by Victor Poole
Flattery from priests, Ajalia told herself, was probably not much different to flattery from servants.
"Your allegiance, should you choose to please me," Ajalia told Coren, "will be to your new king."
"And who might that king be, sky angel?" Coren asked, looking up from his bow to Ajalia. Ajalia thought that Coren looked an awful lot like the other Coren, the little boy who was now dead.
"You just met him," Ajalia said drily, nodding her head towards the hallway.
"I see," Coren said. His lips worked back and forth, as if he were struggling with some inner determination, and then he smiled at her. "I withdraw my impudence," Coren said, "and I agree to serve Delmar faithfully until I am dead."
"Were you thinking that you would be dead very soon?" Ajalia asked Coren. She saw many of the priests attempting to untwist the light within their bodies; some of them were conferring together, and poking at their stomachs with their fingers in an experimental sort of way.
"He thinks you're going to take on the two black dragons," Oracle told Ajalia. "Many of our number will be sacrificed, in the battle against those evil beasts."
Ajalia did not know yet if she ought to tell the priests that she had already taken care of the two black worms; she wondered if the priests would be upset to learn that their great sacrifice would not be required at all. The priests were all ignoring the three still-squirming bodies on the floor; Savage, who had already been bound up with ropes, was wheezing painfully, and the other two priests who had reacted badly to the mixing of the lights in their centers looked almost dead.
"The priests think," Oracle murmured, having come close up to Ajalia, "that you will choose to protect them, if you like them more than any of the others."
"Do you think this?" Ajalia asked Oracle, who smiled.
"No," Oracle said. "I think Delmar's already taken care of the dragons. He said he'd eradicated the evil in our land."
"Keep the door for me," Ajalia told Oracle. Coren, who looked as though he felt left out, came and stood right next to Oracle.
"She told me, not you," Oracle muttered to Coren, who ignored him studiously. Ajalia had gone over to Savage, but she heard this exchange, and she smiled. She wondered if Coren was related to Delmar. She remembered what Fernos had said to Corintha about her cousins, and she thought that Coren could be such a cousin, or a nephew to the royal family.
Ajalia knelt down beside Savage. The priests noticed her now, and moved a little farther away. They stared at her cautiously, and she knew that they listened to what she said.
"Savage, are you alive?" Ajalia asked.
"That's a stupid question," Savage muttered, without opening his eyes. Savage was not moaning and writhing, like the other two fallen priests, but his breath was coming in wheezes, and his face was tense and still. Ajalia thought that he was in a great deal of pain. The twist of magic that she had put into Savage's center was crackling incessantly around what appeared to be a knob of thick magic.
"What is inside of you?" Ajalia asked him. Savage let out a hoarse chuckle.
"You'll let it burn until it does kill me, won't you?" the man asked. Ajalia admired Savage's spirit. He was showing great resolve, she thought, and seemed determined not to bend under pressure.
"Not if you tell me where it came from," Ajalia said.
"No," Savage replied.
"Why not?" she asked. She did not sound angry; she made sure to speak in her very best ordinary negotiating voice, and Savage laughed at her again, and cracked open his eyes.
"Have you met Rane yet?" Savage asked, his eyes gleaming at her. Ajalia saw that the man was very near the edge of his breaking point. She was not willing to take away the magic until she knew Savage was on her side. She thought that if she once backed away, Savage would have found her own breaking point, and the man would feel then that he owned her. Savage was a very rare kind of person, Ajalia reflected with satisfaction. She wanted to collect him, and to get his heart onto her side. She watched him watching her, and she let the barest hint of a smile rise into her eyes.
"I killed Rane," she told Savage. The smile faded from Savage's face.
"Then you'll kill me, too," Savage said, and he closed his eyes.
"Why?" Ajalia asked.
"Oh, don't ask me why in that adorably helpless way," Savage said savagely opening his eyes and glaring at her. "It won't work on me."
"It looks as though it already has," Ajalia said peaceably.
"Stop," Savage laughed, but his eyes had lightened a little. "And if you don't kill me, those other priests will."
