by Don McQuinn
The Messenger continued. “The Sylah one is known to have caused a mountain to burn. She caused the wife of the Chair, the ruler of Kos, to commit suicide. Not, however, before Sylah conspired with dark forces to make the Chair’s wife name her infant firstborn son Jessak, after a known evil spirit. Sylah brought plague. Sylah’s associate is a renegade Seer who prostitutes her Seeing for her own benefit and for Sylah. The Sylah one marked me, the Sister Mother.”
At that accusation, the appalled silence of the gathering broke in a hushed sigh. Sylah caught herself looking away from the Violet Abbess, trying to literally see that sad, horrified sound.
Again, the Messenger. “The use of the marking sign is forbidden to women. All know this. Sylah knows. Yet she did it. For all her sins she was cast out. In communion with all the Tenders of Church’s Orders, it has been decided that the punishment was insufficient. All who would be healed or cured or blessed or forgiven by Church, hear me. Sylah! Hear me while you may. All who associate with you are cursed. All who help you are cast out. Church will seek you. Church will destroy you as ritual commands. I, Sister Mother—I pronounce you witch. Witch!”
The Moondark Saga: Book 8
Poison
Chapter 1
There were those in the room who actually strained toward Sylah like dogs on a leash. That image was underscored by the way they checked and growled when confronted by her proud defiance. She saw Gan rise to his feet. Sylah relaxed. The few men and women eager to earn Church’s favor by attacking a declared witch would be the kind to need assured approval. As much as Sylah feared witchcraft, she feared cowardice more. Witchcraft required skill, and even then was undependable. Cowardice was another matter. A coward would always find a turned back.
Sylah’s personal philosophy also rejected Church’s dogma that witches must be killed. Until this moment, she believed they should be rejected, treated as sick, allowed to come in contact only with Church’s Healers. It felt very different to suddenly understand that such isolation might well be the very kindest fate she could hope for. The faces of the witch-killers in the room were eloquent testimony that, in their minds, life in any guise was too good for her. She saw more than religious conviction in those expressions, too. She saw lust; covert, shamed yearning for the opportunity to kill with impunity, with pleasure. A witch could be killed as horribly as the imagination allowed, so long as the body was properly burned afterward. There were those who maintained that the dying screams of a witch carried the name of her killers to the Land Beyond, to the eventual benefit of her torturers.
Sylah made careful note of those faces.
Gan vaulted onto the table, kicking plates, mugs, cutlery away in a crashing, breaking clatter. His hand rested on the handle of his murdat, and his look dared anyone to vex him further. Shara and Cho bounded to their feet. They dodged under the table, coming out the front to take guard positions. Hackles up, teeth bared, they emphasized Gan’s presence. Once satisfied that no one held notions of further irritation, Gan addressed the crowd.
“Rose Priestess Sylah is my friend. She shared my exile when my own people rejected me, ministered to me when I was near death. She shared Altanar’s cells with my own Neela. After daring a dangerous quest, she came back to the Three Territories triumphant, bearing the treasure of the fabled Door. She offers a new, brighter world, and asks only for safe haven. The Harvester one attempted the death of my friends, betrayed Sylah in her quest, and usurped the leadership of Church. I should have expected this insanity. She names my friend and my guest a witch. I spit on this false Sister Mother. I say Sylah is pure. If there is a better one in Church, show her to me.”
Gan paused. Still swinging his head from side to side, a tiger inspecting a flock, he examined each person in the room. None matched his gaze for long. “These three women with the Chosens, far from their homeland, worked with Sylah to arrange a better life for our people. They represent what Church must be: the agent of benevolent change. I grant their wish. The Three Territories is now and forever the home of the Teachers. Where I rule, whatever improves the lives of those I rule will have my full support. Some will say I rule with Church or for Church. They lie. I rule. I help Church so long as she helps me. Let there be no mistake; Church is supreme in the Land Beyond. In the Three Territories, Murdat rules. Tell all your friends and families that the world is changed, and we lead the way. A testing is on us. Faint hearts will desert, and good riddance. Go from here now and choose your side. Go.” The last word was a roar. The murdat whispered out of its scabbard and sliced the air with a murderous hiss.
