Heretic

Part Two

Chapter 2

The Grand Cleric of Mercy had a face in want of a punch. An old but fit man, he’d have been handsome if not for the careless look of disdain that turned his lips pouty and his eyes lidded. As the seconds dragged on and Kierna’s anger grew, he sat drumming his fingers slowly against the silver-inlaid tabletop. Cloth of gold curtains with ivory carvings strung throughout them covered the window behind him. He opened his mouth and drew in a breath, then paused to turn his eyes skyward for a moment, as if to convey how utterly preposterous it was that he had to speak his next words.

“Clarify for me if you will, Paladin Kierna: you did say that when you gave the order to withdraw that your man Kenth was within reach of the heretic, along with his comrades, did you not?”

“The man’s name was Jurran, Everrek,” the woman next to him corrected, herself the holy Grand Cleric of Charity, a tall, elegant looking woman with pale white skin. At least have the decency to recall the names of the fallen.” Kierna would thank her for that, if nothing else. The woman had displeasure radiating from her the same as Cleric Everrek, if at least a tad more respectful. The Cleric acknowledged her with a flick of his fingers.

“That is incorrect, Blessed,” Kierna said, keeping her gaze just above his head. “I ordered no retreat. My orders were to form up, to defend the village from its attackers who seemed bent on slaughtering everyone. I felt the seven of us needed to fight in unison if we were to have a chance of saving anyone. But yes, Jurram was closing in on the heretic, with Hauthern and Farrus as well.”

“And can you state the instructions given to you by this very council on the day you set out from Ethka in search of this heretic?” Cleric Everret asked.

“You know them as well as I,” Kierna said. She grew tired of this farce, and the Grand Cleric’s game of drawing it out. The council was not pleased with her failure. She had never expected they would be. She was more concerned with Lector Kenly’s opinion, but the sword monks of Jehx had no place on Ethka’s prestigious Council of Faith.

“Then you understand that you have failed, utterly,” Cleric Gramasta said from Everret’s right. The old woman wore a maroon robe and a thick cloth of the same material tightly around her eyes. A tattoo of an eye was drawn on her dark forehead in blue ink, a symbol of her Godseye. All of Ethka’s faithful knew that the Grand Cleric of Insight was so skilled with her Godseye that she could use it to navigate everyday life with no use of her mundane eyes. An impressive feat, to be sure, but one Kierna thought disrespectful. The gods gave them their eyes to see the world built for them. Squandering one’s own sight to cultivate one’s reputation reeked of vanity, but you’d never know it looking at the cleric’s followers. “You were commanded to return the Unbound heretic to us, alive, so that we may question him on his devil god’s designs. You gave him up when he was within your grasp, and for what? A handful of apostates?”

“They were not apostates when I acted, Blessed,” Kierna said, unable to keep the heat out of her voice. “They were innocent people being murdered by a tyrant god. They were dying, with no one to protect them. I am a paladin of Jehx, god of justice. My duties were clear.”

“You came highly recommended to this council, Kierna,” Everret said, idly tilting the jeweled golden chalice set before him. “I’m afraid we will have to reconsider your place in the Heavenly Host. A paladin’s first duty is to her own vows, to be sure… but this council speaks in the voice of the Hundred Gods of the Heavenly Coterie. In accepting the task we placed upon you, certain expectations have to be considered. Jehx is only one of the gods you have pledged to serve. But I am sure now, after your weeks of travel, you have come to realize the error you made in the heat of the moment. Perhaps my fellow councilors could be led to advocate leniency...”

The Grand Cleric’s voice trailed off, leaving a pregnant silence. Cleric Gramasta watched her with her single eye, arms crossed on the table before her. The Cleric of Charity stared out the window in boredom. The other men and women of the council, the few of them who had been chosen to attend this debriefing, looked on her with irritation, condescension, or simple confusion, wondering if she were treasonous or simply incompetent. Everret waited, giving her the opportunity to throw herself before them in supplication, to beg their forgiveness and convince them how she now saw how foolish and wrong she had been. Kierna stayed stubbornly silent, glaring in Everret’s general direction. The man broke the silence with a long sigh.

“I suppose we have heard enough, paladin. The council will discuss your next assignment… presuming we deem you worthy of receiving one. You are dismissed. Inform your master that as you have made the decision to bring these apostates into Ethka, it is the sword-temple’s responsibility to see to their welfare.”

Kierna stood at once, snapping her heels together and clapping a fist to her breast in a textbook salute, then turned and strode out the door. As her boots echoed on the marble floor down the long hall she heard the voices of the clerics behind her, moving the discussion to the subject of her god Jehx.

“...hardly seems appropriate to call him one of the Hundred at this point...”

Her teeth seemed about to crack as she ground them together, so she made herself relax her jaw as she stepped out into the antechamber. Guards in blue steel plate armor stood to either side of the door, long glaives resting on the floor. The floor was marble here too, the hall flanked by tall glass windows with little onyx benches set before each one and some rich urn or statuary placed on display at their sills. Farrus stood a little ways down the hall, still wearing his sweat-stained riding gear and steel greaves, but a much more welcome sight regardless. He took up beside her, his long strides seeming to keep pace with her swift angry ones with lazy ease.

“So, did the old chatterers just give you a tongue lashing, or have they started sharpening up a nice set of spikes for us?” Farrus asked with a dark grin.

