The mage from nowhere, p.8
The Mage From Nowhere, page 8
“I have no other name.”
“What did your father put on your birth certificate? Surely he used your mother’s maiden name.”
“Birth certificate? Why would I require a certificate of my birth? I am here. Obviously I was born.”
“For the love of god. Just go. Go!”
“I have no coin.”
“For all that is holy…how much does a bath and meal usually cost?” Lord Langston pressed his lips together as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver coin. “Here. I expect repayment within a week. That is my own personal coin!”
“Am I to be paid for my service? If not, you should not expect repayment.”
“Take it and go before I lose my temper!” he yelled.
“Arselicker,” Tarak mumbled a little too loudly as he turned and walked away.
“Worthless scum!” Lord Langston yelled. “And buy some pants and undergarments as well!” He tossed another three silver. “I don’t ever want to see your naked backside again, do you hear? And you will pay me back. Four silver!”
Tarak caught one of the coins, but two fell to the floor and rolled to his feet. He knelt down and picked them up.
You should not have said anything, Tarak told himself.
There is no helping it, he concluded.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tarak wondered how he might be able to bathe and eat while spending the least amount of coin possible. He now possessed four silver coins. From his time around the city earlier, he knew from which shop he could buy the cheapest pair of pants and undergarments.
There was not much Tarak could do about his bare ass showing, so he decided confidence was better than shame. Many people stared and even snickered as they noticed, but he strutted it off. Most seemed to find this more amusing, though some seemed alarmed by his unconcerned attitude and made haste to create distance from him. So long as he was not stopped by a guard before he could cover himself, he could put up with this for a little while longer.
He eventually came to the tailor shop and was lucky to find a size of pants that fit him. The tailor sold him what he needed for three out of his four silver. It was a good deal, certainly because the tailor took pity on Tarak after seeing the state of his current trousers, though it only left Tarak with one silver coin. But Lord Langston had little idea how much a bath and a meal cost a man like Tarak and had overpaid. Tarak was certain he could pay for both with at least six copper left over. He did not need to eat much. Some bread would do until the king decided to feed him for free.
He feared he might fail to grasp sorcery upon the first lesson. He had taken many lessons from his father, and very little had stuck. He’d always told Caarda that he was a terrible teacher, but many of the statements Tarak had uttered were in anger after refusing to face his own failures. He had little confidence that Leon the Shit Talker could be a better instructor. The man was a talented sorcerer, certainly so, but talent did not always translate into teaching.
A good teacher was not one who demonstrated with confidence, as Leon had done. A good teacher provoked thought and inspired optimism, and it was hard to imagine Leon doing that.
An example of one was Tarak’s friend, the baker’s son. He had taught Tarak not only how to play cards but how to win. He taught Tarak not just how to talk to girls but how to listen. He even taught Tarak how to stretch a few copper into a week’s worth of sustenance. His friend was wise beyond his years. Tarak imagined he had raised exceptional children.
It was a painful reminder of what Tarak had lost. A single note left with his name would have made all the difference. Father stripped that away from me.
He was in a sour mood as he walked into a bakery and asked for the oldest bread. As expected, he got away with spending only two copper to fix his hunger.
A little higher in spirits, Tarak thought about skipping the bath and making a run for the river just outside the city. He could save a couple copper that way.
A woman standing in the doorway of an old house spoke to the man walking ahead of Tarak. “Excuse me sir, would you like to join us for prayer? We preach the wisdom of the New Magic, the only true belief. You can be enlightened—”
“Waste of time,” interrupted the man.
The woman held her smile as Tarak passed by. “Would you be interested in a sermon of New Magic and the one true God? There is water for you to wash up and food if you are hungry.”
Tarak was hit by a number of thoughts and emotions all at the same time. First of all, how strange was it for this woman to be inviting people into what looked to be a house for prayer? He had seen churches around, so what was the point of having prayer here? His next thought was how destitute he must look for this woman to think that she could entice him with food and a bath, when she hadn’t offered the same to a man with frayed clothes right in front of Tarak.
Tarak had learned to ignore many things: the ramblings of drunken men, the preachers calling his family gods, and most certainly that nagging voice inside his head that usually told him his pride was important.
“I will gladly agree to your offer if I may bathe and eat before the sermon.”
“Yes, come in.” She took his hand and practically dragged him inside.
He feared this might be a trick. A pretty lady lures him in, locks the door, and a few large men corner him until he hands over his coin. He almost welcomed the challenge, but he was too busy today. He kept his hand on the door as he entered and looked around, but the scene before him dissolved his aggression. No men were coming to corner him.
This was not like any church or prayer house he had entered before. It was once a home, as he seemed to be entering a kitchen where a large pot of beans cooked over a fire. There was no furniture, however.
The smell of the place consisted a bit of beans but mostly a sickening sweet smell coming from the incense on the table nearby. Tarak sniffed as he detected something else. Yup, the stench of unbathed man was certainly there beneath it all.
