CHAPTER 4
Epiphany
“What will you do?” Shepherd heard Cecily’s voice ask. There was a bemused wonder in her tone that mocked him. She knew full well he didn’t know what he was going to do, because she was part of him.
What an inane question.
A twinge of awareness arose in him; like a hair standing on the back of one’s neck in a tense situation. He turned to look full on into the face of the pale lady that was both part of and apart from him. “I will not apologize. It was an inane question.”
Shepherd turned back to the suffering woman on the alter. Her tidal wave screams were receding into long, low ripples of torment; her moans belied not just physical pain, but the existential suffering that came with realizing her life would never be the same again. She would never see…anything, ever again.
“I have to help her,” Shepherd declared in a bold and brash tenor.
“But you meant to,” the voice of Finnian argued. “Before the priest stabbed out her eyes. You could have stopped him with a thought.”
“I know that,” Shepherd snarled. It was another foolish reminder of what he already knew, and so help him if Finnian asked…
“Then why didn’t you?”
Shepherd exhaled reflexively, his face collapsing from an upheld grimace to a careworn mien. “I don’t know,” he finally confessed; desperation escaping his words like drops of water leaking from a cracked clay pot.
Nearly two miles away, the woman sobbed. The ripples flowed forth; breaking, one after another, as if at Shepherd’s feet. They washed away the grains of excuses for his inaction, leaving exposed the truth that with all the power in the cosmos, he was still able to fail.
He suddenly saw himself standing next to the alter, holding one of the suffering woman’s hands in his own. So it was. Shepherd stood beside the stony bed, knowing that he should have been awed that he had appeared there in an instant, and yet feeling too tired for wonder. It was easy enough to explain, after all.
Just as he admitted his own fatigue to himself, the woman’s moans ceased, though her suffering had not. But the power was on her now, and she was a slave to the will of Shepherd.
“Lord?”
“No,” Shepherd replied. “I am not Rama.”
That did not matter, of course. It was the power that enthralled her, regardless of who wielded it. Shepherd tried to quell it then so that she could be herself in his presence: just as he had in the midst of Malmira’s people. But without even the strength to muster enthusiasm, there was little chance of him straining himself to suppress the fountain of power that erupted from inside him
He sighed; exhausted in spirt, though he was energized in body. Shepherd gently placed Brand back in its scabbard and took a moment to stand…just stand. He let his eyes fall on the maligned face of the young woman, settling on her slowly sinking eye sockets. Fresh blood was still falling from them; cascading down the sides of her face and staining her pale skin with the red of the route it had traveled.
“What would you have of me lord?”
“I just want you to see again,” he said reflexively, feeling helpless and angry with himself all over again that he did not act when he could have: when he should have.
In the pit of his stomach, he felt the power well up. A warmth raced through his body, and it sparked to life a realization. The furnace of his spirit, home to a single, small flame an instant ago, burst and spread with the roaring fire of purpose.
“I would have you see again,” Shepherd demanded of the gift he carried inside himself.
Gently, he placed a hand over the woman’s useless eyes, even as he closed his own. He felt the warmth running through him pulse to searing: he had summoned the power, and the power was answering. He guided it, using his mind’s eye, from the pit of his stomach through his hand and into her waiting face. A golden light shone from the underside of his palm, setting her cheeks aglow and for the first time since he had come here, he saw her smile.
Shepherd removed his hand and offered his own smile in return, for the woman’s eyes had been restored. Beautiful green spheres, the color of emeralds, sparkled as they took him in with joyful gratitude.
It was so obvious to him now. He was a god. He had the power of divinity flowing through him. He could shape lands as he saw fit: raise mountains, fill oceans. He could use that infinite power to usurp the dominions of the other gods by taking their place in the hearts of their worshippers. He would right the wrongs that mankind deemed they had committed, and in turn mankind would follow him. Then, with all of humanity in his thrall, he would command them to stop obeying him; stop obeying the gods altogether, and to be masters of their own lives. For that, he knew, is what he truly wanted.
Had he been a mortal contemplating this, he would have deemed it impossible: absurd even. It was, for a mortal. Yet he was a god now. Was he not capable of achieving the impossible? Rather than fall into the trap of all the other gods and take up a dominion for himself, was it not inevitable that at some point, there would be a god who would forsake dominion? So that freedom could finally reign?
And she would be the start of it all. She would be his first test.
It was a noble idea, and a selfless one too. Perhaps too selfless…for men. But he was a god.
Shepherd was giddy with this new revelation. How did this not occur to him immediately? He could only guess that gaining all the power of a god did not grant him any more wisdom than he already had: and judging by the fact that he could only guess at that idea, and did not know it for a certainty, was further proof that it was the truth.
“Tarsus,” the married voices of the two ghostly aspects living within him called out.
The use of that name shook him back to the present moment. He had not heard it, either aloud or in his own mind, since he christened himself Shepherd. More than that, he had not felt like Tarsus Cole since that time either. He was more, and less somehow.
He looked down at the maiden whose eyes he had meant to heal. Her body was completely stiff: her arms and legs stretched as far as they would go, and a tension vibrated through her like electricity being conducted through a copper bar. Her mouth was wide open, and her voice soared out of her in jubilant cries of ecstasy.
Shepherd lifted his hand from her face, letting her body fall limp to the stony bed beneath her. As he took his hand away and saw her face underneath, a sharp breath escaped him. For the lids over her eyes were still sunken in, just as they had been before. He had not healed her, and he had not made her worse. He had poured his power into her, and it did nothing.
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