Heretic

Part Two

Chapter 3

Come to the Well at midnight, if you want to meet the Lector. Ratha’s words repeated themselves in Isaand’s mind as he made his way through the village. Twin feelings of apprehension and longing warred within him at the prospect of meeting another of his kind. Szet had made it clear that he would be alone in the world, threatened by all he met or merely tolerated with suspicion as a best case. But another heretic would not judge him, and surely they would have a good deal of common ground to stand on. But where one heretic might be only shunned and feared, two would be unable to be ignored. The people of the lake seemed peaceful and friendly, and he hoped that Ratha’s plea to those on the ferry would be enough to keep them from harassing him so long as he did not overstay his welcome. But keeping the company of a second heretic would be begging for trouble.

Isaand shivered violently, though the sun still shone in the clear sky. He had changed his outer clothes but was still damp, and the cold seemed to have sunk deep into him, numbing his body except for the sharp flashes of pain that flashed through his shins whenever he took a step. An inn and a fire was what he needed. He looked around the village in dismay, seeing no building that looked large enough to likely fill that role.

The ferry had released him, Ylla, and Vehx on a small landing at the shore of a large island in the shape of a great ramp. Its lowest point was four feet above the water with a wooden piling built to allow an easy climb off and on, but from there the island rose, from one plateau to another, until its high point was a good three hundred feet above the lake, a collection of jagged basalt pillars rising up in a rough circle. Lake birds wheeled and soared overhead, and the rocks were stained white along the top from their droppings and no doubt filled with their nests. The village itself rested on the relatively flat land below these pillars, a collection of one-room huts built of piled rocks and thatch roofs. More huts studded the cliffside all across the island, and long rope bridges stretched from various points to other, smaller islands surrounding it on all sides, where more homes could be seen.

Ratha had not joined them when Isaand had departed. “It’s further north for me, to the hook island, where my parents and cousins live. I’ve news to bring them, and others as well, but don’t fear, no one here will bother you so long as you keep to yourself.” She’d given him a sunny smile whose memory warmed him, and dropped her speech to a low throaty whisper. “We’ll talk again though. Come and see the Lector, and I’ll be there to introduce you.”

Could Ratha herself be the heretic she’d spoken of? Despite her assurances, it was plain that she did not feel comfortable talking about the matter in public, and she seemed far more welcoming than anyone sworn to the Bound ought to be. Perhaps her presence on the ferry had not been a coincidence. If her god had warned her he was coming, she may have come to have a look at him first, to take his measure. She’d seemed impressed by his leap into the lake to aid the fisherman, foolish though it might have been.

The path ahead was all naked stone, though thick moss-like grass grew to either side of it. Isaand stepped off the path to let swifter men from the ferry pass him by. As his boots settled on the springy surface, he felt a flush of warmth as though the sun had passed out from behind a cloud, though the sky remained empty, and some small shred of his lethargy fell away.

“I’d stay off the rock, as much as that’s possible here,” Vehx said. The Sendra was standing on the grass himself, his long body protruding over the stone to sniff at it warily. “There’s a god in there, spread out through all of this island, probably the others as well.”

“Ulm-etha,” Isaand acknowledged quietly. “Father of Stone, they call him.”

“It’s odd, though,” Vehx said. “His power is tremulous. Like a ripple, still reverberating, but weaker than it ought to be.”

“Perhaps it is a result of sharing his worship with the lake goddess?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never had worshipers of my own, even before I made my deal with Szet,” Vehx said.

“You were a spirit?”

“A jungle spirit, a great hunter, roaming through a land devoid of you apes, stalking and feeding as I pleased. I fueled myself on the blood of the beasts I bested, not the shallow adoration of a crowd of imbecile followers. Would that I was there now.” Vehx flitted away, over to where Ylla was still standing by the dock, talking with the young fisherboy whose father Isaand had healed. The man himself sat nearby, still weak, but able to support himself.

