Installing the Young Tree (1)
The knightly order cleaved the enemy lines clean in two. The tide of battle turned in an instant. Even with their minds reeling from the unprecedented sight of a wave of light sweeping through allied ranks, the elite rebels held their ground and resisted rather than flee—but it was no use.
Part of our forces pushed into the center and dug in. And when we moved to encircle one of the severed halves entire, the rebels hastily abandoned the engagement and sounded their horns.
Most casualties in war come during the retreat. With a torrent of light pouring over the battlefield and the retreat order given, the rebel formation began to collapse all at once. Elite troops of the eastern front or not, there was a limit to how long anyone could hold.
Each time the light-wreathed knights shattered a line, the allied soldiers around them experienced the strange miracle of their vitality truly returning—and with it came the realization that God had abandoned them on this field.
Abandoned wasn't even the half of it. God was openly aiding the other side, plain for all to see. Before the fear of death could even take hold, they had no choice but to fear something else entirely: that they stood on the wrong side of a war that dared to judge even the divine.
"The Sacred Tree marches with us!"
The Crown Prince, wildly excited, swung the sacred sword. When I poured will into it, the blade came down wreathed in light and split a knight in two, armor and all. With the prince bellowing those words all across the field, everyone on the battlefield arrived at the same conclusion: God is here.
The battle unfolded exactly as the god willed it. The rebels fled in terror and the royal army gave chase.
"The Sacred Tree is with us!"
Geez, I'd really prefer it if you didn't keep mentioning me.
At some point the Crown Prince had slipped into honorifics, and I wasn't sure that was proper conduct for royalty. Much as the Grand Temple of the Holy Kingdom had suspected, I deeply doubted the royal family wasn't pumping me up as a means of checking the theocracy—though knowing the prince, he was probably just drunk on an unexpectedly decisive victory in his very first battle.
"Deliver this dispatch of victory to the capital at once!"
The messengers of triumph flew out to every corner of the kingdom.
It looked like the eastern rebellion would be settled far sooner than anyone expected. Good news for the kingdom as a whole—but for some, it meant fire at their heels. The pro-slavery nobles who had been preparing their territorial war under Priest Borlidon's direction found their plans thrown into disarray. If the rebellion wrapped up before the year was out, their opportunity would vanish; they would have to move fast.
Evidently some word of that commotion reached the Count, who had been keeping a wary eye on things ever since receiving our report.
"I've been summoned by the Count, so I'll be off. Please continue the clerical training in my absence."
―Right, safe travels.
A territorial war doesn't come together overnight. Preparing one in secret takes considerable discretion, and since several nobles were banding together this time, simply agreeing on who held command was a chore in itself. We'd been discussing whether we ought to help the Count keep our territory from being isolated, but I didn't imagine there'd be much for us to do over the autumn.
That didn't mean the village was idle, of course.
"Maintaining the miraculous domain is of the utmost importance."
Priest Dahlia had taken up residence in Thermia's home and was now delivering practical instruction at Thermia's request.
"The Young Tree concerns Himself only with the forest, and seems to pay little attention to the changes spreading across the western half of the domain. It may be fine for Him to do so, but you cannot afford the same negligence."
Thermia wasn't particularly sympathetic.
"That's genuine human territory out there, you know. Not elven land. Do we really need to worry so much about it?"
Ever since the slave market raid, Thermia's affection for humans had dwindled considerably. Not hatred, exactly—more like a distinct lack of fondness. But Priest Dahlia was firm.
"You mustn't. Do you know why the Holy Kingdom forbids idol worship?"
"Well—because the scriptures forbid it?"
"It's barely mentioned in scripture, and certainly not something that warrants killing people over."
Thermia started to give another answer, then hesitated. Glancing sideways—apparently weighing whether this was safe to say in front of a Holy Kingdom priest—she just came out with it.
"Eliminating the competition, isn't it?"
Priest Dahlia nodded roughly. "That's a rather poor way to put it, but the result is much the same. It's about keeping proper faith—faith owed to the Sun God—from flowing toward the wrong places."
"Oh, I see what you mean. So if we don't manage the land beyond the forest too, the miracles become fertilizer for false faith to take root?"
