Talios (4)

“But how are we supposed to know where the dining hall is, sir?”

Kalen and Drick were throwing themselves into this unexpected tour of the inner keep. Something about them put me in mind of myself, a very long time ago.

“Hold on — are we even headed for the dining hall in the first place?”

The keep’s people were all hurrying off somewhere. Drick made to fall in behind them without thinking, and I caught him by the shoulder.

“The dining hall will be outside the central tower. That’s where those men are going. We’re for the banquet hall, so it’s the central tower we want.”
“And what’s a banquet hall, now. Damned complicated, all this.”
“Think of it simply. It’s a dining hall kept for honored guests.”

I led the party on toward the central tower. Word must have been passed ahead to the guards; they opened the door the moment they saw us.

“…You look right at home here, sir knight.”

That got a small laugh out of me. By now I had the layout of any ordinary castle down cold, so he was not wrong.

Inside the central tower, curious looks turned on us. Every one of them belonged to a man with a great deal he wanted to ask about the apostle.

Drick and Kalen included.

“So what rank exactly are you, sir knight, that a commander of a knight order came out to meet you himself?”
“Right. That’s not the sort of reception you’d give a high bishop and leave it at that.”

There was no secret worth keeping about my being their apostle, so I laid out what had happened. Taking care, of course, to leave out anything touching on the undeath, which made the telling a little awkward.

“…You’re that good in a fight, brother? Good enough these war-mad lot worship you like a god?”

“Well, you’ll see for yourself. They’ve simply taken it into their heads to see me that way.”

With the undeath left out, there was no helping how thin it sounded. Drick could not shake the suspicion off his face, and Kalen was grinning from ear to ear.

“Sir knight, I knew it from the very start. A god’s apostle after all.”

Explaining myself had long since passed the point of being worth the trouble. Instead of trying again, I opened the door of the banquet hall. The heavy door swung back on a brightly lit room, and the branch head, who had been sitting inside, got hurriedly to his feet.

“You’ve come, Apostle.”
“Yes. These are my companions. There’ll be no trouble about a meal?”
“Of course not. There is food enough and to spare — will you allow me the time to have more settings brought?”
“Do that.”

The branch head fired one instruction after another at the man attending him. Drick and Kalen only stood there, eyes round, staring at food heaped high enough to bow the table’s legs.

“Am I really allowed to eat this? It feels rude to the food itself…”
“Nobles do live differently, don’t they. Or — not nobles, is it? Great men, anyway.”

I sat down without ceremony, and the two of them took their places as well, stiffly. The table was big enough that even with all of us seated there was room left over.

“Ha ha. I am of the Gunter viscount’s house myself, as it happens. The second son, though.”

A man with a whole city in his charge could hardly have been anything but a noble. Robert Gunter, the branch head, came of a viscount’s house in the north.

“It’s late to be asking, but why is the Talios church here at all?”

The Talios church has its roots in the north. Slonhar and Darbar are western country, a fair distance from the regions where it runs strong.

At the question the branch head’s face twisted for the briefest instant. It was slight enough that no one else seemed to catch it. I caught it.

“A revelation came down. Talios said that a wind of great calamity would soon begin to blow. That wind will start in the west and grow, by degrees, great enough to swallow the empire.”
“Our own reading of the revelation is that it may be not the empire alone but the whole continent that is swallowed. Which is why the main church is expanding westward in such haste.”
“An unprecedented calamity will call up an unprecedented war. Our church is making ready to throw itself into that great tide.”

Gods are no longer things of fiction. In this world they truly exist, and those who believe in them receive a god’s power through baptism. Which made a revelation handed down by one of them a prophecy whose odds of being wrong converged on zero.

“And you don’t know exactly where or when this war begins?”
“What Talios handed down is all that I have told you.”

The Lucseon church showing itself again after decades, and a god’s revelation falling not long after. Was that really coincidence?

Going by the timing, the Slonhar lord had come by Pormel a good while after the Talios church came down into the west.

Two possibilities. Either the Lucseon church and Talios’s revelation have nothing to do with each other, or Lucseon began to stir far earlier than I had thought.

Either way, no amount of turning it over now would answer it.

Drick and Kalen’s settings arrived soon after, and the meal got under way in an unsettled mood. The cutlery had not been clattering long.

“There is one thing, though.”

The branch head brought it up without warning, still cutting his meat.

“To think that I am serving a meal to the apostle out of the legend. Truly, live long enough and you see everything.”
“Don’t they say that noticing what fate is really about comes in order of age?”
“Ha ha, just so. Have you ever heard that legend in any detail, by chance?”

A legend takes shape long after the fact, naturally enough. I had lived through the time itself; how my story spread afterward was another matter, and not one I could know without going and looking for it.

