The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (4 page)

“But I don't want to see her!” someone
shouted from a side room.

“Cleric Domma is different,” another voice
asserted. “She-”

“I don't care if she dances naked for me!”
the other person screamed. “I don't want a woman of God in this
room with me! Prayer won't help me! Nothing can help me!”

Domma winced.
So it's another case like this.
Through all of her work with the mentally ill she
had come across almost every scenario one could think of. She had
been threatened numerous times, screamed at, cried to, attacked,
sexually assaulted, and even proposed to.

She peeked her head into the room. She'd
never been in this particular one. It was dark, but a few torches
allowed her to see a rickety bed that was fitted with chains, the
thinnest and most tattered of sheets stretched across it. The walls
were padded with some kind of straw or grass, probably to keep the
room's occupant from harming himself, but also possibly because
this hospital had been converted from a barn. The sweet smell was
rather pleasant.

The patient sat on the edge of the bed, not
chained up at the moment, although Domma had dealt with patients
who'd had to be restrained for her safety. A Warden in a brown robe
stood in front of the patient, blocking his view of the door. The
patient had not seen Domma enter. That usually worked to her
advantage.

Now that she could see a part of the patient
she was able to Delve him, spending the tiniest bit of her power to
give her a slight advantage. The tiny snippets she could learn from
his mind might give her the edge she needed to build rapport with
him. Delving was random. Images and phrases would stream into her
mind, most of them nonsensical, impossible to comprehend or grasp
onto. But sometimes, if she used her gleanings cleverly, it could
be enough.

Gzzt.

The sound, like a static
shock, let Domma know that her Delving had begun.
The thoughts flowed into her brain. Small, small
things. Pieces of the patient's mind. Random. Unsorted. Mostly
irrelevant.

She stepped fully into the room.

“Oh, shit!” the patient yelled, clearly
startled.

“Please, Stipson,” the Warden said. “Cleric
Domma is a woman of God and does not need to hear such words.”

Now that Domma was inside she recognized the
Warden. His name was Potter and she'd worked with him a few times
over the years. He was a man in his mid thirties, making him just a
bit younger than her. He had a handsome face and dark brown eyes,
still kind and understanding even after the abuse he took from his
patients on a daily basis.

“It is quite alright,
Potter,” Domma said, her voice silky. She tilted her head to the
side, giving Stipson a quizzical look from inside her hood.
“Stipson,” she said.
Gzzt.
“A dockworker were you?”

Stipson looked at her dumbfounded. The thin
bed covers that he had been clutching in defense fell from his
hands. “How did you know? I haven't told the Warden . . . I . .
.”

Domma took a step forward. “That is a proud
lineage; the name Stipson. I know most of the family lines of the
docks. Haroma would be crippled without our sea trade.”

“Yeah, I used to work for my da' on the
docks.”

Gzzt.

“A ship called Seastorm
Blessing?” Domma took another step forward. “She ran cargo up and
down the coast and even, very very rarely, to the island nation of
Trirene. Have you ever been there? To Trirene? I hear there are
very few that have.”

“Look, I don't know what you're doing,”
Stipson shouted, “but I don't want you to come any closer!” He
scuttled back on the bed.

“Stipson, please,” said Potter, ever the
polite one. “If Cleric Domma is bothering you-”

“I am not bothering him,”
Domma said firmly, giving Potter a look that she hoped would tell
him to stay out of this one. “I know so much about you Stipson
because God has told me.”
Gzzt.
“You love cats. Admirable, for they are important
creatures.”

“Warden could have told you all that! Wait.
No . . . You're a spy! A witch of some sort!” She hadn't lost him,
not yet. He was just taking a moment to drop his guard.

“Come now,” said Domma. “Witches are a
fantasy. I assure you my powers are very real, granted from God
himself so that I might do work on this earth. If you could relax a
bit, and with the Warden's permission, I think we should pray
together.”

Stipson frowned. “I don't know,” he said,
but he seemed to waver. Domma said nothing more. She stood silently
in the center of the small room.

