Gathering of the Chosen (11 page)

But if an assassin didn't put that
there, then who did?
Raya thought.
And why didn't they tell
me? Maybe it's another letter from Alira.

Yes, that made sense. As one of the
participants in the Tournament, it made sense for Raya to get
another letter, this one probably containing further information
and instructions regarding the Tournament. It seemed a little odd,
mostly because Raya had not expected to get additional information
so soon, but she wasn't complaining. The sooner she knew more about
the Tournament, the more time she had to plan and prepare for
it.

So Raya walked over to the bed and picked
the envelope off the covers. She turned it over once, hoping to
find some kind of identifying symbol or seal, but even the seal was
a blank red square. She held the envelope up to the magical light
glowing from the ceiling and saw that its contents was a single
folded-up letter. She saw no dust or poison in it that could harm
her.

With all of her fears now abated, Raya
opened the envelope and carefully extracted the folded-up letter.
Unlike the envelope, this paper was a clean white. When she
unfolded it, she saw that the ink was a deep black color that was
easy to read.

The letter's handwriting was neat, but
generic. Raya had never seen this particular handwriting before, so
she had no idea who might have wrote it. She then began reading the
letter, which read like this:

Dear Godling,

Do not think that the gods are unaware of
your treachery and wickedness. The eyes of the gods are all-seeing
and they do not tolerate injustice for long. You are spared only
because you have been chosen to enter the Tournament of the Gods.
Otherwise, your wickedness would be justly punished as it
deserves.

And do not think that you can avoid the
fate you deserve for very long. Though justice's journey is long
and often tortuous, it always arrives at its destination.

The letter ended there as abruptly as if
someone had interrupted the letter writer before he could finish.
Or perhaps the letter writer had intentionally chosen to end on
such an ambiguous note.

In any case, Raya wanted to laugh at the
letter. She had received letters like this before, anonymously sent
by her enemies or enemies of the Royal Family making vague threats
to her and her parents. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these
'threats' could be safely ignored, especially if they were filled
with typos and grammatical errors. In fact, Raya usually saved the
most ridiculous ones to read to her friends, who often found them
just as amusing as she did.

But it was hard to laugh at this letter.
Its mysterious appearance in her room, its lack of a signature, its
constant talk of 'justice,' the letter writer's insinuation that it
knew all of her darkest secrets … that was different from most
threats that she'd received. Most letters typically threatened to
kill her or her parents, often in gruesome and nonsensical ways
(such as one letter writer who threatened to inflate Raya like a
balloon and pop her).

This one, however, made no mention
whatsoever of killing her or her parents. It sounded more like the
angry words of someone who was pursuing justice. It almost sounded
like some of the writings of the old Grinfian monks that she had
read about. Once, a long time ago before Father was born, the
Carnagian government had been horribly corrupt and completely
inefficient at capturing criminals and bringing them to justice. In
fact, Teacher had told Raya that at the time many criminals were
friends or family members of government officials, who often turned
a blind eye to their criminal activities as a personal favor to
them.

As a result, injustice ran rampant all
over the island until a group of Grinfian Monks, tired of the crime
and their inefficient government, formed their own group dedicated
to bringing justice called the Judges of Justice. Their modus
operandi was to send vague, yet threatening, letters to various
well-known and minor criminals alike, written to sound like they
had been dictated by Grinf himself, telling the criminals to give
up their evil ways, lest they invite the wrath of Grinf himself
upon them.

When—inevitably—the criminals would
disregard the letters' warning, then the Judges struck. They used a
combination of magic and trickery, first to scare the unrepentant
criminals, and then to kill them. Often, the Judges wouldn't even
bother to hand the criminals over to the authorities, mostly
because of their distrust of the government's ability to properly
punish lawbreakers.

