The Creator's Intent

"I seek a boy, old man." The priest looked at the man in the gray traveling cloak suspiciously. All he could see of this stranger was his long reddish-brown hair and even longer matching beard. The hood of the cloak hid the man's upper face from sight.

"Why seek you a boy, stranger? And why was it necessary to hide away in my private chambers to ask about him unless you have dark plans? You will find that the rumors of such goings on in the church do not apply to this particular church or this priest. I will give you nothing that can help you, no matter what you do to me, that I can guarantee you. But again, if such were your desires, there are boys aplenty in the streets of the village. You could have taken any of them with ease, I do not doubt."

"I search for a particular boy, very particular indeed," the stranger said. "I have no evil in my heart towards the boy. In fact, I seek to protect him."

"So, what does this boy look like? Give me his name," the priest prodded.

"I cannot, for I have never seen him nor known of him since before his birth," the man said frustratedly. "I have followed the trail of his bearer to this village. I found her, what remains of her, in your church burial grounds. Her grave is fresh, but alone. This means her child is alive."

"There is but one fresh grave in our grounds," the priest said slowly. "She came to town a week ago, dying from horrible wounds. It is a miracle of the Creator that she lived to see my face, so that I could give her the rites of death before the event rather than after. She traveled alone," he added pointedly.

"The boy can't be dead," the stranger whispered as he sat heavily into a chair. "I would know, I would hope I would know."

The priest sat behind his desk and smiled softly. "Tell me your name stranger. It may be that I am able to tell you more after all."

"Why would my name matter? The boy is being sought by someone other than me. I must make sure that he never finds the child."

"Are you Jaraen the Green?" the priest demanded gently.

"I was once known by that title, but my magic has settled since. I am now Jaraen the Gray, but how would you know of my…? Wait, you said she was alive when she arrived here. Did she speak to you?"

"The lady had the strength for two questions," the priest answered. "Is he alive? Is he safe? My answers were yes and as much as it was in my abilities to make so."

"So, the boy is here?" Jaraen asked excitedly.

"He is not, that is how I know he is alive and safe."

"Do not speak riddles to me, please," Jaraen snapped. "I beg your pardon, father, but the child is quite precious to me."

"So precious that you only seek him years after his birth?"

"I was prevented from being free to search for him due to my enforced servitude to a cruel and violent man who seeks the boy as well," Jaraen explained. "By staying away as long as I did, I thought to give his bearer more time to hide from he who seeks her and the child. I underestimated his powers. He knew that I betrayed him and allowed her escape. He doesn't know all, though. He believes that I fell in love with the girl. There is more he does not know as well, but I must not share that with you. It would be your death decree, and mine as well."

"In addition to my training in the Temple of the Falholwyn, I also learned somewhat of the healing arts, enough that I am able to assist in the birth of babies from time to time," the priest said quietly. "Some years ago, in a village far from here, I had traveled to visit a friend from our days as acolytes in the Temple. While there, a young woman came into the church in the throes of a difficult birth. Had I not been there, she and the baby might have died then and there. I do not say this to boast, just to let you know that she felt indebted to me, and more, that she could trust me."

The priest stood and went to a cabinet to pour himself a drink. He offered one to Jaraen as well. "A priest that drinks?" the wizard asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I did not say it was a strong drink," the priest scolded with a smile and wagging finger. "It is merely fruit juice that I find calming at times."

"Tell me more, please?"

"As I was saying, the young woman felt she could trust me, and once she was delivered of the babe, she asked that I take the boy back with me to my own village. 'He is not of me or mine' she said, which I thought most odd, but women do not always make sense when they are recovering from great pain."

"Then I was right, and the boy is here," Jaraen interrupted.

"I have told you he is not," the priest reminded him. "She did not tell me anything of her life other than that she owed her life to a wizard named Jaraen the Green, and that if I ever met you, I would be able to trust you in regard to the child. As she begged of me, I brought the child away with me and raised him for the first few years of his life, but strange things would happen around him, things over which neither he nor I had any control, things the other children taunted him about. They grew increasingly cruel to the poor child who was much too soft hearted to fight them back."