“Down the hall you will find peace and truth,” said the woman. “Please remove your boots.”
“As you wish, but I will carry them with me.”
“You may.”
Tarak did not find peace or truth down the hall. He found someone’s old home had been converted into a very secretive prayer house. The rooms were large, the halls narrow, and there were no doors anymore. Men and women in gray robes stood in the doorways as if guarding them. Their eerie smiles were probably supposed to be disarming, but they had the opposite effect.
“Welcome, child of truth,” said an old man outside what appeared to be the bathing room.
“I am here to bathe and eat first and foremost,” Tarak said.
The old man moved aside and gestured at the room behind him. A number of baths were available. Each one had a stand nearby with some soap and towels with stains and holes. Tarak shrugged. He’d bathed in worse conditions. The river, for example, would’ve been worse. He didn’t even have a towel and hadn’t thought through how he’d dry without one. Standing near the river stark naked didn’t seem like the best idea.
Tarak undressed, painfully aware of the open door behind him and the old man standing in the doorway. The water was warm enough, the soap soapy enough, and the towel clean enough. He would enjoy this bath, even if it was brisk and he had an audience. Tarak sat in his barrel of water with his back to the man.
“Keep an open mind,” said the old man. “That is all we ask of you.”
“Understood,” Tarak said without turning around, then went right back to ignoring the man.
His bath was going well until a beggar entered the bathing room. He undressed to Tarak’s side, his body covered in scars. His long hair probably needed its own barrel to be washed thoroughly. The beggar seemed to be even better than Tarak at ignoring his surroundings, as he never once glanced over at Tarak and gave no response when the old man asked the beggar if he’d accepted truth yet.
Tarak became shocked when a woman entered the bathing room with scissors in hand and asked the beggar if he would like his hair trimmed. He grunted in affirmation. She pulled up a stool behind him as he leaned against the inside of the barrel and pulled his wet mop of hair up over the side.
“Cut it all off for all I care,” he growled in a raspy voice.
Tarak could smell him from a few paces away, even in the water.
“I advise you quit staring,” said the beggar as he still did not glance even once at Tarak.
Tarak was not afraid of the scrawny older man. He was curious, though. “Come here often?” Tarak responded casually, though he did keep his head from turning again. There wasn’t much to look at, anyway.
“Just arrived. Long trip. I lost a good man on the way.”
“Where do you hail from?”
“Rohaer. There’s no food there, and now I see there’s no food here, either. Our king in Rohaer fucked us, and now your king fucks us harder. Things were better during the war.”
“The new god will bless us,” said the old man.
“Well, what’s taking him so long?” asked the beggar. “People are dying.”
“It will be explained in the sermon.”
“Can’t wait,” the beggar said sarcastically.
Tarak had to stop thinking of him as a beggar, as he had not begged for anything. He probably just owned as little as Tarak did but had been poor for longer. A traveler. That’s how Tarak would think of him now. Tarak might’ve been a traveler just like him if things had gone differently.
Tarak didn’t know where Rohaer was, but seeing as how this man had traveled to get to Newhaven only to be disappointed, Tarak was really starting to see that leaving probably would’ve produced the same results for him.
Someone announced from down the hall, “The sermon will begin soon.”
Tarak stepped out of the bath unabashed and hurried to dry off. The woman cutting the traveler’s hair gasped and looked away.
“I apologize,” Tarak said. But he wasn’t going to miss his one chance to grab some food and eat quickly before being trapped in a sermon. He dressed in his newly purchased clothing and hurried to the kitchen. A short line of three men and one woman had formed. They had been given wooden bowls and spoons. Tarak took his place behind them and was offered the same.
He was disappointed to see the beans were mostly water, served far too hot for him to finish them as quickly as he wanted. At least there was still a good smell to them. He followed the others down the hall and into a windowless room lit by candles with a plethora of empty benches before a pedestal.
Tarak was surprised to see someone his age step up behind the pedestal.
“My name is Arthur Adarren. I’m here to open your minds.”
Everyone started blowing on their hot bowl of bean soup as if trying to put out a small fire.
Arthur had dark hair neatly combed back. He had a pensive look to his features that made it difficult for Tarak to imagine this young man smiling. He spoke in a deliberate, careful way.
Tarak figured it was a coincidence that this person had the same name as the young man Michael had warned Tarak to stay away from. With so many people in this city, many of them had to have the same name.
“There is no easy way to discuss the gods,” Arthur continued. “Evidence is required to prove most things, but what happens when the wrong evidence leads to an idea? That is what gave birth to the prominent religions of today, the Formationists and the Cessationists. Both are based on the idea that Basael is God.”
Now this was becoming interesting to Tarak. Basael was his grandfather. The people of Tarak’s time had considered Basael to be God, so not much had changed there. Caarda had told Tarak that Basael had been killed by a celestial body from deep sky but that some of Tarak’s uncles and aunts believed Basael had not died but instead had transcended into an ethereal form.
