This is the proclamation of the Lord Ah-Ren: “For My believers who break not the faith, I have ordained paradise beyond all understanding. Call upon My name and you will surely be saved. Forget not the truth you have seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears. There are those who would avert their eyes from My truth; yea, even those who would gouge out their eyes, lest they see the truth laid bare. To them I say this: you shall call upon me in your darkest hour, and I shall tear off My ears, that I shall not hear you. You shall throw yourself at My feet in anguish, and I shall pluck out My eyes, that I shall not see you. I shall turn away from you in your suffering, and your skulls shall be crushed as gourds, and your little ones shall be dashed against rocks because of you, and My believers shall rejoice. I shall delight in the suffering of those who forsake Me.”
-Gospel of Lucence, Tract 40, Lines 1-18
The Everswamp
They were fifteen believers in all.
Where my fear is, let there be faith, Beam thought. Where my fear is, let there be faith. Four boats glided across the miry face of the bog, wooden oars creaking in their rowlocks. Where my fear is, let there be faith. They were fifteen believers in all. Where my fear is, let there be faith. Over and over. Beam’s prayer became just as much of a predictable rhythm as the croaking of frogs in the swamp, and equally uncomforting.
Are you still there, Lord? Beam asked Him. Or have You forsaken us in this place? I want to believe, just as I always have... All this time, I thought weakness would come from one of my disciples. Oh, Lord, please—all I ask is a sign.
The fireflies were still burned into her memory from the night prior. Each time she closed her eyes, there they were. It was like they had a mind of their own. Like they were branded on the insides of her eyelids for all time. Where my fear is, let there be faith. She was lost in her dark thoughts, in her rhythm of prayer, when the voice of a disciple snapped her out of it.
“Lady Beam!” Shine cried out. “Up ahead! Do you see that? Look!”
Beam’s boat had wound up at the back of the procession. She picked her head up, looking forward to the lead boat in the cavalcade. When she saw what Shine meant, her eyes widened, her jaw falling open. “Ah-Ren above...”
Three gators draped across a massive, mossy log sticking out of the swamp. One of them hoisted itself up and dipped into the murky water—someone gave a half-shriek, half-gasp.
Beam tried to follow the beast in the water with her eyes—it was too fast. The dark blur disappeared somewhere beneath their boats. Looking up, she saw that another one of them had taken to the water, too. Only the third one remained on the log, watching with its sideways stare.
“Ah-Ren, protect and watch over us,” Shine groaned fearfully.
“Oh, no,” said Fulgor. The old man trembled with tense anticipation. “We’re not safe... Not safe here...”
Beam’s hairs stood on end. She felt like she might be sick. Leaning over the edge of her boat, she saw a swimming shadow swell and darken until it broke the surface of the water.
A gator jumped halfway into the boat ahead of her. Disciples screamed, retreated to the other end—the monster lost its footing and disappeared back into the water.
“Why is this happening?” Lambent, the man with the big, bushy mustache, whimpered like a small boy. “Why? Why is this happening to us now?”
“I know why,” Beam confessed. “A lack of faith.” Guilt soured the pit of her stomach, a sobering feeling. Ah-Ren was about to punish her for her fickle loss of faith. “I—”
A gator lurched over the lip of her boat—right next to Luster. Her gut twisted inside her. Luster was knocked onto his back from the force of it. The beast’s claws tore his tunic in one sluggish, powerful swipe.
Ray lifted an oar. Struck the monster on its snout—once, twice.
Its jaws snapped shut on the blade. Crunched the wood in half.
“Ah-Ren, save us!” Ray squealed.
The gator shook the splintered wood out of its mouth. It planted a second stubby leg in the boat, mouth widening again.
This time it lunged for Glimmer.
“No!” Beam cried out.
Beam stuck her hand in its mouth, without thinking, against the roof, intending to hold it open. A foolish mistake. She knew its bite force would make a meal of her arm in one go. But she acted on the instinct of her faith.
At once, the beast’s jaw locked in place—wide open.
The animal writhed briefly, thrashing its legs, its tree trunk of a tail splashing against the chunky green swamp scum, until every movement in its body slowed to a stop. Then it went completely limp, jaw still agape. The boat listed lazily to the left.
