The Book of Battles

Erek

The Kimball house was no different from any other on the street that wound up and down the hill. From the street you could look down and see the peaked roves of the houses below, and beyond you could see the stone and stucco facades of the houses above. Allman, Austin and Skabelund, had drawn the attention of the people on the street and now, out of the Kimball house, came a slightly frazzled looking, golden haired woman in a gingham dress with a black haired baby on her hip, and then came a tall man with too much hair, unshaven, standing behind her.

“Can we help you?” he asked before she did.

There was a touch of belligerence in his tone, but did he know they might be important? After all, they were all in black robes or black suits. It was Elder Pradden who spoke.

“Is this the home of the Kimball family?”

“It is,” the woman answered, but the man seemed to be cautioning her before he said, himself, “It is.”

“And is this your child, born some five months ago?”

“Now suppose you tell us who you are?” the long tall father said before the woman could speak.

“We are from Nava,” Elder Pradden said, “and I am the youngest of the Council of Elders, come in the name of the Prophet.”

At this the woman made a bow as low as she could, burdened by an infant, and the man nodded curtly before saying, “This is our son, Dhalan. He was born five months ago.”

“Five months and two days,” his mother said, and the infant made a small noise, squirming at this.

“We have reason to believe,” Pradden said, “that your son, born nine months after the death of our last prophet, is the Prophet Joses reborn.”

Erek was worried the woman might drop the baby, but instead her hold tightened on him while the father stood up straighter.

“May we come in?” Pradden asked.

“Aimee, let them in,” the father said, and the woman nodded and allowed the five of them into the house.

Aimee was pouring them lemonade and checking little Dhalan in his cradle while her husband, irritated, swatted the other children away.

“The moment nine months and a day had passed since the death of the Prophet Manoah, we began to search out all the houses in Zahem where a child was born in or around that day, all the houses in good standing with a husband and a wife.”

“I can’t believe,” the husband said, sitting down, his elbows pointed out so he looked a bit like a mantis, “that we are the only family in Zahem that fits that description.”

“Joses!” Aimee chided him.

“When we ruled out those born in bad standing or to non practicing families or to families not Zahem, to Rebel houses, the pool grew much smaller,” Elder Pradden said. “Of course we ruled out those born illegitimately, or from houses of mixed blood.”

Joses made a cough and laughed here, ruefully.

“At last we looked for those born closest to the nine months and one day mark,” Pradden continued, “and even then we looked for certain signs, resemblances to the families the Prophet was always born into. At last it came down to you.”

“And so now you take the boy off to Nava,” his father said, sitting back.

“Not at all,” Pradden said. “Or,” he reformed, “not exactly.”

Now Brother Allman spoke.

“We will return when Dhalan is five, with objects belonging to our deceased Prophet in life, to see if he remembers them, if he remembers at all his old lives, and then we will take him to the Great City, inside the Temple, to pray and to see if it is familiar to him.”

“Children do not enter the Temple,” Aimee said.

“No,” Allman agreed. “But he will enter the forecourt, and if it is revealed there that he is the Prophet, then further in he will go. For it is his.”

“The Prophet Joses died in Westrial,” Joses, his namesake said, “he never saw the Temple or this land.”

“But when he was reborn,” Aimee reminded her husband, “he would have. And he would have known it many times, life after life.”

She looked to the cradle now, thinking of her baby.

“It is taught,” Aimee said, quietly, “that Our Father in Heaven begat us with his Wives before the world began, all spirits, and that he chose at what times we would be born into this world as women, and as men, but that after our earthly life we would return to our Father and our Mothers. And yet the Prophet can never return,” she spoke, looking over her son in sadness, “over and over again he must return to the earth.”

“Until the Last Days,” Allman said, “When God Himself comes in glory. Then the Prophet will be joined to every bride and every child, every family he had in every life. Can you imagine how glorious that will be?”

“I’d imagine it would be confusing,” Joses said, “and I don’t think I need my son having a thousand other fathers in a thousand other lifetimes but me.”

“But we all have only one Father,” Austin heard Erek say, enthusiastically.

Joses frowned and said, “And I don’t see why the Prophet wouldn’t be born anywhere, any place to anyone.”

