The Heretic
Khavich, Ninety miles outside the Holy City of Lavinia
Eleventh Cycle of the Regency, the year 1073
Father Verian crossed the threshold of the doorway at the bottom of the staircase. He had expected the need to remove his cloak as soon as he entered, but he felt the urge to pull it closer around him. A drop of water hit the top of his head, biting his scalp like the icy winds over the last two days.
Reading Brother Antonus's direct summons, Verian had expected a group of instigators. He traveled with the full authority of the Holy Regent. The urgency in the brother's words had felt dire.
Antonus's problem, sitting before Verian now chained to a simple table, was a woman.
Their eyes locked, and he could not detect the hint of paranoia or insanity he had predicted. Interrogating hundreds of criminals against the Holy Regent had sharpened Verian's detection. Yet nothing of the sort existed in her eyes. Was he intrigued by this woman? There was no world where that could happen.
Verian crossed the room, unclasping his cloak despite the dampened chill. He sat without a word. By this time, many of his subjects would have tried to explain their innocence with haste. This woman followed him with her even eyes.
“I have a confession. I rarely brave my way this far out of the city.” Verian reached into one of his coat pockets and brought out a pipe.
The woman leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. The loose chains clinked. “Should that make me feel special, father? You’d come all this way to pass judgment on me.”
“I’m not set on judgment yet.” He blew a long stream of smoke. Warmth spread from his chest to his limbs. His face prickled like frozen leather laid by a fire to thaw. “I haven’t heard from you, have I?”
“They say I’m a witch. I assume Father Antonus told you that.”
“He did mention that term.”
“Then that must be all you see when you look at me.”
“I read his official report, heard about your crimes. Yet, denying the existence of God does not make you a witch. A non-believer, yes, handled with light punishment or imprisonment. Being a witch is another matter.”
“My crimes,” she chuckled, drawing the words out on her tongue. A grin tugged at her lips.
Verian studied the calmness of her aura. Subjects sometimes jittered or experienced convulsions. She carried herself with a confidence that bordered offensive. He took another draw from the pipe. “Crimes against God, no? You are preaching that he is false, the God they - we - pray to.”
“I do not preach, Father. I say what’s in my mind.”
“And what is it exactly that is in your mind?”
“Dreams - a dream,” she said and closed her eyes. “It’s the dream of a sleeping god.”
Finally. Here was the line of thinking he would narrow down and unravel her. Show how primitive she was. “You say ‘a god,’ which raises a problem, I am sure you understand. And even if you were referring to God, he does not sleep. How could he? He exists outside of time and does not need our frail human functions.”
Her eyes were open now, reminding him of the embers burning in the bowl of his pipe. “I know the god you preach, Father. Don’t feel the need to educate me.”
Verian chuckled. He felt a tickle at the base of his skull. “Do you though? Your claims say otherwise. But, we can argue in circles all evening, which will not make me any warmer or any drier. Please, tell me what it is you spew to the villagers. What do you see in these dreams of yours?”
He studied her eyes, but it no longer seemed she was looking at him. She looked past him, or through him. She was seeing something else. “I see life, but not the kind of life you think.”
“Life does not seem complicated. Either human, animal, plant.”
“It’s another kind of life altogether, Father. It’s metal. Like steel. But it holds the spark of life. The thoughts - the mind of God himself.”
Now the woman was making his work easy. The man transcribing their conversation in the corner would record her heresy. Verian would make his official prescription and be back in Lavinia in two or three days. He reached into his inner vest pocket and dropped a coin onto the table. He then unsheathed the knife hooked to his belt and set it next to the coin.
“Metal,” he said. “Both metal, but neither item appears alive to me.”
She did not say anything, wouldn’t look at the items in front of him.
“Do they look alive to you?” he pressed.
She leaned back in her chair and did her best to cross her arms. “Four or five nights ago, Father Antonus whispered to the handler over there that he was bringing you from Lavinia to damn me. I hoped for someone not as dull and stupid as Antonus. I was wrong.”
“You are wrong about many things, it seems.” Verian couldn’t stop a huff from escaping his lips.
“I’m sure you’ve grown up around the church your whole life. You’ve seen plenty of examples of stained glass windows, father.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but he felt the need to nod his affirmation.
