Shifting Loyalties

by Melissa McShane

  “No,” Alaric said. He had the page again and was following the last lines with his finger. “This says to cast dominate after another spell, one that alters the body, and then it’s altered again. Like sealing in the spell to bone and blood.”

  Sienne shivered. “You made it sound dire, just then. I mean, of course it is, but that felt…like there was no hope. Like only death can undo it.”

  “I refuse to believe that’s the case,” Alaric said. He handed the paper back to Sienne and stood, towering over them. “We just have to figure out the reverse of this binding.”

  “Which could take another year, or five, or forever,” Dianthe said. “I’m with Sienne. This seems hopeless.”

  “I think it is not,” Kalanath said. “But it will be hard.”

  Alaric regarded him with narrowed eyes. “You know something.”

  Kalanath nodded. “I went to ask today,” he said, “a…holy woman of my people. It is when you ask forgiveness so you will no longer have guilt.”

  “Absolution,” Perrin said. “Why did you need absolution?”

  “It is…absolution…before the thing.” Kalanath put the chair back in place and leaned against it. “But she cannot give it to me because I am holier than she. So it must be my guilt if I am wrong to tell you.”

  “Tell us what?” Sienne asked.

  Kalanath drew in a deep breath and let it out as if releasing a great weight. “Sit, and I will tell.”

  They straightened the furniture and settled in. It felt to Sienne like a campfire gathering, at night after a long day’s travel, except that Kalanath rarely spoke then. Now, with the sunlight slanting across his face and making his high cheekbones seem sharper than ever, he looked unspeakably foreign, someone whose words would carry weight no matter their meaning.

  “We have a practice you will not understand,” he said. “It is…your words are not the same. You say, prostitute, or whore, and it is a shameful thing. In our temples, there are women who are God’s vessels, open to men who want to worship—it is that they need guidance, or strength, and they commune with God through these women. Through sex.” Kalanath drew another deep breath. “They have a thing that stops them having children, and the men as well. If a madhi, one of these women, has a child, it is only because God has a wish for this child. My mother was one of those women. And I was that child.

  “I was born in the temple and it was my home for my whole life. They teach—taught me what a holy child, a devesh, must know. History, literature, mathematics. Religion. The use of the staff—it is meditation as well as fighting.” He smiled. “The divines at the temple would say it is unholy to fight with the staff—no, that is wrong, they would say it is unholy that I, a devesh, fight with the staff. But they do not get to say, not anymore.”

  Sienne almost asked Why not?, but Alaric put a quelling hand on her knee. It warmed her inside that he knew her so well. And that she didn’t have to leave. That wasn’t going to get old any time soon.

  “But that is ahead of the tale,” Kalanath said. “I learned, was taught, many things, but for a devesh there is much forbidden. Things not to eat, things not to learn. I did not ever leave the temple so I would not be made unclean. But my mother…she did not believe being devesh made me less of a child. She told stories she should not, explained about the stars and their movements in the sky, many things I should not have learned. It was secret from the divines. We believed it would not matter.

  “Then there was a day…” Kalanath’s voice trailed off, and his bowed his head, gripping the back of the chair as if he could break it in two with his hands alone. “The divines came for me. I had a purpose, they said, and their training had prepared me for it. A devesh is a vessel for God, one who may speak with Her directly and hear Her voice. It is not like the cloudy visions of a priest or divine. Only a devesh is raised in purity to withstand God’s presence.” He glanced up, caught Perrin’s eye. “I do not know if it is the same for you.”

  “I think not,” Perrin said. “Please, continue.”

  “They gave me wine. I had not tasted wine before, so I do not know if it was drugged. Then they shut me in a little room with no windows, just one vent for air, and told me to meditate. I fell unconscious, I think. Unconscious, or asleep. And I had dreams I have never forgotten, so I know they were not usual dreams. They did not make sense, like someone speaking in a foreign language who believes you will understand. But I remember them still.

  “When I woke, I was not in the little room anymore. I was in the temple and the divines were arguing. I think they did not expect me to wake so soon, because they argued about me, saying things about my impurity and that I was broken. When they realized I was awake, they stopped arguing and took me to my room. They locked me in and did not return for a day. I was frightened. I knew I was impure because of my mother’s teachings, and I was afraid they would hurt her if they knew what she had done.

  “But it was not about her. When they came back, they told me what I had overheard, that I was a broken vessel. But they believed my impurity was because I had not been faithful enough in my prayers and fasting. They almost…they were kind about it, and that frightened me more. Then they told me I could redeem myself through my children. They would choose women to bear them and they would raise them to be pure as I was not, that one of them might be the voice of God.”

  Sienne couldn’t bear it any longer. “But they can’t make you have children! Let alone with strangers!”

  Kalanath smiled. It was an ancient, pitying expression that made him seem far older than he was. “There is a thing,” he said, “a drug the men use sometimes when they cannot be ready for sex. They would give it to me, they said, and then I would not care who the women were so long as they were available.”

  “That’s—”

  “How old were you?” Alaric asked, cutting off Sienne’s outburst.

  “I was fourteen. Old enough to know I did not want to be used for breeding. Or for my children to be raised to the temple’s purposes.”

