by Ron Glick
Not that he had decided to accept the mantle offered him. He had not yet been convinced that it was a job he could not escape. And now he had even more reason to stay than before. His marriage was a farce. His wife was some kind of agent for the New Order, selling her body in order to “save” the souls of his children. How could he possibly just leave his son with such a woman?
He could just imagine telling her he was leaving on a quest for the Old Gods to recover nine magical swords designed to slay the Gods of the New Order. He would never see Geoffrey again, assuming he was not drawn and quartered by her family first. Assuming he left directly without giving her time to adjust, he would still likely not have made it more than a handful of leagues before she had told her father, and a lynch mob would have been in pursuit. Maybe he could have eluded them, but did he really want to risk something like that, knowing that even that would cost him the only child he was ever likely to have now?
So if he left, he would have to so without an explanation, or a flimsy concocted story to justify the trip. Of course, she would not believe anything he said. She would be convinced he was leaving her because of her deceptions. Which would certainly, in part, be true. He could not bare the idea of being near her, not knowing what he now did. But to leave would also assure he would never see his son again. She would not stay here. She would move back in with her father and that man would never let him near his son.
What other choices were there? To take Geoffrey with him? Too dangerous. To evict her and raise Geoffrey alone? A possibility, but one likely to provoke his father-in-law. It seemed there were no clear answers and until he had decided what to do, until he settled upon a due course of action, he could not confront Mari.
All of this he had thought through as he had walked beside Brea. Nothing much had been said between them until now, either, and for that he had been grateful. That gratitude, however, was destined to be short-lived.
“We settled some things, but not everything,” Brea said. She walked on for a minute, forming her question in her mind before speaking again. “You are hiding something. You were nervous when I first confronted you. So what did you think I was talking about?”
“I had no idea,” Nathaniel responded.
A lie, observed Brea.
“You followed me into the woods and I don't have the best history with your kind. How did you expect me to act?” Nathaniel did his best to seem put off by the subject, yet Brea did not drop it.
“Hmmm...” she mused. “Some truth there. So you've had bad experiences with women or whatever...”
“Not women,” Nathaniel snapped. “Priests. Specifically, New Order priests.”
Brea stopped short for a moment, stunned by the venom in Nathaniel's words. She quickly recovered from her shock though and rushed to make up the distance she had lost. With a firm grip, she seized the man's arm and forced him to stop. “What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“Somehow, I imagine it would not be that difficult to find out about, if you have had some sour dealings with a priest in the past. Oaken Wood is a small town and seems ripe with gossip mongers...”
“Ask away. It's pretty well known. You'll get all the answers you want, for sure.” Nathaniel turned a wicked grin upon the girl. “But you'll have to leave me be if you wish to go after your answers. For awhile, at least...”
Brea flushed at the implication. Surely, he thought she was angered, but in truth his words had stung. He actually wanted rid of her...
She snapped her mouth shut as she cut off the retort she had started to make. Better to not further alienate him, she thought. She instead watched his jaw set firmly as he turned to leave. If she wanted an answer, she would not get it by badgering him. Whatever it was, it was personal, close to his heart.
Realization dawned on her. “This has something to do with your mother, doesn't it? What happened to her?”
Nathaniel's entire backside stiffened. Brea did not need any extra senses to tell she had struck a nerve, which meant she was on the right track.
“What happened to her, Nate? It's what has come between you and your wife, too. I don't know how, but it has. I can see that...”
“I said I didn't want to talk about it!” Nathaniel growled.
“I could find out from Duncan, you know. I wouldn't have to leave for that...”
Nathaniel turned on her so fast that Brea had to take a step backwards to avoid colliding with the man. “Fine. You want truth? How's this for truth? The local priestess of Zantel had my mother stoned to death. And I've just learned that my own wife and father-in-law took part in her murder! Satisfied?!”
Brea was speechless. A priest had killed his mother? Or, at least, directed the killing? His mother must have been a heretic, but even still, stoning was a bit severe. She must have done something truly evil to deserve such a thing. But how could she impart the wisdom of her priesthood to the son of someone who was punished in such a way?
“What did she do?” was all Brea could think to ask.
“Do? Of course, you would think she had done something to deserve it!” Nathaniel was practically spitting with pent up fury. “She must have been a vicious heretic, a threat of some kind, right?
“Her 'crime' was that she was a druidess of the Old Gods and disagreed with something Zantel's priestess preached! That's all! Big, powerful menace, that!” Nathaniel turned and hit his fist into a tree before he could let his rage build any further.
Brea tentatively put a hand upon Nathaniel's shoulder and realized that the man was crying. “And she killed my mom because of it!” he sobbed.
“Please, Nate,” Brea spoke so softly that it was near a whisper. “Tell me about it. I want to know the truth of it...”
Nate turned red-rimmed eyes upon the priestess. “That's all you care about, isn't it? Chasing after your Goddess' pointless mantra!”
No, Brea protested internally. I care about you, too. But that is not what she said. “Hiding truth is akin to falling down a pit, Nate,” she answered from dogma. “You're trapped in both cases. Only setting the truth free can liberate you from this trap.”
