Three (The Godslayer Cycle Book 3)

by Ron Glick

  All at once, a great burden Nathaniel had not realized had been upon his heart vanished. His mother was right. He was with her, the woman he had missed with every fiber of his being for a dozen years. No woman could ever have taken her place in his heart. He had been wounded when she was taken from him, a wound that had never healed. There had been no closure. And now there was, could be. He could actually say farewell to his mother...

  “Walk with me, Nathan,” said the woman, as she began to lead the man along the path. It took a moment for Nathaniel to realize she had turned him around and was leading him back to town. “I would have you tell me of your life. What became of my great child, Nathaniel Goodsmith?”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “There's so much...”

  “Did you marry?” prompted Maribel. “Children?”

  “Yes,” the man felt himself mechanically respond. “To both. But... Mariabelle's gone. And so is Geoffrey.”

  “Oh, Nathan,” said the woman, a great sadness filling her eyes as she looked up. Then a moment's curiosity passed her eyes and her brow wrinkled. “Mariabelle...”

  “A coincidence,” Nathaniel responded defensively. “She was the one who chased after me. Well, sort of. She followed me around for years after you were gone...”

  The woman gasped and suddenly held her hand to her mouth. “It's more,” she said from behind her hand. “I know that name.” She lowered her hand. “Aliban's daughter, right?” Nathaniel nodded, and Maribel fell quiet for a moment. “There is a cruel irony there,” she said after a moment.

  “How so?”

  Maribel continued to watch the path ahead as she next spoke. “I don't suppose Aliban ever told you why Mariabelle was named as she was?”

  The man felt his back stiffen. “No.”

  “It is because Aliban wanted a child with me, and I would not give him one. And so he gave his daughter my name. Or a close version of it. Young Mariabelle was named after me, after a sick obsession her father had with me.”

  Nathaniel pulled back. “You and Aliban?! You were with--”

  “No, no,” responded Maribel, pulling her son back to her. “He wanted to. He wanted me, but I would not be his. There is a... darkness in that man, Nathan. One that kept me away from him. But he fancied taking me, making me his own.”

  “He had a wife,” rebutted Nathaniel. “Children...”

  “Such things do not stop the desires of men of privilege like Aliban Stinhauf, Nathan. He wanted what he wanted, and his vows stopped him no more than they would the wails of some bitch in heat.”

  “So you refused him?”

  “Time and again,” said the woman. “It never stopped him though. He would journey to my home, follow me around Oaken Wood like some love-sick colt. All could see his ambitions, his desire. He was never silent about them. He made more than one threat against anyone else he saw take an interest in me. I was his and nothing I said mattered to him. I can only imagine how the spectacle must have hurt his wife.

  “Two days after Mariabelle was born, he trekked out to my home carrying his newborn daughter. He confessed to me that he had named her for me, to show all the world of his love and devotion to me. It was late enough, thank Lendus, that you were asleep, but still...” The woman paused for a moment. “He said some very cruel things that night. He told me that he now had a choice. If I would not lay with him and give him a child in the old ways, that he would always have his daughter to hold in my place.”

  Nathaniel's stomach twisted. “He didn't mean--”

  “Oh yes, he did. He was quite clear on his meaning. He confessed his intent to lie with his daughter if I would not lie with him.”

  New anger roiled in Nathaniel's heart. “Did he ever...” He could not bring himself to finish the question.

  Maribel sighed. “I cannot say. She's only a child yet herself, though there are certainly men of that perversion in the world.”

  The woman walked in silence for several minutes before she spoke again. “Do not take me out of turn when I say that a man who would lie with his daughter out of some perversion is about as amoral an act as a soul may take. This is not an awakening, Nathan. There is no blessing of the Old Gods in such a thing, to lust after one's own child...” She shuddered again.

  “Awakening?” Nathaniel found the word a strange thing to mention amidst talk of incest.

