">Ht size="And evading every question I ask…?"
"I've learned not to trust anyone."
"You trust me."
"And what makes you say that?"
"I can feel it."
Where do I know you from? He thought to himself. Instead of asking her the questions he wanted to ask, he swallowed and cleared his suddenly dry throat. "I'll try to answer more directly, if it pleases you."
"If you're not clergy, what did you do where you come from?"
“I worked for my father in Ilvan. We owned a great deal of property there. I helped with repairs and served as his… assistant, in local matters.”
“Politics?"
“Something like that, yes.”
“You have the mouth for a politician.” She tapped him lightly on the thigh. "You don't act much like one though."
"Skies above," he chuckled. For a moment, it was like he was two months in the past sharing time with Veni. "I'm not much of a leader. Charisma was never one of my virtues."
Aia shrugged. "I don't care to lead anything myself. People think I'm strange, they always have. They admire me, but they avoid me, too."
"People fear differences. You're different."
She paused, idly playing with a blade of grass between her fingers. "You don't have to be afraid of me."
He laced his hands behind his head. "Is that so?"
"Some bad things have happened to you," she ventured, "I don't think you need any more bad things in your life."
"That's only because you don't know me." Teveres closed his eyes, making a retreat back inside himself.
"You couldn't possibly have done anything I haven't heard of before."
"Couldn't possibly…" a shock ran through him as he coaxed himself down from an unwarranted sharp response. “Have you forgotten so quickly? I could have killed you last night, and I nearly did."
"But you didn't."
His voice lowered to a dull murmur. "That just makes everything so much better." Her lack of regard for her own safety irked and confused him, since he was the cause. He moved to roll on his side, but the pain from his ribs made him gasp. He took slow, deep breaths until he could speak clearly. "You agreed to answer some of my questions."
"I did," was her guarded response.
"Where do you come from?"
"I told you last night, I'm from Seldat."
"I imagine there's more to it than that."
"Well..." she sighed, "I'm from a very poor family in Seldat. I left when I was 16 to live here, with my grandmother. She helped train me in alchemy while I attended the University. I was... not suited for the guild, but I completed my training anyway. Now I'm here."
Teveres looked up at her, one eyebrow raised. "And how long have you been a telepath?"
Aia visually searched for Devian, comforted by the healthy distance between the Justices and their conversation. "As long as I can remember."
"You're happy here?"
"It's my home. It will always be my home."
Home. Something he would never have again, not like before.
As if she heard his thoughts - though he was sure she had not - she spoke softly. "I'm sorry about your family." Her gemstone eyes were unwavering.
She was the first person to offer condolences for his loss. He became uncomfortably aware of his heartbeat, so strong that he felt he had to swallow to keep it in his chest. "So am I."
"I know you didn't kill them. I don't know why you won't just say so, but I know you didn't do it."
He turned away from her. His face was flushed, and he could not speak. It was clear that until he let her in, there would be no end. She would never send a man to his death who did not deserve it.
"I didn't mean to upset you. I can go."
He sat up, hands rested in his lap. The sun was beginning to set around them, the colors of twilight echoing through the hills. "If you really want to know why I'm here, fine. Not out here. Not around them." He indicated the distant Justices.
She wore the most curious expression, a curl of the lips not quite pleasant enough to be called a smile. She offered a hand to help him up, which he declined. She led him back inside the cottage, sitting him down at the kitchen table. There was a quiet awkwardness in the way she calmly situated herself across from him, patiently waiting for the story to unravel.
Even though he let down his barriers, he could feel her in his thoughts, searching. It was as if someone was running up and down the library that was his mind, tossing books off of the shelves. The pain started slow but gradually rose in intensity the deeper she went.
In an effort to be forthright, be brought up the memories pertaining to his 'gift.' His first kill when he was six - the young foal his father gave him as a present. He had become angry because the foal ran from him while he tried to pet it. His childish rage released his ability, and without intending to he killed the young horse. Initially there was pleasure - every kill he could remember came with a rush of euphoria - followed almost immediately y timmediaby dread. He could clearly recall his father's face as he stared up at him through tears, trying to explain what happened with a child's vocabulary. Dayle thought it was Teveres's imagination, and Teveres tried to believe him until he killed the neighborhood cat.
Then there was the death of the first human a year later, the little girl next door who used to tease him. He still remembered her with her dark skin and forest-brown eyes, the way she screamed because he had not yet learned how to kill quickly. Her death was prolonged and excruciating. Even while Aia viewed the images it caused his stomach to lurch.
The death of the girl was unmistakably his fault, though no one but he and his father knew it. It was then that his father started training him as clergy, hoping that it would calm his son's anger. In some ways it worked, until he was 12, when he ran into a man who had raped a young boy. His limited telepathy picked up on it while he was browsing the general store; he took the man's life by sheer force of rage. Several weeks later he slipped up again, killing an older boy who bullied him. It was small consolation that the boy died quickly. By that time rumors began to circle about Teveres's presence at so many deaths, but there was no way to prove it was his fault. The death of the older boy was intertwined with memories of his face buried in his mother's shoulder where he cried himself to sleep every night for weeks. She never knew anything - his father did not want to break her heart.
