“You’ve lost me,” Jovan interrupted.
“For Apexia’s sake. Doesn’t it seem suspicious at all? Garran’s killers had a few lines of prophecy and not just any lines. It was about the Elf King protecting me. We all thought that Garran was the Elf King. That’s why I’m being forced to marry him.” She paused. “Was being forced.”
Trying to control her boiling emotions, Bethany stood in silence for a moment. Jovan and Allric knew scholars had determined the line of kings in Ellentop were the Elf Kings of prophecy. Elves lacked their own monarchy, having done away with it centuries ago. Ellentop, however, was still ruled by Elorians and scholars felt the half-blooded line of kings was where the prophecy pointed.
Allric tapped his fingers against the side of his chair. “So, whoever did this knows the prophecy and attacked where you are most vulnerable?”
Bethany gave a curt nod. “That’s what Sarissa would do.”
“I don’t know much about the prophecies, but if Garran, or the Elf King, is dead, doesn’t that mean the prophecy is dead, too?” Jovan asked.
Allric shook his head, letting out a labored sigh. “I think it means Bethany has lost her support and protector. Without an Elf King, she will die at the hands of the Viper. Whoever that is.”
“Personally, I’ve never believed Garran would have saved me from the impending doom that awaits me as liberator of the world,” Bethany said, sneering. The scholars had failed to answer that particular question. In fact, they had failed to answer numerous questions, including why there was a need to save anyone.
Jovan slumped in his chair. “I don’t see why we just can’t put an elf on the throne and marry him off to Bethany. Be done with it all.”
She glared at him and used the image of her fist smashing his nose to satisfy her anger. Most days, she understood his rejection of the divine rule of Apexia. She understood that. Being the daughter of the Goddess often left her with a void where she supposed others usually put their faith. However, today, she lacked patience for when he dismissed the prophecies that had influenced every decision concerning her life.
“Sorry, Beth. I’m frustrated by all this spiritual nonsense,” Jovan said, shrugging.
“This nonsense as you call it affects all of us,” Allric snapped. He looked at Bethany, his tone calmer. “Are you certain Sarissa is behind this?”
She slowly nodded. “Yes.”
A distant, almost forgotten part of her heart ached. Bethany had been the elder of the two sisters by three minutes. Sarissa remained her mother’s favorite even when she fell into the addictive darkness. But Bethany had always known that the Magic would corrupt Sarissa just as it corrupted everyone who had ever touched it.
A childish part of her whined that her mother’s favorite deserved the insanity if she decided to dance with evil. Still, she could not hate her twin because of why Sarissa had chosen Magic. Void of any Power, she turned to the only available source of help to protect Bethany in case the Viper of prophecy came for her. Now, her sister was becoming what she had once tried to stop.
“Allric, I know what I’m suggesting is farfetched, but the carrier. There are too many…” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “There is simply no other person who knows about the prophecy, who would be capable of killing an innocent man connected to it, and who would use Magic to send a sick greeting message.”
Allric dropped his gaze for a moment before looking back up. “You think your sister is capable of murder?”
“Magic is capable of murder. It eats away the sanity of a person until only a hollow shell is left to bring hurt and pain to others. The dark forces are never innocent; they will always be insidious and destructive.” She lowered her eyes. “Sarissa was obsessed with the prophecies. She wanted to help me.”
Bethany’s voice cracked and she swallowed hard to push back the lump in her throat. Crying, even in front of her friends, was unacceptable. She refused to debase herself during a crisis. Controlling her voice, she said, “The addiction would have twisted her mind so far by now that she might be setting into motion the very acts she once tried to prevent. And none of us will be safe.”
“You think Sarissa will kill you?” Jovan’s shoulders sagged under the weight of the question.
“Not just me.” Her voice cracked but she brought the ache in her heart under control. “Anyone in her way.”