  Maribel stopped, pulling slightly away from her son. “Oh,” she said simply. “That's right. We have not ever spoken of an awakening, have we?” When Nathaniel shook his head, she continued.

  “Lendus is our patron God, Nathan. Have you never wondered why he is also called the Guardian of the Grail?”

  Nathaniel reflected back upon his mother's teachings growing up. “The grail represents fertility, in the natural order,” the man heard himself recite. “The grail receives life and holds it until it is ready to release its bounty to the world.”

  Maribel smiled proudly. “Yes. It means that Lendus is a God of fertility, and the faithful who come into their puberty rely upon the servants of Lendus to guide them into their adult lives. At the age of fourteen years, a man or woman will seek out a priest or priestess to undergo a year's ritual. It is a tradition called an awakening. In that time, the young man or woman learns of their changing bodies and explores what it is to become sexual creatures capable of reproduction.”

  Nathaniel felt deeply uncomfortable at the suggestion. “You lie with these people? As a priestess of Lendus, you lay with young men for a year?”

  “Not for a year, Nathan,” corrected Maribel. “The ceremony is very private, done in solitude with no one else about to interfere. It involves mediation, learning the feel of their maturing body and yes, at the end, an act of copulation with the priest or priestess. But there is no lust nor love in this, save to the Gods for their wisdom. It brings young people nobly into the maturity of their bodies, and makes them better to go forth to become positive mates to their future spouses.”

  Nathaniel tried his best to digest what his mother spoke of, but it still was not something he could completely wrap his mind around. He did know his mother's faith called upon her as a sexual creature. He knew that before he was born, she would participate in a ceremony of fertility under each full moon. Knowing what he did of her, imagining that other aspects of her sexuality would be part of her faith was not so great a leap of logic. And yet...

  “And how many have you been with in this fashion?” Nathaniel regretted the question as soon as it had been uttered. Even to his own ear, it sounded petulant and judgmental.

  “Not as many as one of my ancestors might have,” confessed Maribel. “A dozen perhaps in my time. Olric most recently.”

  “Aliban's son?!” Again, the man regretted the harshness of his words. Olric had said Maribel had been guiding him. But the thought of his brother-in-law lying with his mother...

  “Of course. He is a sweet young man. He has so little of his father in him. He came to me to help him with his foresight, but when his time came for awakening, he had embraced Lendus' ways and agreed to undergo the ritual.”

  Again, Nathaniel could not escape the logic of his mother's words. He wanted so much to ask for more details of this dalliance, but instead he heard himself ask, “So why do you mention this in hand with Aliban's incestuous plans for Mari?”

  Maribel smiled. “You call her 'Mari'. You did love her, didn't you?” The woman pulled herself back to the question at hand. “Because there is no one left to have taken you through the ritual, Nathan. On your fourteenth nameday, you would begin the awakening with me.” She looked up to her son again. “Which I can plainly see never even began, because I was not there.”

  Nathaniel was troubled over that thought, but he was left little time to dwell on it. All of a sudden, Maribel released her hold and stepped clear of her son. “We are here,” she said. Startled, Nathaniel looked around to see that the pair had indeed arrived at the outskirts of Oaken Wood. “And this is where I leave you for now.”

 
Nathaniel looked imploringly at his mother. “Can't you come with me? It is not even midday yet...”

  “Nathan, I have a younger version of you to think of,” chided the man's mother. “I will be bringing him with me on the morrow. I need to plan for your nameday, after all. It is only a few short weeks away.”

  Nathaniel's heart leaped into his throat. Tomorrow - Mother will die tomorrow.

  Maribel's face took on a troubled look. “So that's it then,” she said simply, clearly reading meaning in Nathaniel's own face. “Please, say no more about it.” The woman gave a heavy sigh, swallowing hard. “I hope that I can see you once more before...” But she said no more, just turned and walked away.

