Chapter 12: Prophecy

Another day, another village.

The morning had been mostly uneventful. Dina had arrived in Deercall late the previous evening, long past sunset. Tired from half a day’s walk, she had immediately sought out the local inn, eager to rest. A quick meal of wheat porridge and deer sausages later, she found herself sleeping on the hay mattress of her rented bed before she even had time to take off her shoes.

Early this morning, she had set up shop near the small village square, just as she always did. This time, a newlywed couple—obviously well-to-do—had offered their yard to her, and the old mill wheel they kept there for decoration served her perfectly as a table.

The only thing that had been a little bit different about this day was the rate of business. Even before she had rolled out her cloth on top of the stone wheel, the first customers had arrived, eager to avail themselves of her services. Clearly, this was a place in dire need of her and Patera’s aid.

There had been the usual healings. Patients with broken legs, infections, gallstones, and even a snake bite sought her help. The latter had been particularly interesting. She had briefly considered treating it alchemically, but given the young age of the boy who had been bitten, she hadn’t dared take the chance. Everything had worked out well, though. Looking over to her left, she could see him running around, playing with his friend in the grass.

Of course, there were those for whom things had taken a darker turn, too, as there always were. Even ignoring the patients who couldn’t pay—despite knowing better, there were always those who would try to get away without paying—there had been a handful of cases where her healing magic simply hadn’t worked. And for an older woman suffering from a urinary tract infection, the gamble had failed when Patera’s dark magic caused her to grow a tumor instead of getting well.

But on the whole, most of the villagers who had sought her out had gotten the treatment they needed. She was happy with how things had turned out.

Just after noon, everything changed.

At first, she paid no attention to the man speaking in the village square. There were always people talking there, some loudly, and most of them just because they were boisterous, not because they actually had anything of importance to say. If they were truly worth listening to, she was sure she’d find out sooner or later.

Today, apparently, sooner came just after noon.

“May you be dragged to the abyss!” the old peasant screamed at the top of his lungs, making sure everyone in the vicinity heard him, whether they wanted to or not.

Well, that was different, Dina thought. She looked up from her vials to see what the commotion was about. Her next patient, a boy with stomach cramps, would have to wait just a little longer.

“Curse you, Balador!” the voice from the village square continued. Then the man turned his attention from the god of hunting and mutilation to his human audience.

“You’ve known us since Ma and Pa moved here from Silverstream,” he told them. “You know Shera and I have been devout our whole lives. We’ve prayed together with all of you at the shrines.”

Some of the onlookers murmured in acknowledgment. Whoever the old man was, the people of Deercall knew him well.

“Last night, Balador appeared to me in a dream. He told me a white stag was waiting for me in the meadow out by the old oak, the one lightning struck last autumn. The one by Hetter’s field, I mean.”

He paused, making sure those gathered to listen to him understood the implication. From how he’d phrased it, Dina figured it must’ve been far.

“He said I would hunt it and bring its antlers to his altar as proof of my devotion to the gods of the world. So I went out there as soon as I woke up, and you know I’m not a young man anymore. But I went there, and I looked, and there was no stag. I waited there for hours, and none came.

“And I thought that maybe I had misunderstood Balador. Or the dream had just been a dream. So I went home to my Shera to tell her I had failed our god.”

Now, he paused, and Dina could hear a sniffle from the man, as his voice broke.

More curious than before, she rose from her table and took a few steps forward to hear better.

“While I was gone, she had taken a knife and carved off her foot. My Shera, her own foot!”

Now he cried openly.

“I found her on the floor in a pool of her own blood, the knife still in her hand.”

Some in the crowd were visibly upset. Others seemed to take the old man’s account in stride. Dina found his tale saddening, but also not surprising. Such was the way of the gods. They had their domains, and you had to take the good with the bad. There could be no farming without plagues, no hunting without mutilation, and no commerce without fraud.

And no healing without torture.

It wasn’t like there was any alternative. This was the gods’ world, and you had to play by their rules—or not play at all.

“Curse you, Balador!” the peasant shouted again, turning his attention back to the god who had betrayed him. “I spit on your name, and all that you stand for!”

A few of the villagers—no more than you could count on the fingers of your hand—who had gathered to listen to the old man were starting to shout in agreement. They weren’t exactly revolting against the gods, Dina thought, but they were at least distressed enough by the man’s tale to feel dissatisfied with them.

In the back of her mind, she could feel Patera squirming, anticipating what was to come.

