A New Story: Wardu's Wager

Glatinu and I sat in the market square, mourning for our life in the capital, trying for some flavor of home by  adding ahtene to the stuff that passed for food here in the north.  It was a daily competition, to see which of us could stand a stronger dose of the fiery stuff; just one of the many contests with which my brother officer and I had always passed the time.  Drinking, racing, wrestling, a little light magicking, and best of all, womanizing – these were the staples of our friendship.  But we ate peppers for now in this dull, religion-soaked city of Kath, with its small, odd people.  Why had we even bothered to conquer them?

Our waiter had stepped up to our table quietly.  “Honored citizens,” he began, with a hesitant smile and an accent on the edge of gibberish.  “You new to city.  I be first to welcome you?" He was perhaps the one hundredth complete stranger to welcome us, but never mind, we knew what was coming.  “May inquire - you have found a church yet?”

Found a church yet.  It was the refrain Glatinu and I had been hearing since our ships had arrived in Kath, relieving the men that had marched over land, surprised the northerners and taken the city.  When we'd taken  rooms away from the barracks, the landlord asked if we’d found a church.  When we'd had our kit delivered from the docks, the gang chief took our money, then asked us if we’d happened to have found a church yet, since he could highly recommend one.  From street sweepers to random passers-by it was the same.  I commented on this to the Governor, expecting him to laugh at the locals, but he looked at me seriously and said, "Make yourself useful, then, Wardmulidan and enlist.  Someone on my staff needs to understand these people.”

I was thinking about this as Glatinu chased off our proselytizing server.  Somehow I’d not been able to bring myself to cross the threshold of any church, temple or anchorage.  The Emperor was my God: who needed another?  But, there it was, the governor’s request-cum-order.

“I tell you what, Glati,” I said, in the moment the thought occurred to me. “I will take a dare.  If the very next girl who walks by our table can be persuaded to invite me, I will sign up today, no matter whether she have three eyes and an extra nostril.”

“Alright, if you insist,” said my friend.  “I dare you.  But I think you will be bored five minutes after the chanting starts.”

“It’s a wager,” said I.  “I stand drinks for the next week if I fail.”

“The next woman we see?” he said with a sly look.

“The very next,” I replied.  As a wicked smile crossed his lips, I turned to see one of the witches of Kath moving across the plaza like a ship in a high wind, wrapped in a sea-green robe from head to toe, on business that surely did not include me.

Thinking I would be a pauper by the end of the week – Glatinu was a ferocious drinker – I rapped the table for luck, spit over my shoulder for protection, and sallied out.

But trying to stop the witch was like trying to hold back the sea.  “Subject,” was all I could address to her before she sailed past without a pause.  I half-ran to get ahead of her to make another attempt.  I stepped into her path, swept a bow, and started, “Honored subject, –“, before a gloved finger reached toward me, and I found myself stumbling in sudden pain.

She had magicked me.  Touched me, and turned me!  Shame prickled, and anger, that an officer of the Empire, me, was being swatted aside without the slightest effort.  I spun back, and without thinking summoned fire to my hands.  It flashed through my mind that the witches had held our armies at bay for more than a month before surrendering.  But wisdom sometimes comes too late; my spell shot at her like a whip.  And disappeared with no effect into the deep green folds of her cloak.  She stopped then, a full one hundred paces distant, and pivoted toward me.   I heard Glati yelling, sensed that Kathians all around were finding better places to be.  I fell beneath a wave of power.

It seemed to last forever, and left me breathless, battered, and blind.  When the weight and roll of it lifted, I was on my knees, gasping.  Glati was at my side, calling for our men.  My head was spinning, but I was conscious enough to wonder how we’d ever bested such women.  Soldiers were running to us from their posts around the plaza, and I had the sense things could get out of hand quickly.  My anger turned to fear of being the agent of a situation I wanted nothing of.  “Hold!” I croaked.  “Stand down, Glatinumishdan!  Stand down, everyone!”  I stood carefully, pulling on his arm for strength.  The witch smoldered where she stood.

“Your pardon, lady,” I called, using my shipboard voice.  “There has been a misunderstanding.”

I do not know what might have happened then, for I sensed her rage even at this distance.  But the moment passed, because another figure appeared at the witch’s side.  She was a twin of my opponent, but in the palest blue.  They stood like competing depths of the sea, and inaudible words passed between them.  My assailant stalked away at last, while this second came toward our group.

She regarded us neutrally, her expression hidden by her veil, except for extraordinary, cool eyes.  I wanted to bandy with her as I did with all women, but I was learning not to presume with these witches.

“You wanted to speak with us, foreigner?” she asked in an arresting voice with just a slight northern burr.  She was as short as all of her countrymen, but carried herself with great dignity.  My wits were returning quickly, but those eyes and that voice unbalanced me anew.