"Why?" Ajalia asked again. Savage's breath was wheezing out of him; the man looked positively tormented. "You needn't think I will take pity on you, Savage," Ajalia said calmly. "I won't."
Savage's breathing eased a little.
"So you're clever," Savage said. "How wonderful for you. What does your Thief Lord want from me?"
"Why will the priests kill you?" Ajalia asked. The priests in question were staring at this exchange with very quiet faces; she thought that the priests were too lily-livered to actually attack a man like Savage, and she thought that Savage knew this quite as well as she did, and was testing her.
Ajalia reached into the center of Savage's heart, and moved the white crackle of magic so that it lay right over the knot of strange energy. The crackle grew much louder. One of the other two priests who had fallen down let out a dramatic moan.
"One of you kick that man for me," Ajalia snapped, and the moaning man fell silent at once. The standing priests glanced at each other, looking doubtful. "Now you look me in the eyes and you tell me," Ajalia said, "that eight men who daren't kick a brother are going to savage the life from your body just because you have spied for both sides. Any decent spy would do so. Now, if you are trying to shock me, it isn't working. If, however, you are attempting to bore me, keep at it. You're doing an excellent job so far."
A few of the priests tittered, and Savage twisted his head to glare at them.
"You weren't laughing at me when I kept the king from killing the lot of you," Savage snapped, and the priests fell silent.
"I'd like to hear more about that," Ajalia said brightly. Savage growled at her.
"I'd like to speak to Delmar," Savage said finally.
"No," Ajalia said.
"Please," Savage added. Ajalia thought about it for a few moments.
"No," Ajalia said. Savage blinked up at her. When he saw that her expression was not changing, and that she was quite serious, he sighed.
"Fine," Savage said. "Fine. I'm a spy."
"I already knew that," Ajalia put in.
"Well, aren't you bright?" Savage snapped. He glared at the priests whom he could still see. "I was feeding the king fragments of information, in exchange for letting us live."
"That is a lie," Ajalia told him. "If the king wanted to kill you, you would all be dead. Oracle," Ajalia said, standing up.
"I'll tell you," Savage said quickly. "Come back."
Ajalia remained standing. She waited.
"I was teaching the king magic," Savage said. "He was going to kill Oracle, and Shin, and several others, and I agreed to teach him magic."
"How long?" Ajalia asked. Savage looked up at her, and there was finally genuine torment in his eyes. Ajalia saw that Savage had been faking all of the pain. He is very good, she thought, and smiled to herself. He will be most useful to me, she told herself.
"About five years," Savage said.
"Good," Ajalia said. She untwisted the energy from Savage's middle, and then gathered the black claw around her hand, and thrust it into Savage's heart.
"Ah!" Savage cried breathlessly. His back arched, and his whole body went still.
"She's killed him," the priests breathed anxiously to each other. "The woman's killed Savage. She's killed him. He's dead."
Ajalia withdrew her hand, and then coated her fingers with red and gold light, and dragged out the lump, which was shaped like a human heart, and seemed to
be pumping with life. She kept hold of the beating heart of dark light, and turned to Coren.
"Get me Delmar, now," Ajalia said sharply. Coren turned, and fled. Savage let out a pained gasp, and then moved his shoulders tentatively.
"Thank you," Savage said carefully, and Ajalia knew that he was feeling with his own mind at the place where the possessing energy had lain. Ajalia cut Savage free of the restraining ropes for a second time, with the knife she still held in her hand, and then she put the knife into Savage's hands.
"Stand up," Ajalia told Savage. Savage stood up, looking like a man who has been dragged underneath a heavy cart, and trampled by oxen. He let out a careful breath, and his free hand was pressed to his heart.
"Thank you," Savage breathed again, and Ajalia saw the beginnings of a white brand blossoming over the priest's chest. The priests seemed, Ajalia thought, to regain their white brands deliberately, and more quickly than the other people she had healed. She thought that the priests already knew how to manipulate the lights in the sky and the earth, and that they were able to direct their energies into the formation of the white brand, where other people waited for it to grow back over the natural course of time.