“It's what she does, Stipson,” said Potter.
“If you try it and you do not like it, you don't have to continue
with it. I simply asked her to come because I thought . . . you
could benefit from her guidance.”

“I never needed no God before,” Stipson
grumbled.

Domma took one more step and then she saw
it. On the side of Stipson's head there was a gross indentation.
The hair around it was just starting to grow back; some of it
probably never would. The poor man was suffering from some kind of
massive head injury. It wasn't a wonder he had ended up here.

There weren't many that did what Domma did.
If Domma and her sisters hadn't fought for these hospitals to be
put up, people like Stipson would most likely have led painful
lives, possibly never fully recovering from their ailments. Stipson
only looked to be about nineteen. He had many years ahead of him
and being in this condition was no way to spend them.

“That's a nasty wound,” Domma said. “Did
Potter here patch you up?”

“He did. I been here a few months, I guess.
Time's funny. Slips in and out.”

"In and out like the tides."

"Yeah," Stipson agreed. "Like the
tides."

“Warden," Domma said, turning to Potter,
"you may leave us and attend to anyone else you see fit. You do
have other patients, do you not?”

“You know that I do, Cleric,” Potter said.
His eyes met Domma's as he left and there was something in them
that Domma recognized. She heard his footsteps retreat down the
hall.

He's quite taken with
me
, she thought.
I
will have to be careful with myself around that one.
But he wasn't bad looking. He always kept his
beard trimmed and his head shaved so clean. And he had always done
incredible work here.

“May I sit?” Domma asked, abandoning her
thoughts of Potter.

Stipson almost jumped to oblige her. It was
odd how a few well-placed and much-loved facts could put someone
almost under your power. Domma and Stipson shared the bed, she at
one end and he at the other. Domma almost never got nervous
anymore.

“You are a woman of God?” Stipson asked.

“I am,” she said.

“How do you know, though? When I was younger
I think I used to believe. I don't know.” Stipson put his hand to
his head. “Sometimes it hurts so much I just want it to stop. How
do you know He's real? Can you . . . can you . . . or can He . . .
help me?” He had a pleading sort of look on his face, his words
coming out slowly.

Domma reached up slowly and lowered the hood
of her cloak. She revealed a head that was completely devoid of
hair. In truth her entire body was like that: no eyebrows, no
eyelashes, nothing under her arms, or below her waist. The hood
worked for the reveal. That was one of the reasons she always wore
it.

Other times she was simply ashamed.

In the center of her forehead was a large,
round, swirling scar. There was no skull in that spot underneath
the scar. Her head was soft there, much like a baby's soft spot.
She'd had a tattoo inked to outline the scar: a Sunburst, the
symbol of her order.

“I know God is real,” Domma said, “because
He has healed me. And yes. He can help you.”

“T
hat scar,” Stipson breathed. “There's men on the docks got cut
by knives and swords and such, but . . . what the he- . . . what
happened to you?” He swallowed hard.

Domma smiled gently. “A childhood injury. I
remember little of it, myself. But those who witnessed it tell me
that I was shot by a bandit. The crossbow bolt stood out a good
foot from my head.”

“And you didn't die outright to that sort of
attack?”

“It seems obvious that I didn't,” Domma
said. “And, though I remember a lot of pain, I survived. All but my
hair.”

“Where did it all go?” Stipson asked, taking
a drink of water from a clay mug that he kept on the floor near the
bed.

“The physic thought the bolt was poisoned,”
she replied.

“There is such a thing? I never heard o' no
poison like that on the docks.”

“I'm sure it meant to take my life. The fact
that it got only my hair is a notion I'm fine with.”

“That's horrible,” said Stipson. “You've had
a . . . lot of problems?”

Domma nodded. “The worst part is how the
wound has affected my memory. A lot of my past is a blur. No matter
how much I talk to God he won't tell me what my past held. I can
remember my early, early childhood, then there's a large, patchy
gap, then it fades back in on the steps of the Sunburst
Temple.”

