“Sister!” one of them breathed. “What’s going on? Please help us.” The woman was young, younger than Lhaurel even, and her face burned an ashen grey streaked with the marks of tears. One of the other priestesses, far older and looking much calmer despite what was going on, placed a hand on the first woman’s shoulder and hushed her.
“Do not make requests of a Sister,” the older woman hissed. “To do so is death to us all.” This said, the woman pulled a small knife from her belt and raised it to her companion’s throat in an unhesitating motion.
“What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing?” Lhaurel snapped, smacking the older woman’s hand away with enough force that the knife flew from her grip. “I forbid you to do anything to this woman. Can’t you see she’s frightened?”
The older woman blinked, confusion clear in her expression, though the younger priestess simply wept silent tears, adding more streaks down her pale, frightened face.
“Who are these men?” Lhaurel pressed, once she was sure the older woman wasn’t going to try and retrieve the knife. “What do they want here?”
“It is not our place to speculate over such matters, Sister,” the older woman said, mouth a thin line. “Ours is but to serve our Sister in her Progression.”
Lhaurel grabbed the woman’s shoulder as a scream of pain ripped through the air, cutting over the din of metal clashing against metal. “Do you hear that?” Lhaurel asked. “That’s the sound of people dying. If you don’t want to be next, follow me and do exactly as I say.”
Lhaurel looked around at the other woman, meeting each of their gazes in turn. Each of them held Lhaurel’s eyes only for the briefest of instances and Lhaurel felt a knot well up in her stomach that left a bitter taste in her mouth. It was clear that whatever else was going on, even a sure and instant death, they were still more afraid of her—a Sister—than they were of the men killing indiscriminately near them, just as Samsin had been.
“As you command, Sister,” the older priestess said with a slight nod.
“Gather what weapons you can. You can use the wetta powers, right?” When the older woman gave her a blank look, Lhaurel tried something else. “You can heal people with your powers, yes? Manipulate water?”
The priestesses all nodded, not meeting her eye.
“Good. Take whatever weapons you can and gather your powers. If one of you gets wounded, the others will heal them. Don’t let anyone die and don’t do anything to get yourselves killed, alright?” Lhaurel wasn’t sure why she cared, but was relieved when they all nodded, again.
Several of them pulled out short knives from their belts. The blades looked more ceremonial than functional, but they were better than nothing. A few of the others, including the younger woman with the ashen face, rummaged around on the ground and in the back of the wagon and came back with an array of weapons that included a meat cleaver, a cudgel, and something that looked like a scythe for cutting grain.
“Well then,” Lhaurel said. “Follow me.”
Lhaurel took a single look over them to see that they were ready and then stepped out from behind the wagon and straight into a trio of short men bearing shields.
The three men hesitated for a moment longer than Lhaurel. Lhaurel brought her staff up and spun it in a low arch that took the legs out from under one of the men before the other two even moved. The man fell in a crunch of metal and rock and his sword went flying. Lhaurel took two quick steps forward, spinning the staff over her head and back around as she would her sword, aiming for the swordsman who had been in the center of the group.
She wasn’t holding a sword, though. The back end of the staff struck something behind Lhaurel and one of the priestesses cried out in pain. The two swordsmen were able to take a few steps back and their companion leapt to his feet as Lhaurel backed up, hissing at those behind her to get out of the way.
The three men glanced at one another and one of them grinned, a look made sinister by the thin beard and fresh scar across his otherwise youthful face. He looked no different than a Rahuli, aside from the pale complexion of his skin, though Lhaurel didn’t recognize him. Besides, no Rahuli would attack a group of mostly women—not anymore at least, not now that Khari was among them. She’d tear apart any man who tried.
Lhaurel spun her staff before her, resetting her mind and feet to remind herself that she was using a staff, not a sword. She felt sluggish and slow, especially without access to her blood magic abilities, and the staff was not her weapon of choice, not by any level of the seven hells, but she wasn’t about to retreat. Not this time. Not again. This wasn’t an unwinnable fight, like the Sisters entering the Sharani Desert and threatening their entire existence while Beryl was trying to drive them out. This fight she could still win, mostly because they underestimated her.
