One (The Godslayer Cycle Book 1) (20 page)

“
I don't really even know why he bothered to raise me at all. He was a bitter, bitter old man who hated life and hated me for living when my mother had died.”

Brea looked at Nathaniel until he glanced up to meet her eyes.  “I can tell from what you've said that your mother loved you very much.  When my father died, he left me alone and angry.  I never knew what it was like to be loved by a parent, and as I have wandered the world since, I have never felt...  compassion, I guess, for any child's anguish, or for a parent's loss.  When I took up faith, I chose Imery because I believed that people only lived lives of deceit, pretending to love each other, when in truth it was all a lie covering all the real bitter and hateful things they felt about each other.”

Brea let a tear fall without shame.  “For the first time, I think I have learned what real love is, Nate.  It's about a mother protecting not only her child, but something precious she held for him, too.  And yes, even unto death, sheltering it from any harm.  I think that maybe there's more to what two people can share than pretenses and illusions.  And it took you and your tragedy to show this to me.”

And she meant every word.  Imery's gift had laid out Nate's story in more than words.  She had felt the all consuming truth behind those words.  She knew Nathaniel's pain, confusion and frustration.  She understood the injustice and his feelings of futility.  More, she had felt the pure and simple love that a child could feel for a parent, for any loved one.  And how devastating a loss like that – losing someone else who was a part of you – could truly be.  Nothing like what she had ever experienced and she felt sadder for herself for not having had that kind of emotional attachment herself before in her life.

More still, it reaffirmed in her what she was feeling for the man himself.

“
So you think identifying with me will what?  Make me trust you more?”  Nathaniel's eyes burned with resentment.  “I'm not buying, so quit trying to sell me something!”

Brea felt as though she had been slapped.  “I didn't...  I mean, I wouldn't have... “  She breathed deeply, trying to calm down.  “I'm not trying to trick you!  I'm not trying to manipulate you or anything else!  I just...  I just wanted you to know how I felt!”

“And how is that, exactly?”

“
I – I don't know.  I told you, I've never believed that love could be so...  selfless, I suppose is the word I want to say.  That's something I don't think I have ever seen before...”

Nathaniel did not know how much to believe of what Brea said.  Aside from the general distrust he had for her purely upon the basis of her profession, he just could not grasp the notion that she would willingly share something so asymmetrically opposed to his own story and it still be true.  As difficult as it was for Brea to have believed that a parent and child could share more than reluctant coexistence, Nathaniel could not comprehend the scenario that Brea had described.  Perhaps it was a difference between mothers and fathers, or perhaps it was a story designed to win his sympathy.  Either seemed a likely motivation for what Brea presented, but the one thing that Nathaniel could not so easily accept was how almost perfectly opposite it was to his own.

One thing that clashed with the idea of it being false though was the reminder of the God to whom she swore fealty.  Could a priestess of Imery lie?  It would be rather pointless to ask, of course, so Nathaniel was left with a lingering doubt and no idea how to resolve it.

“
I have no idea of what to make of you, priestess,” Nathaniel admitted.

Brea grinned weakly.  “That, at least, is something we have in common.  I don't know what to make of you, either.”

Brea stood up and stretched.  “What happened afterwards?  I mean, how did you get over what happened?”

Nathaniel glared.  “I notice you did not ask what happened to the priestess.”

Brea looked away to hide her reaction.  She
should
have asked that, she knew.  But she also feared she knew the answer.  The New Order's priesthood was above reproach.  No one would have challenged the priestess' authority, much less sought to penalize her for what she had done.  Right or wrong, the priesthood would have risen up against anyone raising a hand to a priest or priestess.  Likely, Oaken Wood would have been razed to the ground if there had been any kind of retaliation against the priestess.  But she did not intend to say anything like that to Nathaniel.

“
I would have asked,” she did say.  “I just cared more about what happened to you.”

Nathaniel tried to take the answer at face value, but the lingering doubt of her honesty still lingered.  “I tried to live out here for awhile.  I was too stubborn to accept help.  I almost died after the first winter storm that year.  If Bracken had not come out to take me back into town, I probably would have.  I fostered with a family in town for a few years, then struck out on my own, hunting and trapping mostly.  I didn't come back here until after Mari and I were wed.  I didn't trust the idea of raising a family in Oaken Wood.  I wanted to get away from the New Order and their influence.  And there were far too many 'faithful' in town for my taste after that day.  I fowled that up pretty well, right from the start.”

“How do you mean?”

