Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) Read online

  MARTYR™ by N.P. Beckwith

  Amazon Kindle Edition, June 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by N.P. Beckwith

  Published by Flagship Fiction™ an imprint of CGI Publishing™

  Copyright © 2014 Command Group International LLC

  Denver, Colorado, United States of America

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without proper attribution or the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, contact the publisher at www.cgipublishing.com

  With the exception of historical figures and events, all characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

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  Copyright © 2014 N.P. Beckwith

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  MARTYR

  N P Beckwith

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  1

  I never dreamed. Or if I did, I never remembered. Sleep was anesthesia, a blink of the eyes between awake and awake again. That night I had dreamed, my mind born anew into a world of tangible light and sound. I woke, and elation dissolved into panic, as I realized my alarm hadn’t sounded. The blue-green digits were flashing twelve o’clock, again and again; the power had gone off. A glance at my watch confirmed my fears – I had overslept. I was supposed to be in class in less than twenty minutes. I braced for an icy shower.

  A few minutes later, I had one leg in my pants and a trickle of red down my neck from a reckless shave. I tried to remember my dream, but with each cast it receded farther from my grasp. I finished dressing and ran a comb through my hair, pausing before the mirror to inspect the result. I was a junior English major with a minor in philosophy. English as a major was an easy choice. I loved the interplay of words and ideas, and realized early on that a command of language could give me a decisive advantage in life. But philosophy…that was a little harder to explain.

  I wasn’t especially religious. My family hailed from a long line of non-practicing Methodists, and had conveyed an attitude of extreme indifference with regard to spiritual matters. It was more of a personal quest for truth. I wanted to know what was real, what mattered. I wanted the certainty my upbringing had failed to provide. I wasn’t dogmatic about it; on the contrary, every time I was proven wrong brought me one step closer to knowing what was right. I was fine-tuning my belief system, chiseling away the contradictions and fallacies. When it was done, I would either find absolute truth, or nothing. I honestly wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  I checked my watch again. Seven minutes. It wasn’t that I cared about the class. “Politics of Religion” – sacred ground for the pious; battlefield for the profane. Interesting, if only for the limitless mayhem potential. It wasn’t that hard, really. All you had to do was suggest that something could be known with certainty, and one side or the other would pounce, eager to shred both the argument, and the person foolish enough to advance it. The real art was in planting the seed without owning it, as in, “I heard someone in the history department say…” Then just sit back and watch the blood flow.

  I had a powerful suspicion the professor was wise to my little games of instigation, but he had yet to call me out. He was a real head case, that one. Recently PhD’d, arrogance in spades. Textbook narcissist. Humiliation and intimidation were the weapons he wielded to strike down any who questioned his views or methods. This was all out there for anyone to see. Privately, rumors circulated that he was into occultic stuff, but accounts varied widely on the specifics. Almost nothing would have surprised me. It wasn’t the class that had me trying to cram thirty minutes of hygiene into ten, and it certainly wasn’t the professor. It was all about the girl.

  Mana. Part-time friend and long-time crush. Raven-haired beauty of some semi-exotic stock. We had bonded over a mutual love of sport, somehow always ending up in the gym at the same time. These were carefully crafted coincidences. I had given her an edge in our first racquetball match, and she had neatly diced me. After that I had always tried, and had lost as often as I’d won. As far as I could tell, Mana didn’t suspect my true intentions. She went on a lot of first dates, and few seconds. As soon as the guys realized that she expected them to match wits with her before she’d even consider taking it farther, most never called again, and she was fine with that. So was I. I worried that I might have played the friendship angle a little too well, and become locked into that status. I had been thinking that it was time to do something about that. But now I was going to miss the social window, the crucial few minutes before lecture when everyone found their seats and made their connections.

  Breakfast could wait; coffee could not. I nuked the thick stuff still sitting in the pot, spiked it with cream before slipping into my jacket and out the door. I had settled off campus after a less-than-satisfactory first term in the dorms. The never-ending party that was campus life had not been conducive to serious study. I shared a spacious rental house with three other guys who were hardly ever there. This was a blessing. Most days I enjoyed the drive, a mind-calming jaunt through a shadowed glade and along the edge of a sandy-shored pond. Today it was just unwanted minutes. I accelerated, dropping it into fourth as I entered the winding stretch of road that passed through the shadow of the granite bluff called “God’s Forehead”. The landscape permitted only a truncated view of the road ahead, but the Jeep knew the way. Another quarter mile, and the road would level out, dip under an old railroad bridge, and resume an easterly course toward the University.