“God won't tell you?”

“If you've ever talked to Him, Stipson, you
would know it can be exceedingly frustrating.”

Stipson frowned again, a face that Domma was
now starting to associate with him thinking. “How come we don't all
have the powers of a . . . what are you called?”

“I am a Sunburst Cleric of the First Grace,”
she said, “but I think what you are referring to is the fact that I
am a Devotee. We are sometimes called Faithful Mages, but we don't
prefer it. And, of course there are many other names, some nasty
like Prayer Witch or Godswhore. I prefer Devotee over those.”

“Yes,” said Stipson nodding his head.
“Devotee. How did you get your powers?”

“Would you really like me to explain? The
details – the good stuff - may take a while and I want to hold
prayer with you before my time here is done. I have many others to
attend to.”

“Maybe the prayer would be best. But don't
you think it's unfair that you have powers and . . . and I
don't?”

“I don't think you honestly believe in God
at this point,” she said. “That makes a huge difference. And
besides, not everyone who is truly Faithful turns out to be a
Devotee. I don't know why I was selected to gain these powers, but
I will use them to the best of my ability. There are things you can
do that I can't, you know?”

Stipson frowned.

“I am talking, for example, of knowing how
to load a cargo ship,” she continued.

“You could learn,” said Stipson, pointing a
relaxed finger at her.

“I might be able to,” Domma conceded. “But I
didn't grow up with it. And besides, I am weak. Look at the arms
you have.” Domma smiled. “I hear some of those ships can hold some
seven-hundred fully packed crates. I would never be able to keep
track of them all or even help lift a single one.” She held up her
skinny arms and shook them gently.

Stipson smiled. That was better.

“We need you to get well,” Domma said,
“because you have skills, Stipson, and you can be much more than
just a bed-weight. May I lay my hands on you?”

Stipson closed his eyes and leaned forward
towards Domma. She placed her hands on Stipson's head and began to
draw power from God. Now that she had physical contact with him she
could Mend him a little, but it took incredible amounts of magic
and drained her quickly. She began the process anyway, reaching
into the web of his mind.

Mending allowed a Devotee to find glitches
within a consciousness. Domma found plenty within Ormon.

Pieces of his thoughts were wrapped and
twisted about, looped tightly many times over like an incredibly
complicated series of knots. This was something she found
sometimes, and it was never easy to deal with. She began to whisper
a prayer as she pulled a few of the easier knots apart.

“Praised is God,” she intoned. “We who are
so like him. Cast in his image and formed from clay and air. Help
Stipson to find himself again, Lord. He is lost at sea and only
with Your light – with a Sunburst – can he find his way back
home.”

“And a strong wind,” added Stipson, with his
eyes closed.

“A strong wind,” Domma agreed. It was always
better when the other person got into it. “And an abundance of
cats. Til'men.”

She had only untied seventy of the thousand
or more knots in his mind, but Stipson would notice the difference,
even if just barely. He would feel more balanced, might even be
able to sleep easier.

She stood up.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked.

“I am afraid so,” said Domma. “There is
little rest for a Cleric, and our visits are always too brief. I
will be back to see you, Stipson.”

“Please,” he said. “Call me Ormon.”

Something twinged in Domma's brain, but she
didn't know what. There was something familiar about that word.
“Ormon it is, then,” she said. "I hope you are feeling better." She
smiled as she pulled her hood back on.

“I am,” Ormon said. “I am.” His eye twitched
and he held his hand to the side of his head. “Just a little pain
sometimes,” he explained.

Domma nodded. She would have to trust Potter
to take care of this one until she could visit him again. She would
mull over his knots on the way back to Sunburst Temple, perhaps try
to really lay into them next time when she had more power.

“You are beautiful, Cleric Domma,” Ormon
said suddenly. “Even without any hair.”

“We are all beautiful,” she replied, with a
gentle smile and a wave. "Until I next see you."

Domma turned to go. She felt good. It was
good to help people. Her eyes watered a little as she left.