Penance

Danyth had betrayed his own god. Kazos, Prince of Storms, was not known for his forgiveness nor his mercy. And if Danyth had been a novice acolyte, a recent convert, or a lay devotee, the hierarchy of the Sky-Borne Temple would have enacted its own discipline. But he was not called the Saint of Squalls for no reason. Kazos’ retribution would be personal, and epic. It would be the kind of cautionary tale the faithful will remember until the last gale rages over the greedy seas.

He stood on the docks, grey eyes drinking in the ocean as a hurricane brewed in the distance. His hair was long and prematurely white, as was often a distinguishing mark of his god. His dark blue capes fluttered and whirled around him with a life of their own, begging, pleading with the storm on his behalf. But the wind howled between two narrow merchant stores behind him, so cold it bit through the thick black inner robes that clung to him in fear. Sea spray leapt to the air, hurtled over ships and between the grimy dockside wood, slipping over and around his sandaled feet, dragging tiny icy chains across his skin.

The Prince of Storms could have easily started this off at the horizon. The god could have pinched a length of cloud, driving it down at the addled waves below, adding just enough of a twist to get it started. And a single spiteful breath would have catalyzed it all, carrying the roiling vortex of wind and hatred closer and closer to the port town of Kazand Edge. By the time Danyth had seen the storm, it would have been too late, the winds driven crazed and powerful, and the errant priest – the blasphemer – would have been fortunate to escape.

Danyth smiled as bitter as the wind. The town was named after the Prince of Storms himself. Kazos wanted him to see this hurricane as it was being forged, give him time to run, a chance to spare his faithful populace with their shrines and festivals in the god’s honor. Danyth had planned for this, had raced here – tucked away in the hold – of the first ship bound for the port: a quiet captain who would not question the Saint of Squalls, and a crew that wondered in whispers why the wind was not helping them if the famed Master Danyth was on board.

The priest’s smile slowly faded. On sea, on plain… in countless lands under the sky he had worshipped Kazos’ wide eyes and lightning-ringed hands. He had taught the folk of the ports how to honor the jealous god, to appease him, just as any groom would coach his friends on how to best please his royal bride. He had called down unrelenting tempests with a single hateful breath, and had urged the wind into the folds of welcoming sails with a merciful sigh. To channel the god’s blessings was as exhilarating as sex: a coupling of will, and love, and power. On the dusty plains, tornados have plucked him from the ground as delicately as any flower, and borne him through the air in a heart-pounding dance of silt and spin, as a father would pick up his child and toss him about in his arms, joyfully, playfully, as they went about their errands. Alone on a small boat, coursing through seas where land does not touch, the god drove his little vessel across the ocean’s shivering skin, the three of them – storm, sea, and servant – moving through each other, biting lips, stroking sides, screaming in a psychotic bliss that left the sky wide and blue, the sea flat and glassy, the priest dozing like an infant on the boat’s cradling deck, rocked to sleep by the last of the storm god’s wind. And they would whisper to each other then, spent lovers on a bed of waves; the secret things that orbit any soul. Danyth had listened to Kazos’ secrets, and had now used one against him. He had betrayed the love of the one being that had known him more thoroughly than any flesh-wearing human. The god once resided in his lungs, and Danyth had spat him out.

His heart burned with his own betrayal. Acid clambered up his throat and closed it in a vengeful grip. Traitor. Blasphemer. Heretic: this word scalded him right behind his eyes, just as the Saints of Law would brand the unorthodox. He could feel the word, its letters white-hot and accusatory, blistering his mind and boiling the liquid of his brain. He looked up at the darkening sky and could almost hear the god’s voice: not the crackling, chaotic song that could tear houses from their foundations, but grown poisonously quiet like the eye of a hurricane… You betrayed me. You, who I loved so much.

He wiped at his eyes with a sleeve, and a nearby sailor grew worried, began approaching. His grey eyes met the sailor’s, power and authority in them still, and the man shouldered his pack and stalked off quickly. They were frightened. Kazos was angry; they needed no priest to tell them this. But Danyth was with them. Surely Danyth would appease the god, lull him into forgiveness. Surely Danyth would petition on their behalf. Surely Danyth would save them.

And he thought of the sound of hungry waves against the side of the Singing Gull. He thought of the cloudy sky above and the crew, on deck, locking onto him with disgust in their eyes. They began shouting. The captain screamed at them for quiet. It disturbed the tiny baby in Danyth’s arm, who began crying.