Beam slowly withdrew her hand from the gator’s mouth. She panted heavily, as did her boatmates and everyone else in the flock. A smile had just started to spread across her face.
Then someone else screamed.
A gator lurched into another boat. Bit Fulgor across the chest and neck. His eyes bulged, blood splattering out of his mouth. An instant later, it dragged him under the water, its body whirling in a powerful spiral motion, churning the water easy as smoke. Then it was gone. Fulgor was gone.
They sat in silence for a while. Some exchanged glances, while others were too afraid to look another in the eye. Some just kept their gaze trained on the water below.
The Lord has appointed a day of ruination for those who withhold their obedience. Was that Beam remembering a line from the Gospel? Or was that the voice of Ah-Ren? She couldn’t tell. This time, it brought her no comfort, but shame instead.
“‘The Lord has appointed a day of ruination for those who withhold their obedience,’” said Ray. Hearing her recite that same verse sent chills down Beam’s spine. The elderly woman guided the oar back into its rowlock, even though it lacked a blade to pull the water. “Lady Beam was right. Lack of faith brought this upon us—Fulgor must have lost his along the way.” She eased her old bones down onto the wooden seat. “Let’s none of us make his mistake.”
Beam didn’t notice who touched their oar first. Once someone did, the rest followed, and soon the cavalcade of rowboats was back in motion, rowing steadily away from the grisly scene, the glaring, blood-tinged spot of water.
Was Ray right? Did Fulgor stray from the faith, too? Now she would never know, the truth dying with him at the bottom of the swamp. His fate filled her with all the more dread for her own growing doubts. She cast light on them in her heart, threw them at the feet of Ah-Ren as she was supposed to do—but would it be enough?
The flock pressed on deeper into the bog.
They were fourteen believers in all.
***
Beam knew she didn’t belong here. Were it not for Ah-Ren’s command, she would never have set one foot across the border except with a sword pressed against her back. Perhaps not even then.
She hailed from Claeloch, a small, tranquil region in the northwest of the continent. Cold winters brought blankets of snow, and summers were a time to be treasured. Life was simple. Work, for one’s own sake, was its own reward. Children were taught from a young age not to wander too far into the wild woods alone for fear that they might not return. Aside from that, the only real danger a Claelish person faced was when their tranquility was disturbed by outsiders. Raiders from Grackenwell.
Grackenwell proper, the nation that had annexed Claeloch in the past, felt like a different world entirely. Life here was brutal and short. Slavery was rampant—and it was not the more polite arrangement seen in Claeloch, where slaves were kindly servants often permitted to sit and eat at the table. Grackenwell treated slaves worse than animals. Even the brothels in Claeloch were nothing compared to the brutality of Grackenwell at large—a fact that disturbed Beam to no end when she worked in one.
The Everswamp was Grackenwell personified. It was all its worst parts distilled into one festering, maddening, dim, dreary place devoid of hope. It was a strange place where even death could die—thus the origin of its name, Everswamp, a cursed land where those who were buried could attain some twisted facsimile of eternal life. But that wasn’t the only story that floated around about its name. Grackenwell’s only humor was black, and one of its dark jokes was about how the Everswamp really got its name: once one crossed into it, the swamp went on forever and ever. Of course, Beam knew that wasn’t true.
But now she was starting to wonder if perhaps it could be. They hadn’t planned on being in the bog this long.
No. She knew why it was truly called the Everswamp. And she knew that whatever people said of it, they were just myths. Ah-Ren held monopoly over the truth; all the world beyond His word was just a cascading series of lies and illusions meant to distract her, to torment her. Beam knew the Everswamp had an end—she’d seen it on a map. She knew Ah-Ren would never allow a place like this to be infinite.
Still, the Gospel of Lucence warned of dark forces at play in the world. Powers that would attempt to poison her against the truth—that would tempt her to lean on her own understanding instead of the truth she’d been told. Even after Fulgor’s death, an obvious act of the Lord... even now, her faith wandered.
“Something up ahead,” said Lambent. His voice was firm and manly again; his low pitch overcompensated for his fearful outburst earlier. “See that?”
“Ah-Ren above,” said Glint. He was the portly man Beam thought would fail her test of fasting; now here he was, calling upon the Lord Above Lords for help. “It isn’t another gator, is it?”
