One (The Godslayer Cycle Book 1) (2 page)

Of course, the Witness had learned this over time.  It certainly was not inherent knowledge that he was born with, nor even anything imparted to him by being witness to future events.  His foreknowledge was limited to the mortal realm – he could not see into the divine realms and thus could not foresee the actions of the Gods.  Yet he had witnessed the rare occasions that one God or another had chosen to cast his or her influence upon the mortal realm and its consequences.  He had seen wars spark between Gods and their faithful.  He had seen the rise of the New Order and the slow demise of the older pantheon.  Though he believed the old Gods were not yet gone for good, he had seen the devastation wrought by the new Gods' followers upon the old's and seen very little in way of retaliation.  He saw the need for balance in the choices made and the actions taken by the Gods, and his understanding had blossomed from that.

By now, his path had brought him to where he needed to be.  He stood at an alleyway opening upon a fairly busy throughway.  Across the road stood a building that had come under ill repute.  Inside, a woman was being beaten, a cruel man taking his rage out upon one too defenseless to fight back.  Or so he believes.

The woman has a child who will see it all, who will reach out and strike the man, providing her mother the chance to break free and strike her own blow against the man.  Yet hers would be fatal, smashing a bottle into the side of the man's temple, piercing his brain and ending the brutal man's life.  Within moments, the woman would race from her room, screaming, crying for help in the hall.  And it would come, though not for her nor in the form she expects nor needs.  Members of the city guard are present, taking their own pleasure with the women behind the brothel walls, and they will take the woman into custody for the murder of a prominent businessman.  The woman will be hanged for the murder, and justice will not be served.

Yet this is not the event the Witness has come here to see.  It is not the woman's fate, one destined to end in a fortnight, that is of lasting consequence here.  Such deaths happen far too often to have a single, lasting effect.  Normally.

And so he waits, watching the building.  The commotion inside is audible even on the street as the guardsmen secure the woman and begin dragging her to the street, the day's light dimming into dusk as they take her to the gaol located within the heart of the community.  Other women, many only partially dressed, scream and taunt the men, cursing them for their actions.  They will not soon be welcome back, that much is obvious.  All know what transpired, all know the woman acted in self-defense.  The businessman had been a regular and had visited his violence upon other residents of the brothel before.  But it is the way of corrupt men to protect other corrupt men and these guardsmen cannot permit the death of one of their own to go unanswered, regardless how justified the death may have been.

And then the Witness sees her.  The little girl, the daughter who had hidden herself outside her mother's door, the one who had rushed in and saved her mother's life, only to see it cast away the next.  The golden curls fall into a face set in stone, her features largely in shadow.  Any other child of eight would be in tears, hysterically calling for her mother to be released.  But not this one.  Not young Malorie Novis.  The Witness can see the variable futures that might have been weaved about her – a prostitute like her mother, eventually a madame in her own right; a wealthy man coming to take her away as a teen, to be raised and kept as a mistress, locked away from the world; a teen runaway who could no longer take the brutalities of the men who would turn to her once her mother was spent, turning later to the love of women for comfort.  All these possibilities and more.  And yet, now not one of them would come to pass.  Fate had cast its mold upon young Malorie, for her path was set through the injustice before her this day.

This young child would grow to become a power in her own right.  She would live for a time under the care of her mother's co-workers, yet she would never sell her body.  She would never submit to the will of a man for money.  By fifteen, she will have left the brothel and made  her own fortune, investing what she had managed to acquire through odd jobs and services through the years and by seventeen owning a sizable trade business outright.  By nineteen, she will hold status within her guild and by twenty a position on the city counsel.  Her drive toward purging the perverse and sinful within her community will be her halberd, her weapon, and by twenty-five she will wield this weapon to be elected mayor of this town, the first woman to hold the local title.  She will be a heroine to many, an enemy to the wicked.  And though her life will end shortly after her twenty-seventh year, her influence will live on through inspiration and her dream would be realized – this town, this settlement in a land too broad to know it as more than a community amongst legions, will never again see an innocent die for the sins of another after the death of Malorie Novis, not for as far as the Witness could see into the future.

It is a minor role in history perhaps, but a significant one.  Young Malorie will save many lives, and her memory even more.  Many of those will carry on her dreams and make the world a better place, several taking their influence well beyond the boundaries of this small town.

No history book will ever record the trials nor influence of Malorie Novis.  But the Witness has seen and knows.  And he will remember this crucial moment that so drastically changed the course of this part of the world.  And thus his purpose is served.

An older woman places an arm around young Malorie's shoulder protectively and leads her back into the building.  Words of comfort are offered but not heard.  The young girl cannot willingly take her eyes from the direction where her mother has disappeared.  Not until she is finally coaxed beyond the doorway and the view is no longer possible to see.

