“What do you mean you tried to stop him?” Jerico asked, honestly baffled. “How can two servants of Karak battle? If this Cyric is claiming he’s a god, he’s speaking blasphemy. Why has Karak not struck him down, or denied him power?”
“He hasn’t,” Luther said. “And he won’t.”
“Then is he right? Is he really Karak?”
“Of course not,” Luther snapped, and the sudden shout caused him to double over hacking. He coughed until blood was on his fingers, but at last he regained his breath.
“No,” he said. “That is the great mystery, one I have long suspected and only now understand fully.”
Jerico lifted his hands in surrender.
“Then explain it, Luther, because I do not.”
“I will,” Luther said. “But promise you will listen with an open mind. What I say may sound like blasphemy to you. Perhaps some of it is, but it is the truth, so far as I know it.”
“Say it then,” Jerico said. “I’ll try to keep my mouth shut.”
“The rules of our gods are strange,” Luther began, his wet voice painful to listen to. “The power they grant us, be it the fire and light on our blades, or the spells we learn to cast, they are all granted by our faith. Our faith makes them manifest, and our faith decides their power. But it is faith, and only faith, that grants the power. I am beginning to believe that so long as there is faith, Karak and Ashhur will grant that power, whether they approve of the wielder or not. Perhaps they must. There is no way to know.”
Jerico felt his hands tighten into fists. Luther was right. To claim either god was helpless against those who took power in their name…surely that was blasphemy.
“What of Darius?” he asked. “He told me of Karak’s betrayal, and how he yearned for a restoration of his faith. Yet he was denied it because his beliefs no longer matched your god’s dark design. How does that fit into your ideas of gods being slaves to humans?”
“Doubt is a cruel lion. Often it attacks without us ever being aware. From what I know, Darius spent many months in Durham with you, and even counted you as a friend. Your words affected him, though he might not have realized it at the time. His faith was shaken by discovering a second truth, which I will tell you now. He lacked wisdom to understand it, to reconcile with it as I have. You see, Jerico, our gods have changed.”
It took all of Jerico’s willpower to remain silent.
“I see your anger,” Luther said. “I understand it too, for you have forever seen Ashhur as the unchanging mountain. But when our gods first warred, Ashhur was not as you know him now. His tendencies to mercy, forgiveness, compassion…he did not practice these weak compulsions as you now preach. He was a god of Justice. Karak was a god of Order. In a way, their goals were the same. They both wanted a civilized world for Dezrel, a land where men did not murder, steal, and rape, and women did not sell their bodies for a scrap of coin. But my god was all about the ends, whereas yours kept focused on the means. That they warred is no surprise, as much as many in my order like to claim otherwise.
“But the Karak I read about does not quite match the Karak our paladins profess. Ever since our brother gods were imprisoned by Celestia, what we preach has slowly evolved. The miracles change, the demands of our gods shift, and suddenly these two deities of Justice and Order are so very different than they began. What I wonder, Jerico, did our gods change, or did we change our gods?”
Luther believed it, all of it, but that didn’t mean it was true. Jerico tried to understand, to know what it was he himself believed. It’d take time to think on these things, time he didn’t currently have.
“You said Cyric is our greatest threat,” Jerico said. “Tell me why.”
“Because the Karak I worship, the Karak I teach to my pupils, is not the Karak others would have him be. No doubt Darius realized this as well, and his faith was broken for it. Can the same god have multiple faces? No, one must be true. One must win out, and the history of our order is full of men in conflict about our god’s true nature. The worst of them is the prophet, the man with a hundred names and a thousand faces. Over the centuries he has always been. His words drip with war, and his fingers are stained with the blood of sacrifice. There have been those of my order who have mistrusted his presence from the beginning, for death refuses to claim him. The Council of Stars even denied his authority over us. I was just a young man then, but I was one of the loudest speakers there. So often I’ve felt myself fighting a losing battle, but never did I think it would come to this.”