Chosen Ones

Stirred by a dream, the high priest awoke one night from a deep slumber. He stumbled through the grand hall to the scrying chambers. Shouting and shaking the tables, he roused the acolytes from their cells. There, in their linen small clothes, they consulted the charts, cast stones, and sorted the scalded innards of a bleating lamb brought in from the cold.

The high priest compared each augury, each divination. There could be no doubt. On that night a god was born among the humans.

One week later, all the peoples of the kingdom gathered before the gates of the mighty palace. The king stood on a balcony infront of the great crowd and asked that the newborn god be brought before him that he might shower the child with blessings and wealth. He sent agents out among the people, searching for infants born the night of the priest's dream.

The next morning, three young women holding babies were escorted into the king's audience chamber. The whole of the royal honor guard stood along the wall in their crisp uniforms with gleaming sabers. Distinguished noblemen sat on velvet benches along the side along with doctors, philosophers, and scribes. Great taspetries of rich purple hung behind the silver throne. The king in his cloak of white fur with his queen standing at his right hand and the high priest at his left.

The first of the three women stepped forward. She was a very plain sort of woman with the pitted, heavy features of a hard life lived. Her dress was of the rough sort of sack-cloth used by the fisherfolk, where the salt water brings rot and ruin to all gentle things. Indeed, when she finally spoke, her speech and manners seemed as rough and bracing as the storm-tossed tide.

"To all these mighty lords and wise men do I bring my child. Here in this court do I give name to Razhaal, god of the sea!" and she held her tiny child aloft. The assembled elite squited into their spectacles and leaned forward to glimpse some hint of divinity there, swaddled in fish rags.

After a moment of awkward silence the queen, a woman with an uncommonly sharp mind, wondered aloud if perhaps the child wouldn't mind to demonstration of his godly powers. The people of the court turned toward the fisher-wife with expectant eyes.

She beamed and nodded. "Of course, if the gathered lords and ladies can bear the sight, the mighty Razhaal will perform a miracle this day!"

She took her child and held him upside down, letting the rags fall from his body, revealing the squirming pink flesh. "Watch him now call upon the mighty tides even here in this stoney castle," She held aloft a crude knife, but sharp and hooked to peel scales. With a quick snap, she slash open the child's throat. "Behold," she cried out, "The salt-tides lick the floors, washing away the sins of the world,"

The crowd gasped in horror as the woman shook and squeezed every drop from the infant who quickly grew blue and still. "Return now, clean, to your plantations and counting houses for Razhaal has blessed you this day,"

The guards quickly seized her and pulled her from the king's sight and down to the dungeons below.

The king was greatly affected by the death of the infant and almost waved away the other women. It was the priest who counseled him otherwise, "My liege," he spoke, "Let not this one crude beast spoil this moment. Indeed, she was low and cruel, with such vulgarity. How could a god choose to live among such filth? The other women have poise, beauty and bearing. Let them bring their children before us,"

The king could not refuse such wise words, and so with a gesture, the next woman stepped forward.

"My gracious liege," she knelt before them in her gown of ruffled silk, "and the most honorable assemblage, I am humbled to find myself in such a position, to be handed such a great honor to shepard this new life into the world, to serve as a vessel to deliver such a being as this into the world," and there did she turn to show her arms and the sleeping child nestled in them.

Again the queen mused about mothers and how each must believe each singular child is the most wonderful and special creation.

"Of course," said the woman in silk. She snuck a hand into her bodice to produce three small rocks hardly bigger than a man's curled thumb. She held them out to show the assembly. "You see, this child is already a miracle, conceived in a garden from the earth itself as I lay in the sun. I lay there last spring as the world poured up inside me filling me with such a magic that just this week passed a boy was born," She placed the child on the ground and smiled over him, "This boy, Otok of the Stones, god of earth and bounty. Behold him now as he enjoys his favorite snack. Even without teeth, he can crush stones and eat them like biscuits!"

And she pushed the stones into the boy's face one by one, jamming and shoving them. The guard rushed to pull her away, but she had already burst the boy's jaw and battered his skull with the last rock. The poor creature flopped mutely there on the floor for a moment longer, then lay still. The woman in silk was sent to the dungeon.

The king was upset indeed and stood to march out of the room himself. The third woman pleaded, "Wait, my lord, those women were mad. Come see my baby, come see her. She is the one you seek,"

The king stopped a moment by the door to listen.

The third woman continued, "She has no name, she is a song of light and fire. She holds the secrets of the serpent peoples. She knows the voice of the dark!"

The king watched the woman with her child.

"She is the god born among us and I can show you," she insisted, "I'll just need a bowl of hot coals and a razor,"

The king spit on the ground in disgust and stormed from the hall.