Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (10 page)

Calivera did not provide Steffor the opportunity to discuss the subject any further by walking over to the first step of Frejak's Ladder and starting the ascent without him. Steffor lingered behind, not catching up with her un
til she was within the last few steps. They stepped onto Instenkul's Forging Bough together, both alone in separate thoughts.

A firm head wind leaned on them as they crossed the barren bark peninsula. Instenkul's higher altitude, the open sky between branc
h and Toliver's compact evergreen canopy above, the onset of night, it all made Sofelarus’s humid and confined setting feel like a distant memory.

Calivera unpacked her travel cloak and wrapped it tight around her weary body. Giving Steffor a sidelong glan
ce, she noted how his Garments had adjusted to the colder temperatures, forming a loose body suit with high collar, his hands folded into deep front pockets. His face was blank but his mood had changed. He was distant with a troubling resolve set into chin and jaw.

They crossed the sturdy bridge, the gorge between bark plates an impenetrable darkness below, and began the steady incline toward Lake Arol. The volcanic shaped knot, a mountainous hulk of bark and wood spanning over a third of the Forging bough
’s width, loomed dark and ominous against the Trunk’s enormous outline eclipsing the night sky to the east.

With Ginllats shining bright on their backs from the west, the restive silence ensued as they briskly hiked the strait trail, shifted into the smooth
bark plate that led directly to the giant knot lake. A mile out, the lake depicted by its waterfall glistening in the distance as it sliced down the mountainside, tall wild flowers began to crop up, at first one or two stray plants but within in minutes of spotting the first a quilt of violet, pink and yellow petals covered both sides of the worn path.

The flower-infested path eventually led them to a T-intersection formed at the edge of a cliff. Looking over the tiered edge, they gazed upon the Forging Ri
ver churning wildly within a wide basin as the high bark plate walls corralled the flowing water down the length of the bough.

"I used to dive from this spot," Steffor said absently, fresh with nostalgia. Calivera followed the cliff side directly below the
ir feet, nauseous by the thought of diving three hundred feet into the swirling waters below.

The trail leading southwest followed cliff-side and river down the bough, where it eventually flowed into Teuton Valley. To the northeast, the trail skirted cliff
-side for another ten yards where the edge of town where it forked again a few yards away. The cliff-side path led to the base of the mountain and the town's lower avenues bathed in Ginllats's ghostly green light a few hundred yards away. The third path angled to the left, skirting the western side of town entirely, where it then became a steep and direct climb to the top.

"You are healed Steffor, my presence is no longer needed," she stated as they reached the fork, meeting his hurt expression with phlegma
tic eyes. "We can part ways now. I will find lodging in town as you go to see Kilton," she said, nodding toward the path leading to the looming lake rim. "I hope and pray you find a way to join us with the Provider and once again bask in his unending love." Delivered with arms crossed and knit brow, pausing long enough to confirm Steffor registered this as their final parting, she turned her back to him and started down the trail leading into town.

Twenty yards down the path, a confident voice, absent from
his demeanor until that moment, called back. "Our bond spans lifetimes beyond conception. This much I know to be true. I do not understand why you choose to deny this connection between us and mask your true feelings, at a crossroads in our journey where we have never needed each other more. I am sure the reason will reveal itself, either in this lifetime or between another..." He paused as she stopped in her tracks.

The sad boy, so prevalent since meeting him, was gone. The Steffor of legend now spoke to h
er and his powerful diction had shattered with one blow the pathetic walls built around her heart. Yet she still kept her back to him.

"If this brief interlude is to be our only in this lifetime," he continued, "then I am grateful for it and pray you enoug
h happiness to keep your spirit alive, till the Provider sees fit to reincarnate us onto his world so that we may yet again unite in the flesh. If not, and our souls grow closer in this lifetime, I pray you enough loss while we are apart to appreciate all that you possess."

She lost track of time, battling with the undeniable truth of his words. Steffor's arrival in her life felt like an imposed rebirth on a life just starting its purpose. Altered forever was her perception of the world and, to her shame, s
he resented him for it, desiring to inflict a similar pain.