Nathaniel considered a moment before answering.  “I just learned that Mari only married me at the bequest of her father to 'breed out' my mother's influence.  Seems you New Order types will do anything to kill off the old ways, even prostitute your daughters for the cause.”  Nathaniel sighed deeply.  “And me all the more foolish for thinking I could be loved by someone like her.  Poor little orphan boy, easy to manipulate if you give him the illusion of a real family to call his own.”

Brea's heart twinged.  She wanted to tell him that he could be loved, that she ached so badly just being this near and not saying anything.  If only he knew how easily she would fall into his arms if only he would give a sign!

Yet she could not do that.  Another new limitation she had imposed on herself unwittingly: She would not, could not, take advantage of him like that.  For anyone else, she would never have considered their feelings in the matter.  In Nate, she wanted his love, but she wanted him to respect her, too.  Even if he could be swayed into her arms now to satisfy this grief, would he still want her after the emotion passed?  Somehow, she doubted he could ever even get to the point of accepting
her
as a paramour, but even if he could, it would not last.  And she could not bear the thought of that rejection.

“
You have to know that's not true, Nate,” she said simply.  “Even if what you say is true, and I still cannot imagine it is,” though she
so
hoped it was, just so he might, possibly, one day see in her what she did in him,” it does not make you unlovable.  It would make her a very...  cold person, to say the least.  But none of
that
reflects upon you.”

Nathaniel did not want to pursue the topic any further.  “Not that you care, but no one was ever punished for the stoning.  The priestess absolved any wrongdoing on anyone's part and the magistrate would not investigate.  Bracken made quite a pest of himself trying to get something done, but nothing ever happened.”

“I am sorry, Nate.  You can believe me or not, but I am sorry.  I am not blind to the politics of the clergy.  I know that we, as priests, enjoy a great deal of liberty when it comes to laws and common order.  And yes, I have taken advantage of that liberty on more than one occasion.  But if what you say really happened, that kind of behavior would not be tolerated by the Gods nor their worldly servants in the priesthood as a whole.  I know the doctrine of Zantel well enough, as well, to know that he does not ordain violence in any form.  His priests believe it is...  bad for business and, by extension, profit.

“
Something else you might consider, though.  Not that I am trying to defend what happened in any way, but there are many people who wander the small towns pretending to be priests in order to bleed a town of its wealth.  They come in, collect donations, then move on.  As rightful priests, we are charged with finding such charlatans and to bring them before whichever order they are impersonating for justice.  I know there was no priest of Zantel nor any shrine when I came to Oaken Wood, so obviously this priestess did not stay long.  It does sound to me like this 'priestess' you describe may well have been of this false ilk.”

Brea watched Nathaniel closely to gauge his reaction.  But the man did not know how to react.  He only stared dumbly back at her.  Could that be possible?  After all these years of hating the New Order, and it may never have been a real priest in the first place?

After several minutes passed, and Nathaniel did not respond, Brea tried to steer the conversation away from the delicate topic.  “Do you mind if I ask what it was?  What the nameday present your mom held was?”

Nathaniel blinked, coming out of a daze.  He kept learning new things that challenged what he had long accepted as true.  He had to wonder if his life would ever again settle down.

“I don't know,” he answered.  “I never found out what happened to it...”

Mari had never really wanted for much growing up.  She was relatively comfortable.  She had had a loving family – a somewhat distant father in her earlier years, perhaps, but a doting mother, and a brother and sister who were never really the cause of any untoward trauma other than typical sibling conflicts as she grew up beside them.  Her father had supported the family well enough by working books and managing accounts for other businesses and even for the local magistrate's office.  She had received an adequate education – she could read, write and knew numbers.  She had even learned a couple of exotic languages – a local elvish dialect and a merchant cant.  For many, her childhood would have seemed for the most part to have been idyllic.

Except for one notable exception.

She could not escape the image of a beautiful woman with orange-gold locks, her head jarred to the side, the pain on her face as her body fell to the ground.  She could not silence the sound of her father crowing with triumph at the impact of the rock he had thrown.  Papa even put a stone in her hand and directed her to throw it at the woman who was struggling to get up, her hair covering her face.  She was confused why Papa would be having her throw rocks when she remembered well the switching her brother had received for throwing stones at a neighbor boy.  Yet Papa had always been so hard to please and this was a chance to make him happy, to make him proud.

So Mari had thrown the rock, with as much force as her little girl frame could produce.  She could still hear the thudding sound of it striking the woman's head, and watched the rock fall away from the body as if in slow motion.  And she remembered the sudden blossoming of red amidst those beautiful locks of hair after her stone had struck the side of the woman's head.  And after that, the woman never tried to get back up again.

Mari remembered then turning her smiling face to see her Papa's, expecting to see him smile down at her with love and acceptance, to see any sign of approval for what she had done.  But the great man in her life was not looking at her – he was too busy shouting along with the crowd and throwing another stone of his own.  He had not seen her, at all.  But if he had not seen her do it then, maybe he would if she threw another?

