Chapter 3: Condemned
Days and days more passed before Mellain devised a solution to the problem, and the woman kept popping up in his thoughts at the strangest moments. He’d simply never met a woman with such elegant features and such a devil-may-care attitude. She’d taken a sip of his coffee for Mortis’ sake! For a time Mellain couldn’t decide whether she’d been flirting with him or didn’t give a whit about his opinions of her. Then he realized that both options were equally as intriguing. He had to have her as his date to the ball, and that was that. The strangeness of the situation drove both thoughts of his father and thoughts of dallying out of his mind for nigh on a week. This ended one Gods’ Day. While he was blissfully free of his secular schooling on Gods’ Day, neither he or his siblings were spared their religious education. Which was, for the record, even more grueling than the ordinary sort. One of the local priests came to visit them about an hour after sunrise on this particular day, and they were all forced to gather in the manor’s classroom. For a particularly cheery topic, the priest, an aging acolyte of Celais, goddess of the harvest and prosperity, chose to speak of Mortis’ genesis-the birth of the god of death.
Cole sat, quite naturally, in the front row, answering questions in what he thought was a man’s voice and posturing with his stout and unreasonably muscular body. The boy would’ve been a bully if he’d had any need to. His father’s arm snuck around Cole’s shoulder occasionally, while their mother sat on his other side, plucking at her finery and shifting her legs about. The topic did not bring her much comfort, it would seem. Mellain and Cora, quite naturally, sat in the back, keeping quiet and inconspicuous, Cora fidgeting nervously while trying to maintain a sardonic composure. She’d once said after a particularly brutal sermon that the only thing that worried her more than priests was pregnancy, and there was a fellow on Buckle Street who could help her get rid of the latter. Very few things Cora said to Mellain were not horrible.
The priest milled about the front of the large room, tapping on the benches as he went past, quoting a passage from the Book of the Gods of Reason, the more modern and generally more appealing tome pressed upon the uninterested. Suddenly, he began reading from the black book in his hands. “And so when the first birth came to be-the birth of the dryad Oak-two babes also sprang forth from Heaven’s Font, wet and bewildered. The Primals looked upon them with wonder and terrible fear. One was a girl, sweet of nature even in her infancy, with silver eyes and ruddy skin and the lightest of locks, and the Water Mother took her in her arms, recognizing her for what she was and calling her sister. But the other, a boy, was pale of skin, and dark of eye and hair, and his solemn stare drew away the eyes of even stolid Phaerdra of the Earth. And the Primals convened for many years, and named them Spirit and Mortis, the Soul and Death. And the gods kept Spirit for their own, but for Mortis they traveled to the shores of Earth and came to the barren soil where Oak stood alone, and said, ‘This babe is not yet needed, for life in this world has only begun. Cradle him in your roots until the time arrives when you see the first wrinkle on your firstborn’s brow. Then will Death begin his rule.’” The priest went on to speak about how the Primals had loved Spirit as their dear and abiding sister, and how they had been greatly bereaved when, upon the day of her womanhood, she had broken like an eggshell and become all the aspects of the soul-or at least most of them. “Many years passed,” the priest continued, his hands shaking the book around and slowing his reading down to a crawl. “Finally came the day when Oak saw the wrinkle on the brow of her firstborn, and lifting up her roots she brought forth a man, terrible and beautiful, with the darkest eyes and hair and lips like the freshest blood. She saw at once that this was no man the Primals had brought to her, but a god the equal of Spirit. She woke him, and bade him go to meet the other gods that now roamed the land. She clothed him with her leaves and gave him a knife made of her bark and sent him on his way. And when he met them-Amara, Celais, Moren, and all the others-he said in a shout to the heavens, ‘This is not right. You have coddled my twin, brothers and sisters, and given her only daylight when the world must have darkness as well. You have shadows within each of you, but you would only show the living half of what it means to live!’ And with a great sigh, Mortis took up the knife of bark and cut off three locks of his hair, and when they fell to earth they became Crespus, deity of Pestilence, Lezi, goddess of famine, and Martius, god of war. And sighing again he said to them, ‘You three shall be cursed by the living, but you will be welcome in my halls when no temple will have you and no heaven will abide by you.’ And with these words Mortis cast off his clothing and cast away his knife, and returned to Oak, and he said to her with solemn voice, ‘Oak, first of the dryads, my home shall once again be beneath your feet, but it will grow into a great and hollow cave as more souls come to inhabit this world.’ Oak nodded, her great trunk swaying in unseen gales. ‘This is right, and so shall the passing of souls beneath my feet make this world a stronger place to walk upon.’”