The die has been cast and the event witnessed.  The Witness does not smile, shows no outward emotion.  Yet he is satisfied that he has seen and that young Malorie's defining moment will be remembered.  Having satisfied his goal, he turns to leave.

And stops.

Confusion crosses his face.  He stumbles slightly, leans against a supporting wall.  The outward conflict is visible for only a moment, yet it is significant.  No one else sees, no one else would have recognized the meaning of the falter, nor it's importance.  To others, he is just a man like any other.

But this one does not become confused nor stumble.  The Witness knows all that will come to pass and is never surprised.  And he knows himself well enough to understand how monumental a moment has just passed for him.

Once again in control, he casts his eyes to the sky, then to the north.  Then slightly to the east.  Yes, there is where it came from.  That is where the brief disruption began.  And though it is gone now, he recognizes this as something new.  And worse, he does not
know
what it is.  Not at all.  Something unearthed, awakened, powerful.  Something old enough he knows to precede his own awakening, because he has never perceived its like before.  And still, it is beyond his knowledge and to a man who knows all that will come to be, the concept breeds a feeling in his heart that he has not felt in countless centuries.

The Witness knows fear.

Deep down, he knows he should investigate it.  He should seek it out.  He should bear witness to whatever it is without hesitation, for something beyond his understanding is something that surely will have significant impact upon what will be.  He owes it to his cause.  He knows this.

And yet he does hesitate.  The unknown is no longer something he is comfortable with.  To be frightened is not exactly new – he was frightened enough in his younger years, frightened by the awakening of his talent, frightened by the understanding that his immortality would take him beyond the lives of his loved ones – but it is a sensation he has not experienced in such a long time.  And this alone is enough to give him pause.

Yet ultimately, his choice is made, as it must always have been. A new path has opened in his mind that had not been there before.  It is one in which he follows the core of his purpose, seeks out the source of the disruption.  Seeks it out, that much he sees.  Yet he cannot see what he ultimately discovers.  More troubling still, he cannot see where this path leads.  He cannot see his own future any longer past this path.  All of his other futures are gone.

Does this mean he is destined to die following this path?
No
, he chastises himself.  He would see his death, and he just sees nothing at all.

The thought occurs to him that he could alter his path.  He could choose to not follow this path that had so unexpectedly opened before him, alter his fate and cast aside his calling.  He could move on to witness something else.  Men could do it, and in spite of his talent, he was still a man.  He knew he could...

But he also knew he would not.  It was his nature to witness. It had become the reason for his being.  And he would not shy away from that duty now.  He could not.  Or he would cease being what he was.

And so, even though he does so with dread in his heart and uncertainty in his mind after too great a time, the Witness changes his direction and begins to move along his new path.  North, and slightly to the east...

The night wind blew cold and damp through the loft in the blacksmith's shop.  The forge had long since been dampered for the night and the fiery heat that had originally been so inviting had escaped into the night's air.

Avery shrugged.  The chill had set into his bones like a spirit possessing a corpse.  This thought sent a new chill through his frame, as he convulsed with the imagined feel of invisible, ethereal fingers prickling along his upper back and neck, searching for a purchase in life, hoping that his spirit would flee its mortal shackles to give it a new berth.

Avery clutched his satchel closer to his chest.  His few possessions in this world would offer little protection against fleshless ghouls of the afterlife, yet he nonetheless felt some comfort in their closeness.  Fear was nothing new to him, but it still visited upon him the same helplessness it always had.  It was not enough to fear the real world and its consequences;  his mind had to create phantom menaces to terrorize him, as well.  And the soulless wind that blew tonight fed into his primitively  superstitious mind.

By the Old Gods
, Av
ery thought. 
If it is my soul you want, fiends of darkness, take it already and be done with it!
   Better to end his life now than to continue in prolonging his miserable existence in terror.

Avery took a deep, steadying breath.  At least, he wanted it to be steadying.  He tried convincing himself that there was nothing to fear.  The old blacksmith had not seen Avery when he had scaled the outer wall of the building, nor heard him as he had silently settled into the loft for a sheltered night of seclusion.

The evening squatter had thought that the forge would be an excellent place to wait out the evening's chill, but had not realized that the smith had little need to keep his edifice sheltered from the winds when the building was near inferno temperatures when occupied, even without insulation of any kind.  Consequently, Avery's perch in the loft was little better than outside at all.  Yet it was
not
outside and it did provide some safety he would not have had trying to sleep under a bush or some hollow in the woods.

Yes, he was safe.  And surely the smith's building was not haunted by disembodied banshees in search of a hapless soul to feast upon.  Only the night and its cold wind encircled him, nothing more.  Or so Avery kept trying to convince himself.

