You can use the page links above to find your place. I hope you enjoy the first chapter and please tell your friends. The Piaculum will be available for purchase in March 2004.The following material is copyright (c) 2003 Richard C. Gray.

Chapter 1

Evening settled down onto the dusty plain and hushed the sounds coming from a small village. The village was made up of about thirty or forty little homes with weathered fences penning in animals, and little sheds housing plows and other farm equipment. Stone and wood were difficult to come by in this area, so most of the homes in the village were constructed of adobe bricks. Each home had a simple design with a large main room and, perhaps, one or two private sleeping areas sectioned off inside. They were built on the corners of wedged shaped plots of farm land that fanned out from the church at the center of the village.

One plot was left unplanted for crop rotation and was designated by the owner as a place for the children to play. In the middle of it there was a kickball field etched out on the ground with little trenches dug by a child with a strong stick. The goal boxes on each side of the field were marked off by little stakes in the ground that had loose, twine net tied around them to catch the ball if it was kicked in for a point.

Kickball was a popular pass time among the children, and only an hour earlier there were twenty boys and girls running from goal-box to goal-box in a heated game. But, with the sun light fading, most of the children in the village had gone home and there were only two boys left kicking the ball back and forth on the field.

The two boys were named Euen and Cearl. They were best friends. One was rich; the other was poor. One had six sisters; the other was an only child. One was small and light; the other was tall and strong. One looked just like everyone else, and the other had a rare skin condition known among their people as the white-mark. Despite their differences they were still best friends. Both of them were only seven years old and none of their differences mattered to them.

Though they lived in a harsh region of the continent, the water well that their village was built around had been generous for as long as they could remember. Neither one of them had ever known a time when they were thirsty and could not find water; or a time when they were hungry and were not readily given food by their parents. Kicking the ball back and forth across the field was the most important part of their care free lives. As far as they were concerned everything was close to perfect and there was no reason for anything to change.

Cearl laughed as he chased his friend down the field then stuck his foot out and deflected the ball off to the side. Cearl jerked his body back, then cut ahead toward the new direction of the ball before Euen had even realized that he had lost it. Cearl shuttled the ball around with a series of controlled kicks then headed off toward Euen's goal-box on the other side of the field. He smiled to himself as he reached the edge of Euen's undefended goal-box, but right before he could kick it through, a sick feeling gnawed into him and he suddenly fell to his knees.

He watched the ball as it rolled on past him with a swift kick from Euen and there was a flash of Euen's dark skin as he followed behind it. Cearl just sat there, motionless, as Euen scurried down to the other side of the field and kicked the ball into Cearl's goal-box.

Euen laughed and shouted with his victory. He danced about, then slowly looked over and saw that his friend was still motionless. "Cearl," Euen called out. He picked the ball up into his arms then waddled on over to his friend and dropped down to his knees to sit next to him. He wiped a few beads of sweat from his dark brown skin, then leaned in closer to Cearl.

"Are'ya sick again?" Euen asked.

Cearl slowly nodded. He panted as his red eyes stared into nothingness and he rubbed his own pale shoulders. These pains had been periodically happening to him for a few months now. It wasn't like other times in his life that he had been sick with flu or a cold; the pain was like a ball of anxious worry had materialized and lodged itself between his intestines.

"Yea," Cearl said with a sad tone as he stared off into space. "I'm sick again."

"Are you just doing this when I'm winning?" Euen sighed. Euen was half jesting. He knew that whatever pain his friend was feeling was real, but they always seemed to come in time to ruin a game.

"No," Cearl said with a childish, angry grumble. "I told ya'bout'em."

Euen passed the ball back and forth between his hands. He asked, "Why'don'cha tell'en adult'bout it? If they're what'cha think they are, you should tell a grown up."

"No," Cearl grumbled. He had a theory about why these attacks were happening to him. He hadn't told any adults yet, just Euen, but he knew what the adults would say if he described the pains to them and what he thought about them. Sometimes when these pains hit him he could see horrible visions of bad things happening to himself and others in the village, and he almost believed that some divine force was trying to warn him about something bad that was going to happen. He knew that if he told any adults what he really thought they meant, people would think he was being both foolish and sacrilegious.

Cearl and Euen belonged to a group of people called the Mone. The Mone culture was very much religiously and spiritually based, but it was still thought unacceptable for a young boy to think that his illnesses were warnings from God. The Bishop (the local religious leader) and many of the others in their local church probably would have given him a number of sermons about bearing false-witness if he had told any of them.

Cearl gasped several times before the pain slowly drifted away. He sighed, "It's gone away."

