Witchling
by
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As Baebelle slept that night, deep shadows swarmed continuously around Behrtith's Mind, haunting her. Watching them, she trembled that she had escaped a dire danger that day, and wondered why she was led to risk such dangers. It was as if her Talents drove her to challenge the Cenobite, so that the excitement this stirred up in her might thus stir up the shadows. Her thoughts were interrupted by a dark Power floating near. It was Cenobite Delseena and her thoughts whispered out of the black. "I was surprised anew at how pure her Mind was, holding only lessons and Precepts. I have never seen such a one before, who is the germ of that Embodiment which is the legend of the Oraculars. But why would a pure Embodiment of the Precepts ask us of the fate of the Virgins we sent away? Do the Oracles themselves question what we have done to them?" "Not at all, Delseena," whispered a voice of reason. "Did not the Embodiment of the Precepts accept it, even as the Oracles require?" "But I did not tell the Embodiment we separated the souls." "The Embodiment did not ask it. It accepted that the Celestials acted properly, whatever the resulting misfortune to the worldly Virgins." Another shadowy whisper asked, "Is it not strange that this remnant witchling be barren of all but Precepts, and yet have such questions?" The darkest Power explained,
The shadows drifted off into the deeps again. In their place, two gleaming dots appeared and floated into view. Two circlets of gold, the glow of souls about them, hovering amidst dark pillars of night. With a forlorn cry, each soul flowed into its gold circlet, and the circlets snapped open and fell into the yawning abyss. Left in their place were two faces, NoNayn and Johtehla, but their eyes had no souls. Now a blot, dark even against the dark depths, floated below the faces, and a deep masculine voice came from it. "I will put a part of my soul into each of these empty bodies, and practice worldly deeds with them." The eyes of NoNayn and Johtehla lighted with strange passions not their own and sank away into the dark blot and all were gone. NoNayn giggled in her memory. "Well, what can they do if I laugh a little? Are they going to kill me for it?" Kill you? Oh my Izshna, yes, NoNayn, they did kill you. Stupid NoNayn! Why did you do it? Why didn't you trick them, so to save yourself? I liked you and wanted you to stay! Oh, now I fear they do even worse to you. Because you laughed, they've killed your soul and sent but the husk of your body out into the world for another to own. The circlet of the Oracles did not bind your throat, NoNayn. It bound your soul and sent it away forever. It binds my soul, too. In the quiet of her Deep Mind, Behrtith floated, more troubled of her visons and warier than ever before. Tell me, Mind Shadows, is there no other way to take off the circlet of the Oracles, but to give up your soul to it? Is that the only way I, too, have to leave the Temple? There was no answer to that this night, and Behrtith did not like it. Whatever the source of her mysterious visions, they had at last led her to believe that these clever Celestials carried death in their hearts just as much as that bandit Solgor had. Oh, she must hide ever so well from them!
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About the Book
Is the father of the child the father of the soul? Behrtith’s father wonders. There is no question that her mother is a Jhassa witch, of a clan in which red hair marks the Talents. Behrith’s aunts have Talents, too, and train her, until the day one of them enters her mind, for a harmless game, and Behrtith does not return from it. So begins Behrtith’s odyssey in magic. She learns in a hard school, all alone. Then the Thunder Giant wakes her, and she comes back to the world of people, a wary and untrusting child. She hides her true being from the bandits who sell her, and from the Gray Lady who buys her, and from the Celestials to whom she is dedicated, and who offer her the Way to the Gods. She grows up as two people, in a temple of oracles, deception and murder. One is Behrtith, her hidden self. The other is Baebelle, her outward self, a simpleton saved only by Behrtith weaving in her mind. The ghost Kiki befriends her, if a ghost who sends away the soul can be a friend. As a Virgin learning the oracular way, Behrtith learns to hide her mind in the minds of her teachers, moving from the lowly Acolytes, to the formidable Cenobites, to the deadly Celestials. Then she meets the Sibyl, the deadliest of them all, who is intent to make a demi-goddess of Baebelle, for her evil ends, and who bends the Celestial Concert to her will.
About the Author
I was born and live in the U.S. Midwest, am married and have four children. I am a scientist (chemistry and behavior), a university professor, and now, a politician. Formative to my novels, I am an eclectic reader (philosophy, science, religion, literature) and have also played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for years. My fantasy novels assume dualism, treating body and soul as different forms of existence. Thus, they treat awareness (the soul) as part of an unreal universe parallel to the real, in a medieval setting I used in my AD&D games. The physical universe defines the real. Existences outside that physical system are unreal. Thus, awareness, and the meanings carried by languages, are unreal. Yet, they exist, for which a complete theory of existence must incorporate them. In unreal terms, my book is my awareness, reaching out to yours. Physically, you and I and the book are real. Yet, no physical analysis would reveal the meaning (the unreal) which my book transfers from me to you. The unreal of the book survives my death. But does my own unreal?