99 Blessings

It was coming upon midnight when the stranger told them he was a god.

Luwell, who had finished his evenings last tale an hour past, perked up like a tavern cat that had been brought a mug of forgotten milk. Fair or foul, the evening now promised to be delicious.

After a bit of rocking back and forth, Luwell was nestled properly in the chair’s worn leather where he waited for the sparks to fly. His honed and practiced senses opened up like leaves angling to the light.

Give us something good, he thought happily. Give us something to take with us.

Luwell was a storyteller, a story thief in truth, and the Godless North had heretofore been a bust. The people were good natured, forced by the altitude and a lack of godly walls to work together, and over the years had become a people who abhorred conflict with one another.

Luwell hated them.

Not a deep hatred, just a passing loathing born from the wate of his time. The journey had been costly and hard, and while it had carried him far from his creditors and those who called for his tongue for telling stolen tales, it had been a bust as far as new material went.

Any storyteller worth his salt needed tales from far and wide. He was proud to say his tales were hewn from no less than three of the great Walled Cities and also included many choice morsels brought back from a trip across the Riven Sea. In nearly all of the myriad places Luwell had been, a man proclaiming himself a god would have seen him dragged out of the building by his throat. He would have endured a short, brutal trial for blasphemy and faced a grizzly execution in the land's customs. Fed molten honey in Ciaptha, made a home for Dreaming Wasps in Takuth, or grafted with iron and pushed into the charnel pits of High Lum for The Laughing Child’s amusement.

If he made it that far.

Lucky for the stranger, and Luwell’s coded volume of stolen stories, this was the Godless North and the inn sat no traveling zealots, pilgrims or seekers tonight. The inn contained only locals, and so it was laughter, not cries of sacrilege that filled the air.

A startled moment was all it was.

Badrick Seels, the town’s head man, was the one who ended it. A broad man of ginger hair, he sported a fine red beard elaborately knotted and adorned with a silver snake biting proudly onto its own tail.

“Well, stranger, that’s really something,” he said, commanding the room and setting its tenor to bemused. “Don’t think we’ve had a god sit at the bar as yet. ‘Nuther round I think’s in order. On me,” Badrick said, raising his voice to a jovial hollar.

A cheer. A great clack and clatter as Metea herself grabbed up a handful of pewter steins and began to fill them.

The tavern filled with noise and activity. Men and women reaching for their fresh drinks, reordering their chairs, opting for sight lines that could better see the stranger. Something interesting was finally happening and no one wanted to miss it. Even the three Keepers, back from a hunt of some undoubtedly unspeakable horror, rustled in their mud brown boiled leather and turned an ear.

Luwell didn’t take his eyes off the stranger. It was rare that someone said something he had genuinely never heard before. As a story thief he had sharpened his ears to knifepoint. From within the tavern's dark corners he had heard every manner of strange secret, devious plot, hushed treasonous scheme, wild drunken boast one could imagine.

The stranger had come in an hour past, ordered by pointing at the tap and sat quietly as if he was waiting for something, and then, just after eleven he had muttered it: “I am a god.”

The stranger was out of place, but not otherworldly. He was tall, but not towering. Dressed unlike the men of the mountain, but not in anything elaborate or fine. The strangest thing about him was his claim.

His face, beneath the brim of his wide hat, was the face of a man, nothing more. His jaw was square, his lips were thin, unremarkable. A dusting of stubble marked him as an outsider as no northman in his right mind would shave his braided beard. His teeth were white and straight, marking him as a man of means whose family had been able to afford a physist, but his garb was simple layers of cloth and leather, his cloak like a thousand thousand others.

The stranger smiled as Badrick slid a stein in front of him, white froth moments from spilling down the side. “We did not forget about you, holy one. It’s no nectar true, but it's as fine a draught as we can muster this side of the mountain, this time of year.”

The candlelight caught on the stranger's teeth. Luwell was surprised when a shiver ran down his spine.

So sharp.

He tried to shake it off. It was not like he believed the man. He was just a joker livening up a tavern on a cold night. A fool living dangerously, stoking the hearth fires with a bit of blasphemy. A ploy to get a pint by sheer audacity. It had worked after all.

Still, as the man spoke, Luwell caught glimpse after glimpse of sharp and white along the edges of his teeth and the chill would not go away, despite his proximity to the tavern fire.