"His gifts were showing themselves," Jaraen mused aloud. "This makes it even more important that I find him. The boy must be trained to use his powers."

"Then it is even more fortunate that he is where he is now," the priest smiled. "As the boy grew, I saw more and more a resemblance to a youth I had once encountered some years before. A young man, barely more than a boy, but so crushed by the life he had led up to our meeting that he was ready to make a foolish and permanent end of problems that he would surely survive, if he only gave himself the time. That youth never gave me a hint at his past other than that he could never go back to where he had come from. He carried with him at all times a parcel, as long as your staff, which he kept wrapped in cloth. I never saw him open the thing, or use it, but it was never out of his reach."

"This youth, what did he look like?" Jaraen asked softly. “Do you know his name?”

“He would not share his name, as he said knowing it would put me in danger,” the old man sighed sadly. “I pressed, but he would only say that what he ran from was too powerful and evil to taint my innocence.”

“What of his looks, then?”

“I feel I must tell you that if it is he that you have designs on, he is some years beyond a boy now,” the priest smirked.

“I would know if it is the same young man of whom I heard so much from my former master,” the younger man snapped. “That is my only concern. I would know that he is the one… involved with the boy I seek. Please, holy one, tell me of him.”

“The boy I knew then, for he was hardly any older than sixteen summers at the time, had garments much like your own, but where yours are gray, he dressed all in blue. He kept the closest companionship with the mighty horse he rode. Until you arrived in town today, I had never seen it’s like in all my days.”

“His horse looked like my own?” Jaraen pondered. “My former master never spoke of the beast, nor did he ever ride, but he insisted that it be kept in the best conditions. I stole the animal when I stole away from him. Perhaps another reason he seeks my death.”

“I would most times at this sort of confession remind you that horse stealing is a most grievous offence, but strangely, I find myself convinced that you have done the animal a great favor, rather than a harm, or perchance you will yet do the favor. Back to the youth, though. He was a most strikingly beautiful young man. Pray, do not tell me that males cannot be beautiful, for this one was, even to the eye of one such as I, who have no desires for the flesh of any being.”

The old man sipped his juice again and got a faraway look in his eyes as if he were actually seeing back through the years and witnessing the young man in front of him once again. “He had hair the color of the lightest, softest, purest butter,” the priest said with a gentle smile at the memories.

“Almost more white than blond,” Jaraen added, his voice also distant, and husky.

“Yes, just as you say,” the old man agreed. “His eyes…."

"The color of the clearest sky on the clearest day in summer," Jaraen finished for him.

"You say you never knew nor saw him, and yet you can describe him as if he were standing in this room with us," the priest observed wryly. "Methinks you deny yourself the truth of your own heart. Perchance you seek them both, and not just the boy?”

“I will not lie, it has long been my wish to meet them both, but the boy is of the most importance, as he is too young to defend himself against the other who seeks him.”

“You speak again of your former master,” the priest observed. “She was right that he is a most dangerous villain?”

“I say this to explain, not to brag,” Jaraen began. “While still a boy myself, I came to know myself well enough to understand that I would never seek the flesh of women for pleasure. I found my interests were… elsewhere.”

