Erachus muttered in the darkness.  What began as a rote prayer diminished to a gibbering stupor.  His whispers echoed off stone and fluttered away to die amid the clinks of chain, the moans, and the occasional shriek of agony.

There was no window in his cell; not so much as a crack in the wall to admit a sliver of light.  The air was fouled by the stench of excrement and moldering offal.  Cold seeped into his bones.  The shackles chafed his wrists.  Welts on his back festered and throbbed.  His forehead burned from the spider mark they'd branded into his skin.  Hunger gnawed at his gut. 

Somewhere metal ground against metal.  A door creaked open and slammed shut.  Footsteps echoed in the darkness, growing louder.  A soft glow flickered beneath the door to his cell.  His heart froze at the sound of a key grinding in a dry lock.  The door swung open.  Torchlight filled the chamber and seared his eyes. 

Three figures entered.  The one called Dallag wore studded gloves and smelled of old sweat.  He was a brute who never spoke.  A coiled whip hung from his waist.  The second, tall and rail thin, called himself Cleave.  He preferred knives and intimate contact.  He especially enjoyed describing in savory detail his “special methods.”  His barks of laughter bounced off walls and echoed into nightmares.  He carried a narrow wooden chair, which he placed on the floor in the middle of the cell.

The third man, the confessor, wore a pale robe and carried a thick book.  His feet shuffled as if he was carrying an oppressive weight.  He nodded to his leather-clad companions.  "Get him up."

Dallag loomed over Erachus, seized his wrist and hauled him to his feet.  A gloved hand enclosed Erachus’ throat and shoved him against the wall.  There was a clink of metal above as they slipped loops of knotted rope around his wrists.  A chain slapped on the gears of a pulley.  Erachus yelped when his arms jerked upward.  His shoulders popped as he was lifted into the air. 

He hung there, sobbing, while the confessor lit a torch on the opposite wall.  The man turned and straightened his robes.  His face was masked in shadow, but Erachus felt his eyes boring into him. 

"Let me tell you a story."

The confessor drew closer.“I’ve been searching for years for the one you call Navda.  I’ve never seen a group of followers so willing to die to hide their master.  All I ever got were lies;  it's an old man with a white beard.  A young girl.  No!  A dwarf with white eyes.  One of your associates tried to persuade me Navda’s a talking cat.”

Erachus craned his neck to hold the confessor’s eyes.  There was a gloating tone in the man’s voice.

“Yes, I’ve been on quite the chase.  But last night, in this very prison, we spoke with one of your associates.  What was her name?  Hespith.” 

Hespith?  What was she doing in Sevestal?  He’d commanded her to head for Alamar weeks ago.

The confessor smirked.  “That name’s familiar, isn’t it?  We found her three days ago, skulking around the keep.  She’d come to Fornith to rescue the prophet.  Turns out she’s not as… resilient…as you are.  She opened her mouth and out came a name."  He leaned forward.  "Erachus of Brahm.”

Erachus’ heart sank deep into his gut.  Hespith!  Sweet Hespith. What have you done?

“I must say,” the confessor purred, “You're the last one I would have guessed.  You’re so… normal.  Of course, that’s the disguise, isn’t it?"  He chuckled and ambled away towards the chair.  His head was bowed in a permanent slouch. "Anyway, after that I began questioning the others. I told them, 'Erachus of Brahm has confessed!'  Oh, I wish I could show you the looks on their faces when they heard your name.  They all gave way.  Every one of them.” 

The confessor turned and walked back to the chair, where he sat and flipped open his book.  “Your god has deserted you.  And your friends.  I no longer need your confession, but I want it.”

Erachus closed his eyes.  The confessor was right.  Anul had abandoned him. 

"If I do?"

The confessor gazed at him for a long moment.  "If you confess now you'll be publicly shamed and beheaded.  It’s better than you deserve, but Kalan wants an end to this so he can focus on the war.  Let me warn you, Erachus.  If you persist in this ruse, I'll make your death a spectacle of days."

The headsman’s axe.  It would be over in seconds.  Eternal sleep. 

The last of his faith crumbled like a clod of dry earth.  Erachus was nothing.  The church was in ashes and the king was dead.  Even Hespith had betrayed him.  With a tremulous breath, he opened his mouth.

 A voice echoed in his mind. 

Have faith! 

The confession died on his lips.  His head sagged and he began to weep.  Had he not suffered enough?

He struggled to spit the bitter truth.  “I’m no one."  