The two men on each end darted forward at the same time, the one in the middle hanging back momentarily. Lhaurel let them get within a few feet of her, one man leading with his shield, the other his sword, then spun to one side, ducking around the man with his shield raised on her right and spinning the staff around with her. She halted her turn as the man ran passed and jabbed the staff’s butt hard into the back of the man’s knee. He crumpled with a shout.
“Keep him down!” Lhaurel shouted over her shoulder, hoping the priestesses would hear and act on her words.
The third swordsman, the one who had hesitated, darted in as his other companion leapt over his fallen friend and tried to move in behind Lhaurel. Lhaurel sidestepped, grateful that the tiredness in her muscles wasn’t growing so quickly as to be called exhaustion yet, and put her back up against the dead gatheriu, using its massive bulk to offer her some shelter. The animal smelled of dust, sweat, and blood. It would limit her ability to swing the staff, but she needed the protection if she was on her own.
The two men fell in ahead of her, ignoring the pair of priestesses that swooped in behind them and finished off their companion.
Lhaurel felt sweat bead on her forehead, but found herself suppressing a small smile of exhilaration. For several weeks now, dark thoughts had plagued her. She felt as if she’d betrayed her people somehow, by going with the Sisters instead of staying to fight. Beyond that, guilt still haunted her dreams over what she’d been forced to do in the Oasis. But this, fighting and defending both herself and others, granted an exhilaration and thrill that burned away the lingering self-cynicism. This was Lhaurel, stubborn and resistant. This felt right somehow. She was one who acted instead of letting others control her through their own actions.
“Are you really sure you want to attack a Sister?” Lhaurel asked in a broken mixture of the “slave tongue” and Orinai.
The soldier on Lhaurel’s left hesitated, though the one on the right kept coming. Lhaurel readied her staff, hoping that one of the priestesses would take the initiative and distract one of them, though she knew the hope was a foolish one. Her earlier confidence in being able to take down all three men wavered slightly, though it was a pale thought against the thrill of the fight itself
The soldier on the left stumbled, and then seemed to catch himself, before falling headlong into the dirt, shield skidding across the ground before him. An arrow stood up from the back of his neck. An instant later, the other soldier fell, also transfixed by a red-fletched shaft.
Lhaurel looked over in the direction the arrows had come, not sure what to expect. Blood thundered in her ears in accompaniment to her beating heart.
Talha stood at the head of over a hundred archers clad entirely in red, her scarlet hair—now free of the odd bun from earlier—billowing out behind her, caught by the breeze. The blood-red stone on her staff shone with a burning, almost flame-like light and, for the briefest instant, Lhaurel thought she saw a faint cloud of reddish mist around it. Then it was gone.
Lhaurel let out a long breath and then sucked in a short shallow one, careful not to linger on the scent of fear, sweat, blood, and death that hung thick in the air around her. She kept one eye on Ta
lha, who looked far more regal and deadly than Lhaurel had ever seen her before. Up until that moment, Talha had seemed almost entirely a bookish, unimposing thing, especially when compared to Sellia or the other Sister Lhaurel had met, but in that moment, standing at the head of the archers and with her staff held before her, she’d been as majestic and regal as anything Lhaurel had ever seen. Holy, even. And terrifying.
Lhaurel shook her head, trying to clear it. The last thought had come from what had seemed a great distance away, a passing tendril of memory attaching itself to a current image, like the feeling a moment has happened before, even when truth dictates that hasn’t. She glanced back at the priestesses behind her, not sure what to expect.
The younger priestess stood at the front of the others, her back turned to the still figure on the ground behind her. Red glinted on her hands, but she stood with her head bowed, facing Lhaurel with subservient attention. The older woman and the others stood behind the girl, all with heads bowed. None of them looked at the dead man at their feet.
