by Jean Johnson
“So it is to blame,” Krais asserted, seizing on that point. Something had to make sense in all of this!
Rolling her eyes, she flipped a hand ceilingward. “Only as much as the sky is to blame for being blue. Nurture or nature, it doesn’t matter. You have this inclination; it has been tested and embedded deep in your responses. There is no shame in accepting and admitting it.”
“But I am not a submissive!” he asserted, slapping a hand on his kilt-covered thigh. “The only reason why I’m submitting at all is because Menda told me to!”
Her brows rose at that for a moment, but once again Pelai chose to pursue the other topic, not the Goddess-wrought one. Rolling her eyes, sighing in exasperation, she dragged in a breath and demanded, “Setting that aside for now . . . Krais, for a man raised in a Disciplinarian’s household, you have seriously gotten your axis points confused. What is the difference between a top and a bottom?”
Struggling to keep his frustration in check, Krais recited the words he had learned as a child simply from being around his father and mother and their servants. “ . . . A top is the person who does something to someone, and the bottom is the one receiving what is being done to them.”
“And what is a dominant versus a submissive?” she prodded.
“A dominant is the person in charge and the submissive is the one letting them be in charge.”
“Setting aside the fact that most subservients actually have quite a lot of power in the dynamic, because they can always tell the dominant or the Disciplinarian no . . . when they’re not a penitent,” Pelai allowed. “Krais, a top is not the same thing as a dominant. A dominant can order a submissive to do something to the dominant . . . and that makes the submissive the top, the person doing something to the dominant, who in that moment is the bottom, the person receiving whatever action or service is being performed.”
Krais frowned. “I never saw that at home.”
“That’s because your father’s a dominant top. Think of it as a grid,” she told him, using a touch of magic to sketch a blue-glowing box in the air, and dividing it into four sections with two crossing lines. “Being a top is at the top, and being a bottom is at the bottom—obviously—but dominant is not on the top. Dominant is on the left, and submissive is on the right. So when you open up the spectrum of actions and assertions, you have these four corners where people can be a dominant top, a dominant bottom, a submissive bottom, and a submissive top. Or there could be partial variations, like a fairly balanced person who likes being both top and bottom—doing and receiving—while at the same time they’re fairly submissive. They love doing things to other people, and love having things done to them. A submissive top is someone who wants to be told to do something to others.”
“I . . . I suppose that’s possible,” Krais admitted, still a bit dubious.
“You’ve only ever seen your family’s dominants acting in the upper left corner of this grid, topping the household subservients, who as a result of that stance are forced to exist down in the bottom right corner of that grid,” she pointed out. “Dagan’thio is good at what he does, but because he disdains the center of the grid, he isn’t a well-balanced example of a Disciplinarian.”
“Are you well-balanced?” Krais asked dryly. At her chiding look, he felt compelled to defend his father. “You’re making judgments about my father. Are you well-balanced, when you say he is not?”
The Second Disciplinarian gave his question a few moments of thought. To his surprise, she actually shook her head. “ . . . No. I am not perfectly balanced. I can be submissive if necessary . . . and I don’t need the command of our Goddess to do so, unlike you,” Pelai pointed out dryly, teasing him. “But I do prefer to be the dominant far more often than the submissive. As for top versus bottom . . . I enjoy having things done to me, but I get a bit more enjoyment from doing things to other people.”
“So you do want a submissive to play with, just like Father and Mother,” Krais muttered, looking away in disappointment.
“Absolutely not!”
He snapped his gaze back to her face, and frowned in confusion. “You . . . don’t?”
“Nope,” she confirmed promptly, elbows braced on her knees, fingers lightly laced in front of her. “Managing a subservient—and of course a penitent—is work, Krais. If it weren’t for the fact I know your father would be tempted into meddling, which would lead to him breaking the law, I wouldn’t even have you here this late at night. You’d have time off, and so would I. The last thing I want in my life is a dependent to have to take care of. I want an independent soul in my home and my life. That’s why I picked a cat for a pet, and not a dog or a monkey or whatever.”
Eyeing her, Krais found himself asking, “Then what do you want in your life?”
“Someone I can do things to as a top, things of both pleasure and pain, which makes them happy to receive as a bottom. The rest of the time, I want them independent and capable of managing for themselves. I don’t want to be responsible for their life. I want someone who can work independently, exist independently. It’s good to be able to come together to offer sympathy and support, and healthy, but I don’t want to have to be in charge of the other person, and I don’t want them to think they should have to be in charge of me.”
This was the most personal conversation they had ever had, and yet something within Krais made him push it even farther. “You say person. Do you want a male in your life? A female? Someone else?”
“The gender doesn’t matter to me,” Pelai told him. “Only their personality, and hobbies and interests, personal preferences.”
“Then you’ll not have to worry about me, I guess,” Krais murmured. At her bemused look, he added, “Because you don’t like me.”