The crowd poured out of the room like a multicolored liquid gushing from a jar, leaving only Gan’s family and closest friends.
Except for the covey of frightened Chosens.
And the coldly unmoved Violet Abbess.
Ignoring the older woman, Gan smiled at Kate Bernhardt. Softly, he said, “You can stand aside, Kate; I won’t eat the children.” He waited until she did so, then vaulted lightly from the table. A hand signal settled the dogs in place. He advanced on the small knot of Chosens. They hung onto Carter and Anspach, still not sure of this shouting, frightening man. Even after he sheathed his weapon, none of the huge, round eyes left his face, never blinked. He knelt, hands to his sides, making no move to contact. “I’m sorry I frightened you. Do you ever get excited and talk too loud?”
One girl blurted, “Not that loud,” and Carter choked on laughter that boiled out in snorts and gusts until she simply let it go. Others joined her, including Gan. After a bit he went on. “It’s bad manners, isn’t it? So I apologize. But I’m very excited about what the Priestesses are doing. The things they’re showing you will change the world, they tell me. Do you want to help them? And help me?”
Some of the children nodded. Most simply waited. Gan wasn’t entirely accepted. Not yet.
The Abbess said, “I forbid. Chosens are the property of Church. What you’ve done here tonight curses you eternally, Moondark. You will not corrupt our Chosens. Nor will your condemned friends. All of you will be cast out. Cursed.”
The room drew in on itself. Gan answered calmly, but his lips were pale as he rose to full height. “You speak fairly. We have made game pieces of these innocents. This war is between those who hold Sylah’s vision of Church and those who hold yours. But the fighting will be done by those who have no hope of power, or desire for it. You’ll lose, old woman. There are many reasons why you must lose, but the one that will destroy you utterly is the one you’ll never understand. The Teachers will grow and flourish and triumph because they aren’t property.”
The Abbess laughed scornfully. “Brave talk. A warrior, surrounded by his lackeys, insulting an unarmed female. I know I can’t physically take the Chosens from your control. Not now. I will defeat you and your weapons, however. I am Church. You cannot strike me. Eventually, Church will have what belongs to her.”
“And welcome to it, Abbess. But nothing else. I assume you’ll leave the Three Territories now, and take all Church Healers with you. My Wolves will see to your safe passage to the lands of the River People.”
The Abbess stalked away, turning to stand under the massive lintel. Outstretched arms almost spanned the doorway. “Church has no quarrel with the people who suffer under your rule. You cannot dispossess us so easily as that.” To Bernhardt, the Abbess said, “You. The Bernhardt one. You and your friends play with the souls of helpless children. Keep them from the spell of the witch, Sylah, and those who support her. I command. I warn.” She turned and was gone, the black figure an eerie swirl of shifting, erratic shadows.
One of the children pulled on Carter’s sleeve, bent the small woman down to her even shorter level in order to whisper in her ear. Carter’s face flamed. She straightened jerkily, painfully. Still her answer was gentle and soothing. “No, little one, you’re not going to die, or be taken from us. The Abbess is wrong about what we’re doing, so we have to show everyone we’re good people. You understand?”
Another child ventured her concerns. “We don’t have real mothers and fathers. We have to go where Church says. The Abbess is more important than you. She can make us do anything. You, too.”
“Never again.” The words were hard, decided, but Carter’s hand on the child’s tousled head was loving. “That’s what she was talking about, dear. There are two Churches now, ours and hers. We have to decide which one is the right one.”
“Murdat; whose side is he on?”
“Yours. There are things we must do for him, but he wants us to be happy.”
“He’s scary.”
“I know. Sometimes men are like that.”
“The Abbess isn’t a man. She’s scary, too.”
Carter nodded calmly enough, but her eyes flashed dangerously at a suddenly smug Gan. “We won’t worry about her.”
