Chris Pierson - Chosen of the Gods

“For centuries,” he went on, “the church has told you such lies. The time has come for this to stop. I saw the thing that slew Lady Ilista and the others. It was a beast of purest evil, murderous and heartless. I will not simply accept her death was what Paladine intended.

“Some of you, no doubt, are thinking of the Doctrine of Balance that the church has held dear for millennia. We are told that without evil, good cannot exist. Even at midday, when the sun shines brightest, shadows remain. This has always been, the canon says. It always must be.

“Lies! In ages past, the Balance had its uses. It kept Paladine’s power alive in the world, when the dark gods and their minions threatened to overwhelm all. Those days are past. The Queen of Darkness is gone from the world, her dragon hordes fled a thousand years since. We have hunted the servants of evil-the goblin, the ogre, the monster of nightmares-until they are all but destroyed in Istar. We have beaten back the cults that worship sin, yet Lady Ilista is still murdered by a thing of evil sent from the very Lordcity where the god’s light shines brightest!

“Yes,” he went on, as the folk of Govinna stared. “The author of this wickedness is the Kingpriest himself, Kurnos the Usurper. If you doubt it, ask yourself this: who else would send an assassin here? He fears me, fears the righteousness of my claim to the throne, so he does all he can to destroy me- even if it means truckling with darkest sorcery and demons from the Abyss itself!”

He opened his arms, displaying the bloodstains for all to see. “ Look! See what the precious Balance has wrought! As long as we lack the will to destroy evil altogether, innocent blood will flow! The time for the old ways is over. We must kindle a new light, one that surrounds us, burning so brightly that the darkness and those who serve it flee forever!” He flung his hands up, reaching to the heavens. “ Sifat!”

The light poured out of him then, spraying forth like the jets of some great fountain, arcing high into the air with a sound like the ringing of a great crystal bell. The glow hung in the air, bathing the mourners’ open-mouthed faces, then it dropped again, raining down all over the room. Wherever it fell, it touched a candle, and that candle burst aflame… scores… hundreds… thousands of them, filling the room with their glow. As they did, the shadows they cast grew dim, until at last there was nothing but light, surrounding everyone, swallowing the gloom.

It began with just one man, surging to his feet halfway to the rear of the hall and thrusting his fist in the air. Then it spread, more and more folk jumping up to add their voices, until finally the whole Pantheon rang with the cry, and the city outside as well, a roar that cut through the morning air as the fog burned away in the sunlight.

“Death to the Usurper!” the folk of Govinna cried. “Life to the Lightbringer! An end to the Balance!”

Amid it all, his eyes twin suns, Beldinas smiled.

The catacombs held the smell of the old dead, a musty, spicy aroma that permeated the air and the stones alike. They were dark, close, and silent, older than the Pantheon, older than Govinna itself, a place harking back to the days when the Taoli were savages, scouring the wild hills with bow and spear and sacrificing their enemies to pagan gods. Missionaries from the church of Istar had dug them as a hiding place, where they could bury their fallen so the barbarians could not defile their bodies.

Times had changed. The church ruled now, and the barbarians had become civilized highlanders, but the dead remained, lying in niches mantled with dust and cobwebs. Each body was meticulously wrapped, from neck to feet, in strips of linen, but their heads remained uncovered, revealing bare skulls with scraps of colorless hair clinging to them. Their eyes stared sightlessly in the dark, teeth bared in rictus grins.

Cathan tried not to look at the bodies as he and Beldyn made their way through the cramped passages. The light of the torch he carried made the shadows leap in the corners of his vision, and that made his fevered brain-already edgy from the darkness deep beneath the earth in the cellars of the temple-see things that weren’t there… or that he fervently hoped weren’t there. Surely the corpses didn’t stir as they passed, their skulls turning toward him, their bony fingers twitching. Surely he didn’t hear the rustle of wrappings being shrugged off or the scrape of bone against stone. Even so, his heart leaped every time he brushed against a niche or stepped on a bone that had fallen from its resting place. He was terrified to think that if he looked back, he would see ghosts shambling after him, staring at him with dark holes whose eyes had long ago turned to dust.

“This door you’re looking for,” he whispered, his voice sounding horribly loud. “We’re almost there, right?”

Beldyn peered through the gloom, then down at the scroll in his hands. He slowed down as he did so, which made Cathan even more afraid. If you stop, a childlike voice said in his brain, you’ll give them a chance to catch up. They’ll get you…

“Yes,” Beldyn said after a moment. “Pradian’s writings say it’s close.”

“Good.”

They went on, Cathan wishing someone else had come with them… like about one hundred armed men. Tavarre had offered them before they set out, though he couldn’t afford to lose that many swords, but Beldyn refused. The scroll he held, the one Durinen had given him moments before the demon attacked, had something to say about the matter. The door would only open to Pradian’s true heir and would let him and one other pass, so long as that other was faithful.

“I would have you, my friend,” Beldyn had said that afternoon, after Ilista and the others were entombed. Cathan objected, saying there were better warriors among the bandits, but the Lightbringer shook his head. “You were the first to swear to me, and you have been true ever since.”

Cathan sucked in a breath, caught a lungful of dust, and fell into a coughing fit.

The noise of his hacking and wheezing was still echoing back through the dark when the tunnel opened up before them into a burial chamber. It was not a large room, perhaps five paces on a side, but compared with the catacombs it felt as vast as the Pantheon’s worship hall. A single pillar stood in its midst, carved with reliefs of twining dragons, and stone sarcophagi lined the walls, their lids sculpted to resemble long-bearded men in clerical garb. The high priests among the missionaries, Cathan guessed. The lid of one had crumbled, spilling out a tangle of bones and moldering robes. The skull that leered up at him from those leavings was still covered with leathery flesh. The image of Tancred, wasted and gaunt on his deathbed, flashed through his mind, and he had to shut his eyes to make the memory go away.

When he looked again, Beldyn had crossed to the chamber’s far side. Cathan hurried after, torch held high, and when he came around the pillar he saw what caught Beldyn’s attention. There, in the far wall, was the door.

It was hewn of stone, the same living rock as the walls, and intertwined roses snaked around it, carved into its frame. Perched high upon its lintel, looking down on them, was an alabaster falcon, wings half-spread, a triangle clutched in its talons.

They stared at the door in silence. Cathan felt no surprise when he saw it had no latch.

“What now?” he asked.

Beldyn studied the scroll a while longer, then nodded and tucked it into his belt. “Now we open it.”

Cathan snorted a laugh, then stopped. As he watched, the monk pushed back his bloodstained sleeves-he still had not changed clothes-and studied the door.