Mellain and Cora had heard this passage a few hundred times or so, after all it had to be drilled into them that the sorrows of the world were not only insurmountable but also quite just and inevitable. Cole beamed at the priest, nodding solemnly as if he were Mortis himself. The priest shut the book with a thud and set it down, then began pacing about again. “For many centuries, of course, the dead-mostly dryads, some sprites and then elves at the time-went down to Mortis’ Chasm, their souls feeding Oak and reappearing as acorns to give new life. Yet when the dwarves and humans were born, Mortis perceived a flaw. What did he do, young Miss Cora?”
Mellain’s sister smiled sweetly as her mother’s gaze swung back toward her. “He decided the Three Fates of the Dead, father,” she said.
“That is correct,” said the priest. “And what were those three Fates . . . young Cole?”
The ruddy-faced boy beamed at the opportunity to prove his mettle to his father. “The dead would either die forever, be reborn to live again, or go on to Paradise.”
The priest smiled and Arel clapped his younger son on the knee. “Father,” Arel said, “you might do well to remind my sons how one’s Fate is chosen.” The merchant’s balding head swiveled around, looking past Cora as usual and settling on Mellain. There’s that lion’s grin again, Mellain thought to himself.
“Well, Mellain, can you answer that question?” the priest asked.
Mellain nodded, as respectfully as he could manage when he was frozen with fear. “Yes, Father. Those who have achieved true understanding move on to Paradise. Those who prosper and are virtuous and those who move forward with purpose are given the chance to live again. And those who . . . “ Mellain lost his composure only slightly as his father’s stare tightened around him like a hangman’s noose. “Those who fail to make use of themselves, whether good or bad in spirit, are . . . they cease to be.”
Arel nodded, turning his attention back to the priest. “Very good, Mellain,” the acolyte said. The sermon was soon over, but the chill remained in Mellain’s heart. It didn’t matter what he did, or how much he tried to change. He had been marked a failure, condemned to the worst of Fates in his father’s less eternal ledger. Cora caught up to him later pacing through the less-inhabited quarter of the garden, a smile of amusement reaching to her blue eyes. “Daddy really has it out for you, doesn’t he?”
Mellain did not look amused at all. “Yes. I think I’ve overstepped my bounds by a mile or so. I’ve been trying to act respectable, but . . . I’m afraid it’s too late.”
Cora shrugged. “What’s the absolute worst father could do to you? Put you on the streets? I’m sure you could find a widow to take care of you.”
Mellain’s heart skipped a beat at his sister’s words. “What was that?”
She looked at him oddly. “Nothing, I’m just saying you’re excellent at fooling people into liking you. I’d like to think I taught you that skill, but I believe it’s in our blood.” Cora smirked. “Just watch yourself and eventually he’ll forget about it. He’ll never like you, but at least he’ll put up with you.”
Mellain suddenly found himself angry, an emotion he simply didn’t permit himself very often. “Why the bloody hell does he hate me so much anyway? He hated me for years before I became such a bad seed! Bloody prejudice is what it is, and I don’t understand it.”
Cora stopped walking and poked her brother in the middle of the chest, the layered sleeves of her autumn day dress flailing in the breeze. “Well first of all, you say bloody too much, and it’s ridiculous. Stop it or I won’t help you out anymore.”
Mellain smirked. “Yes ma’am, I’ll remove it from my vocabulary immediately.”
“Good,” Cora said. “Now listen, I had no idea you were such a dolt that you didn’t know why you never got along with your father. Do you know the day it began?”
“The day I was born?”
“No, and stop being so damned sarcastic all the time. Sometimes I can’t understand how you’ve managed to get anyone into bed, let alone a third of Serelmouth. He started hating you the day he fired that nursemaid of yours.”
Mellain stepped back, his sister’s bony finger following him. “Tirena?”
Cora shrugged. “Yes, if that was her name.”
Cora stepped back as she heard voices coming from the center of the vast gardens-Cole and Arel were approaching. “I can’t believe you didn’t know that, you idiot,” she whispered, then turned off the other way, mouthing “Meet me in my quarters tonight.”