10. Chapel

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1367 DR, city of Memnon

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"I can't pay" the man stared at the cleric with an imploring look. "I beg you. I'm dying. I'll do anything!"

The priest took a deep sigh. He was not cut out for that job, not for how it was managed in Memnon. He would have helped this man; actually, if he could, he would have helped them all.

"The Goddess asks for offerings, not payments," replied his colleague, an older priest who was clearly more ruthless than him. "If your health is valuable to you, then prove it. Open your purse and offer what you can for the temple."

Brother Furaij witnessed with sorrow the profound humiliation of the man who had to open his purse and show a few copper coins and one silver. The priest reached out and the man with extreme reluctance gave him the most precious coin.

"We will pray for you," assured the priest, placing the coin safely in a metal casket inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Furaij thought to himself that that casket was worth much more than its contents, perhaps more than the entire miserable district where that sick man lived.

The suppliant remained on his knees for a moment longer, as if waiting for something, then he understood that he would not get anything else.

He lowered his head, took a deep breath, and when he raised his eyes were misted with tears. Whether they were of despair, frustration or anger, the young cleric could not have said.

The man was dismissed with a brusque gesture. As he left, the senior priest turned to his neophyte colleague.

"Don't look at him that way. It wouldn't be so ill if he didn't drink all his money in some tavern. Even just by taking that coin away from him and putting it to better use, we're doing him a favor."

Put it to better use, Furaij thought a little discouraged.

"You're right, Brother Haseid, but clean water is rarer than alcohol in the slums, and much more expensive."

The older cleric shot him a dirty look at that objection but said nothing. He merely motioned to the servant who was stationed at the door, indicating that he should let the next beggar in.

Put it to better use, Furaij repeated to himself, trying to detach himself as much as possible from what was happening. The queue of poor people outside the door seemed endless and he did not have the moral strength to listen to every plea and every cynical answer. My salary comes from the temple coffers, so can I be an active part of this better use…?

That evening, Brother Furaij went to pray in the public chapel in the outermost part of the temple. It was the place where ordinary citizens and the poor went. Most of the clerics preferred to pray in the main temple, a majestic structure that was open to the public only for special occasions, or in other more private chapels. Higher-ranking priests had similar gathering places - as rich as the rest of the temple - directly adjacent to their chambers. He chose to go there, to that slightly less opulent place but still adorned in silver and gold decorations, because it was necessary to impress the masses with the greatness of the Goddess. Yet his gaze did not linger on those earthly treasures but rose to stare at the circular hole in the roof that let in the moonlight. That night the moon was almost full and Furaij found himself pondering for a long time rather than praying; despite the chapel being bathed in moonlight, Selûne seemed so far away.

He left the chapel hours later, with no response. The Goddess was silent, or perhaps she did not speak to mere acolytes like him.

A few evenings later, with a more confident step, the young cleric returned to the chapel. Carrying out the prayer service in that room open to the public was a little coveted task, relegated to newcomers. Furaij made a very welcome surprise to his young fellow Khalid when he offered to replace him in his duties.

That night Brother Furaij gave an encouraging, welcoming speech about Selûne's role in providing help and comfort to those in distress under the moonlight. He was not yet able to reach the Goddess with his conscience or faith and ask her to infuse him with her magic, he could not heal the sick or even create water from nothing for the thirsty, but he had bought a barrel of fresh water and used it to make a nourishing brew, which he distributed to the poor with Selûne's blessing. Many of those people did not have the possibility of consuming fruit or spices, most ate bread and half-rotten vegetables, the one that could not be sold to the market, and drank wine of the lowest quality that did more harm than good.

Furaij tried to quench their thirst and give them some nourishment, but more importantly, he really listened to ordinary people and their problems. Sometimes feeling listened to and considered could be almost as useful as finding a solution, and the young man knew this well because his superiors never listened to him. He couldn't reiterate that wrong model. His neophyte fellows were beginning to do so, showing peasants the same disdain that high clerics showed them. Furaij recalled that they too had good intentions, in the beginning, when they started priesthood training alongside him. What had become of those good intentions?

