rix_scaedu

“Sir, sir!”  The agitated boy wasn’t even a member of the clergy, just an odd job boy who was swapped around between the stables and the internal buildings as the establishment’s needs required.

From kunama_wolf's prompt "What are the angels of the Third Swordlord up to, now that one of the deity's mortal paladins died protecting a Sister of Hasnor?" we have this piece which follows on from A Staff With A Knob On It.

Pharial had been summoned to the holy presence. Even for an angel of his rank and time in the Third Swordlord’s service it was a great privilege, a rare event for individuals among the Phalanxes of angels that served his holy master. Even more surprisingly, when he rose from his obeisance he found that he was almost alone with the god: the Choirmaster was absent and none of the Flight Generals were present. Clean, sparkling light filled the sanctum, and the Third Swordlord himself, Heraclaid by sacred name, stood on the other side of a large map table from both the entrance and Pharial. The only other angel present was one of much his own age who was also currently assigned to the care, guidance and support of their god’s paladins. Elekiel had brown wings that were permanently mottled from the effects of a vardbeast’s breath weapon that he’d survived during a battle of the Death War.

“I have summoned you here,” said Heraclaid in a quiet voice that Pharial felt throughout his being, “because my human servant, Sempleticus Lorax, has died in unusual circumstances.”

“I did not know him,” admitted Pharial humbly.

“I didn’t expect that you would, because he was on Elekiel’s roster,” Heraclaid answered quietly. He turned to the other angel, “Were you able to glean anything from his soul, Elekiel? From my point of view he was suddenly dead, and that’s all I have.”

“I don’t think he even saw me,” replied Elekiel carefully, “and neither did the priestess of Hasnor he was travelling with. From what I could tell, they could see and hear each other perfectly, but I and the angels of Hasnor who were there, four of them, couldn’t get a flicker of acknowledgement out of either of them. If I didn’t know it shouldn’t be possible, I’d say they were almost dissociated.”

“I know it happened in a temple of Hasnor, and that’s why I don’t know what happened,” admitted Heraclaid. “Pharial, Ordestia Prima is on your roster and she’s been praying to me about this. She’s there, she’s seen the bodies, and she and some religious of Hasnor’s seem to have found how the killer got in to the temple. Go there, talk to her, and find out what happened. If Hasnor decides not to let you enter his temple, then we will have to rely on her observations.”

“We have not, hitherto, been close, she and I,” admitted Pharial. “She has not required personal guidance or intervention from me – her mortal preceptors have been sufficient for her.”

“Ordestia Prima is a steady and steadfast soul,” agreed Heraclaid. “I should not like her to feel unappreciated or overlooked because she does not require as much cultivation as some of her fellows.”

Pharial bowed, chastened, and replied, “My lord, I will do my best to cultivate her acquaintance during our time together on this assignment.”

“Good,” said Heraclaid. “I’m glad we were able to cover this subject – I would not like to lose my little armoured lily because she became exhausted by a heart broken through unrequited love.”

The angel looked up, startled. “Unrequited love, my lord?”

“My paladins come to me from love, Pharial, and you are part of my response to that love. If you spend all your attention on others because she ‘doesn’t need you’, how will she know that her love is reciprocated? After all, she cannot hear me as I hear her.” The god smiled for a moment, then went on grimly, “I have already sent a messenger to Hasnor, asking his permission for you to enter the temple where Sempleticus died. Elekiel, I need you to return to the Hall of Judgement; see if you can make contact with his soul and find out what happened. Off with you both now, I have implications to consider.”

The two angels bowed and left their divine master considering a map of shifting and phasing elements that was too complex for an angel to understand.

I wrote this to kunama_wolf's prompt "zzz... mimimimimimimi... zZZZz... mimimimimimimi". It cam in at 1,350 words.

The inn at the forest crossroads had been a gift from the gods. Charrot needed to get away from the coastal strip where the family of his late father’s partner were raising a hue and cry for him, claiming that he was a run-away indenturee. It wasn’t true of course. What was true was that with both the older men dead the Gharee family had decided that they wanted all of the smithy and not just their father’s half. Charrot would happily have sold it to them for a fair price, but they’d not only tried to steal it but impugn his freedom. He wasn’t sure if the new, from-out-of-town magistrate they’d gotten to issue the orders was corrupt or simply gullible but as the result Charrot was on the run and hadn’t dared sleep for days.

