rix_scaedu

I wrote this to kunama_wolf's prompt when I thought my first piece was trapped in a broken computer or lost.  It follows on from An Angel With A Message.

Haigenes had a lot to think about.  That was unusual because he wasn’t encouraged to think.  Usually he was told what to do and did it.  It was certainly easier than being shouted at and called slow and stupid because he hadn’t done what he’d been told straight away.  Almost everyone he knew told him what to do: his Dad; his Mum; his brothers and sisters; the village priest; and, well, everyone else in the village.

Despite what everyone said about him he could think while working.  The way everyone else was acting he might be the only one of them who could.  The older men, like the priest and his father, were gathered in one group, talking furiously and quietly to each other while the young men his age were in another group, talking furiously and loudly to each other.  The angel was watching all of them.  Haigenes was the only one who was putting out the fires.

“Burn the blasphemers out!”  The priest had said that a lot but Haigenes didn’t see how you could be a blasphemer if you’d only found the place that had the murals and statues that the priest objected to.  According to the angel, Haigenes thought that tic of his right dusky red wing was probably a sign of impatience, the god Hasnor was very fond of this place and didn’t want it destroyed, despite what the priest said.  When you got down to it, Haigenes was sure that an angel trumped a priest, even though this wasn’t a game of cards.  So he kept taking the bucket back to the creek, filling it with water then bringing it back up the hill to throw on the fire they’d set to the fences and hedges surrounding the small farmstead.

“Have you considered,” Haigenes was startled to find the angel walking beside him as he came back up the slope from the creek again, “not working on a farm for the rest of your life?  There’s nothing wrong with farming but my divine master is always on the lookout for good mortal servants…”  He left the sentence hanging.

“I’m not smart enough to be a priest,” Haigenes almost laughed.  “Ask anyone around here.”

“You can walk, talk and carry a bucket of water all at the same time,” commented the angel.  “That seems to be more than any of your neighbours can manage.  I wasn’t actually thinking of the priesthood, though you’d be a better candidate than your village’s man.  There are other paths of service, you know.  How do you feel about, say…books and weapons?”

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's first prompt.

“Just curious,” asked the voice from the doorway, “but what are you doing?”

The priest straightened.  “This boy is possessed by an unclean spirit, giving him hallucinations.  The spirit must be driven out to save his soul and mind.  His mother was supposed to stop us being disturbed.”  The priest hadn’t turned to see who he was looking at.  The boy tied flat to the table, gagged and staring with desperate eyes at the doorway, must have been fourteen rising fifteen at most.

“I suggested to her that she might like to make a nice, soothing pot of tea.”  The newcomer chuckled, “She was amenable.  Why do you think he’s having hallucinations?”

“Because half-breed striplings do not have conversations with angels.”  The Benarian’s back was rigid.

“Who says?”

“The clergy has determined that only those with the most advanced levels of spirituality and theology are graced with angelic communications.”  The emotion behind that stiff back wasn’t indignation it was something else, but what?

The newcomer moved slightly and the floor creaked under the weight shift.  “Besides, I’m fairly sure that unclean spirits don’t exist.  Vard and a few other things, yes but not unclean spirits.  How do you intend to drive out these non-existent entities?”

“The usual means.”  The priest did something off to his side.  “Holy water, fire, blood and salt.  If you don’t believe in unclean spirits what do you believe causes mental disorders?”

“Family history, other people, trying to reconcile incompatible beliefs and being tortured.”  The newcomer made a rustling sound.  “You’re a very uncurious fellow, aren’t you?  Why is that?”

“Uncurious?  No.”  The priest went on with his preparations.  “I know what the problem is and I know what I need to do to help this boy.  My main concern at this point is to cool the holy water and heat the irons to the precise points where we will chase the unclean spirit from his mortal frame with the least amount of damage, pain and anguish to the boy himself.”

“But it’s not necessary.”

“But it is, you fool!  Do you have any idea what the temple hierarchy will do to him if I can’t save him like this?  They’ll destroy his mind and because he’s only half Benarian,” the priest turned to emphasis his point with a shaken finger that stilled as his voice dropped away, “they won’t even try to salvage anything of him.”

“Well then,” the grey and silver feathered angel flexed his wings, “perhaps we should untie the boy and discuss whether his best option is a fast horse or a few spare feathers.”

Face on the priest was a middle-aged man with a worried face who said faintly, “I think I’m going to need some of that tea.”

“Quite possibly,” agreed the angel, “and it wasn’t about theology, it was about sunsets.”

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's fourth prompt.  It follows on from Forewarning.

Birgenes hadn’t told anyone where he was going, what he was doing or why.  He had a real fear that if he did, he’d be stopped and detained.  As a religious candidate, former religious candidate in his own mind, there was a real chance he’d wind up in a corrective retreat being prayed and chanted to, over and about.  The example of Brother Laerches at the seminary was all too clear in his mind – once you were subject to that you were never the same again.  There was no appeal to the civil authorities either, the business with the dam had proved that.

It had also been Birgenes’ decision point.  He’d had doubts before, raised by the religious texts he’d been studying, but the sheer callousness and feeling of entitlement that the dam scheme demonstrated had made him reject membership of both the priesthood and the people of his birth.  If the Benarian hierarchy thought the murder of thousands in a pseudo-miracle of the most macabre sort was appropriate, then Birgenes would uproot his life so as not to be a member.