Euen squinted his eyes and looked away as he fiddled with the ball in his hands. "Momma's ganna be mad if I dunna'get home soon."

Cearl nodded, "I need'ta be back soon too."

They both got to their feet and wandered on back toward the village. Euen's home was closest to the kickball field because it was on his family's land. His family was one of the richest ones in the village and one of the few with enough land allotted to them so that they could practice yearly field rotation.

With a nod and a wave Euen scrambled into his house and left Cearl outside. Before Cearl could go very far, his pains returned. He did his best to hurry past a few houses so Euen wouldn't know how quickly they had come back.

Cearl grabbed his stomach but it didn't help. He shivered as he quietly stumbled off of the gravel walkways to the side of another neighbor's house. This time, visions accompanied the attack. In his mind he could see himself all tied up with ropes onto wooden planks that formed a crucifix. The vision didn't show him very much, but he got the distinct impression that he was being carried along in the dark by strange looking men.

The pain ended again as quickly as it had begun, but he still felt weak and could barely move. Deep inside himself he just knew these had to be warnings of some kind, but he didn't know of what. He had never experienced anything in his life so horrible as what he saw in these visions, nor had he heard of anything so horrible happening to anyone else.

He had thought about telling his father about the visions, but his father had been out traveling. Cearl's last extended relative had died, and his father had to go on a long journey to the next village to perform funeral rites. Cearl decided then that when his father got back he would tell him about the vision he had just had. He felt like he had to tell someone, but if he were to tell the bishop or anyone else in the church about a vision of being tied to a crucifix they most likely would have charged blasphemy.

His father was different from the others in the village, and there was a good chance he wouldn't be as condemning as the rest of the adults. Though Cearl's father knew the Church doctrine better than most, he almost never came to the same conclusions about things that everyone else seemed to. Even if his father didn't believe him that his visions were some sort of warning from God, he knew that his father would at least give a different and more understanding lecture about them than the one he knew everyone else would give.

Cearl leaned against his neighbor's wall for a minute more as he regained his strength. He peeked into their window; there was a family of a mother, a father, and four children inside. The family was sitting together, humbly clothed and huddled around a candle with a book. It was a common practice among the Mone that a family read together before bed.

Books were typically printed and bound in the northern cities and were hard to come by in the poor, southern villages where they lived. But, despite the hard expense on the southern farmers, there was one book in particular that every Mone family, no matter how poor they were, made every effort to own. This precious book was a religious text known to them as The Book of Testaments, and was the basis of their religious beliefs.

Cearl could hear from the window that it was The Book of Testaments that his neighbors were reading together. Each person was taking turns reading out loud from this book while the others listened. He watched for a while until they passed the book to a child that was still learning to read. Their parents quietly read the pages then whispered the words into the child's ear. The child then gave a big smile and recited the passage to everyone else as it had been read to him.

Cearl knew that most Mone practiced the nightly reading in much the same way as this one did. Though it would have been more convenient to just have one person read to everyone else, every family member's contribution, whether they were old, small or as yet unable to read, was just as important as lessons learned in the holy book.

Cearl's family, however, was different than most in the village, and they usually did things a bit differently than other Mone. His father was not only a farmer, like the other men in the village, but also a philosopher who always strove to find unique perspectives in life rather than simply follow tradition. Cearl's father had no problem conflicting with conventional thinking as long as he felt it was a valid way to interpret The Book of Testaments, and his father's eccentricities often set his family on a fine line between being admired and being outcast. Among other things, Cearl's father conjured a slight modification to the typical nightly reading that most Mone practiced, and it forever altered the way Cearl thought about God.

His father came to the conclusion that it was not enough for his son or his family to simply read about God, and decided that it was necessary to take the time to see God first hand. Once his father had come to this conclusion, it didn't take very long for him to decide the best way to act on his idea. Each night, his family added to the typical night of reading an hour beforehand to sit together and watch the sunset, then gaze at the stars as the darkness settled in. It became a sort of ritual that was the same almost every night, and Cearl never got tired of it.

The routine began after Cearl had returned home from his usual game of kickball. His mother would always scold him for coming home so much later than the other children, and his father always smiled at him as if he were remembering games of kickball from long ago. Cearl was the only child, so once he arrived the three of them would step outside of the adobe brick flat that they lived in. Cearl would crawl up onto his mother's lap after she had sat down on a wooden chair. His father would always shuffle up behind the two of them and gaze at them for a while; the man constantly seemed to be studying everyone and everything around him, and was especially fond of watching the expressions on his son's face.

