by James Stone
And at last, she was rewarded as a small fountain of stones broke free, leaving her in a hot sweat.
She dropped the bowl and dove to the floor, gathering the shards in her shivering fingertips. She settled on one about the length of her forefinger and then began to work on that, running it again and again over the grooves in the walls until it was as sharp as Moonbeam had been.
It was heavier than Magmaya had expected, and she could scarcely move her legs, but she summoned the strength to stand all the same. She moved to the end of the bed, the bowl between her knees, took a deep breath and nodded. Now it’s time, she repeated, it’s now or bloody never.
Magmaya unravelled the bedsheets between her teeth and bit down hard, feeling her tongue lash out against the satin as her head betrayed her muscles. Still, she found the strength to steady her arm over the bowl, shimmering naked in the dim moonlight.
She could only hope that an ounce of the Dew of the Honey still surged through her. And with a whimper, she drove the stone into her arm. She bit down on the bedsheets as her blood began to flow—in thin lines at first, but then in heavy black swathes. If I pretend not to feel it, I won’t, she decided, but the lie only lasted a moment before it coursed through her, relentless.
She spat whatever bile clung to her throat and watched her blood rise in the bowl. But it wasn’t enough; the dish was slick and red, but it was far from pooling. Magmaya felt her arm grow limp and heavy but reminded herself to keep on moving.
Whatever would my father have said? He probably would have laughed. Or have told her not to get trapped in the first place.
She gathered another bundle of bedsheets and fastened them around the cut, watching the scarlet bleach through and the agony ignite in her eyes. But there was little time to dwell on her pain. She found that her cheek had long stopped bleeding, and after some short deliberation, wasted no time to unfasten her gown and move to her belly.
Even in the dark, she was able to make out the grooves and bruises where she’d been kicked by that deer in her past life. She traced the wound with her fingertips, drew one final breath and took the chiselled stone in her sweating palms—it was heavy and warm, and every instinct and every voice deep inside of her screamed at her to toss it as far as she could throw. But she had already begun; it was too late to turn back now.
The stone seared through the red gash in her navel like a white-hot wire. Her ripe skin began to contort and glow, and then her blood began to spill again. It was a trickle at first, but soon enough, it became a torrent running down the creases in her skin.
But it still wasn’t enough—the blood dried on her fingertips the moment it touched them, and she still needed more—just a little more.
Some other part of her was still bleeding, though. And it had been for nearly a week.
Magmaya dropped the chisel and threw away the bedsheets, finding the skin between her legs already wet and red. With a little spit, it’ll run thick like butter, she told herself, but she was growing weak and tired at the sight of it, and every instinct she knew told herself to collapse and drift off to sleep once more. But she knew she couldn’t stop yet.
She couldn’t stop bleeding until the First had been bathed in her blood.
It was quarter-past midnight when one of the servitors began roaming the tower block; all the prisoners convicted of a heresy of sorts were stored away there, and it was always down to the luck (or rather lack) of the draw that decided which of Deih’s low-born maids were to patrol that night. The tower was usually crowded by the screeching of lunatics awaiting trial, but things had been different recently; word had travelled fast of Magmaya’s drunken assault upon the High Priestess.
And that would only mean the patrols would be more frequent outside her cell.
As she’d expected, the sounds of her cries had echoed through the Temple so that even Deih heard them. The High Priestess still wanted her alive, and that was her lone weapon—perhaps she had learnt Mercy after all.
It was near half-past midnight when the servitor finished scaling the stairwell and arrived atop of the tower—Magmaya could hear her footsteps grow closer.
But it wasn’t until half-past that the servitor approached Magmaya Vorr’s cell, and when she did, she could almost see the sickness wash over her; there was a desperate groaning coming from behind her door, after all. As the seconds passed, the groaning grew louder like the mewling of a wounded kitten, until there was a chime of wetness—and then a scream.
