And the Lord Ah-Ren said, “What is the pride of a man in My presence? He who is above some, but I am above all. What is the wisdom of a man in My presence? He who knows much, but I know all. What is the power of a man in My presence? He who conquers many, but I conquer all. The man who bows down before Me, I will exalt him above the rest; but the man who stands tall in My presence, yea, I will lay him low.”
-Gospel of Lucence, Tract 11, Lines 13-17
Claeloch Territory, Grackenwell
Beam lay her head down to sleep on a dry hill in the woods of Claeloch. She slept on nothing but her sleeping mat rolled out on a soft bed of pine needles that cushioned her against the winter-hard soil. She tucked herself into a bearskin bag that protected all but her scalp from the cold.
Spring was coming soon. If the year were a day, it was the blue light just before dawn now. This was one of the last bitter nights of the season.
“Praise be to Ah-Ren,” she murmured, and the words warmed her cold nose. “Ah-Ren, the Maker of the Morning. Ah-Ren, the Light of the World. Ah-Ren, the Merciful. Ah-Ren, the Lord Above Lords. Blessed be the Bringer of Life and the Banisher of Death, and cursed be every false god who blasphemes against You. Blessed be Your word.” She ended each day the same way she began it.
The thick bearskin had already begun to warm her body. The campfire being so close helped as well. She was reminded of a tract in the Gospel of Lucence about how the Lord Ah-Ren was never far: “In the day, I send the sun to watch over you. In the night, I send the stars. In the storm, I send bolts of thunder and I provide for your fires. Wherever there is light, there am I. And so you are never out of my sight all your days.”
All she needed was warmth. She had no need of a shelter or even a tent. The Lord Ah-Ren would protect her in the night, turning away all the beasts of the wood and even the monsters which still walked the earth from the Time Before Time. These were tall tales—she wasn’t even sure whether or not they existed. She supposed it didn’t really matter if they did or didn’t. Her only faith was in Ah-Ren.
Luster dozed uneasily nearby. He made use of the tent that she would have abandoned otherwise; he was fresh in his faith, a tender sprout which needed time and nourishment to grow. Beam knew that such things were not to be rushed.
She drifted off to sleep with her mind on the holy tome she carried.
***
She was in the brothel again.
It was dark. Only half the lanterns were lit and the fireplace burned low that night. The brothel tavern’s patrons drank from their cups in silence while the tavernkeeper polished a glass with a rag. Her wrists hurt; they were bound together in iron shackles—her ankles, too. She sat at the bar between an array of faceless men obscured by shadow.
Someone called her name. It was faint and far-off sounding, but when she turned her head to the left, she saw that it was coming from a kind-eyed man sitting next to her. He repeated it with a half-smile and raised eyebrows and stared straight at her. She still couldn’t hear it. His face was soft and looked so familiar, like an old friend she’d met a long, long time ago, yet she couldn’t describe a single feature of his face if she tried.
“What did you say?” she asked. He repeated her name, but it sounded muffled, underwater almost. “My name? What is it?”
“Hey,” said another voice. This one was crisp and sharp. She turned her head and saw the man sitting on her right side. She could see his face plain as day; he was barrel-chested with a beer gut, an unkempt beard that ran down his neck. He glared at her with half-lit eyes full of contempt. “That don’t matter no more, lass. Understand me?”
Her head was tempted to turn back to her left. Her chains rattled as she moved. “I just—”
“Hey!” This time he grabbed her by the chin and jerked her head back toward him. “You got a customer tonight. Man in the green cloak. He’s bought you, full service, till sunup. Try not to foul it up this time.” He guzzled the rest of the ale in his cup. “Your folks are dead. You’ve got no kin. No land. I’m all you’ve got, see? So you best do as you’re told. No one’s comin’ for you, lass. No one.”
“All right,” she said. There was an urge to cry welling up inside her that she tried to suppress.
She felt a firm hand on her right shoulder—turning around, she saw the man in the green cloak, a lecherous grin on his face. “Upstairs,” he growled, the alcohol hot on his breath. “Now. Room nineteen. And don’t be such a downer, eh?”
She stood up from her stool at the bar. Then she felt a hand on hers—softer this time, on her left hand. The chains were gone from her wrists and ankles. She turned to see the kind-eyed patron from a moment ago, only now his eyes and mouth were full of light so bright that they obscured his face. His voice was loud and resonant.
“Remember,” he said. “Yours is the path of the savior. Yours is the task of the righteous liberator freeing the doomed from their fates. This is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God. Your name is Beam. Great are My plans for you, and bold is your purpose. Go now. Waste not the passing of another day!”
***
Beam awoke with a start.