After giving his wife a kiss on the cheek, he would groan as he bent his tired back and legs and sat down on the ground beside the chair. His father would then sigh to himself, give Cearl a thoughtful look from the corner of his eye, then point to the sky and tell him to look toward the setting sun. Cearl would anxiously look up and wait for his father to continue. His father would then lean up next to the chair and take his wife's hand. With another look to his son he would tell him a beautiful little story he had invented about God's home in the sky. He would tell Cearl that God lived up in the stars and heavens and that it was God's home just as this little wedge of land belonged to them. God put the sun up during the day to help people to see while they were awake, his father explained, and at night it would move beneath the ground so that God could look over everyone while they slept. Without any pretense the story came from his father's imagination, but Cearl believed every word of it and felt he always would.

After his father had told his story, Cearl would then look off into the radiant colors of the evening horizon and watch as the sun headed toward the ground. He would hardly be able to breathe the moment before it completely left the sky. All of the colors of everything around him seemed to grow in intensity in those last moments of day light. Then, with a brief flash of light on the horizon, the sun would completely sink below the ground and leave the sky until morning. Each night that final flash before dark took him by surprise even though he knew it was coming. He would almost hold his breath as the darkness finally settled in, then with a deep sigh he would look up to the starry sky where God lived. He loved the stars. Each time he looked up to them he felt both insignificantly small and infinitely loved. He knew that God was staring back at him and looking after him just as his father had said.

Even though his father had been out traveling for funeral rites, Cearl and his mother had still been keeping to the tradition of watching the sunset together. As soon as Cearl felt the strength return to his legs he hurried home to this parent's hut. The sun was drawing closer to the horizon and Cearl didn't want to miss watching the sunset with his mother.

As soon as he stepped through the door his pretty mother gave him an angry glance as she looked up from her sewing. She had large, amber eyes; curly, brown hair and she also had the white-mark. It was from her that Cearl inherited the mark. Though the skin of the white-mark was so much different than what most Mone had, the rest of his mother's features, particularly her bone structure and figure, were considered the ideal of beauty. Everyone else that Cearl knew, including his father, had dark brown skin, but his Mother's skin was chalk white with fine, dark brown lines and a few tiny blue veins meandering through it.

When a child with the white-mark was first born, their skin was usually mottled with dark brown and chalk white patches. But as they got older the white patches grew together leaving fine, dark streaks across the white skin. Since Cearl was still quite young, the dark bands on his white skin were still as wide as his big finger, and only with age would they become the fine tipped streaks that his mother had.

She shook her head a bit at her son, then grumbled, "Why are you always so much later getting home than the others, Cearl?"

Cearl shrugged as usual. "We had to finish the game," he said.

Cearl's mother continued with her sewing as he inched into the room. There was a meek looking wooden table in the center of the main room with a candle placed on the middle of it. Around the table was an assortment of chairs and cushions, and along the wall's were some wooden shelves holding food and utensils. Behind his mother was another shelf and on top of it was a ragged looking book, the family's copy of The Book of Testaments. Cearl cautiously maneuvered around the room so that he wouldn't disturb his mother's sewing, then he snatched up the book.

Cearl loved to listen to his father read to him only slightly more than he loved to read himself. Most in the village were amazed at how well Cearl could read for his age, and he had actually been asked by several families to help them teach other children, some of whom were older than he was.

Cearl greedily handled the pages of the book. A few weeks before Cearl's father had left for his journey he had officially given the book to his son, just how it had been passed to Cearl's father by his father's father. Though it still sat at the same spot in the house, and though each of them used it as they wished, there seemed to be a subtle change to the texture of the paper and the sharpness of the printed words ever since Cearl knew that it technically belonged to him. He fingered the bumpy texture of the cardboard cover, then opened it up and read again a message that his father had penciled in before giving it to him.

His father had written, "Study God's word's without presumptions and leave your heart open to what his words say. The more a man will understand of God, the more he will know of himself, and the more blessings he will have."

He smiled at his father's hand writing. The phrase 'without presumptions' in his message was bolded and emphasized. Cearl knew that it was his father's belief that far too many people simply believed whatever they were told was written in The Book of Testaments without truly reading the book for themselves. They may have recited passages or skimmed through the difficult dialect, but in the end they seldom heard what was actually written, only what they thought or had been told was written. His father didn't hide this or any of his criticism of their culture, and Cearl knew it had deeply offended a few of their neighbors while inspiring others. Some of their neighbors deeply admired Cearl's father, and others would have been content to have him and all of his criticisms and unorthodox opinions leave the village in the middle of the night.