Delmar rushed into the room, and Ajalia held up the pulsing heart. Delmar's eyes darkened, and he took it from Ajalia, and pressed the heart hard against his own chest. The priests all gasped when they saw this; they could plainly see the lights now that their brands had been healed. Ajalia saw that most of the priests had been able to get the twisted lights out of their bodies, but a few of them still had crackling white mixtures of earth and sky magic inside of themselves.
The pulsing heart sank into Delmar's skin, and vanished. Then, with a sound like shattering glass, an explosion of purple and white light filled up the room, and the heart expanded outwards, ballooning out from Delmar's body. With a wet slap, the lump of magic that was shaped like a heart burst, and disgusting green light, filled up with small white worms and crusted pieces of darkness, slopped onto the floor. Ajalia drew up a handful of lights from the earth, and burned away the pool of green light. The white lumps of worm-shaped stuff crumbled into white powder when the light from the earth touched them. The white powder was like the substance that had erupted from Lilleth's slice of soul, but this white powder seemed wet, as though it had been soaking in a mixture of milk and spit.
When Ajalia had burned away the last of the green light, Coren, who had followed Delmar into the room, clapped his hands together, and the noxious powder in the air vanished. Delmar, who seemed to be in a state of overwrought excitement, kissed Ajalia, and then went straight out of the room again. Coren, muttering something about clearing up any dust that Delmar was about to cause elsewhere, followed the Thief Lord out, and the whole roomful of priests turned their faces back to Ajalia.
"That was very exciting," Oracle said. Ajalia laughed, and the priests chuckled nervously, watching her closely.
"Here," Savage said, holding Ajalia's knife out to her. She thanked him, and took it.
"What about those two?" Ajalia asked, pointing to the two priests who were flat on the ground, the turning of mixed magic crackling around their insides. Savage curled his lip when he looked at them.
"I wouldn't release them," Savage said. Ajalia turned her attention to Savage.
"What would you do to them?" she asked. Savage watched her closely.
"I'd send them to Slavithe," Savage said.
"Why?" Ajalia asked.
"If they pass through your magic gate and live," Savage said cautiously, "I would cast them out of the priesthood, and let them go free."
"Great idea," Ajalia said. She went to the door, and pulled Oracle into the room from where he had been standing just outside. She reached up into the sky, and deep into the earth, and made a barrier of ocean-blue magic in the center of the hallway. "Now," Ajalia said. "I'll go first, and then Oracle will follow me. Savage will come next, and the rest of you will pass through the wall of magic in this hall. If you live, fantastic. If you die, good riddance."
"What about if they try to go the other direction?" Savage asked.
"Then I'll chase them down. I don't want to chase anyone," Ajalia said sternly. The priests looked at her with somber eyes. Some of them nodded.
Ajalia went out into the hall, and stepped through the blue barrier of magic. Oracle and Savage followed her, and then a trickle of priests came hesitantly through the doorway and into the barrier. Only one of the priests who had remained standing had any trouble with the wall; this priest vented a whole host of shadows from his head, and looked around at the other priests, a look of shock and embarrassment on his face. Finally only the last two priests were left. Ajalia undid the twist of magic in the few priests who still had not been able to get it out of themselves, and then went to speak to the two priests who were now sitting, looking abashed, in the room where they had been left.
"Everyone else is out there, on the other side of that blue wall," Ajalia told the two priests. "And I don't know what you were whining about," she added, "since you don't seem to be in any pain right now."
The two priests looked at each other.
"I'd rather die with magic than by a knife," one of the priests said, and he rose up to his feet. Ajalia waited until she heard the flash of magic, and the thump of the priest's body on the floor, and then she turned to the second priest.
"Well?" she asked.
"I guess you'll just have to kill me," the priest told her, giving her a sickening smile.
"All right," Ajalia said, raising her knife. The priest let out a yell, and dashed past her and down the hall, away from the blue barrier of magic. Ajalia turned, and saw Savage and a few other priests tearing down the hall after the priest. She went to the door, and watched the scuffle. Savage got hold of the runaway priest, and carried the flailing man towards the blue magic wall.