Sunlight seeped into her sleeping bag. She crawled out onto her mat, seeing the forest awash in the golden dawn. A squirrel scratched its way up a tree with an acorn between its teeth. Birds sang songs of praise for the morning.
Luster was awake and boiling water, a small satchel of dried leaves in his hand. “Good morning, Lady Beam,” he said with a smile. “Would you like some tea?”
Her body rose to greet the day before her mind had fully joined it. She stood on wobbly legs, bracing against a tree trunk. Her sight was foggy and slow to adjust. It was always like this when Ah-Ren graced her with a vision or a message in her dreams—so great was His glory that her feeble mortal form could hardly withstand a fraction of it.
“Are you all right?” Luster asked. He set his materials aside and rushed to help her, guiding her to a small stump next to the fire he’d built.
Her head was still spinning when she sat down. “I remember,” she murmured.
“You remember what?”
The kind face she’d seen in her dream was that of a tavern regular—a young man about her age, or a bit younger, who tended to her with compassion on her rough nights and woeful mornings. Those nights, he would bring her comfortable pillows to sit on. He would draw her cool drinks of water to soften the blow of whatever wine or beer or other harsh drink had been poured in her mouth. He even held her hair back when the contents of her stomach came bubbling up on the gravel path behind the brothel, up from that deepest place inside her where the last shreds of her soul still hid and trembled. He likely saved her life on more than one of those nights.
But he never saved her soul.
The man was a coward. Kind or unkind, he had no place in the new world her Lord was to build. She wondered if Luster would take the same safe, well-trodden path as all the other men of the kingdom, of the world.
It may have been too early to judge him. She was reminded that he was still fresh in the faith. But she saw that kindness in his eyes as he put a hand on her shoulder and crouched down next to her.
“Lady Beam, are you all right?” Luster asked again. “What do you remember?”
“‘Yours is the path of the savior,’” she recited, staring into the crackling campfire. “‘Yours is the task of the righteous liberator freeing the doomed from their fates. This is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God. Your name is written in My book. Great are My plans for you, and bold is your purpose. Go now. Waste not the—’”
“‘—passing of another day,’” Luster recited in unison, “‘but strike while the sun is high.’” She let him finish. “‘Do not hide in the dark as the cowards do, but attack in the full light of day, in My Name, wild and unafraid. Then the world will know that I am the Lord Above Lords.’”
“Your readings,” she breathed. She felt the flutter of butterflies in her stomach. “You’ve been keeping up with the readings I gave you in the Gospel of Lucence. Haven’t you?”
He smiled warmly. “Of course, Lady Beam. I believe. Truly, I do.”
Time would tell the truth. While she had full faith in Ah-Ren and gave Him her whole heart, it was a trickier, more delicate thing to place her faith in another mortal soul—a man, even more so. For now, he’d earned another modicum of her trust that he was who he claimed to be. A believer.
“It pleases me to hear that, Luster,” she said. She rose from the stump, unfurling her limbs like the petals of a flower in the sun. “Ah-Ren reminded me of those words in my dream. He speaks to me in visions at times.”
Luster’s eyes widened. “Really? Directly to you?” He was in awe.
“Ah-Ren doesn’t want us to delay any longer. He has a glorious vision for Claeloch. For all of Grackenwell. He wants to transform the whole world. And we are going to be the ones to lead the charge.” She turned to him. “If you’ll follow me where I would lead you.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Luster dumped the water, which had begun to boil, on his fire, gathering up their things in a hurry. “Without hesitation! Lead the way and I will go there, wherever Ah-Ren would send me. This I swear to you.” He went to dismantle the tent when Beam put a hand on his shoulder.
“It is written. Not all who tread Ah-Ren's path to glory,” she said solemnly, speaking from a deep and somber place, “will live to see its radiance. Perhaps not even me.”
“I died once,” he replied, “or was good as dead, for no one but myself. To die for a just and merciful Lord? It would do me the greatest honor of my life.”
Beam smiled. “You would still follow? Even into danger?”
“To the Great Unknown, my lady. To the Great Unknown—or beyond it.”
“Then let us not waste the daylight.”
***
The journey on foot from their encampment to the nearest village burned through the first half of the day. In her head, Beam hadn’t the slightest clue where they were going or how long it would take them to reach it. Her heart was another story; she had full faith that Ah-Ren was in complete control.
She counted them fortunate that, at least for this leg of the path, the walking was easy and the views arresting. Claeloch was renowned as home to some of the most gorgeous landscapes on the whole Stone Continent, all quiet forests and rivers running clear as the finest glass. It was nothing like the dank, dark, unsightly swamps that puddled much of Grackenwell to the east.
