Faith of the Fallen

The city of Fairfield had returned to a semblance of order. It was the order of a military post. Little of what could be said to make a city was left. Many of the buildings remained, but there were few of the people who had once lived and worked in them. Some of the buildings had been reduced to charred beams and blackened rubble, others were hulks with windows and doors broken out, yet most were much the same as they had been before, except, of course, that all had been emptied in the wanton looting. The buildings stood like husks, only a reminder of past life.

Here and there, a few toothless old people sat, legs splayed, leaning against a wall, watching with empty eyes the masses of armed men moving up and down their streets. Orphaned children wandered in a daze, or peered out from dark passageways. Nicci found it remarkable how quickly civilization could be stripped from a place.

As she walked through the streets, Nicci thought she understood how many of the buildings would feel if they could feel: empty, devoid of life, lacking purpose while they waited for someone to serve; their only true value being in service to the living.

The streets, populated as they were by grim-faced soldiers, gaunt beggars, the skeletal old and sick, wailing children, all amongst the rubble and filth, looked much like some of the streets Nicci remembered from when she was little. Her mother often sent her out to streets like this to minister to the destitute.

"It's the fault of men like your father," her mother had said. "He's just like my father was. He has no feelings, no concern for anyone but himself. He's heartless."

Nicci had stood, wearing a freshly washed, frilly blue dress, her hair brushed and pinned back, her hands hanging at her sides, listening as her mother lectured on good and evil, on the ways of sin and redemption. Nicci hadn't understood a lot d it, but in later years it would be repeated until she would come to know every word, every concept, every desolate truth by heart.

Nicci's father was wealthy. Worse, to Mother's way of thinking, he wasn't morseful about it. Mother explained that self-interest and greed were like the eyes of a monstrous evil, always looking for yet more power and gold to feed its insatiable hunger.

"You must learn, Nicci, that a person's moral course in this life is to help others not yourself," Mother said. "Money can't buy the Creator's blessing."

"But how can we show the Creator we're good?" Nicci asked.

"Mankind is a wretched lot, unworthy, morbid, and foul. We must fight depraved nature. Helping others is the only way to prove your soul's value.

It's only true good a person can do."

Nicci's father had been born a noble, but all his adult life he had worked as armorer. Mother believed that he had been born with comfortable wealth, and instead of being satisfied with that, he sought to build his legacy into a shameless fortune. She said wealth could only be had by fleecing it from the poor in one fashion or another. Others of the nobility, like Mother and many of her friends, were content not to squeeze an undeserved share from the sweat of the poor.

Nicci felt great guilt for Father's wicked ways, for his ill-gotten wealth. Mother said she was doing her best to try to save his straying soul.

Nicci never worried for her mother's soul, because people were always saying how caring, how kindhearted, how charitable Mother was, but Nicci would sometimes lie awake at night, unable to sleep with worry for Father, worry that the Creator might exact punishment before Father could be redeemed.

While Mother went to meetings with her important friends, the nanny, on the way to the market, often took Nicci to Father's business to ask his wishes for dinner. Nicci relished watching and learning things at Father's work. It was a fascinating place. When she was very young, she thought she might grow up to be an armorer, too. At home, she would sit on the floor and play at hammering on an item of clothing meant to be armor laid on an upturned shoe used as an anvil. That innocent time was her fondest memory of her childhood.