Saying the words seemed to lift a great weight from his back.  His neck tingled. 

The door to the cell creaked open and a tall man in garb of the city watch stepped inside. He glanced towards their grouping with a curious look. "Excuse me, your Eminence," he said. "I must speak with you."

The confessor frowned at the interruption and motioned for the man to approach. The guard leaned down and whispered, his sibilant "S" hissing through the cold air as he spoke the one word Erachus could make out. "Erissia." The confessor's brows lifted in surprise. The guard stepped back after delivering the message and the confessor rose from his chair. 

"It seems this is all for naught," he said. His voice had lost its hard edge. "I have been summoned away from Fornith immediately." He gathered his book and shuffled towards the door, his step quickened from its earlier shamble. The guard nodded towards Dallag and turned to follow the confessor.

"What are we to do with him?" Cleave asked, gesturing with his knife towards Erachus. 

The confessor stopped and regarded Erachus with eyes on the verge of panic. "Kill him." He shambled out of the cell with the city guard in tow. The door slammed shut behind them.

The two torturers looked at one another in confusion.

"You don't have to kill me," Erachus said. "I never confessed. It would be dishonorable."

Erachus gasped as Dallag drove a gloved fist into his stomach. Cleave elbowed Dallag aside and leaned forward, his eyes wide above a grotesque smirk.  He lifted a curved knife to Erachus’ face. "Who you suppose I'm wont to obey? Cleave asked. "The confessor, or a bloody traitior?" 

Erachus shivered as his breath returned.  He ground his teeth. Hot blood rushed to his face and a sound, like the dying toll of a giant bell, filled his head. The air in the cell began to shimmer with a soft blue light.  His pain vanished in a flood of ecstacy, tingling in his every pore.

He peered into Cleave’s face and smiled.  "Anul sees you."

Cleave barked one of his shrill laughs.  His eyes widened in surprise.  He grinned with wonder, chortled gleefully.  In an instant, the mirth fell from his face.  He whimpered.  He took a long step backward, turned his head, tried to avert his eyes but he couldn't break free from Erachus’ gaze.  He screamed, screamed again, lifted the knife to his own throat, and sliced.

Praise be to Anul, said the exultant voice in his mind.  Erachus cackled with joy.  The shrieks from other two men caromed through the keep as Erachus faded to unconsciousness. 

When he awoke he was lying in a cart, bouncing over rough ground.  Hooves thumped in the darkness.  The nip of night air and the smell of pine told him he was outside the keep.  He closed his eyes and a vision came to him; a warm, arid land, a river, a giant tree, a girl with auburn hair.  A beckoning from the south.  A longing. 

He drifted back to oblivion.

When he opened his eyes he was surrounded by grey light.  His arms and face pressed into wet grass.  He rocked to his knees, rose with a grunt, and looked around.  Early morning fog clung to pine needles beneath still boughs. He lifted his hands to his chest, surprised when his palms brushed against warm wool.  Someone had dressed him in a long grey tunic, belted at the waist, along with the soft leather boots he’d been wearing when he was arrested.  He rubbed his chafed wrists and winced. 

 A horse lifted its head.  Its ears twitched and it nickered softly.  A saddle and packs were strapped to its back.  The animal looked at him for a moment, then lowered its neck to forage.

Erachus saw no sign of the cart. How had he escaped?  He searched his memory, but found only the echo of screams and blackness.  Then his stomach growled.

Every joint in his body protested as he limped towards the horse.  The animal flicked its ears above a thicket of clover as Erachus raised the flap on each of the packs. From one he extracted a loaf of brown peasant’s bread, tore off a chunk, and stuffed it into his mouth.  He lifted a canteen from the saddle and drank greedily, then went to work on another chunk of bread.

What now?  He’d built the Church from the shadows.  Most of the Navdites had run to ground.  Had it all been for naught? 

Four years of work.  Less than six months removed from his greatest triumph, the conversion of the King of Sevestal.  Now all was in ruin.  Darius was dead.  Kalan was a devout Myrian whose first act had been to declare the Navda's teachings anathema.  In a matter of weeks his church had been scourged and scattered. 

He sighed and chewed his bread.  The morning fog had thinned to a haze.  He was high up in the foothills, looking out over the Arnus river valley.  A few miles away, in the middle of that valley, rose a steep hill, and atop that hill sat the walled city of Fornith.  Pillars of brown and yellow smoke rose from inside.  Here and there tall plumes of flame lapped the morning air.  A column of soldiers, clad all in red, marched beneath the white and red banner of the roving star, up the King’s Highway and through the city gates.  Their line stretched far to the north and disappeared into the gloom.