Isaand watched them, wondering. He knew little of Vehx. The creature liked to hear the sound of his own voice well enough, but when it came to matters of his past he was much more soft-spoken. And Isaand had always felt uncomfortable bringing it up. He despised the tyrant gods like Tzamet who ruled their people with cruelty and power, people who never had any choice but to serve them by virtue of the happenstance of their birth. But Vehx had no more to say in the matter of his servitude than they. Isaand had oft thought of freeing him… but that would be a dangerous decision. Freed, Vehx might be more inclined to revenge than gratefulness. Besides, Szet had given him the Sendra as a holy boon for his loyal servant. It would do him a disservice to discard his gift, perhaps even blasphemous. The servants of the Bound had it easier. They could speak to their clerics, to receive answers to any difficult questions they might have.

Seeing him standing there, Ylla gave him a cheerful wave and a wide grin. He still hadn’t been able to adjust to the girl’s ability to switch at once between silent melancholy and manic joy. He limped over and the fisherman pulled himself to his feet, his son giving him a hand. Now that they were out of the water both of them wore loose short trousers, colored black and blue, and loose sandals. The fisherman gave Isaand a sober look, many expressions warring on his mind. Isaand sympathized. He rarely stuck around for long after healing someone, concerned that their cultural dogma would win out over gratitude.

“My name is Tokaa. My son is Taram. Both of us are grateful to you. I have… I have three daughters, and an older son. Without you, they would all be fatherless. I am in your debt, traveler.”

“You owe me nothing. The world would be a cruel place if those with the means to help others stood idly by,” Isaand answered graciously.

“Those with the means are few and far between, and fewer still who would be willing to help. You are a good man, even if...” Tokaa trailed off, uncomfortable, then looked down to see his son looking up at him sternly, as if reminding him of something. Tokaa sighed, and turned back to look Isaand in the eye, his hand nervously picking at his bandages.

“My wife and I, we’ve little room in our hut with so many children. My older son though, his wife and daughter have gone across the lake to sit with her mother, who is ill. There is room for you and your child, if you wish it.”

Isaand hesitated, then slowly nodded. “We will gladly accept your invitation… for tonight. After that, we have arrangements already.” He would not encroach on the man’s hospitality for longer than need be. If the village roused itself against the heretic, he did not want to bring any trouble down on Tokaa’s head, nor fuel any foolish ideas that he had beguiled or mesmerized him with his unholy powers.

Tokaa looked happy to hear it; plainly he did not like the idea of him sticking around. “Taram will show you the way. It is a steep climb, and I have friends down here to speak with until I grow strong enough. Go on, Taram, show Isaand the way.”

Taram chatted amiably as they wound up the path towards the village heights. Ylla was staring everywhere, with Taram pointing out various huts and telling who lived there and why. Unsurprisingly, most villagers tended to be fishermen, though many of them seemed to specialize in specific prey, some for food, some for harvesting particular oils or toxins, others for selling to the town on the lake’s shore.

“Tell me, Taram, where would the village well happen to be?” Isaand asked, visions of Ratha in his head. Taram raised his eyebrows.

“Well? What would we need with a well? Maesa’s blessings makes the whole lake pure and clean. You can drink right out of it, if you want, no one gets sick from it. Oh, but maybe you mean Well Island?” He did not wait for Isaand to confirm. “It’s west of here, three, four miles, past the shattered tower and the great arch. No one goes out there much, its a strange place, it doesn’t look like one of our islands at all. Da says it’s not even blessed by Ulm-etha.”

“I see, I should have gotten better instructions. How would I recognize this well?”

“It’s a low, flat island, but there’s not much room on it at all, just barely enough to walk around the edge, though there’s a big rock on one side. You can’t miss it though. There’s a big hole in the middle, it goes down a hundred feet, and the water there is all gross and murky. Don’t drink from it, it’s not any good.”

“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind,” Isaand said. An island not blessed by the local god, with waters within it also untouched by the goddess... that sounded like exactly the sort of place for heretics to meet. At least he assumed so. Isaand had never met another heretic before. He slowed, realizing that Taram had stopped and was staring up at him with an expression of awe.

“Isaand, can you heal anything? My grandfather has a missing foot from the time he got stung by a Urafin, could you make it come back? Oh, and old lady Wahanda is blind, can you cure that too? Our gods are great but they don’t give us any miracles like that, yours must be really powerful, what’s his name?”