The innkeeper hadn’t questioned him or looked at him funny when he’d arrived and asked for a room with a locking door. She’d simply handed him a key and given him directions to the room, the privies and the baths. “You didn’t ask if I could pay,” he’d pointed out to her.

“You obviously haven’t seen yourself,” she’d replied. “The house’s patron has Views that cover your state. There’ll be a meal when you’re ready for one and there’s already a jug of clean drinking water in the room.”

He stopped in the privies before going up to his room and washed his hands and face thoroughly with what was provided there. He locked his door, the room was plain but as stated, took off his outer clothes and boots, intending to slip on sandals and go bathe but the bed was soft, and flat, and there… He may have been asleep before he touched the coverlet.

And he dreamt.

He was being pursued, and he was escaping pursuit, and his sisters who lived down in the Harnican grasslands would give him shelter if he could get to them, but he was lost in the forest on the way to them because it was the wrong forest… And then there was a signpost in the middle of the forest and it was being painted by an angel. Charrot asked the obvious question, “Where am I?”

The angel looked down from his painting. It seemed odd to Charrot that a being with wings would be standing on a stepladder. “Well, if you’re here, then you must be on the way to somewhere.” His wings were banded in brown and two shades of green. “Not been sleeping lately by any chance? That’s usually the other half of how humans wind up here.”

“Where’s here?” Charrot looked around. The forest was tall, and green, and he realised, it was the idea of a forest rather than an actual one.

“This is Kheladare’s domain. You could say we’re all about journeys here.” The angel grinned as if he were making a joke.

“So, where does the signpost point to?” Charrot had only a very hazy idea of where a god’s domain might be; he’d never heard a priest give a clear answer on the subject.

“Where do you need it to point to?” The angel dabbed on a little more white paint.

“I don’t know,” confessed Charrot. “I need to escape from the people who are hunting me. I need somewhere I can start again, beyond their clutches. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“What does the signpost say?” The angel climbed down from his stepladder, set aside his brush and put the lid on his paint.

“It doesn’t say anything,” pointed out Charrot. “That’s why I asked.”

“If the signpost doesn’t point out any path for you, then maybe you don’t need leave where you are,” suggested the angel. “Perhaps you should go back now and have a look around.”

“How do I do that? I don’t know how I got here in the first place?” Charrot was confused.

The angel laughed, not unkindly. “I suppose you don’t at that.” He reached out with one hand and said, “I’ll just give you a little push and you’ll be on your way. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”

Charrot woke up, face down in his shirt, inner trousers and socks on the still made-up inn bed. He remembered that he’d been going to drink and bathe, and from the way the light had changed, that had been hours ago. Fortunately there was still hot water in the bathroom and he could lock the door while he sluiced and scrubbed.

When he emerged from the baths he realised that new guests had only just arrived. There were horses eagerly using the water trough outside the stable and loud voices in the common room. Most of them were calling for food and beer but that wasn’t what the innkeeper was talking about and if he was any judge, she was standing in the doorway between the common room and the less public parts of the inn. “So you’re after someone who’s run off from debtor’s indentures are you, captain?”

“Yes.” The man she was speaking to had a thicker than usual Rajjan accent. “The Gharee are a most respectable family and they wish to be rid of this problem, so they onsold his indenture to me. Have you seen a man of this description?”

“Ah, captain,” the innkeeper’s voice firm and feminine, “if these are the actual indenture papers, I hope you didn’t pay more than a copper groat for them.”

“Why not?” The Rajjad’s voice was cautious.

“If a man can write well enough to sign his own name,” the innkeeper replied, “then he generally doesn’t spell his given name differently in each of the three places he signs the same document at the same time. Also, this magistrate’s seal at the bottom that’s supposed to be from Colanta? The design isn’t right and the wax is wrong – the grade’s too cheap.”

