56. Families

  “You can’t just kidnap my diplomats, grandmother,” Duke Valan said to the portion of Omaia that was painting her toes on the table nearby. The servants were scurrying about in the background as he vented his frustrations, while the little-girl avatar cheerfully ignored him.

  “I need her to present her formal request for aid before the court, so that we can officially move into Duke Loshi’s dimension,” Valan continued.

  “Why would you need her request when you already have a request from Loshi himself?” the girl asked, giggling.

  “Because the terms that he asks are too one sided,” Valan said. “It’s better to enter this conflict supporting Atla than Loshi. They haven’t realized yet that we covet the spare worlds of that dimension, and that when the conflict is over, it shall be impossible to evict us. Lord Loshi has required a soul-oath that we will not take what is his, promising to repay us gradually over millennia. The child-lord who calls himself Worldfather or Little Bug only asks for aid and does not ask what that aid costs.”

  “And so you position yourself now for a conflict with Loshi once the Divine Fates have been driven off?” Omaia asked, her voice sounding surprisingly tired. Valan’s eyes narrowed. She never sounded tired in her girl-avatar.

  “That’s right,” he agreed.

  “How boring,” she said. “Very well. I just asked her and yes the Lord Little Bug requests any and all aid that the Emerald Court is willing to provide at this time. You have my word on it, so go fight your wars like a good little boy and leave your elders to the important business of deciding the future.”

  Valan stared at her in confusion. “Grandmother, is aught amiss? You are not your usual self. Is there a problem on the nexus?”

  “Never mind that,” she snapped, and then she finished painting her toes. She began fanning them to make the polish dry faster. “Let me only say this, little Valan. If Atla falls, so too does the future of the Emerald Court. The Worldfather is so very young, but he carries with him a legacy which will span the cosmos. Do not let this light of hope go out.”

  Then the little girl was gone, and Valan was left alone with the servants preparing his meal. He looked at the empty space where Omaia had been and swallowed.

  “Grandmother?” he asked. “How much time is it that you have left?”

  He received only silence as an answer.

  ~~~~~~~

  Toorah had pretty much lost his blush.

  Being the high-priest of a fertility goddess would do that pretty quickly, he’d learned. Not only had he been forced to learn all sorts of secrets about reproduction, but he’d been forced to teach them to his followers, and to the masses, and while he was only a teenage boy, everyone had seen his selection, so they considered his word on these matters as the final authority.

  So that meant that they had questions for him. Questions that had made him blush at first. But there were so many, many questions, and eventually he’d run out of embarrassment, and he could deal with almost anything with a calm and patient expression.

  In the weeks since his appointment, the religion of Matla was really starting to come together. It was mostly due to Lady Di Tonilla’s efforts, he reflected, as she had given him talented underlings who had taken what had seemed like colossal donations in order to build the temples to Matla throughout the world.

  They were all in waygate cities, however, so he could make the circuit between them all in one day, giving sermons as he detailed the correct way of getting Matla’s attention, which issues might require her attention and which ones the mortals should resolve on their own, and other various aspects of worshiping her.

  In fact, his official duties were pretty light, and he found that he really wasn’t challenged by them. His sermons were mostly written for him, and he just had to repeat them a few times every day of worship. Aside from that, people would pay to see him and ask him questions.

  His new blush-proof stoicism was important for many of those questions, but he was proud of how icy-cool he was now.

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  More challenging was the fact that, since Toorah was officially his high priest in his Matla form, and because Toorah could hear him, and because he was lonely, Atla would often interrupt Toorah with inane questions throughout the day. It was a challenge, because these questions genuinely appeared in Toorah’s head as thoughts that were not his own, and it often derailed him from his chain of logic.

  Atla couldn’t actually read his mind, so he had to respond aloud in order to both answer the deity, and to get the young world to stop bothering him. Because Atla had no issue with repeating a question constantly until Toorah responded, believing that he hadn’t been loud enough the first time, or something. Toorah wasn’t exactly certain.

  Fortunately, it was perfectly acceptable for him to interrupt whatever he was doing at the moment to inform his followers that “Matla has a question for me, hold on a moment while I commune with her.” Then he would duck out of the room for a private location to discuss whatever concern the young god had.

  One of his primary duties aside from his sermons was the certification of fertility, which basically only required him to look at someone and ask Atla whether or not they could make babies. Since most of the people who purchased this benefit of the faith had already prayed to the goddess, they were all in working order and very seldom was he faced with a situation where he’d been forced to inform someone that they were infertile.

  More common were the misunderstandings that there would be a physical exam required, which is where Toorah’s blushproofness came in handy as he was presented with beautiful women attempting to undress in front of him. Or women who were not so beautiful. Or men. But he would quickly correct the matter by simply stating that the goddess saw them as they were whether they were clothed or not and such a thing was not necessary.

  Or, if they were insistent, then he’d perform the exam to get it over with.

  ‘Hey,’ he reminded himself, ‘she is a fertility goddess, so I should only expect this much.’

  Of course he had no idea what he was doing during the exams, but Atla thought it was funny.

  Anyway, he was quite certain that nothing could make him blush anymore.

  Which is why he wasn’t worried when he was awoken in the middle of the night by one of the temple maidens who informed him that one of the chief donors was requesting his presence at their home. He thought that this would be another ‘witnessing’ event. Which was another service that he could perform, albeit at an extreme price.

  It wasn’t just that he was expected to watch , but that he had to then wait with them a few hours to see whether or not it would take, since he’d learned from Atla that actual conception didn’t take place until a few hours after the act which sparked it. Sometimes it might even take days, although if it was taking that long Toorah would just tell them to come by in a few days to see if it had worked or not.

  So he flew off, following the guide to a house, and he arrived. He was not expecting to hear the woman’s screams, however, and he realized that this was a different sort of call.

  “Atla, what do I do? I’ve never delivered a baby before,” he protested.

  “Oh it’s fine, the woman does all the hard work,” the god informed him. “And I just checked. She’s about as perfect as you can get in this situation. Her baby is in the right position and everything is ready to go, you basically just have to catch it when it comes out.”

  And so, two hours later, he caught a bloody, slimy thing that almost slipped through his fingers and handed it off to a midwife, who bathed the child. He informed everyone that Matla said that the boy was healthy and that all was well, and that the child would grow into a son that the father could be proud of.

  Then Atla began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked the god on the way out.

  “You’re probably right, but the father of that child won’t be proud of him,” Atla explained. “Because I don’t think he knows that he’s a father.”

  Toorah frowned. “Are you saying that the mother was unfaithful?”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Atla said. “I just know that the father of that baby wasn’t in the room, or in this city. I’m not sure where he is, since I wasn’t paying attention to when he was conceived. But his bloodline doesn’t match anyone in – oh there he is. He’s a stable-hand at an inn. Good looking fellow. Hopefully the baby takes after his mother, since if he takes after his father there are going to be questions.”

  Toorah blushed.

  “Well, at least it’s not my problem that the father isn’t in the city,” he muttered. “I didn’t certify that conception.”

  Unfortunately for Toorah, his words were overheard, and the implications were far more profound than the teenager was ready for.

  ?