The Orthodoxer

These five days were his favourite of his circuit. Particularly now, in a nice warm summer. Villages were positioned a convenient five or so hours away from one another. A nice short ride but with the added advantage that by the time he had arrived, conducted the Recital and so forth it was early enough in the day but too late to set off for the next village.
Which meant, oh heavy burden!, he had to spend his afternoons under a shady tree eating the creamy sheep’s milk cheese that these villages specialised in. Truly, his lot was a tough one. Children had been playing in the central green but had stopped deferentially when he sat under the oak. Slowly, though, their game was starting up again, each being extravagantly hushed by their fellows when it became a little boisterous but soon enough joining in the quieting of another.
Two sat slightly aside from the roughhousing and, judging by their glances towards him, he was the topic of their conversation. That was fine, his periodic arrival was likely one of the most interesting things to happen to a quiet farming village like this and a new face was a rich topic of conversation. He was a little surprised though when they got up and approached. Though there was no reason to, children tended to stay away.

What does orthodox mean?

“What does orthodox mean, sir?” the elder, a blonde girl with poor skin asked. He raised an eyebrow questioningly while hurriedly swallowing his cheese.
“You’re an Orthodoxer aren’t you sir? That’s someone who orthodoxes isn’t it? Father said it was alright to ask you questions. Is it?”
“It’s absolutely fine child.” He spent a moment sending his tongue around his teeth to collect his thoughts. “Sit down child. And your friend”
“He’s my brother” she interrupted
“Your brother then. Sit down. Please. Orthodox means ‘correct thoughts”. People call me an Orthodoxer for short, and its perfectly fine for them to do that, but what I am is a Brother of the Congregation for the Orthodoxy of the Wakeful. So I’m not someone who orthodoxes – or, well, I suppose I do orthodox but you can’t really use the word that way. I make sure people are orthodox.”
“By making sure we know the Precepts?”
“By making sure you know the Precepts”
“Why?” This was the boy. Ten? Eleven? He wasn’t good at this. Walking upright, no hair on his chin so somewhere between two and fifteen was all he would swear to.
“Well, it’s a little complex actually. Errrrr.” He looked round for a place to start and lighted on the small shrine outside the tavern. Functionally identical to thousands like it across the Diarchy. Stones fitted together to form a plinth, a crudely carved statue on top of it. This one a woman carrying something he couldn’t make out from here. “OK. Who’s you goddess?”
“Her name is Selena” the girl informed him solemnly “She makes sure the sheep are healthy and that the grass grows”
“Does she? Well, that sounds like very important work. Where did Selena come from? In fact,” he continued hurriedly “don’t answer that. Don’t even think of an answer. Sorry. Let’s make up a new god shall we. What about…” another scan of the environs for inspiration “Treejar, the god of Trees” He got the chuckle he was hoping for. “Now. Mighty Treejar, the Deciduous Deity. What does he think of you collecting fallen branches for firewood?” At their silence he raised his eyebrows encouragingly, indicating it was a genuine question.
“He doesn’t mind” declared the boy. “They’ve fallen off a tree and so they’re not part of a tree any more.”