“You are right,” that was the Rajjad again, “in this light you can see the chalk grains and if it’s been coloured with vermilion, then I’ll eat my right boot.” For a moment Charrot didn’t hear anything, then the man said, “There’s no point in going back to the magistrate who certified the transfer of the indenture to me, he must have known this was a forgery. There’s no choice but to go to Colanta and lay a complaint against the lot of them if I’m to have any chance of getting my money back.”

“As you say,” agreed the innkeeper primly. “Will you stay the night or leave after you‘ve eaten?”

“After we’ve eaten,” was the last thing Charrot heard before he snuck back to his room and locked the door behind him.

It was almost an hour before he heard the horses leave the inn and then ten minutes later, as he was considering whether it was safe to emerge, there was a knock on Charrot’s door. He opened it cautiously and found the innkeeper standing there with a meal tray. “I thought you’d be hungry,” she said. Then she added, “You did well to stay out of sight.”

“I heard you talking to the Rajjad when I left the bathroom,” he admitted.

“Well, everything I said about his document was absolutely true,” the inn keeper sighed. “It’s disappointing that your local magistrate seems to have been rather…susceptible.”

“Well, I look disreputable and of no fixed abode,” pointed out Charrot. “I’ve got the blood of at least four races in my veins and I don’t look particularly like any of them. Mostana, my home town, is a little place in Ghessi territory and the Gharee are so pure blood it almost hurts.”

“They say the Benarians are thingy about people with mixed blood, but back country Ghessi can be worse,” agreed the inn keeper. “Now, just in case the Rajjad’s people circle back, I think you should eat in your room for now. Perhaps later we could talk business? Those false papers said that you’re a blacksmith?”

“I am,” agreed Charrot as he took the meal tray, “and I think I would like to talk business.”

I wrote this to kunama_wolf' prompt "Moonstone Sunstone Bloodstone. oh hey yeah more angelsverse would be good (thanks for the reminder kelkyag) or one of those officer friends of the cadet?"

For those with limited spoons or time, this piece runs to 1,842 words. Birgenes and Saprista have appeared before in Choices and Consequences and Correcting Assumptions.

“So, what was this place?” Saprista held her lantern high as she asked the question.

“It seems to have been a house,” Birgenes was directing his more focused beam at details. “The upper floors have gone, of course. Wood just doesn’t last over that amount of time in these conditions.”

“I wouldn’t have trusted my weight to it if it had,” replied Saprista. “Are you sure it’s a house? It’s seems awfully big.”

“Those stone lintels are all plain. If this had been an official building, a nobleman’s manor or even a palace they would have been carved with designs. You’re right though, it is large.” He grinned at her, “I’m hoping that it means the owner was rich.”

“You only have to be rich to build a place like this,” Saprista pointed out. “You don’t have to stay rich once you’ve got it. Besides, with the floors collapsed, anything of value or interest is going to be on the bottom level. I’ll find somewhere to tie off the ropes.”

Half an hour later, having lowered themselves carefully down to what had been the ground level of the house, they took stock of their surroundings again.

“Water’s been through here,” Saprista remarked, “but we are above the water table.”

“And no footprints in the silt and sand deposits,” added Benares. “We should be alone down here.”

“On the other hand,” Saprista bent over and picked up a shard from the floor and held it up the light from her torch to see it better, “anything fragile got broken when the floors fell, if not before.” In her hand was a piece of green painted and glaze porcelain. “I would have liked to have seen this in one piece.”

“It’s Bitrano ware,” Birgenes was already looking around their feet. “If we collect more pieces, you can get your potter friend to copy it for you.”

“And you’ll have another set of pot pieces for your collection.”

“Well, that too,” he admitted, laughing.

Later, pot pieces and a few other small items of interest and value stowed in their backpacks, they examined the set of doors they’d found leading into a section of the house bounded by corridors on all four sides. “I doubt it was a living space,” commented Birgenes.

“Metal bound doors with the hinges on the inside. Someone meant business.” Saprista was casting a business like eye over entire set up. “Not ostentatiously tall, but tall enough for a big man to get through. They were built to secure something. How secure they are now will depend on how thick the metal is and how well the wood inside has withstood the passing years.” She flexed her muscles, as if in preparation.

“Let me have a look at the lock first,” Birgenes said with a restraining hand on her arm, his touch light enough it only gave the idea of holding her back. “Even if it’s rusted solid, I may be able to cut the bolt and that would save you from a set of bruises.”

