Chapter Fifty-Three

  “Hey, Auren, you alright?”

  Auren ignored the question and walked away. ‘He doesn’t care. He’s not paying attention. If he did know what’s wrong, he’d know how awful you are, everybody would know.’ He listened to the self recriminations as he walked away from the speaker. He didn’t even know who it was that spoke to him.

  Dismissed from their work, he had one destination. ‘You can’t make up for stealing a prayer coin, you can’t. If you confess, they’ll hang you, if you get caught, they’ll hang you. You’re the worst person. Stealing a gold coin given by some good hearted soul to the gods, you cut their prayer off to what, pay for a whore to touch your filthy body? To pay for beer to dull the knowledge of your vileness? You’re the worst, everybody knows it. They’d be better off if you weren’t here… there’s no hope for you… go on, turn in the money to the counting house so they can catch you… that peasant is going to go there with the guards, I’m sure they’d have questions about what you’re doing turning in gold when everybody else has coppers and silvers!’

  It wouldn’t stop.

  No matter how Auren begged the voice in his head, it wouldn’t stop. He grabbed the side of his head, then frantically began patting himself down to make sure he still had the little gold circle. His hands slapped himself as if he was inflicting self punishment instead of searching for money, then stopped the stinging blows when he felt the coin where he left it, in between two strips of leather secured to his belt.

  His relief was short lived, other people on the streets of Kami Miyako saw his sudden bizarre behavior and stepped away from him as quickly as they could. ‘They know. Even strangers know to avoid you, they think you’ll steal from them too. If you’d steal prayer coins from the tithes of the gods, what won’t you take, heretic?’

  He swallowed the lump in his throat and picked up his pace, his boots slapped the stone and between his size and armed state, people quickly got out of his way well before he approached, allowing Auren to make swift time to the counting house…

  But he could not go in. His feet would not allow it. He lingered there, pacing back and forth across the street, stopping sometimes to turn and face it, a foot would go forward, but before he could even complete the step he would hear the voice in his head…

  ‘They’re going to catch you, oath breaker. You’re going to lose everything. There’s no solution in this life, only the gods can absolve you, there’s only one way out, only one way, you need divine help. You stole the prayer tithe of a desperate peasant, you know what you have to do. In your heart of hearts, you know. They’ll all be better off, too, they’ll all be glad, and you’ll be free and safe from this burden… no more pain and no more fear and no more loathing, and they might even all forgive you… if you made it right.’

  “Why is that guy pacing around across from the counting house…? Does he work there or…?” A few commoners asked who’d apparently noticed his strange behavior.

  His eyes darted towards the cluster of three who were evidently busy minding a carriage parked not far away, they quickly turned away from him, but before he could think of anything at all, chaos erupted within the counting house.

  A thunderous racket so loud that it caused the outside foot traffic to stop and stare, while horses briefly reared up and had to be brought back under control. “Seize them all! We’ll sort it out there! Shut it all down!” It was a bellowing roar of command, one Auren knew very well belonged to his own commander.

  Auren’s hair stood on end as he watched, frozen stiff as a corpse encased in ice, while various officials were dragged out by their necks, flailing and crying out protests while others marched with pikes at their backs and eyes cast down, hands over their faces to hide what they looked like… or conceal the distraught expressions which were paired with their very audible sobs.

  The peasant woman walking out with the commander a few moments later was chatting quite amiably and then, to Auren’s horror, the Commander pointed in his direction. ‘Why are they pointing at me?! Oh gods above, it’s time?!’ Auren regained his ability to move, turned, and began to walk as fast as he could, disappearing into the noisy crowd of the bustling city, looking behind him every few seconds.

  ‘There’s no way out of this, not now… not now! Why’d I do this?! Why?! I ruined my whole life, it’s over! It’s all over!’ He wailed in despair as he sought the only place he thought could help.

  Kami Miyako was a holy place, where legend said the gods first descended to the world to help mankind, and to live in that city and have status was to be tied to the temples in some way. So it was in all the Slane Theocracy, but nowhere was it more evident than here, at the city center, where the greatest of all the temples to the gods sat in all their towering glory.

  The statues of the gods lined the walkway, the doors were emblazoned with the insignias of their glory, the steps were of marble and the doors of shining polished bronze that shimmered in the light.

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  And there were always people going in or out. It was one of the few temples to offer services at every hour of every day. Thus, Auren felt confident in his actions. Every step he took toward the doors he felt a lightness coming over him, ‘Yes. This is the way. This holy act of redemption…’ He blinked back tears as he thought over his life, it hadn’t been a proud one, and it seemed he could not find a day in which he hadn’t sinned.

  He was still full of his reflections and thoughts as he made his way to the far end of the wide open temple when something caught him by surprise.