Finally Aia came to his departure from Ilvan and the bloody living room scene where his family was murdered. He managed to steer the memories through that moment, skipping over Veni's discovery to the twelve townspeople who surrounded him outside his burning house, their shouts of anger punctuated by the beating they delivered. He begged them to stop - he didn't want to hurt them. They were so spiteful, these people he had grown up with. He taught their children to read, fixed their fences and painted their houses, yet they treated him like an animal. They were convinced that he was a traitorous bastard who murdered his family. It was their mistake, he thought, as they lay quietly, peacefully dead.
When it was over and there were no more memories to be had, he stared at the table, scrutinizing the imperfections in the wood. Reliving the memories as she viewed them left him feeling numb. No one had ever been able to see the world as he had seen it. He felt a pang of remorse, realizing that she now shared the burden of his broken past. Now I've made her suffer, too.
It seemed like ages before she moved to do anything. He expected her to yell, or slap him, or do something rash. Instead, he heard the sound of a cupboard opening and closing. Water was being run into a steel pot. The sound of a knife drawn from the drawer sliced through the crisp flesh of an unsuspecting vegetable, rather than his heart. He looked up in her direction, but her back was turned to him.
"Do you..." Teveres spoke, his voice sounding far away. "Do you need help? Or something?"
She shook her head without turning to face him. Teveres always found silence to be worse than a decisive reaction, but he did not
dare tell her so. She held his future in her hands, and he couldn't fault her for whatever she chose to do with it. He waited.
She didn't face him until she placed the covered pot on the stove. She paused, one hand extended in hesitation toounesitati touch him. He wanted to recoil, but he couldn't move. Her hand lit on his shoulder. She closed her eyes, and he heard a hum, at first very soft but then louder, vibrating through his entire body. A white glow emitted from the places where her fingertips contacted his skin. Pain-killing warmth seeped through his skin into his bones. All of the air left his lungs for a moment, her muscles tensed, and then the touch was gone. Aia collapsed back into the chair, and Teveres took his first painless deep breath in days.
He stared at her, confused. A grimace passed across her face. She finally let go a sigh, eyes snapping open to meet
his. She licked her lips before she spoke.
"We are the same."
She said nothing else the rest of the evening.
Chapter 4
There was a berry bush outside leading down a long ravine, calling her to run, run to the edge and jump. Would the thorns scratch her skin as she tumbled downwards to the numbness that she dreamed of? Would the pain really hurt so much more than the agony she endured every day?
There was a vial of poison in her bag made of hashdem and lylic, red like the blood coursing in her veins. It could transport her far, far away from the pain and emptiness; it could take her away forever. It might be less violent, less bloody than the ravine. It might not hurt so bad.
There was a woman inside the small, cold shack that sat on the precipice bordering The Hunter's Woods. The woman had the green eyes of a demon that spat fire when they looked at her. The woman was hateful and disgusting, stubby fingers that slapped her across the face like an animal. Her voluminous mouth opened wide enough to swallow her when it cursed her and called her a whore, when she shouted and screamed like a roaring bear for no reason at all. The woman in the small, cold shack was a small, cold woman for whom she harbored no love.
Aia stared down the ravine with the vial in her hand. Hot tears turned cold in the wind as they streamed down her face, making her shiver. This night was her 16th birthday, her 16th year in hell. Years she had thought about it, gazing at the 50-foot drop, fantasizing about the blackness of death. She had tried to get herself to jump, sometimes stood at the edge looking down thinking about what a simple move it would be. One careful "misstep" and it would all be over. It could take all the pain away.
She hurt so much that sometimes every inhalation shot spikes into her chest, yet every night when she submitted to the woman in the shack there was a small piece of herself that she kept locked away deep inside. That little piece was the only thing keeping her around, but it was so far down that she wondered if it existed at all anymore. For all she knew that little glimmer of untouched soul wa+0"is the mirage of a too-damaged and broken psyche.
Her only source of reassurance was the distant voice that whispered in her ear to keep going. Every day that she drew close to the edge of death it called out to her, ‘There has to be more. This cannot be the end of you.'
She didn't know where the voice came from. She hardly believed the voice - had no reason to - but it was there all the same. She had to get out, had to survive. She had to at least try one more time.
Temed's moon, named for the god of healers, shown down upon her like a promise. She looked up at the blueness of its light, let it surround her and give her strength. She turned to the shack. The living room candle was still lit. The woman was waiting for her to come back so she could continue her campaign of humiliation.
Aia took a deep breath, and for once, there were no spikes in her chest. To the east was the city of Nivenea, and with it her last chance at escaping hell. Her last resort. She faced the east to walk away, only to behold the woman in a dirty old nightshift with her hands clenched. In her hesitation, she had not felt her creep up from the shadows. Aia tensed at the sight of her.
"So this is what you planned to do? Leave, just like that? Without saying anything?" The tide of anger began to rise. Aia could feel the heat on her face.
"Yes, mother." Detached and blank, Aia began walking. The woman followed.
"After all I did for you? After all I sacrificed to give you a good life, this is what you do to me? I'm your mother, Aiasjia."
