Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) (13 page)

“Didn’t
want you two to get too far before we’d had a chance to chat,” she said.  “Go
ahead, mount up.  We’ll ride together for the first bit.”

We
did so, and soon we were riding three abreast.  Reya led us up the gradual
incline of a wide, grassy hill, the trees thinning as we neared its crest. 
From the top we could see a pond, its surface mottled with wind-blown
whitecaps.  We descended the far side of the hill and paralleled the near shore
of the pond, where dense yellow-brown reed beds obscured our view of the
water.  Here we slowed, and Reya introduced the business at hand.

“I
have no desire to prevent you from beginning your training,” she said to me,
then addressing Maya as well, “But I must know what you know about the
potential security breach.  Tell me about the man you saw.  Leave no detail
out, however small.”  We proceeded to describe the man we had seen by the
powerlines, and the strangeness of his demeanor.  We expected her to identify
him immediately, as distinctive as he had been.  But her look was rather one of
puzzlement.

“Do
you know who it was?” I asked finally.

“No,”
she said.  Maya and I looked at each other, surprised.  “That means it could
have been one of Magus’ men in disguise, or it could have been a traitor
entrenched in one of the other rebel camps.  I’ll send word to trusted agents
within the camps I know of, and see if they have anyone matching this
description.  It’s also possible,” she continued, “that he really was just a
rebel looking for water, however strange his behavior may appear.  I don’t believe,
however, that the attack at Milltown was a case of ‘wrong place, wrong time’. 
It was too convenient.  Magus knew you were there.  And that means that
somewhere, we have a traitor.”

“How
are traitors dealt with?” I asked.

“They’ll
be given a trial,” she said.  “We’re not beasts like Magus’s men.  But the sad
fact is, we don’t have enough men to keep prisoners of war under watch, and we
can’t afford to let them return to Magus with any information they may have
stolen.  If we manage to catch someone involved in treachery, the only
realistic option is termination.”

I
felt a chill, and saw that Maya was equally unsettled.  But Reya was right, if
this was a war, then even the good guys might have to make some distasteful
choices now and then.

“Was
there anything else that might be helpful?” Reya asked.  Maya and I both shook
our heads.  “Then I won’t detain you longer.”  Turning to me, “Get to know the
Puurr-deer.  Magus can only employ them through coercion.  They have a will,
and they reserve their greatest gifts for their friends.  We count ourselves
lucky to share that status.”  Then to Maya, with a bit of menace, “And do be
careful to observe the boundaries I spoke of previously.”

“Of
course,” said Maya.  Warbling to her deer, Reya turned about and galloped back
along the shore and up over the hill, out of our sight. 

I
returned my gaze to Maya.  “So what’s the first lesson?”

A
devious smile spread slowly across her face, still staring at the distant
hilltop.  “Lessons can wait,” she said.  “You recently survived a fatal
attack.  Aren’t you the least bit curious what that means?”

“Of
course I am.  But I don’t see how I’m going to find out, short of…”  My mind
was beginning to go down the path hers had so recently traveled.  “You want me
to go talk to the Deity again.”

She
was nodding.  “Chaer-Ul.  He will know.”

“But
Reya…,” I started.

“…Is
not my mom,” she finished.  Then she made the vocalization and her deer
exploded into motion.  At a loss for alternatives, I imitated the sound
awkwardly, and to my astonishment, mine took up chase.

12

It
was gone.  The hole, the gap between the tectonic plates that formed the
fault-line, was gone.  I walked a couple hundred meters in each
direction trying to find it, but to no avail.  I was sure that was the
spot, but the cleft through which I had descended to that spherical chamber was
not to be found; there was no way in.  I turned to Maya,
still mounted on her deer.  "You knew of this place.  Did
people from your camp come here too?"
 
"Yes.  Chaer-Ul can be sought anywhere, he knows no physical
limitations.  But only here has anyone ever spoken with him face-to-face,
at least as far as we know."
 
"And you have been here too?" I asked.
 
"Yes, but not for myself.  All of the leaders of the resistance agreed
that this place should only be accessed under very special circumstances. 
That it should not become a 'wishing well' for every curious supplicant
wondering if the girl he liked fancied him too."
 
"But we didn't have authorization to come here now.  Maybe it opens
only at appropriate times," I suggested.
 
"Possibly, but I don't think so," said Maya.  "For one
thing, I think this is a very appropriate occasion.  I'm surprised Reya
didn't suggest it.  And in my experience, Chaer-Ul doesn't respect the
customs and restrictions of men.  Many have come here to seek his counsel
and been met with only darkness and the sound of their own breathing.  But
the hole remained; the gravity anomaly was intact."  A creeping sense
of guilt nagged at my mind.  Had my outburst merited a permanent end to
this mode of communion with the Deity?  Not just for me but for
everyone? 
 
"What do we do now?" I asked.
 
"Well, I guess we head back," said Maya.  "But we should
rest the deer first.  There's a glade with a spring not far from
here.  I came across it on a previous trip.  The deer should be able to
refresh themselves.  Us too.  There's sometimes berries!"
 