Magmaya watched from underneath the door as her blood seeped into the intricacies in the servitor’s toes, sprawling like a nest of tortured limbs across the cobbled floor.
After the scream, the groaning turned into a mumble. ‘Help me,’ Magmaya called, and then louder, ‘Help!’
There was a nervous chattering from the servitor before a jingle of clockwork rang out, and the door opened to a trail of blood, cutting the cell in half.
The servitor followed it to its source: a small wooden bowl which appeared to have leaked the last of its contents. She followed it through the dim light of the window, and then to the girl in the corner, holding her bandaged stomach.
‘Prisoner! What is happening?’ she wailed in a crude attempt at the common tongue.
And that was her cue. Magmaya lurched forward and drove herself into the servitor’s chest. She pinned the poor thing to the floor, but she just wouldn’t stop screaming, no matter how many times she put a finger to her lips.
‘Quiet,’ Magmaya hushed, her eyes wide and bloodshot. ‘Please…!’
The servitor was struggling, though; her screams were echoing through the corridors and setting the tower alight. It wouldn’t be long until someone noticed, and then all her bleeding would’ve been for nothing. Even in a temple as large as this one, one misplaced shriek wouldn’t go amiss.
There was a tangle of crooked limbs beneath as Magmaya reached back, feeling something sharp prick at her fingers.
Then an arm jabbed at her belly, and a knee found its way between her legs as if the servitor somehow knew where she had been bleeding. The pain came to her quickly but threatened to never leave. Magmaya toppled back, screaming.
The servitor pulled herself up, blackened with blood, but Magmaya forced herself up quicker, her fingers groping at something she couldn’t reach. Crimson handprints spread across the walls as the Belliousan tried to steady herself, but she was too late—and too loud.
Magmaya forced herself forward and drove the chisel into the servitor’s chest. The robed girl clattered to the ground like a statue pulled from its plinth, and her screams died out at last.
She was a pitiful thing to watch die, but Magmaya didn’t have time to mourn. She had to keep moving.
She scoured the remains for something—anything which might’ve helped her, but she was forced to settle on bundling the cell keys between her knuckles. She decided to take the servitor’s cloak too, but by the time she had snatched the bloody thing up, there was little else left of use.
As she left the corridor, Magmaya felt a sense of euphoria rush through her like a terrible sin. The girl was dead now; there was nothing else she could’ve done, surely?
But what if someone else confronted her? It wasn’t like she would be able to find the strength to swing a sword any longer—perhaps something as pathetic as a ring of keys was the right weapon for her, after all. Besides, it was better than nothing if she wanted any chance of escaping.
The corridors and stairwells disappeared behind her like a swift breeze, and she thanked the gods no one found her on her way, save the troubled scuttling of a rat beneath her step. The path grew thin at some intervals, to the point where she had to crawl through sodden alleyways no wider than her hips.
In those precious seconds of darkness, where no stray light could taste her, she at last found the chance to breathe. To her dismay, the air reeked of vomit, piss and pathetic attempts to conceal the former with flowery perfumes.
The l
ower in the tower she reached, the larger the floors became; cell blocks sprung up around her, mostly empty of their heathens and heretics, and judging from the cobwebs, they had been for quite some time. But as Magmaya passed them, the occasional prisoner with stitched-shut eyes would throw themselves at the bars and yell something she didn’t understand. Some of them were murderers, heretics or rapers. Others had committed different sorts of crimes; they were men who loved men or women who loved women or some other combination of the two. There were a lot of laws about love, she realised.
Magmaya could feel the weight of the keys in her hands as she passed them, but she still couldn’t decide which way would be best to use them. She felt her arm drawn towards the lock, but despite it all, she couldn’t bring herself to move an inch. Soon enough, Magmaya had left the prisoners behind her.
She couldn’t hold on much longer—the cold of the tower was numbing, but the heat would burn her alive.