“True,” she smiled at her dark skinned companion, “and it’s not as if we have to keep an eye out for an irate home owner or the Spartoli.”

“Please, after all the times I’ve had to explain why it’s perfectly unexceptionable and above board for me to be carrying around a set of lock picks and sundry other housebreaking tools? I always keep an eye out for the Spartoli.” He shone the beam of light from his lantern into the crack between the two doors. “I can see the bolt and I should be able to get my thinnest metal saw in there, assuming the lock isn’t trapped, of course.”

“If I have to haul you back up that three storey drop because you’ve gotten yourself poisoned or something, you don’t get to complain about how I do it,” Saprista warned as she moved back down to the corridor intersection and what she hoped would be a safe distance.

“Agreed,” replied Birgenes as he carefully took a small, thin saw blade from his leather wrap of tools, “although I’m more worried about having to cut the hinges as well.”

A levered-off architrave and a good hour of metal sawing later, the door was open in the sense that its corroded in place hinges and locking bar had been cut and then it had been manoeuvred and manhandled out of the way. While they waited for the opened room to air out, Saprista and Birgenes occupied themselves with little things they would be better off doing while they had the time: Birgenes cleaned his metal saws and Saprista repacked her backpack for a better balance. Finally, Saprista tested the air by opening up her lantern and, after attaching it to the ring on the end of Birgenes’ ten foot pole, putting it into the room while the two of them stood outside the door. When the colour and size of the lantern flame didn’t change, Saprista pulled the pole back out to reclaim her lantern, and then the two of them entered the room.

After looking around, Birgenes remarked, “This is either a storeroom or a strongroom.”

“Strongroom from the door,” Saprista gave her opinion. “Not that it kept the water out. I doubt this is how the owner left it.” The light from the lanterns showed chests and amphorae piled higgledy piggledy, like children’s toys, and a few smashed tables. “Anything perishable died long ago, but,” she strode over to one of the piles of debris and took a closer look, “You’ll like this – I think some of these amphorae are still in one piece with their seals intact.”

“If the internal resin coating was good enough and the seals are wax, then the contents might still be good.” Birgenes smiled. “It would be best if we got them home before we try opening them, though, I don’t want to wind up emptying an amphora of Thonburi pepper onto the floor here.”

“That’s right, we don’t want to go wasting a king’s ransom.” Saprista bent over a chest to get a better look. “Some of these smaller chests seem to be wood, I’m surprised they’re still intact.”

“Could have been lacquer ware of some type, or simply varnished, but I doubt they’d survive being handled. The contents, well…,” he trailed off.

“Would depend on what they were.” Saprista looked at the small chests speculatively. “There aren’t that many goods that would deserve this sort of security. Spices, some of the rarer dyes, precious metals or gems.”

“Also the merchant’s strong box,” Birgenes pointed at a large, solidly metal bound chest that sat on the floor towards the back of the room. “That’s either bolted to the floor, or it was so heavy, not even the flood that came through here could shift it. Let’s open that one first.”

Naturally and expectedly, all the metal parts of the chest were corroded into place. The wood, however, crumbled into soft splinters with very little prodding. Underneath the rotten wood were mounds covered in the results of leather rot and decay. Birgenes pulled out a pig bristle brush and carefully moved the dark debris aside. The first object he revealed was a misshapen greenish mass.

“Bronze or copper coins,” he commented quietly. “Probably Senlorain murcohs. Honestly, we’d be lucky to get an intact coin out of that, though we might make something by selling them as is to an antiquarian.”

“You always say that,” Saprist chided him gently. “How many lumps of those do you have sitting around your flat now?”

“Probably more than enough, but not enough to cave the floor in, yet,” he rejoined quietly. “Now this one,” silver appeared under the brush as it moved, “looks like it was a bag of decohna.”

“Enough to make our rents this month?” Saprista cocked a knowing eye at the number of coins, “Perhaps there’s more than one bag of those?”

