Father Andre stepped into the small centuries-old church that served the Keldara — smaller than it should be for as large a population as the Keldara had, but considering what he’d long since guessed about their true allegiance he supposed he should be grateful for the congregation he had.
Looking around in the light coming through the clerestory, the priest found the girl he was looking for, in the place he’d expected — the tiny side chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. She was kneeling, her eyes fixed on the statue of the Blessed Virgin, twin tear-tracks running down her cheeks. Quietly, he walked over to stand behind the teenager. In the English that his ring granted him that was the only language they shared, and that poorly on her part, in as gentle a voice as he could manage he said, “Miyo, it’s time for dinner, and the Wizard Myrddin has arrived. He wishes to speak to the first of the newcomers, and it has been long since the noon meal. Will you not join us?”
For a moment, he thought she was so totally focused on her prayers that she was unaware of his presence, but then she shook her head slightly, eyes still fixed on the icon.
Opening his mouth to try yet again, Father Andre paused. There really wasn’t any point, not yet. This was hardly the first time he had seen overpowering grief and a demand for answers. Sometimes those answers had been forthcoming, or at least comfort given. Sometimes the petitioner had wavered in his or her faith and fallen away in despairing pain at the silence of heaven. He’d given up trying to guess which way any petitioner might go and that was for Christians, which this girl was not. But he’d never dreamed that a petitioner would stay on the knife’s edge for week after week. Of course, those other petitioners hadn’t been grieving for the death of an entire world....
Finally, he sighed. “Very well, I will have a servant bring some food. You will eat this time? We can’t afford to waste any of what we have, and you have not been eating enough. Promise me?” After a few moments Miyo nodded. “Thank you,” Father Andre said, and turned to walk toward his own awaiting dinner with perhaps the second most important man in Caithness — even if they weren’t in Caithness, technically.
Stepping out of the church, Father Andre turned toward the keep then froze at the sight of a column of dwarves coming down from the upper end of the valley toward the keep.
Miyo listened vaguely to the sound of Father Andre’s retreating footsteps. She felt sorry for the priest — he was a good man, and worried about her, she could hear it in his voice, even feel it. But for all his compassion, he had been unable to give an answer for why her world — and her friends and family along with it — had died, and so she continued her struggle, demanding answers from the only being or beings that could give them, the ones that had killed the Fire and her world with it.
Once again, she slipped into the meditative state that she had used for years as she sought to perfect the future sight she’d discovered in herself, only now directing it out instead of turning inward. Again, the church around her dimmed and faded, until only the statue she knelt before seemed real — the statue of a robed woman standing upright, face tilted down toward the girl kneeling at her feet, arms spread wide as if offering an embrace. The artist that had carved her had been a master, and even in the dim light sorrow and compassion were plain on her face and in her stance. The priest had said she was the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God (and wasn’t that a contradiction in terms?) and a saint, but Miyo had labeled her Kuan-Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, and poured out her heart, demanding to know why the Goddess of Mercy had had none on her people.
Suddenly, Miyo realized that something was ... different, brighter, somehow. The faint sunlight shining through the opening behind her into the main chapel and reflecting from the bottom of the figure’s robes was brightening, making the teenager squint. The light slowly climbed up along the woman’s robes, spreading down along her arms while her face shone brighter and brighter, until Miyo’s world was washed away in a flood of light.
When the light faded and her eyes cleared, Miyo found herself kneeling on grass beside a minor river, the gently flowing water green with sediment. Rising to her feet, she looked around, frowning at the unfamiliar sights and sounds. The trees were unlike any she’d ever seen; the underbrush they grew up out of was a faded, tired green; the air was dry and warm. Bird song filled the air, but she didn’t recognize the songs they were singing.
“The River Jordan,” said a woman’s voice, and Miyo whirled to find an olive-skinned, dark-haired woman of middle age and average height behind her, dressed in primitive-looking plain robes. Her face showed long exposure to sun and weather, smile-wrinkles around eyes that somehow shone with stern wisdom. “In the north of the Holy Land,” the stranger continued. “An ironic name, seeing how it’s perhaps been fought over more than any other land on God’s earth, as is happening again as we speak.”
“I ... how did I ... ?” Miyo managed to get out as she fought through her shock.
“How did you get here? You aren’t, not really. You have been demanding answers, child, and I thought to give them in a place familiar to me.”
“Familiar ... you aren’t Kuan-Yin then. Are you Saint Mary?” Miyo guessed, only to see the stranger shake her head.
“No, child, I’m quite a bit older than that blessed and cursed woman — twelve centuries older. My name is Deborah, and in my life I was a prophetess and judge in Israel.”
Miyo stared at her in confusion. “I ... I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize ...”
Deborah chuckled softly, and her eyes seemed to lose their sternness as the laugh lines around them crinkled up with her smiling laughter. “Relax, Miyo-chan, I don’t expect a pagan living on the opposite side of the world to recognize a name that too many Christians wouldn’t know, either.” Just as suddenly as it appeared, the smile vanished. “Though I’m afraid that too many of the few survivors will need to turn to me for inspiration in the future.”