"My daughter has a skin disease, but I don't know what ..."

"My husband is losing sight in one eye"

"My children are hungry, I don't know what to do"

"My wife had to give herself to one of you priests because she was sick, but then she died anyway"

"The fields this year bear little fruit, for us there will be nothing left"

Furaij listened. He took charge of those complaints, of the questions, of the suspicion, of the words of hatred and rancor. He could not offer solutions, he was a only one man, but at least he forced himself to stay there and listen to them all, until even the last poor man came out of the wooden and silver doors, disappearing into the night.

Then he bolted the door, returned to the center of the chapel, at the altar right under the hole in the roof, and prayed. This time he was able to really pray. He turned to the Goddess and asked her to bless her faithful, their fields, asked her to alleviate their pains and diseases. He still suspected that those words were falling on deaf ears, yet he knew that Selûne was real, everyone knew it. He spoke to her with an open heart, asking her what was the social role of priests like him, what was the use of being barricaded in a golden temple, in a city where the poor were dying of starvation.

"Why, Selûne?" He asked in a broken voice, staring at the moon that was about to disappear over the edge of the hole in the roof. "Why do you allow all this? Why don't my superiors work some miracle for people? Or maybe… maybe they can't do it? Perhaps you have long since withdrawn your blessing, and this place is but an empty shell? Perhaps keeping our distance from people serves not to make them understand how pointless we are? " Brother Furaij was tired, indeed exhausted, in body and soul. He had listened to many miserable stories, and on the other side there was a wall of disinterest and silence. By his superiors, by the Goddess.

"Damn, tell me!" He burst out, shouting to the sky. "You have to tell me! What the hell am I for, in this world?! You stand there, silent and careless, watching people suffering and… what do the myths say? That you bring relief to the people! Are they lies?" His voice sounded hoarse, alien, it came back distorted due to the echo. This heightened the feeling of being completely alone.

Furaij screamed until he fell to the ground, exhausted, voiceless. His eyes were misted with tears, so he put cupped hands to his face to wipe his cheeks.

He almost choked.

He removed his hands immediately; his face was now wet as if he had just dipped it in a bucket. His hands were also wet. Tears alone couldn't have created so much water. He tried again to bring his palms to his face, but it was enough to cup his hands for the miracle to repeat itself: water had just materialized in his hands. Furaij separated them abruptly and the water fell to the ground, wetting the splendid marble floor.

"What…?" he whispered, amazed. He repeated the experiment. Once, twice, three times. It was still happening. Invariably, every time he cupped his hands, fresh and clear water began to form, appearing out of nowhere. And not just enough to fill his hands, no: when the process was triggered, he kept gushing the precious liquid until it trickled down to the ground. Furaij ran to the outer door and flopped into the courtyard in front of the temple, because he did not want to flood the chapel. He tried cupping his hands again. The water began to flow immediately, and in fact it did not stop. The arid land drank greedily, so it wasn't easy to tell how much water he was producing, but it seemed… too much. It was not like a normal spell, he had studied that creating water with magic was possible (well, for expert clerics, not for him), but that spell had to be done voluntarily and had limits. You could not create more than a few gallons of water. Furaij, on the other hand, was now wearing a soggy tunic and sodden shoes, and was creating a large patch of damp ground beneath him.

He snapped his hands into fists, interrupting the miracle. A gust of freezing air brought him back to reality, reminding him that the Calimshan weather at night was not so mild. They were too close to the desert.

He lifted his face looking for the moon in the sky, perplexed. He had had a very clear sign of the Goddess's existence, and that she was listening to him. But what did that strange phenomenon mean? Was it a punishment or a blessing?

Or both?

If his condition persisted, he could irrigate himself the dry fields that were dying in the hot spring sun. Conversely, he had no control over that power, and he would have to be careful about how he moved his hands all the time.

Maybe it really was both a gift and a curse, and there was no way to tell if it would last forever or for a few hours.

Furaij finally managed to find the moon in the sky. He was descending behind the bulbous dome of one of the temple turrets. From that angle, it almost looked like a crooked smile.