“I didn’t like your old self, not so much, no,” she allowed. “But this new Puhon Krais, the man who thinks for himself instead of playing parrot with his father’s words . . . if I am completely honest with both of us, I find myself intrigued by this new side of you.”
Krais blinked at that. He was not certain exactly how they had gotten onto this topic, though he knew he was at least partially to blame. Clearing his throat, he pointed out, “As your assigned penitent, I know we shouldn’t be talking about that sort of thing.”
Chapter Six
“I know . . . but in truth, Krais, I cannot discipline you,” Pelai told him, and waited to see his reaction. It certainly was not a statement she had ever expected to say. She could only imagine how he received it.
“You . . . what?” he asked, thrown for a loop by her words. “You can’t? But . . . I have to be disciplined! You’re confusing me, Doma. First you say I need to be punished, and now you say I don’t? That you cannot . . . ?”
“In the eyes of your father, yes, you need to be punished,” Pelai agreed. She shook her head, forestalling his confusion, and tried her best to explain. “What I felt when I assessed you . . . You’ve been punished, in the eyes of the Goddess. Specifically, for the things for which you were judged by the Hierarchy this morning. Your punishment has come from a higher power, and mere mortal efforts are no longer necessary. The only reason why I hesitate to lift the suppression of your powers and send you to your own home is because of your father. Him, and his fellow Partisans who support his demands that you be punished excessively.
“What we need is what lies in the heart of the word verisimilitude. Having the appearance of being truthful,” Pelai stressed. “An illusion which will withstand casual inspection and seem real. Does putting it that way make sense to you?”
“I . . . I think I understand,” he allowed, bowing his head. “So I have to remain your assigned penitent anyway.”
“That would be the easiest way out of this mess, but only as far as appearances go,” Pelai admitted. “Which brings me to what the Goddess commanded you to do.”
He flinched, and she saw him flinch, but Pelai did not
ask directly what Menda had told him to do.
Instead, she asked, “Have you been submitting to Menda’s wishes all this time, all six months since leaving the Convocation?”
Krais nodded, relaxing a bit.
“And have you been acting against your old nature, restraining your dominance and your arrogance by willingly submitting without complaint?”
He nodded, a little more cautiously this time.
“Well, there you go. You have punished yourself by restraining yourself . . . something which long observation has told me is not normally in your nature,” Pelai stated dryly. He flushed, but didn’t argue the point . . . which proved hers. “Our Goddess came to me in a dream with a prophecy, which I suspect is about you and your brothers. And just now, She told me through the assessment that you do not need to be my penitent, because you have been Her penitent.”
“But . . . according to Menda, I still need to submit to a punishment. I haven’t been actually punished yet,” he pointed out. “I have to be punished, for my prophecy to come true.”
Now she asked him the question she had avoided earlier. “Penitent Krais, what exactly did Menda say to you? Consider this an official part of your punishment, telling me what She revealed to you.”
Flushing, he clenched his jaw for a moment, then breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and recited a poem. One that startled Pelai from its near-familiarity.
“Hush, little writer; don’t say a thing!
Granite reveals redemption’s face.
Accept your penance with no objecting.
Silence leads you to the right place.
To hot-aired hate, bend unbreaking.
Heroes can rise from fallen grace . . .
For one of you will save humanity,
Another of you will betray humanity,
The third will walk away from humanity.
But all are needed to save your whole race.”
Pelai blinked a few times, absorbed what she just heard . . . and cleared her throat. “That’s rather interesting.”
“I figured out most of it,” he told her. “The mountains of Nightfall Island are granite, and they built—or carved—a set of chambers underneath one of the mountains near the city. That’s where they hosted the Convocation, beneath the granite. Redemption’s face . . . is . . . I think it was when I spoke with the Queen of Nightfall. Or rather, when she spoke to me, shortly before the Convocation began.”
“Oh?” Pelai asked, curious. “What was that conversation about?”
“She somehow realized I was there to assassinate her. I don’t know how. She chided me for being too tall for the line—they were doing something with their water system, removing the salt and compressing it into coffin-sized blocks that had to be hefted and passed by hand from the artifact creating them to a storage building . . . and I was too tall for the group she was in, helping her people with the work,” he admitted. “She chided me for that, then told me any attempt to kill her wasn’t going to work, because basically the Gods were on her side . . . and then told me again to go get in some other line, because she didn’t want me hurting my back.”
“How odd,” Pelai murmured.
“How surreal,” Krais corrected. “She didn’t yell at me, she didn’t call for any guards or mages, and she didn’t try to attack me . . . at that point,” he allowed. “We got into a fight later, and she used this mirror thing she had to shatter Gayn’s arm.”
“I thought his arm was damaged from a storm at sea?” Pelai said, confused.
“It was. The mirror-attack was the first break, and their Healers set and healed his arm. It was mostly whole by the time we left,” Krais clarified. “Then when we got out to sea, he broke the arm all over again, but we didn’t have a specialist Healer on board.”