* * * * *
Sarissa dragged her table closer to the fire. With no coal and only three scrawny pieces of wood left, she opted not to stir the fire to heat the entire hut. At least the wood had been dried properly, though it crackled too much for her taste. Each time the fire popped, she cringed. It was a distraction but a necessity. Her elven blood craved the warmth, not to mention her nearly-blue hands.
“Prophecy scrolls,” she shouted at Anders, the old slave, who stopped to warm his hands by the small fire. He obeyed, shuffling his feet against the straw-covered earthen floor and lowered his head to avoid her harsh glare.
She scratched at her eye. The twitching had been unrelenting for several days. The healers proved beyond useless and she suspected they had caused permanent harm.
“Which ones?”
She glared at him. “All. Of. Them.”
Her good eye caught a glimpse of the empty coal basket. There would be no more until the blizzard stopped. She pulled a tattered, patchwork blanket over her shoulders. Winter usually lasted nine months deep in the Northern Taftlin Mountains. Spring was already a month late.
She debated using Magic to fuel the fire but her strength was low. As it was, she only had eight people left in captivity and killing them for something as mundane as a roaring fire was a waste. An animal could provide enough life energy, but she preferred to let the others eat the animals and avoid starvation. She had to conserve her energy.
Soon, she’d have her Magic texts decoded. Then, she would never been cold again.
Anders slid the basket of scrolls under the table, near her feet. She glared at him until he went back to stirring the soup pot that hung over her tiny fire pit.
Sarissa snapped the twine from her small leather-bound book and dropped it on her wooden desk.
“Soup,” she whispered, skimming the first prophecy scroll she grabbed.
Tranquility’s blazing death.
Anders plunked a wooden mug in front of her, steam curling from the liquid inside. She scribbled those words from the prophecy then sipped at the hot soup, little more than onion and potato. The villagers had enough smoked fish to last a few more weeks, but that did not help her. She remained true to her elven upbringing of no flesh.
With a bare pantry and endless snow, she found herself thinking about dill cream sauce. She followed her slave’s movements with her eyes, licking her lips. Everything tasted better with dill cream sauce. She wondered if elven rules applied to eating humans as well as animals.
She shook her head and returned to her work. Hungry though she was, he was far too thin to be useful floating in the soup pot. He wasn’t worth breeching her ethics over. Besides, she’d get more food from him if she just killed him and used his life energy to cast a food spell.
Sarissa frowned. For reasons beyond her understanding, the others liked him so she would not kill him. Dipping her quill back in the ink, she continued writing on a new paragraph:
The trail remains ambiguous. Texts reveal little. Slavers brought eight Rygents today. Did not bring supplies. Idiots. Rygents continue to be odd people. Unlocked fourteen words. Will experiment using Rygents.
Sarissa tapped her head with her index finger, trying to focus herself. A decade of next-to-no progress grated at her. She read the first fully exposed sentence from the large book in front of her. The first sentence that she had unlocked.
Follow our instruction and all will be revealed in a scorching inferno.
She pondered the phrase and scribbled more into her journal:
Fire will undo the bolt and purge the lies from the sister’s life. Fire is t
he key.
Sarissa laid down her quill and picked up her most treasured possession: Secret Heretics Against the Power of Gods. She inherited the book eleven years before—the only one of its kind—from a dying Magi. It supposedly held some of the remaining secrets that halted her arcane progression. But out of the four hundred pages, there were only splatters of sentences and odd words visible. As she experimented and researched, random words had appeared. If the book was ever unveiled, she felt certain she’d have enough spells to rival even Apexia’s Power. Until then, Sarissa knew that her own Magic couldn’t even come close to her sister’s innate Power.
Gutter whore, she thought.
She scratched at her burning, itching eye. Her banishment had been unkind and she whispered incantations for Bethany’s misery. The bitch was the one who had caught her and turned her over to Allric and his gang of zealots. Bethany had thought she had acted mercifully by begging the Temple of Tranquil Mercy’s senior advisors to sentence her to exile instead of death. How Sarissa planned to make her pay for that act of sentimental pity.