“Because that’s not the way it is done,” Allman declared.

Joses snorted.

Aimee said, rising, “Nevermind all that. Will you stay the night?”

“No Ma’am,” said Allman. “We have rooms reserved in the inn in the next town? Carrum?”

“Yes,”Aimee said, “Carrum is a good place. Joses and I stayed there once before the children were born.”

“Then we will head to that goodly town now,” Pradden said, smiling cheerfully at Aimee, and at Joses who only raised an eyebrow.

“I will see you out,” said Aimee. “You will return to see us when the child is five.”

Allman rose before the other men, putting his hands together and bowing, “We will.”

Since Dhalan had come to live at the Temple, or rather Temple Court, he had learned that, for him, it was better to anticipate the moves of all around him rather than wait to be told what to do, or asked to do it in a kindly way, which amounted to being told what to do. So it was barely ten in the morning of the day he’d learned of the old Prophet’s death when he rose, washed, bathed and removed himself and his immediate servants across the courtyard into the Great House.

When he arrived, the Seventy were still there, and they all bowed low as he entered the Great Hall. He could see he had taken them by surprise and was pleased by this. Elder Snow, upon rising, approached Dhalan and said, “Holiness, the body of the Prophet still lies in his rooms being dressed.”

“I will go and see him,” Dhalan announced, pushing a hand through his thick black hair. “And see that apartments are prepared for me.”

“But, Prophet,” Elder Snow said, “you will have the rooms of Prophet Zakil once they have been cleansed.”

“I will not,” Dhalan said, looking back as he headed up the circular staircase. “You will find me fitting rooms in which a man has not recently died. Also, if you can, summon the palace staff so I can meet with them before noon.”

 

On a table, by the great bed, the fragile body of the former Prophet lay, jaw bound in cloth, the eyes closed with wax coins, the female relatives washing the flesh, a cloth over his genitals. Dhalan was still murmuring the First Prayers for the Dead when Allman and Skabelund came into the room and were immediately silent until the young man was finished. He approached them.

“Let us step out in the hall,” Dahlan murmured.                They followed the boy, leaving the women of Zakil’s family to their tasks. All of his life they had been the family of the Prophet and now, if things went as usual, they coul be turned out of the palace with only a stipend.Dahlan would have to look into that. If there was no protection for Zakil’s family, how could there be protection for his?

“Your Honor,” Allman began, “the palace staff will be summoned as you requested, but you must also—”

“Arrange a meeting with the Seventy,” Dhalan concluded. “And the High Priest as well. There will be government briefings but before all that, we must go into the Temple and purify. Purify to be purified, I suppose, so I can stand in charge of the funeral tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Allman said, his mouth opening and shutting in frustration.

“Brother Allman?” Dhalan said.

“Yes, Prophet.”

“When the women are done with their work, I need that mattress burned, and this room turned into something else, and please be quick about setting me up new apartments.”

“The succeeding Prophet has always kept the same room,” Skabelund said.

“Well when Yahn returns he can have this room again, but according to you I am Joses reborn and Joses reborn is not sleeping here.”

“Prophet,” Allman began, “you are young.”

“I am the youngest Prophet in three hundred years,” Dhalan said.

“And you will require guidance.”

“You are saying yes, Prophet,” Dahlan began in a steady, ironic voice that remeinded both Allman and Skabelund of his father, that dreadful Joses, “but you are thinking, ‘This is the boy Dhalan, whom we had hoped would not come to power for some time if not at all.’”

“Prophet,” Allman said, “power is the wrong word.”

“Power is the only word for the ruler of the Zahem, which I now am, the true and living Prophet. Because you chose it. You and Skabelund and all of you rode in on your horses, came to my parents and chose it, but I imagine if you even believed it you thought you would have the shaping and perhaps the ruling of me. And it has not happened, and now the damage is done and done by you. I may be a boy, but I am the boy who is the ruler of the Zahem, and you need to know that.”

Dhalan frowned and looked into the great room, at the great unmade bed where the women prepared the shriveled body of the dead Prophet.

“Now burn that damn mattress,” he murmured, “and set up my apartments.”