Heretic

Part Two

Chapter 1

Never before had Isaand seen water so clear, so deep, and so brimming with life.

The lake stretched out ahead of them in every direction, broken up here and there by small islands, little more than large rocks, rising up out of the water at dramatic angles like fingers thrust towards the sky. They were more vertical than horizontal, rising ramp-like from a low point, a mere twenty or thirty feet above the water, to towering cliffs three or four hundred feet high. The islands were starkly beautiful, inhospitable cliffs of black basalt bearded with thick green moss. Hundreds of birds wheeled around their crests, nesting in the many crevices and jutting platforms of stone that studded them.

The islands seemed to tower overhead, an illusion created by the lake’s utter clarity. As far as Isaand could see, the water was as clear as perfect glass, allowing him to see down to its sandy depths two or three hundred feet below, and so could see where the islands began, doubling their height. Looking over the edge of the ferry, Isaand could see whiskered fish as big as pigs swimming a hundred feet below, sleek blue eels undulating alongside the boat, schools of hundreds of tiny fish no bigger than his finger, and brightly colored graspers with their long capes of tendrils trailing thirty feet behind them.

Ylla was staring at it all wide-eyed, bare wonder clear in her expression. Before coming to the lake town of Merasca, she’d never seen any body of water larger than the Settel stream that flowed past her village. The lake would be an inspiring sight for anyone, but so much more so to a girl who’d never seen a world beyond hills and grass.

“Why is it all so clear?” Ylla wondered aloud. “The Settel was always murky, brown or blue.”

“Good question,” Isaand said with a smile. With a careful glance around the ferry to make sure none of the other passengers were looking at them, he leaned over and spoke low over her shoulder. “Why don’t you open your eye and see if you can figure it out?”

Ylla’s smile vanished as she put on that sober look she got when concentrating, and she gripped the ferry’s side hard and leaned forward. On the bench beside her, Vehx opened one eye where he was curled in a round shape. Isaand felt it when she opened her Godseye: the barest hint of power brushing against him, like a puff of hot breath from some enormous beast.

“There’s something there… shimmering? All along the surface of the water. Spirits?” Ylla said, quietly. She knew better than to draw attention to her abilities.

“Look a little closer. Vehx, why don’t you instruct her?” Isaand said. He dreaded the idea of opening his own Godseye and being swallowed up in the vast power he knew was present beneath them. He tried not to let it show, but he felt it was unfair that he couldn’t use his own Godseye as easily as a little girl who had only received hers three weeks ago. Fortunately, the Sendra had no problems with his own sight.

Vehx sighed dramatically and uncoiled, sticking his long body over the edge to hang down towards the water, watching the fish swim by hungrily. “Focus your vision girl. Look deeper, not wider. Narrow the lens, and try to take in everything within an arm’s span, but all the way down to the bottom. Block out everything to either side.”

While Ylla concentrated, Isaand took a look at the ferry. The boat was long and wide, but flat on the water, with benches built into the sides, with a crew of four, three young brothers with sun-browned skin and their father, all going shirtless in the warm air. Seven or eight other passengers were scattered around the deck, most of the with the same coloring, island folk on their way back from Merasca, along with a couple of paler merchants from the town. All of them seemed at ease, smiling or sprawled out in relaxed poses, and there was not a single weapon beyond a belt-knife in sight. Maenis was a peaceful land, it’s people poor but well-fed. They had nothing of value but fish, and no one who wanted to take it from them. It seemed the perfect place to get away from the troubles of Warana for a bit, and to figure out exactly what he was going to do with Ylla at his side.

“I see it,” Ylla said, wondrously. “Like tentacles, all through the water. It’s a god’s power, right?”

“Goddess,” Vehx said, yawning. “Maesa, the goddess of pure waters. She rules these lands.”

“Not quite,” Isaand said. “Maesa blesses the people here with the clear and pure lake, which is always clean and good to drink, and it’s clarity makes fishing easy. But Maesa does not actually rule. Take a look at those islands.” He pointed to one of them, a mere hundred feet away. A couple of huts were perched atop the precarious cliffs, with long rope-ladders hanging down to the surface of the lake. A woman was hanging fish on a board beside her home, far above them.

“I don’t see anything…” Ylla said.