“No. That darkness at the horizon. Is that a storm?”
It was impossible to parse out the darkness from the already dim bog shrouded in shade. Beam could just barely make it out, a blot of blackness at the horizon straight ahead, between the breaks of the canopy.
“We can only pray that it’s not,” said Ray grimly. “Whatever it is, our path to Holcort takes us right toward it.”
“Ah-Ren will see us through it,” said Glimmer. “If we believe.” Even after what happened, she kept the little flame of her hope burning. Beam realized she could learn from the young as well as the old.
Luster rowed ahead of her in the boat. Her eyes lingered on the shifting sinew beneath his torn tunic flecked with bog mud, how his back muscles rose and fell, rose and fell. To return to those sunbathed forests of Claeloch with him and only him, to be alone together again. To rise and rest in a world of simple, still unbroken promises—selfishly, she would have thrown it all away in that moment, just to return to those days. She hadn’t savored them enough. She hadn’t known how much she would miss them.
‘It is written: Not all who tread My path to glory will live to see its radiance.’ Perhaps not even you.’ She recalled the lines from the Gospel, but not as if she’d gone looking for the memory—as if someone had thrust it into her hands. It must have been the Lord calling down to her, using the voice of her own mind.
I know this, my Lord.
‘You would still follow? Even into danger?’
To the Great Unknown, my Lord. To the Great Unknown—or beyond it.
Then there came a different voice, deep, gurgling, that seemed to speak a hair’s breadth from her ear. ‘You know what happens to liars in Grackenwell.’
She flinched suddenly in the boat. In her heart, she called out to Ah-Ren to save her—in the next breath, that other voice, the voice of the Everswamp itself, was gone, along with its foreboding presence. Ah-Ren still answered her when she called upon Him. What can drive out darkness but light?
“Beam,” said Luster. He nearly dropped his oars to tend to her. “Are you all right? What happened?”
Her shoulders deflated, pressing out a deep sigh. “I’m all right,” she said to him. She had abandoned half-lies in favor of full-fledged ones now.
I haven’t strayed from the faith, Lord Ah-Ren. Not yet. Please deliver us from this place. She closed her eyes—saw the yellow ones staring back at her again. Deliver us into the new world You promised.
***
When the flock reached Cormund, one of the last towns in Claeloch before the region’s border, they were ten believers in all.
Beam led Luster, her new convert Glimmer, and the other eight new disciples from Pythe down the dirt road that fed into the city. It was bigger than most Claelish settlements; packed dirt soon gave way to cobblestone, a sign of wealth, a sign of the local lord and merchants investing in the place where they lived. Bigger cities meant more people, and more people meant more taverns.
“Will we finally be stopping here?” asked Malthier, one of the men who’d knelt before her in Pythe. He was a changed man now. He was still the same bored-looking man with shoulder-length black hair, the weak chinstrap of a beard, the fishy lips always pursed and pouting—only now, he seemed to lack the same enthusiasm for their journey that he’d had back in Pythe. Miracles had a way of invigorating people, but they were a poor test of faith. “I’m dead tired.”
“You’re not the only one,” grumbled Hjarsant. He was the largest of all Beam’s disciples, a midsection so thick that his leather belt creaked whenever he breathed or sat down. “The road’s got me parched. Could use a drink.”
“I like the way you think,” Malthier agreed. “I could use a drink myself—or several.”
Luster sidled up to them as they walked. “You know, we really shouldn’t get drunk. It isn’t what the Lord—”
“Oh, come off it, Luster,” said Hjarsant. “What’s the matter with stopping at a tavern for some ale?” He grinned back at Beam. “If the lady permits it, of course.”
Beam was reading from the Gospel of Lucence as they walked the road. She glanced up from the page momentarily, seeing Hjarsant facing her and walking backward for a moment, his face giddy like a young boy’s despite being at least a decade her senior. “Anyone who wishes to visit a tavern in Cormund is free to do so,” she answered. She chose her words carefully for a reason.
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It was just like Ah-Ren to guide her to a tract in the Gospel that was immediately relevant to her. It was the thirty-fifth Tract, its final lines: “The blind will never see, not even by the light of a thousand suns; the unbeliever will never keep the faith, not even by the light of a thousand miracles. Suffer not the unbeliever; lead him not by rope, as a dog is led, but cast him out with mercy. This is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God.”