“Land, Johann, you’re so stupid.” The girl said contemptuously “A god of trees wouldn’t like any fire at all. What if it got out of control?”
He grinned. It was rare that a lesson went so perfectly. “Neither of you are stupid, they were both very good answers. Sensible people could think either one. And that’s a problem for Treejar. Because when you” he nodded to the boy “are saying your prayers you’re saying your prayers to a god that doesn’t mind fallen branches being burnt; but your prayers” a nod to the girl “are to one who does. Now, Treejar can’t be both. So what will happen eventually is that he’ll be, errr, he’ll be ripped in half. You’re both praying to a god called Treejar, you might even think it’s the same one. But it’s not. There was one god getting two people’s veneration, now there’s two gods each half as powerful.”
The girl nodded but the boy looked confused.
“OK, think of it this way. A god is like a bucket. When you pray to them, you fill the bucket up. When they do things” he clicked his fingers and the soil at his feet rippled as if something were moving under it “it empties the bucket. Before you were both filling up the same bucket, but when you disagreed on the god, you ended up with a bucket each. You both think there’s only one, and you’re filling up the same one. But there’s actually two.” The boy nodded slowly.
“There are about twenty million people in the Diarchy” he continued. “We want all of them filling up the same bucket, not twenty million different ones. So the Orthodoxers, the Brothers of the Congregation for the Orthodoxy of the Wakeful, go round everyone and make sure they recite the Precepts. What’s the, oh I don’t know, fourth Precept?”
“The fourth Precept is this: Land makes its will known through the Patriarch. That is the fourth Precept” they recited in unison, as they had earlier that day when the whole village had joined in.
“Excellent! Couldn’t have done it better myself. That’s the fourth Precept alright. If you guys had thought that Land made its will known through, oh I don’t know, through that goat over there then, even if you didn’t mean to, when you said your prayers they wouldn’t be to the same Land as I pray to. And we don’t want that.”
“Because” she was speaking slowly and squinting into the middle distance, working it out as she spoke “if we thought the fourth Precept was about a goat then we’d have torn a bit off Land and would be saying our prayers to that. So the prayers we were putting in would be going to the wrong place.”
“Absolutely correct. And that’s why the Precepts are so repetitive: The number Precept is this: Then some words. This is the number Precept. It makes them easier to remember. Twenty-five is also not a lot of rules for a religion but, again, we need everyone to be spot on with all of them.”
“And you can’t add any new ones” she was still talking as much to herself as to him “because if you did then not everyone would know you had and so some people would be praying to a Land that had twenty five Precepts and some to one with twenty six. Oh, and that’s why you didn’t want us to think about where Selena came from!” she continued excitedly “Because if I said one thing and Johann said another we’d rip bits off Selena and then the grass wouldn’t grow.
“Well, the grass would probably still grow, but it might well grow worse, yes. Full marks. You really are a clever girl aren’t you.”
“So where did Selena come from?” It had clearly been playing on the boy’s mind.
“Ah, now that’s a much simpler question”

