She pulled the black robes over her head and let them fall all the way to her ankles. “Just like that,” she muttered, staring at her bare feet peeking out beneath the hem of the robes. “I’m one of them.” A low, crackling chuckle escaped her at the thought. These people were insane. Hours ago—or days, for she could never tell the time in a place without windows—she’d thought she’d seen something of magic in the High Priestess’ whispered incantations. Now that the smoke had cleared from her senses and she no longer suffered the haze of confusion and awe brought on by that burning tar, whatever it was, she saw that little display in the chamber for what it really was.
Yuhltse had done her damnedest to pry open Rahlizje’s secrets using little more than sexual desire and a drug-induced haze. And the woman so clearly thought she’d succeeded.
Rahlizje chuckled again and shook her head, spreading her arms to eye the way the robes fell loosely around her own body. She could play the High Priestess’ game well enough, sure. And then she’d find a way out of these stone walls and retrieve the freedom she had not and did not intend to hand over to anyone else.
Two swift, loud knocks came at her door, and she turned. The priest with the braids and beads in his brown hair pushed the door open and nodded at her. His expressionless mask melted into a frown when he caught the smirk still lingering on her lips. “You’re rather thick-headed, aren’t you?”
“I couldn’t say.” Rahlizje pressed her lips together and lifted her hand to her shorn head. “Might be it’s easier to tell without all that bothersome hair in the way.”
The priest glowered at her, which made it even harder for Rahlizje not to laugh. With a small, irritated shake of his head, he nodded toward the corridor behind him and waited for the newest acolyte to obey his wordless order. Rahlizje bobbed her head at him in a mockery of deference and barely escaped being elbowed out of the way when he jerked the door shut again behind them. “Stay close.” The priest’s words echoed quite loudly in the stone passageway, but he did not once turn to see if she were following.
The thief guessed she could very well turn around on her silent, bare feet and make her escape quite easily—at least, she’d escape from this single priest and his emotionless stare. But she did not know this place nearly as well as those who called Arahaz home. It all looked the same to her, and she was smart enough to realize she’d never make it out on her own before she’d spent enough time memorizing which passages led where.
Her leg ached as she limped along behind the priest, who fortunately did not walk so quickly as to leave her behind. She’d also been wrong to assume her feet would pass silently over the stone floors; a limp was never silent, but even the steps she took with her good leg made more sound than she would have liked. It seemed the priests here went through more than a little trouble in training themselves to be that silent. And, of course, it had its benefits.
After an unrecognizable series of turns down infuriatingly winding corridors, the priest stopped just outside the double doors of another room carved into the stone. These were far more intricately designed than the simple wooden slats of Rahlizje’s new quarters. The images of unknown symbols flickered to life beneath the flaming torches set into the stone walls. Rahlizje had little enough time to contemplate what any of it was supposed mean before one of the doors swung slowly open by just a few inches.
“Thank you, Zemor.” The low voice rose from the soft, muted glow on the other side of the double doors. “That is all.”
The man named Zemor said nothing but turned toward Rahlizje with that discerning gaze, his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he meant to warn her against whatever it was she meant to do. For all intents and purposes, the thief had done nothing yet to suggest that she had anything planned. As far the High Priestess knew, Rahlizje had given her full name, and that seemed to be the only thing anyone had truly wanted of her. Rahlizje met the priest’s gaze and raised her eyebrows before he turned and disappeared down the corridor.
Two more robed figures slipped through the crack in the open door—the man with the short brown curls and another blonde woman Rahlizje had not yet seen. Each of them met the thief’s gaze, their eyes alight with something like satisfaction and yet a little fear. The man passed her quickly and headed into the darkness, but the blonde woman paused long enough to eye Rahlizje’s shorn hair. A half smile grazed her thin lips, then she met Rahlizje’s gaze again and raised an eyebrow. Soon after, the woman was lost to the darkness of the corridor, gone wherever she wished to be now, and Rahlizje was left alone outside the intricately carved door.