  Lances of golden sunlight had begun to penetrate the thickness of forest, treetops stark against a copper sky. The dream! It was the same sky I had seen in my dream, triggering a recollection of other details. In the dream, I had been driving on this same road, or one very much like it. But instead of going under the tracks, the bridge had taken me over them. On the other side, the pavement had become cracked and pitted, with tufts of long yellow grass poking through in places. The farther I progressed, the more the state of the road deteriorated, until the Jeep could no longer manage the terrain, and I was forced to proceed on foot. Navigating the uneven ground, I traveled for some time with eyes downcast, until a huff of exhaled breath brought my eyes back to the fore.

  There was something in the road. It was a massive, many-pointed thing, silhouetted in golden light. As my eyes adjusted to the glare, I could see that it was some kind of creature, though not like any I had seen before. It was a deer, or something of that nature, but essentially different. It had six legs: four long, delicate forelegs and two heavily-muscled hind legs. It was easily ten feet high a
t the shoulder, and it held its enormous head well above that. Its antlers branched, and branched again, and again, more like the branches of a tree than anything animal. And they were translucent, capturing and holding the early morning light in a luminous halo about the beast’s head. It was entirely white, like new snow, save for four enormous eyes of liquid gold. It was watching me. There came a sound like an old air-raid siren. The creature had thrown back its head, and the noise was issuing from that great, arching throat. It lasted forever. Then the thing was across the road and gone, into the trees.

  Were dreams really supposed to mean something, to provide a key to some unresolved conflict in the psyche? The deer was my father, looking at me with censure, the four eyes implying double the disappointment. I laughed at my own pathetic attempt at Freudian analysis. Or the deer could have been Mana, representing all that is beautiful, mysterious, elusive…and perhaps unattainable. Then again, maybe the meaning lay in the numbers: four eyes, six legs, infinite branches; something about my limitless potential? Psychobabble and nonsense. Dreams don’t mean anything, I decided. Or they mean whatever you want them to mean. Then I saw another angle. It wasn’t about the animal; it was about the bridge, the first departure from the familiar, from the world as I knew it. Every day you take the same path. What if, one day, you took a different one? A bridge over instead of under, down instead of up, right instead of left? Could that change everything? Could you ever go back? Would you want to?

  That was it: a different path. I was going to take a leap. I was going to talk to Mana, ask her out. It wasn’t quite that simple, of course. But I knew the words would come, as they always did. I’d say that the idea came to me uninvited, when I was thinking about how much fun we always have together. I’d tell her that it surprised me too at first, but when I thought about it, it just felt so right. I’d assure her that it could never jeopardize our friendship, only make it better. And of course, that we owed it to ourselves to find out if there might be something there, and would regret it forever if we didn’t try. OK, I’d drop the “forever” part, too melodramatic. But the rest of the pieces were there. What happened today would change the dynamic of our relationship forever – for better or worse. I was feeling my nerves, to be sure; but I was also exhilarated. My dream had emboldened me to do something I had wanted to do for a long time. And even if it backfired, it would be better to know than to cling to a hope that was ultimately false. Wouldn’t it? I crossed the bridge without even noticing.

  2

  Arriving on campus, I parked as close to the philosophy building as I dared. I jogged across the lawn, clearing the steps two at a time. I was only a few minutes late when I arrived at the lecture hall, but I paused at the door, edging it open just a crack, enough to see that class was already underway. I waited. A notice board across the hall was plastered with several brightly-colored fliers announcing one of Maitland’s pay-per-view lectures. It was entitled, “God’s Mistakes: How irregularities in the fabric of the universe argue against cosmic intelligence”. No bias there.

  When I heard one of the students ask a question, I made my move, slipping through the door and melting into the nearest empty seat, next to an older Asian guy named Hyung who always took notes on his laptop. I hoped the constant tapping would mask the sounds of my entry. Professor Maitland was responding to the question. “So you would say we can’t know anything unless it is divinely revealed?”

  “Yes, because otherwise knowledge would be subjective, and what you know may not be the same as what I know.” The questioner was revealed to be a bespectacled young lady with a long braid of mousy brown hair. I had never noticed her before.

  Maitland answered with his customary snark. “Then, my dear, you would be wrong, wouldn’t you?” This earned an approving laugh from his fan club in the first couple of rows. The professor waited a few seconds for the buzz to subside, then added, “There is of course another possibility…”

  The young woman stood defiant, refusing to dignify the professor’s comment with a response. He continued. “As I see it, one can grovel and beg for whatever scraps may fall from the gods’ table, or…” He clutched the edges of the podium with both hands and cast his gaze around the room. “…he can climb up there and take it for himself, just as the great ones did eons ago.”