Isaand looked around nervously but they were in an empty stretch of the village, the closest people a pair of women cleaning fish in front of their hut fifty feet away. Isaand knelt and spoke a bit quietly, trying to lead by example.

“It would be best if you would not talk about such things, Taram. My god is strict, and there are limits to what I can do. And your own gods wouldn’t like it if I went around healing people on their islands. I saved your father because he was about to die, but I can’t help people with old injuries. Besides, I’m not going to be staying long.” He had originally planned to rest here for a few weeks, to teach Ylla more of his mundane healing skills and help her practice her Godsight, and to make plans on how he was going to continue his journey with a child in tow. Now though, he had little choice but to move on soon.

“Oh, that’s too bad. It’s good enough what you did though. You even tried to fight the Lsetha. Are you a warrior, too?”

“I’m afraid not. What is this Lsetha? That word… ‘unseen?’ Something tells me it isn’t native to your lake.”

“It’s a monster,” Taram said with childish certainty. “It hasn’t been here long. There’s always been things in the lake that were kind of dangerous, but with the water as clear as it is we all know how to avoid them, so nobody is scared to swim. But the Lsetha can’t be seen, so you never know if it’s there. Every time we go out to fish now, we have to worry if it’s around. We have to go, though. If we don’t, there’s nothing to eat, and nothing to trade to Merasca to get all the other things we need.”

“How long has the creature been attacking you?”

“Three or four months, I think, though maybe it was around before that. There were some weird deaths no one could explain, before we knew about it. It doesn’t attack often though. Two or three times a month, and sometimes it doesn’t kill anyone, just cuts them or pulls them under so that they almost drown. Da says it doesn’t need to hurt us at all, that it could eat all the fish it would ever need, since nothing knows it’s there, and it’s just playing with us. No one knows why it’s here now, but it must have come up the Endyll river.”

“And your goddess has done nothing to stop it?” Isaand asked.

“The cleric says that Maesa is the goddess of everything that lives in the lake, and that she won’t take our side against the Lsetha, because it’s one of her subjects too. That’s stupid though. A monster can’t pray to her, or make sacrifices, like we do. Why shouldn’t she help us?”

“Gods and goddesses have their own way of looking at things,” Isaand said sadly. “They care for us, as their children, but the whole wide world is theirs as well. Even those parts of us that are a danger to us.”

“Maybe your god could help?” Taram seemed to remember he was supposed to be quiet about that, and looked around carefully. They were climbing up onto the midpoint of the island now, where most of the village was located, more than a dozen huts huddled around a grassy swath of land. A circle of standing stones was erected in its center, the stones thickly covered with moss. A slab stood in the very center, a groove carved into its middle. The image gave Isaand a chill.

“If there is anything I can do, I will, boy, but my powers are for healing, not harming. I am no monster slayer.” He gestured towards the stand of stones. “And what is this, if I may ask?”

“That’s just Ulm-etha’s shrine. There’s one on every island, except the ones no one lives on. Though some of those have them too. This is the most important one though. That one in the middle, that’s where they do the sacrifices, so that our god will bless us.”

Ylla jolted at that, as though slapped, and looked up at Isaand in worry. He patted her shoulder, and nodded to Taram. “And these sacrifices… how often do you have them, and how are they chosen?”

“Not too often, just twice a year. The cleric draws lots, from the oldest people in the village. That way the only ones who die are the ones who’ve lived the longest.”

“Perhaps that’s wise. Tell me, what do you think of the sacrifices? Does it bother you that Ulm-etha demands such?”

“It’s just what happens,” Taram said, shrugging. “Though… my grandparents are old enough now to be chosen, and there’s only a few others. Mavan says it’ll probably be one of them.”

“I hope Mavan is wrong then.” Isaand’s body shuddered as the wind began to pick up. “This house of yours, is it near?”

“Oh, yes. We’re right over here. Let me show you around.” Taram trotted off, and Isaand followed slowly, with one last look back at the stone slab, its surface discolored with a stain of old blood.