The flickering firelight on the other side of the door beckoned her to something warm, something inviting. The voice that rose from within the chambers did not.
“Do not keep me waiting, little flame.” It was Yuhltse—Rahlizje thought she’d recognize the woman’s voice anywhere now, after that odd, ritualistic display between them—but her words held something far more sinister in this moment.
Trying not to smile, Rahlizje slipped through the open door and into the well-lit room beyond.
Chapter 17
A fire blazed in the hearth just beside the door, providing a comfortable warmth for the first time since she’d set foot inside these temples. The room was sparsely decorated when it came to drapery or items used only for aesthetics, but it was far from empty. Two bookshelves lined the wall on Rahlizje’s right, one nearly overflowing with old tomes while the other also boasted various items that seemed rather misplaced among such a library—pewter dishes; knives carved of bone and stone and what looked like graying wood; a human skull; and a trinket box that looked as hard and cold as iron.
Rahlizje took a sweeping glance of the room and the torches set on the walls, the wardrobe in the corner, the other door at the opposite side of the room. And beside that other door was a massive four-poster bed with curtains of red gauze gathered at the back. Pillows of satin and velvet were strewn across the furs and silky sheets, everything in hues of red and black and white. She might have expected the High Priestess to own such things within her own chambers, but she certainly did not expect the High Priestess herself to greet her like this.
Yuhltse lay back against the pillows, her arms hung languidly over the mountains of them piled around her body. She was as naked as Rahlizje had been in the chamber, though the woman still had all her hair. The dark coils of it spilled over her shoulders and hung below her breasts, hiding most of them but not leaving nearly enough of her visage to the imagination. The impossibly white color of her face was indeed matched by the rest of her flesh, as if the woman had been dipped in milk and stained by it. Kohl-blackened lids hung heavily over those piercing blue eyes as they studied Rahlizje with no lack of amusement or satisfaction.
For her part, the thief realized this tactic might have been used to shock her, perhaps unnerve her, or maybe even appall her. The only thing it made her do was smirk.
The High Priestess tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Would it surprise you to know that very few of my acolytes offer the same response when they first see this?”
Rahlizje studied the woman’s body, which was perfect at first glance and subtly, eerily marred under more scrutiny. The High Priestess of Arahaz was undoubtedly pleasing to look upon, and yet there was something about her—perhaps the pallor of her skin, perhaps the liquid, almost lifeless way her flesh hung from her bones at her shoulders and hips—that hinted to more than what met the eye. Even when there was nothing to hide her true form. Rahlizje did not think the woman would willingly state her age for anyone, let alone her little flame, but it was impossible to tell the number of years the woman had spent inside that body.
Still smirking, Rahlizje dipped her head. “If most of your acolytes were acquired as I was, no. It wouldn’t surprise me.”
Yuhltse blinked slowly but still didn’t move. “Yet you admit to being so much different than everyone else. Considering how you were… acquired.”
“I remember telling you you did
not purchase a slave.”
The woman’s lips parted in a languorous smile. “You are not as different as you’d like to believe, Rahli.” Her eyes widened as she said her newest acolyte’s name—or what she thought was the whole of that name.
Despite herself, Rahlizje could not deny the odd pull of the woman’s voice on the back of her mind, something calling her to do whatever it was the High Priestess beckoned. But it did not consume her, which was very much what the thief thought Yuhltse expected. It only briefly occurred to her that few things she knew had the power to warp someone’s mind; none of them were true magic, and yet when she heard the half of her name on this woman’s lips, there was nothing more at work here than sound and air. But she felt it.
With a slow, deep breath, Yuhltse pushed herself off the pillows and stood. Her steps were slow, calculated, as she headed toward the low table at the foot of the bed. On silent feet, she stopped and stooped for just a moment to retrieve a deep wooden bowl from the table, completely at ease with her nakedness and the fact that Rahlizje stood just inside the door, staring at her. Then the woman straightened, turned, and approached her newest acolyte. Those blue eyes blazed with eager anticipation as she held Rahlizje’s gaze and stopped just a mere few inches away. “Others have performed this rite for me for longer than I care to remember.” Her voice was so low, so soft as her eyes roamed over the thief’s face. “I imagine me calling you to it so soon will not gain you any friends here for some time.”