“Not here,” Kierna hissed. The holy halls had ears, it was said, and the council did not take kindly to insolence. She was a paladin of one of the Hundred Gods of the Holy Concorde, they could not take direct action against her without Jehx’s consent. The same was not true of Farrus, a mere sword-monk, and a citizen bound to Ethka’s laws.

At the end of the hall, they stepped outside into a yard and Kierna took a deep breath of the thin cold mountain air. Clouds floated by a mere hundred feet or so overhead. The yard was covered in light grass with great statues of clerics and gods adorning the grounds. More guards patrolled in their thick armor, and many junior clerics moved swiftly about their business in stately robes or dresses. Kierna walked to the cliff-side, where a waist-high railing was all that separated her from a hundred foot fall to the blue-slated roof of the temple below. Ahead of them, the city of Ethka stretched out, great white stone buildings clinging to the side of the mountain, down to the surface of the mirror-smooth Thelta lake hundreds of feet below. The city of many faiths was studded with churches and temples like banners rising from a battlefield. Most of them rose high, stretching for the sky to tower over their rivals. Slender towers climbed from the middle of carefully cultivated gardens, great thick keeps thrust up from the city like upraised fists, long or low buildings sported steeples with golden symbols shining atop them. Others sprawled, their grounds spreading like grasping tentacles reaching for influence. Kierna turned away, lifting her gaze to the mountain behind them. Rising up far out of sight, its upper third hidden entirely in the clouds, the great Throne was dominated the countryside, its shoulders spreading across the horizon. The smaller mountains crowding around its feet, including the ones on which Ethka was built, would have been magnificent, awe-inspiring if it weren’t for that colossus looming over them. Above, miles beyond the city, reachable only by a thin and stony road, she spotted the monastery of Jehx, a brown hexagonal structure perched atop a relatively flat stretch of peak. From the distance, she could not see the orchards or flocks of wooly sheep being herded across the high pastures, nor the men and women dancing in the yard with swords in their hands, learning the skills by which they would protect the weak and innocent. Her heart longed for home.

“Did brother Kenly have some message for me?” she asked. Farrus had gone up to the monastery along with Hamaara and the others, when they had arrived in the city early this morning. Now, the sun was beginning to set, its scarlet glow slowly spreading across the Throne’s great cliffs.

“No message, no, we only worried that the council had planned to keep you here all night,” Farrus said, leaning back against the low railing with no regard for the height. Kierna had wondered the same thing. She’d been summoned to the holy halls of Hollandas as soon as they’d reached the city gates, and had arrived with the sun high at its zenith. Once there, though, the council seemed in no hurry to receive her. She’d been left standing outside the audience chamber as the hours slowly flowed by, and had only finally been admitted an hour ago. The councilors were very busy men and women, to be sure, yet she had little doubt her wait had stretched out for the sole purpose of wasting her time. In her experience, clerics practiced pettiness as she and her men practiced their swordsmanship.

“Well here I am, free, if not exactly clear,” Kierna said. Out in the cool air, the wind whipping her cloak around her and kissing her skin, her anger was beginning to cool. It helped to have Farrus here as well. The man took his duties seriously, but never seemed concerned or anxious about them, and she found his attitude contagious.

“We knew the council wouldn’t be pleased with us. When are they ever? The day we come home to a welcoming parade and a feast awaiting our pleasure is the day I’ll turn and run, fearing some trickery. Them villagers are happy enough, at least. It was a long, hard climb, after that march, but they’re there now, and can see it’s not some kind of apostate torture camp, so they’re finally beginning to relax. They have a name for you, you know. Ata mamarrsa.”

“Sounds like a mouthful.”

“I believe it means ‘oathkeeper.’ Apparently they’re amazed that you actually did what you said you would.”

That should have made Kierna happy, but instead she only saw the ruined village, the men she’d left behind and the hundreds who hadn’t survived. Justice hadn’t been done, only a meager bit of charity. Amauro still ruled. Tzamet’s people were dead or enslaved. Injustice still reigned on the southern grass.

“And master Kenly?” Kierna hoped he would understand her decision better than the council. If he rebuked her, though, so be it. Kierna had followed her heart, as Jehx had taught her, and she would not ask forgiveness for it.

“He’s grateful to have the new blood. Says three or four of them might be worth training. You and Hamaara won’t be the only southerners around then, at least. Still, though…” Farrus sighed. “You don’t like it, do you? Leaving the heretic behind.”

“It’s not as though I disapprove of the Conclave’s mission. Isaand has left chaos and destruction in his wake, and no one has any idea what his god is playing at. This Szet has done little for centuries. The fact that he’s moving now, with all the rest of the trouble down south, begs suspicion. I did want to capture him… and to speak with him myself, one faithful to another.” Kierna turned away from the heights and looked back down to the valley floor, across the lake where the a small city of tents and pavilions had been set up. They had ridden through it on their way into the city, passing thousands of soldiers from a dozen different lands, all gathered together in one great mass beneath the city of the gods. Clerics and paladins, Lectors and faithful soldiers, all come together as one great holy blade. No one had spoken of their purpose, but Kierna had seen such hosts before, and she was unsurprised.

“Well, perhaps you’ll get your chance still,” Farrus said, following her gaze. “Master Kenly says the Crusade is meant to strike south. The Conclave means to bring peace and order to the southern regions, to investigate these rumors of heretics that keep popping up, and to end the practice of human sacrifice. And we’re to ride with them.”