“Are you alright?” Lhaurel asked them.
“We are at your service, Honored Sister,” the older woman said. “How may we serve you?” A tremble caught the woman’s voice for a moment, but it steadied after a short moment. She kept her head down as she spoke, however.
The younger priestess that stood at the forefront raised her head for the briefest of moments, catching Lhaurel’s eye, before her eyes darted back to the ground. The girl’s face was still ashen and drawn, streaked with tears and a reddish smudge on her chin, but the eyes had changed. Lhaurel recognized a bit of the emotions that flashed there for a tiny moment. Pride. Anger. Fear. It amazed Lhaurel how frequently those three emotions existed together within the same individual.
“Are you alright, Lhaurel?” Talha asked, walking toward her. Talha walked through the dead carefully, avoiding the bodies and pools of blood that lay around them, staining the ground a familiar red color.
Lhaurel nodded and leaned heavily on her staff. She felt weak, even with the adrenaline still coursing through her. She breathed in through her mouth for a moment, the smell proving too much for her, but it didn’t help much. Lhaurel couldn’t remember feeling this drained after a fight since . . . well, since the first time she’d secretly practiced with the sword among the Sidena.
“Who were they?” Lhaurel asked. “Why did they attack us?”
Talha shook her head and signaled for one of the priestesses that accompanied her to fetch some water. “Just runaway slaves. Sometimes they band together and form a resistance . . . of a sort.” Talha’s lip curled into a small sneer as it worked around the word.
“Slaves?” Lhaurel’s brow furrowed.
“Yes, Lhaurel, slaves. We will discuss this later.”
An archer with golden bars on his uniform came forward. He stopped next to Talha and gave a slight bow, right hand clenched into a fist and pressed into the palm of his other hand in front of his heart.
“We only took three casualties, Honored Sister,” the man said in the Rahuli tongue, though with an accent and inflection that Lhaurel had to concentrate to understand. “Though they killed the gatheriu.”
“No matter. We’re only a short distance from the sea, a day at most. You and your men will need to pull them the rest of the way yourselves. Leave the bodies.” Talha’s tone was factual, without any emotion of inflection. Lhaurel thought leaving the bodies was strange, even callous, but she wasn’t about to argue after what she’d seen of Talha in the last few minutes.
“As you command,” the man said with another bow, hands clasped before him in the same manner as before.
Lhaurel looked a question over at Talha, but the Sister simply shook her head. “You’ll see soon enough.”
Talha turned and looked back over the scene of carnage behind them. Lhaurel counted almost a dozen bodies, each bleeding into the ground. Talha breathed in deeply through her nose and, for a moment, the orb on the end of her staff glowed. The deep red color deepened and some of the blood pooled around the nearest body simply disappeared.
Lhaurel swallowed hard.
“I do not envy you, Lhaurel,” Talha said in a voice that was almost a whisper, eyes closed. “To feel as we do, with the powers that we have, is beyond comprehension for those who have never experienced it. To be cut off from that . . .” Talha trailed off and opened her eyes. The look she leveled at Lhaurel was one of both pity and open curiosity. “I would not wish that upon anyone who has ever drunk from that cup. I will be interested to see how it affects you over the coming weeks.”
Lhaurel licked her lips and looked down at the bodies around her, ignoring the scurry of Orinai rushing through the makeshift camp. A breeze picked up, tugging at her cloak and stirring some fallen leaves and depositing them atop a fallen Orinai soldier. The soft smell of char mingled with the lingering stink of death. Lhaurel wrapped her arms around her own shoulders and shivered from more than just the cold.
Chapter 7: Longing
“Goodwill is often seen as the weakest of the Progressions, though which is the stronger, the tree that remains unyielding in the storm and is broken by its passing or the one which bends and still remains when the storm is gone?”