At the shock of the reminder of the questions she’d been crying out, Miyo stiffened and paled, closing her eyes as she fought for control. Finally again opening eyes hard as flint, she simply asked, “Why?”
Deborah sighed and motioned toward several large stones embedded in the ground near the bank of the river. “Sit, child, this will take some time.” Miyo nodded silently and sat beside the prophetess, waiting patiently. Deborah simply sat for a time, frowning thoughtfully, then shook her head slightly. “This would be easier if you were Jewish, or even Christian. Do you know anything of the conquest of Canaan by the Children of Israel?”
Confused by the apparent non sequitur, Miyo frowned thoughtfully, then nodded at a memory. “Yes, I remember —” She broke off, suddenly blushing.
“Remember what?” Deborah asked.
“I remember some friends ... they said they didn’t understand why Jews were so horrified by the Holocaust, when ...” Her voice trailed off, as her gaze fell to the grass at their feet.
“When my ancestors tried to do the same thing when they invaded Canaan, and we aren’t ashamed of it, right?” Deborah finished, and Miyo jerkily nodded. “No need to be embarrassed, child, it’s a fair question.” Miyo looked up at that, and Deborah smiled sadly, gazing off into nothing. “Tell me, child, have you ever known someone that had beliefs about how to live that were simply wrong — not just wrong, but selfish, even evil?”
Miyo slowly nodded, thoughts flashing through her mind of the Kuno siblings.
“Unfortunately, as with individuals, so with an entire people — and how do you kill an idea, a way of life? You can preach, excoriate, cajole, plead, do your best to convince people of the error or their ways, but when they won’t listen ... when that happens, when that people reach the point that there is no hope for change for the better, the Lord may move against them. He prefers to use the nations around them as weapons to His hand, as He did when he sent the Israelites against the Canaanites — a people for whom adultery was a religious duty and burning infants to death as sacrifices to their gods a way to dispose of unwanted children — and later with His chosen people when we fell away, bringing against us the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and even later the Romans. But early on, when the world was less populated and there were no other nations at hand, He took a direct hand — the Flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah.
“And so it was again — the rich nations of the earth were living a life of wasteful consumption, uncaring that the poor nations that provided what the rich nations consumed suffered under tyrants or writhed in chaos. And that was not enough, the rich nations were taking water and oil from the earth faster than they could be replenished. Sooner or later the day would have come that their greed and self-indulgence would turn upon their heads, ending their civilizations in a flood of disease, starvation, and their own fire falling from the sky. ‘A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?’
“So in His wisdom, the Most High chose to cut those days short. The immediate toll of the dead will be at least as great, but the Earth itself will not be poisoned with disease and invisible death from the pillars of fire. And as we rebuild again, there will be those that know why, and pass it on to their children so that when once again He returns the Fire to them they will use it more wisely.”
Miyo sat silently as she struggled with the images the prophetess’s words had brought to mind: reports of famine with food donations turned into political markers, shrinking glaciers and dropping water tables, refugee camps filled with starving people while their enemies prowled around the outskirts waiting for the chance to rape and kill, massacres and oppression as one dictator was replaced by another. She had ignored them before — they were happening to other people far away, after all, and nothing she could do anything about. “How long, before we’d have destroyed ourselves?” she finally whispered.
“You are young, most likely within your lifetime,” Deborah answered. “Perhaps even within your parents’ lifetimes, if your leaders proved truly blind.”
Miyo jerked to her feet and turned away from the older woman, staring down along the river. She found herself rubbing her upper arms and raised her crossed hands to hug her shoulders. “All those billions dead and that was the merciful outcome,” she finally murmured. “We did it to ourselves!” The tsunami of grief Miyo had been holding at bay with her demand for answers finally rolled over her, and dropping to her knees then falling to her side, the young seer curled into a ball as she was wracked by gut-wrenching sobs.
When she once again became aware of anything but her pain, Miyo found herself in Deborah’s lap, the prophetess rocking her gently and stroking her hair as she crooned a soft tune in a language the teenager didn’t recognize. For a time she simply lay there, soaking in comfort from the adult’s care. Finally, reluctantly, she sat up and pushed herself away, scrubbing at her eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Hugging her legs to her chest, Miyo turned again to look at Deborah. “Why?” she asked quietly.
Deborah frowned in confusion. “ ‘Why’, what?” she asked.
“Why am I here, why are you telling me all this? Why are you telling me all this? I can’t be the only one demanding answers and you can’t be visiting everyone that’s asking.”
Deborah nodded. “You are right, for almost all crying for comfort, the most they will receive is a sense of comfort — that, however things may look, all is well, or will be.” Taking a deep breath, she continued, “But for you, it is different because you are called to service — to battle, often enough.”
Miyo shot bolt upright in shock. “Me?!” she squeaked. “But, what for? Why me? I’m nobody, less than nobody, now!”