“It’s quite faint, but I see something there. Another god?” Vehx asked.

“Ulm-Etha is the protector god of these islands. If you look, you’ll see rings of standing stones on most of the islands. Those are to honor him. He’s on good terms with Maesa though, and the people here worship them both.”

“Look, swimmers!” Ylla pointed. As they rounded the island, they came across a deep open area where a dozen small fishing skiffs were floating. Each of them had a number of fish piled on them, along with the clothes of their owners. The fishers themselves were in the water, swimming naked in the clear water with short spears in their hands. A boy nearby speared a five-pound fish, pulling it in to toss it up onto the boat. Ylla leaned further over, entranced.

“Do you know how to swim, Isaand?” she asked.

“Well yes, but I wouldn’t say I’m very practiced at it. My homeland was a lot like yours, though we had a few small watering holes here and there,” Isaand said. He found himself just as focused on the swimmers as Ylla. Half of them were women, and they showed no more modesty than the men. One twenty-something woman with long brown legs caught his gaze and turned over, floating on her back and smiling at him.

“Oh gods, you’re blushing,” Vehx said. Isaand pushed him over the side of the boat, sending up a splash. Ylla giggled as he climbed his way back up, growling.

“HELP!” The cry shattered the peaceful mood like a stone through a window. Isaand leaned forward and saw blood in the water, swimmers quickly fleeing the area. The people on the ferry pushed over to the edge, frightened or fascinated, and many voices were shouting, people pointing or calling out advice. Isaand scanned the water but no sign of anything dangerous. Had there been an accident, a clumsy fisherman spearing a fellow instead of his prey?

Ylla shrieked in dismay, and Isaand thought it was only from the blood until Vehx growled in answer. “That’s a Sendra for certain, and far more powerful than I.”

“What-” Isaand started to ask, then realized the crowd around him might take it amiss if he started talking to himself. He kept looking, but saw nothing… until the water began to rise in a crested wave, bobbing the ferry and splashing a few inches over the edge, soaking them in spray.

There, where the wave had begun, Isaand saw something in the air, rising as it broke the surface of the water, then vanishing in a dive that sent ripples through the lake. What it was, he could not say. He got an impression of a long and sinuous body, long and thick, coiling its way through the water. But despite the utter clearness of the lake, he couldn’t see anything but the most vague impressions of movement. Within seconds, he’d lost sight of it and was left wondering if he’d only imagined it.

The fishers were in their boats now, all but a few stragglers pulling themselves up as he watched. They all clutched spears and had their eyes on the water, watchful and shaking with fright. Isaand turned back to the blood.

A man was hanging limp in the water, the blood trailing off behind him. He would have sunk but for the child, a boy of perhaps twelve, holding him up by one shoulder, swimming in a panic towards an empty boat more than thirty feet away. The water around them seemed strangely empty, and Isaand realized all the fish had fled.

“It’s coming back around,” Vehx said. Ylla turned up at Isaand in mute appeal, clutching her little dagger with white knuckles. Isaand leaned low and whispered to Vehx.

“Can you do something?”

“Well I could snap the beast up in a heartbeat if you released me, but it’d be hard for all these folk to miss it,” Vehx said. “Aside from that, we’d need to know its bane, and I can’t tell that with just my Godseye.”

“Very well,” Isaand said, sighing. He took a deep breath, threw off his cloak, and drew out his knife. The people on the ferry looked at him as though he was mad as he put a foot up on the railing and threw himself overboard.

He was shocked as the water surrounded him, but it was as warm as a hot bath and when he opened his eyes he could see as easily as he had above, though everything had a wet and shiny quality to it. He oriented himself towards the blood, the only murky spot in the lake, and began to swim towards it in long overhand strokes, kicking with his legs.

Its turned towards you now, he heard in his head, Vehx’s link to him allowing him to hear him even beneath the water. Isaand looked back and forth, cold fear gripping him, but still he saw nothing but empty water and spires of rock rising from the sandy floor. You fool, he told himself, you should have used the quickening miracle first. He dove suddenly, trying to move unpredictably, but had no idea whether or not the beast was still coming for him. He could see it if he opened his Godseye, but he’d probably drown if he did.

That’s curious. It’s slowing down, Vehx said. Maybe it senses your power.