The heart of Cormund bustled with commerce. Pillars of smoke from hearths and kitchens rose up over the city. Horses and their waste lined every street. There was a colorfully dressed man juggling colorful sacks on one street corner—someone threw a silver scale at him.
“There she is,” said Malthier, grinning ear to ear. He trotted up proudly to the door of a tavern with a wooden sign hanging above the doorframe, the spring suddenly back in his step. He only ever had enthusiasm for the drink anymore. “Who’s with me?”
“I most certainly am,” said Hjarsant. A third member of the flock was about to join them both when Beam stopped them.
She stood at the door, blocked the knob with her hand. They would hear what she had to say first. “It is as I told you,” she began. “Any one of you may enter this tavern and drink your fill. The Lord Ah-Ren would have you as a servant, not a slave.” Luster nodded at her side—she remembered when he’d heard the same words not long ago, and he’d passed her test. Would they? “Anyone who walks into this tavern is disobeying the will of the Lord Ah-Ren.”
“Says who?” Malthier scoffed.
Beam met his gaze. “Me. His Prophetess.”
Malthier rolled his eyes. “You mean to tell me the Lord Above Lords cares about how much ale I drink, when I’m thirsty from walking all day in his honor?” He scoffed. “This god—he must not be so great, then.”
Glimmer gasped. Luster took a step forward, but Beam held out a hand to stop him. “Go ahead,” she told Malthier.
The man obliged. When she took her hand away, he grabbed the knob and threw the tavern door open. “Hjarsant, you coming?” Hjarsant, for all his eagerness to drink, looked down solemnly at his boots. He shook his head. “Suit yourself. See you all in a bit, then.”
An hour had passed, maybe two, when Malthier emerged from the tavern. In the meantime, Beam had purchased a gift for the believers who remained in her flock. Each of them had a skin of mild mead to enjoy, delectably sweet, effervescent, and not too strong that it would dull their senses.
“Oh,” Malthier scoffed, “some believers you are! What’s all this? Mead?”
“‘The fruits born of faith are sweeter than the sweetest honey,’” said Beam. “So it is written.”
Malthier grinned, wiping a wet trail of ale that still lingered on his chin. “Well, where’s mine? Let me have it!”
Beam shook her head. “This gift is only for the faithful. You, Malthier, are banished from my flock.”
“Oh, come on...”
“I told you what would happen.”
“You only said it was disobeying—”
“So it is also written: ‘Suffer not the unbeliever; lead him not by rope, as a dog is led, but cast him out with mercy. This is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God.’” She spoke with such authority and conviction that Malthier had no answer for her this time.
He hung his head, then scowled at her, before turning and walking away.
They were nine believers in all. They walked together to an inn across the city where they would take up residence for the night. As they walked, they sipped their mead; Beam relished the feeling of warmth in the pit of her stomach. It was not like ale, wine, or the hard spirits she’d been force-fed in the brothel. Mead was always sweet and tender to her, and it never made her drunk. It was gold as the light of Ah-Ren Himself and every bit as pure.
It was a simple gesture, one that weeded out a disciple who was no true disciple at all, while hopefully strengthening the resolve of those who remained. Faith in the Lord Ah-Ren was not a never-ending exercise in self-denial—rather, it was commitment to the promise of something greater. She hadn’t foreseen needing to test her followers so early this way.
But she sensed that, if her flock was to grow, she would have to test them again to be sure of their faith. The time would come when it was Ah-Ren who put their faith to the test, all of them. They needed to be ready.
***
Later that day, they learned the darkness that Lambent saw was a brighter omen than they could have imagined. It was dry land—not the end of the bog, but an impressive island at its geographical center. Urgaul was its name. Beam remembered seeing it on the map.
Urgaul was a small, self-contained paradise compared to the rest of the swamp. Trees and berry bushes were scattered across its surface, and flowers even bloomed there. There was a dense copse of trees at the very heart of it, the only meaningful shade it had. It was the brightest spot in all the Everswamp, a land where the trees had room to breathe and stretch their branches, spacious enough that daylight didn’t just trickle through like in the swamp—it came cascading in broad shafts across the landscape. It was so beautiful that Beam knew it had to be a sign.
