Aid

OF GODS AND MEN

Chapter 26: Mortal Immortality

            She stood outside the grand entrance to Malthus’s cathedral.  The moon hung high in the night, and she pulled her hood up to veil herself as best as she could from its face.  In her left hand she gripped Malthir tightly.  The blade gave a soft glow, which she hid from the sight of the world by pulling her cloak over the rest of her, draping herself entirely.

            She looked up, above the cathedral before her to the palace of Malthus that extended high above the clouds.  Inwardly, she could feel the divinity of the GodKing calling out to her.

            “Not to me, though,” she thought.  “Not to me.”

            She felt the smooth, cold grip of Malthir in her hand; as though the sword understood her thoughts.  She felt it give a slight tingle. 

            “You want me to go on,” she returned in her mind.  “You want to go home.  Yes.  Let’s go home.”

            A rustling breeze blew past, ruffling her cloak.  She pulled it tighter around her, though she did not need to.  There was no wind that could cool her now.  Ignoring this stray thought, she took a step forward.

Then she stopped.  Cecily turned quickly to look behind her.  There was no mistaking it; she had heard something more than the rustling of the wind in that breeze.  It was faint and far, but it was there.  She gripped the sword tight, preparing to release its power…

GONG

She turned back to the cathedral, the midnight bell breaking her from the distraction.  This was the hour she had waited for; to enter the church at its least occupied.  For the previous night’s workers and worshippers had all done their due, while an hour from now the night staff would begin preparations for the early morning’s worship.  Yet in this medial hour, the place would be at its most still.

She moved quickly forward; thoughts of nipping winds and grazing sounds lost to the task at hand.  The time had come.

The priest finished stacking copies of the next day’s homilies in the pulpit.  He had spent hours copying them all himself, and as he stood up, he stretched his body out to relieve his tired muscles of his monotonous labors. 

He stood at the pulpit, looking out into the hundreds of pews that lined the sanctuary.  Starlight poured in from windows on either side of the room, giving the place a ghostly glow. 

The holy man smiled, imagining a phantom congregation filling every seat.  He envisioned himself sharing a rousing homily; his flock moved to tears at beauty of Malthus’s message that flowed through him.  His gaze shifted, and the pale, cold truth returned to his sight.  He was only a lowly rung on the ladder of the clergy now, but one day he would be that man of his mind’s eye.  One day, Malthus would take notice.

The temple doors flew open, crashing against the stone walls of the cathedral with a thunderous clap that echoed all throughout the sanctuary.

The priest rushed in front of the pulpit to get a better view of what could have done such a thing.  It took four men, two on each door, to open and close them.  Who could have the strength to force them thus?

In the doorway, draped in darkness, stood a shadow only visible by the glow of the sword it held aloft.

“Who dares defile this sacred temple of the GodKing?” the priest called out, trying to sound brave. 

The figure walked briskly down the center aisle into the moonlight.  He was granted one instant of realization - that the intruder was no man, but a redheaded young woman - before the spell of divinity took him.  Whatever outrage he had planned on feeling before she had come closer was replaced with a longing desire to serve.

Faced with a priest of Malthus in Arden’s greatest temple to the god that she served, Cecily felt the inkling of old instinct.  Her knees bent before her mind could think it, and she found herself in the beginnings of a genuflection.  But in her descent, she remembered the cold steel she held in her hand, and she brought the shining blade before her face.  The faint glow that Malthir gave off outside of the cathedral had grown brighter; it now shown with the light of a far off star.

Cecily stopped herself from falling to the stone floor.  She rose, bringing the sword to her side as she looked to the priest.  The diminutive man had fallen prostrate before her.  She understood then that there was no longer any authority in the world of men to instruct or command her.  This man; someone she would once have turned to for guidance; now relied on her to guide him.

            “Take me to Malthus’s chambers,” Cecily ordered.  “The GodKing has long been expecting me.”

           

            In the corridors of the upper echelons of the cathedral, Cecily followed the priest as he passed by a series of grand doorways, each one more beautiful than the last.  They had been crafted as the worshipful constructions of the greatest artists in all of Arden.  Some were made of precious metals, inlaid with bright gems that caught light in such a way that they were always aglow; others sang lovely melodies with overlapping voices who’s harmonies came together in transcendent tones; and others still behaved as blank canvasses for ever-changing art that would renew itself with the dawn. 

            “Everyone finds their own door to Malthus in the end,” the priest explained to her as they walked by these doors.  “Yet the GodKing cannot be found behind such material riches or earthly talents.”

            Finally, they stopped some ways away from a small, unassuming wooden door.  Standing before it was a solitary guard, the first Cecily had seen in these upper corridors since she and the priest had entered them.

            “Beyond that door,” the clergyman whispered, “lies the only way to the palace above this cathedral.”

            “And the only way to Malthus,” Cecily concluded.

            “Precisely, my lady,” the priest returned excitedly.

            “Why would Malthus allow such a humble entrance to his chambers?” Cecily asked.