Cearl looked out the window; it was getting closer to sunset. He swung his head around and anxiously looked to his mother. She had pretended to forget the family ritual of watching the sunset together ever since his father had left for his journey. Cearl's mother was always a bit nervous about his father's views and his openness with them and she usually didn't try to encourage Cearl to follow them.

"Momma," Cearl sighed.

She eyed him again from her sewing, then set it down in her lap. "You want to see the sunset, eh?"

Cearl laughed, "Come on Momma." He took her hand and dragged her outside and made her sit with him on a rocking chair they had beside their door.

It took a moment for them to settle in, then his mother put an arm around him as she rocked back and forth. Cearl looked up to the sky, then back to his mother. "God lives up there Momma," he said. "It's his home, just like how we live in our house... He give's us'da sun for the day, so we can see, and He takes it down at night so He can look over all of us while we sleep."

His mother sighed, "Now, is that in the Testaments anywhere, Cearl?"

"Momma," Cearl groaned. "It's Pappa's story... I know it's not in the Testaments, but I gotta tell Pappa's story, or it's just not the same."

She smiled a longing smile. "Ah Jacob my husband," she sighed. "Cearl, your father should be back in a day or two. It's a long journey and the funeral rites take a few days. But, he should be back in a few."

"I know, Momma," Cearl sighed.

As he looked to the horizon, he saw something unexpected. It was a large mass that was crawling over the hill and toward their village. It was coming from the west and was difficult to see what it was against the glare of the sun. He put his hand over his eyes and tried to squint at it, but it wasn't until the sun had sunk beneath the horizon that he could make it out. The large mass was actually hundreds of strange men carrying torches and marching toward them. The bright points of the countless torches made it look as though there were stars in the earth as well as in the heavens.

"What's that?" Cearl said as he pointed. "It's beautiful," he naively said. "Isn't it beautiful Momma?"

When his mother didn't respond to his comment, he turned his head to look up to her. He was so sure that she would agree with him and that she would be smiling at the pleasant site, but when he turned his head and looked up he found his mother was petrified by fear. He didn't understand what was going on, and he called to her several times to rouse her from her trance.

"Momma!" Cearl shouted.

She closed her eyes as if she were about to weep, then she called out, "Get back in the house Cearl! Get back in the house!"

He could tell that she was terrified, but he didn't understand why. "Momma? It's just a bunch of travelers, Momma. Maybe Pappa is with them."

"I said, get back in the house, Cearl!"

With a few terrified gasps, she quickly pulled him into the house, and bolted the door closed.

"What's wrong, Momma?" Cearl shouted.

She ignored him, then frantically looked around the room. With a jerk in her step she rushed to the table, and pushed all of the chairs away from it. Then, with all her might, she slowly pushed the heavy table up against the door.

"Momma?" Cearl asked again. He had no idea what was going on.

All she would say to him was, "Stay away from the windows, Cearl!" She started stacking the chairs up against the door then she took the last one and set it in the middle of the room. She sat down on it as tears began to leak from her eyes, and she pulled him up onto her lap.

"Momma?" Cearl questioned. "Please tell me what's going on."

She gasped a few breaths, then stroked his hair and whispered into his ears. "It's going to be okay, Cearl," she said. "It will all be okay. You have to promise me that you'll have faith when they come, Cearl."

"Who's coming?"

"Cearl!" she gasped, "promise me that you'll have faith. If you hold to your faith, everything will turn out okay. Everything will turn out okay, Cearl." After she had said this several times, she broke down, buried her head in his back, and started bawling. She looked down at her own white hand. "I'm sorry," she gasped as she cried. "I'm so sorry, Cearl. I'm so sorry." She said that it was her fault they had come for him, but he didn't understand. He didn't know who had come for him. Cearl only wished that his mother would stop bawling and that she would stop hiding her face in his back; it made him feel like she was already gone and that he was sitting in a chair all by himself in an empty room.

For a long time the only sound he could hear was his mother bawling, then the whole world seemed to center on him as he listened to the sound of people screaming outside. Strange voices shouted out curses and threats and other voices, familiar ones, pleaded and begged for mercy. He could hear the voice of one of the women from their village; she was screaming out that her husband had just been killed. He could hear her violent sobs as she screeched out at someone, asking them why they had killed her husband and calling them a monster. Her voice became more and more frantic until it suddenly stopped dead with the sound of a strange man grunting back at her in rage. There were more screams from more people and he could hear them running as fast as they could over the gravel walkways outside.

He tried to move his head toward the window to see what was happening, but his mother held his head away from it. Then, as the village bishop started to shout out at the intruders, his mother covered up his ears to try and keep him from hearing. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't keep the conversation from him and he could hear every word that the bishop shouted.