“My lord,” someone called from the crowd. “Perform for us a miracle!”

"Yes, oh yes!” A rosy cheeked young woman chimed in with a giggle over the renewed laughter. Luwell thought her name was Neda, but could not be sure as he had not found her interesting and so he had let himself forget her story as soon as he heard it.

As a story thief, Luwell often imagined himself like a mad trawling fisherman. Scouring innumerable amounts of fish, but only keeping the one in a million with an extra eye, or three tails or who could sing. Tales others might shudder even to know were his stock and trade.

The stranger reached within his cloak and with nimble fingers produced two copper tokens, one he placed on the bar with a smile that let Metea know it was for her. The other he held out towards the room's center and spun along his fingers. As the copper coin danced, it glinted more and more rapidly in the firelight. The laughter ebbed as just a touch of genuine anticipation began to build.

The light from the wide hearth, thick candles, and copper lanterns began to catch on the coin’s surface at irregular intervals.

Luwell pulled on his pipe again but the acrid smoke did not warm his lungs as it usually did. He gathered his velvety green cloak up around his knuckles and pulled it in tighter. The tavern flame crackled and spit just beside him. He had told enough stories over his time in Peshowydd and the half dozen cliffside taverns nearby that the folk of the mountain had begun keeping the storyteller's place of honor open for him. The respect amused Luwell greatly, since he was the sort of man they would have been more likely to throw bodily down the mountain than keep a seat of honor for had they known the truth.

But few think to ask the teller for his own tale, Luwell mused. And certainly it is not one I offer.

Luwell breathed into his cupped hands and caught himself staring at the stranger’s fingers. The coin was moving fast enough that it had most everyone’s attention now.

His fingers. Luwell realized. The man has too many fingers.

But he hadn’t before.

Luwell had honed every bit of himself to look for the unusual. To trap and catch the odd and interesting. There was no way, no way at all that he would have missed a seven fingered man.

The stranger caught the coin mid tumble off the end of his extra digits.

Those gathered in the tavern clearly had been waiting for something more grand than a tumbling coin trick. Loud guffaws and jeers exploded into the room.

“Boo! I want my pint back,” Metea laughed, tossing her rag on the bar with a wet slap.

“My sons can do that with acorns,” someone bellowed.

Laughter kicked up again. Several men were trying to dance coins across their own knuckles and moments later iron coins were clattering to the floor. “I could do it myself if I wasn’t damn drunk,” one of them shouted.

Amid the chuckling, boasting, chiding and swearing the stranger muttered under this breath. “Wait.”

Luwell did not want to.

The Stranger’s hat tipped upwards a faint glint appeared beneath as his eyes caught the light. Luwell cast his own eyes down, desperate not to meet The Stranger’s gaze.

Gather up your things. Get out of the tavern. Sleep in a tree. You do not want to be here anymore. Luwell’s mind kicked like a startled mule. He had never been this willing to abandon a story. Never ever betrayed his vocation so thoroughly and completely. He wanted out.

With a sudden bluster of wind and shock of cold, the door was cast open wide, banging loudly into the stone wall. Evor the Waller and his three children staggered into the tavern.

Evor was too gentle a man to burst in that way. The whole room, all knew him, and all seemed to sense at once that something terrible had happened.

Luwell had met Evor his first night in Peshowydd. He was an incredibly kind man, doting father and loving husband. A truly good man like him was a rare find, but the story thief had tossed aside most of the details. He was a good man, which meant that when the god’s hammer fell on him, it would fall hard, but until it did, there was no story worth stealing there.

Blood trickled down Evor’s forehead. It had frozen red icicles in his beard. The children did not even whimper, their minds squeezed with shock.

No. Luwell’s heart bucked in his chest. I do not want to be here for this.

It was too late of course.

“Help us, please,” Evor choked out. “A bear. A bear wearing armor like a war-horse… It took Ivia.”

The words barely made it out of his throat. The horror was crippling him. Luwell could see the words forcing terrible sights before his mind's eye and each made him wince as if he had been struck a blow.

“I’m sorry to interrupt my good fellow,” The Stranger said, cutting him off. His voice was odd. His accent is unplaceable. “I happen to be in the middle of revealing a miracle.”

He then held up a stern finger for quiet.