Suddenly, the light of day, which was already bright in the summer noon, turned impossibly intense. From the air above the square, blazing like a thousand suns, the shape of a man appeared. Larger than life, he towered many men’s lengths above those gathered. His long hair was brown, yet shone like gold. His beard was the neatest Dina had ever seen, pruned with perfect symmetry. And his robe, white as winter’s snow and trimmed with ornaments of ruby, diamond, and the purest gold, and held together with a waistband woven from precious metals, glowed as if it had been on fire.

From behind his back, a gloria engulfed him, stretching longingly like wings of light toward heaven. All around the god of the world, the air shimmered and crackled with energies the minds of mortal men were incapable of even comprehending.

The god of hunting and mutilation, having come to visit the world of man, shone with a beauty more pleasing than life itself.

“Bow before your god, and worship the glory and majesty that is Balador, your lord,” he declared, his voice booming across the village and echoing over the surrounding fields and forests. “Now strike down the blasphemer and purge this land of the unbeliever and his house. Do this in the name of Balador, the eternal, whose knowledge and power know no bounds, and I will bless your hunts. Defy me, and your eviscerated bodies will be left to rot in the fields, food for the birds of the sky and the worms of the earth.”

Well, there was nothing to motivate people like divine inspiration, Dina thought darkly, as she watched some of those gathered fall to their knees. She knew what was to come. She didn’t relish it, but she understood it had to be done. That didn’t mean she had to participate, though.

The peasants who had voiced their agreement with the old villager silently disappeared to the back of the crowd, while some of the remaining men, women, and children stepped forward, pitchforks and stones in their hands, shouting angrily. The mood had changed. Now, terror filled the air, thick enough to be cut with a knife.

Dina could feel Patera’s bloodlust rise in anticipation of the carnage to come.

She glanced at the onlookers lingering along the square’s edges, keeping just far enough back to avoid injury when the violence began. Some were elders, too frail to carry out their god’s commands. Others were children, too young to take part. And then there were those who could have acted, but chose not to, either out of fear, or because they preferred to watch the execution unfold rather than take part in it. Dina felt a little nauseated when she saw the lips of a woman in the crowd move in prayer, her face half-buried in the shadows of her hooded cloak.

Then the beating, and the screaming, started. At first, Dina could only see droplets of blood splash into the air, but soon the globs turned into streams and were joined by mutilated body parts.

Before long, the screaming ceased, and the crowd started to ready themselves to move on to the rest of the man’s family. But before they had time to leave the square, Balador spoke once more.

“You have seen my power, and yet there are those among you who disobey me,” he screamed, intoxicated by the butchery he had instigated. The air cracked with his rage.

“For the unbelievers among you, I will give a sign,” the god roared. “Thus speaks Balador, the all-knowing and all-powerful: before the sun reaches its peak tomorrow, the white stag shall walk through your village. Then shall you know the might and glory bestowed upon me, and you shall fall to your knees in worship of your lord and god.”

After delivering his prophecy, Balador left Deercall, as suddenly as he had appeared.

In the distance, Dina could hear the desperate screams coming from the old peasant’s home, slowly fading to silence.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, Patera giggled.

* * *

His heart sank when he saw that the second trap was empty, too.

Jalep was beginning to fear that the day would end with him returning home to Applefield a disappointment, once again with nothing to show. His wife deserved more from him than this.

Granted, it was still early in the day, and there was always the possibility that things could change for the better. But he was a man who easily succumbed to despair, and this morning was no different.

At first, his thoughts became even darker when he approached his third trap, only to find it devoid of prey. But when he got closer to it, he could see blood on the grass and small tufts of fur stuck to the wire. He lifted it up from the ground to reset it but stopped when he noticed that hanging from the contraption was the gnawed-off foot of a red fox. The animal had indeed been caught in his trap but had amputated its own leg to escape.

It wasn’t quite as good as actually catching the fox, of course. But Jalep’s mood still improved. The pain and terror the animal must have experienced had probably been received by Balador as a sweet offering. Hopefully, the god of hunting would bless him for that.

His fourth trap was located inside the hole of a rabbit's den in a small hill in the middle of a sheep pasture. Jalep carefully climbed over the fence into the field and crossed it, taking care not to spook the livestock in the process. Reaching the mound, he stuck his head down the hole to look for the trap he had set there the day before.

A wind, cold as death itself, emerged from the ground to brush against his cheeks.

From the wind came a voice, low and rumbling, as if the earth itself had spoken. “We know who you are, Jalep Maturan.”