  Every instinct Nathaniel had urged him to chase after the woman, to confess all he knew and to beg of her not to come into town. He needed her safe, needed her to survive. After having such peace at how nobly his mother accepted her fate, his heart now bled profusely at the pain of the loss yet to come.

  The man could not say how long he stood in that place, watching to where his mother's back had vanished amidst the trees at the edge of town. She had gone back to her home with the knowledge that this would be her last evening with her child. Her true child, the one who belonged in this time. Could her own pain be any greater than his own, even if she only knew of the when and not the how?

  Finally, Nathaniel forced his legs to move, turning him about and beginning a slow trek back to the Wyrm's Fang. His mind clouded over with choices made and unmade, so much so that he barely registered his surroundings. Before he realized it, he had arrived at the entry to the tavern. Yet as his foot fell upon the first step, he realized he was not ready to enter.

  The man was not ready to be around anyone else yet - he needed time to gather himself. His emotions were raw, his heart chafed. He could have gone directly to his room, but to do so he would have needed to pass through the common room. And he could not bare to walk past anyone else who might seek to intrude upon his misery.

  Nathaniel turned around and walked away from the Wyrm's Fang, his steps taking him in no direction in particular. There certainly was no great maze of streets in Oaken Wood - truth be told, there was only one. But there were spaces between buildings, places as a much younger child he had run to play games of hiding with other children. And now he desperately felt the nostalgic need to see these places of innocent abandon again.

  The man had only just stepped away from the main street between two buildings when a great force suddenly hit him solidly from behind. He fell to the ground, barely registering that he had been attacked. His mind struggled between his memories and what happened around him. As he felt his body strike the ground, his awareness only half existed in his current situation.

  “You should have known better than to speak, you fool,” came a woman's voice from behind the man. “You have a place in this world, and it is beneath the heel of any God who deems you worthy of his or her attention.”

  Nathaniel recognized the voice dimly, a new anger rising in his chest. A fist gripped a handful of his hair and pulled his head back sharply as a boot dug into his back.

  “Perhaps you have convinced others that you are some poor wretch, deserving their pity for some imagined brain fever, but we both know better than that, don't we?” Nathaniel could hear the scowl in Erias' voice, her words dripping with venom. “You fairly reek of Old God magic. You think I would not have caught the stench of your cancer the moment I saw you?”

  Nathaniel thought to reach for his sword, but his face was slammed mercilessly into the ground.

  “But you're more than just some pitiful priest in hiding, aren't you?” The priestess' voice broke through the murk of Nathaniel's barely conscious mind. “You know things. How do you know what you do? How do you know anything about purgings?”

  “Let me up,” Nathaniel managed, the copper taste of blood on his tongue. “Let me up, and I'll show you.” Again, the man found his face buried into the ground, choking him with the dirt he was forced to breathe.

  “Keep doing that,” scolded the priestess, “and he won't have a mouth to answer with.”

  “Better he have no mouth,” came an unfamiliar voice, “than he use it to speak more lies.”

  Nathaniel's head was forcibly twisted to the side, to where he could see Erias squating beside him, her robes hitched up to keep them out of the dirt. What might have been a beautiful face under any other circumstance held such darkness at this moment that the woman appeared more a demon than human.

  “Who are you?”

  When Nathaniel said nothing, something solid collided with the side of his face.

  “Your name?”

  “You know who I am,” Nathaniel said, his eyes burning as he glared at the priestess.

  “Who you really are,” scolded the priestess. “You are not the Lendus witch's child, and you're not some lost brainless sod. So who are you?”

  Nathaniel laughed, blood flecking from his mouth as he did so. “You don't really want to know.”

  “Oh, I really do,” urged the priestess, leaning closer to the man's face.

  The fallen man lifted his head, a smile leering across his face. “The Pantheon isn't dead.” He could feel his chest rattle with fluid as he laughed again. “They're alive and we're killing off your Gods one by one!”

