by Gwynn White
Mel reached out to run a finger softly across Shovock’s lips. ‘You have only ever loved yourself, Toxiv, for that is all you are capable.’
Toxiv’s face darkened and her eyes blazed gold. She spun on her heel, yanked open the solid door and over her shoulder said, ‘Happy birthday my beloved siblings.’
‘She’s gone now, brother,’ Mel said, eyes glistening with tears. For decades, Mel believed that Toxiv held some shameful secret over him, and blackmailed him into favouring and loving her. Even when he tried to convince her it was untrue, she never believed him.
Shovock loved Mel’s sweetness, but he owed his life to Toxiv. He desperately wanted to make a case for Toxiv, who was lonely and bitter at the world. Toxiv’s complicated nature didn’t recommend her well to others, and Shovock sympathised with that. He saw himself in her depths.
‘I am going to heal you,’ Mel said to her brother. ‘I’ve had the notion since last we met.’ She closed his bedroom door. When she came back Shovock blinked at her over and over. He even managed to make throaty sounds of panic.
No, no please, he thought desperately.
‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘I know it is forbidden, and I know you’ve never desired healers.’
Except Toxiv, he thought.
‘I believe that underneath, you are a healer like me. Like Toxiv.’
Stop, Mel. Don’t! He thought, fighting the physical cage of his skin, the dormant bones and withered muscles. His tongue would not move, his murmurs stopped. Now he blinked so tight he strained his eyes.
No! No!
Healers smelled wrong, moved wrong. Mel pulled up the hem of her robe, climbing over him, and resting gentle on his groin. She took out a vial of man’s lustre, and tipped it down his throat. Shovock gurgled, trying to spit it out, but failed. Choking, he finally swallowed.
Mel removed another concoction, oiled herself and waited. Slowly, she pulled down his pants, exposing his maleness to the air.
He managed to make another noise and prayed to the gods someone would enter.
‘I am a healer. You are a man. I can heal a man.’
Soon his body reacted.
Mel lowered herself down. The life force drifted into him, a warm, gentle caress on his skin. Spreading. A needling pain, hot pokers, rushed from stomach to limb, as if his very skin boiled.
Wrong, wrong, his mind screamed.
He scrunched his eyes up, groaning; his body was shaking somehow. But it wasn’t him, it was Mel. Her face was raised to the ceiling, mouth open screaming.
Their bodies burst apart, shaking the foundations of the earth.
12
Toxiv
Toxiv sat at her desk, weeping for her brother’s state. Wishing she could save him. A tin of pebbles she collected from the local river jingled; the floor rattled. The sound of rolling thunder shook the walls.
‘Healer Euka,’ she called out.
Her apprentice appeared. ‘Yes, Priestess.’
‘Has the weather turned wild?’
She frowned. ‘No. It’s likely an earth tremor.’
Toxiv glanced outside her window, she’d given her brother and sister enough time to talk. ‘These letters need to be sent off today.’
‘Yes, Priestess.’
Toxiv rose. ‘I’ll be with Shovock.’
Her understudy inclined her head.
Toxiv walked the passageways leading under the western side of the enormous temple, which boasted hundreds of rooms and countless glorious views over the green countryside. In the darker sections of the temple, she housed traitors, men who’d hurt women, and spies from other lands who attempted to convert her people to other gods.
The air grew cold, and she eyed the familiar mossy walls.
She heard men’s violent heaving. She broke into a light run and approached six soldiers crawling feebly across stone. The acrid smell of intestinal juices stung her nostrils. Two clutched their stomach’s, another scratched at red spots on his body. One man’s eyes rolled about, and thick sweat matted down his hair.
‘Soldier, what’s wrong with you?’ she asked.
He opened his mouth wide and laughed manically. ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong? The sun chases the moon to burn it up, yes it does. Wrong, and wrong is the girl from the table—’ The rest came out garbled.
Toxiv slapped him, scratching him with her long nails. He shrieked like a frightened animal, got to his feet and darted up the passageway screaming. That made the other men scream.
‘Shut up! Shut up!’ She ordered.