He tramped westward through the spring night towards the nearest border, consulting the navigation stars when he needed direction.

*************

Archaeology in The Wash, as the glacial rubble that covered the ancient ruins of Senlor was called, could be very profitable if you went the right way about it.  Birgenes had carefully opened up an entrance into the mound with a crowbar, spade and a saw, for the tree roots, while Saprista stood guard.  Now Saprista thrust the lantern into the hole before her and, when the flame didn’t change colour, followed it with her drawn sword, her head and then her whole body.

“Nothing’s moved in,” the voice of the Gelharine swordswoman who was now his full partner floated back out of the opening to him.  “Looks like a temple – this’ll be another donation.”

“Ah well,” Birgenes joined her inside the relatively intact building, holding a second lantern.  “The good will of the clergy means no-one interferes with us.  Being respectful costs us nothing,” the beam of his lantern caught the intact altar and he bowed to it while Saprista saluted, “and the temple tells us where to look for the other interesting buildings: libraries, prominent houses, town treasury.”

“Blacksmith, goldsmith and potter,” Saprista finished off for him with a laugh.  “Whose temple is this anyway?”

Birgenes let his lantern beam wander further beyond the all-around glow given off by Saprista’s.  “Thaladeneth’s, by the look of things.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Saprista admitted.  “That theological education of yours is very useful.”

“Of course you’ve heard of him,” Birgenes corrected her.  “He’s The Thirteenth Swordlord.”

She turned towards him, slowly and in place, “This is The Black Scabbard’s temple?”  Her face was pale.  “Have we set off any of the traps yet?”

*************

The two middle-aged men looked at each other.  No-one built houses like this one anymore, but it went with the story they’d heard.  The building, none of it more than two stories tall, rode the crest and spine of the hill and was all white walls and red tiled roofs, purposely windowless because the rooms looked inwards to courtyards.  Orchard groves, pastures and fields of vegetables and grain surrounded it.  It was the home of a rich family, a rich Gelharine family, and the two Benarians did not expect it would be easy to rescue their long lost brother from his servitude here.  It was probably best that their sons had not accompanied them today.

The long lost brother in question was looking up at them in surprise from his seat at the table in one of the courtyards, books spread in front of him.  “Orges.  Leodes.  I wasn’t expecting you.”  Birgenes carefully closed the book in front.  He turned to the Gelharine girl beside him, “Apina, please go and tell your mother that two of my brothers will be joining us for lunch.”

“Of course.”  She made a courtesy obeisance to Orges and Leodes, then left.  She was, Leodes noted, quite pretty with almost Benarian features even if her skin was the Gelharine olive rather than the darker, god-blessed Benarian hue.

“Now we can talk,” Orges said with relief.  “Birgenes, the priests who attended the convocation at Iboshoer brought us news of your enslavement.  We’ve come to rescue you and bring you home.”

Leodes added, “Forgenes, your old friend from the seminary, told us how your owner kept you away from the Benarian delegation.  You must have wanted their help.”

Birgenes sighed.  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so careful to avoid talking to them.  I didn’t realize he was there but Forgenes still doesn’t get out much, does he?”  Orges and Leodes looked at each other askance.  Birgenes took pity on them.  “Come and tidy yourselves for lunch,” he coaxed.  “Lunch will give us time to talk.”

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's second prompt.

“So,” Colexes looked across the plains lying before them, “what do the Benarians think they’re cleansing?”

His companion on the hill top gazed in the same direction.  From here they could see three towns lying along the river and downstream, on the edge of their vision, was a smudge that was the smoke above the city of Xorxas.  “Sin.  Failure to live like them, believe like them, be them.”  Micorah shrugged his shoulders.  “They believe that they’re the favoured people of the gods and that thus they’re entitled to anything they need or want.  They’ve thought that ever since the Great Flood wiped out the Senlorines just as Camoreen the Great was going to conquer them.”

“Did the gods wipe out the Senlorines with the Great Flood?”  Colexes looked at Micorah with interest.

“Not deliberately.”  Another shrug.  “The Great Flood was a burst glacial dam caused by a volcano erupting under one of the feeding glaciers.  I remember the Senlorines being given warnings to get out of the flood path for weeks before the dam burst, but less than a quarter listened.  It was a tragedy.”

“How old are you?”  Colexes asked.  “I’ve known you for years but this is the first time you’ve spoken of anything that long ago as if you were there.”

“I haven’t needed to before.”  The angel stretched his wings to feel the breeze.  “I’m younger than the universe, of an age with the younger gods and older than you.  I talk to you because I like you and I’m talking to you about this because the Benarians have managed to annoy enough of my divine masters that they have given me orders to meddle.”

“Meddle?”

“The Benarian leadership is planning to break that upstream dam your people hate so much.  The priesthood have had the country praying since last winter for deliverance from evil and for divine guidance on their future.  Many of their people would see a devastating flood here as a divine mandate to move in.”

“And now?”

“You’re not the only one I’m telling.”  Micorah laughed.  “I like you but I don’t overestimate your influence.  Forewarned the damage can be mitigated, the Benarian schemers stopped in their tracks.”  The angel smiled.  “The gods and I trust your ingenuity.”