“Fear not judgement from me, my friend,” the priest assured him. “While many of the church oppose the love of which you speak, it is tradition only, not the teaching of the Atha Falholwyn. He, like me, had no intimate companion, but never spoke against those who sought similar flesh rather than different. It is truth that the one who followed his footsteps to lead the church and built the Great Temple and its library, S'Tarsa, had a male, T'Moth for his intimate companion.” At the raised eyebrow of the wizard, he smiled and explained. "When as a young student in that temple myself, I found that I had inclinations of the flesh for anyone. Fearing that I was somehow unfit or lacking, I spent much time scouring through that library. Hundreds of years of writing by many Falholwyn and many others as well. I learned with the help of one a few years older than I that in wisdom and love the Creator has brought us all forth, one race of beings with many different talents and skills and yes, even powers, to worship him in perfect diversity. We are all the same and we are all different. Sadly, even the church has fallen away from that knowledge. The former Falholwyn fell from communion with the Creator and sought to purge the library of anything that would contradict his own teachings. I am proud to tell you that I and the one that helped me study were given the privilege to help the archivist of that time to hide the holy writings that false man would have destroyed. When that man died, his son took over as Falholwyn, and while he has not been right in all of his decisions and choices, he did declare the library safe from any such purge ever again. I hear the holy father is nearing the end of his life, though. I fear the future of the church if his spawn, poisoned by his grandfather's betrayal of the church takes over. Dear me, I have rattled on about my own memories when you should be telling your tale, young man."

"Nay, father, your words speak comfort to my mind, peace to my soul, and trust to my heart," Jaraen smiled. "I, too, was quite a bookworm in my youth. Through my studies in the arcane arts, I have been privileged to create a number of spells of my own inspiration. Perhaps the greatest of these has brought me the dearest joy, most intense self-pride, and yet it is also that spell which brought about my slavery to the most evil monster of a wizard as has ever disgraced this realm. He learned of my spell, a spell to create life, not of plants, or farm animals, father."

"Can such a miracle be true? Your spell, it has been cast successfully?"

"Oh yes, father, indeed you have delivered the fruit of the spell yourself," Jaraen smiled.

"The boy you seek," the old man gasped. "She spoke the truth then that the boy was not of her or hers."

"He was not," Jaraen confirmed. "Have you seen in farm fowl, how a bird can take the egg of another into its own nest to nurture and bring it to the point of hatching? The woman was just so, she merely nurtured the unborn infant until he was ready for birth."

"Who were the true parents then?"

"Brace yourself, father," Jaraen smirked. "The boy you once met with the hair of sunlight, and eyes like the sky, for lack of a better word is the child's mother. It was his essence that took the place of what a mother would give in the creation of a child."

"Pray tell me the father is not this monster of whom you and she have spoken," the priest begged.

"I cannot answer that for you, holy father," Jaraen replied sadly. "I can only tell you that there is a reason that Corbrin seeks the child."

"Corbrin? Not Corbrin the Black?" The old man shook in his chair.

"Father, I fear I must perform another spell of my creation on you. It is for your safety and welfare. You must forget that you have known either of the boys, the birth mother, or even myself. Corbrin will bring destruction upon your village such as has never been wrought if he learns of your knowledge and involvement in this sordid affair. I will protect you and the village as best I can, but he will come, and he will demand answers. If he so much as thinks someone here knows something, nothing will be left alive within these city walls."

"Pray, may I beg one favor if it is possible," the old man said softly. "Let me not forget the child I raised completely. Change him in my mind, if that is something you can do, that he does not fit the boy that monster seeks. Let me think rather that it is my son buried in the fresh grave and not she."

"Even now you seek to help and to protect us all," Jaraen mused aloud. "I will twist your memories as you suggest, holy father. But I make you this vow, if by the intervention of the Creator you serve, I am victorious in defeating Corbrin and securing the boy safely and happily with his blood family, I will return to give you back your proper memories of all you have done for us."

"If it protects the village, then you must do so, but I do not worry for myself."

"Would that all men were as honorable, brave, and true as you, father." Once he had the old priest's name, and the name he would have given a son if he had been so blessed, Jaraen climbed to the top of the church's bell tower and cast his spell over all the inhabitants of the village. They would remember the priest bringing his grandchild home to stay with him after the death of the babe's parents. They would also recall the death of the boy from a fever and his burial in the church grounds in the grave that actually marked the resting place of the woman who gave birth to him. Jaraen could only hope that the spells he used would be strong enough to fool Corbrin.