The corridors of the First Temple quickly became recognisable again; the architecture returned to veined marble and prestigious busts of people who never mattered. But still, their lips were sculpted to such a perfection, she was half-tempted to reach out and kiss them just to feel warm again.
After scouting through a myriad of halls, a grand corridor opened before her, complete with a checked floor shimmering with unbroken candlelight. Magmaya forced the red cloak farther over her eyes as she heard footsteps. And then a servitor passed, holding out a lamp before him.
It became clearer with each encounter that the simple disguise had worked. Yet still, it gave her no inkling of where the Divinicus might’ve been, let alone Anclyn. She scurried across the hall in an effort to remain composed and stole a glance through the window.
It was difficult to see anything at all between the fog and the staining, but Magmaya could just about make out the Temple’s battlements disappearing into oblivion below. She followed the crevice farther down until she found a lone star in the darkness: a Divinicus standing tall against the wrath of the night. The angels had once been beacons of beauty—what had they become? What had changed in her so quickly to feel so much fear when gazing into the eyes of those who’d fulfilled her prayers? Perhaps all gods desired to be feared; Magmaya certainty couldn’t see herself coming to love the world so artlessly.
She couldn’t see anything more in the darkness, though, except for when it was too late as another face joined her own in the reflection of the window.
Magmaya looked up to face him, his endless robes overflowing with holy books. A few moments passed as she waited for him to apprehend her, but after a while, nothing came. In the end, she was the first to bite.
‘The angels?’ She bit her lip, attempting a thick accent that ended up sounding nothing like the locals. ‘Are they leaving?’
‘Are you blind, girl? They’re swarming the Temple like flies,’ he tutted, slurring each syllable. ‘Their diplomats are in the quarters where they’ve been all night—may the First watch over our souls when this is done.’
‘I was ordered to their quarters by the High Priestess,’ Magmaya croaked. ‘Where can I find them?’
‘Is that some jest?’ he spat. ‘Why aren’t you at the communion? The First need each and every soul they can muster in these times of trepidation. We are oppressed from all sides.’
‘Where’s the communion?’
The priest gave her a look like thunder, and it seemed for a minute he was going to lash out at her. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had, though; she could’ve bested him even in the state she was in. The priest’s arms were bundled with books, he had a belly spilling from beneath his robes, and he looked as if he could barely move those chubby fingers he wore. He muttered something under his breath and traced her body down to her hips, staring in horror.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said, and the colour fled from his lips.
Magmaya pressed herself against him, so her blood kissed his gowns, and forced the keys into his flowing belly; for all he knew, she could’ve stabbed him, and from the look in those bloodshot eyes, she might just have.
‘Where are the Divinicus?’ she asked softly.
‘Black Quarter,’ he choked, swallowing hard. But it wasn’t enough, so she pressed the keys farther into his gut. ‘Cross down the stairwell at the end of the corridor,’ his voice rasped, but when she released him, his posture became stern again like he’d never been threatened. ‘May the First have mercy on you, girl.’
Another priest pushed past, and Magmaya disappeared into the shadow of his cloak, forming a map of the Temple in her mind. She ducked beneath a dozen stone pillars and skirted the history books as she went, passing a hundred memorials to the times man stood in fields of wheat with no bronze bells to aid him. She crossed the Age of the Technomancer as a storm of angels descended from the heavens with horny masks of gold, though they all looked like the Divinicus to her.
She carried on down the hall, passing a row of chieftains cast in bronze, faces fearful as if frozen by their sculptor; there were good kings and wicked kings and lusty kings alike; there were kings with endless beards, and there were kings with hooks through their eyes. Occasionally, there would be a queen, always fretful but never afraid, and so Magmaya found the strength to dance through the Age of the Imposters and then through an ivory archway, losing everything in a series of betrayals and empires. A murder of crows chased her through a crowd of nobles as she carried on, escaping the crooked pages until all that was left was her.
