The Demigod Proving Read online

  S. James Nelson

  The Demigod Proving

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  The Demigod Proving

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephen Nelson

  Cover art by Arthur Nelson. Contact him at [email protected].

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  First edition: August 13, 2011

  Dear reader,

  Thank you for purchasing The Demigod Proving. I would love it if you stopped by www.sjamesnelson.com and let me know what you think of the book. In addition, I invite you to leave a rating and review of the book on Amazon.com. I would be much obliged if you did. Thank you.

  Let the proving begin!

  Best,

  S. James Nelson

  A book about brothers, for my brothers: Sam, Tom, and Arthur.

  Table of Contents

  Part I: A young branch

  Chapter 1: Not so good news

  Chapter 2: Laughter no more

  Chapter 3: Unexpected attention

  Chapter 4: A lesson in Ichor

  Chapter 5: Seeking safety

  Chapter 6: A proving promised

  Chapter 7: Wearing human flesh

  Chapter 8: No time for patience

  Chapter 9: A brother’s secrets

  Chapter 10: Confession

  Chapter 11: Bound

  Chapter 12: Interrupting the Reverencing

  Chapter 13: A simple question

  Chapter 14: Starting out at a disadvantage

  Chapter 15: Certainty

  Chapter 16: An attempt at mass murder

  Chapter 17: Escape

  Chapter 18: Binding Ichor

  Chapter 19: An old foe

  Part II: In the pleasant garden

  Chapter 20: Seeing forever

  Chapter 21: Not confederate

  Chapter 22: A mother’s counsel

  Chapter 23: Weakening god

  Chapter 24: A disgrace to draegons everywhere

  Chapter 25: A second chance

  Chapter 26: Divine correction

  Chapter 27: Giving up on subtlety

  Chapter 28: Chasing living flame

  Chapter 29: An unexpected compulsion

  Chapter 30: Becoming a mother

  Chapter 31: Heavy burdens

  Chapter 32: A conspiracy uncovered

  Chapter 33: A minor inconvenience

  Chapter 34: The Strengthening

  Chapter 35: Too many options for death

  Chapter 36: Running from god

  Chapter 37: The dutiful wife and mother

  Chapter 38: Killing a son

  Chapter 39: Nothing beats a good cow

  Chapter 40: A tasty draegon treat

  Chapter 41: Admission

  Chapter 42: Not who he said he was

  Chapter 43: Accusations

  Chapter 44: Accelerated plans

  Chapter 45: The deep recesses

  Chapter 46: Fire in the veins

  Chapter 47: Tipping the scales

  Chapter 48: Willful disobedience

  Chapter 49: Interrupted

  Chapter 50: Situation in flux

  Chapter 51: Kicking god

  Chapter 52: Grounded

  Part III: Pruning branches

  Chapter 53: In the Valley of the Elder Gods

  Chapter 54: Brotherly hate

  Chapter 55: Deferring the Strengthening

  Chapter 56: The Task

  Chapter 57: Brother against brother

  Chapter 58: A mother’s price

  Chapter 59: The nature of the test

  Chapter 60: On the inside

  Chapter 61: An unexpected complication

  Chapter 62: The right choice

  Chapter 63: The killing cave

  Chapter 64: The first kill

  Chapter 65: Victor of the proving

  Chapter 66: Parting and joining

  Chapter 67: Gone to war

  Chapter 68: By starlight

  Part IV: Ax to the root

  Chapter 69: The southern limits

  Chapter 70: The past explained

  Chapter 71: The choice is made

  Chapter 72: Breaking point

  Chapter 73: Inexorable path of violence

  Chapter 74: Cut in half

  Chapter 75: Protected

  Chapter 76: Engaged

  Chapter 77: In a tangle

  Chapter 78: Distant application

  Chapter 79: Last embrace

  Chapter 80: Too far away to help

  Chapter 81: Never again

  Chapter 82: God rage

  Chapter 83: Unwilling to leave

  Chapter 84: It’s what a draegon does

  Chapter 85: A new friend

  Chapter 86: No way around

  Chapter 87: Re-commitment to life

  Chapter 88: Remembered memory

  Chapter 89: Something like victory

  Chapter 90: Just the beginning

  Chapter 91: Saved

  Chapter 92: Renewal

  A note from the author

  Acknowledgements

  Part I: A young branch

  Chapter 1: Not so good news

  The problem with realizing you’re in over your head is that you’re already in over your head.

  -Krack

  Wrend hefted a crate of cheese and considered his brother’s suggestion. Accepting it could not only cost him his life, but also his eternal soul.

  Yet, it could also be so tasty.

  Grunting at the weight of the cheese, Wrend carried the crate up the steps and out the doorway. He blinked in the sunlight and stopped on the boardwalk as Teirn emerged with his own crate.

  “Just think of it,” Teirn said. “Sardo cheese. Or just-right testouri.”

  Wrend shrugged. “I’m not debating the value of cheese. It’s how the Master would react to my stealing it.”

  Teirn rolled his eyes. “You only lose your soul if you’re caught. Besides, if you do get caught, at least you’ll know why the Master ends up wringing your neck.”