“So it healed wrong. Got it,” she murmured. “So . . . this queen of theirs . . .”
“Queen Kel-lii of Nightfall,” Krais supplied. “A very strange woman who apparently has no magic, and comes from another world. Short—well, they’re all short, compared to us—and reddish gold hair, blue eyes, freckles, and strange clothes. She has the backing of all the Gods . . . and from what I heard, was responsible for dissolving a God. Erasing Him from existence.”
“That would be Mekha,” Pelai stated, nodding. Surprising him a little from the way he blinked in confusion. “That part, I already know about. He wasn’t a true Patron Deity, and was acting more like a leech, nothing more than a manifested parasite feeding on the magics of his supposed people. So the host nation ruled Mekha wasn’t a God anymore, and commanded the true Gods and Goddesses to dissolve him from existence. That was a little over six months ago. His former nation more or less immediately picked a new Patron Deity, and have been worshipping Her as hard as they can, so as to be ready for Naming at the next Convocation in three and a half years.”
He nodded. “I didn’t see the dissolving, but we did hear about it. At the time it happened . . . we kind of . . . We escaped and made extra trouble for our captors. . . . But eventually we were dragged to the chamber hosting the Gods, and . . . that was when Menda spoke to me.”
Seeing him shiver a little, Pelai nodded. “Menda spoke to me as well, right after I returned from helping the people of Mekhana with a problem of their own. That was a handful of days after the Convocation began. At least, it looked like Her, an amalgamation of all Temple images of the Goddess of Writing. She spoke to me in a dream, and gave me my own prophecy. One that is remarkably similar to yours.”
“Oh?” he asked, echoing her earlier query.
Nodding, Pelai recited it from memory.
“Hush, little Guardian; stand your ground.
Wisdom faked will try to know.
The sight is different from the sound.
Spoken words aren’t what scrolls show.
For one will walk away from humanity,
And one of them will betray humanity,
And one of them will save humanity.
Love, not hate, is what must grow.”
Krais quirked his brows. “Yours sounds very much like mine . . . but your verses are even more enigmatic. I, at least, could figure out that if I did not protest my impending punishments, to bend without breaking before my father’s constant windstorms of overheated words . . . I could maybe be the one who will save humanity. At least, I hope I will somehow be that brother . . . though if it is speaking of my brothers, I fear what will happen to Gayn and Foren.”
She immediately saw why, and nodded solemnly. “Because if you are the one who saves, then one will end up betraying everyone, and the other will somehow abandon everything, whatever that means,” Pelai agreed. “I wish mine were that simple to figure out. All I can think of is the other situation that is going on in the world maybe has something to do with this—the other prophecies. One of which involves eight Guardians, and one of which clearly involves the Guardian of the Temple . . . which has been Tipa’thia, and which very soon will be me.”
“What are these other prophecies?” he asked, curious.
Pelai started to answer, and found herself smothering a yawn. “ . . . Pardon me. I was woken up in the middle of the night to begin the transfer of the Guardianship of the Temple Fountain. I need to go to bed soon. . . . The important one that deals with me, the one I can remember, um. . . . Ah, I remember:
“Synod gathers, tell them lies:
Efforts garnered in your pride
Lost beneath the granite face.
Painted Lord, stand by her side;
Repentance is the Temple’s grace.”
“Painted Lord? And Temple?” he asked softly, frowning in thought.
Pelai started to say more, then checked herself, understanding dawning. “Wait . . . it’s not talking about me in those first two lines. It’s talking about you. Krais, you are the Painted Lord! All this time, I’ve been
confused about the granite bit, but it’s clearly talking about your prideful actions and intentions that got lost when you lost that fight—“
“—When I lost the fight under the granite mountains of Nightfall, yes,” Krais stated, following along and echoing her words. “But I didn’t know about that prophecy at the time, and I still don’t know how it relates to you, or . . . well, the only thing I can think of is that I have to somehow help you as you protect the Temple from being under attack.
“But . . . Wisdom faked will try to know,” he recited, “and then the bit about the Writ and secret knowledge hidden in scrolls . . . Those lines sound like they’re talking about someone trying to fake their way into the Restricted Halls of the Great Library. And . . . I don’t know, maybe sound-based magics will be involved somehow?” he added.
“Your guess is as good as mine. But none of this really settles the fact that your father . . . or wait, maybe it does,” Pelai mused. She rubbed her chin for a moment, then smothered another yawn behind her hand. Ending the yawn, she nodded. “I’ll just have to pretend to punish you, as we considered earlier. Seemingly bending in compliance to Dagan’thio’s will, but not actually breaking any laws under it, laws of God or Man. And then . . . I don’t know . . . have you search through all of the Restricted Halls, looking for someone who is trying to gain access to information that deals with demons somehow.”
“Demons?” Krais asked, blinking. “I know the world is going to be in trouble somehow, but . . . demons? Outworlders that come from a Netherhell? How do you know about that? Your prophecies didn’t mention any demons.”