No matter how hard he tried to dispel his fears though, once awakened, images of soul-stealing apparitions dominated his mind's eye.  And the sleep he so desperately craved remained as elusive as those self-same spirits.

You're a coward!
  he cursed inwardly. 
Yes, but one that keeps surviving because he knows to be afraid in the first place
,
he answered himself.

A small star peeked into the loft through a crack in the roof.  The twinkle of the light drew Avery's eyes' focus momentarily away from the shadowed corners of which his imagination had populated with all the wicked soul-stealing demons his mind could conjure up.

Oh, Sarla
,
the frightened man thought. 
If only you and your kin still watched over us, perhaps I would not be the fearful wretch I am today.

But the Old Gods were gone, dead now lo these three hundred years.  Everyone knew that.  Or so the priests of the New Order preached.  Sarla, Goddess of Earth and Sky, had been dethroned by Ava, the Sun God, and his mistress, Alana, the Moon.  And Sarla's dominion over the land had likewise been usurped by Galanor, the Knight of the Fields, Urlock, the Mountain King, and Davini, Maiden of the Soil. 

So many Gods reigned in the New Order.  Avery could never remember them all, even when he was a  man of faith, and he held the secret belief that not even the most devout clergyman could possibly know them all, either.  It would have been so much easier only needing to know the nine members of the Old Gods.  Those he could have remembered easily, he was sure.  As it was, the disuse of their names made it a struggle to recall all of them at one sitting for Avery these days, but in his younger days he had surely known them all.

There were prohibitions, yes, but there were still those who held to the old faiths, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that their Gods were gone.  After all, how could the New Order have gained such a staunch hold if the Old Gods still lived?  Surely, the elder pantheon would have thrust the younger upstarts out of their domains if they had lived.  That they did nothing to curb the encroachment of this New Order for several centuries spoke for itself, so many thought, Avery amongst them.

Of course, there were always new prophecies cropping up from time to time foretelling the fall of the New Order and the re-ascension of the Old Gods.  But that was little more than wishful thinking of the hopeful, fewer and fewer with each passing generation.  In another hundred years, perhaps, there would not be any at all.

As the star's light passed out of alignment with the breach in the roof, Avery thought it poetically similar to the passing of the Old Gods from the mortal realm.  One moment in time here, the next gone out of sight with no sign that they had ever truly been there at all.

No, that was not completely true.  There was still the old magic of the Game that persisted.  That was a mystery, since none of the New Order took responsibility for
that
!  In fact, anyone found playing the Game would be lashed, their homes raided, their wealth (if they had any after tithes) taken in the name of “purifying” their souls.  For, it was said, that the Game could only be bought with wealth, and if wealth a man had, then taking the temptation from him would save the soul.

In his wanderings, Avery had seen the Game once or twice, but only at a distance enough that he was sure he could have been mistaken.  He knew well enough to stay away from any concept of fortune manipulation, and if he saw a man practicing the forbidden ritual of the Game, he wished to be nowhere near such a man!

The Game had persisted after the rise of the New Order, or so the old people said, but no one could recall exactly when or where it had come from, either.  Most ascribed it to the Old Gods, but none knew what God may have created it if it did.  It was clearly a magic separate from the New Order, however, and that alone seemed to suggest some lingering power other that they controlled still existed.  And if not the old Gods, then from whence did such power come?

As he watched the blackness now that occupied the space in the ceiling, Avery reflected on his earlier thought that he could have more easily have remember the Old Gods' names in favor of the endless host of the New Order.  Could he even now recall all of them?  He remembered that each of the Old Gods was a dual deity, presiding over parallel spheres of influence.  Like Sarla, who was Goddess of both Earth
and
Sky. 
Who else?
  he mused sleepily.

There was Sarla, of course.  Then there was Malik, God of War and Peace; Airek, God of Charity and Greed; Dariel, God of Truth and Deception.

Why am I stuck on recalling only the names of the Gods, and not the Goddesses?

Oh yes, there was Karmel, Goddess of Magic and Chance (always a strange duality in Avery's mind, since was not magic a form of chance?); Naris, Goddess of Love and Hate; Charith, Goddess of Life and Death...

Who am I forgetting?  That was how many?  Seven, so two more...

Of course, there was Olgoth, God of Knowledge and Mystery.  And...

Lendos!  That was the last one.  He was God of Bounty and Famine.  Odd that under his current circumstances that that would not have been the first God on his mind.

Yes, that was all of them.  He smiled drowsily.  Yes, it would have been much easier to be expected to know only the Old Gods...

