Holy Opposites 20

Chapter Fifteen:


	I sat with my head in my hands in the little garden, describing my experience to Grand Cleric Solen and Axiopistos.  “The pain was just getting worse and worse as I sat there,” I said.  “It was so bad I nearly screamed!”

	“My dear child, I’m afraid I don’t know what that would mean,” Solen said.  “If Ryaire had judged you ill, you most certainly would not have left the Arbor alive.  You should not have been in pain.”

	I squeezed my hands around each other, staring holes in the grass.  Axio rested his hand on my shoulder, and I tried to draw strength from that.  “The relief I felt…”

	“That may have been Ryaire,” Solen said.  “Her Ladyship may have sensed what was happening.”

	Axio looked around to make sure they were unobserved.  “I could ask Ryaire in my prayers tonight,” he said.  “As her Chosen, I can extend contact to her in prayer, and she can send me physical signs or even speak to me in my sleep.”

	I hesitated.  “I wouldn’t ask you to…”

	“No, but I’m offering to do it, and I will do so if it makes you feel better.  I’m offering, Cavria,” Axio said gently.  “This isn’t a headache; this was an interruption of a holy ritual.”

	I sighed.  “I suppose I do take this seriously.  Thanks, Axio.”

	“Of course.”  Axio stood and looked over at his grandfather.  “Sir, if I may, I would like to ask a few unrelated questions of the Elder Brother Forswaithe before he departs.”

	“Certainly, Axio,” Solen said.  “He should be in the rectory.”

	Axio walked off, leaving me with the Grand Cleric.  “Thank you, sir,” I said quietly.  “I’m sorry to bother you with this.”

	“Dear girl, if there is something wrong with you, it’s not a bother,” he assured me, but I wasn’t convinced.

	“‘Wrong with me?’” I asked bitterly.  “Well, I’m a devil.”

	Solen sighed.  “Cavria, this self-loathing of yours is interfering with your mind.  You took a conscious choice to embrace the light of Lady Ryaire.”

	I glared at the green grass.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I did.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have evil still lurking inside me.”

	“Who doesn’t?” Solen asked.  I looked up in surprise.  “I’m being serious.  There is evil in all beings, Cavria, whether intrinsic or learned.  All, save the smallest of children, which Ryaire knows.”  He held out his bare hands.  “Do you think I have never raised a hand in anger?  Never against my daughter, no, but against those who impugned my church in its infancy.  I have slain, girl, when I served alongside the Guard in battle as a War Cleric.”  He closed his eyes, and I saw old pain on his wrinkled face.  His half-celestial visage seemed all the more poignant with such regret scribed on it.  “I slew the non-believers and I found myself enjoying it.  I am half-divine, Cavria, do you imagine I did not know shame when I awoke from the haze of battle?”

	I sighed heavily.  “I’m sorry, sir.  I must sound selfish.”

	“Yes, you do, Cavria, but not deliberately.  You see, your world was pain and bliss,” he said, “in unequal measure.”  He sat back in his seat, and the pain was gone from him.  “From agony and loss in the Hells, to the cool, non-judgmental peace of Ryaire’s Arbor and the gentle hands of the nymphs, and an entire world alight with the laughter of children.  From utter hopelessness to infinite delight.  I do not demean you with my pronouncement of selfish-sounding words, Cavria, for you had never known the mortal world… nor will you ever know the mortal mind.”  He tapped the side of his head, skewering me with his old blue eyes.  “You see, Cavria, though I am longevous in my descent from the demigoddess, I am not eternal, nor does my mind hold eternity within it.  You shall.  Eternal youth is a great thing, to be sure, and you shall make the most of it in Ryaire’s service, but you are in the first few years of your life.”

	I frowned.  “So I’m being selfish because I’m so young?”

	“No, no, my dear, you are not selfish.  You simply would sound that way to others.  I know you are afraid.  Things are happening in your world for which you were not created, and for which you have no context.”  He leaned forward again.  “That would lend anybody to self-doubt.  Anybody.  You focus on your inherent flaws to such an extent that you ignore your own strengths.  Think of it, Cavria, how many will ever have your strength and your connection to the divine?  Few mortals will ever have the might and knowledge you have acquired in your few, short years.  Few mortals will ever walk the planes, or sleep in the shadows of the Arbor.”