—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 17, Year 1171
Lhaurel looked out at the expanse of water before her, sunlight reflecting off the perfect, blue-green surface. The sheer size of it took her breath away and left her speechless. Even the vastness of the underground lake in the Sharani Desert, Elyana’s grotto, was but a small drop in the bucket. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how astounding it would feel standing here if she simply had access to draw upon it. Profound regret at not having access to her powers wrapped cold fingers around her heart and squeezed.
“Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Talha asked. She walked up to Lhaurel, staff making sharp thunks against the ground.
All Lhaurel could do was nod. Even that came with effort. Tears formed on her cheeks but she didn’t have the heart or energy to wipe them away. A small flush of chagrin at the tears colored her face, but Lhaurel chose to ignore it.
“You know, as the Sister who walks and guides others on the path of Knowledge, I end up cloistered in a room much of the time, nose pressed into the musty pages of a book. It’s a stale, stagnant sort of life sometimes. I love it, as I should; there really is no greater pursuit in life than the quest for Knowledge. But this.” Talha breathed in through her nose, straightening to her full height and closing her eyes. “The sea. It’s always so fresh and lustrous. It’s a visceral, emboldening experience that almost makes me regret my chosen Path. Almost.”
Lhaurel stared at Talha through the blurry edges of her tear-filled sight. Though Talha spoke the Rahuli tongue, many of the words were new to Lhaurel. The meaning and emotion still managed to come through in Talha’s tone, though. Something more than the passing curiosity that generally garnished her words filled her voice. Little actual passion lived in that, though there was often an intensity to the woman that made Lhaurel uncomfortable. No, this new color to Talha’s voice ran deeper by far. Talha clearly felt the awesome power and might of the vastness before her. She experienced it. She lived it.
“I miss being able to feel it,” Lhaurel said, not ashamed of the quaver in her voice. “I miss being able to be a part of things, to live them. I miss my powers. And yet, I fear them too.”
Talha looked down at Lhaurel and her face twisted into the first true look of sympathy Lhaurel had ever seen on the woman.
“I know, child,” she said, placing a hand on Lhaurel’s shoulder. “I know. What we had to do to you was necessary, though the moral ambiguity in it is not lost on me. To be a Sister, to have our powers, is to be a means of connection to life itself. It transcends the physical and taps into the spiritual, the holy, and the deific. Once you truly come to understand that, you’ll see why those who do not know this power still fear us. You will come to understand the divine and our small place in such vastness. It
is right to both love and fear what you are to become.”
Lhaurel swallowed hard and scrubbed at her eyes. Her hands came away wet and dirty, but she didn’t care. She looked out over the blue-green horizon, stunned by the scope of what filled her gaze and struck by a great weight pressing down upon her.
“I think I’m beginning to understand.”
Talha pursed her lips and ran a finger along the side of her jaw and down to the tip of her chin. “I believe you are, indeed. When your powers are returned to you in Estrelar, you’ll understand even more. Until then, be careful. There are consequences when one of us doesn’t use our powers for an extended period of time. As I said, what was done to you was necessary, but not without consequences. I will watch over you carefully as we travel, but let me know if anything out of the ordinary happens.”
Lhaurel nodded her acceptance, her curiosity at the woman’s statement dulled by the sheer majesty and power of the ocean before her. Power which she couldn’t even begin to grasp.
* * *
An hour later, a small dark dot appeared on the horizon, marring the otherwise perfect view of the water’s vastness. Lhaurel pointed at the blemish from where she still stood at the water’s edge.
“Talha?”
The bookish Sister glanced up from her book, where she was busy taking down notes and squinted out over the sea, brow furrowed and lips pressed into a frown. Then her expression brightened and she smiled.
“Ah, that’s the ship,” Talha said and snapped her book closed. “And right on time, too. Sellia will be pleased. She didn’t like the lengths this journey would take, but I needed the time to teach you the necessary basics of being a Sister.”
“Ship?” The unfamiliar word fell off the end of Lhaurel’s tongue in a garbled mess and she grimaced. She was beginning to understand just how little she really knew about her own language, let alone that of the Orinai.
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