“Oh, yes there is. At least two more bags, we’ve definitely made rent and probably housekeeping as well.” Birgenes kept the brush moving, “and here are more murcohs and those were probably Klavan tally markers – being soaked with water would have made the ivory split.” He worked past the stick like objects to the final corner of the top layer. “Now what’s here? This doesn’t look like coins.”

“Not gold,” said Saprista. “That’ll be on the bottom layer.”

“Stones,” said Birgenes cautiously, brushing away the dark detritus.

“Moonstones and bloodstones,” murmured Saprista appreciatively. “Good ones.” She reached in and picked up a bloodstone the size of the final section of her thumb. “All a nice size and they look like a really good colour.” She looked at Birgenes, “They might even be from one of the old worked out mines that are supposed to have had a better colour stone than anything they can dig up today.”

“Your cultural biases are showing,” Birgenes smiled at her. “I prefer the sunstones myself.”

“You would. I’ll get bags for these and the silver and then we can see what’s underneath them.”

The chest was empty and Birgenes and Saprista were looking at each at each other, awestruck, across their find while they decided what they could carry away with them and what they would have to come back for. “I thought the moonstones, bloodstones and sunstones were wonderful,” said Saprista helplessly, “but rubies, emeralds and sapphires as well? And we can’t leave the gold behind.”

“We should take as much of the silver as we can carry after we’ve packed those,” added Birgenes. “It’s more negotiable than the gems or the gold.” He got a calculating look on his face. “Even after we pay taxes, make a few religious donations and put something reasonable towards public works, after all we want to be regarded as lucky and not greedy, I think we might have enough to buy land in the country and build a house. Particularly if we can get back here and get everything else out.”

“Excuse me,” Saprista interrupted him, holding up a hand. “Did you say “we might have enough to buy land and build a house”?”

“Well, yes.” Birgenes looked at her. “Would you rather keep living in the city in an insula?”

“No, no.” She shook her head and waved her hand dismissively. “You said “we.” Are you offering me a marriage contract?”

“Umm, yes?” He looked uncertain. “Should I have spoken to one of your brothers first?”

“Of course not. Technically three of them aren’t free men so they have no authority over me and even before this I was worth more than the others.” She dismissed her brothers’ fraternal authority with another wave of her hand. “You just have a tendency to come at these things sort of sideways and unexpectedly. You do realise that I’m going to want a big ceremony, don’t you?”

“As big as your heart desires.” He looked at their find. “I’m sure we can afford as many petal scatterers and nut throwers as the neighbourhood can provide.”

I wrote this for ysabetwordsmith's second prompt, "Angels and the symbolism of decorated eggshells."  How Mistress Borneal got her inn is in Finding Something To Run To.

“But what’s it for?” The Rajjan wool merchant glared at the peddler with his handiwork sitting on the table in front of him. “What does it mean?”

“It’s a decoration.” The pedlar held up the eggshell he was working on so the merchant could see the design. “If I get it right, it’s a thing of beauty and even wonder. Does it need to mean anything beyond that?”

“Nothing should be without purpose,” the black-haired and sallow-faced merchant said austerely.

“Which purpose would you like?” The peddler picked up his fine pointed tool again. “It turns something I would otherwise throw away into something I can sell. Of course, I have to blow all my eggs instead of cracking them open. Doing this when I stay the night in an inn keeps me from spending too many of my coins on drink, instead of saving them up.” He carefully carved a little more of the design out of the eggshell.

“But what is the purpose for the purchaser?” The Rajjan was being persistent.

“A little piece of lasting beauty and wonder. Something to make the heart a little gladder?” The peddler shrugged. “I don’t pretend to know all the reasons people buy them. Perhaps you should ask our hostess?” He pointed at young Mistress Borneal behind the bar, keeping an eye on the common room of her inn that had been built during the spring. “She always buys one when I come through, though perhaps that’s to keep me coming back – I was one of her first guests.”

“A good customer is to be treasured,” the merchant intoned seriously. “But what use is beauty and wonder to a shepherd and his family, who are already surrounded by the creations of the gods?”

“Beauty is wasted on no man,” corrected the peddler, who paused to gently blow the shell dust off his work. “Appreciation of beauty is one of the things that marks us from the animals. As for creating wonders, we know the gods can create wonders, but it is good to remember that men can create wondrous things too.”