"Precisely. I experienced it several times on my journey here. When I asked Priest Borlidon, he said the same."
Whoa?
So I do have to manage it. The domain was just so vast that I'd been busy sightseeing around the village—watching the flowers on the courtyard wall of elves I knew grow a little taller was a genuinely delightful pastime. I did sweep my awareness over the whole domain whenever boredom struck, but I knew precious little about the actual day-to-day lives within it.
"What?! Someone dares to exploit the miracles bestowed by the Young Tree for base personal greed?!"
And so Thermia marched out of the village to investigate, my bow in hand.
"If you find any human who displeases you, say the word. I'll shoot them myself—no need for you to dirty your hands, my lord. Or, well, your branches!"
―I somehow doubt it'll come to that.
But before she'd even left the forest, we found some base personal greed.
"This here's that famous water spirit. I went to special lengths to acquire these, so this is your one and only chance at this price!"
A human peddler was pitching his wares to a gullible human who had recently settled at the forest's edge. Inside the bottle, a water spirit swam about in nothing but plain pure water.
"Ooh! So this is the water spirit the Sacred Tree is said to have created!"
"With one of these, you'll never worry about water again! No more hauling it up every day, and drink what the spirit makes and you'll be rid of every little ailment—clears the mind, and makes you younger to boot!"
"Truly?!"
"Truly truly. Go on, take it home!"
I feel like I've seen that peddler's face somewhere.
Wasn't he the one who'd tried to swindle the elf at the general store by passing off ordinary lake water as precious magical water made in the capital? Apparently an equal-opportunity con artist, preying on elf and human alike.
The human settler wavered, torn over whether to buy. Only someone who didn't know that water spirits lay sprawled everywhere if you walked just a little deeper into the forest would agonize over such a purchase.
Thermia was flabbergasted. "Are most humans just that greedy? The human merchants who visit the village too—it seems everyone's greedier than elves."
―Well, you'd need passionate ambition to make the journey all the way out to this remote village. Only the greedy ever come to our village.
The peddler pressed his sales pitch hard. "I've a feeling you and I will do long business together, so—today only! I'll let you have it at half price. Go on, take it!"
"Hmm. Well, in that case, I'll take—"
"You will do no such thing!"
Thermia wrecked the deal on the spot. When the elf—the de facto owner of this forest—revealed the truth, the human settler caught on at once and bolted. It looked more like he fled because he had no wish to catch an elf's arrow, but regardless, a decent soul had been saved from being fleeced.
"Aaah, spare me, have mercy!"
On the receiving end of a withering glare, the peddler dropped flat to the ground immediately.
"I'm a devout man! Faithful enough to pay into the offering box every single time! I may have erred this once, but I am a man who has devoted body and soul to the Young Tree!"
"Is that so."
"Yes!"
The peddler was remarkably defiant about it. As far as I could tell, this man wasn't receiving any miracles at all. Devout, was he? A man who shed his greed into the offering box and still got no miracles—in more ways than one, that was impressive.
Curious how much he was worth, I peeked into his satchel. There I found a suspicious itemized ledger: records of water spirits sold off to some party. Not one or two cons—one bulk sale after another, dozens of spirits at a time.
Whoa? What?
Selling them is one thing, but who on earth is buying?
I had Thermia press him.
"What?! I've done no such thing! On what evidence do you accuse me?!"
Denial was useless. Evidence or no, Thermia knew full well that when the Young Tree says He can see something, then He can see it—full stop. Playing into every prejudice about elves, we simply aimed the bow at him first and told him to produce the proof himself. The peddler, terrified, confessed everything.
"Aaah, Priest, have mercy! I only sold them with the purest of intentions! I'll tell you everything!"
Some human had been buying up water spirits in bulk, all on his own. "Bulk" meant a few dozen, but it was still a shocking affair.
Water spirits are innocent and guileless. They even look the part—squish one in your hand and they crumple into a mess, then bounce right back into shape.
Which is probably why people assume they're truly harmless creatures. In truth, though, it wasn't quite that simple.