"Let go of me, traitor, she'll kill us all!" the priest shrieked. Savage carried the man through the blue wall, and with a flash of white light, the man went limp. Savage dropped the body on top of the other dead priest, and then turned to Ajalia.
"What do you want now?" Savage asked her. Ajalia kept herself from feeling the things that were happening in her body; she thought that if she paid any attention to how she felt right now, or listened to the physical sensations that were unfolding within her gut, that she would lose control of herself, and not recover at all, or not for a very long time.
"Find me somewhere that I can be alone," Ajalia told Savage. "Put a guard at the door, tell Delmar where I am, and then do whatever Delmar asks."
Savage turned to the other priests.
"Go and help the Thief Lord," Savage commanded them, and Oracle led the priests towards the second room, where Delmar's voice could faintly be heard. "This way," Savage told Ajalia, and he led her back along the way Aaron and the other guards had brought them. He took her partway down the stairs, and then opened a door. "I will tell your Thief Lord where you are," Savage told Ajalia in a low voice, "and then I will come and watch at the door."
"Thank you," Ajalia said, and went inside. Savage shut the door behind her, and Ajalia looked around. She was in a small room that was shaped like an oval. A pair of windows were set high up in the wall, too high up for Ajalia to see, and a plain wooden table and chair were placed against the wall below the windows. Ajalia thought that the room looked like a guard's chamber. The floor was made of black stone, and the walls were constructed of roughly-fitted black stones. Much of the palace was made of wood, but the outer walls, and some of the pieces inside the rooms, were constructed of the black stone from the mountain. Ajalia went and sat down in the wooden chair, and put her face into her hands.
She had felt, often enough in the past, as though she were going to die, or as if the darkness in her gut was so extreme that she would be eaten up by it, but nothing so far had prepared her for the purely evil feeling that was in her heart now. She had, up until this point, avoided thinking about her father. She had thought
about her mother, and she had thought occasionally about her brother, Gabriel, but Ajalia had, almost since before she had left home as a child, consistently avoided thinking at all about her father.
I don't want to think about him now, Ajalia thought, but she worked her fingers into her hair, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, and her father's form and face rose up like an awful vision in her mind.
I did think of him before, Ajalia told herself. I thought of my father when I woke up in the forest, and Philas was there. I remembered my father teaching the boys at his school. Ajalia's father, before he had run away from the family, had taught sums and prayers to the boys who had attended a special monastery school in the next town over. The priests of the school had been nothing like the priests in Slavithe or Talbos; the priests that Ajalia had known as a child were all fat, and married, and some of them had been jovial. The religion that prevailed in the region where Ajalia had been born had been a faint and cheerful one; the priests who administered the religion were benign in their discipline, and kindly in their attitudes towards children. Ajalia's father had not been a priest, but he had gotten along well with their numbers, and he had had a knack for learning and for the old chants that the priests used.
Ajalia sighed, and wiped her nose against her arm. Tears were seeping out from under her eyes; Ajalia did not mind them, but she wished they would not last too long. She hated the red marks that tears left around her eyes, and on the skin of her cheeks.
My mother never cried, Ajalia told herself, and she laughed. The seat of the chair was hard, and she slipped down to the floor, and wrapped her arms around her legs. Ajalia had never thought much about her father, but she told herself now that it was entirely possible, and even likely, that her father was alive somewhere, though she did not think her father would ever find his way this far south.
Ajalia's father had abandoned his family when Ajalia had been nine, and her brother had been ten. She had always thought of Gabriel as younger than herself, because she had had to care for him when he had been a child, and he had been very small until about the age of five, when he had begun to sprout like a weed, and had beaten her more often. Their father had come back three times. The last time he came back he said he would stay, and he had stayed for almost four months, but in the end he had left, and Ajalia knew that her father would not come back anymore after that. He had told her so, privately, before he had left. Ajalia kneaded at the place over her sternum, where her father had kissed her goodbye. He had picked her up, and hugged her, and then kissed her swiftly and gone away into the darkness.