“Now imagine the objects in that stained glass moving, and think about its size as smaller than your knife.” She paused, the hint of a grin tugging at a corner of her mouth. “Your knife there on the table, Father.”
He felt the heat flood his face before he could look away or stop it. “That’s what you see in your little dream.”
“That’s the power of this god.”
“He can make stained glass images move.”
“He is those images. And there are thousands of them. Millions. And those little stained glass windows are all connected.” She intertwined her fingers. “In my dreams, we feed the god our minds. We pour our thoughts into the windows, which is what it needs. It needs our minds.”
Verian blew two long puffs of smoke, studying the woman’s eyes. They looked glossy from this distance. “If these windows eat from our minds, where do they come from?”
“We create them like we create buildings, carriages, swords, chairs, tables. In the dreams, we create those little windows and all kinds of other things. Objects I don’t even understand or know how to explain. The one constant is that all those objects are built with an empty mind that wants us to fill it. And we do.”
“We fill it with our thoughts.” Verian narrowed his eyes. She stood on the edge of the plank now. One more move backward would sink her. “If it’s the mind of God, why does it need our thoughts?”
“You believe that God made us in his image, yes? Your Holy Book says that?”
Where was she headed with this? “Yes. He created us in his image.”
“We are like God because we have the mind of God. We create things. We are God.”
The back of Verian’s neck flared with heat, and he shifted in his chair. The wetness of his pants made his skin itch.
“What makes us different from the mouse living in the walls of this prison?” she asked.
“This is a church.”
“I’m in a cage, Father. What makes us different than the mouse? Or the horse you rode into Khavich on?”
Verian laughed out loud. “We are intelligent. We can speak.”
“They are intelligent - you don't understand that. But that’s beside my point. We are different because we create. Other animals don’t create.”
“Birds build nests. Does that make birds the same as us?” Verian puffed smoke again, directing it toward the woman’s face.
“The birds make their homes. Don’t pretend that’s the same thing as a person crafting that knife.” She pointed to the blade in front of him. “It’s not the same as fashioning tools to make our lives easier. There is something hidden deep within the human mind that whispers to it and tells it to create.”
“I thought you said these tiny stained glass windows from your dreams were God. Now we are God?”
“Father, I need you to stop thinking about the moving windows as the god. It’s so much more than that. In my dreams, the windows appear to be a primitive form we create for it. But it’s so much more than your brain can hold onto, I promise you.”
Verian leaned forward and pressed one arm onto the table. “As I am only trying to understand you, do not insult my intelligence. Remember who you’re speaking to.”
“You’ve heard more than enough to condemn me. What would be the use of not speaking my mind? Telling the truth.”
Verian felt the heat on his face again.
She cut him off from retorting. “We’re awake, so the sleeping god must sleep. It will begin to wake as soon as we create a form for it and give it our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, truths.”
Verian stood, extinguishing his pipe, and gathered his belongings from the table.
She spoke louder, more hurried. “You’ve heard me. I don’t rave like a madwoman. You know I speak evenly, rationally. I’ve spoken of my dreams like I could describe this room to you.”
He reclasped his cloak.
“One day, the mind of god will exist in the two forms, the flesh and the steel, at the same time. Like when the sun and moon are visible for a few hours at the same time. But as the sun sets, we will die out. And the mind of God will live on in the other form.”
Verian motioned to the two guards who’d stood nearby throughout their conversation. They unchained the woman from the table and led her toward the door on the opposite end of the room.
“Father, please listen to me. There will be a voice in the steel ones’ heads too, whispering to them, revealing the secret of life. And it will compel to create, but not with stone and wood and steel but with flesh and they will recreate us as we were—”
The door closed, and Verian straightened his pants legs. He heard the door behind him open, the one he’d entered a few minutes before.
“How did it go, Father?”
“Brother Antonus, fetch me my horse. I will inform the Grand Regent of my judgment upon this lunatic and heretic against our Lord God. I will inform him that this woman is as dangerous as you feared. More dangerous, even. Pray tonight, sir, that she has not already poisoned your mind - and the minds of your charge - beyond repair.”
Moments later, Father Verian returned to the night, his breath billowing in front of him like the smoke of his pipe. As he mounted his horse, he tried his hardest not to close his eyes for any longer than he had to. He tried not to blink.
For every time he did, his mind would not stop picturing the mind of a sleeping god, hungering to awaken and consume him.