Elves are a race close to nature. Naturally, they get along beautifully with water spirits—beings who are nature itself. The spirits never once got angry about being used as dishwashing tools because, quite simply, water spirits like elves.
Had humans stuffed water spirits into net bags and used them to scrub dishes, there would have been an uproar. They'd need to brace for a body slam before they even got near the sink, I'd wager.
The reason outsiders visiting the village could take an interest in the water spirits but do nothing about it is that the spirits are pickier about humans than you'd think. And if a human—not an elf—spirited one away beyond the forest, the spirit would simply dissolve its water-droplet form and revert to its original state: plain water. It's nature made of water, after all.
Yet this fellow had somehow coaxed and coddled the spirits all the way out of the forest to sell them. Had he kept them soaked in vats of pure water for transport, then prepared a lake's worth of the stuff so they'd never think of returning?
"Don't tell me he's using them to wash dishes?!"
Thermia was aghast. "Water spirits are friends, equal to any person! How could anyone!"
Exactly what I was thinking.
"Good heavens, dishes?! How could anyone even imagine such an unspeakable atrocity against these adorable darlings! Never!"
The peddler waved his hands in horrified denial. "I was curious what the man wanted them for, so I looked into it—and he's not washing dishes! He's making money, claiming to work miracles!"
Whoa?
At the mention of the village's name, I shifted my sight to a mountain a short distance from the Forest of Serenity. A reasonably sized human village—your typical farming hamlet, but with most essentials on hand, and so insular that it barely traded with the outside world.
At the very heart of that village, the townsfolk had gathered. And where every gaze converged stood a man arrayed in splendid, sacred vestments.
"Do you desire holy water!"
The villagers prostrated themselves. "We do!"
"Bestow your grace upon us!"
"Today, specially, I shall sprinkle holy water upon you."
The man raised both arms high. Concealed within his billowing sleeves, the water spirits—perhaps they'd been given some instruction—spouted jets of water in unison. As if conjuring water from nothing, a baptismal spray poured from his outstretched arms.
"Ooooh! A miracle!"
The villagers rolled on the soaked ground, scrambling to catch every drop on their faces.
Whoa?
Then, suddenly, a village woman knelt, weeping and wailing.
"Holy Father! My miracle has vanished! I merely stayed up one night without sleep, and now my body aches and my spirit suffers! Please, return my miracle to me!"
A sack of grain was presented as an offering. Looking closely, I recognized her—one of my own miracle-holders who had lost her blessing. What did she do to lose it?
"Your devotion is commendable. As a special favor, I shall intercede with God for you."
The holy man closed his eyes. Then he murmured a prayer laced with abstruse aristocratic vocabulary—phrases the villagers couldn't begin to parse, which only made it feel all the more mysterious.
"God has granted His assent."
The holy man laid his hand upon the woman's head. His elbow gave the faintest twitch, and the water spirits hidden in his sleeve spouted in unison, the spirit-guided streams swirling round and round above the woman's head.
"Ooooh!"
The villagers gasped in awe and prostrated themselves.
"As God's proxy, I absolve you of your sin."
The plain water came pouring down in one great rush, for all the world like a baptism of holy water. Soaked to the bone, the woman shuddered—then her eyes flew wide. Her hands flew frantically over her body.
"The miracle! The miracle God bestowed upon me—it's come back! I don't feel tired at all!"
Whoa? Without an offering box, too?
On closer inspection—no, not remotely. It was a lie.
Are the two of them in on it together?
"Ooooh! Holy Father! My miracle has vanished as well! Grant me your mercy too!"
"Mercy on me as well!"
Some of the villagers scrambled to their knees while others dashed home in a panic to fetch whatever wealth they could carry.
"Heh heh. How this world does abound in sinners. God may not permit it, but for your sakes—so commendably devout—I shall strive on your behalf."
Straightening his sleeves, the holy man looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
Geez.
Now I understood exactly what Priest Dahlia had been worried about. The miracle-less domain dwellers were being fleeced, plain and simple. It was a problem born of the offering boxes existing only in our village.
Apparently I need to give every corner of the domain a chance to shed their greed too. Yes. I'll get on that.