Our Little Gods 1: RABATEA, the first World of the Daughters.

Chapter 21.

At dawn the stranger and the beast were gone and they, they took the path down towards the Broken Lands. 

As soon as they found the trail the going became easier. There were no traces that there ever had been  constructions around anymore or even that there had been inhabitants. Had game survived or come back after the cataclysm? There were less traces of black rains also and  a short grey-green tuft of bush seem to be growing everywhere. Yet no trees had grown and grass was patchy but still it gave them something to feed the horses with. The weather was getting much warmer and dryer the further down they went. The game path sometimes wandered brutally to one side or the other but they kept following Yïach's instructions. The vast expanse of land directly under the Dead Lands was impressively flat and smooth. It became clear rapidly that the trails went to the rare pools of rain water that could be found, but apart from that they could have been traveling across the great desert of Utesh. 

"Limero! Ride with me if you please." Baalbek told the monk, motioning him to come to his side.

"I know very little about the power of the healers, how they use the Heal Seals and such things. So, can you explain to me what happened back in the villa? I have seen battle wounds that did not look that bad and the soldiers died. Farenn should at least be crippled, with only one leg left and his hands... even the best healer would not have been able to completely fix them."

"I don't know." The monk replied in a sigh.

"I guess they healed him using their intimate knowledge of each others. The Touch partial as it may be, might have helped..."

Baalbek raised his arm and pulled his sleeve up. A large purplish gash ran the length of it from the wrist to the elbow.

"The healer who tended to this was the best of his generation, Master Pico Mirandolis, I suppose you have heard of him?"

"I have indeed. He was celebrated for his talent. I have never met him myself but I grieved his passing when I heard."

"So did I, since I warned him when he made his plans to leave Feroll and go help the mining communities of the Middle Parotos."

"I heard it was an accident, wasn't it?"

"Sort of, my sources had it that he was kidnapped by a tribe chief to tend to his village and that he was killed during the attempt at freeing him by the minors... This, was an axe, it cut my arm open to the bone. He healed it for two days almost without rest and I will sport that scar for the rest of my life. I watched Farenn get dressed this morning, his body has no scar, no trace of the wounds, it is as good as if he had been born the day before."

Limero looked at the general in silence. He knew. This was going to a place where he had simply refused to go to yet. 

He was, after all, a simple man. Yes, he had been clever enough to be noticed and it had placed him in the position he was into. If he had not decided to go himself to the Keregan's estate he would have probably been elected to the Council of Eight the same time as Efiel. But he wasn't a devout. He had always thought that most of the words of the goddesses were metaphors and parables to teach them moral lessons and guide them in life. He had never been fascinated by the translation problems inherent to GodWord as exercises in deciphering the mind of their creator but as linguistic puzzles. 

Had the goddesses actually roamed the land at some time, he did not think so, he believed that gods were a necessary creation of the mind of men so that they could aspire to something beyond the vibration of the matter composing their bodies. 

What had the boys done in that room? Indeed, what had they done? They themselves did not know, they assumed that the seals he had left on Farenn had been activated somehow but they claim no part.