  Instantly, the room was abuzz with whispered conversations. “Take it…,” the girl echoed, incredulous, “from the gods? You mean literally?”

  “What is a god?” asked Maitland. “Who is a god?” He glanced around the room, perhaps hoping someone would be foolish enough to attempt an answer. “A god,” he said, “is simply one who has the will, and the ability, to rise above. The rest are destined to be worshippers, followers…slaves.”

  The questioner was undeterred. “Some say we are all gods,” she said.

  “And some say we are all winners,” Maitland said. “But it is a poor kind of victory that is shared by all. Likewise, godhood that is common to all is of little value. Uniqueness is an essential quality of deity. Consider the Olympians. Of what advantage is the ability to hurl thunderbolts if your siblings are invulnerable?”

  I should have held my tongue. Instead I heard myself say, “And what good are siblings, when you could have a few more slaves?”

  Maitland smirked. If he was ruffled by my comment, he didn’t show it. “As it happens, I have been given students rather than slaves. And the only god-like power I wield is over your grades.” A subdued chuckle. “Oh, and the next time you decide to come to my class late, Mayer, please close the door behind you.” This yielded a collective “ooh” from the class, as heads turned to see who had just been humiliated. “We’ll pick this discussion up tomorrow,” he said. “Remember to bring the abstracts for your research papers.” He collected his notes and slipped out the back, brushing off the three or four students hoping for an audience with him.

  Through the deluge of bodies pressing for the door I spotted Mana. She was still sitting, surrounded by some of her most trusted girlfriends. They appeared to be discussing a text Mana had received. Breaching the perimeter would be no easy task. I had to formulate a strategy, time it perfectly, and…oh, what the heck. “Mana!” I said. One of the girls stepped aside; the rest just turned to look at me with mild amusement. Change of plans. “Got a minute?” I asked.

  Mana pocketed her phone, excused herself from the circle of trust. “Sure, Justin,” she said.

  “Walk with me,” I said. Her eyes searched mine for some clue to my intentions, but she smiled and came along. The hallway was bustling with students, too noisy. I led her to the stairwell at the end of the hall, then down the stairs. The basement of the building housed the faculty offices; nobody would bother us there. Halfway down the hall there was a small lounge area off to one side consisting of a couple of chairs and a table scattered with outdated magazines. That was where I led her.

  Mana was beginning to look concerned. “Justin, what’s going on?” she asked.

  “Look, I’m really sorry for being so cryptic, Mana,” I said. “I just needed to talk to you alone for a minute.”

  “OK,” she said, still uncertain.

  “Can we sit?” I asked, indicating the chairs. She complied. I took the other chair, drew a slow breath. “Mana, we’ve been friends since first year, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Ever since I first mopped the racquetball court with your sorry butt.” She was obviously trying to break the tension. But was she also trying to remind me of the strictly casual nature of our relationship?

  I allowed myself to smile. “Since then,” I said. I reached out and rearranged a couple of the magazines on the table. “Mana, that’s what I’m trying to say. You have a great sense of humor. I love that we can talk trash with each other like that. I would never want to do anything to jeopardize that.”

  “Justin,” she started. I could see from her body language that she was growing uncomfortable. “Before you say any more, I need to…”

  “You old fo
ol! How dare you presume to tell me…” It was a shout, from somewhere down the hall. We gaped at each other for half a second, then Mana rose and gestured for me to follow, taking cautious steps. As we approached a darkly stained wooden door the voices resumed, animated but not quite so loud. These were the faculty offices. The brass plate on the door was engraved with the name, “Simon Maitland, PhD”.

  “…the Board’s decision, ultimately,” a second voice was saying. “They had proposed an administrative review, in response to some of the liberties you’ve been taking with the curriculum, but…”

  “Liberties!” The tone was elevated again. It was definitely Maitland. “That curriculum hasn’t been revised in over a decade. The ‘liberties’ I’ve taken are the only parts of the program that actually reflect current scholarship!”

  “Current scholarship, Dr. Maitland, or your own ideas?” said the other voice.

  “Have you taken the time to crack open a journal in the last few years, Rackliff?” Maitland asked. That had to be Bruce Rackliff, Dean of the College of Sciences. “The two are pretty much synonymous.”

  “Really? One of the other faculty members overheard you saying that Plato and Aristotle aren’t even worth reading. It’s a philosophy department, Professor!”

  “What do you know about philosophy?” asked Maitland. “This department is just rehashing the dead ideas of dead men. I could breathe new life into this school, if you and the Board would stop blocking me at every turn.”