“Wherever blood ran, there he was, and on any day a holy war opened, his sword was the first to cleave the enemy.”
“The silver hair and silver eyes that came down out of heaven were the very form of an angel, and what he held in his hand was the sacred holy sword bestowed by Talios.”
“He was the first to perceive the god’s will, and the first to carry it out. Therefore he is called the Heaven-Conquering Apostle.”

A certain amount of it was inflated, as with any legend, but it was true that I had helped them through the few years I stayed with the church.

“That is roughly how it runs, in summary.”
“Is that so.”
“I heard that legend not long after I first entered the church. I was not yet ten years old. Hearing the apostle’s story, it struck me as so splendid that I spent whole days imagining what he must look like. An angel swinging a god’s sword: what child’s heart wouldn’t that stir?”

The branch head’s words were building toward something. I could tell what he meant to bring out at the end of the long preamble.

“So — if it would not be rude, might you take off your helm?”

“…Why?”

“Pure curiosity. I should like to see the angel out of the legend.”

He was suspicious of me.

I am Talios’s apostle. That had been proved the day before in the fight with Walter, and the branch head had checked the token himself.

Then why does the apostle not know the god’s revelation? If he is a god’s apostle, ought he not to hear the god’s word sooner than anyone?

That was what the branch head was asking.

Kalen, quietly working at a rack of lamb, gave a start and stole a look at me. Drick showed interest too, if not as much.

“You want to see my face.”

He gave no answer.

“That’s a pity. My face is not for just anyone to see.”

The branch head nodded, unruffled. I could see plainly enough that his suspicion had gone another step deeper.

“Might I know the reason?”

Because it was a matter of conviction. I had sworn it to her as she lay dying.

To Eladin, who watched with sorrowful eyes as I changed, I promised that from then on I would show my face to no one but her. She was the one who had urged the helm on me in the first place, out of concern for me, and by now that suggestion had become a binding in my heart. It was what kept the helm where it was.

“I’ll show you something else instead.”

It amounted to telling him he would get no reason out of me. I rose from my seat and pulled off a gauntlet.

Then, in one motion, I drew my sword and took my left hand off at the wrist.

Kalen cried out in horror; Drick’s eyes went wide.

“Sir knight! Wh-wh-what are you doing?!”

“…Brother. Have you lost your mind?”

The branch head must have had some idea of what was coming; he was not shaken as badly as the other two. He only set his cutlery down, quietly.

The wrist began, slowly, to grow back. The horror on Kalen’s and Drick’s faces did not take long to turn into the look of men who no longer trusted their own eyes.

“That is the authority of the angel in this legend of yours.”

“…I see.”

I got up from my place and sat the two of them, still gabbling, back down. I had taken deliberate care in the cut, so no blood had spattered the food.

“Carry on eating.”

Kalen, with a ridiculous look on his face, spoke up as I fitted the gauntlet back onto the left hand that had come back whole.

“I— no, that… you never said a word about any of this.”
“About what?”
“You’re a god’s apostle after all. Taken it into their heads, my arse.”

I burst out laughing before I could help it.

“I never said I wasn’t.”

I am a god’s apostle.

Only, that god is not Talios.

“Hah. Live long enough and you do see everything, right enough.”

Drick let out a hollow laugh and picked up the meat he had dropped. The branch head, by contrast, looked as though he would not lay another finger on his food.

“To see with my own eyes the angel’s authority I had only ever heard told of — I am more honored than I can say.”

Having watched the flesh knit with his own eyes, he could hardly go on doubting. As the meal picked up again I spoke to him. He looked a little sick.

“I have two pieces of business.”
“Yes. Please speak.”
“I’m looking for someone. For his appearance you can consult Kalen.”

The branch head looked to Kalen, who nodded.

“That is no great difficulty. Turning out the guard corps alone should be enough to find him.”
“And one more thing. Confer the baptism on Drick.”

This time the branch head’s gaze landed on Drick.

“You intend to make him a paladin?”
“Yes. Once he takes the baptism he’ll make a fairly useful paladin.”

“…There is no reason it cannot be done. If the Heaven-Conquering Apostle vouches for a man’s standing, he is qualified enough.”

Drick was wholly given over to his food, hard at work packing as much of the fine stuff into his belly as it would hold.

“The basic procedure will be needed, however. It is so fundamental a matter that I would ask your understanding on this point at least.”
“Of course.”

The paladin’s trial.

Drick would be going through it now. It sifted out which warriors would receive a god’s power, and it was notorious for its harshness; yet even the right to sit it was a rare stroke of luck an ordinary man could never come by.

“Ah — this time there is a request from my side. May I put it to you?”

The words came with the meal nearly over. I answered as I rose from my seat.

“What is it?”
“It is nothing much. A personal request.”

The branch head, who had been circling all the way round, came straight out with it.

“I should like to have the apostle’s left hand for my collection.”

“…”

Watching him send a man off to fetch a white cloth, I was reminded afresh that this was the head of a church that gathered every madman in the world into one place.