The prophetess shook her head. “No, Miyo, you are not ‘nobody’, and never have been — whatever happens, your Father loves you, never forget it. But for this ... your new home is in trouble, and it’s going to get worse. Because of the initial Banestorm and the conditions its victims found themselves in, the peoples of this place are very hidebound. That wasn’t a problem even with the occasional new victim transported here from our world, or even the occasional banestorm, until our world developed gunpowder, and all the social upheaval and new devices that came with it. As a result the elites, especially the wizards, formed conspiracies to keep the new knowledge out of the hands of the common people. Not all of it, of course. Much of it was harmless to them, even useful — new ways of growing crops, knowledge of disease. But anything that might threaten their place in society, especially gunpowder and any hint that kings and priests aren’t the pinnacle of society or at least answerable to the people, that has been suppressed through everything from burning texts, using magic to wipe minds clean of dangerous knowledge, to outright murder. Though they missed a march when it came to how you make books reproduce like rabbits,” she added with an urchin grin. “They didn’t realize how dangerous that is until it was much too late!
“But here in Caithness, it has always been different,” she continued more soberly. “The way that magic is more difficult to use there has kept out most wizards, and restricted those that are here to those few constrained places where manna enjoys its usual vigor — except for those sufficiently powerful and skilled that the dearth of manna is overcome. And aren’t they truly scary when they travel outside the country? The frontier conditions of the land kept out most of the nobility, and has kept those that did take part in driving out the orcs that used to live here and stayed afterward closer to their subjects. The church was independent from the Curia for a short time and is more independent-minded to this day, and closer to the mystics and the people it is supposed to serve. The way Caithness is at the tail end of the trade routes, except for some of the dwarves here, means the merchants are comparatively poor and powerless. True, the king’s” — her mouth twisted as if about to spit for a moment, before she thought better of it — “ his ‘Royal Majesty’s’ spies, the Silver Hand, help maintain the secret gunpowder ban, but much more dangerous to the elites is a saying found throughout the country’s common folk: ‘If new Jack be not worthy, old Jack can hang.’
“Some outside of Caithness, at least, have come to realize the danger and are maneuvering for its destruction. And if this people falls, without the continuing yeast of newcomers from your world able to leaven the dough with new ideas it will be many long centuries before the opportunity comes again, limited to a few desperate searchers hiding in the shadows while grasping for what scraps of knowledge they can discover and pass on.”
She fell silent. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to continue, Miyo asked again, “But why me? I may not be ‘nobody’, but I am to them. Why should they listen to me?”
“Don’t underestimate the advantage that comes from being an outsider,” Deborah rebutted. “True, it means you start with only those allies you can find, but it also places you outside the pile of memories, slights and grudges, histories of one family with another. That can be of use. Also, you are young, and an exotic beauty — that, too, will help, as will the fact that you are a maiden. While in the long run throwing a people’s childbearers into battle will destroy it as surely as losing those battles, Caithness will not have the luxury of looking that far to the future for some years. With you leading them into battle, the people’s daughters will take up the cause, enough at any rate, and the sons with them—what young man wouldn’t eagerly follow young women anywhere?” Glancing at the dumbfounded look on the young girl’s face, Deborah smiled sympathetically. “Yes, child, if you agree to this you will be spending a large part of your life living in army camps. Though I suspect that you will find that it just means that you have more bodyguards than you could ever wish for or want — you will be their living banner, and they won’t want to risk you. That’s certainly how it worked out for me.”
“I ... please, tell me about it?” Miyo requested, and Deborah shrugged.
“Not much to tell, really. It was yet another would-be conqueror coming into our tribal lands, and there was no man with the charisma and standing to rally the people to his banner. I was already well known as a woman of wisdom and sought out for judgment, and so I sought out the best man available to lead our warriors, a man named Barak, and sent out the call to rally to his banner and marched with him to battle. I came up with a clever plan, at least I thought so — using part of our army to lure Sisera to the Kishon River, where the soggy ground would hinder his chariots, and attacking him from the rear with the larger part of our army. I wanted to lead the lure, because if the battle went badly for us they would be trapped against the river and destroyed. I wanted to share the risk.” She grimaced. “But Barak refused to allow it, told me that if I didn’t stay with him he wasn’t going to go, and the rest of the army agreed with him. We won, and the invading army was itself trapped and destroyed, Sisera killed by having a tent peg driven through his temple.”
She again fell silent, waiting patiently as Miyo rose to her feet and began to pace. I can’t do this, I’m just a kid, I don’t know anything! Surely ... She whirled to face the older woman. “I can’t be the only hope this world has! Isn’t there anyone else that could take this on?” she asked desperately.
Deborah shrugged. “Of course there is, but none that could do as well, that are as well-placed as you to act.”
Miyo’s shoulder slumped, then squared as she straightened and took a deep breath. “All right, I’ll do it. My people failed one world, I won’t fail another!”
“Wonderful!” the prophetess responded, standing and walking over to the teenager and placing her hands on her shoulders. “It will be a hard life, but a rewarding one, I promise. And you won’t be alone, nor are you the most unlikely person God has called to His service. At least you weren’t as hard to convince as Moses, he did everything short of running away, and Jonah even did that!” she added with a whimsical smile. “Now, let me show you the breadth of your task, and some of those that will rally to your cause....”
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(Posted Mon, 31 May 2010 00:02)
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