Thank you, Lord, she whispered in her heart. Thank you.
They hauled their boats half-ashore on the small island, tying them to sturdy oaks. Beam’s muscles were stiff from disuse; it was a miracle just to walk and stretch her legs, feel her hips and spine align properly, after sitting for so long. Despite what happened to Fulgor, and despite their whole long arduous journey, there was a light behind the eyes of each of her disciples that she hadn’t seen of late. Hope. They all had a bit of it now.
“Halfway,” said Glimmer. She smiled uneasily, cautiously, reminding Beam of a small child’s first smile after being disciplined severely. “Halfway there.”
“Praise be to Ah-Ren,” said Ray.
Beam agreed, “Praise be.” She helped her flock set up tents and get a campfire going. They only had scraps of their rations left, but it didn’t matter. Urgaul was a much needed reprieve even if all they did was enjoy the fire and walk around a bit to loosen up.
Then it happened—a miracle within a miracle. Somehow, all the way out in the center of the Everswamp, was a single deer. Beam couldn’t believe her eyes at first. The doe grazed unassumingly in the island’s meadow, its brown, glassy eyes wide open but seemingly unaware of its company, its ears turning to catch sound from another direction.
No one said a word. Luster, Glint, Ray, and Shine all approached from different directions, knives out. Somehow, the deer didn’t notice them until they were within striking distance—and then it was too late.
“Thank you, deer, for giving your life to sustain us,” Beam said as the animal was skinned and cleaned for cooking. “I give thanks most of all to the Lord Ah-Ren for providing us this bounty. Thank you, Ah-Ren the Merciful.”
As Glint helped erect a spit for roasting their kill over the fire, his eyes wandered to the island shore. “We shouldn’t stay for long,” he muttered nervously. “We should leave soon. Shouldn’t we?”
“After a kill like this?” said Luster. He helped scoop out the offal from the deer’s bisected cavity, which went into a large wooden bowl for preparation. “We’d be fools to waste this. Ah-Ren has blessed us with a hunt that will feed us for days.”
“But the gators,” said Glint. With each breath, he seemed to grow more restless about their decision to set up camp. Beam watched his panic from a distance. “I had a dream about this...”
“Drop it,” said Ray in a huff. “We need the rest. We need time to clean and cook this. We’re staying the night—unless the Lady Beam thinks otherwise?” She turned and waited for the prophetess’s approval.
The question caught her off guard. She did her best to feign a solemn nod, as if she had all the answers her flock so desperately needed. “Yes. We will stay the night.” What could disturb Glint this much, and why was he so keen on leaving the island? They were safer from the gators on land than in the water.
Then again, Ah-Ren revealed great truths in dreams. And the dark spirit of the Everswamp—she knew it was equally capable of invading the unsuspecting mind. Which of the two forces compelled Glint now? There was no way of knowing. She dared not ask.
Where there should have been faith, she saw only fear in him.
***
That night, Beam saw the stars again for the first time in a while. The Everswamp’s fog had lifted, at least over Urgaul, and the inky black night was adorned with a glittering tapestry of the Lord’s design. Never had she come to miss the stars so much as she did in the bog. Never had she appreciated them more than this night.
She bit into her chewy venison steak, tough but flavorful, loaded with salt. They needed this meal. Luster sat next to her and ate a cooked hunk of the animal’s liver. The flock shared a salad of spring onions and dandelion greens—Aurora helped to provide once more. Even though she ate as much as much as the rest of them, this journey seemed to be whittling her thinner and thinner. She was a growing girl; Beam reasoned that the toll of travel was just sapping her of some of her baby fat, that she’d put some healthy weight back on once they reached the other side of the swamp. That had to be it.
“You’re missing the food, Glint,” said Shine. “You helped clean it. You should eat some—build your strength back up.” There was no answer. “Glint?” She cocked her head in the direction of his tent. “He asleep?”
“He staggered out of his tent just before we sat down to eat,” Ray answered mistrustfully. “Seems he has more interest in what he drinks than what he eats...”
“Oh, no,” Shine sighed. “Truthfully?”
“I didn’t want to say it in front of the whole flock.” The old woman met Beam’s gaze. The younger found it funny—not long ago, she looked to the older woman for guidance, but now even the eldest in her flock deferred to her. “I was going to tell Lady Beam later.”
