Tenebroum

Chapter 44: Paying the Toll

"Truly?" Kelvun asked. Until her last sentence, he'd only been pretending to be impressed by the religious nonsense the woman had been going on about, but now she had his full attention. "You've seen the water dragon yourself, with your own eyes?"

He took another drink of his wine as he tried to remember the woman's name. Alison? Arrissa? He was pretty sure it was the former, but it didn't really matter. Until just now, he'd been far more interested in getting her drunk enough to see what a priestess of the cult of Oroza wore underneath their drab blue robes. That was the whole reason he'd brought her back to his cabin. To the best of his knowledge, their order had no rules demanding celibacy, and if they did, then he very much doubted they would apply to a Lord like him. Why would they? They worshiped a goddess of fertility; surely, with all the fertility she'd given his lands, Oroza would appreciate him returning the favor with a member of her flock now and again.

"I have, my lord, not just in prayers in the temple either," she giggled nervously before taking another sip of wine to steady her nerves. A common girl like her had obviously never been in the presence of real nobility before, and it showed. "I was there - that night on the waterfront. That's what made me convert. As soon as I witnessed the true power of the river dragon, I knew that I must give up my sinful ways and focus on serving her."

That admission forced Kelvun to raise an eyebrow. When the priests of the Orozian temple in Fallravea had asked for permission to come with him on his annual trip to tithe the river goddess, he'd accepted, but only because it would have seemed strange not to. The last thing he would have expected was to meet someone along the way who could shed some light on the mystery that had happened just over a year ago. "You were there that night? You saw what happened."

When Kelvun had returned from last year's tithe, he'd seen the devastation on the southern end of the waterfront even before he'd returned to the city proper. His underlings had told him that it was evidence that they'd done something to upset the river, but a few coins in the right pockets and Kelvun had quickly turned the blame in the story to a barge captain that had upset the goddess instead. In that time, he'd received a few stories, but not the one he wanted most: that of his spymaster, who had been missing ever since.

"I was, my Lord," the priestess answered, nodding her head in an awkward sort of sitting bow as she tried to observe protocol she didn't truly understand. "I was on the docks that night, ummm… plying my trade with a couple of sailors when it all happened."

Normally he'd have a lot of trouble not staring at her generous cleavage when she leaned forward like that, but her words banished his lust in an instant. On any other night, talking about any other topic, Kelvun would have focused on the lewdness of what she'd just said. He would have asked for all the lascivious details and then paid her double what her rate had been just to relive the moment with her. His wife was still recovering from their firstborn, after all, and there wasn't a man alive who didn't understand that a leader like him still had needs in times such as these.

But his true need was to finally know the truth.

"Tell me," he breathed. "Tell me everything you saw."

She blushed, and for a moment, she started at the beginning, with exactly how many ducats she used to charge, but Kelvun rushed her past that part. "No, no, no - The crash, tell me about the crash. Was it truly a dragon?"

"It was my Lord," she agreed, obviously a little annoyed that her attempt at seduction was starting to go sideways. "She was as powerful as she was beautiful, and she towered over most of the buildings on the waterfront."

"That big?" he asked incredulously. He'd known that anything that would shatter the broad south dock had to be monstrous, but he found that when he tried to imagine a river dragon like the one in the murals that was two or three stories tall, his brain just wouldn't accept it. "Describe it to me, please. I'll pay you; you need only name your price."

"Not all, my Lord. You donate so much to honor the river every year. You needn't pay me for anything. I'd happily do whatever you ask for free…" She let the moment of sexual tension linger, but when Lord Garvin didn't bite, she continued. "My Lady Oroza was beautiful, my Lord. I wish you could have seen her. She had such pale skin and wide eyes, and the way that she rode on the dragon, she—"

"She rode the dragon?" Kelvun interrupted. "I thought she was the dragon?"

He'd been so busy trying not to laugh as she mentioned him tithing the river goddess that he'd almost missed that point. This would be the eighth year of his reign and his seventh trip to Blackwater, but he'd never once tithed her goddess. Not in truth, and this would be the first time that he felt brave enough to reduce his usurious payments to a creature that no longer seemed to exist, though.

From everything he'd seen in the last few years, the likeliest explanation for why he no longer got those terrible dreams was that his efforts to drain the swamp had finally paid dividends and starved the spirit of its strength. Between that and the fact that the river goddess had reasserted her claim to the area so often lately, he no longer felt that he needed to honor his oath to pay the loathsome spirit that he'd bargained with so long ago. Surely she would protect him should the worst happen, wouldn't she?