Where do gods come from?

“Selena came from the same place as Treejar. And even as Land. Someone made her up one day. It was me who made Treejar up, I don’t know who made Selena up and Land itself was sort of created by a man called Mikhail”
“The Prophet Mikhail!” the girl said excitedly but before he could reply the boy spoke up.
“So Selena’s not real?”
“Well done, yes, the Prophet Mikhail. And yes, of course Selena’s real. Probably, I don’t know for sure, but probably your grass would be worse and your sheep sicker if she wasn’t around.”
“But you said she was made up”
“Ah, right. I see. She was made up by someone one day, yes. But so were songs. Songs didn’t exist, then someone made them up, then they did. Or place names or…oh, lots of things. Laws”
The boy nodded. “So is Treejar real?”
“At the moment yes. He’ll die soon, though, as he’s not receiving any veneration.”
The boy looked stricken “He’ll die?”
“No no no. Sorry. That was badly phrased. There’s no need to worry. Imagine…errr…imagine a really smoky room. When you create a god you collect some of that smoke together. But if you don’t keep putting in effort then eventually it’ll dissipate…” blank looks “…eventually it’ll spread back out again. It’s not dying like we do.” He was only slightly mollified.
“But if I give Treejar vener…veni..that word you said.”
“Veneration”
“Yeah, that. If I give him that he’ll stay around? And get stronger? And be able to make trees appear from anywhere I ask him to” His eyes twinkled with anticipated mischief.
“I mean, making a tree appear is quite a big thing. One person’s veneration is unlikely to make Treejar…I really wish I’d chosen a less ridiculous name now…but it’s unlikely to make Treejar powerful enough. You’d need to convince other people to venerate him as well and I’m not sure most people would have much use for a god of trees.”
“So if you think a god would be useful you can just make one up and convince people to venerate it?” This was the girl, sharp as a knife.
“Absolutely. It happens all the time. Every barracks, every village, even big enough businesses. Ship’s crews. You need about twenty or thirty people for them to be powerful enough to be useful, and it’s very hard to grow them outside a specific locale. Place, locale means place. Because as soon as you bring another place in people get different ideas about the god and before you know it two different gods are being venerated.”
“So how do I venerate Treejar and make him strong?”
“Well, veneration takes six forms.” He started counting off on his fingers. “Prayer, Sacrifice, Attention, Abstention, Mortification and Consecration!”
“I don’t even know what those things are” the boy’s dreams of miraculously appearing trees were dying in his eyes.
“Well, you know what Prayer is. You do that to Land and to Selena. Or at least you should be” he glared at them suspiciously for a moment then laughed. “Sacrifice is when you kill something for a god. Do you kill, I don’t know, the first lamb of the season or something?” At their nods he continued “Well, that’s sacrifice. Attention is just a low level awareness of the god. That’s what the shrine is for” he jerked his thumb at it “every time you pass you go ‘oh yeah, Selena’ and that provides a little sliver of veneration to her. Within my church there’s a Begging Brothers order, the Brothers of the Order of Continual Attention, and all they do is go round and move shrines to somewhere else. Because if you always see the same shrine in the same place you stop noticing it, but if it suddenly pops up somewhere new then you notice it more. It’s also why I wear these Orthodoxer's Robes. So everyone who sees me thinks of Land for a moment.”
He paused for a moment, checking he still had their interest. But both looked rapt – though the boy was doubtless illiterate he gave every impression of being anxious to take notes. Maybe Treejar would get somewhere.
“Abstention is just giving up something you like. So I don’t drink ale, and every time I don’t have one though my throat is very dry and I really want one, there’s a little trickle to Land. I don’t eat porridge either but that’s because I don’t like it” the girl nodded enthusiastically and made an exaggerated expression of disgust “So that’s not abstention. One of the other Brothers in my congregation won’t talk to men. And every time that causes her problems, there’s some veneration right there. Mortification is hurting yourself, don’t do that you two. Again there’s a Begging Brother order, you might have seen them. They wear red loincloths and hit themselves with scourges.” He raised an eyebrow but they shook their heads. Apparently the Brothers of the Order of the Scourge hadn’t made it this far south. “Finally Consecration is a big ritual where you dedicate something to the god. So when I visit a village and there is a new baby I hold it against the soil and say some words. Do you, for example, do something special to say ‘this grass belongs to Selena’” Shakes “Oh, well. You should. Walk around a field while saying how all the grass in it is hers. It’ll grow better. Probably.”
“When a lamb is born we give them some grass from our hands and say ‘Selena gives you this and you are hers as well as ours’”
“Ah well, there you go. Consecration.”
“Do I have to do all of those for Treejar?”
“No, but the more the better. And some of them Treejar might not like depending on other decisions. He’ll still get some veneration from it, but it might be hard to venerate the god of trees by sacrificing trees to him for example. Or maybe he likes that. Land doesn’t really like Mortification for example, it’s because of the eighth Precept.”
“So why do the red loincloths people do it”
“Ah. Well. They’ve got other problems in their life that made this seem like their best choice, in the main. Be kind to them if you see them, they’re very sad by and large. Something went wrong for them and they…they never really dealt with it.” He shrugged.
“Can you not just tell them to stop?”
“Well, they’re Begging Brothers: an Order not a Congregation. We’re not really in charge of them. They’re not trained or anything they just, like, pick up a scourge and dye their underclothes red. We intervene when and where we can but…” another shrug, this time accompanied by a helpless hand gesture. She didn’t seem satisfied but the precise chain of events that led to someone making a decision like this and the realpolitik of how the Faith should deal with it were a little advanced for one of her age, even one as sharp as she.
They sat quietly for a moment and he took the opportunity to have another morsel of cheese.
“Are there Brothers of Sleepful Orthodoxy?” the boy piped up.
“There are. But we say sleepers, not sleepful. The Congregation for the Orthodoxy of the Sleepers.”
“Do they make sure we know the Precepts when we’re asleep”
“Ha, no. I guess we need to build up to what they do a little bit. Do you know where humans come from?”