“He is dead and gone,” Caarda had told Tarak. “I am certain of this because I felt his presence fade. He never was God or any form of a god. I am also certain of this because his motives are too similar to those of mortals.”
Basael had been the source of many arguments between Caarda and his siblings, and it seemed that this was still a source of arguments among the people these days. Tarak had never heard of these two religions. There was only one in the time he came from, though it did state that Basael was God. He almost forgot about his bowl of beans as he listened to Arthur.
“Formationists believe Basael pulled the celestial body down from the heavens to destroy his body as he ascended to the stars to forever watch over mankind. Upon the death of a mortal, a person’s soul would ascend to heaven if they led moral lives, and to hell if they chose the path of immorality. Meanwhile, Cessationists have an even more diluted idea of God. They think He once lived among us and took different forms, first Basael and then Airinold after he fought against the other demigods and won but before he took the form of the winged beast.”
Arthur tossed a hand as if bothered, then went on. “We all know that the winged beast was killed and Airinold fought in the recent war. This is proof that not only the Cess have it wrong but Formists as well. The demigods are not demigods but beings with great power and long life. Caarda himself has spoken to our king about this. They are not to be called demigods anymore but Deviants, and Basael is not to be referred to as God but as an Ancient.”
It was finally something good that Tarak’s father had done. Tarak had never thought of his father or his aunts and uncles as demigods. What would it mean to live in a world where they were the sons and daughters of the being that had created life and earth? It would mean that mankind was doomed. Tarak was not always optimistic, but this was too pessimistic even for him.
“Wrong ‘evidence,’ more and more of it,” Arthur continued, “has led people to the wrong beliefs. Now…finally, we have evidence that cannot be refuted. We are the New Order, driven by the new magic that we are beginning to see now that the corrupted Deviants have left. There are some of us who have seen and even spoken to an Ancient—a being as powerful as Basael once was. He is not God, but he is closer to God than the rest of us. It is wise for us to heed his words. He is here to bless us with his power. All he asks in return is to believe and spread the word.”
There were murmurs from the small crowd, skepticism in the air. Arthur raised his voice.
“You have every right not to believe me, but you cannot possibly deny that magic is changing. We have seen sorcery in a new light. A seemingly endless array of spells is becoming available to us. Even if some of the spells we knew before are becoming more difficult to learn and cast, this was the world as God intended, and it was this world that was closed off from us by Basael and his offspring. You may have come here today to eat and bathe, but you should leave here with an open mind. As you see how the world changes, remember that we are in the midst of a holy war. Those who deny true evidence and hang on to lies wish to destroy the New Order and anyone who speaks ill of the old gods—the corrupters, as we see them.”
Amen to that, Tarak said to himself.
A few people had finished eating and were getting up to leave.
“A bunch of horseshit,” muttered the traveler, now clean and with short hair. Tarak figured the man should be more appreciative, but the traveler’s comments were only the first.
“Where is this Ancient now, and why hasn’t he given us rain?” asked a woman.
“He will when we believe,” replied Arthur. “We can begin by no longer denying what’s true. Keep your minds open,” he called after the people who were leaving. Tarak looked around and found only he was left. “God is good, but God has been suppressed until now. Water will come, as will new magic and a new order.”
As Tarak sat alone, Arthur’s gaze fell upon him.
“Tell me more about this new Ancient,” Tarak requested as he finished his beans and slurped the water. Caarda had mentioned an inability to see future events. His listed reasons were either a cataclysmic event or a powerful being, like Basael, who had some way of preventing others from seeing further ahead. This worried Tarak. The world was better without Ancients around.
Arthur stepped down from the podium and sat next to Tarak. “I have not met him myself, but I have spoken with a man who has. The Ancient watches us for now. He has just arrived. He desires to help.”
“And what does he expect to receive, besides our faith in his existence? There must be more.”
Arthur gave a quick, practiced answer. “He expects to have a place he can call home. That is all. He has been pushed out of every place he’s known because of his power over sorcery. There are changes to the land wherever he goes, and most people are not welcoming of changes no matter if they are beneficial or not.”
“Even if he might not expect something, you and the others must.”
“I expect you to embrace change. That is all.”
“Why not first convince the lords and those with power to embrace change? Everyone else will be easy after that.”
“I have tried, and I have found that the people who possess the most wealth and power are the least likely to embrace change. It has to come from those who need, not from those who have.”
Tarak supposed that was right. “But if this Ancient is so powerful, why does he not show himself?”
“He first needs to see how he can help. God did not create man and earth in one day. He saw what was good and what was needed. He went piece by piece. This Ancient plans to re-create Dorrinthal in God’s image.”
“That sounds destructive.”
“Mankind is already destructive. We need saving.”
“My mind will stay open,” Tarak lied as he stood up. “I am late for a prior engagement. My gratitude for the hospitality.”
Arthur stood and offered his hand. “Your name?”
“Tarak.” They shook.
“In case you didn’t catch it earlier, I’m Arthur Adarren. I have a feeling we will be meeting again.”