Aia felt the familiar iron grip of her mother's hand on her shoulder. Aia whipped around, furious, and slapped her. Her hand stung from the impact, but the pain felt like ecstasy. She grit her teeth to keep her voice low.
"You never get to touch me again, do you hear me?" She trembled with the effort to stop the words that spilled out. "All you've done for me? All the times I worked till I was feverish to support you, the long days I spent cleaning your house and gathering your god-cursed blackberries, the nights I cried when you forced me to sleep in your bed? You have no right to ask any more of me."
Her mother's shock only made her angrier. "Aiasjia, I've always loved you. I don't understand. Why are you doing this? What have I ever done to you?"
"What…" Aia shook her head and took up a more brisk pace. They were at the edge of Seldat, the Great Plains only paces away. "I've had enough."
This time her mother's grip was punctuated with the sharp prick of fingernails. "What am I supposed to tell the elders?"
Aia looked her mother in the eyes one more time. She would never forget the wrinkled makeup-plastered face, the once-beautiful blonde hair bound up in a m gond up iessy bun, the green eyes lit up with all the hatred she remembered from her childhood. To speak the words that ran through her mind since she was 6 years old was so much easier than she ever imagined.
"I don't fucking care what you tell them. I'm not - and I never was - your daughter, and I do not love you."
Pulling her small hand into a fist, the woman punched Aia with all the strength in her body. The obscenities that flew from her lips rang back into childhood. What a little bitch she was, a fucking little selfish, stupid whore, what a mistake it was to give birth to a child so treacherous.
For the first time, Aia fought back. She didn't hear the words - they didn't hold power over her anymore. Her mother didn't notice how her knuckles began to bleed, little cuts along the edges of the skin. She didn't flinch when the struggle caused the vial in Aia's hand to shatter. She didn't know she had been poisoned until the paralysis set in.
Aia's face and wrists were bruised, her body ached, and she felt better than she could remember feeling in her whole life. Her mother lay on the ground, her breathing slowing, staring up at Aia with the same terror in her eyes that Aia had experienced every day of her life. Aia had the power to heal the woman a hundred times over, but in that moment, staring at the one person who had hurt her more than anyone in the world, she couldn't bring herself to do it.
One little misstep, that's all it would take.
"May the gods bring you mercy, mother."
She ran.
* * *
The second-highest floor of the University opened in an expanse before Leniq; whitestone walls surrounded a myriad of training equipment - balance beams, weights, bowls of fire and reflecting pools. His small stage was against the far wall, encircled by a mote of water and kelspar at all of the world's twelve corners. The training room branched out into several smaller rooms meant as offices, living quarters or spaces of meditation. Usually the training hall was alive with activity, each of the twenty clergy trainees busying themselves with their work. This evening the hall was quiet, Nivenea's 9 district priests and priestesses sitting in the middle of the room on their knees in silence. It was the Night of Community, the one evening each month when all of the senior clergy in Nivenea gathered to call upon the gods. Each month was harder than the last as it became apparent that the gods, if they existed, cared little for the matters of the Nivenean people. Elseth's Children had long been forsaken.
His doubts aside, the High Priest did as was expected of him. The people look
ed to him for guidance. If he were to falter, there would be deep unrest amongst the priesthood and the public. His job required a show of faith, and that's what he would give them: a show.
Leniq gathered his mental strength as he crossed the polished obsidian floors toward the group. He was only 35 years old, one oface old, o the youngest High Priests in history when he was chosen at the age of twenty-five, but the job had worn wrinkles in his skin, gray hairs mixed in his chestnut-brown mane. The worries of the world were making him an old man. His joints clicked when he walked, the result of the dozens of injuries he sustained climbing his way to the top of the priesthood. He was a shadow of the man he had been at his peak.
He faced his colleagues, all dressed in plain beige training tunics, standing on a large square mat in the center of the hall. When he spoke, the room's acoustics carried his voice to all corners of the hall. "In all things we are but one link in a greater circle. As the energy flows through us, we amplify our message to the gods, all of us a part of the Great Communication. Go with pure heart and pure intention. Calm your mind. Begin." The High Priest of Nivenea reached his arms to the ceiling in an arch, the priesthood's welcome to the gods. The ten district priests and priestesses bowed their heads for a moment, all of them inhaled at once.
Leniq moved into the group as they dispersed, each member pairing off with another. He faced his partner, Sheyna, the new dark-haired priestess of the university. She was a head shorter than him but made up for it in agility. She inclined her head in acknowledgement before she came at him with a punch towards his sternum. He followed her motion, his chest angled out of her fist's path, and grabbed for her opposite wrist. She reacted with a deft hand, using his forward momentum to flip his body over on the padded floor. He recovered in a somersault, the follow-through of her spiraling motion, springing to his feet unscathed.
Though the exercise was one of apparent violence, it was meant as a representation of a balance between the gods and the mortal world, the reciprocity of energy around them. It was a dance, and before long their movements were synced, his energy flowing through hers and back again seamlessly. All around them were bodies in motion spinning, falling, and pushing.
Tragedy (Forsaken Lands) Page 6