Orthodoxy of the Sleepers

They shifted uncomfortably for a moment and exchanged glances. It took him a moment to work out the reason for the sudden change of tone, but when he did, he laughed.
“No, no. Sorry. Not like that. I meant originally.”
“Oh, you mean Werewolves?”
He looked them over for a moment. Yes, they probably were of wolf stock. Rangy. Short course hair. All the markers. “Among others, yes. My ancestors were probably Werebears, but the Shifter Races in general, yes.”
“There’s one that lives near here. We bring him food in winter” the boy interjected excitedly.
“Oh really? That’s unusual, they’re very very rare. You know to be careful around him don’t you, even if he seems friendly.” They nodded solemnly.
“He’s very old.”
“Yes, a lot of them are. They’re a dying race. But then we’ve been saying that for centuries and they’re still not dead so…who knows. But anyway. So, as you know, in the Second Age all the living things could change their shapes. Then The Orderstorm came and almost all of them got trapped in one form. So we got wolves and men, bears and men, and so on instead of werewolves and werebears. Well, what you might not know is that the landscape used to change as well. So one day there might be a mountain but then the mountain might get bored or curious and wander off to be somewhere else” They laughed at the image “Or you might wake up one morning to find your field had travelled off to make friends with a river miles away, taking your sheep with it!” Of course there was no agriculture or herding at that time, but he was playing it for amused giggles rather than historical accuracy.
“Well, when the Orderstorm hit, the landscape got stuck in one form. Or almost all of it. A few bits stayed able to move, but only a very very few. In the whole of the Diarchy we’ve found seven – well, eight actually but one was…, well, never mind that. One died. But anyway, we’re pretty sure that’s all. Moving landscape is pretty easy to spot after all, we think we’d know about it if rivers sometimes were in one place and sometimes in another.
“We’d found them all by the time of the twenty third Patriarch and he came up with an idea. He rounded them all up by various means and begged Land to help him put them to sleep. It was a huge spell, loads of priests and magicians too. And elementalists, even. But it worked, mostly worked, and they fell asleep. Now, my Congregation already existed at that point, we were founded under the eleventh Patriarch, Siebe the Changer. Or the second eleventh Patriarch really, the numbering gets a little confusing at times. It goes thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-three, thirty-six at one point. Boring political stuff.” He flapped a hand dismissively, offering a silent prayer to Land that he wouldn’t have to try to dredge up barely remembered lessons and try to convincingly explain what had happened. Not his specialist area in the slightest. The children didn’t pursue it though, Land be thanked.
“Anyway. Have you ever been asleep when people are talking near you? And you end up dreaming about what they’re talking about? Well, what the Patriarch asked us to do was to split our Congregation in two. Carry on what we were doing, which is what I do. But also recite and chant the Precepts to the Sleepers. Make sure their dreams are about Land. And their…well, let’s say their brains are much bigger than yours. Grimnir the Second, his brain is bigger than this entire village. So when they give Prayer or Attention they give much more than you or I would.”
“And all they do is chant the Precepts to sleeping trees? That sounds boring”
“Only three trees. One pond, one mountain, a fern plant and a sand dune. But in general, yes. That’s all they do. The Brothers of the Orthodoxy of the Sleepers are…I don’t want speak badly of them, they do incredibly important work. But their ranks aren’t filled by the intellectual elite of our novices, lets just say that.”
“Did they choose to be one?” Her tone had changed and he wasn’t quite sure why. What had been a pretty free flowing conversation seemed to have suddenly taken on a purpose.
“No, it was chosen for them. Novices are assigned a role by the Brothers of the Congregation of the Eternal Clergy. They’re your teachers in seminary, priest school, and then at the end they tell you which Congregation you’ll be joining”
“How do you go to seminary?”
Ah. There we go. “Hmmmm”. He licked his teeth for a moment as he thought. She was a smart girl and a life serving Land was likely to be a considerably better use of her talents than whatever she would get up to in a small sheep farming village. The Orthodoxers weren’t strictly recruiters, that was the Eternal Clergy’s job, but it was well accepted that they travelled more and met more people than any of the other Congregations – it was an expected part of his job to flag possibilities like this. “Well. When I get back to Ruthertown, why don’t I tell some people. They can come and talk to you and your dad about ways forwards.”
She grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “Thank you sir! I’m going to tell pa!” She jumped up and stared imperiously at her brother until he followed her.