Nothing tore into him or pulled him down into the lake, so Isaand found himself before the fisherman, a terrified boy looking down at him with pleading eyes. Isaand grabbed ahold of the boat, numbed fingers slipping on the smooth wood, and fell back into the water with a clumsy splash. He cursed and reached up again, felt the boys hand grab around his. Together they got him up into the boat. Isaand unceremoniously shoved him aside and took hold of the injured man, pulling him upward so that he could get an arm under each of his.

The water began to jump and shift around them, almost as if it was coming to a boil. Isaand didn’t need Vehx to tell him the monster was near. The boy jumped forward and got the man’s legs, and together they hauled him into the boat.

The water parted. Something rose up before Isaand, four or five feet above the surface. Water dripped and slid off it it in a constant stream, and Isaand could see sunlight glinting off its scales, but he could also see straight through it to the ferry where he’d jumped from. Isaand found himself shaking, an impression of pure predatory menace pouring off the invisible beast. He held his knife before him in both hands, wishing he had his staff.

A rainbow of colors shifted across the creature, there and gone in a moment, but giving sight to its shape. It was a serpent, perhaps three feet wide, with wing-like fins spreading off six feet to either side. Two long tendrils like a catfish’s whiskers spread off its face, twelve feet long and tipped with sharp barbs, and long crests flared from its back. Beneath the surface, Isaand caught a glimpse of its body shimmering, more than a hundred feet long, narrowing to a tail only inches wide. The color coalesced, revealing a single eye as wide as a drinking horn, pale yellow with a strange black pupil split in two.

The boy began to scream in helpless terror, cowering against his unconscious father, but the beast did not attack. It held Isaand’s gaze for several seconds, and he could see it thinking, and then the eye vanished and water splashed as it sank beneath the waves.

It’s going. I guess you scared it off. Vehx’s voice was quiet, too far away to be heard well, but Isaand noted his sarcasm all the same. Isaand turned to the man sprawled over his lap and the crying child.

The fisherman was about forty, strong and fit, but the Sendra had savaged him horribly. A shallow gash spiraled all the way around the man’s calf, where it had gripped him with some tentacle and pulled him off balance. Worse was the man’s side, where a semi-circle of deep teeth wounds were gushing blood, as though he’d been stabbed with a knife over and over in a long line. A chunk of flesh had been torn away, and from the rate of blood loss, Isaand guessed he had no more than three or four minutes to live. Isaand shook him, looking into his eyes. They were open, but confused, unseeing.

“HEY! HERE!” The voice shocked him and he looked up to see a girl waving from the ferry, standing almost out over the edge with one foot on the rail and the other on the bench. She was waving a coiled robe in one hand, and when she saw him look, she pulled it back and let it fly, holding the other end.

The rope splashed down into the water a foot away from the boat, and the boy seized it quickly. Three men on the ferry grabbed hold and pulled them in.

Everyone gathered around the man, laid out bleeding and dripping on the ferry’s deck. “He’s dying,” the boy was sobbing. “Help him, please.”

There’s no way I won’t be seen, with all these people, Isaand thought, but pushed it away almost immediately. Szet had not given him his powers to slink and hide. He shoved his way through the crowd and knelt beside the man, shaking him and forcing him to look.

“Listen closely. I am a Lector, a physician who can heal your wounds. You don’t have to leave your son alone in the world. But you have to agree. Will you let me heal you?” Isaand asked. It grated him to waste time, but Szet had made himself very clear. Isaand was to heal no one who did not assent to it. He need not explain every detail, but they had to agree.

Fortunately, this time the man did not hesitate. He gave a weak nod, and Isaand immediately clapped both hands over the bite wound.

“Szet nah ereh ta naru,” he began chanting, his voice low and sing-song. A few of the passengers leaned in close, but he ignored them now, focusing on his chant, calling on the power Szet had blessed him with. He saw it the moment the first miracle took hold, the pain going out of the man’s face, replaced with wonder and then an exhausted smile, the cessation of pain transforming his features. The men and women around them began to mutter.

“Szet nah emma to mahra feth.” His second miracle began. A light golden glow spread across Isaand’s hands, like they were covered in shining luminescent pollen. He chanted, and the light flowed down into the wound, spreading out in a circle around the man’s entire torso. The blood flow slowed to a trickle, then halted.