Calivera knew her parting words would do nothing in the way of mending his estranged relationship with the Provider or give insight as to how he may reconnect to the whole. On the contrary, she wa
s confident her words would only add to his insecurities and confusion. Faced with the biggest challenge of his young life, she chose to rebuke, not love.

But she had succumbed to a primal fear, hidden to the ego until that fateful moment she dove into the
depths of his soul. Confused, scared and angry, she sought to explain it by making Steffor the source of her fear. She now recognized how Steffor shared that same fear, lost and confused as she was, groping for the one person who could possibly help him find his way back to the only reality he had ever known.

Her back still turned to the only person truly capable of relating to her plight, she turned to face him with a new sense of purpose. She craved his strong arms around her, to have him whisper in her
ear and tell her, so long as they stayed together, all will be right in the world. To know he would always be there to shine light on her darkest shadows.

Knees buckled as she locked onto the sight of his tiny form halfway up the mountainside, her desperat
e plea for forgiveness lost in the rowdy breeze teasing the waist high flowers carpeting the otherwise barren bark floor.

Chapter 8

"Why Janison? What good could possibly come from such betrayal?"

Janison shot up from bed and reached to remove his link visor. His hand smacked his face, but no visor.

I knew I'd have to fight with my conscious but never imagined it would sound like Stalling.

He swung his legs around to the side of the bed and sat up.
He reached for the glass of water on the bed stand and was startled to see the clock read 3:16. It had only been a few hours since taking the sedative. The dose he took should have knocked him out well into morning. He took a long drink and layback down, his body lead-heavy and head thick with sleep.

"Trust, Janison. It's a basic principle for people like you and I. What happened to make you betray yourself?"

Janison opened his eyes back up in alarm but did not sit up. He slowly turned his head and located his link visor resting on the nightstand. If Stalling was not communicating via the visor, then he must be in the room.

That's just not plausible, Janison's logical mind retorted. He chose this safe house over a year ago. No one knew where it was. Was he g
oing insane then? Did his conscience truly sound like Stalling? If so, he truly would go insane if he weren’t already.

As if on cue, Stalling's voice pounded in his head, "Put your visor on Janison, we need to talk. I could continue to berate your sense of
principle all day but I have a feeling your own conscience will be harder on you then I ever could."

Stalling being in his head was crazier
than the concept of him being in the room. Janison was off the grid. He chose this spot because it was one of the few pockets where the Auranet could not locate him, assuming of course he had disconnected, which he had. Even if Stalling had managed to broaden the signal in the past few hours, Janison had turned off his transmitter.

"Do you really think I would have div
ulged everything to you Janison? I love you like a brother but our mission is too important to allow the mistake of one person to bring it all down, including myself." Janison reached behind his head and felt a dull pulse at the base of his neck as Stalling spoke. The familiar warmth generated by his implant said it all.

"Yes, I can still communicate to you without your visor or connection to the Auranet. One of the few abilities I have reserved for myself...in case of an emergency. I didn't imagine having
to use it to communicate to my closest advisor and trusted friend under these circumstances, but the Universe has thrown us both enough curve balls to not be shocked." Janison smiled and nodded to himself in agreement. "By the time we are done here I am sure you will piece it together but time is precious right now. We need to talk. Put your visor on so we can make this a two-way conversation."

Janison sighed and
, despite himself, began to chuckle. Who was he to believe his actions would deter the force known as Stalling?
I should have known. After witnessing twenty years of inexplicable miracles, I should have known.

He acknowledged the part of his heart eased by the sound of Stalling
’s voice, even if it was just in his head. The hardest action to take over the past year was to let go of Stalling, one of the few people he could truly say he loved.
But my life is not what is important. We do not choose our destiny, God does. I am here to play a role in God's master plan, not the other way around.
Blocked by Stalling's looming shadow for years, Janison had lost sight of this truth, but no longer.