"Please!" the Bishop cried out. "We know what you want."

"We want salvation!" a strange voice cried back at him.

"Is it your time of blood?" The Bishop asked. The Bishop's voice was desperate and shaky. "You want the boy? Don't you? The one with the mark?... Take him... We won't resist. Just take the boy and leave everyone else alone. Please!"

Cearl shivered as he listened to them inside his home. He and his mother were the only two people in the village with the mark. Cearl knew they were talking about him. "What's going on, Momma?" Cearl begged.

His mother bawled and held him closer to her, then kissed his cheeks and repeated what she had said earlier, that he needed to hold to his faith, and that if he held to his faith everything would turn out okay.

The cries of his people died down, but the grunting and impatient sounds of the strangers began to surround their home. Light from the men's torches spilled in from the windows and from the corner of his eyes he could almost see one of them looking in on them from outside. He tried to look toward them so he could see what these men looked like, but his mother put her hand over his eyes and held his head next to her heart.

"Please don't look, Cearl," she begged. She started to mumble prayers to herself as she bawled.

He refused to obey her. He tore her hands away from his eyes then he looked to the window and saw a strange face eyeing him. Then, there was a bang at the door. He immediately swung his head toward it. The table and the chairs mostly held their ground, but the door shook from the force. Cearl's eyes fixed on the door as the men outside grumbled about how best to get in. There was shuffling of foot steps, then another pound echoed against the door. Then another... And another. Cearl's body shook from the inside out each time they came closer to breaking in.

With a final great shove, they burst through the doors and pushed all of the furniture away and flooded into their home. The first thing Cearl noticed about them was their faces; he had never seen anything like them before. Each one of their faces was covered in a mask of intricate tattoos. There was a cross tattooed on each of their foreheads and spider webs of ink fanned out from the corners of their eyes around their shaved heads and down their backs. There were geometric symbols and writing driven into their cheeks, and reddish brown stains from some animal's blood had recently been streaked across their faces. Their clothes were also very different. Unlike the humble earth-colored garments of Cearl's people, these men wore robes of stone white, pitch black or blood red.

All of the men gave hungry stares at Cearl as they studied him. Then, with a nod from their leader, the men dropped torches against the walls to set Cearl's home on fire. Two of them stepped forward with metal rods then beat down on his mother until she let go of him. He was picked up by one of the larger men, then carried through his burning home to the outside. Waiting for him around his house was an army of men that were each covered in tattoos and wore the strange gothic clothes and metal jewelry.

The man carrying him held him up to the sky as if Cearl were some sort of trophy. Cearl squirmed and kicked, but to no avail. "Neodeus!" the man shouted. The entire crowd began to chant, "Neodeus! Neodeus! Neodeus! Neodeus!"

Once the crowds were deep in their mad chants, Cearl was lowered to be within reach of them and they swarmed forward. Cearl could feel hundreds of evil hands groping at his flesh and pulling at his clothes. In less than a minute his clothes had been stripped off of him by the mob and bruises covered his shoulders and legs.

Cearl's naked body was thrown into the back of a wagon. There was a group of three men wearing white robes and red hoods. Two of them were boys under their tatoos--no more than fifteen years of age. The other one was an old man of at least sixty years. "God!" Cearl shouted, "God! Please! Help me!" he prayed. At the sound of his voice the two young ones snatched at his arms then held his face and belly to the floor of the wagon.

"Leave me alone!" Cearl shouted.

"May the devil take this flesh," the old one said as he dipped a sharp nail into a bottle of ink. "May the devil take this flesh for the salvation of all that partake of his blood. The blood of a son of the mark sent to save us. Though he comes from the womb of a marked daughter who we know bleeds sin, his blood will cleanse our own."

Cearl gasped as the point of the nail was driven into his flesh, then again, and again as the old man sketched a tatoo into Cearl's right shoulder.

Cearl sniffled to himself and bawled out his prayer. "Dear god please help me... Please make these bad men go away," Cearl prayed. "I will have faith... I will have faith."

As Cearl bawled and prayed, the whole time the old man mumbled and chanted, "May the devil take this flesh," the old man said. "May the devil take this flesh for the salvation of all that partake of his blood. Piaculum. Piaculum. May the devil take this flesh. Piaculum. Piaculum. For the salvation of all that partake of his blood."

There was a jostle as the horses that were tied to the wagon were whipped, then, there were cheers and chants of, "Piaculum" or "Neodeus" as the wagon and the army pulled out of Cearl's village and went out to the open road. In only a few moments Cearl knew that he was farther from his home than he had ever been in his entire life.

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