Part of her heard her own words and blanched. For the first time in her spiritual life, the words not only lacked meaning to her, but they actually did not even seem to apply. She was speaking them only because she felt she needed to say something, while inwardly cursing that it was practiced rhetoric more than something personal. She longed to express her true feelings, but dared not make fool of herself more than she already had the day before.
“You know the truth already,” Nathaniel managed. It was obvious that he fought to get the words out.
“Only part of it. Set yourself free...” She stopped herself, almost biting her tongue in doing so. She did not want to convert him. She wanted to comfort him. And she instinctively knew that her spiritual routine was not the way she would accomplish that.
“You aren't going to leave this alone, are you?”
Brea considered doing just that, but she found herself shaking her head just the same. She needed to know, if for no other reason than to learn the truth behind his deep-rooted hatred of the New Order and its priesthood. How could she ever hope to gain his affections, after all, if he hated her simply for what she represented?
“Fine,” he grunted, taking time to sit down with his back against a tree. “If I am going to tell this, you had might as well get comfortable. This may take some time.”
Brea considered momentarily before doffing her cloak and laying it upon the ground. Once she had it settled smoothly, she knelt lightly upon it facing Nathaniel. The similarity between her current position and her morning ritual to her Goddess did not escape her attention, either.
Nathaniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It happened a little over ten years ago now. I was shy of my fourteenth year by a little under a month then, and my mother had brought me along with her into town.” The man paused and opened his
eyes, looking directly into Brea's eyes in such a way that made her feel he was looking deeply into her soul for some meaning to all that he was about to say. “I wasn't always allowed to, you know. I usually stayed at the cabin with some chore or another. I guess in hindsight, she thought I was safer here than in town.”
Brea looked in the direction of the house that they had been returning to, perhaps a quarter mile distant now. “This is the same place you grew up?”
Nathaniel nodded. He rubbed at his nose and sniffed quickly before continuing. “It's my mother's place. Maribel was her name.”
“Pretty name,” Brea caught herself saying.
The man smiled and Brea blushed, though she tried to cover it by bowing her head respectfully. “Thank you,” he said simply before continuing on.
“Anyways, when we got to town, she sent me off to the tavern to visit Bracken. He's the tavern owner, the dwarf?” Brea nodded. “Said she had something to do I shouldn't be there for. She was going nameday shopping for me, though I did not know it at the time. See, we rarely bought things that weren't necessity. I had expected to celebrate my nameday at home as I did most every year, and so I was not expecting anything more.
“Bracken was an old friend of my mother's. I had known him since he first came to Oaken Wood, even worked a little on helping him set up Wyrm's Fang, his inn. So it wasn't all that uncommon for me to visit him, either. If she had not told me to go there, I would have asked to go anyways. He always had jerky or some new sweet he wanted me to try. And he had this interesting card game he was mildly obsessed with that he always wanted me to play. I guess it's what people call the Game, but I didn't know it at that time. Not a lot of people took to him in those days, though they didn't exactly frown on his setting up the business. They just didn't befriend him personally. I was one of the few exceptions.”
Nathaniel paused as he took another deep, steadying breath. “I remember I was playing the Game with someone Bracken had introduced me to, someone from out of town, when we first heard the noise. It was a sound of a large group of people shouting, cheering. I can remember still the rise and falls in the cheers, urging others on, louder when they must have done something they approved of.”
The child now grown closed his eyes again, swallowing hard. It took him a moment to continue. When he did, his voice had begun to choke with emotion. “Bracken grumbled something and went to look out the door. He called out to someone, but I never heard an answer. I remember him shouting for them to move along, to clear the road in front of his business. I guess someone did move, because he went real quiet all of a sudden.”
Nathaniel opened his eyes and stared off at some unfixed point in the distance. A tear had begun a path down his left cheek, and he had to swallow more than once to steady himself enough to continue. “He called to have someone keep me inside and then ran out. Me specifically. 'Keep young Nate inside,' or something like that. Of course, as a young man, being told to stay was the only reason I had for wanting to see what was going on for myself. I honestly would not have thought nor cared about leaving if Bracken had not wanted me watched. But as soon as he said that, I was rushing out the front door. No one even tried to stop me.”
Tears were flowing freely down Nathan's cheeks now as he once again closed his eyes, reviewing in his own mind's eye what he had seen and heard that day. His voice caught as he tried to continue. He had to stop for several minutes before he could compose himself enough to go on. Brea sat silently in front of him, patiently waiting for him to continue. She knew he would at this point. He had to tell the story, had to get it out. She would only have made it harder if she had prodded him.
“The first thing I remember seeing was Bracken,” he started again. “I had never seen him so mad. He had a stick he had picked up and he was actually hitting people with it. Anyone who tried to come close, he would roar something in what I assume was his native tongue and charge at them swinging. At one point, someone tried to throw a rock at him, but he used the stick to swat it back into the crowd. I didn't see another rock fly after that.
“I couldn't understand why he would react that way, or why the townsfolk would turn on him like that. He had been so – I don't know – controlled, I guess is the best way to say it. And the people yelling and throwing things at him? They may not have been the friendliest to him in the past, but they had never been hateful toward him. It just seemed so unreal to see him so... berserk.