He turned on the lamp, stood up and stretched. "Coffee," he muttered to the room. A blunt, earthy aroma filled the room in seconds and helped lift the sedative haze. J
anison chose to give up many luxuries with the decisions he made in the past few days but good coffee was not one them.

Meandering to
a bathroom, he took a long piss and then looked at his profile in the mirror. He stood up tall, pulled up his gut with both hands and stuck out his chest. In the dimmed light, he caught a glimpse of the body that made all-region his senior year. Finding hope in the image, he turned to look himself in the eye and said, "It's not too late to get it back. Hiking these mountains every day will trim your fat ass yet."

Admittedly, the decision to betray Stalling and his closest friends was easier to make knowing, once done, he could disappear to pursue a life of solitude. He was tired of burning it at both ends but more importantly,
he was tired of having to make tough decisions under continual grey conditions. He needed life to be black and white again, when his heart made all the big life decisions. He needed the life of his youth, the life he knew before Stalling. Janison needed to rediscover what he believed was worth living for.

He gave his oval, pale face a reassuring smile as he patted down unruly and comical clumps of thick hair; the one vanity he still allowed himself, normally brushed back in smooth salt and pepper waves. Th
e blood shot eyes, ringed black from stress and lack of sleep over the years, sent back convincing cheer. With a sigh, he filled himself a cup of coffee, walked back across the open room to the bed and sat down.
One more time Stalling, I guess I owe you that much.

Placing his link visor across his head to rest just below his brow, Janison did his best to relax as the wireless connection melded to his neural cortex. An instant later, a dark green static filled his field of vision. A pervasive hiss, as if the
volume cranked with no audio playing, was the only sound. "Alright Stalling, I'm here," he said, his voice sounding as if sealed in a box.

"Thank you Janison," Stalling replied, the static before him forming a fuzzy outline of his face. "Let me start by s
aying you don't need to justify your decisions to me. If you feel the need, save it for another day. Right now I need your help and as I mentioned, time is something I don't have much of."

"It's Muzar, isn't it?" Janison asked.

"Yes," Stalling replied after a long pause. "Given the only reason why I have sought you out today is in the hopes you might help me find a way to save him, I should not be surprised by your intuition. But for once, I am." Janison tampered his pride in shocking Stalling with the knowledge that Stalling knew he would be.

Damn Stalling
and his persuasive honesty! He knew the one thing that might motivate me to help was my love and admiration for Muzar.
This is why Janison decided to leave. The only way to not fall under Stalling's influence, was to avoid him altogether. Yet here he was, manipulated for the sake of Stalling's ultimate mission, again.

"Look Stalling, I don't feel the need to justify my de
cisions now or later. You already know that but I want to make it clear that I did nothing directly to harm Muzar. My actions are nothing more than political and even with that, they are passive. I am out of the game."

"I know Janison and for what it is wo
rth, I understand why you made the decisions you did. The difference between you and me is that none of this has ever been a game." Janison regretted his choice of words but had to agree their motives had never truly aligned. "While I am sure the timing of your choices as of late is no coincidence, the issues surrounding Muzar's survival appear to be unrelated. The issues relate to an epic miscalculation on my part."

Wow, two self-deprecating statements in one sitting, Janison had never seen Stalling this r
attled. "So what's the problem?" Janison asked. Stalling had sucked him back in before the question formed on his lips, but he accepted it with eyes wide open, reminded that you don't remove a major part of your life for the past twenty years in less than a day.

"To put it simply, he's dying and bringing down everything with him. I think we discovered it soon enough and have Jennifer doing an emergency shut down as we speak. I can stop the bleeding but no idea how to save the patient. I just can
’t predict the short or long-term effect this procedure will have on him."
But you have a strong theory no doubt
, Janison thought. "For Muzar's sake, help me find a solution."

For Muzar's sake, there it was, Stalling plucking the strings of others to produce the resul
ts needed to complete his agenda. Janison took another sip of his coffee and let the rich aroma and bitter taste clear the fog in his mind.
Put your emotions in check for a moment and think this through. Could Muzar's death better achieve the same objective I set out to reach by going to Clortison?