“Glint was a hard convert,” said Beam, shaking her head. “It’s disheartening to hear that he disobeyed the Lord by bringing the drink with him. The fact that he hid it from us all this time... He must have been saving it, knowing one day he’d partake of it.” She tore off another hunk of venison with her teeth, growing angrier with each chew. “Every day he lied to me was a sin against Ah-Ren.”
“Come to think of it,” said Luster, “I don’t see Glimmer, either.”
“Glimmer?” Shine called after her. “Has anyone seen her?”
“She left only a few moments ago,” said Lambent. His mustache undulated like a squirrel’s tail as he chewed. “She needed to relieve herself, she said.”
“She’s been gone longer than a few moments,” said Ray worriedly. “Perhaps I should go and find her.” The old woman set her hands on her knees, straining to stand from the stump where she sat.
“Sit and eat,” Beam told her gracefully, and the old woman reluctantly obeyed. “I will find them both.” She took a sturdy branch from the pile next to her, lit the end of it in the campfire, and took it as a torch to light her way across Urgaul. The island was significant, but it was not impossibly big—she would be able to find them both within the hour if she looked hard enough.
Leaves rustled in the dank swamp breeze. Frogs croaked in the distance while crickets sang. There were no fireflies here on Urgaul, and for that she was grateful. Beam made her way across the island, checking bushes, behind trees, and calling their names as she went. “Glint? Glimmer?” They were harder to find than she thought.
“Hjarsant, you coming?” The voice of Malthier, her exiled disciple, still echoed in her head. She could still see him standing at the door of the tavern and beckoning to his friend. She recalled the way Glint averted his gaze, like a child being denied something sweet. She should have known his heart even then.
“Glint?” she called out to him, but not for long. He would need to be called by his old name again. A sin like this was hard to overlook—even if he begged the Lord for forgiveness, it would take time and diligent work to restore the flock’s trust. Either way, he’d be going by Hjarsant again once she found him.
This place tries so hard to strip us of our faith, oh Lord, she thought worriedly. But it hasn’t gotten to me. Not yet. I still believe. I will never let this twisted world shake my faith.
Then she found him.
“You and me,” Hjarsant slurred. The drink was thick on his voice—then came the stench of alcohol when Beam drew closer. “Take a boat with me. We’ll be gone. You and me. I’ll make an honest woman of you, true. Come on, then.”
“What are you implying?” said Glimmer. Disgust was equally thick in her voice. “Let go... I said let go of me! I want nothing to do with you!”
“Come here, lass. I won’t hurt you. I... We could...”
Beam made her presence known. They both turned with a start, and Glimmer used this chance to snatch her wrist out of Hjarsant’s grasp. She retreated behind Beam. The stout man wavered on his feet, barely keeping a grip on his torch.
“Hjarsant,” said Beam.
“So, that’s how it is, eh?” he snickered. “Ah... Pissed it all away, then.”
“You brought hard spirits with you on our holy quest. You knew it broke the law of Ah-Ren. Still, you hid it from us.”
“Only brought it in case the nights were too quiet away from home. Or for times like these...” He gestured to the horrid dark. “Places like this.”
“And that’s all you have to say for yourself?” She put her free hand on her hip, standing in stark judgment.
Hjarsant shrugged. “Not gonna beg for your forgiveness. Is that what you’re waiting for?”
Beam was stunned silent at first. Even for his great sin against Ah-Ren and his fellow disciples, he had no remorse. “You know what the Gospel says. You know what happened to Malthier—you were there!”
Another drunken shrug. He drained the rest of the skin full of clear liquor, the fumes caustic on his breath. “I’ll part with you all after the bog.”
She couldn’t contain a frustrated sigh, as mortal and fallible as it felt. “Let’s go. Both of you. We’re going back to camp for the night. The last thing we need is for one of you to wander off into danger.”
“He cornered me when I was alone,” Glimmer muttered. “I’m sorry, Lady Beam.”
“Everything is going to be all right, Glimmer,” Beam lied.
***
“What shall we do, my lady?”
Beam stood and swayed in her tent, in tandem with the flame of her candle. The Gospel of Lucence sat open before her, still and silent. Yet she could hear the fluttering of the pages, see the shifting shapes of the words, or the ghost of such things, and the sound of grating metal mingled in.