  “I should hope not,” Perrin murmured. “And yet I daresay they did not simply allow you to decline and walk away.”

  “That is true. I told my mother what they intended and she helped me escape. She used the same opening she used to bring me inappropriate things, and we fled. But she—” He closed his eyes. “We were trapped, and she let herself be taken so I might be free. I do not know if she is dead. She was alive when I saw her last, screaming at me to run, but they are not gentle with those who break the sanctity of the temple.”

  He fell silent. Sienne said, “But do you…you said you had true dreams. Does that…still happen?”

  Kalanath nodded. “I do not always understand them. Sometimes it is years before I do. Sometimes it is immediate. But I never forget the ones that are true, not like other dreams that fade or are ridiculous in the light of day.”

  “And you’ve had another true dream,” Alaric said. “Or a true dream from your past now makes sense.”

  Startled, Kalanath said, “How do you know?”

  “It makes sense. This ritual, and the place where we found it, and that symbol on the mosaic, means something to you. Something you only just put together. What is it?”

  “I saw the symbol, God as destroyer, years ago in a dream,” Kalanath said. “I told you it means change, disruption. In the dream, I saw two people circling a room, doing things that made no sense, with the symbol hanging in the air above them. At first the people and the symbol were all I saw. Then I seemed to step back and saw the room. It was the temple, and yet not the temple—” Kalanath swore softly in Meiric. “I mean it is that Omeiran temples all look much the same in their building, but each is different, enough that you know which temple you are in by looking. It is what I was taught—I have never seen a temple but the one I lived in. This was not that temple, and when I stepped back again, I saw it was surrounded by desert wastes as no Omeiran temple could be. We do not live in the desert, except for the pakhshani. The dre
am showed me the people moving, and the symbol, and the temple, and until now it meant nothing. But that—” He gestured at the notebook—“and what Sienne said…it is the movements the people did in my dream.”

  Once again the room was silent. Sienne picked up the notebook and opened it to the ritual. “Omeira,” she said. “Is the answer there?”

  “It must be,” Alaric said. “There’s the mystery of why an Omeiran symbol was in a Rafellish ruin, after all. And if Kalanath saw our ritual in his dream…somebody in Omeira might be able to explain that.”

  “But we can’t go to Omeira and wander from temple to temple, asking about foreign ritual,” Dianthe said. “Never mind that they probably won’t let us in, it would take forever.”

  “We don’t have to wander. I know where the temple of his dream is,” Alaric said. “It’s the lost city of Ma’tzehar.”

  “That city is a myth,” Perrin said, “and if it is not, it is at the very least impossible to find. I have not been a scrapper long, but even I know no scrapper has found it in over sixty years of searching. And most of the expeditions who sought it did not return.”

  “Except that Kalanath’s dream says it’s a real place,” Alaric said.

  “Why would anyone build a city in the middle of the desert?” Sienne asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “The stories say Ma’tzehar was settled before the desert shifted and encompassed it,” Alaric said. “It was abandoned because it became uninhabitable. I don’t believe it’s a treasure city, filled with heaps of valuable artifacts, because the people had enough warning to get out with their possessions before the desert took over. But if it had a temple, and why wouldn’t it, there’s no reason that’s not still there.”

  “And somewhere in that temple is the key to this ritual,” Sienne said. Excitement bubbled up inside her. “Maybe the key to inverting it. That could mean change, wouldn’t it? Destructive change, even?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Alaric said. “I feel that symbol is important to us, terrifying or not.”

  “It is true,” Kalanath said. “But I do not think I can go.”

  “Because you are a fugitive?” Perrin said.

  “That, and because I have never dreamed myself returning to Omeira,” Kalanath said. “I think it means I should not return.” He sounded so young, and so forlorn, Sienne’s heart went out to him.

  “Do you want to go home?” she asked.

  Kalanath looked thoughtful. “It does not feel like home anymore,” he said. “Not like this place does. But I am still a stranger in Fioretti by my looks and my speech. Maybe it is that I do not belong anywhere.”

  “You belong with us,” Dianthe said.

  “That is true. That is why this is home.” Kalanath sighed. “I feel fear when I think of returning to Omeira, and I dislike acting out of fear, but I cannot see another path.”

  “You’re not old enough to have run out of true dreams,” Alaric said. “Just because you haven’t dreamed of returning there doesn’t mean you won’t someday. And I wonder if your dreams about the ritual and the temple don’t mean Omeira isn’t finished with you yet.”

  “And maybe—” Sienne almost said you can find out what happened to your mother, but realized in time what a tactless thing that would be to say and turned it into, “maybe it means there’s more for you to learn there.”

  “That is also possible.” A small smile touched his lips. “Then I will go, because I think you will be helpless without my staff.”

  “Almost certainly true,” Alaric said. “So it’s settled? We’re off to Omeira?”

  “I want to do some research first,” Sienne said. “There must be something more than legend written about Ma’tzehar.”

  “It will take a few days to assemble everything we need for a journey of this length,” Dianthe said. “We’ll need passage on a ship, and the right kind of coin to provision ourselves when we reach Omeira—it’s not like heading into the wilderness for a week.”