“He really is a Lector,” someone said. More of them began to talk, in hushed voices as if they were at a funeral, and Isaand heard the word ‘apostate’ on several lips.

“Szet nah ferrah, Szet kahsa morrow tehn, Szet el senna.” The crowd gasped as if one entity. The flesh beneath Isaand’s hands began to knit back together, leaving small punctures. Isaand switched over to the leg and repeated the same process, the crowd watching silently now, every eye focused on his work. The man began to talk in a shaky whisper to his son, who was looking back and forth from his father to Isaand in wonder.

“Ylla,” Isaand said. “My bag. Get the bandages, and the recovery paste.” His shoulders sagged, and his sodden clothes seemed to drag downward on him, heavy as lead. The sun over head still shone bright, but for Isaand it was as though he was in deep shadow. He began to shiver, teeth clattering together with the cold, and his legs had gone numb beneath him. The power from his miracles had to come from somewhere, Szet had warned him. Szet would not reach through him as a local god would through his clerics or shamans; to do so would light a signal flare for every god within a hundred miles, and they would send their servants to find the heretic in their midst. Isaand always felt drained after a healing, but he couldn’t help but to smile. A man lived, who would have died. A boy had a father, who would have been orphaned. The price for that was inconsequential.

Ylla brought him his things, and he began to spread the thick orange paste across the man’s wounds. It held no godly power, but was an ordinary medicine that would fight infection and keep the wound clean while it healed. That finished, he wrapped clean linen bandages around the man’s wounds, and tied them off. Only then did he raise his gaze to those around him.

A dozen people surrounded him. Most had reverent looks, but the sideways glances they gave each other were clear. They were all locals, save maybe the two merchants, and they would know what their own god and goddess’ Lectors would be capable of. Isaand was either an apostate, or a heretic. Neither could expect a warm welcome. One of the crowd moved towards him swiftly, and he flinched, half expecting a blow.

“Thank you,” a woman said, kneeling in front of him. It was the girl who had thrown the rope to reel them in. She was perhaps twenty, with the same slender build as the fisherwomen he’d seen, though she was very tall, as tall as his chin. She wore a simple brown dress with a sash belt, the fabric thin and airy, and a wooden medallion around her neck that looked oddly familiar. She had hair tied in a long braid hanging across her chest, eyes of a light honeyed color, and full smiling lips lighter than her skin. Isaand found himself distantly wondering if she swam naked in the lake as well, and hoped he was not blushing again.

“You’re welcome,” he said warily. Shakily, he got to his feet, stumbling as one leg gave out in a brief spasm. Ylla took hold of his waist, glaring daggers at the crowd around them.

“This man saved one of our own,” the girl said, whipping around to face the others. Though young, she had a voice that commanded attention. The others seemed to shrink back unconsciously. “And he was brave enough to face the Lsetha, when no one else did. He’s done none of you any harm. So we’re all grateful, right?” A few of them murmured in response, and she bowled over them immediately. “So we all agree none of the clerics need to hear about this, isn’t that right? Show’s over, give the poor man some privacy.”

The crowd broke up, half of them going back to their spaces, the others kneeling around the wounded fisherman, helping him to sit up and talking about what had happened. Amazed and grateful, Isaand stumbled back to his bench and leaned back, shivering. “Dry clothes, please” he muttered, and Ylla began to rummage in his bag. Cold as he was, he felt it when a shadow fell over him, and opened his eyes. The girl was standing there again, wearing a mischievous smile with catlike eyes.

“I can’t thank you enough for your assistance. With them, and with that rope,” Isaand said. “My name is Isaand Laeson, of the wandering Aislin tribe. I am happy I could help.”

“I’m Ratha, Maesenna tribe, though my da was Merascan. Gotta say, I’m glad you jumped in when you did. I was working up the courage to do the same, but I doubt I’d have found it.” Casually confident, she sat down at Isaand’s side, leaning her shoulder against his. He wished he could feel it properly. Her face leaned close, smile widening, and she spoke in a whisper as soft as the breeze.

“I thought you might want to know, Isaand Laeson: you’re not the only heretic in these parts.”