We set off almost directly east, rather than following the fault-line north to
intersect the normal trail.  Immediately we entered a forested
area.  The density of trees and undergrowth that might have
hindered a horse proved no obstacle for the puurr-deer, for whom thick
vegetation was home turf.  They bounded over low shrubbery and dodged tree
trunks with great facility, and the remarkable resilience of their long legs
made for a mostly smooth ride.  Maya's long, dark hair whipped about in
her wake like a windblown flag.  I focused on this fluid movement as the
yellow foliage smeared into a blur in my peripheral vision, leaves occasionally
brushing my cheeks.  It became a golden tunnel through which we
raced, and the serpentine swirling of Maya's hair lulled me into a state of
relative relaxation. 
 
So entranced was I that I didn't at once notice that the tunnel had grown
narrower, the forms of Maya and her deer smaller.  Only as the leaves
began to touch my face more frequently, and with a less gentle caress, did
I begin to realize that Maya had pulled a good bit farther ahead, and the forest
had become markedly denser.  When I did notice the change, I shook myself
out of my motion-trance and called to Maya.  She didn't appear to hear me
over the rustling of leaves and the steady thumping of hooves against the
forest floor.  I shouted to her again, with similar result. 
The forest canopy high above had now grown so thickly
intertwined that the light touched the earth only here and there,
and all was cast in twilight tones. 

The
braches pulled harder now against my clothes, and it seemed at last that
my deer began to strain against the increasing resistance.  When the
darkness was nearly absolute, I felt my legs slipping against the body of
my mount.  I squeezed my thighs hard against its sides in
an effort to remain in place, but too late; its snow-fleeced haunches
disappeared into the thickness of brush before me.  Still I didn't fall;
the branches held me fast, suspended well above the ground.  I twisted and
pulled against the restraining tendrils, but the tips of countless branches
bent by my passage recoiled, lifting my body, contrary to gravity,
higher into the prickly overgrowth.  I squinted my eyes tightly
against the probing twigs that scraped my face.  When I felt myself
achieve a sort of equilibrium, I waited, listening for the sound of Maya and
the deer returning.
 
Instead, there was a faint, irregular crackling and snapping from
somewhere high above.  Cautiously, I pried one eye open, then
the other.  Directly over my head, maybe ten meters above me, a tiny spark
had kindled the very tips of the branches where they came together. 
There was no flame, but an orange glow began to spread slowly outward from the
point of ignition.  Where it had already burned, the branches turned
completely to ash and crumbled, sprinkling me and the lower foliage with a
shower of fine, glittering ash.  As a larger area was scorched by the
unseen conflagration, a cavity of branchlessness appeared and grew; a
hollow sphere the bounds of which were described by countless tiny brands
that continued to burn orange-hot.  When the branch-tips
immediately around my head had been similarly seared, the progression of the
burning ceased.  Dozens of tiny match-tips smoldered around my face,
but I felt no heat.
 
Then I heard again the voice from the subterranean chamber.
 
"Justin Mayer.  You sought me, but it is you who are
found."  With each uttered syllable the branch tips flared a brighter
orange, as if blown upon by an unseen breath.
 
"Chaer-Ul...," I intoned softly, but the name on my lips
felt as if taken without consent.  Inexplicably I experienced shame. 
“I’m sorry for the way I acted before,” I added awkwardly.

“Your
mind hasn’t made enough room for me yet.  Your mind hasn’t enough room for me. 
What can you understand?” the voice said.

“I
understand that you are a god.  The god of this world, or at least the
greatest.  The people who follow you speak of other, ‘lesser gods’.”

The
smoldering tips flared white hot, pulsed to the sound of rumbling laughter. 
There was amusement, not anger in the words that followed.  “I am not the god
of this world.  I am the god of worlds,” he said. 

“You
brought me here, right?”  I asked.  “What exactly is it that you want me to
do?  To become?”

“I
only expect you to be.  What you may become is in my hand,” he said simply.

 “Can
I go home?” I tried.

“Do
you want to?”

I
didn’t answer right away.  The pulsing embers accented a chuckle that grew into
a hearty laugh.  I couldn’t completely suppress a smile.  “I have to admit, I
am a little curious where this is all going.”

The
laughter tapered off into a rumbling “Mmmm…” that sounded suspiciously of
satisfaction.  “That sounds like teleology,” he said.  The embers beamed and
smirked.

I
wasn’t convinced that this was the same god of the dead religions of my world. 
Had anyone ever truly spoken with him as I did now?  Was this a god of penance
and reprobation?  I suspected that Chaer-Ul could extinguish my life as easily
as one of these embers.  I also had a feeling he wouldn’t.  That gave me the
confidence to press a little farther.  “Look, I need to understand what is
happening to me.  I need to know why I survived that blade.  Was that bullet
just luck, or something more?”

“It
is always something more.  That you live…that is because of who you are.  That
you are untouched…that is because of who you must become..”