“My apologies, lady,” I replied.  “I simply wished to ask a question of one who clearly must have great knowledge.”  I thought I sounded quite diplomatic, but Glatinu bit back a laugh.

“My sister is not one for words with the empire’s men.”

“But you?” said I.

“A realist.”

“I am thankful, lady.”

She looked at me steadily, and I reddened, thinking about the bet with Glati, and how I had thought to play with these people.  Seeing my chagrin, she softened.

“A question, you said?"

“Yes,” I answered.  Our men, with calm restored, moved back to their posts.  “Since we arrived here, I have been the, um, honored recipient of many invitations to join a church.” I smiled with a bit of my usual humor, “I think I‘ve been invited to join every church in Kath.  Could we have been invited over fifty times, Glatinu?”

“Maybe twenty,” he corrected.

“Ah,” said the witch, “I see.  Have you found a church yet.”

“Exactly.”

“And you have no idea, foreigner, why people you have conquered, whose armies you have blasted, would want you to join them in worship?  I will tell you.”  I saw a smile in her eyes then.  “You see this city.  It is a great wheel, with eight thoroughfares as spokes meeting in this plaza, and a great church at each joining.”  She paused, as though perhaps this was too complicated for me and I nodded understanding.  “In twenty days, at the turning of the moon, it will be our great Festival.  Each congregation will compete in prayer, in artistry, and in strength.”

“Strength?” I repeated, meeting eyes with Glatinu.  Strength was something we knew.

“We bring forth images of our saints, and each church competes to be first to drag its avatar from the edge of the city to the heart.  It is a glorious day for us, when we remember who we are, and what we are.”

“But,” said I, plainly: “I am the Emperor’s man, a foreigner.”

“Look at yourself, soldier.  You stand a full span taller than any of us.  You bore the fury of my sister’s magick.  We look at you,” and she laughed suddenly like a land breeze after weeks at sea, "and we think ‘This one could pull a rope!’”

Which is how Glatinumishdan and I found ourselves twenty days later stripped to the waist, sweating, swearing, and laughing with our fellow congregants as we dragged the heaviest damned block of carved weirdness I’d ever seen from the edge of the city to the very center.  I’d found a tale for the governor, but I’d found much more.

She walked ahead of us, clad in fairest robes of blue, like foam on a cresting wave, calling us to strength and speed.  I’d found my church, oh yes.  And she could have my heart, my soul, my very being for the asking.

Old Hundred: short story, sort of grim

My first completed story in, oh, 30+ years.
Let me now what you think.

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OLD HUNDRED

He said: “And the angel told me that this window from our world to his only opens once every hundred years, and he comes each time and waits for another hero to come through.”

His daughter snorted and rolled her eyes.  “But he got you instead.”

“He got me.  I was eight years old.  I asked him how long I could stay.  Because it was wonderful, you see.  He was wonderful.  He said, ‘You can stay in this world for as long as your heart is true.’  As long as my heart was true.”

“I guess that left you out.”

“Ah, well.  I stayed, and became one of them, one of the great clan.  Oh, I could tell you many things about that year, Fran.  So many.  But it ended so quickly, because I grew homesick.  And frightened.  They needed hero.  And when I realized that wasn’t me, I just… fell.  And landed back out there, in the sand, in front of the stone, with the tide in and the surf around my knees.  It was still summer, still 1955, even though a whole year had passed on the other side.  And I was late for dinner.”  He laughed at that, which got him coughing again.  She had to hold a tissue to his mouth so he could spit, then pull him up straight again in his float-chair.  Even with the leaps science had taken in the last few years, one hundred-and-eight years old was not pretty.

They looked at each other, each one scanning the other’s face for some clue where to take this strange discussion.  Fran found she was pissed.  That didn’t surprise her; it was standard with her father.

“You are so full of shit,” she complained.  “You call me down here from D.C., and give me this fantastic crap.  It’s 2055.  And I’m sixty-five years old.  Do you think I’m an idiot?  ” 

She winced, expecting him to jump on such an easy line.  Ten years ago he would have, but now he just looked at her.  There were tears in his eyes, and his face was strained, his shoulders and neck rigid.  She glanced down at his hands, bony white and gripping the arms of his float-chair fiercely.  Her scalp prickled suddenly, and a shiver ran from her head all the way to her toes in a sudden rush.

“You’re serious.  You really believe this.”

The relief in him was almost heartbreaking.  “Yes!” he said.  “Yes!  Look outside.  Look at what I’ve done.  Would I do all that as a some joke?  Just to pull your leg?”  She turned her head and did indeed look out through the great picture window, down the lawn to the dunes, to the cranes, trucks, men and machinery, and beyond them to the dike that now held back the water and reclaimed a stretch of beach lost to climate change twenty years before.  A stretch of beach leading up to a great, black, jagged rock.  And on top of that, a tall, grey, granite stone, glittering in the late afternoon sun.