  Wrend shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “Knowing why you’re having your head popped off is a definite plus. Although the dying part kind of spoils it.”

  When Wrend was two, the Master—as tall as clouds and as angry as thunder—came into the playroom. The mothers started to sob. The more experienced children began to cry. From the midst of toys and playmates, the Master lifted a four-year-old girl and twisted her head off. The crunch still haunted Wrend’s dreams. He and Teirn had clung to each other and cried.

  He’d witnessed scores more deaths since, and hundreds of other siblings had died outside of his sight. They simply disappeared. Wrend had probably only ever known why a dozen of them had perished, although the mothers and priests promised that the Master never killed without a reason. So the Parable taught.

  Teirn made a skeptical sound and shook his head. “Cheese is worth it. Put it on the scales.”

  Wrend imagined his soul on one side of a scale, and cheese on the other. “Hmm . . . danbo cheese?”

  Teirn sniffed. “No—sardo. Or testouri.”

  The scales tipped in Wrend’s mind. “Well, that makes it easy. The cheese wins.”

  With a laugh, Teirn darted ahead of Wrend and down three wooden stairs to the white and blue pavers. Wrend followed. To their right, a sea of wagons filled the Courtyard of the Wall, each with a red-tiled roof and iron-shod, shoulder-high wheels.

  Wrend and Teirn had spent the morning and most of that afternoon loading a handful of the boxy wagons with supplies bound for various parts
of the country. They’d carried everything from sacred books to barrels of wheat to tiny boxes of saffron and other exotic spices. Now, they worked on the last of their duties: loading the cheese wagon. It waited near the top of the courtyard, almost the last in the many columns and rows of wagons.

  As they headed up the courtyard, Wrend gamed at getting ahead of Teirn, to reach the cheese wagon first. He feinted to the right or left and tried to get ahead, but each time he made a move, Teirn responded by dodging aside and blocking his path. He’d already learned that trying to take a different route to the wagon didn’t work, since it made the trip up the courtyard longer.

  To their left, a series of two-story buildings stretched up the canyon, toward the rear of the courtyard. The buildings—each painted a different color: red, blue, green, yellow, white—shared side walls, so it looked like they could have been a single building. A boardwalk ran along their fronts, up the entire length of the courtyard.

  Each wooden building had a different shape, although each bore carved curls and twists of polished spruce around the windows and doors. The second level of some structures extended out over the boardwalk, while others simply had an awning. One had a balcony on the second level, with a fine white railing along the front. Others had gabled roofs with red shingles, and some had flat roofs. Most of them had rain gutters carved with vines, and hosted at least several draegon gargoyles stretched out in various poses of flight or attack.

  Wrend could never walk in front of the buildings without suspecting an ambush from the gargoyles. It seemed they’d descended from the steep canyon walls behind the building, from among the pines and firs, and waited for just the right moment to attack.

  A similar stretch of buildings lined the opposite side of the courtyard. Between the two lengths of buildings, at the front of the courtyard, stretched the Wall—although calling it a wall was a misnomer; it was really just a towering stone structure that reached from one side of the canyon to the other.

  In preparation for the Reverencing, red cloth covered the Wall, starting at the top, where red and black bunting stretched across the entire length of the parapet. Serving girls had sewed the bunting so that it looked like the lower half of a target, with concentric circles of black and red. The bunting also stretched over the thirty-foot recessed gates in the Wall’s center, and hung on the balconies at the tops of the stairs set at even intervals along the Wall’s base. It dangled over the doors that gave ingress to the inner bowels of the Wall, where priests and serving girls lived in tight quarters.

  From each half-circle of bunting along the parapet, or along the balcony in front of a doorway, a curtain of red cloth stretched down, so that all of the Wall except for the doors was covered with red. Here and there, the breeze stirred the curtains, making them billow or lift, revealing the Wall’s smooth gray stone.

  The red, representing blood that would soon be willingly given, matched the red and black livery of the paladins standing along the parapet, at attention with shields and pikes, wearing masks that covered their rotting faces.

  In a week, demigods would strip all of the bunting away, but they wouldn’t stop there. They would also tear down the ornamental woodwork—the carved rain gutters, gargoyles, and trim. They would rip the pavers up from the ground, destroying the intricate design of red swirls against a white background. Then the demigods would spend the next year rebuilding and redecorating the courtyard as part of a final test of ability and readiness to leave the Seraglio.

  In two years, Wrend would undertake that test. He already had plans on what kind of design to create with the pavers. With luck, he would win the right to that task.

  Other demigods, some of Wrend and Teirn’s siblings—although typically much older than Wrend and Teirn—also worked among the wagons. As they carried equipment, repaired a wagon, or completed any of a number of duties, they sang in unison about a demigod who’d lived out his days in service to the people of a southern district.

  Teirn joined in the song for a few words, using a false bravado, and rolled his eyes.

  “Why did they choose this insipid song?”

  “I like it,” Wrend said. “The tune is catchy.”