Evor was stunned back to silence. He pressed his eyes shut, not able to process. He looked like he might stammer something, but was at a loss.

The Stranger suddenly had the air of a Child Day celebration performer. His gestures were elaborate and exaggerated. His voice lilted and sang.

“You there, ser,” he said pointing to a man seemingly at random. It was Adaber, a woodsman. “How many children do you have?”

Adaber’s massive brow raised. He set his jaw, not at all enjoying the evening’s turn. The big man began to stand and go to Evor by the door. “You’ll excuse me while I attend to my friends' troubles.”

“You’ll answer,” The Stranger said. Something dangerous played around the edges now. Adaber powerful muscled form and a lifetime of living by his own laws suddenly meant nothing and he obeyed like a scolded child.

“It just so happens that I have three. The Mothers Before blessed us with three as one in fact.” He was proud, even in the face of that terrible moment, he could not hide the pride in his children. Three children born as one was an incredible blessing. Rare beyond rare and with so few left anything that sped up the cycle of life was cause for celebration.

How did you miss that the woodcutter had triplets? Luwell’s mind was scrambling. He’d been in peril many times. Each and every time he had slithered loose of it like a mink, but he’d never felt as trapped as he did. The rest of those gathered were standing. Some of the men had hands on sword pommels, or axe hafts. Neda’s lovely round face was set and grim, a bodice dagger drawn and at her side.

“Congratulations on the boon of life to you all,” the stranger said, with genuine joy in his voice. “And you sir, how many children might you have?”

The other man, a trapper by the patchwork of furs making up his cloak, began to speak, but as he did his face began to pale. The words came slowly. Something had clicked in place and it filled the man with unplaceable fear. “I have three.”

The Stranger pointed to a woman on the other side of the room. “Three born as one,” she said.

His long finger, one of seven, moved to another person. “I have three. Born as one.”

“Two sons and a daughter.” Someone offered with a strange desperation, as if finding some differentiation would give them back their lives.

Luwell knew these facts could not all be the same, it was impossible. Each of us has a story and that story is our own. This man, though he was certainly no mere man, was twisting their tales together. What explanation could there be but some terrible design? Their histories were being tampered with by the stranger. Their pasts homogenized more deeply as each moment passed.

Two sons and a daughter all.

The veteran among the Keepers stood and hefted a greatsword from where it leaned on the wall. The pommel clutched a particularly large binding. The dull stone refused to reflect the tavern’s light as the warden angled it towards the stranger.

The veteran spoke authoritatively from within a neatly trimmed black beard. “That’s enough, magician. I don’t know what you’re playing at, but it’s done.”

The Keeper, a warden it would seem, squeezed at the Bind on the end of the sword. Luwell had seen a warden eat spellcraft a few times, though he had never managed to suitably describe what a strange thing it was to witness.

That’s all. All it is. Luwell tried to comfort himself. It’s a spell peddler muddling with everyone’s minds, putting a scare into us. It isn’t true. It’s bewitchment.

When the warden looked down in shock at the bind-stone and then at his companions, Luwell’s heart jumped back up in his chest.

The binding stone is silent, Luwell thought in panic. It is no magic. No trickery. This is happening. The past is clay.

The warden said nothing, turned his back to the room and sat, shaking, back at his seat. Luwell tried to bolt for the door.

His legs did not cooperate.

Badrick the Head Man began to speak, his once commanding presence now filled with fear and panic. “It was a blustery and cold night. My wife and children were on our way home, just down the road from Metea’s…” his voice trailed off as the memory jabbed forward in his mind with searing pain.

Luwell tried to run then, but his body was not his own. He looked down and realized he had been writing. His eyes flicked to the top of the page, he’d been writing since the man came in.

“We were on our way home and something big rushed out of the dark,” Badrick tried to continue but his throat closed.

“A bear,” one of the town guardians continued for him, because their story was the same. All of their stories were the same.

"It tipped the cart,” a woman called in. “Ignored the oxen. It went right for my husband.”

“My wife,” someone added.

My wife. My husband. My wife.

Again and again it was repeated.

Luwell counted thirty widows and widowers. Each with three children born as one. Each trio had two sons and one daughter.

Even as they realized it, it became true. As it became true, it had always been true.

The Stranger removed his hat.

His eyes were as fire.