The girl inspected Gan. Then, “You promise we can stay with our Priestesses? And Rose Priestess Sylah and Violet Priestess Lanta? In our own Iris Abbey?”
Gan returned the examination with full seriousness. “You promise to listen to them? To be faithful to their trust and instructions? They’re my friends, and I expect you to make them proud of you. Will you promise to try?”
The girl swallowed. “I promise.” As Gan’s gaze swept his tiny audience, they each managed, “Me, too.” Some answers were more like small squeaks, and one broke like thin glass. Gan remained stern. After the last response, he said, “You have the word of Murdat. You’ll stay with your friends. They’re your family.” He turned to face the adults, and seeing some faint smiles, he darkened. “This is serious business. These are the new Teachers. If I die, I task you, all of you, to see my promise carried out.” Then, reluctantly, he left the children to go to Sylah. “You are many things. War Healer. Rose Priestess. The Flower. Wife to my closest friend. My friend. Now you are Church.” The hard, forbidding set of his features shifted momentarily. It was a change none but a particularly astute Priestess would catch. For a fraction of time Sylah saw the incomprehension of a trapped animal looking at her through the eyes of a man.
That instant threw her back to the night of fire and sword, the night her parents died and she became worse than an orphan. A thing, a possession.
Owned. Gan was owned.
Softly, Gan told her, “We become what we must. We are different strengths, you and I. Fire and water. Darkness and light. When you pray, ask that we never conflict.”
Impulsively, she reached for his hand. Her massive gold bracelet slipped out of her sleeve to glint brightly between them. Gan withdrew from the grasp, returned to his wife’s side.
The three Church women hurriedly ushered the Chosens out. In the lull that accompanied their departure, Sylah examined the small group of adults remaining in the dining hall. She almost smiled at the way each one struggled to disguise or deny reaction to the things they’d seen. Except Neela. Always open, practically incapable of dissembling, Neela’s thoughts came through her expression more clearly than words. And Neela was afraid.
Conway and Tate were grim. They recognized the full extent of the threat thrown at them by the Violet Abbess. Conway and Tate knew the power of Windband and Moonpriest. They saw the Skan sharkers schooled off the vulnerable coast of the Three Territories.
Beside Tate, Nalatan was protective. His look for her said the world, Church and all, would do well to avoid troubling her.
Sylah ignored Lanta, quite certain she knew exactly what her small friend was expressing. Lanta was responsible to forces beyond herself. And Conway. They demanded her first consideration.
The remembrance of mute pain in Gan’s face struck at Sylah. She felt light-headed. She wanted Clas na Bale. The touch of him, the scent of him and him alone in her nostrils. The tingling, moist warmth of his breath on her throat.
Leclerc bent toward Jaleeta. The movement broke the spell of Sylah’s yearning. Jaleeta smiled at him. Sylah was deeply disturbed by the artificiality of it. Slyly, the young woman’s gaze eased past Leclerc’s determined good cheer to Emso. There was a physical quality to that look, as though she used it to touch, to arouse.
And then it was over, and Jaleeta was fully attentive to Leclerc again. Confusion tightened Emso’s face. Turning away, unsure of what had actually happened, the tough, harsh features struggled through several changes. In the end, Emso startled Sylah.
Anger. The least expected reaction of all. Then she realized there was something else. Fear. Why? What could make Emso fear Jaleeta’s look? Or was his mind on something, someone else?
Her mind drew her back to her earlier thoughts of the dinner, the camaraderie, the laughter, the sharing of good food, good music, good company.
All despoiled. Ruined.
The shrill giggling of King Altanar rattled at Sylah in the clatter of plates being cleared from the table. Candles guttered in a sconce just by her head, the tiny sound suddenly reminiscent of the cruel, smirking whispers of his followers. A dropped spoon clanged, echoed from the cold stone, and she heard the slam of the dungeon door that closed her away from light and life and love.
That imprisonment cost her a price she couldn’t bear to think about even yet. Now she felt imprisoned again, and the power of evil was gaining strength before her eyes. Had she sacrificed so much for nothing? Could she escape again?