Beyond them, Shovock’s door sat ajar. As she entered, Mistal was on her knees praying beside Shovock’s bed. A sheet covered a human sized lump. Blood splatter painted the room red. Vomit covered the ground before her.
Toxiv clutched the maid’s shoulder. ‘What has happened?’
As Mistal turned her head, Toxiv spotted the red boils she observed on the soldiers outside. She felt the woman’s forehead. A fever burned hot. Half-digested bits of food stuck in her curly black hair. Her eyes bugged out of sunken, bruised sockets.
‘They cursed us. They cursed us all.’
‘Speak sense.’
‘Look.’ Mistal pointed a shaky hand at the bed.
Toxiv stood, pulled back the blood-stained sheet and gasped. Shovock’s ribs had split apart, red guts and entrails lay outside his body. His shoulders, neck and head remained intact. Mel’s head lay with her face tucked against blankets and Shovock’s left arm, her eyes open, neck severed.
Toxiv turned away in disgust, finding a bottle of men’s lustre on Shovock’s bedside table. Mel had given him some, then tried to heal him. Shovock had always feared being healed, and grew wild with fury at the mere suggestion of it.
Beside the vial, a container of lubricant oil sat open.
Toxiv backed away, taking in the scene. Anger took her. They’d betrayed her. Her brother and sister had died together. In death, they excluded her.
‘High Priestess,’ Mistal said coughing and groaning. ‘The curse will spread. I will stay here.’
Toxiv barely heard her, and was so overcome with grief and resentment that she took a broomstick and smashed every object in the room. Mistal huddled against the wall, protecting her head.
As Toxiv calmed, she ripped a piece of linen and wiped Shovock’s face of Mel’s tainted blood. His face had mangled and twisted into a bare glimpse of the man he once was. She leaned over and kissed his scarred lips. ‘Goodbye.’
He seemed peaceful; she envied him. Death had taken him as swiftly as Shovock had taken life from others. That’s all he’d been. A Taker. He had taken all the goodness left in her with him, leaving her alone in the cold, heartless world.
Unable to behold their entwined bodies any longer, Toxiv fled the room and locked the door behind her. She stepped over the soldiers’ bodies, and ran the hundred steps to the Sun Hall where all ceremonies and worship took place. Inside, soldiers and servants coughed and wheezed.
One servant woman arranged fresh flowers while clutching her stomach. Toxiv grasped a padded beater and struck a large gong ordinarily used to signal the start of sun worship. She hit it with all her might, over and over until a sea of faces stared up at her on the landing.
She dropped the beater, stared down at the faces of her followers. ‘A plague awakes here in this holy sanctuary. We must contain it! Healers, heal all soldiers and men immediately. Soldiers, you will remain here in the hall. Likewise, for male servants. Women are to fill the prayer hall on the eastern side of the sanctuary. Healed soldiers will bathe, put on clean clothes and saddle your horses. You’re to raise the alarm in Lightend Village. Separate men and women, bring everyone inside the temple grounds. Close the main gates. Turn away outsiders.’
People shouted out questions, others sobbed; hysteria flared. Toxiv recited the symptoms of vomiting, fever, red blotches, and mad chatter. Other afflictions brought similar signs, but not all at once. She feared the sun god punished them for her siblings’ iniquities.
A Death Plague.
13
Toxiv
A border wall surrounded the village of Lightend, and the sanctuary temple. Both gates were locked shut. Healers were sent into the village to heal, while the sanctuary housed hundreds of afflicted people.
Green and black skin decayed, toes stopped wiggling and fingers couldn’t bend. Several women died. The men who contracted the disease were healed, and subsequently resistant to all afflictions for the following two weeks.
Toxiv took soldiers to Shovock’s quarters to wall up the entrance and barricade the door, fearing any movement of her siblings’ corpses could prolong the Death Plague’s effects.
When the soldiers stopped several a dozen feet from the door, Toxiv barked. ‘Don’t be so superstitious.’
She ground her teeth at the cowardly men. They were such fickle, ridiculous creatures. The men moved forward with their bags of pitch, buckets of water and stone blocks.