            “Malthus is all-wise,” the priest replied.  “This door is the least obvious route to him.  No invaders would think to find him beyond it.”

            “Invaders?” Cecily questioned aloud, more to herself than the priest.  It struck her as amusing.  Only mortal invaders would be taken in by such a ruse, and they had no hope of doing any harm to Malthus.  The concern was entirely unfounded, unwarranted…even, un-godly.

            “So…Malthus, the GodKing of the realm and the most praised and worshipped deity in all of Arden, had once been a man after all,” she divined.

            They were upon the wooden door, in plain view of the guard.  The soldier grasped his sword hilt, and he raised a hand to them, signaling them to halt.  Old memories of battle sprung up and Cecily gripped Malthir more tightly as she prepared herself for an attack.

            They were on the man quickly.  The soldier’s eyes moved up from the priest to Cecily, and as he looked on her his gaze grew wide in astonishment.  Cecily raised her sword, ready to bring it down quickly and with righteous fury, until…

            The soldier fell to his knees, his eyes never leaving Cecily’s.  He raised both hands, palms facing upward, in a signal of surrender.  “I am ready, my lady,” he resigned in a euphoric whisper.

            Cecily felt the weight of Malthir in her hand…ready to fall…ready to strike.  The grip, ordinarily cool to her touch, was warm with the heat of her bloodlust.  Yet a soothing calm ran through her.  There was no need for such savagery; the guard was hers.

            “Open the door,” she said with a lilting calm.

            The guard quickly rose to his feet and pulled a key ring filled with skeleton keys from his belt loop.  He searched frantically, putting one key after the next into the keyhole of the door; trying, unsuccessfully, to obey her.

            Cecily offered him a gracious smile.  The priest jumped in to help the guard; the two of them scrambling to get the door opened,

            “A key ring filled with decoys,” Cecily thought, laughing inwardly.  “Has that ever worked?”

            Just then, she heard the click of the right key and watched the priest and the guard struggle to push the wooden door open.  The screech of the creaking hinges, rusted with the disuse of several hundred years, screamed through the stone corridors like an angry mother eagle that had lost one of its young.

            “My lady,” the guard huffed, stepping out of the way of the open door and presenting her with what was inside, “at the top of the stairs, you will find the antechamber to the throne room of Malthus.  Have I done well?”

            Cecily stepped forward and looked inside.  Beyond the door was the bottom of a simple stone staircase.  Her eyes followed it up, but there was no end that even her holy gaze could see. 

            “You have,” Cecily answered without looking down at the guard.  “The both of you have done very well.”

            “My lady,” the priest said in a concerned tone.  Cecily looked down at him.  “Only the knights of the KingsGuard dwell up in the palace now.  No other servants are allowed.  In fact, other than that holy order, no living soul has even been up there for hundreds of years.”

            “I understand,” Cecily said, smiling down at him and putting a comforting hand to his shoulder. 

            The priest blushed for a moment, then shook with ecstasy, and collapsed.  Cecily did not spare him a second glance, but turned to the staircase and strode in.  She did not hesitate when she took the first step, nor the second.  Up she went; up into the veiled darkness.

            “Who goes there?” the knight of the KingsGuard called out.

            Cecily gripped Malthir with both hands as she readied herself behind the column that concealed her.  Only a few steps from where she hid was the grand red door that led into Malthus’s throne room.  Flanking it from either side were two of his holy knights. 

            But she had given herself away trying to keep from the KingsGuard’s sights, perhaps with an over-quick step or an accidental brush of her armor against a wall.  The guards knew someone was on this sacred floor that shouldn’t have been.  She did not have much time.

            She moved, striding out from behind the column and rushing the first guard nearest her; the one who had called out.  She brought up the hilt of Malthir and bashed it across the guard’s helmeted face.

            SLAM

            He fell to the stone floor, stunned.  Cecily, barely completing the arc of her bash, brought the sword back around just as the second guard ran in.

            “My lady…”

            CRASH

            The knight did not even try to defend himself as the flat of Cecily’s blade collided with him, sending him flying across the room.  Cecily looked at the two fallen men, lying on opposite ends of Malthus’s antechamber.

            “I…only…wanted…” the knight she had sent flying sputtered out, through pained breaths, “to...open the door for you.”

            Cecily panicked.  No one in this palace meant her harm; yet she had been ready to fight her way to Malthus.  She brought the sword up to look upon, and now it was glowing more brightly than she had ever seen.  Cecily could not even make out the blade anymore, for it had become pure white light in the shape of a sword.

The sight soothed her.  Her inclinations to violence from only a moment ago seemed so ugly to her now; so inelegant; so tediously human. 

“I do not need you,” she said flatly to the guard, even as the mean was reaching up for her from the stone floor.

She turned to the large red door and pushed in.  A glittering light spilled out into the antechamber.  It was a light that would have blinded mortal men, but Cecily was no man, and she was not mortal anymore.  Not now.

She strode forth, a goddess, joining with the jeweled light of eternity.  Cecily disappeared into the wall of white, leaving the door open behind her, letting the light consume all that was left in her wake.