Danos. Little and pink and angry. Not an hour out of the womb and still had not slept after that perilous journey from placental seas. His mother, Aleini, had screamed like a cyclone with each contraction. Her hair was matted to her face and forehead – beautiful hair that smelled of lavender – grown heavy with the effort of shoving her little boy into the waking world. And Danyth had been outside, on deck, screaming even louder. Hatred and shame tore at his throat as he raged at the winds for not getting them to port faster.

In the space before birth, a child floats in the First of Seas: waters warm and gentle, waters holding and forming. This is what they say in the port towns, that the sea lays claim to a child even before it is born. But should a child be born at sea, it must be given to the sea entirely. Mamwa, goddess of the deeps, long ago swore to keep and love any child born on her waters… to love them with the kind of obsession that even the other gods found distasteful and dangerous. She would hold them forever in her liquid arms, would pour her love into their lungs and saturate them with her joy. And the child would drown.

But Danyth had hung himself on a length of hope. Aleini was pregnant, yes, and waiting mothers should never travel by boat, or Mamwa might lay claim to their children. If not given her prize, she would drown every living soul on the bark. The captain expressed doubt, and Danyth stilled him.

“Am I not called the Saint of Squalls?,” said Danyth.

“Yer speak true,” said the captain. “But as I hear it, the lord of storms an’ lady of seas were lovers once… lovers still, on occasion.”

And Danyth nodded his white-haired head. “Yes, it is so. As servant of Kazos, I would not shame his lady and sully their pact. But…” And he had grabbed the captain by the shoulders, driving his grey gaze into the man’s eyes. “I am the Saint of Squalls! The winds will bear us upon their backs! Your sails will be as full as the woman’s belly. Surely you will arrive in Saltston Port, and they will marvel that your craft could move so fast!”

The captain frowned dubiously. “How deep the mother in?”

“What?”

“How long ‘til her baking’s done, afore the baby come?”

“A month to go,” Danyth said, and kept his eyes still, so that they would not tell the truth on his behalf.

“Pushin’ it a little close, ain’t yer?”

“I am a priest of Kazos,” he had said, giving a final squeeze to the captain’s shoulders. “It is in my nature to push.”

When Aleini’s water broke, Danyth knew than that there are powers greater than the gods, and these power are hateful and cruel, their laughter forged from the screams of nations and the wails of suicides.

There on the deck, his throat raw and torn from his screams, he sank to his knees. Tears in his eyes, salt spray taunting on his face, he had prayed more earnestly to the goddess of the deeps than he ever had to Kazos. He prayed so hard his heart shook and twisted, prayed that the baby would have a birth caul: the thin, web-like sheet that covered the heads of certain infants when born. For Mamwa had vowed that no such child would drown in her seas. This, too, a secret murmured from the smiling, lazy lips of the confessing god of storms. This, another secret Danyth had betrayed.

Somewhere, a thousand leagues away, beyond the din of the sea, he had heard a baby’s cry. Danyth leapt to his feet, sandals slipping on the wet deck, and bolted below. He hurtled down the wooden halls, knocking sailors to the side or slipping like wind around their bulky frames. He burst into the room – candle-lit, thick like swamp air – the captain-come-midwife sitting wearily on the ground, Aleini holding her squealing child with tears of love and pain streaking her face alongside the trails of sweat.

“Was there a caul?!,” Danyth screamed, his voice ripped and tattered and coarse. “WAS THERE A BIRTH CAUL?!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The people of Kazand Edge closed their shutters. They called their children inside and bolted the doors. Kazos was angry, and nothing was left to be done but put hope in the Saint of Squalls. There was a bitterness in the dark sky they had not seen before. And for the few who saw the priest on the docks, they saw a man of sorrow and loss.

But he would save them, after all. He would take the god’s final gift: an offer to leave the town, spare the faithful, and not have it decimated as thoroughly as Saltston Port was now a mass of wreckage where once there thrived a rich city. Danyth would go and the god would follow. Kazos would hound him, haunt him, until the god could devise a punishment so torturous that no one – until the last gale rages over the greedy seas – would ever betray him again.

And Danyth, with but a few simple words, stilled the storm in his own chest: My son lives. He allowed himself a weak and fragile moment of happiness, a father’s smile.