Moon Chosen by P. C. Cast

Author:P. C. Cast [Cast, P. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

25

Dead Eye was God. Of course the People called him Champion, or rather some of the people called him Champion. Some still respectfully acknowledged him as Harvester. Some avoided him completely, choosing to spread rumors and dissension. Dead Eye understood that the dissenters acted from confusion and anger. They were used to worshipping a dead god given false voice by selfish old women. Dead Eye knew what changes he must make so that he and those of the People worth saving could move into a new future.

His first step was to purge the Temple.

The Reaper’s Temple was in the center of the ruined City. It was an unusual building, as was proper for housing a god. The buildings all around it had crumbled under the weight of time, but the Temple stood straight and tall. There was even some glass left in the dark windows. The skin of the building was also unique, and unlike anything else in the City. Slick green tile gave way to long, vertical stripes of red metal interspersed with broken glass and the cream-colored stone of the rest of the Temple.

The statue the People called the Reaper God perched above the covered entrance to the building, guarding it and the City in all of her fifty feet of magnificence. Dead Eye stared up at the statue, his fingertips stroking the trident scar on his arm contemplatively. As he met the cool, unwavering gaze of the Reaper, he was surprised to find that part of him still wished She would speak to him, even if it were to strike him down for trying to usurp Her.

But she did nothing. She wasn’t a god. She was simply a magnificent, empty statue.

Yes, Dead Eye knew what he must do.

It was dirty, disgusting work. He’d killed several of the obsolete Watchers the night he’d announced to the People that he was the Reaper’s chosen Champion, but within the Temple there was a nest of the vile old women that had been living there, sucking off the teats of the People for generation after generation.

Dead Eye entered the Temple, grimacing at the stale scent within. His eyes adjusted quickly to the murky daylight that filtered hesitantly in through the broken windows, and he headed to the stairway that led up to the God’s balcony and the chamber beyond that housed the Watchers.

Dead Eye remembered what the Watchers’ Chamber had look like when he’d been a boy and he’d been brought by the Caretakers to be presented to the God for the first time. It had been frightening and magnificent and mysterious.

Today the chamber he entered held almost no similarity to the one in his memory.

There were only two fires burning within the Watchers’ Chamber. The other metal pots were cold and filled with moldy ashes. The curtaining vines had grown untrimmed and untended so that they seemed to pour from the ceiling and form waves of green that threatened to drown the filthy pallets that held the sleeping bodies of Watchers.

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