Rahlizje swallowed. “If I’d come here on my own accord, I doubt it would have been for friends.”
The High Priestess smiled and offered a little snort of amusement. “Take this.”
Glancing down at the wooden bowl in the woman’s hands, Rahlizje paused. The black, ink-like substance inside looked very much like a liquid version of the tar that burned with blue-gray smoke. She could handle herself well enough with the High Priestess, even when the woman was as naked as the day she was born, but she wanted nothing more to do with that smoke. “No.”
Yuhltse lifted her chin just a little and pursed her lips. “I realize you were not welcomed here with the full knowledge of what is expected of you. I knew this when I paid the merchant of Gethlem more than enough to ease his troubled mind. And I know it will take time to teach you.” She took one step closer to Rahlizje, which was all she had before she would have pressed her body up against the thief’s new black robes, and leaned forward until her lips nearly brushed against the acolyte’s once more. “I am a patient woman, Rahli. You will suffer far less if you do not confuse my patience with leniency.”
A foreign heat spread through Rahlizje’s face, whether at the woman’s words or the proximity of Yuhltse’s lips to her own. Was that the act for which the other two acolytes had been summoned to these chambers? “Are you just as patient with your games, then?” It was a bold question, but Rahlizje doubted there was much more this woman could do to her than drug her with blue smoke, shave her head, and try to convince her that her power had been taken away by the use of half her name.
With a click of her tongue, Yuhltse blinked at the thief and pulled away. Then she passed Rahlizje and made for the bookshelves against the stone wall. “I’d planned to tell you this after you’d spent more time in service.” She placed the wooden bowl atop the bookshelf and ran her fingers along the spines of the volumes resting there. A large, thick tome with a spine like ribbed bamboo slid easily from its place at her command, and she stood there with her back turned to Rahlizje for almost a minute, flipping through the aged, yellowing pages.
Rahlizje contented herself with gazing over the woman’s bare shoulders, the lithe muscles of her back rippling beneath her skin as she turned page after page, the narrow dip of her waist just above the bones of her hips and far less angular thighs. Yuhltse’s shamelessness made her want to laugh and push the woman back onto the silk- and velvet-covered bed, but the thief couldn’t ignore her own curiosity. To be naked with a stranger and riffling through old, dusty volumes made no sense to her at all, and Yuhltse seemed to think it a common enough thing.
Finally, the High Priestess turned toward her again, her finger pressed delicately onto a line on the thin page. She stepped toward Rahlizje and nodded. “You remind me very much of myself, little flame.” Her blue eyes glistened. “Unfettered. Indelicate. Dauntless.”
The thief pressed her lips together again. “You flatter me.”
“The truth is never flattery.” Yuhltse spun the book around and pushed it toward her acolyte. “I assume you can read.”
Without responding to that snide little quip, Rahlizje looked down at the pages and the hand-written lines upon it. “The gateways are opening,” she read aloud, “slowly and over time. Where the Sleeping Darkness has lain for centuries, now awakes a new power. A new purpose. Imlach stirs—”
“And his servants answer the call,” Yuhltse finished from memory. Rahlizje looked quickly up at the woman, and the old book slammed shut in the High Priestess’ hands. “We answer the call. As you must. In this place”—she glanced up at the stone walls curving around them—“and especially in this time, that is your only duty, in whatever form it takes.”
“This is your god?” Rahlizje’s smirk returned, because now all this smoke and ritual buffoonery made so much more sense. She knew full well the things addle-minded people did in the name of some deity far less concrete than coin or ale or a warm body beneath the sheets.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Without looking away from Rahlizje, the High Priestess set the book atop the bookshelf, dipped her finger into the wooden bowl, and brought it slowly toward Rahlizje’s face. The thief caught a brief glance of the black substance running slowly down the woman’s finger, but before she could react in any way, that finger touched her lower lip.
