Chapter Twenty
Twenty
There is no fouler sort of heretic than a Renderer. More than judgement, they warrant nothing less than extermination. But despite all efforts, their kind—and more concerning, their knowledge—persists.
—FROM THE WRITINGS OF BELLATOR HADRIANA
THERE WERE THINGS THAT we were taught at the Cloisters, and things that we were told.
Renderer—a word I first heard on the foggy morning I found Jeziah cornered by a trio of older Potentiates while on my way to the kitchens to steal something to eat.
I’d been there just over a year; him, a little less, and our training at the time had us testing our physical limits.
Three days has passed since we’d been given anything other than tepid water, and my stomach ached almost as badly as during the forced march that carried me here.
I kept my distance, pressed into a curve of wall, already having experienced my share of cornerings. Best not to interfere.
The fog softened their laughter, but it still carried the tang of amusement at another’s expense.
Then one—an older girl named Galilea—grabbed Jeziah’s wrist and wrenched his arm up so sharply he was nearly lifted off the ground.
“Always wondered what these were supposed to be,” she mocked, the undulating bands of Jeziah’s tattoos exposed. “Worms?”
No, rivers. To the north, there were hundreds of waterways that fed into the Great Meander river—one of which I had my own history with.
And thousands of folks who traversed them in convoys of houseboats and barges.
They would add a tattoo of each river they’d traveled the length of, filling their arms from wrist to collarbone.
But I didn’t know any of that until later.
“Looks like something a heretic would have,” spat one of the others.
“I’m… I’m not.” Jeziah tried to sound brave. “The river nomads—”
“Only practically a heretic then,” Galilea cut in. “You know what else is up there, hiding out in the wilds? Renderers. Oh, I bet they’d like to get their hands on you. Nice and young and plump for the cutting.”
Jeziah blanched.
“They’ll have him soon enough.” One of the others smirked. “I’ve seen him in the training yard.”
“No they won’t!” Jeziah wasn’t crying. But his composure was crumbling.
Galilea sneered, releasing him. “They really dug you out of the mud, didn’t they?
Go ’round the kitchens when they’ve got a pig hung and gutted.
” She leaned in so that they were only inches apart.
“That’ll be you soon enough.” Then, she shoved him into the wall, so hard I heard the crack of his skull from where I hid.
I waited until their laughter had faded away to approach.
I didn’t have a reason to, could have waited until Jeziah was gone too, but I found my feet carrying me over to where he was crouched, rubbing the back of his head.
I knew him, of course. I’d watched him toss and turn, lashed to a bed in our dormitory, suffering the effects of our blood mother’s blessings, certain this pale, scrawny boy wouldn’t be one of the ones who survived.
Later, I’d trained with him. Studied with him.
But our relationship began and ended at the boundaries of those lessons.
He barely moved once he noticed me, but those bright, vulpine eyes of his tracked my approach.
“What’d you do?” I told myself I was asking in order to learn. Find out what he did to piss off the older Potentiates. Not do that.
He didn’t answer right away, suspicious. Then: “I accidentally fell into her yesterday. During a drill.”
I remembered. It was torturous, weakened as we were, to keep up the same intensity of training. But watching my footing around Galilea wasn’t the only information to be gleaned here. “What’s a Renderer?”
“You don’t know?”
“Wouldn’t have asked if I did.” Sour tone.
A little threatening. To make him think maybe I’d make him tell me instead of asking.
He still had the hint of frailty he’d brought with him to the Cloisters, and had yet to hit the growth patch that would leave him with four inches and twenty pounds on me.
At that point in time, I still had the advantage.
But I didn’t need to resort to fists. “Thieves of divinity,” he said. “The older Potentiates say they hunt Chosen, flay them alive, snap their finger bones off one by one, pull their teeth and grind them into—”
“They made it up!” I snapped it with a child’s defensiveness.
Jeziah flinched, and a feeling of superior pride rose in me.
This was weakness, this fear, exactly what we were training to leave behind.
He’d been caught in it, he knew, and was probably picturing how quickly I would run to Prior Petronilla and the disciplining that would follow.
And I was picturing the same, knowing it was what any other Potentiate would do, and that maybe I’d be rewarded somehow, maybe with a meal. “The Goddess wouldn’t—”
“The Goddess’s Chosen can’t be weak.”
That shut me up. The truth was, we’d both been there long enough to know that there were consequences to not performing up to expectation.
And that sometimes a Potentiate simply… disappeared.
They’d be a fixture in training, a familiar face during studies, and then…
one day their bunk or their room would be empty.
One of our earliest lessons was to never ask where they’d gone.
Another blessed body would take their place soon enough, anyway.
Who was to say they weren’t given to monsters?
Still, it seemed unbelievable. “Our blood mother would never allow—”
“What if she didn’t know?” It was the closest thing to blasphemy I ever heard Jeziah say. “I’m not afraid to die,” he continued, and I was never sure if it was a defensive statement to make himself appear less fragile, or the truth, “but I don’t want to die like that.”
He didn’t. He died doing his duty to the Goddess, broken and sprawled across the bloodied floor of the Cathedral.
But that day we stole bread. And stewed apples and fresh cheese.
The punishment was bad enough that it was nearly a year before Jeziah and I exchanged more than a few obligatory words again.
By then, we both understood that Galilea’s tale was only a cruelty played out by the older Potentiates and, more importantly, that we hadn’t been punished for our crime, but rather for being caught.
We learned not to get caught.
Maybe Nolan needed more lessons in that.
I’ve gone only a few leagues before I tug at the reins of my newly acquired mount, pulling it to a stop without a full thought as to why, as if I’d reached the end of some road.
Carsaire was ahead, and the heretic on his way there had a strong head start.
There was the chance to catch up, if I didn’t waste time.