Eris.  The children of The Father had come. 

A crack of wood made him turn, and he was startled by the presence of a man standing just out of arm’s reach.  Dallag. 

Erachus froze, dropped the bread and backed into the saddle.  The horse snorted and wheeled.  Erachus fell backwards and landed in the grass. 

The torturer approached and loomed over him, frowning.  He was dressed in common garb; tunic and breeches, with a leather scrip hanging from a strap over his shoulder.  A wicked barbed sword had replaced the whip on his belt.  Dallag held out a hand. 

Erachus gaped at it as he would a cobra.  The brutish man nodded and Erachus lifted a tentative arm.

Dallag snatched it and pulled him to his feet.  He pulled the wicked sword from his belt.  Erachus’ heart thudded.  Dallag flipped the sword and offered it. 

Erachus opened his mouth but no words came.  He took the sword.

Dallag’s face twisted and tears ran down cheeks.  He dropped to one knee and bowed his head.  “I beg the forgiveness of the Prophet,” he said in a gravelly voice.  “Anul showed me my sin.”

Erachus' knees nearly buckled.  It all made sense.  The Navda, standing in a meadow on a hill, gazing down at a man who would torment his nightmares.  The truth sank into his bones, like the cold in the dungeon.  He’d endured these last weeks with the certainty he was being tested.  Why Anul would test him in this way, he couldn’t reckon. 

But it wasn’t a test. It was a punishment.

He’d been too passive.  Anul had given him everything he needed to consolidate power and prepare for the return.  Instead of seizing that power he’d remained in the shadows.   The Navda had quailed in awe before the throne of Sevestal, content with platitudes and promises.  Anything to avoid leaving the safety of the fringe.

Now, Anul had given him a second chance and a new disciple who would serve as a constant reminder of the folly of inaction.  Erachus of Brahm wasn’t chosen to be the servant of mere men.

He tossed the sword onto the grass.  “Get up,” he said.  Some small note of authority returned to his voice for the first time in weeks.  “It’s not for me to forgive you.  It’s for you to serve the glory of Anul.”

Dallag rose.  He looked disappointed, but he nodded and wiped his eyes.  Then he turned his face away, embarrassed.  “I swear to serve you. With my life.”

“Enough of that,” Erachus said.  The bowing and scraping got old fast.  Better to cut it off early.  He pointed towards Fornith.  “That happened this morning?”

Dallag’s head turned to follow.  He nodded.  “Maybe half hour after I got you out.”

“And thanks for that,” Erachus said, slapping the man on the shoulder.  It was like slapping a brick wall.  “Umm…yes.  And…we have…just the one horse?  And no cart?”

“I’ll get us another.  The cart broke a wheel a ways back.”

“Ahh…so.  You carried me here?”

Dallag grunted.  “You’re not very heavy.  Where to now?”

That was the real question.  Erachus sighed.  At Fornith, the stream of red-clad soldiers had broken into three columns and was forming ranks outside the walls.  It was said a single Erissian legion was a match for all the armies in Sevestal.  As he watched that ceaseless stream, he thought they might be right.  Should he go to them?  They were the Children of the Father, after all.

Not yet.  It didn’t feel right.  He felt only the pull from his vision.  A compulsion. 

“South," he said.  "We'll head for the port.  Take ship.”

“Oceanwind’s no good,” Dallag said.  “The Erissians are probably already there.  If not, they will be soon.  Besides, it's going to be hard for you to travel in Sevestal."

"Why?  Because of money?  I can get money, don't worry about that."

"Not the money," Dallag said.  He gestured somewhat hesitantly to his forehead.

The brand.  Erachus had been branded a heretic.  No one in Sevestal would offer safe passage. 

That would complicate things.  "We'll have to go overland then.  What's the nearest town in Rodera?"

"Dugard."

A warm land.  A giant tree.  A girl with reddish-brown hair.  “Good.”  He nodded.  “Dugard it is.”

Dallag fished a half-wheel of cheese and a sausage from one of the packs and offered it to Erachus.  “Eat.” 

Erachus ate until his gut swelled.  The numbness from the dungeon began to fade.  His head cleared.  The exhaustion he always felt after Anul’s Gift came upon him gave way to fresh hope. 

Anul had given him a second chance.  This time he wouldn’t fail; even if it meant burning down all of Myrias.

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