There was a wooden sign on the dirt road leading into the village that read “Pythe.” Buildings were loosely scattered across the hillside with houses, a few central shops, and even a small bookseller. Thin white smoke curled up from the chimneys. She stopped in her tracks when she spied a small tavern, the flat wooden sign bearing a carving in the shape of a flagon.
“The Lord drew me to this place,” said Beam. “I don’t know why. My next step feels uncertain.”
“We could take a look around,” said Luster. “Perhaps sitting a spell in the local tavern could help clarify the way for you, my lady. I know some ale would do me a world of good.”
She shot a glare at him, watched him draw back. “I have had more than my fill of every fermented and distilled drink in this world. Ah-Ren detests drunkenness and the clouding of the mind. But He would have you as a servant, not a slave. So if you’d like to go into that place without me, you’re free to go, Peadhar.”
That seemed to wound him; he blinked away the shock. “I beg your forgiveness, Lady Beam. I meant no offense. I’ll stay by your side and shun the drink. I swear it!”
She softened her glare. “Forgive me, Luster. That was too harsh of me.” She took his hand between both of hers. “Come with me. Let’s walk the village—I’m certain the Lord will show us the way from there.”
She led the way down the dirt streets that crisscrossed through Pythe. On the outskirts, she saw a building that looked starkly out of place, a squat hut with a much thinner chimney. Behind those walls of straw, heretics stuffed their pipes with entheogens and communed with that dark spirit called the Bogman. They worshiped the undead brute as an incarnation of pure power lorded over the weak. Their view of the world was simple, cruel. It was repugnant.
She consoled herself with the knowledge that such houses of perverse worship had their days numbered.
Beam led Luster through the village, walking until the soft flesh of her feet ached with future callouses, until they’d walked laps around the village many times and their path tangled over itself. Beam shined a light on the little shadow of doubt darkening her heart. She admitted the sin, to herself and to Ah-Ren, and cast it out. The One True God’s designs were not always simple enough for a person to comprehend fully, even a chosen person.
She began to consider finding an inn to rest for the night and meditate on the Gospel of Lucence for further inspiration when a certain kind of ruckus spilled out of a tavern door cracked ajar. A man shouted. Not in pain, but something less pure. A female voice seemed to beg something of the male. There was more than one man shouting—Beam had no trouble putting the pieces together.
She didn’t want to go there. But the Lord pulled her there all the same.
Beam motioned for Luster to follow, slipping into the tavern door discreetly. Four brawny men stood around the bar. Their faces were reddened with drink, and they wore sheens of drunken sweat. They’d cornered a young maiden.
Four suits of Grackenwelsh armor lay stripped and disassembled on the floor around them and they stood in only their ordinary underclothes. Their eyes were hungry, their grins feral. One of them took a sloppy gulp of ale and tried to force the lip of the flagon into the maiden’s mouth.
“You will stop this at once!” Beam roared. The volume of her own voice surprised even her.
Two of the men laughed without taking their eyes off the maiden. The third one turned and made lustful eyes at Beam. The fourth one, also without turning his head, hacked and spat something on the floor, saying, “We’ve gone two moons without a good lay. What do we get if we stop? You?” Then he sneered at her. “You’re so old. And I’ve had better.”
Ugly memories of her days in the brothel surfaced in Beam’s mind like some hideous swamp creature. Hurt turned to contempt. A flash of anger—no, not simple anger, base and pointless, but righteous fury welled inside her then.
Luster stepped forward with a clenched fist but Beam held him back. “If you stop,” she said with careful authority, “I will allow you to walk out of this tavern alive.”
At this, all four of the soldiers burst out laughing. One of them knocked over a flagon of frothy ale. Their faces went even redder with their hideous, crooked laughter. The biggest of them downed the remainder of his drink and belched loudly. “I can think of a better use for that loud mouth of yours,” he slurred, kicking over his stool as he stood.
The back door behind the bar eased open enough for a young man with a patchy beard to poke his head inside. “People are coming up the road,” he hissed at them. “Not much time.”
“Be quick about it, men,” said the big soldier, reaching into his pants. “Kill the scrawny bastard. I call first with her.” The other three men drew their swords from the sheaths around their waists with the air of butchers about to complete an honest day’s work. Luster trembled, reaching for the dagger at his waist.
“Get the book,” Beam said calmly. Her level voice belied the panic that swelled inside her, but this was a reflex, a mindless animal instinct that Ah-Ren could surely forgive. In her heart, she repeated a mantra from the Gospel of Lucence: Where my fear is, let there be faith. Where my fear is, let there be faith...
Luster retrieved the holy text and passed it to Beam. She flipped the pages without looking at them and in an instant, they began to turn themselves. This spectacle slowed her attackers but did not stop them—a mistake she was secretly happy that they made.