“That's when I saw the pile on the ground that he kept darting around.” Nathaniel swallowed, but didn't stop. “No matter how mad he got, he never once stepped on it. He would jump over it or step around it, but never by accident or purpose would he disturb it. It wasn't until I saw the... the hair... that I realized it was a body.”
The man swallowed again, and when he continued, his voice now shook with emotion. “My mother used to have the most beautiful orange-blonde hair. It had its own wave to it so you never knew if her locks would curl or lay straight. She used to curse at it sometimes when she would brush it out, but I always loved the feel and smell of it.”
Nathaniel opened his eyes. They had gained a steely appearance now. Coupled with the tears flowing freely down his face, it gave him the appearance of being the most devout acolyte Brea had ever laid eyes upon. “That's how I knew it was her, even at a distance. There was so much blood and dirt mixed in with it, but I knew her hair. Of course, I didn't know it was blood then – I thought it was mud, though the road was dusty dry that day. I couldn't understand why she was lying on the ground to get her hair all covered in the mud. Since I didn't recognize the blood at first, I did not know it was her own or that she was even hurt. But I knew I should get out there and help her get up. So I ran out of the tavern to do just that. It's all I wanted to do – to help Mother get back up...” The use of his mother's name as personal did not escape Brea, but she said nothing as the young man continued.
“Bracken heard me coming but didn't know it was me. He turned, screaming, raising up that old stick like it was his axe, the one he keeps behind the bar. I remember the look of... rage in his eyes, the hatred I had never seen in any man's eyes before. It stopped me in my tracks. Like a deer too startled to know which way to run. It took him a moment for him to recognize me, but when he did, he went pale as milk. It would have been almost funny to see, if the circumstances were different. But I was scared at that point, if not exactly understanding why. His jaw dropped and I could see his rage change into pain in an instant. 'Oh, Nate,' was all he said. Then he dropped the stick and the whole crowd went quiet.”
Nathaniel took another deep, steadying breath. “I was confused. I didn't know what that look meant or why suddenly no one would look at me. I remember hearing someone's voice as he tried to push himself forward, but no one would move out of his way and I didn't care to look to see who it was. All I could see was my mother then. I rushed up to her and knelt down beside her, only thinking about helping her get up.”
The steel look in his eyes left and a vacancy seemed to take their place. “Have you ever felt how warm blood is when it first comes out of the body or how fast it grows cold? Or how sticky it can be when it does cool? That's what I noticed first – how that blood felt as it left her body, how her skin already felt cool to my touch. Not cold, necessarily, but there was a distinct difference I could feel – I could feel how she was not as warm as she should be anymore.
“I had always thought a body took awhile to cool off when it died. I remembered when we slaughtered animals and let them drain on cold winter days how long the steam rose from their bodies. But this was different. Maybe that's normal when you only lose a little blood at a time, or maybe people are different than animals in some way. But that wasn't how it was with my mother. By the time I first touched her hair, felt where the hair was pulled away from her wet, sticky scalp underneath, felt softness where it should have been hard, that's when I knew she was dead.
“Oh, I still tried to get her to talk, to wake up, to come inside wher
e I could help clean her up. But I knew the whole time that she was gone and I just felt...” Nathaniel sighed. “...empty. I couldn't even get angry or try to reason out what had happened. I just couldn't do anything except keep talking to her, trying to convince myself that none of it was real.
“There was something in her hand when I tried to get her to hold onto me. It was partially wrapped in cloth, the rest pulled away by whatever had pummeled her body so badly. It was covered in her blood because she had pulled it in tightly against her like she was trying to protect it from harm. Her grip held it fast, and I could not bring myself to force her to release it, but I could make out a slip of paper on the outside with my name upon it. I never knew what was inside the wrapping, other than it was metal, but I knew what it was, all the same. It had been meant as a special nameday present for me, something she had had to come to town for. And she had wrapped her body around it even as she died, trying to keep it safe for me.”
Nathaniel's eyes once again took on a steel glare and his lips went taught. “It wasn't until then that I heard the voice. It had probably been there for awhile, but I had been oblivious to it. Someone was calling to the crowd, commending them for what they had done, saying that they were good and holy for striking down the 'infidel' in their midst. She said a lot of other things, but that is all I remember. I knew she was talking about Mother and I suddenly felt all the anger and hate I have not been able to feel before. I remember getting up and screaming. I remember the woman's face as she turned to look at me, a little fear and surprise mixing into her confidence. I remember her taking a step backwards, almost tripping, raising her hands up to defend herself. But that's all I remember for sure until I felt someone grab me and haul me back.
“I was a mad beast, screaming and growling. All I could do was scream and shout. I don't think I even said any actual words. My fists were clenched, and I could not unclench them, so I could not grab at whoever was holding me back. All I wanted was to kill that woman for saying such awful things about Mother. I think I might have killed her, too, if I had not been pulled off of her, and people in the crowd had not ushered her away, crying things about heathens every step of the way.”