And yet, here I was, doing exactly that.
And thinking of Jeziah. His sharp-edged laugh…
his dead stare. Rotting away now, in his nook in Cineris.
The Renderers were as real and present as he feared, but they would never get him.
They’d never melt down his fat, bottle his fluids, or carve those bright, playful eyes from his skull.
Not like they would Nolan.
A groan escapes, never mind that I haven’t made it far enough away from the farm to feel safe. And yet, I can’t bring myself to urge the horse any farther.
Because if there are Renderers about, there’s no such thing as safe. Especially if their “hounds” can pick me out with a glance.
“It’s a good thing you’re dead,” I mutter, not caring whether Jeziah can hear me in the beyond. “You would have run crying back to Lumeris the minute these freaks showed up.”
I pull the horse around and retrace my path.
It’s stupid. I know it. Nolan deserves nothing less than to be left to the fate he made.
But it’s the fate itself that I can’t ignore, the abhorrent, rotten gnaw of it.
I know what the Chosen have done in the name of Tempestra-Innara.
Been party to it more times than I can count.
But none of us deserve what the Renderers have in store.
Not even Nolan.
The Renderers are still at the farmhouse when I return.
Back on the ridge, I count two new additions to their ranks, but if they located their “hound” or Avery, it’s not clear.
Given the way Baldy stomps around with an air of annoyance, however, I’m inclined to think they didn’t.
The caravan wagon I saw within the barn is now outside, hitched to a team of draft horses.
And, to my relief, Mortimer and Buttons are lashed to the back as well.
I’d pictured them lost and afraid, turned out into the woods after the Renderers captured Nolan, but clearly, they aren’t foolish enough to waste a couple of quality horses.
Or maybe they’re just looking for more ways to pad their lost profits.
As I watch, the wagon gets loaded, the final addition an ominously large wooden crate.
Something in me tightens, make me wonder whether they changed their minds, decided a dead Chosen would be easier to transport than a living one, but the holes drilled into the side for air gives me hope.
Finally, they move off. I wait before following.
This is the compromise. I could try to take them here, but given the fact that they’ve already managed to subdue one well-trained scion of Tempestra-Innara, that seems like a less than wise idea.
And if there are more Renderers, I need to know that…
and, hopefully, figure out a way to remove them as a threat.
Rescuing Nolan—if I can manage it—well, that will be a bonus.
And while losing track of the heretic heading to Carsaire needles me, the woman with the Renderers seems to know where the reliquary is being kept too.
I’ll just have to persuade her to tell me.
I keep a safe distance, but their trail isn’t hard to follow.
The Renderers aren’t Chosen, though. They need more sleep, their horses need breaks.
They make camp, they break camp, I follow.
The forests along the roads turn vibrant and plush, a far cry from the twisted, withered lands surrounding Novena.
Civilization reappears in trails of smoke rising above distant villages and the presence of other travelers on the roads.
I follow closer, less conspicuous now, but still keep to myself, hood drawn most of the time.
Here, I’m not the only one.
The familiar friendliness that Nolan and I encountered on the road to Belspire doesn’t extent to this part of the Devoted Lands, apparently.
Eyes aren’t met, packs kept close, cargo tied tight.
I ask a few travelers for news from Lumeris, worried that a new avatar might already have been found, but I learn nothing I don’t already know, and most folks prefer to keep to their own business.
Only a few call out “May the Flame warm you,” more cursory than sincere.
Still, with every one, the longing that has accompanied me since leaving Lumeris behind grows more pervasive.
If I were forced to describe the growing distance from my blood mother, the feeling it’s imparting, I couldn’t say it’s a true ache, itch, thirst, or anything else.
It’s more like some special discomfort reserved especially for their Chosen.
And given we’re moving farther and farther away, it’s going to get worse.
I almost envy Nolan, undoubtedly subdued in some manner to be so easily transported.
The forests taper off, giving way to rolling plains with mountains in the distance.
They’re pale and snow tipped—almost inviting.
Not the stormy, craggy spires I remember from my youth.
An estimation informed by hours studying Petronilla’s map tells me this would have been, centuries ago, the beginning of the Stone God’s lands.
Do their followers persist like the Storm Goddess’s?
Are there villages like the ones where I came from, sequestered up among those distant ridges?
The lack of knowledge grows like an untreated sore, especially in the wake of the Renderers’ grisly appearance.
Nolan and I were entrusted by the Goddess to find the heretics, the stolen reliquary, but with only the barest understanding of the world we were being thrust into.
What other crucial pieces of information are we lacking? What else is waiting to surprise us?
With every day that passes, those insecurities grow.
Doubt isn’t far behind. Even as I mentally chart my progress to Sethane, I imagine where the heretic on his way to Carsaire is.
I wonder if I should turn around. I wonder if he’s arrived by now, and whether he’s already on the next leg of his journey, taking the best lead we—I—had to finding the reliquary with him.
Prior Petronilla whispers in my ear, disappointed but not surprised I didn’t stay on task.
I know the truth of it. Nolan would have been an acceptable loss, along with Jeziah, the other Potentiates who fell, the whole of the crowd in the Cathedral.
Wars aren’t won without sacrifices; I’m no Bellator, but that’s basic strategy.
It’s the Renderers that have complicated the situation, creating an unexpected challenge.
Maybe there’s only a few of them, maybe a lot, maybe…
The maybes swirl during the long hours in pursuit of my prey.
The questions. The fearful, visceral imaginings of what awaits in Sethane and the growing, bitter craving to be back in Lumeris.
I picture the reliquary to drive the feeling away, imagine it in my hands as I confront Tempestra-Innara.
Spin a mental tapestry of events that mirrors Emmaus’s assassination attempt, only successful.
I imagine staring over their remains emptied of humanity and divinity alike.
It helps.