Chapter 2
The honor of guarding the castle’s interior fell to Olan troops who wore the traditional armor of the former kingdom. Conical metal helmets and metal torso plates weighed them down, as did chain-mail skirts and more plate covering the front of the legs. Their mobility was heavily curtailed, but they could absorb terrible punishment. They stood at all ground-level doors, at selected watch windows on the upper story, and patrolled the crenelated roof.
Emso stalked them this night. He moved silently, with the peculiarly solid grace of a fighting man, continually poised to deliver a fully leveraged blow. The guard normally welcomed his appearance. His inspections were considered hard but fair, and he usually made conversation to help pass the time. Tonight was different. With every minor infraction, Emso’s anger erupted. No detail escaped his eye. The slightest nick in a sword blade brought down inordinate wrath. No man’s armor was satisfactorily polished.
Sadly, Emso knew he was being unfair, yet he was powerless to help himself. The thing eating at his conscience gave no respite.
Outside the castle, he sought relief in walking. Rounding the walls, he headed for the dock and its attendant warehouses. There would be no one there at this hour. He could sit and think through his troubles.
Preoccupied as he was, he failed to notice the shadow that detached itself from the darkness to follow him until he committed to the downhill grade. Whoever lurked in the darkness understood that once Emso started in that direction, the only reasonable route of return was by the same roadway. There was nowhere else for him to go except the beach itself. The obscured figure melted into the smothering blackness of the castle’s base.
Sitting on the dock, feet dangling just above the water, Emso examined his dilemma. He knew the real Church was right in this matter of the Teachers. The name alone was deadly. His mother, a good, decent woman, constantly warned her children that what she called “high notions” was a form of moral decay. A soup ladle wielded like a war club made it clear that Church knew all that anyone needed to know. “If rich merchants and nobles feel the need to do numbers or make letters, that’s between them and Church. And the local Baron, of course: A thing as treacherous as learning wants leadership from nobles as well as Church.” Emso’s scalp tingled in remembrance of throbbing knots the size of walnuts. They saved him from sin.
So why wouldn’t Gan let him alone? If it bothered a man to go against the right and proper ways of his childhood, what authority did Gan Moondark or anyone else have to push him into something else?
Especially a man who’d served loyally. Who’d saved Murdat’s life. That should be worth something.
Nothing seemed to be enough. No matter what old cust
om died, Gan seemed determined to root out another. Progress, he called it. So did that weasel-eyed alien, Leclerc. Change; that’s all it was. It was one thing to devise new weapons, or fighting techniques. But putting women to work making them think they could be independent? Craziness. Emso swelled his chest with pride. Did he complain about making the women arrogant and vain? No. Not once.
Teachers. That was too much. Did he dare think the word? Yes. Betrayal. Betrayal of all the old ways. Learning was doom. Everyone knew it.
Emso painfully admitted to himself that Gan wasn’t merely mistaken about this Teacher thing, but willfully wrong. He was setting himself above Church’s rightful hierarchy.
Emso shivered so hard his shoulders threatened to cramp. He rose swiftly. Mist surrounded him. A thrill of fear ran up his back, a childhood thing of bad dreams and creatures that lurked, unseen, eager to rend, to devour. High above, the light of the castle wall torches was diffused, so that each appeared as a round, orange-yellow eye. The two of them visible from his angle wavered, seeking, trying to focus on him.
As if Murdat watched in the night, peered into the souls and minds of those who served him.
Emso tested the ease of his sword in its scabbard. He checked the fit of the holstered shortknife up his sleeve. He savored the sinister scrape of metal on metal. His step was confident as he began the climb back up the hill.
At the top, just past the bend where the road turned to parallel the castle’s southern wall, there was a place where no shard of light penetrated the darkness. The very road was almost indistinguishable, its flagstone surface an irregular, pale deception underfoot.
Someone waited.
What sense, or combination of senses, warned Emso he neither knew nor cared.