This
Deity had an amazing way of using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing.  I
wasn’t ready to give up just yet.  “Am I immortal?” I asked.  It seemed like a
fair question.

“A
belief in one’s immortality has a way of making heroes into martyrs,” he said. 

“And
is that what you’d have me become – a martyr in this fight against Magus?” 
There was no response.  Only the sound of a long, slow exhalation that I took
for an exasperated sigh.  As it finished, the orange glow of a thousand burning
branches faded to black and sent tiny trails of smoke wiggling into every small
gap in the dark canopy above.  It was very dark for a moment, and very quiet. 
Then without warning the limbs that supported me cracked and sent me plummeting
toward the forest floor.  I landed on the back of my mount in full stride, and
blinked at brilliant rays of sunlight beaming through the leaf cover.  Grabbing
thick handfuls of the deer’s shaggy coat, I turned to look back at where I’d
been.  It didn’t look particularly dark, or dense, and focusing on my arms I
saw no trace of ash.  I turned my view to the fore once again, and was relieved
to see Maya’s entrancing locks swirling before me. 

She
turned to glance at me over her shoulder and smiled warmly.  “We’re almost to
the clearing!”  she shouted.  Then her smile grew wider and her eyes took on an
ever-so-slightly unfocused appearance as she added, to no one in particular,
“Berries!”

As
it turned out, there were a few berries by the spring.  I was hungry, but I let
her have them all.  It was fun watching her eat, her mannerisms at once primal
and child-like.  By the end her lips and fingertips were all stained red-purple
from the juice.  I sat on a big, mossy rock dappled with patchy sunlight. 
Crystalline water burbled from under some overhanging roots behind me and to my
left, flowing between Maya and me.  All around us the ground was spongy green
moss, decorated with fallen yellow leaves.  Here and there a patch of tender
new grass or ferns poked through and vied for a place in the sun.  It was a
scene of incredible serenity, and I wished we could stay there, unmoving,
forever.  My reverie was interrupted as one of the deer approached and sniffed
the water tentatively, then tasted it.  Maya stood from the spot where she was
crouched opposite me and removed a pair of canteens from her pack, tossing me
one.  We filled them and drank, filled them again.  The deer drank freely and
nibbled blissfully upon the rare greens. 

Since
Maya made no comment on my recent temporary absence I asked.  “Did you notice
anything unusual since we left the fault?”

“Like
what?”

“I
think I had kind of a vision,” I explained.  “I was lifted right off of my deer
and…and Chaer-Ul spoke to me.”

“Chaer-Ul! 
What did he say?!!?” she asked excitedly.

“Very
little that I understood.”

She
nodded, unperturbed.  “That’s his way.  But it always has meaning.  Come here,
tell me, and maybe I can help you understand it.”

Actually,
that seemed like a good idea.  I hopped over the narrow stream and we both sat
down on a broad, flat rock.  I began, “I don’t remember it word-for-word, and a
lot of it was just riddles, non-answers.  I tried to press him for an answer
about why I didn’t die from that assassin’s blade…”

Maya
thinned her lips and tilted her head at me in a mildly scolding manner.  I
explained further, “I wasn’t disrespectful, I tried to ask in a nicer way this
time.”  This softened her features.  “The part I remember is that he said
something about those who think they are immortal becoming martyrs.”  I knew
the wording wasn’t right, but hoped that it was close enough for her to make
something of it.  She smiled and began to nod her head.  “This means something
to you?” I asked.

She
continued to nod, her mouth fell open slightly and at length she said, “…no.” 
I grunted, but she hastily added, “But often Chaer-Ul gives a piece that
doesn’t look like anything, and only later gives the key that unlocks it. 
Other times he gives the key first.  And sometimes…”  I could tell she was winding
up to a dramatic conclusion.  “…sometimes…you already have the key and don’t
know it!  Do you already have the key?!!?  You have the key!!!”  She was so
genuinely thrilled that I hated to let her down.

“Sorry,
no.  I don’t think so,” I said.  I thought she might experience a bipolar
crash, but her smile endured.  I don’t think she totally believed me.

Maya
picked up tiny pebbles and tossed them one by one into the stream.  “You seem
to be doing all right with your deer,” she said.  “I mean, except for that one
part where you fell clean off her and had a vision.”  I squinted my eyes
tightly and grimaced, letting her have her fun.  “Anyway, there’s still a lot
of daylight left.  Let’s work on some more riding skills, and we can still be
back before Reya would start to miss us.” 

“You’re
the teacher,” I said.

“Good,”
she said.  “Let’s start with some communication.  You’ve heard some of the
sounds we make to get them to come, to go, and so on.  You did it yourself, as
we were leaving camp, right?”

“Right,” 
I said.

“You
probably assumed that there were specific commands for each action.  It’s not
exactly like that.  The puurr-deer communicate in tones, like the ones you’ve
heard.  The sounds are essential for understanding to occur.  But the tone itself
is not the message.  It is only a vessel for the message.”