So she picked up another rock, and another after that, and still another after that, each time looking to her Papa for his warmth and approval, each time disappointed that he was missing her throws.  She lost count soon after, and she even stopped looking to her Papa for approval.  Even when Papa picked up a stick when he could find no more stones to throw at the side of the road, she could still nimbly run between legs to get more and continue throwing.  It had become a kind of game, and she did it so well, she kept thinking deep down that Papa would notice and approve.  When the game was done, he would sweep her up and congratulate her on how well she had done.

All the while, she knew that there was something not right about what they were doing.  She had been told at an early age, so young she could not remember when, that she was not to hurt people.  She remembered well the lesson her brother had received for throwing stones of his own, and she had sorely been tempted herself on more than one occasion to do the same when her brother or sister were being especially mean to her.  But always the memory of the bleeding welts on her brother's backside reminded her and she never wanted to be hurt like that.  She also remembered the ugly purple bruise on the neighbor boy where her brother's rock had hit him on the side of the face.  Briefly, she even wondered how the woman lying still on the ground avoided getting such bruises herself.  It never really occurred to the little girl that the woman was not a willing part of the game.

Then that ugly little man with the beard had gotten into her face, yelling something at her she could not understand, and had scared her.  Mari had burst into tears and run away, afraid the ugly man would chase her.  She did not stop running until she had reached home, where she had run to her room and slammed her door.

That was where Papa had found her some time later, curled in a ball on her bed, dried tears staining her face.  When he looked in on her, she had felt immediate shame.  She had run away and Papa would not be proud of her, after all.

But her father had only smiled and told her to wash herself before coming out for the noonday meal.  And even at the meal table, Papa did not yell at her nor insult her as he sometimes did when she had disappointed him.  In fact, he did not say a word about the stone throwing game.  And she did not bring it up because she knew she had gotten scared and run away like a baby.

It was over a week before Mari first saw Nathan Goodsmith and learned it had been his mother they had played the game with.  And worse, she learned it had been a game that had taken his mother away from him forever.  She did not understand right away what that had meant.  At first, she had thought his mother had gotten scared like she had and run away, too.  The ugly man had been
really
scary!  Maybe his Mama had been so scared she had run away from home? 
That did not make her a very good mother,
Mari had remembered thinking.

When at last Mari realized the truth, she had been even more scared than when the ugly man had yelled at her.  It did not seem possible that Papa would have helped kill the boy's Mama!  Worse, that he had made her take part in it!  When she had learned the truth, she had run home and cried harder than she had ever cried in her life.  And all she could think about was how lonely that poor boy would be without his Mama to tuck him in at night for sleep...

Mama had come asking after her, but Mari would not talk.  When Papa had come in, she could not speak to him about it, either.  Eventually, Papa had asked Mama to leave, and he told her she was Papa's special little girl because she had helped him where no one else would have.  He tried to explain to her about how she had helped remove an evil, evil woman from all of their lives.  The woman had not
looked
evil, though – she had been real pretty.  But Mari did not know what an evil, evil woman would look like, either.  So she had just lay there and listened as her Papa ran his hand through her chestnut hair, giving her all the special attention she had always wanted, yet now seemed to matter so little.

Mari became the center of her father's attention after that day.  He spoiled her over her two siblings, her preferred status earning her envy from them.  And she did not even want the special treatment.  She wanted to be left alone and to have things go back to the way they had always been.  Every time Papa would bring her something special or take her someplace for only the two of them, she was reminded of what it was that had brought them so close together in the first place.  And she would see that beautiful head of hair covered in blood and the deep, lost eyes of young Nathan when he told her that his mother had gone away forever.

After a time, she went out of her way to follow Nathan around whenever she could.  For the first few months, she had not seen him, but after winter hit, he could be seen quite a lot around the ugly man's building.  Anyone who saw her thought she had a little girl crush on the handsome older boy.  No one else knew how she tortured herself over how much she had hurt him and how she wished to hurt herself to make the pain go away.  But she knew she could not stop the pain by hurting herself, and she knew that if she somehow did, she would not be there to watch after Nathan.  She was wise enough to know that, at least, even at ten years old.

She had ended up following him around for years, always keeping her distance, always retreating if he seemed to notice her.  If Nathan thought her behavior strange, he never said anything.  Though from time to time, she would see a pretty smile on his face that seemed to be meant for her.  Of course, she had convinced herself that that was just her mind playing tricks on her.  How could he be smiling at her when he did not even know her?  Besides, deep down she knew that she had become an evil girl herself and was scared of what Nathan would do if he found out.