Once she made her way out the other side, she discovered a chill in her palm; as she had passed through the flock of preachers, she had managed to swipe a ritual blade from one of their bony hips. Sly theft wasn’t anything she had quite perfected, but her newfound desperation forced her to do things she would never have quite believed herself capable of. Besides, it was just the same as when she had stolen the Free-People’s blade from that scribe she’d condemned all those years ago. The same knife she’d used to kill her father.
This new blade was as long as her forearm, though, and its shimmer in her palm had given her confidence she didn’t have before. She slung the keys across her wrists as the servitor before her had and carried onward.
At the end of the corridor, Magmaya caught a glimpse of the Black Quarter. A glimpse proved enough—the hallway was lined with the Divinicus (Magmaya counted eight in total). Each guarded an iron door as faceless as the next, but in the shadows, she could make out the silhouette of Krel beneath his armour. He was helmed, but his muscled frame gave himself away in an instant. It was surely the Legatus’ door he was guarding, and with him, there would be Anclyn.
The beast of a man looked around, and Magmaya jumped, praying he hadn’t caught her eye. She slipped back into the darkness again, contemplating the impossible and letting the hymns from somewhere far mask the rush of her breathing.
She couldn’t make out the words in their songs; they were clearly in the native tongue of Belliousa, and yet, the same phrase persisted at the end of each prayer and filled every chorus: ‘Angelica, deliver us.’
Was it the same ‘Angelica’ Deih had claimed to be—reborn from the First Temple? They were calling out to her for salvation, that much was certain. It was as if their fear had become song, destined to resonate throughout the island forever.
‘Angelica, deliver us,’ they sang again, before Magmaya turned and knelt, feeling beads of sweat spill across her eyebrows. She was beginning to fear she couldn’t fight from the shadows any longer—she was far too wounded to see the night through. But if Kurulian had taught her anything, it was that there was another way to win the war.
At the end of the path, she found a shrine nestled into the wall, overflowing with flowers and prayer candles in reverence to the First—an ecstasy of colours. But in her chest where she had bloodied herself, Magmaya felt the weight of something missing rise within her: a deep emptiness that reeked of rancid cries and starless nights, and the warmth of something cold in a mot
her’s arms. She shivered and turned away, feeling ice flutter through her.
As another horde of squabbling preachers passed, she dragged herself over to the shrine, the last of her energy leaving her. She tugged the hood farther over her eyes and stared into the candles, watching the wax disappear into itself and reanimate with each passing second. And as if in response, her eyes came alive and died again with the coming and going of the heavy white glow.
Magmaya wrapped her fingers around one of them and broke it free of its plinth, brought it to her eyes, and took a deep breath of the grey smoke. It was warm and lithe and soft as it spiralled in her lungs, nestling there, and giving her one last surge of strength through her loins and in her head.
There was another way to win the war. Fire won the war.
Twenty-Five
She watched the fabric take aflame with a ghostly white glow and spread to the ceiling where the tapestries fluttered down. She closed her eyes and let the loose embers rain into her shimmery black hair until it became a molten river of gold. Smoke filled her mouth like sweet salt and kissed at her dimples. There was screaming, but it was all one with the white noise; it was all one with the rasping and kissing of the flames.
Magmaya was a lunar eclipse caught amid a firestorm.
At last, she allowed herself to drop the candle from which it had all began before she watched it eat away at the carpets. The girl smiled and let the blackness fill her lungs; all around her were maddened Belliousans desperately tried to waft out the flame—the drunken ones even tossed their wine into the fires, only to watch in horror as it grew larger. But no one suspected her—a mere servitor afraid and tearful. No one would know who started the inferno, or even when. No one save the whispers of the wind would know the truth.
She was even more joyous when a new flock of Belliousan preachers arrived in horror and stared as the fire crossed the beams that held the hall aloft, bringing down the ceiling. All the bronze busts and ancient scrolls were turned to smoke in the wake of the white embrace, but Magmaya just looked down to the preachers and smiled, letting the words take her lips before she conjured them.