Eventually, most criminals would cease
whatever they were doing as soon as they received a letter from the
Judges of Justice, even though the letters were always unsigned and
delivered anonymously. The fierce reputation of the Judges
themselves caused the crime rate to fall year after year, until a
religious reform united the entire Carnagian people under the
principles of Grinf, which led to the government taking the matter
of arresting and punishing lawbreakers more seriously. The Judges
then disbanded, though many of their letters were in the Carnagian
Vault and had been reprinted as Scripture that was still read by
many Carnagians today.

That was what this letter reminded Raya
of. It was almost like the Judges of old had sent her a letter from
beyond the grave. Only, Raya was pretty sure that this letter
wasn't written by a bunch of ghosts.

Unless Braim wrote it, but he doesn't
seem like the kind of guy to do that,
Raya thought.

She considered telling her parents about
this letter, but then Raya decided that they didn't need to know.
It was probably just a very strange prank. Maybe it was the work of
the God of Jokes and Pranks. Or maybe one of the katabans who lived
in the city had sent it to her as a bizarre joke that only a
katabans would understand.

So Raya walked over to the trash bin near
the writing desk on the other side of the room and held the letter
above it. She then drew a match from her dress pockets—she always
carried a few around—lit it in one stroke and then held it under
the corner of the letter.

The flame rapidly ate away at the letter,
until soon it was nothing more than a pile of ash in the trash. She
did the same to the envelope, thus eliminating all traces of the
mysterious letter.

And now it's time for bed,
Raya
thought as she picked up her thrown fish, which was still wrapped
in the paper towel.
After I finish my snack, of course.

***

O
ne moment, Carmaz, Saia, and
Tinkar stood in the now-empty village of the crustaceans. The next,
all three of them stood in the center of Carmaz and Saia's
hometown, which was called Conewood. Not only that, but a cursory
look at his body showed Carmaz that Tinkar had somehow also managed
to heal him during the teleportation. Saia looked much better as
well, so much so that he was able to stand on his own without any
trouble.

But Carmaz's stomach immediately rebelled,
causing him to grab it with both hands and moan involuntarily. He
had no idea where this sudden sickness came from because he hadn't
been feeling sick at all earlier. He hadn't even had much to eat
today, so what was his stomach trying to get rid of?

“Teleportation can often have unintended
side effects on humans who are not used to it,” Tinkar said. “I
assume you have never teleported before, Carmaz?”

Carmaz looked up at Tinkar with annoyance.
“Yes, though I thought you'd know that, seeing as you gods know
everything, don't you?”

“Not everything,” said Tinkar. “But most
things.”

Saia, unfortunately, must have had a much
weaker disposition than Carmaz, because he actually threw up. It
was mostly liquid, but the sight of his friend throwing up made
Carmaz's stomach retch, forcing him to look away to avoid joining
his friend in illness.

That was when Carmaz noticed that they
were standing in the village square of Conewood. It was a village
of about three dozen or so huts, with an old well set in the center
of town where anyone could gather water (even though the well was
dry half the time). Tall jungle stood on the outskirts, surrounding
the village on all sides, but Carmaz was so used to seeing the
jungle that he didn't have any strong emotional reaction to it
except to note that he felt happy and safe being back home, even
though Conewood was hardly much safer than the rest of the
island.

Right now, Carmaz did not see anyone else
in the village out and about. He at first found it odd before
remembering that it was in the middle of the afternoon, which was
usually the time that the entire village of Conewood napped inside
their huts. That was because it was usually too hot at this time of
day to do anything else. And indeed, with the sun's rays beating
down on him, he wished he could be inside his own hut taking a nap
right now.

“Allow me to wake up the people,” said
Tinkar, raising his hand.

Carmaz was about to ask Tinkar what he
meant when the god waved his hand. Not a second later, the doors of
the huts opened and all of the villagers streamed out, heading
toward the village square as quickly as they could, like they had
been summoned by a mysterious force that they could not deny.