"Well, the water is muddy here, and I confess that I was so shocked by the sounds of shattering wood that I remember it both ways," Alison agreed. "She was at once the majestic river dragon with gilded scales rising out of the water and simultaneously a rider upon it. She wasn't in a saddle, though, like you might ride a horse, you understand? She was in a gilded carriage of silver and gold, like in a fairy story."

As the woman spoke, her eyes clouded over like she was struggling to remember something or, more disturbingly, struggling not to remember something.

"I didn't see the first boat that she crushed," she remembered. "But I saw the second and the third, and it was only after I thought that I should run that I noticed that she was chasing someone down the docks."

"Who was she chasing?" Kelvun asked. Trying to imagine the carnage of that scene was difficult, but trying to think of who might be important enough for even a small god like her to personally hunt down and kill was even harder. Small gods lacked the powers of true divinity, but even so, it was a foolish person who would ever dream of crossing them.

"I have no idea," she said. "I was frozen in fear as I watched him go though. The wagon he was running from was smashed into flinders, and just before he reached the land, foolishly thinking that such a place would be out of my lady's reach, he tripped and went tumbling to the ground."

"Did she kill him then or drag him into the water while he was still alive?" he asked, leaning forward. His wine was forgotten now, and he was sitting on the edge of his seat. Kelvun could hardly contain himself as she continued her tale as a nameless dread came over him. Suddenly he felt foolish for trying to cheat the swamp even though it was dead and gone. He no longer had a real fear of the darkness. Perhaps this goddess now felt that his payments were owed to her instead? Could this whole story be some sort of message in that regard, he wondered?

"Neither, actually," the priestess said, surprising him. "She just sort of loomed over him for a long moment. At first, I was sure she would destroy him like she had everything else in her path, but instead, she just stood there frozen for the better part of a minute and gave him some sort of message. After that, he fled as quickly as he could, and then she turned her gaze to me instead."

"What did she say?" Kelvun asked, feeling uncomfortably reminded of the night that he'd made his pact with the darkness. Was this the source of his paranoia all these years? Did the goddess Oroza have servants of her own working against him the same way he'd once carried out the orders of his own demon?

"To me? Nothing. She just looked at me with those dark, sad eyes from her gilded carriage and then turned and—" she answered, her voice mixed with both fear and awe.

"No, not to you. To the man!" It took all that Kelvun had not to throttle the woman. If not for being in the right place at the right time, he wouldn't care a whit for her beyond the bedroom.

She looked at him, obviously unsure of what to say, before she finally opened her mouth. "Well, you have to understand that I was terrified, and they were far away, so I really didn't hear anything, but even so, the priestess told me that I shouldn't repeat it."

That at least made Kelvun smile, and he placed his hand on her knee to reassure her. "You didn't hear anything, and you shouldn't repeat anything you heard are two very different things, Alison. Now which is it?"

"Ummm…" She realized she'd said too much and was looking for a way to back-peddle her way out of this trap.

"Come now, I'm Count Garvin, the Lord of the whole region. Surely you can tell me anything," he said in his most sincere tone of voice. "I promise you, I can make it worth your while…"

The moment of indecision stretched a few seconds longer before the priestess finally said, "Alright, but you mustn't tell a soul that I told you; I could get in real trouble."

She waited for him to promise before she continued. "My lady Oroza said something about how the temple depths were inviolable and that he must instead seek the headwaters to be truly cleansed. I think she was forcing someone to repent from some terrible deed they must have committed honestly."

"The headwaters, hmmmm, that's very interesting," Kelvun lied. He pretended to consider what she said, but in reality, he had absolutely no idea what that might mean.

They talked for a while after that, and Kelvun considered bedding his interesting little priestess just for something to do, but in the end, he just dismissed her to brood alone. Another man might dismiss her words, but he knew well the touch of the spirit world, and even if he'd succeeded in throwing off the shackles of his old master, there was nothing to guarantee that the river goddess wouldn't seek to enslave him in the same way. Did that mean that the greater risk was in continuing to venerate her and pay her tithe or in not doing so and cracking down on her worship? One would placate and strengthen her, while the other would starve and anger her.

Both seemed like poor decisions to him, and in the end, he decided to split the difference and hope that she would reward him with indifference rather than wrath. This year he would tithe the river goddess instead of the vanquished spirit of the swamp, but less than he had paid before. If she wanted more than that, then she could bargain with him the same way the darkness had.

That wasn't all that Kelvun decided on the final two nights of his trip, though. He also decided that he would be returning to his home in Fallravea via horse. One way or another, he would be steering clear of the river going forward. To date, it had served his domain well, but after lurid dreams about river dragons ravaging his city, he did not think he would sail on it again any time soon.