I sometimes write stories set in a polytheistic world where angels are a theological and objective physical reality, created by the gods as their servants. The Benarians are convinced that they are the favoured people of the gods, while angels recruit and drop a word, or a scroll, in the ears of the wise to influence events and outside the bounds of creation the vard plot to undo everything. This is the home of Tala, the angel in service to Thaladaneth, The Thirteenth Swordlord known also as The Black Scabbard.

The stories in this universe so far are:

Forewarning;

Choices And Consequences;

Just Curious;

An Angel With A Message;

The Man With The Bucket;

The First Of Her Kind;

The Work

Might Have Beens;

Tala’s Fight;

An Instructive Conversation;

The Need For Vigilance;

How Large Is The Problem;

Some Days Are Worse Than Others;

Afterlife;

Finding Something To Run To;

Correcting Assumptions;

A Philosophical Discussion;

Betrayal;

Moonstone;

Back When There Was Water On The Moon;

Refuge;

A Staff With a Knob On It;

Initial Orders; and

Rainbow Tears.

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's prompt " From the Angels setting: a forgotten holiday."

Tala found Lasrial sitting morosely on a rock on the edge of their practice ground.  The older angel was usually serious and solemn but today he drooped.  The shades of the dead that thronged Thaladneth’s halls usually ignored the angels but they were crowded around Lasrial, so many in number that they made a barely audible susserating murmur.

“Lasrial,” Tala put her hand on his shoulder to make sure she got his attention, “what’s wrong?”

He looked up and asked eagerly, “Does our master have a task for me?”

“Not that I know of,” Tala replied, “but you looked so sad, I was worried about you.  What’s wrong?”

“Today would have been my first master’s highest holy day,” he was solemn again and a tear might have glistened in one eye.  “It’s a day I like to be busy on.”

“But today you’re not busy and you miss him?”  Tala couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to lose her divine master, and she didn’t want to know.

“Yes.”

“Humans mourn their dead by going and putting flowers or lit candles on their graves,” she offered.  “I could come with you if you would like company.”

“Thank you,” he smiled at her, “but with a dead god that’s too close to worship to be safe.”

“Oh Lasrial,” she knelt down beside him and put her arms around his torso, and only his torso, under the point where his blue-grey wings sprang from his back, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right little one, it’s not your fault.”  He still hugged her back and he may have cried a little while she couldn’t see him as he petted her hair.

When he let her go she stood up. “If you want something to do,” she offered, “you can come and help me put all the books I pulled out in the library back on the shelves.  If there’s time left after that, then you can take me through my spear drill again.”

“Your spear drill’s okay,” Lasrial observed in a why-would-we-do-that tone.

“Given the amount of time I’ve been doing it, you can’t tell me it’s up to your standards!”  She flashed a smile at him.

“Well, no.  You have a point.”

I wrote this to kunama_wolf's prompt, "More on the world with the angels. Tala?"

The convocation of the gods was a great thing even if no-one else knew what the gods discussed behind their closed doors, not even the angels who had accompanied them from their own domains to this great meeting place.  The angels waited outside the bounds of the meeting in their Choirs, Phalanxes and Congregations their mien and demeanour depending upon their individual natures, some hovering anxiously figuratively and literally while others treated the event like an enormous angelic fete.

Thaladeneth, the Thirteenth Swordlord, had brought the smallest number of angels with him, a bare dozen, of all the gods.  That was few enough of them to move around freely and almost unnoticeably as a group.  Almost unnoticeably.  When they went visiting, which they did because the older angels had former colleagues in the service of the Third and Seventh Swordlords, the clustering of grim faced and dark clad male warriors had a single white clad sister in their midst.  Her white wasn’t the long gown or robe some angels serving other gods wore but trousers and a tunic finished off by brown boots.  She was a grace note in their clustering, breaking them out into individuals of strength from the lump of their commonality and when they spoke to her their faces showed unfamiliar flashes of humour, animation and even compassion.  Their old colleagues who’d taken service on different paths when their original masters died saw flashes of their old friends again.

Tala was asking questions.  What she’d asked this time was, “Why do the other gods bring so many angels with them?  It’s not as if we’re helping with the meeting at all.”

