PROLOGUE
This world once knew twenty gods, the sons and daughters of one couple. Their parents were so wrapped up in each other that they neglected their children, and the brothers and sisters turned to quareling with each other. In time, the quarrels turned violent, deadly. The gods looked for allies, and for followers. At various times, one or another of the Twenty would look with favor on one of the religions created by men, and lend it his, or her, favor, giving power to that religion, molding it, and being molded by it in return. And using it.
In the Year of Our Lord twelve hundred and seven, Rome called a Crusade, not against the Saracens but against Christian heretics in France. The White Brotherhood, long the dominant order of the orthodox Roman Church, rose to defend itself against the heresy of the Blue Rose, centered in the Burgundy region of France. People and towns were burned, but the evil of the Blue Rose was not totally extinguished. It merely went underground, biding its time, preparing for a comeback. And a comeback was possible. The Blue Rose had the power of gods behind it, an alliance of five gods of the eighteen who remained of the Twenty. But the White Brotherhood also had gods behind it. Mikel, the Unseen Lord of the Mysteries of the White Brotherhood, had taken the Roman Church under his sway at the time of Constantine. Church and god had accommodated themselves to each other over the years. Mikel’s sway was never seriously challenged by any of his siblings until the growth of the Blue Rose.
The Crusade in Burgundy did not end that conflict, though Mikel and his allies hoped it had. Thirty-one years later, in 1238, in the month of August, a great battle was fought among the gods and their armies. This battle was the culmination of the war for the domination of the Christian Churchin Europe, a battle without mercy. In one horrendous confrontation that stretched from mother earth to the land of the gods, the heretics were destroyed, root and branch, leaving only powerless remnants behind. The Blue Rose would not rise again. The victory of Mikel and his allies was complete.
In my solitude, I shed tears for all who died in the battle that was centered on the village of Mecq. Gods, mortals, demigods, and demons died in the fighting. The roster of the old gods was shortened by a third. The dead included Carillia, who had long been the most gentle and loving of the gods.
Had the horror of Mecq sufficed to end the ages of deadly feuding among the divine siblings, it would have been a brutal but perhaps—ultimately—worthwhile lesson. But there was no sign that the deities would take that lesson. If anything, their bitterness toward each other, and toward the parents who had abandoned them in disgust and self-reproach, increased. For a time, they might lick their wounds and spare the mortal world their deadly conflict, but I had little hope that any respite would last long.
Pessimist that I was and am, I still had no idea that the fighting would resume even before the wounds of Mecq had time to heal. The old war had ended, but the seeds of a new conflict had already been sown.