The memory of his recent covert meeting with the Archbishop ran a spastic wave of nausea down his body. Janison's disgust and dislike of Clortison and the C.O.S. aristocracy was arguably equivalent to that of Sta
lling's, but for different reasons. To Stalling, they represented all that was wrong with the ancient religion and theology. For Janison, they epitomized all the inherent flaws of man, how they can corrupt even the best intentions of God. "Faith" had become a cliché. They used scripture to instill fear not inspiration. Janison was a rare breed of evangelist that put emphasis on Leviatus's message of love and compassion, not the cryptic dogma created by his misguided followers centuries after his death.

Stal
ling’s unique ability to practice those teachings in his everyday life was the fertile ground from which their beautiful relationship and commercial empire grew. Janison's faith led him to believe Stalling, in time, would acknowledge the Savior’s grace in all that he accomplished and in turn apply it toward helping Janison reinvent the church. Sitting on his bed, in a cabin high in the mountains stranded from civilization, an outcast to all he cared about, his throat constricted as he reminded himself:
no matter how aligned I think my intentions are with God, he has a cruel way of reminding me I don't know shit.

While there were plenty of moments over the past two decades that kept Janison's faith alive and strong, it was in the past year that he started to
come to terms with the fact that not only had Stalling not seen the "light", but also his own convictions had only grown stronger.

And why wouldn't they?
Everything the man touched turned to gold. Faced with dozens of obstacles over the years that would have made the most devout give up all hope, it was Stalling's unwavering faith in his ability to control his destiny that always found a way to solve the problem. Hindsight always pointed to some logical explanation besides luck or miracle but having sat with the man many a times when faced with these issues, he came to believe Stalling could will anything to work in his favor.

Janison's awe and fear of this ability grew over the years and if it were not for their intimate connection when it came to matters o
f the heart, he would have left sooner. Stalling never coddled or held back in expressing his beliefs or disagreement with Janison when it came to religion and theology. In lieu of taking the stance that he was right and you were wrong, he would display empathy that was so respectful Janison would lose sight of their differences and always leave feeling they were on the same page.

It was from these conversations that Janison first spawned his vision of a reformed church; Stalling always presenting compellin
g views toward the situation that he alone could not have done.

Evidence of God intervening in his life had never been more tangible then in those moments with Stalling. Why God did not intervene with Stalling in the same way remained a mystery. Or maybe H
e did in a way that only Stalling would recognize. In the end, Janison concluded, God's mission for Stalling was not his concern, no matter how much he believed otherwise.

Janison came to a crossroads and chose the road toward God. He was on that road now
and Stalling seeking him out in this moment affirmed he made the right choice.
Stay true to your mission; leave the rest up to God.

Janison had left Stalling hanging for several minutes. True to form, Stalling had waited patiently.
He knows how I process and has benefited more than once over the years by doing so
, Janison reminded himself. He chose to betray Stalling because he believed if he did not, the man was certain to destroy the Church of Salvation. Not just the social and political structure of the Church—two aspects he himself would like to see gone—but every shred of its existence.

No question, Stalling's success would have had an immediate and positive impact on the lives of billions, but he gave me no other choice.

Unfortunate does not begin to describe the circumstances that led Janison to provide Clortison and his lackeys an arsenal of intel on Alterian Enterprises. If used correctly, it would bring down an enemy that had whipped their ass for the past decade. Forced to live in what he perceived as black and white, scuttling the project was the only choice Janison believed he had. Because in the end, the church's survival also meant the survival of what he knew to be the one and only truth.

But here I am playing the role I believe myself destined
play. Who am I to conclude I am the Lord's one and only champion?
A wave of optimism, absent for too long, filled his chest and along with it, a sense of peace he had come to know as his one and only Savior. Presented with another chance, a better choice, joy and gratitude overwhelmed Janison as he prayed without thinking:
Thank you, please forgive me, I love you.