Faith: Anathema

(Part of a continuing series. Previous post here, first post here.)

Jared looked up as hoofbeats rose behind him. Thera appeared to his right, held high above him on her riding ass. Jared sighed, and looked down as he trudged onward. The Beckoner village was in sight now, just a few hundred yards away.

Thera spoke, breaking the silence. "Don't do this," she said, as she had each day since she'd caught up to Jared after his precipitous departure from the Beckoner camp. "The Cause has need of you. Now, and in the years to come, after our victory. Don't throw yourself away for this futile gesture."

Today, in sight of his goal, Jared answered. "I have to," Jared said, anguished. "I believed in you, in the Cause. I had faith! And you slaughtered friends and employed monsters without apology."

"I only do that which is necessary for the Cause," Thera said. "The Jhozhur were killed for our own safety. They were a threat to the cause, once they - they - decided they'd had enough of war and ended our campaign, our alliance."

"And how do you justify Lar?" Jared stubbornly asked.

"Lar is a tool. That is all. He serves the Cause well. If he even once trespasses against us, he will die. But we are few in number, Jared. Very few, compared to the world of enemies lurking beyond our valley. I need every tool I can get."

"Is this supposed to persuade me?" Jared asked, indignant.

"It's the truth," Thera told him.

"No. It's your truth. I saw that after I spoke to you about Lar before, after I saw the heaps of the dead. It is your will that shapes this campaign, your vision of the Cause. When the Interpreters replace you as War-Leader, that will stop."

"They won't," Thera told him, impassively.

They didn't.

Jared and Thera met once more, afterwards, outside the village. Jared sat on a boulder, thinking. Thera rode up to him; Jared watched her approach. She stopped just before the boulder, meeting Jared face-to-face.

"They exiled me," Jared told her. "Declared me anathema, expelled me from the service of the Cause, gave me the mark of death should I ever enter Beckoner lands after this week."

"My parents refused to see me."

"I talked to the Interpreters, afterward," Thera told Jared. "Kept them from setting the dogs after you."

"I've lost everything," Jared mused. "My parents. The Cause. You. And now, I don't have anything to believe in. Anything at all."

Thera looked at him sympathetically. "You've made a great mistake," she told him. "But you still have another chance. We've already cleansed, by my best guess, about half the tribes in this land. We're getting better and faster with each one. Within five years, we'll have cleansed the every valley held within these mountains, and will move on to the world Outside. When we do, we'll need agents out there, serving the Cause through subtler means."

"I've been forbidden from serving the Cause," Jared reminded Thera.

"The Interpreters are no longer important," Thera said disdainfully. "They're feeble, impotent. They'll do whatever I tell them to. What matters is that you are sworn to me."

Jared sat for a long moment, thinking. Then, slowly but with increasing vigor, he shook his head.

"No," he said. "I've had enough of that. I won't serve the Cause, or you. I can't. I don't know what I will do, but I just can't believe any more in any cause so ruthless as yours."

"And your oath?" Thera prompted near-tonelessly.

Grimacing, Jared said, "I forsake my oath. No longer will I serve you, Thera."

Thera waited a moment, speechless, motionless, seemingly waiting for something. Then, quickly, she turned her mount and sent it trotting back down the valley, back to the village.

Jared watched her for a moment, then turned and began to walk into exile. He didn't look back.

For some years, he will wander in the wilderness - in valleys not yet touched by Thera's hand (and hostile to strangers), in barren wilderness, and, at last, into the world Outside. He will age, become tougher, perhaps wiser. He will be lost to history, for a time.

It is when he returns to the stage of history that our tale resumes.