  Normally there were six tithe boxes present, so that the money could go to the chosen god, but now there were seven. He looked around until he saw the white robes of an initiate and hastened over to what he found was a young woman with an apple shaped face and a bright smile seemingly painted on when she caught sight of him.

  “Welcome to the temple, how can I help you?” She whispered, and Auren counted out the boxes, pointing to each one.

  “I was just wondering, why seven boxes?” He whispered back, leaning close so that she alone would hear.

  “Oh,” she pointed to the box that sat in front of all the others. “That one is for donations to help the faithful in the Holy Kingdom.” The smile proved it wasn’t painted on when it formed into a deep frown. “Rumor has it that a heretical new movement has started there, something that proclaims the Sorcerer King to be a God, an evil undead…” She visibly shivered when she spoke the last word, and audibly shuddered for good measure, “can you imagine? So there is a special collection going up to assist in providing for the faithful and protecting the faithful from heresy. All donations will go directly to the Paladin Order to assist with their efforts, would you like to donate?”

  Auren had never felt so sure of anything in his life, it was like a divine light was cast down from heaven itself and commanded that he do exactly that. “Yes.” He whispered, “I ask only one thing…” He dropped down to his knees before the initiate priestess and whispered, “Grant me forgiveness… for crimes I cannot name.”

  “I… I can only do that for the dying, as long as you can speak, you have to name what you’ve done...” She hastened to say and stepped back in shock at the sudden change in the new entry, such was her surprise that her voice rose an octave, and to her relief, he got to his feet.

  He approached the box, removed the coin, holding the gold aloft, and slamming it down into the opening of the box where it clinked sharply against the other metal coins.

  Then in one smooth motion, he drew his knife, stuck out his tongue and held it out with one hand, then with a single muffled cry, he sliced the soft meat of his tongue away with his sharpened blade.

  He dropped the tongue to the floor, raised his foot, and stomped on it, the wet slap echoed around the silent temple, a woman screamed, joined quickly by a man who knelt beside her, and blood poured ceaselessly out of Auren’s severing wound, running out of his mouth and down his face as if his maw wept red tears that dripped down his uniform to pool at his feet.

  The initiate cried out, putting her hands at her cheeks and shaking with horror, she rushed over to where he stood, he was already shaking as the pain went through him, she reached Auren, and he fell trembling to his knees, grabbing her hands, his head shaking back and forth, eyes filled to the brim with tears that blurred her face to his vision, he shook his head back and forth, no longer able to form words.

  “Wh-whatever you’ve s-said which you should not, the gods absolve thee! Wh-whatever you’ve f-f-failed to do that you should, the gods absolve thee! Wh-whatever you’ve f-f-failed to say that you should, the gods absolve thee!” She screamed and fumbled the invocation of absolution as the wounded soldier fell away from her and onto his back, the choking sensation was not long in coming. His body was starting to spasm as his own blood killed him.

  ‘Say that last line! Say the last one!’ He begged her with his eyes as she fumbled over her words, her desperate search in a desperate memory for things she was only just learning…

  “Wh-Wh-wh” She fumbled the words as she came down over him, her hands grasped the side of his face.

  “Mghadone! Fdoghfn!” He struggled to prompt the absolution… ‘Whatever I’ve done! Say it!’ He screamed in his mind as blackness began to overtake him.

  As despair and darkness swallowed him, he heard no more.

  As Auren then spasmed, and died.

  ““Whatever you’ve done which you should not, the gods absolve thee!” She screamed into his face and prayed that it was not too late.

  She hovered over his corpse until she felt a hand tug at her shoulder, “What happened?!” The voice of a Cardinal in his middle years shouted as she refused to let herself be pulled away from the sinner’s corpse.

  “I-I don’t know… he begged for absolution… I told him the rules… he… he did this… why?! Why would anyone do this?!” She shouted, and then felt herself forcibly yanked up, her bloody fingers still shaking, her eyes wide with horror, she only calmed when she was forced to look into the eyes of Cardinal Raymond and he shouted…

  “Look at me! Look at me, Mira!” He brought her body closer to his, he whispered softly as her little mewling, crying noises settled down, “Whatever his reasons… what he feared, what he’d done… it had nothing to do with you. Some people…” He looked down at the dead man, he couldn’t have been even in his thirties, probably much younger…

  “Some people,” Raymond continued, “there’s nothing you can do, because they’re haunted, chased, and destroyed, by things inside them they haven’t the power to face. Maybe he did something terrible, could be he raped someone, or killed someone, or betrayed someone, or it might be something trivial that he blew all out of proportion. Whatever it was, we’ll never know. May the gods forgive him, now that his own inner demons have won.”

  His calmness helped her relax, and Raymond’s firm hold on her arms relaxed in turn, “Go, go rest, clean up, take the day for yourself, I’ll handle everything here.”

  “Th-Thank you, Cardinal.” She whispered, and left the Cardinal and the corpse behind.