  He tried to squeeze past Teirn, to get ahead, but Teirn blocked him, nearly ramming him into a wagon. So he settled for adjusting his grip on the box and looking for an opening as they continued up past the wagons and buildings. He joined in the song, but without the sarcasm.

  When they’d almost reached the top of the courtyard—the last building on their left, and the top of the row of wagons on their right—Wrend looked back at the double gates and frowned.

  “I guess we were wrong,” he said. “The gates won’t open while we’re here.”

  Teirn shrugged. “Too much to hope for, apparently.”

  More than anything, Wrend wanted to get out of the Seraglio, to finish his education and get out into the world, serve the Master’s followers, and see more than just canyon walls. He chaffed at classes and trade lessons and lectures. He needed to get out and live life, but couldn’t until age twenty, when he would receive an assignment as a Caretaker. How lucky the other demigods moving around the courtyard were. How blessed the lives they lived out in the open world. They returned to the Seraglio only once each year, for the Reverencing.

  As Wrend and Teirn approached the cheese wagon at the top of the courtyard, Wrend dodged to the left and surged forward. But Teirn jumped in front of him, nudging him so that he nearly fell against the boardwalk. With a laugh, Teirn reached the wagon first. At the base of the three steps that led up to the open wagon door, he smirked and looked back at Wrend.

  “Sixteen for me. Fourteen for you.”

  Wrend didn’t acknowledge the defeat with even a shrug.

  Once Teirn had deposited his crate and exited the wagon, Wrend ascended the steps and entered. Inside, the dimness smelled like heaven, with the scents of half a dozen cheeses mingling into a greater temptation than a vast majority of things that ended up getting other demigods killed. Wrend would have liked to take a brick. Or five or six. It was as if the priests who’d given them the assignment knew his weakness and wanted to test him.

  He deposited the box with the others, exited the wagon, and shut the door behind him.

  “Finally done,” he said. “Now, to the square?”

  Teirn frowned. “Why torture ourselves. The priests won’t let us take a peek at the decorations.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  As demigods who hadn’t reached their majority, they couldn’t attend the Reverencing—though they’d done plenty of work to prepare for it. But everyone did. The Reverencing was the feast where the Master honored the demigods he would soon sacrifice to the people.

  Voices called their names from behind. They turned to see two mothers striding up the boardwalk, past a bowing handful of serving girls in yellow dresses. One of the women, Calla, waved. Wrend smiled and waved back. The other mother was Rashel.

  Teirn sighed. “I should have known we wouldn’t escape so easily.”

  “We still might.”

  “Not likely.”

  They headed back down past the cheese wagon. The women descended a set of stairs and met them between the boardwalk and a column of wagons. Calla embraced both of them in turn, exclaiming pleasure at seeing them. Rashel nodded and kept her hands on her hips.

  Wrend couldn’t greet Calla without feeling like she accepted him. Her pleasant smile and warm eyes reached out in amity. Her hair, as dark as Teirn’s, flowed down her shoulders and back. She had a thin face with eyes like black pearls. Her tanned skin bore no flaw. She looked like Teirn, only older and female.

  As usual, Rashel wore her brown hair in a loose bun. Unlike Calla, she had an undistinguished face. And where Calla emanated acceptance, Rashel emitted a stern challenge, a demand that you prove yourself before she accept you. Each time he saw her, Wrend felt like he had to verify his abilities anew.

  Both she and Calla stood a head shorter than
Wrend and wore the standard mother’s clothing: a red skirt, split from the hips to the hem with a white skirt beneath; a white blouse with a laced bodice and the likeness of tree roots embroidered in gold up the center of their torsos; and sleeves that ended below the elbow.

  “Have you finished your tasks for the day?” Rashel said.

  “Of course, Mother,” Wrend said.

  He addressed all of the Master’s hundreds of wives that way, since they all helped raise him and the other demigods. The Master preferred that none of his children knew exactly which mother had given birth to them. Only over time had Wrend concluded that Rashel was his mother.

  “We thought,” Teirn said, “we would go take a look at the banquet square before they shut it off to the likes of us.”

  “Well,” Rashel said, “that won’t be necessary. You’ll have an opportunity to see it later.”

  Teirn grunted. “In about two years.”

  “No,” Calla said. “The Master sent us to find you.” Her face became solemn. “Teirn, it’s time.”

  Teirn’s brows knotted and his lips tightened. Calla returned his expression by raising her eyebrows. Wrend didn’t understand the sudden seriousness.

  “Time for what?” he said to Rashel.

  A message from the Master outside of the usual routine was an honor. That it came via Rashel reinforced Wrend’s notion that she’d borne him. In fact, whenever the Master had a certain task or specific information for Wrend, he sent Rashel. Except for Teirn, other children received messages via priests or a variety of mothers. For Wrend it was always Rashel. For Teirn it was always Calla.

  It explained why they felt they held special status with the Master: everyone knew that the Master favored Calla and Rashel above all his other wives. It made sense for the children of favored wives to also be favored.

  Rashel pursed her lips. “He wants you to sit at his right and left hands at the feast tonight.”

  Wrend laughed. “He does not. Why would you even joke about that?”