A flaring, electric jolt shot through Rahlizje’s face first, racing up into her head and making her far too dizzy before blooming down into her chest and rushing to her fingertips. She found herself unable to move, unable to utter a cry of defiance or a plea for clemency.
Yuhltse drew the black substance down her new acolyte’s lip, over the dip of her chin, and stopped just before she reached Rahlizje’s throat. A grin slowly revealed itself beneath those blazing blue eyes, and the woman slowly pulled her finger away. Rahlizje could only blink, frozen by whatever the black substance had done to her. Then the High Priestess stepped toward her again, closer than before, and pressed her lips to Rahlizje’s in a shock of intense cold. The thief could no more move away from the kiss than she could have avoided it.
Those cold hands lifted to brush across Rahlizje neck, up over her jaw, back across the soft, jaggedly cut remains of what had been the thief’s long dark hair. Rahlizje shuddered at the chill it left her, gooseflesh rising over every inch of her skin beneath the robes. Though she found herself unable to move her body, her mouth was her own, and she knew she would have returned that kiss as she did now even if the woman had not done whatever it was that looked and felt so much like a spell.
Finally, Yuhltse pulled away and sighed. Her tongue flickered over the smudge of black on her own lower lip now, then her eyes fluttered open and latched onto Rahlizje once more. “I will not punish you like that, little flame. We both know you’d enjoy it more like than not.” She bit her lip and took a step back. “Perhaps that will be your reward. But you will come to learn that I can be as terrible as I am patient.” Turning back toward the bookcase, she retrieved the wooden bowl again and lifted it in both hands. “That passage you read was penned by my predecessor. He told me once that I would come to thank him for what he did to me. I often wondered what he meant by that. Now I see.” Her gaze flickered up and down Rahlizje’s body again, as if she saw straight through the thick folds of black robes, and she nodded. “So much alike.”
Rahlizje had conjured an argument to that just behind her lips, feeling still as if the woman were playing games with her. She could not fathom what this thin, pale, perpetually languid High Pr
iestess might do to her that would serve as a punishment; there was little enough in Rahlizje’s life that had come anywhere close. The merchant had been infuriatingly cautious with her, true. And he’d tried to punish her for her crimes, though that had culminated in a crossbow bolt through her leg—and that was healing now, was it not?
Yuhltse extended the bowl toward the thief one more time and tilted her head. “Take this.”
Rahlizje squinted at her. “Do I not deserve a warning, first? If I refuse—”
The woman’s hand shot from beneath the bowl like an arrow and nearly pierced Rahlizje’s heart full through. Her pale, slender fingers dug into the flesh over the thief’s breastbone, and while it was indeed surprisingly painful, that was not the worst of it. A flash of blue light flared behind the High Priestess’ eyes, dimming everything else in Rahlizje’s vision. When next the woman opened her mouth, the thief thought her ears would burst with the inhuman sound of Yuhltse’s voice.
“Kneel.”
A thousand tones of that one word echoed through the woman’s chambers, slicing through Rahlizje’s head and turning everything upside down. Rahlizje tried to step away from the woman and the deadly pressure of those fingers on her breast, but all she could do was lower herself to her knees as she’d been commanded. Her head spun with the realization, and for the first time, she found herself daring to believe that what others called magic and hoped did not exist had truly found its place here in Arahaz. This unnatural compulsion was no trick of alchemy or smoke or a manipulation of weak minds. This was something else entirely.
“Open your mouth.”
There was no possibility of disobeying now. Though Rahlizje fought against her own body, it would not listen to her—only to the thousands of darkened, inhuman voices rising from a single throat. Her lips parted, trembling, and her jaw opened fully until she gazed up at the blue-eyed High Priestess finally revealing what it was she could really do. Tears shimmered in the thief’s eyes—not of fear but of rage.
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