“It’s a hangover from the murder of the goddess Erithme when she was bathing alone in the Pool of Beauty at the beginning of the Death War,” admitted Dorthiel.  “Having our divine masters go off on their own still makes those of us old enough to remember that very nervous.”

“And no-one ever leaves their demesne unattended either,” added Gadiah.

“But that’s not why our master doesn’t bring us all, is it?”  Tala was looking around.  She cleared her throat, “I’ve been told there are some of us who’ve never been to a convocation.”

“Yes, that’s true,” admitted Dorthiel.

Tala tumbled on before he could speak again.  “It’s because he doesn’t want anyone to know how many of us there really are, isn’t it?  And someone who’s never here can’t have their face counted.”  She looked around again, taking in the sights beyond her now still brothers.  “So, is it because the convocation is being observed or does he believe it’s been infiltrated?”

Mauve winged Warial dropped his hands on her shoulders to ensure he had her attention.  “Little sister, we can all be trusted but never speak of this to anyone else.”

She looked around at the others, suddenly chilled as she realised that they all believed the enemy was already inside the gates.

I wrote this in response to kunama_wolf's prompt and rescued it from my computer that has issues.  This has a sequel in the piece I wrote as a replacement when I had thought I had lost this one, The Man With The Bucket.

Aldorachai found himself in this position rather often.  He was beginning to think of it as an occupational hazard.  The humans who did this sort of thing did seem to have a thing for fire.  He supposed that this was just what it was like, serving a god whose portfolio had changed and whose current followers didn’t like to be reminded of what it had changed from.

The fences and hedges around the property had been set alight.  That meant the mob would go after the buildings and the people next.  Aldorachai sighed.  It was time for him to step in.

He made an entrance, stepping through the fire at its fiercest point, becoming present in all senses of the word in as spectacular a fashion as possible.  He was trying to get the mob’s attention after all.  It worked.

“Look!” bayed one of the leaders and instigators, the local priest.  “A divine angel come to help us cleanse this blasphemous site!  Praise Hasnor!”

“Well you can start by putting out this fire,” snapped Aldorachai, “before the rest of the farm catches alight.  What in the world were you thinking?”

The priest stared at him.  “The farmer let the learned fool from Iboshoer poke around on his farm and he found the underground place with the lewd murals and statues of men together.  They have blasphemed against holy Hasnor.  They and the blasphemous place must be cleansed with fire!”

“So, did you not do well in theological history at the seminary or did you not do theological history at the seminary?”  Aldorachai smiled at the half stunned, half apoplectic man.  “Or, let me guess, because you Benarians have this peculiar system of one priesthood for everyone, you didn’t cover Hasnor’s theological history at all, did you?”

The priest, speechless, nodded.

“Well, here beginneth the lesson for all of you.”  Aldorachai looked around to make sure he had the attention of all of them.  “Back before you developed this peculiar idea that the Benarians are the chosen people of the gods, back before the Death War itself, so many gods played in the realm of human affections and relations they were called the Pantheon of Love.  The Death War started with the Vardmasters’ ambush and murder of Erithme, goddess of romantic love.  By the time it was over, only three of the Pantheon of Love were left so they shared out the empty portfolios and Hasnor became god of all carnal love.”

“All carnal love…”  That was from a rather bovine-looking, large young man at the back of the mob.

He was immediately shushed with, “Be quiet, you great booby!” from those around him.

“Now,” Aldorachai went on, “my divine lord can’t override your free will, although I am ordered to prevent murder happening tonight.  Know this.  Before his portfolio expanded this was one of his major cult sites, a great temple glorifying his name.  Out of use now for millennia, but he’s still very fond of it.  You can choose to destroy it.  If you do, he will turn his face from each and every one of you who participates in that destruction.  Your prayers to him will be forever unnoticed.  No more inspiration that will speed you to your desire.  You’ll all be on your own with only your own attractions, or lack of them, to aid in your wooing.”  He let the silence sit for a moment.  “So what will you do?”

The mob split into two groups, the young and the old, and started arguing.  Except, interestingly, the large, bovine, young man who emptied out his bucket of tools on to the grass then, leaving the hammers and chisels sitting there, went to the nearby creek to fetch water.