Quickly, the hunter withdrew his head, almost falling backward in the process.

Terrified of the hill spirit, he started to back away but suddenly changed his mind. After all, it wasn’t every day someone from his village was called by name by the gods—albeit a lesser one—and he found himself curious to see what it wanted with him. And besides, shouldn’t he, at least for the moment, be safe from the wrath of the gods of the world, now that he had made such a powerful sacrifice to Balador? Granted, it had been more of an accidental offering than an intentional one, but the pain the fox had suffered had still been the same, and that, he hoped, would be good enough for the god.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice shaking. So did his hands.

“I am a messenger of the god of hunting,” the voice whispered in reply, its tone rasping as if coming from the rotting throats of men buried in the ground and lost to the ages.

“You will go to the forest by the river, between the mill and the old pier. There, you will find a white stag. Balador commands you to drive it to Deercall before noon.”

Deercall? That was several hours from where he was, Jalep thought, somewhat confused. How was he supposed to make a wild animal walk in front of him for that long?

Thinking about it some more, he realized he was in a bit of a bind. If Balador wanted him to drive the animal through Deercall before noon, he just had to drive it through there by then. If his god ordered it, he simply had no other choice. But at the same time, if he went to the forest by the river, there was no way he’d be able to drive the animal that far, let alone get to Deercall in time.

Which meant he had to think outside the box. The forest the spirit had suggested he should go to was too far away to allow him to fulfil his god’s command, but he knew he could use his experience to find a suitable animal closer to the village.

Running across the pasture, he jumped over the fence and pressed on through the trees beyond, heading in the general direction of Deercall. With so little time left, he had to hurry or risk invoking the wrath of Balador.

But he knew the landscape well, and having followed the herds of deer grazing among the trees of the forest for decades, he knew where they usually were this time of year. Hours later, as he neared the meadow just outside Deercall, where he expected to find them, he slowed down, took stock of the wind, and crept around the edge of the field until he could approach the animals from the right direction.

Jalep glanced at the sun. It was midsummer and it was now high in the sky. He estimated he had at most half an hour before Balador’s timetable expired. He didn’t expect failing to meet that deadline would be even remotely pleasant, and the stress was starting to get to him.

Fortunately, he managed to get into position without spooking the herd. Now, he only had to find a stag suitably majestic for his god. Looking across the field, he spotted a large, beautiful animal at the other end of the meadow, grazing among the cornflowers, completely oblivious to the approaching hunter.

Now, all he had to do was get it the last part of the way, through the narrow band of forest separating it from the village. When that was done, he could leave all this nonsense behind and go home to his wife, proud in the knowledge that he had served his god faithfully, despite not understanding the reasons for Balador’s request.

* * *

That morning, Dina got up early. She didn’t usually stay in a village this small for more than a single night, at the most. But this time, she was much too interested in what the gods would do to leave before seeing the prophecy come true, and had decided to stay in Deercall to the next day.

Of the prophecy’s fulfillment, she had no doubt. The gods of the world weren’t distant or weak. No, they were here, and you could see them with your own eyes and hear them with your own ears. They were real and powerful and true, they knew all and could do all, and what they prophesied would come to pass, just as promised.

But even though she knew it would happen, actually seeing it was too thrilling an opportunity to pass up. Prophecy in action could be quite invigorating. And so, for the second day in a row, she set up shop next to the village square, with one eye on her patients and the other on the field of gravel that served as the center of the hamlet.

The higher the sun rose into the sky, the more excited she got. She could see she wasn’t the only one in Deercall expecting to witness a miracle this day. People from all over the settlement were starting to gather in the streets around the village center, careful not to block the path across the square, or they’d literally stand in the way of prophecy. The feeling of euphoria in the air was tangible, almost visible.

Suddenly, she heard screaming from the outskirts of the village, close to the forest’s edge. As the sounds came closer, she could hear the clapping of hooves against the gravel street leading into the square. Moments later, from behind the corner of a building that had been blocking her view of the road, a large stag leapt into sight, followed by a man running after it, screaming with everything his lungs could give.

All around her, the gathered villagers began to cheer, giving thanks to Balador. Once again, the god of hunting had proven he was worthy of their praise and adoration. Some fell to their knees in devotion, moved to tears, and prayed to their lord to forgive their unbelief. Others, drunk on mead and divine presence, danced in the streets in his honor.

But Dina couldn’t help but notice the stag hadn’t been white.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods!

This novel is 43 chapters long, with new installments posted twice each week. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of my other stories while you wait for the next update?

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