In less than five minutes, the entire tiny
village of Conewood was gathered in the village square. This was
the quickest that Carmaz had ever seen everyone gather like this.
It was rare indeed for the villagers of Conewood to gather here. In
fact, Carmaz could name only two other times that this type of
village-wide gathering had occurred, and both had been several
years ago when Carmaz was much younger than he was now.

The villagers were a sorry lot in
appearance. Most were quite thin due to a lack of food to eat and
very dirty due to a lack of soap and water in which to bathe. One
man, who Carmaz knew as Wood-foot, was missing a foot, which had
been replaced with a block of wood that was held on by rope. And,
although some of the villagers were descended from the old Ruwan
Royal Family, none of them looked rich in the slightest.

Yet none of the villagers dared to speak
or move toward Carmaz or Saia, even though Carmaz could tell that
everyone was both surprised and happy to see that the two of them
had returned to the village safely and in one piece. All eyes were
on Tinkar, as if everyone knew who this god was but were too afraid
to actually talk to him.

The silence was broken when a young girl
shouted, “Carmy!” and dashed out from behind the adults. She
slammed into Carmaz's legs, almost knocking him over despite her
small size, and hugged his legs fiercely as she said, “Carmy, I
missed you! I thought you weren't ever going to return.”

Despite the serious situation, Carmaz had
to smile as he looked down at the young girl clinging to his legs
like she thought that she could keep Carmaz from leaving through
her childish strength alone. He swept the girl up into his arms,
hugged her tightly (much to her delight), and then rested her back
on the ground, saying, “I'm glad to see you as well, Frissa. And
see, I even brought Saia back with me, too.”

The young girl, Frissa, looked up at Saia
with her dark, innocent eyes. Saia spread his arms as if he
expected a hug from her as well, but then Frissa said, in a rather
monotonic voice than before, “I'm glad to see you are alive, too,
Mr. Saia.”

Saia's smile vanished as quickly as if
Tinkar had teleported it away and his arms fell to his sides. “Hey,
I
was the one who was going to be eaten by the crustaceans.
Isn't anyone happy to see me?”

Saia looked at the other villagers, but
unlike Frissa, none of them came forward to greet them. Even Hazur,
the village elder, stood with the others, her old, aged eyes
looking at Tinkar with much suspicion and distrust.

Tinkar, meanwhile, was looking at Frissa,
though the young girl seemed to hardly notice the god. “Is she your
daughter?”

Frissa finally noticed Tinkar when he
spoke, but rather than cheerfully greet the stranger, she just hid
behind Carmaz. Carmaz wished he could hide somewhere, too, but he
knew that it was impossible to hide from the gods.

So he said to Tinkar, “No. Frissa's
parents were murdered by some pirates when she was only a year old
and so doesn't really have any parents, so to speak. She
technically is raised by everyone in Conewood, including me. But
you knew that already, didn't you?”

“I know the fates of all mortals,” said
Tinkar. “I simply asked the question to appear less alien to you,
though I doubt I succeeded.”

Carmaz found it hard to believe that
Tinkar—or any god, for that matter—would bother trying to
understand him and the others. He suspected that Tinkar was playing
with him, which, considering how the gods in general treated
mortals, was not an unheard of thing for a god to do.

Then Carmaz looked back at the villagers.
They still didn't seem likely to break the ice, so he decided to
explain to the others what was going on and why Tinkar was
here.

So Carmaz stepped forward and gestured at
Tinkar. “This is Tinkar, the God of Fate and Time himself. He—”

Carmaz didn't even get to finish his
sentence before the villagers started to hurl dirt clods, rocks,
and even precious shoes at Tinkar. Carmaz, Saia, and Frissa ducked,
therefore avoiding most of it, but Tinkar didn't even try to dodge.
The clods, rocks, and shoes rapidly disintegrated ten feet from his
body. Tinkar's facial expression didn't even change as the
projectiles disintegrated, as if he was unimpressed by the
villagers' actions.

Once it became clear that throwing things
at Tinkar was not working, the villagers stopped doing it, but they
still viewed Tinkar with the same distrust from before.