  The woman's face balked, her eyes growing wide with shock. “What madness...” The woman stood up, her robes falling back to the ground from where she had pulled them into her lap. Without warning, her foot collided with Nathaniel's nose, stars bursting out of a sudden darkness creeping over his vision.

  “Charlatan or madman,” the man heard as he faded into oblivion, “his body will burn all the same.”

  Chapter 15

  Enuchek sat in silence. Her demesne, unlike those of other Gods, lacked any real substance - like her dominion of mystery, her surroundings were in a constant state of being discovered. Mystery was a concept of something perplexing becoming understood. Before there was unknown; after there would be knowledge. But the mystery was the point at which the bridge between the two existed.

  Many people misunderstood this aspect of mystery. Too many confused mystery with the unknown, but the realm of the unseen was more Belask's realm of influence than Enuchek's. Mystery was more in the quest for discovery, not the perpetual state of unknowing. It was a fine point - but it certainly distinguished those who were truly faithful from those who only made empty affectations.

  Normally, the Goddess would be wandering through the miasma of shifting understandings that comprised the totality of her realm, reveling in those of her faith who set out to expose mysteries for what they were, those who brought issues which had been undiscovered to light. But this day, she was not. A disturbance within her realm of influence had left her unsettled - and as time had progressed from its first discovery several weeks previous, it had only compounded upon itself. Now the feeling of wrongness was so pervasive, that it dominated the Goddess' focus entirely.

  Yet in spite of how much she obsessed, Enuchek was still unable to identify the element that had left her so unsettled. She sat in perfect stillness, allowing nothing to distract her - and still she failed to identify the imperfection within her dominion.

  Something had happened, some discovery had been made. And yet, whatever it was remained mercurial, still unknown. It was if the discovery would fall back into the realm of the unknown, only to appear as a new discovery over and again. But how could something be continuously rediscovered? How could something mysterious be exposed, disappear, then be revealed again? How could it do so time and again over a period of weeks?

  Worse, this anomaly seemed temporal in nature - moving about in time. Each resurgence had the appearance of being out of sync with the next. It was mostly a feeling, since the Goddess could not find the exact cause of the ripples through her dominion, but the feeling remained persistent. And if anything had been learned in her centuries of existence, the more a factor repeated, the more likely
it pointed towards something true.

  However, the mystery that remained hidden was not what had Enuchek the most unsettled at this moment in time. It was where the mystery had most recently left an impression - or, more specifically, who might have actually been involved. And if he was involved, the Trickster might be up to worse things than anyone could imagine.

  Months ago, Ankor had come to a gathering of the Lesser Powers of the New Order. He had professed to a plan to eliminate the Greater Powers and to give rise to the dominance of those Gods deemed to be insignificant in the larger cosmic scale of things. It was a grand plan - and it seemed to have a chance of success. So far, three of the Greater Powers had fallen, and Ankor was full of promises that the rest would soon follow.

  Yet if the God of Mischief were keeping something so catastrophic as this anomaly from his fellow conspirators in the Lesser Powers - something he could somehow mask from the Goddess of Mysteries... Well, that did not bode well for anyone.

  Centuries ago, when the Gods had come together to form the New Order, they had been forty-eight. There had been a plan then - to overcome those who had come before, the self-named Pantheon. They were the lost brethren, seeking to live out the ambitions of their mother - to undo the usurpers who had taken the realms of mortals for themselves. They had needed to be many then - and they had needed structure to accomplish their goal. But with the Pantheon all-but gone from the world, the divisions that had seemed so reasonable at the outset had begun to become symbols of status, a wholly unacceptable position for those labeled as Lesser Powers - who had been just as instrumental in deposing the Old Gods as any of those gathered as Greater Powers.

  Ankor had used this rancorous disquiet amongst the Lesser Powers against them. Their egos had been used to encourage the Lesser Powers to be silent of what Ankor was about - because the end result was that the Greater Powers would die, and the Lesser Powers would be able to assume control over their dominions. And yet...