Ah-Ren has so much more in store for you.
She tried to blink the words away. When that didn’t work, she held her eyes shut tight, hoping that when she opened them, she would realize the error of her misreading or misinterpretation. It was the same when she opened her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
Dawn had broken over the tree-lined horizon, and she hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night. Luster stood beside her. Most of the other disciples were awake now, too, some of them cooking more of the deer over the fire or erecting taller spits for drying strips of salted meat. Every one of them glanced toward her open tent every few moments—none all at once, nor frequently, but they added up against each other, such that it seemed there was always a pair of eyes looking her way. It infuriated her. She didn’t dare tell them that.
“Are you well, Lady Beam?”
She was prepared to read from the Gospel of Lucence that morning, explaining to her remaining disciples why Hjarsant was to be given his old name out of the faith, explaining why he would be exiled from the flock once they reached the other side of the Everswamp. But all had not gone to plan. When she looked up the tract and the line that would justify his exile, she found something else in its place.
What can drive out darkness but light?
Visions of spears and blood danced in her mind like the shadows that her candle cast. The pulling of the spear. The closing of the wound. Then all the blood was gone, sealed away.
All life is precious in the eyes of Ah-Ren.
It was not Peadhar’s eyes looking up at her in her memory, but Hjarsant’s.
There are false gods in this world. Falsehoods to be silenced. Idols to be torn down.
She read and reread the passage. She read it from end to start. She plucked out each word by itself, dissected them all to ensure that she understood the meaning.
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.
How could He mean this? And why didn’t she remember?
“My lady?”
“WHAT?!”
Beam’s outburst scared even her. Luster took a step back, flinching, his brow furrowed and lip trembling for an instant.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I was consulting the Gospel of Lucence. I...” Her eyes found the words on the page again, and then so did his.
“I have never read these words, my lady,” Luster replied, taking a step back toward her with caution. “And I have read the Gospel twice now. Are we certain the newcomers have not tampered with the text somehow?”
“Impossible,” Beam replied. “We would have seen evidence of their forgery. Besides... The words of Ah-Ren are immutable.” She dabbed at her eyes discreetly with the corner of her shirtsleeve. The Everswamp suddenly felt frighteningly alive and motile, and she thought of all the golden firefly eyes that might have watched them from afar. “Leave me now, Luster. I will speak with Hjarsant in private.”
Luster obeyed, but as he left, Ray and Lambent both entered in his place. Ray had a resolute look in her eyes. Lambent, ever the coward, looked fearful of Beam’s sudden change in affect, but he was equally faithful and submissive to her commands. Good. She would need their help.
“You’re not really going to banish me now, are you?” Hjarsant asked from the corner of the tent. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot from his drunken stupor the night before, locks of hair plastered to his sweaty forehead. “Now? In the middle of the swamp?” He shook his head incredulously. “Venturing out there alone, especially without a boat—that’s tantamount to suicide!”
I have not broken the faith, Lord Ah-Ren. I will not. I promise. I promise!
Beam closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look at him. “No, Hjarsant. We will not banish you.” She indicated the tract and line open in the Gospel for Ray and Lambent to read. It only deepened their existing expressions; Ray set her jaw, determined, and Lambent looked horrified, tears glistening in his eyes, but ready to obey all the same. “The Lord Ah-Ren demands expiation for your sins, Hjarsant. Then we can all get on with our lives. Our holy mission. Do you understand?”
A look washed over his face that Beam feared she would never forget. “All of us?”
Her eyes gravitated back to the words on the page. Words she’d never read before this day.
“The blind will never see, not even by the light of a thousand suns; the unbeliever will never keep the faith, not even by the light of a thousand miracles. Suffer not the unbeliever; lead him not by rope, as a dog is led, but take his life, that the spilling of his blood might cleanse the sin he has left behind. His death is the will of Ah-Ren, the One True God.”
***
The morning was green-gray over the Everswamp. Everyone packed up their supplies in silence, and they dared not meet the eyes of a fellow disciple. They loaded the boats, untied them from their trees, and piled into them. They dipped their oars into the water, paddled on deeper into the bog. To the unknown where their god bade them go.
They were thirteen believers in all.