“Anders, is there a healer amongst the Rygents?”
The slave shrugged.
“Then find out or I will stab your eye out with this quill. Along with mine.” He scurried out of the hut, leaving the door open for too long. Snow blew in, coating the floor. She frowned as the heat escaped. Hands cramping from the cold, she continued to write:
Incompetence plagues my existence. Recognizing this is the price of achievement. Dreading that I am the only intelligent creature left in this world.
The howls of sled dogs, followed by a rapping at her door dragged her mind from her task.
Interruptions are my plight.
“Enter!”
A rider stepped inside, letting in the drifting snow. The rider was covered in an odd mixture of dried mud, blood, and snow. Gales blew through the hut and stole what was left of the precious heat Sarissa had saved.
“If this fire goes out, I’ll chop you into kindling.”
He smiled, though he looked half frozen. Silver frost clung to his normally black beard and eyebrows, emphasising his dark features all the more. “I missed you, too, wife.”
“Well?” She asked, tapping the table with her fingers.
He dumped a bag of dry wood on the floor before discarding his sealskin overcoat on the floor. He tossed one of logs into the fire. “It’s done.”
She slammed her quill down this time and stood up. “Positive?”
“No one can survive being gutted.” He rubbed his hands over the fire.
Sarissa looked at the now-closed door. “The others?”
A frown spread across his face. “Dead. Dugan managed to get a travel spell off before he died, but only got us to the edge of the ranges. Castile and Dennis were both injured and died on the way.”
She frowned at losing three of their physically strongest Magi. “The prophecy notes?”
That brought a sparkle to his eyes. “Left inside Garran.”
A wide grin spread across her face. She pushed herself from the desk, scraping her chair across the straw floor. “Excellent. Simply excellent. How will they react now that there is no Elf King?”
Robert pulled his stinking shirt off and dropped it on the floor. “Now what?”
She shook her head and stepped closer to him. She lowered her voice, in fear of eavesdroppers. A person could never be too careful. “The dark Powers still conceal the future from me.”
She paused to rub her eye, digging her knuckle into it. “But we will bring the murderous sister and the whoring mother down. They will fall.” She sniffed the air. “You stink of horse ass.” She scratched her eye.
He grabbed her hand, pulling it away from her eye. “It would be easy to kill her now.”
Growling, she grabbed his throat and pushed him against the cold, rounded wall. Sarissa touched his nose with hers. “There are too many who will still rally to help her.” Still pinning him, she successfully pulled her other hand from his grasp and resumed scratching.
He pushed against her, flipping positions. Though she was tall, she lacked his strength and size. He used his weight to pin her against the uneven wall. “Leave it alone. You’re making it worse.” He kissed her hard. She bit his lip until the taste of blood improved his breath. His yelping made her bite harder.
She laughed wildly and turned her face away. “You taste like horse ass, too.”
CHAPTER THREE
Alone she will find the way. If others sway her judgement, the Viper will own them. They will become disciples of evil and betray the Diamond. All will be burned. None will be safe.
—Aleu’s “The Agony of the Diamond”
Bethany stared at the mountain of work on her desk and frowned. She fanned herself with the new quill Rebecca had prepared for her. At least she’s good for something, she thought, listening to her aide flutter about in the adjoining room. Only twenty minutes had passed since her meeting with Allric. It seemed longer. Sitting around waiting for proof and deciding next moves was not her style.
Practically, waiting made sense. A blood-soaked piece of prophecy inside a corpse was hardly evidence enough that her sister was the killer. It didn’t even matter if Sarissa had done it if no one knew her whereabouts. Sarissa had been banished seventy years ago for Magic. Since then, there had been no trace of her. Even Apexia could not sense her.
Allric had dispatched a few discreet teams of regular soldiers to investigate. They were the kinds of folks who lived in the gutters and who could get information vowed knights never could. For now, she had no choice but to wait and carry on.