Avery suddenly jerked awake.  Had he heard something?  He had begun to drift asleep and something had set him awares.  He held his breath close, hearing the beat of his heart thundering in his ears.  The sound thrumming through his ears made it difficult to hear anything else, but he still strained to hear whatever it had been that alerted him to its presence.

Avery tried to recall if there had been a noise but could not remember anything specifically.  His chest felt tight as he forced his breathing into a harsh rhythm that would not be heard by anyone else in the building, though to his own ears, his breathing seemed even louder than the pulse beating in his head.

The smell of mold seemed stronger with Avery's senses heightened by his fear.  The blacksmith used hay and straw to absorb any leakage from the roof, and the rot was keenly apparent to anyone even entering the loft.  Avery had not minded the smell then, but now the stench overwhelmed him.  His nose twitched at the odor and he had to pinch it to avoid sneezing.

Several minutes passed and Avery could not sense anything amiss.  Maybe it had been nothing more than his imagination after all.  He tried to force himself to relax, but he could not stop the sudden shivering that had overcome him.  Perhaps this place
was
haunted.  He certainly had not been able to relax since he had come here...

I'm a coward
,
he cursed at himself again. 
I'm a grown man huddled in an empty building frightened by imagined specters going bump in the night!

He had not always been this way.  Once he had enjoyed a modicum of success as a barter's apprentice.  He had worked out of a small hamlet named Kellenburg, some leagues distant from where he lay now.  Truth to tell, he would have been hard pressed to give even a rough idea of how far away his former home lay, or even the exact direction.  His wanderings had certainly not carried him in a straight line away, that was for certain.

But his former life had ended shortly after a priest of Anlar the Hunter, Rantell by name, had moved into town, setting up a shrine in his God's name there.  Everyone was expected to tithe the shrine, to show reverence to the deity that now was said by Rantell to shelter the town under His grace.  Most of the townsfolk were timid and feared to speak out against the words of the priest, feeling unsure of whether it was proper to resist, even if none in the community had ever directly worshiped Anlar before the priest had established His shrine or not.  Kellenburg was largely isolated from the larger urban areas and the etiquette of how to handle a priest of the New Order was beyond the experience of the simple folk of the town.

At the time, Avery was barely fifteen summers and he was apprenticed to the owner of the local trading post, one Master Farun.  Avery had been orphaned before his first ten years and Farun had been without child to inherit his business.  It had been an arrangement made out of convenience and amicability, though had over the years blossomed into sincere devotion between the two, if not outright love.

The trading post trafficked in furs and preserved meats mostly, with occasionally more exotic goods finding their way to Farun's keep.  Due to the business owing its existence primarily to hunters and trappers of surrounding territories, it quickly became a focal point of opposition when Farun would not pay the tithe demanded by the priest.  He had enjoyed success before Anlar, he was heard to say, and he saw no need to lose profit now on the whim of one mortal man, no matter how holy he professed to be.

Within days of this fateful declaration, Farun had been felled through the heart by a “stray” arrow near the edge of town.  Rantell was quick to declare the shaft to have been diverted by Anlar himself to strike down the man who had spoken such blasphemy against the God only days before.  The priest did not dispute that the hand that had fired the arrow was likely mortal, and to the archer it would have seemed a stray shot, but in where it ended up attested that it was the will of Anlar that had truly declared its path.

None dared to dispute the priest's words, fearful eyes darting between the woods and the man standing before them.  None doubted that Rantell had had a hand in the execution of Farun the barter, but also none knew whether or not he had acted alone.  In recognition of a possible assassin watching their every move, no man nor woman would speak further.

Avery had returned woodenly to his workplace only to discover men whom he did not recognize loading the shop's stores into a wagon.  Rantell had wasted no time in ordering the business seized and its assets sold to pay the “debt” to the shrine for the barter's insolence, it seemed.

Avery had been enraged, attacking the men without thought of the consequence.  He was, of course, overcome easily – it had been four fully grown men against a slight teen.  Beaten into submission, he was dragged to the shrine where Rantell awaited him.  What the priest had to say would forever thereafter be etched into young Avery's mind:

“
The evil of the barter lives through his disciple,” emoted the priest, “yet since a life has already been paid for the barter's insult, this young man's shall be spared.”  But it came at a cost, a hefty one:  Avery would be branded a heretic.

The priest did not wait for anyone to speak on Avery's behalf before reaching to a brand he had already prepared beside the alter.  As the four large men held the hysterical young man, Rantell had seared the mark of the heretic into Avery's arm where it met his wrist, forever branding him an outcast by command of the New Order.  Under the laws of the New Order, no man branded a heretic would be made welcome before any hearth nor within any shelter.  He would have to forage for himself to survive for none could offer him succor without being cast out themselves.