  “And I will attempt to scry the location of our lost city,” Perrin said. “It is possible I will learn nothing, if the desert is as featureless as all accounts suggest, but any guidance Averran is willing to provide is welcome.”

  “Then we have a plan,” Alaric said, rising from the sofa. “Sienne, let’s see about redeeming this banker’s draft, and then I’ll join you in research. Unless you’re going to the university library.”

  “No, I was thinking of starting at Madalynna’s. She won’t charge us anything to look.”

  “We’re hardly impoverished anymore, Sienne,” Dianthe said with a grin.

  “I know, but frugality is a virtue, or should be.”

  She and Alaric strolled hand in hand through the streets, stopping for skewers of roasted meat and vegetables and washing the meal down with ale from Alaric’s favorite tavern. Sienne controlled a burp and said, “I missed this.”

  “Such low tastes you have,” Alaric teased. “It’s fortunate you aren’t going to be a duchess, because think of the horrible example you’d set your people.”

  “That’s actually very low on my list of reasons it’s fortunate I won’t be a duchess.”

  “Am I at the top?”

  “Of course. You and all our friends. You might be a little higher than the others.”

  Alaric took her hand again. “I’m glad Octavian convinced me to see sense. I was ready to break down your parents’ door, throw you over my shoulder, and escape into the night. The problem was, it was daytime and I’d certainly have been arrested.”

  “That would have made things so much worse.” Sienne breathed in the warm air of Fioretti, scented with roasted meat and ale and animal waste all stirred together by the salty sea breezes. A couple of small children ran past, laughing, and she looked at Alaric. He was watching an elaborate high-sprung carriage drive by and hadn’t even noticed the urchins. Despite his reassurances, it would be a while before she stopped feeling anxious about the subject. For today, though, everything was fine.

  “I’ve been thinking, though,” he said, a little too casually. “About marriage.”

  “Oh? What about it?”

  “It’s a powerful promise, beyond the legal ramifications. An oath to be true to your love, now and for the rest of your life, said before witnesses. Not something you take lightly.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “And I was thinking…it’s not something Sassaven do because it’s forbidden them. No—they don’t even have the concept of marriage. For me, it would be an act of defiance as well as a binding promise.” He stopped and turned Sienne to face him. “I still don’t know how I feel about it, and I don’t want to make you into a symbol of my defiance. But…when we return from Omeira, if I asked you to marry me, what would you say?”

  For a moment, he looked as he had the first day she’d met him, pale blue eyes intent on her, mouth set in a firm line, shoulders filling the sky. She remembered that day, and all the days after that, flickering past so quickly they made a moving line tracing the path that ended with her loving him with all her heart. “If you asked me then,” she said, “I’d say ‘yes.’”

  Sienne’s Spellbook

  Summonings:

  Summonings affect the physical world and elements. They include all transportation spells.

  Castle—trade places with someone else

  Convey—teleport an object

  Ferry—teleport with one other person

  Fog—obscuring mist

  Jaunt—personal teleportation

  Slick—conjure grease

  Evocations:

  Evocations deal with intangible elements like fire, air, and lightning.

  Barrier—wall of fire or air

  Burn—ray of fire

  Force—bolt of magical energy, hits with perfect accuracy

  Fury—six force-bolts, hits whatever is in range

  Scorch—fireball

  Scream—sonic attack, causes injury

  Shout—sonic att
ack, causes short-term paralysis

  Confusions:

  Confusions affect what the senses perceive.

  Camouflage—disguise an object’s shape, color, or texture

  Cast—ventriloquism

  Echo—auditory hallucinations

  Imitate—change someone’s entire appearance

  Mirage—visual hallucinations

  Mirror—creates three identical duplicates of the caster

  Shift—small alterations in appearance, such as eye or hair color

  Vanish—invisibility

  Transforms:

  Transforms change an object or creature’s state, in small or large ways.

  Break—shatters fragile things

  Cat’s eye—true darkvision

  Change—polymorph a living thing

  Drift—feather fall

  Fit (object)—shrink or enlarge an object; permanent

  Fit (person)—shrink or enlarge a person; temporary

  Float—levitation

  Gills—water breathing

  Mud—transform stone to mud

  Purge—transmute liquid

  Sculpt—shape stone

  Sharpen—improve sight or hearing

  Voice—sound like someone else

  The Small Magics

  These can be done by any wizard without a spellbook, with virtually no limits.

  Light

  Spark

  Mend

  Create water

  Breeze

  Chill/warm liquid

  Telekinesis (up to 6-7 pound weights)

  Ghost sound

  Ghostly form

  Find true north

  Open (used to manipulate a spellbook)

  Invulnerability

  Sneak Peek: Sands of Memory (Company of Strangers, Book 5)

  Sienne leaned over and tickled the copper-red puppy’s nose with her knotted handkerchief. The little animal growled, a high-pitched sound closer to a purr than the deep-throated grumble of a dog, and fastened his tiny teeth in the knot. Sienne tugged against his grip and smiled as the pup’s hind legs skittered on the shiny floorboards of Mistress Elodie Givvani’s office.