	I looked away.  “Oh.  I guess…”

	“You needn’t change your worldview today, of course,” he said gently.  “But the longer you fixate on a flaw of yours that you can’t fix, the longer it will take for you to gain true mastery of those of your strengths you can improve upon, or fix what weaknesses of yours you can address.  You can fixate on the unchanging, or acknowledge it and change what you can.”

	I looked over at him.  He wasn’t smiling or frowning, he wasn’t even raising his voice.  Somehow, though, I felt him extending his patience to me, and I couldn’t help but relax.  I felt very tired inside.  “Thank you, sir.  I need to think on what you’ve told me.”

	“Then please, help me to the kitchen,” he said, extending his hand.  “Leading the flock in prayer does make me so hungry.”

	A disarming moment, to rob his image of himself in my mind of its judgmental quality, and help reassure me that I could come back and talk again without concern.  My respect for him grew again.

	“Of course, sir.  Would you like me to make us something?” I asked, helping him up.  “There are some very good cooks in heaven.”

	“Oh, I’d love that,” he said, and we walked off together.  The burden on my soul was fading.  Yes, I reflected, I had indeed fallen in with a good sort.


	Axio walked into the rectory and looked around.  Finding Forswaithe wasn’t hard.  He was holding court in the outer rooms, where the monks worked and scribed, talking to the assembled friars.  “Of course, there is always a risk in even the most just and fair campaign,” he admitted to one friar.  “But it is also vital to remember that there are causes for which such a risk is worth taking.  Mass abductions, whispers of ritual sacrifice, these things must be stopped.”

	“Will you be joining the campaign, Elder Brother?” one friar asked.

	“Oh, I imagine I will, but not in the first wave,” Forswaithe said.  “My fighting years are long, long past.”  He turned to Axio and grinned.  “Brother Axio, here, is approaching his prime, and could probably have borne half of us on his shoulders, so we’ll make him do all the fighting instead.”

	“Oh, hush, Elder Brother,” Axio chided jokingly.  “I apologize if I’m interrupting.”

	“Not at all, Axio.  Can I help you?”

	“I wanted to ask you something,” Axio said.  The older human nodded.  “Can you help us determine where the enemy’s principal lair may be in town?  We found little on the man we arrested, and the Watch are inspecting the ruin of their rookery, but we may not have time to wait.”

	The Oracular Cleric rubbed his chin.  “Perhaps.  Ask me again tonight, after evening ceremony, and I may be able to help you.”

	“Thank you, Elder Forswaithe,” Axio said gratefully.  “I’ll speak to you then.”


	As evening drew close, Axio sat in the little private chapel and listened.  Forswaithe was a patient man, as he had to be when receiving oracular sight, and it wasn’t Axio’s strength.  Forswaithe had a small bowl on the altar, and he was kneeling before it, deep in prayer.  Axio may have been impatient, but what he saw still awed him.  This was a form of magic that eluded him completely.

	A thin circlet of smoke, which rose and fell all around him, leaving no trail, surrounded the Oracular Cleric.  The ring never turned darker or more translucent, even as it grew and shrank.  It traveled up and down around Forswaithe’s body, never more than an inch or two away from the man’s clothes.  Every so often, a bulge would appear in the ring of smoke, pulse slightly, and withdraw, looking disturbingly organic.

	Oracular Clergy were vanishingly rare.  They did still exist in places, but the traditions to train and upkeep their magic were so dizzyingly complex that few bothered to learn them, and they generally were so all-consuming in their training requirements that only people with an intrinsic bent for focused magic even bothered.

	Forswaithe was a master.  Even as Axio watched, he moved his hands through the smoke ring, not visibly disturbing it, and inhaled the scent of the incense he was burning on the altar.  He reached down and drank a bottle of some potion dry, the set the bottle down at his feet and bowed his head.

	Axio watched in silence.  The room would have looked ordinary to the normal churchgoers, but his own divine senses let him detect the ring of magic in the room, pulsing behind his mind like an audible buzz.  Ilmater was speaking to the old cleric, and despite his urge to fidget, Axio sat as still as stone.