel's taste, and now he found himself taut with the fear that she would somehow draw the remaining pieces together and report who he was to her own Goddess, that he was the Old Gods' chosen avatar, complete with powers that were somehow intended to overthrow the New Order. Or whatever he was supposed to be doing. What could seeking out swords have to do with power struggles between Gods, anyway?