The dike was new.  It stretched the length of two soccer fields from one arm of the small bay to the other: an enormous, ugly ribbon of concrete, like an old-style roadway stood on its side.  How much had all that cost?  How much had all that cost!  Shit!

He saw her face close down in disbelief, anger and worry.  “I’m not senile, Fran,“ he said.  “And I’m not crazy.”

She wanted to scream.  She did scream.  “What do you mean, you’re not crazy, Dad?  Look at what you’ve done!  Look at what you’ve spent!  Is there anything left?  Who the hell let you do this?  What lunatic contractor hired on to change the goddamn coastline!”  She couldn’t stand sitting there any longer, and started pacing back and forth as stunned questions just vomited forth.  Oh yes, vomited.  She knew that was the right word even as she kept on yelling and pacing and pointing and panting for breath.  Sixty-plus years of this man, and his crap.  How had her mother ever stood it?  How had any of them ever stood it?

But he just sat there looking at her, like she was his last chance on earth.  No arguing, no arrogance, nothing.  She found she was weeping, and that she was sitting across from him again.

“I need you, Frannie.”

God, and she needed deodorant.  Amazing how menopause could survive the implacable march of medicine.  She stank.

“You need me,” she said, her voice shaky, her whole body almost limp now.  “That is the definition on irony.

“You need me,” she repeated, when he didn’t rise to the bait.  “What happened to your nurse, what’s her name?”

“She quit yesterday.  Couldn’t stand me anymore.  Packed her things.  Left.  I called you.”

“Well someone had to change your diaper, I guess.  Wasn’t that a treat.  Hey, Fran, it’s an emergency down here at the beach house.  I’ve shit my pants and no one’s here to clean me up.”  She closed her eyes on him and tried to let her mind go dead.  But she felt the anger starting up again, and had to swallow hard against the taste of bile.  She took a deep breath.  Let it out.  Took another.  “How much money?” she said.

“There’s still money left, if that’s what you mean.  Building the dike took a lot.  But I have a lot.”

“Not what I meant, Daddy,” she almost sneered at him, knowing that the anger was turning her mean.  “I mean, how much is it worth to you?”

Their eyes met, and she looked away first, blushing from her neck to her ears.

“It’s good to see still you have some capacity for shame,” he said.  Hah! she thought.  Look who’s calling the kettle black.

He used his chin to point to his desk.  “Over there, you’ll see I’ve gotten it all written out properly.  Amazing what virtual lawyers can do these days.” The old bastard knew her, didn’t he.  Knew what she’d want to go along with his delusion.  And what did she care anyway?  Let him have his pathetic fantasy, if she got something out of it.  She felt every wall there’d ever been between them go up, enormous, black slabs of history and bitterness, as she walked over to the deck and picked up his last will and testament and a power of attorney over all his earthly affairs.

The sun was falling to the horizon when they reached the black rocky outcrop and the standing stone on its crest.  He’d had a ramp built from the base of the dune, across the sand and up the side of the rock.  But there was no way he’d have been able to navigate to it without help.  He hadn’t had a chance to get one of the new lift-chairs that could be controlled through a brain-link.  She couldn’t believe it.  All this effort, all this money, and it hadn’t even occurred to him.  He’d needed her.  Well, someone.

Gulls wheeled overhead as the sky blushed rose and orange.  She was glad she was standing behind him, and unable to see the weird patterns he’d insisted she draw across his face with lipstick.  “Next best thing,” he had said.  Though in comparison to what, she didn’t think she wanted to know.

“Hold my hand, Frannie,” her father said.  She let him grab on to her. 

“I’m going to sell the damn house,” she said. 

“I won’t need it.”

“Hey!” came a voice from the sand below, startling Fran and almost causing her father to jump out of the chair.  She twisted around and saw a small boy looking up at them.  He started climbing up the side of the ramp, calling out, “What are you doing?  What’s up there?”

“Who is it,” her father asked, in a sudden panic.  “Who is it?”

“It’s just the boy from next door,” Fran answered, remembering seeing him playing around among the litter of the construction when she’d arrived that morning.

“He can’t be here,” the old man said. “You can’t come up here!” he shouted, waving his arms wildly as the boy stepped up next to them. “Go away!  It’s not for you!”

The boy squeezed around the chair and stepped toward the standing stone as the blazing sun kissed its very top.  A shimmering started all around them, as though waves of heat were suddenly baking off from every surface.  And something opened in the sky.

“Take me!” screamed the old man.  “Take me!  I’m ready now!  I won’t fail you!”

The boy said, “It’s beautiful!”

The old man screamed again, and again, weeping and begging and cursing.

Fran laughed on the edge of madness and said, “I guess the house will sell for more than I thought.”