“Lady Bethany, don’t forget your meeting with Mother Aneese in three minutes,” Rebecca called out in her perpetually nervous, high-pitched voice.
Bethany tipped her head to look at the clock in the adjacent room. She wondered if she could pierce it with a well-aimed dagger. She frowned. Her aim wasn’t that good and she might scrape the urine-yellow plaster. Oh, how disappointing that would be.
She dropped her quill, splattering two drops of ink on the report in front of her. She stepped to her window, watching Kiner as he organized clumsy initiates into battle formation in the lower courtyard. Bethany yanked the bug-and-bird screen out of her stone window frame with a crack. She leaned her elbows against the windowsill and watched the initiates four floors below.
Kiner shouted single-word orders. “March.”
“Turn.”
“Halt.”
For the recruits below, it was their first taste of training. They sported tan trousers and tunics, along with arguably the most uncomfortable footwear ever fashioned, a four-century-old boot design. Bethany understood that discomfort was part of training soft and spoiled aristocrats and the reason the cobblers never upgraded the pattern. Still, she winced at the memory of how much those brown leather boots had blistered her feet.
She missed the simplicity of those days.
How fast the world changed for her in a single day. Garran had been her friend. Had. How quickly her mind moved him to the past tense. Guilt slashed her soul. Selfish waves of relief washed over her knowing she was released from her arranged marriage dictated by a prophecy she privately didn’t completely believe in. But she would still miss his friendship.
Rebecca slinked into the room. “Mother Aneese is waiting outside.”
“Thank you, Rebecca.” Bethany dreaded any meeting with Aneese. Even though she was an Honored Sister and right hand to High Priest Torius, there was something about the elven woman that grated her nerves. A lot of somethings, honestly.
Bethany decided that making Aneese wait would annoy her. So, she turned back to watching Kiner to ease her…grief? Anger? No one word could describe the ache inside her. She only knew that somehow watching the troops calmed her.
Kiner marched the recruits through different formations; squares, lines, circles. For the first week, the positions weren’t about actual battle form, but rather physical and mental conditioning. Mos
t of the men in the group had never taken an order in their lives. That level of independence often led to conceit and rebellion, only constant drilling could teach them how to react without thinking.
“Prince Daniel! Pay attention,” Kiner bellowed loud enough that she could hear him four floors up. He pointed to the spot where the young man was required. “Stand here.”
Bethany snorted. She remembered the awkwardness of drills when she was a lowly initiate. Months of training had passed before her own feet had cooperated with the endless marching commands of her instructors. Eventually, she had settled into the rhythm of marching. Now, she didn’t know if she could walk without a march in her step. She felt confident that these recruits would turn out the same way.
“Lady Bethany, I’m sorry but Mother Aneese is waiting.”
Bethany let out a loud sigh. “Send her in.” She made sure she was sitting when the priestess entered the room. “Good day, Aneese.”
“Did Miss Rebecca not pass along my request to speak promptly with you?”
Bethany gritted her teeth. “Yes, she had. As you can imagine, I’m very busy.” She motioned to the statue-like priestess. “Please, sit. What can I do for you?”
Aneese lowered herself into a chair adjacent to Bethany’s desk, her hips cracking. “I want to confirm your role in the Remembrance ceremonies. Protocol needs to be observed, even though you are in mourning.” She paused. “Why are you not in widow’s weeds? You should be dressed in white and your face covered in a veil. Have you no sense of propriety?”
Bethany drew in a sharp breath. “I am not a widow. I’ll save that distinction for Garran’s wife.”
“You were betrothed to him. Not that you cared about such things.” Aneese shook her head. “Your disrespect disappoints me, but does not shock me.”
Bethany opened her mouth to speak, but shut it just as fast. Arguing with Aneese would serve no purpose.
Gods & Dragons: 8 Fantasy Novels Page 141