The northmen were from godless lands unsworn and unmarked. Still at the sight of him, they began to kneel. An archmage could lift a mountain, a endsage could sing an army to dust, but this was a miracle none could deny.

None but a god could make something true.

It had not been so, but now it always was so.

So the northmen kneeled to The Stranger and all across the mountains in years and years to come would raise roadside shrines and markers to him. Luwell could see the traditions and trials and rites being cast forward into the future. They would whisper his prayers when they woke, and on dark nights, they would fear him.

Luwell’s fingers cramped as he wrote it. His skill with the pen usually used for thievery, now scrawled out a new sort of scripture, given freely. Or perhaps given by force. He was now The Stranger’s prophet. To the end of his days he’d never be remembered for another story than this one.

The sound of bones cracking shook the still air. Luwell saw small perfectly white shapes skittering across the floor towards him.

Teeth.

Evor’s walking staff lay shattered on the stone floor. It had broken across The Stranger’s face and had dislodged several of his perfect teeth.

No one dared move. No one dared to breathe.

The Stranger shook his head, trying to stop ringing from the blow. He blinked rapidly as if seeing stars and fell back to his seat at the bar.

“She was alive. She was alive as it ate her,” Evor said with an odd calm. “You did this? Why did you do this? Why did you hurt her? You who could do anything at all. Cause any happening. You chose to hurt her. Hurt them all. Orphan, our children.”

Luwell was not sure why he grabbed up the teeth. The vice grip of The Stranger’s will loosened, perhaps the blow Evor struck was to thank and in that stolen moment his thieves' fingers snatched up the teeth.

The god did not seem to notice.

Blood the color of honey poured down his chin. Where it fell on layers of leather and cloth the fabric moldered away, the leather mummified and turned to dust. Where the blood fell on the wooden bar it petrified. Where it spattered on the stone, the stone crumbled to dust.

The god stood again. The stars that were its eyes were now too bright to look at directly. Somewhere behind the light it looked almost sad.

“You do not get to ask us,” it said.

As its long fingered hands grabbed either side of Evor’s face his three children suddenly rushed forward. One struck its leg with a broken piece of Evor’s staff. Honey colored blood poured over the boy's hand and his scream was high and piteous. The girl tried to reach up and pry the fingers loose of her father’s face, but in doing so she looked fully into the eyes that were stars. Her hair fell loose from her head in clumps and her body seized and bucked, crashing into and toppling a table. The third child pulled their fathers dagger loose from his belt, but when faced with the overwhelming horror of the thing before him, his courage failed. The boy dropped the weapon and wailed into his hands, hopeless, helpless and overcome.

The God began to keen, “I blessed you with three children. I took one woman. Am I not kind? Am I not generous?”

Evor’s voice rose into exquisite agony then pitched up and up again until it was nothing more than the painful, wincing suggestion of a sound.

“You could have kept your memories. Could have kept her there. Am I not good?” the god howled now in fury and anguish.

Luwell watched transfixed by the horror of it. He knew would never sleep soundly again. The gods jaw snapped open wide. It's sharp, gleaming teeth, row after row of them, appearing from within pink flesh and gums.

“Am I not good? Did we not give up paradise for you? Am I not beautiful? Am I not glorious!?” it screamed from its wide open mouth.

Then it bit deep into the face of the helpless writhing mortal.

The men and women who knew him and loved him and relied on him, looked down.

The Keepers' backs stayed turned.

Luwell’s fingers helplessly wrote what transpired.

Evor’s blood and soul sprayed out into the air.

His children felt the life of their father spatter warm and cold onto their skin.

Then everyone forgot him. Only a ghost of him remained, an empty father shaped hole where he had once been.

The color of his eyes popped between the gods molars. The sound of his voice rolled around on its tongue. The last words he had spoken dribbled down its chin and spattered onto the floor.

The god chewed all that he was and swallowed it.

The screaming and shaking and the sound of fire from the gods eyes were gone all in a rush, but it was hours before anyone dared to look up.

The Stranger was gone, but for a handful of lost teeth. The man he’d killed was mostly forgotten. The fire had died down and the only warmth now was cast from the last glowing morsels of the devoured man’s soul it sputtered out on the stone.

His children sat huddled around them as if soaking in the dying warmth of eve's last embers.

They clasped one another's hands as the fading light of a good man reflected in their eyes

Then it went out.