As the years had passed, she had blossomed.  She grew into her womanhood without actually realizing it.  Certainly, she knew that her breasts had developed, her hips had broadened and her menstruation had begun.  But she had not connected these things in her mind as anything special or noteworthy, nor had it occurred to her that anyone else would have taken notice.  What she had not realized was how appealing these changes had made her to the boys in town.

However, just as oblivious as she was of her beauty, so also was everyone else aware that Aliban's painfully shy little girl had eyes only for Nathaniel Goodsmith.  None of the other potential beaus in town even made more than cursory efforts to win her attentions.  Nathan though was the only man she cared to watch, if not necessarily for the reasons anyone else suspected, and she had no interest in the fawnings of other boys her own age.  They had other girls that were far more receptive to their charms, anyways, so that no one even tried to divert Mari's attention at all after awhile.  She had gained the reputation of being a little too simple, touched in a special way that made her less desirable as wife and mother.  So much so, in fact, that beyond the simple desire to rut, her father had not even been able to attract suitors for his daughter's hand.

Mari was not the only one who had taken notice of the young orphan, though.  Many young women swooned over him and he had more than a few flings with them.  And though Mari felt twinges of hostility towards the other girls, something later she would acknowledge as jealousy, still she saw Nathan laugh and be happy when he was with them, and that mattered more to her than her own misgivings.  She had already caused so much pain in his life, how could she now begrudge him his happiness?

It had been the fall of Mari's fifteenth year when Nathan had finally trapped her.  She had become lost in thought in the marketplace and had failed to see him approach from behind until his arm had somehow wrapped itself around hers and her basket had ended up in his opposite hand.

“You're Aliban's daughter, Mariabelle, aren't you?” he had asked simply, staring ahead as though they had been engaged in an ongoing casual conversation all along.

Mari had blushed and only nodded.  He had to have seen her head move out of the corner of his eye because he went on.

“I knew that, actually.  I've known for a long time.  And I've wanted to talk to you for so long now, but you always run off.”

“
W-why?” she had managed, looking away to hide her face.  She could not tell what she was feeling, between her fear of being caught, her embarrassment at his attention, or the butterflies from...  she did not know where they came from, only that they made her want to sit down.

He had not responded right away, and she was forced to look up to see what he was about.  He had been looking down on her with the deepest blue eyes until she had looked back at him.  “Because you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said as simply as if he had told her to watch her step.

He would have done better to tell her to watch her step, because no sooner had he spoken than she had stumbled so badly that only his strong arm suddenly wrapped around her waist had saved her from falling altogether.  Somehow in her stumble, she had ended up against his chest, her eyes locked with his, the young man's arms holding her firmly from behind.  From that moment on, she had lost herself to him forever.

Their romance had been fast and passionate.  They had planned to wed in the spring of the following year shortly after her sixteenth nameday, but her father had vehemently objected to the pairing.  Though Aliban was not one to make public displays, in private he berated his daughter endlessly over the humiliation she had cast upon him.  He knew Nathaniel's mother had worshiped the Old Gods, and he would not see his daughter – and especially not his grandchildren – corrupted by the old ways.  It took countless promises from Mari that she would not let her children be raised in the old ways, made frequently and piously, before her father finally relented and granted his reluctant consent to the union.

Nathan had never known about the promise.  Nor had he ever known about her part in his mother's death.  For four years they had lived here, in the cabin where he had grown up.  Geoffrey had been an almost immediate blessing of the union and Mari had thought the curses of the past had left them all behind.  She kept her father distant by keeping to her promise, and made her husband happy in every way she could.

Until today.  Or yesterday, at any rate.  Someone had finally broken ten years of silence and told Nathan the truth.  She had had nightmares of his finding out early on, but after they had wed and moved away from town, thoughts of exposure had all but vanished.  She had thought she was safe from discovery at this late a date.  Even when Nathan had acted so oddly the night before, it had not occurred to her that he might have learned something about this.  But he had and now he was gone.  And she had every reason to believe he would not return.  Or, if he did, it would be to take Geoffrey and leave again.  It was certainly a fate she deserved.

Duncan had held her for hours and listened to her incoherent gibberish.  She was not even sure all of what she had told him.  There was a point that she began confessing every lesser sin she had ever committed, as well, followed by things she had done to make up for those, none of which compared to the real sin that had overshadowed her entire life and that now had cost her her marriage.  There was a point she had rambled on about the chores she did around the cabin each day, how the garden was nearing harvest, of the meals she had planned for the rest of the week.  Anything to keep talking about anything other than the real issue at hand.  Anything to keep from accepting that she had lost the man she loved.