“By the light of Ah-Ren,” she said, and her voice projected like the blowing of a great horn. “Hateful vermin like you have no place in the world I will build. The Lord Ah-Ren has judged you, and you are worthless beyond saving.”
“Some kind of witch?” one of the soldiers muttered. “Forget this. Kill ‘em both!” He drew his sword and swung it against Beam’s neck—clang. It rebounded off her skin, the blade quivering on impact. He dropped it and cried out in pain.
The others tried as well—whether swords, daggers, or their bare hands, nothing made her so much as flinch or even left the smallest mark on her. She watched the evil men rubbing their wrists, cradling broken fingers, staggering backward onto the floor in bewilderment. Their eyes were wide with fear just as they deserved.
“By the Bogman,” said the big one. “This isn’t worth it. Let’s get out of—!” There was a sudden snap. His head turned at a gruesome angle all at once and he fell to the floor, silent.
“Please,” breathed another one of the soldiers. “I beg—” Snap. Crack. Crunch. All four of the soldiers lay dead on the floor. The one at the bar fell from his stool, spilling his ale, which fizzed across the hardwood between their bodies.
Luster fell to his knees in reverence. A sudden lightheadedness befell Beam, who would have fallen herself if not for Luster’s quick catch. He even grabbed the Gospel of Lucence in midair before it could crash down to the floor.
“Lady Beam!” he gasped. “Are you all right? What happened—what was that?”
“The girl,” she whispered, barely clinging to consciousness.
“Say again, my lady?”
Her lips pursed with great effort. “The girl.”
Luster rested Beam against the tavern wall and jumped to his feet. The maiden sat shaking behind the bar; as her eyes opened and closed, Beam could see the girl’s petrified face, the horror of what might have been. For a moment she both pitied and envied the poor girl—she didn’t know what it was like, had only her imagination to fill the blanks, but that meant she couldn’t steel herself against it, either.
This is why I’m here, Beam thought. Ah-Ren sent me... so that I could save her from suffering what I did.
Beam remembered her purpose in all this. She would be the vanguard of a new world, a brighter world where that sort of thing was relegated to the darker footnotes of the history books. It would have no place in the glorious new world Ah-Ren would create through her.
“The cellar,” said the maiden. When she stood, Beam saw that she wore a barmaid’s uniform. Luster touched a cloth to her forehead and dabbed away her sweat. “That’s where they tied up my p-patrons, all men. They were warned not to interfere... or they’d be put to death.”
“Wait here and rest,” Luster said reassuringly. “Both of you. I will free them and bring them up here.” He nodded once at Beam and offered her a cautious smile. “Praise be to Ah-Ren.”
***
In all, there were twelve people gathered outside the tavern that evening—Beam, Luster, the barmaid, and her nine patrons, each of whom were in various states of drunkenness and bewilderment.
“I wish to go with you,” said the barmaid. “My name is Maighril. I’ve lived here in Pythe all my life. The man who owns this tavern hired me a year ago when I came of age to serve. Those soldiers have been a menace from the beginning, but they never went so far as today.” She brushed stray russet hairs out of her face in the timid breeze. “I would sooner follow you, my lady, wherever the journey might take me. You saved my life.”
“She saved me, too!” said Luster. “That’s why I’m here today!”
“The Lord saved you,” Beam corrected them gently. “I am His instrument. And he brought me here at just the right time. I can see now that Ah-Ren judged your heart and deemed you worthy of saving.” She surveyed the patrons that Luster freed from the cellar. “And who among you would abandon the lives you know in order to serve a purpose greater than yourselves?”
The patrons exchanged looks among themselves. One man stifled a drunken burp. When they’d made up their collective minds, two of the men dispersed from the group, casting nervous glances over their shoulders as they left, but the other seven remained. One of them took a knee and the others followed suit.
“Ah-Ren’s Light,” Beam sighed contentedly. “With the Gospel of Lucence in my hands and a band of steadfast, goodhearted disciples who seek justice in this world, I know that we cannot fail. Our numbers will only grow.”
“However long the way,” said Maighril, “I will walk it. I swear!”
“Your new name will be Glimmer,” said Beam dreamily. “Each of you will receive a new name according to your discipleship of Ah-Ren in due time.”
Luster bowed his head in reverence.
“My lady,” said Glimmer, “where would the path take us? Has Ah-Ren told you yet?”
Beam smiled a wide smile that almost hurt her cheeks. She was beyond blissful, overcome with emotion for what her god had done for them all that day. The setting sun shone warmly on her face. “At first light,” she finally answered, “we march for Holcort. There are slaves to be freed. There is justice to be done. There is a vile king to be dethroned—and I don’t mean King Garrotin.” She allowed herself a smirk. “Although he will fall, too.”