The Grove(121)
So . . . I have Your official blessing to demand a bigger staff for the Grove? she wanted to clarify.
Kata smiled at her, as warm as sunshine, if the sun could shine from the inside out rather than merely against her skin. (Of course. You are now the chief Guardian of the Grove, as well as its Keeper . . . but We will discuss its needs later.)
(For now, you may relax and just be yourself,) Jinga told her. He flicked His gaze to the side, toward the unseen source of all those shimmering rays pouring in through the Fountain Hall door. (Things will get a little . . . interesting . . . as soon as the Naming of Names is done, and this Convocation fully begins.)
* * *
Interesting wasn’t the word for it. Saleria preferred jaw-dropping when she thought about it later, because that was exactly what it was.
Certainly, she was a touch afraid at first. Even with the Lord and the Lady aspects of her Deities on hand to protect her—and she knew They would protect her—it was still unnerving to watch the scene that unfolded the moment the last God was Named.
Stepping through the Gateway of Heaven, Mekha looked half-dead, with one arm clinging to his shoulder via some sort of Artifact-mechanism dotted with gears and crystals and who knew what else . . . and He did not resize Himself to fit in the thrones allotted for the various Deities. He in fact challenged the entire existence of the Convocation, and the presence of the very woman who had brought all of the priests and priestesses here through her Doorway.
Within moments, the plan their red-headed hostess had outlined for the orderly progression of all these priestly petitions before the Gods was thrown out the nearest window. Accusations of power-stealing flew back and forth between the Patron of Engineering and the blonde Witch-priestess. It was like watching children throwing a ball back and forth between themselves, save that this ball had spikes on it.
The moment Mekha lifted His massive arm to strike down the defiant blonde Witch was the moment Queen Kelly made Saleria’s jaw drop. Bounding up to stride between the two of them, the incipient queen proved she had more bravery than anyone Saleria had ever heard of, not only demanding that both quarrelers sit down, but threatening to spank the God of Engineering—the God of Engineering!
Saleria did not know all the details behind what she was hearing, but the priest who had arrived bound and gagged as the last to arrive was the priest for the God Mekha, the Patron of Engineering, the supposed God for the kingdom of Mekhana . . . and the tale that priest told, when it was his turn to speak, was a chilling one, corroborating the accusations that had been flying across the chamber between Mekha and the Witch-priestess Orana Niel.
Saleria couldn’t help it; when she heard how Mekha had been stealing the powers of His worshippers literally for centuries, she leaned back in revulsion from the Thing that dared call itself a God. She wasn’t the only holy representative appalled, either. Anathema! This, what they were all hearing, went against everything she had ever heard of about the covenants of trust implicit and inherent between a Deity and the people He or She patroned!
It was Fate’s question that pulled her out of her disgust.
“Arbiter, you have reached your verdict?”
The arbiter in question was the queen of Nightfall. Something in the way the Threefold God spoke those words sharpened all of Saleria’s senses. A quick peek around showed she wasn’t the only one blinking and focusing. This is something important . . .
(Yes,) she heard both Kata and Jinga whisper to her, Their voices curling around her thoughts in unison. Sitting up straighter, she paid close attention.
The strawberry blonde incipient queen cleared her throat, looking a little nervous, or perhaps unnerved. But she didn’t hesitate more than a moment. “Ah, yes, Holiness. I have heard and seen enough to make a judgment. Mekha is not a Patron Deity,” Kelly stated. “Not by its definition. He does not care for the people He claims are His. We have heard how a member of His own clergy serves more out of fear than of love, and we have seen Him ignore that cleric. He steals His subjects’ powers like Broger of Devries tried to steal the powers of his relatives.”
Once again, Saleria had no clue who that was. She hoped that, at some point in this Convocation, she would get to hear at least some of the rest of this story, which seemed to have spanned more than two centuries, and had apparently caused the destruction of the last Convocation of Gods and Man, and the subsequent Shattering of Aiar that had torn the once mighty empire into shredded little kingdoms on the continent to the north . . . and who knows what else. But for now, she had to sit in puzzled silence, a bemused spectator of the resolution of a long history she did not yet know.