‘Before we proceed,’ she said. ‘Allow me a few moments in the room.’ To say goodbye, Toxiv thought. Inside she found Mistal dead; she pinched her nose.
The soldiers scraped and shovelled outside, preparing the sealant. When she eyed the bed, she curled her upper lip.
‘I curse you, Mel,’ she said cruelly. ‘I pray you never find peace.’
Upon death, healers believed they travelled to the sun’s surface to live in a golden city. If such a thing existed, she hoped Mel burned up in its heat, but for Shovock she wished a millennium of peace.
She spied her brother’s desk on the other side of the room. She went to it and sat in the same chair where Shovock had used to write for hours by dwindling candlelight. Little of the wood remained untouched by wax or ink. In their youth, he often read his dark musings out loud to her and wept.
Toxiv’s fingertips trailed the neglected mahogany before turning her attention to a brass drawer handle. Inside, she found Shovock’s tarnished ruby ring that Mel had given to him, and that he’d reluctantly removed from his swollen fingers.
The drawer jammed as she closed it, causing her sudden and violent anger. She jumped up from the chair and kicked it hard, dislodging a large metal case that clanged to the ground.
The box’s latch squeaked as she opened it. Inside was a leather bound journal. Embossed into the cover was Shovock’s name. She opened to the middle of the book.
What is life without the sun on my face?
Just a single line. No other words. The next page was filled with eloquent, perfect handwriting.
I am old, and sad today…
Her throat tightened, making her swallow. In her mind, she heard his low, soothing voice. He’d been kind once, but in his pain had pushed her away, urging her to love another. Though a dark passenger lived inside him, she loved him without fear or regret.
She read on.
I am different. Since my thirteenth year, I am different. I am not different by how I feel or think, or how my soul desires love. I require food or drink like any man, but I feel something in me. Hot, vicious, a burning that devours me from the inside.
Last night, I felt myself search for a woman. Not like a lover or seducer, but as a murderer hunting his victim, or a snake stalking a mouse. I wanted to look into a woman’s eyes and see fear, and I believed that when I’d taken her will, she would be grateful.
The nothing lies.
I am being punished. I am a monster. My name is Death. When I look in the mirror and see my midnight hair and the dark black bleeding into the whites, I feel the hatred of a thousand wrongfully convicted men.
Toxiv brings me a woman every month to keep me alive. I cannot let myself die, but as I grow older, it is by her insistence and begging that I remain alive. For her only. To keep her heart beating.
The women are drugged, barely conscious, most have not given their approval. Toxiv keeps me alive, but I want to die. Why won’t she let me die?
For every life I devour, I loathe my clever sister for living. It is her needs that keeps me alive. If I were truly alone, I would let myself die.
Hundreds of voices that are not my own swirl within me like a stormy ocean. I dream their dreams. I remember their sweetest memories, and feel their greatest hurts. I know a woman’s every desire. Know what it is like to be a daughter, a mother, a sister. Women truly are the sweeter and kinder sex. Toxiv only serves herself.
I have tried to say no to Toxiv’s offerings, but the monster is strong, and I am weak. There is no stopping the beast. I must bewitch them. Charm them. I take what I want and when my life is extended, I snap awake from my dream. It is only in books that I find refuge from my suffering.
I want to die. My sanity slips away. Toxiv refuses to kill me. I cannot kill myself. The souls of the women who live on inside of me prevent me from doing so. If I die, so will they. I wish she didn’t love me, so I could stop loving the souls of my victims.
Toxiv collapsed onto the chair, weeping. All these years she believed he still loved her, but he didn’t. The journal slipped from her fingers and onto the floor. In her shocked state, she held herself and trembled. She hadn’t known him at all.
Toxiv screamed, smashed her lamp onto the hearth wood, setting flames alight. She tossed in the journal, weeping like a beaten child.
High Priestess Ninen’s words echoed in her mind. ‘Hide your brother’s atrocities,’ she’d said. ‘You must take my place and protect the secret of the sun. No more like him can be born.’
The journal’s pages curled all brown and yellow, but a curiosity to know more of Shovock’s inner thoughts broke through her rage. She flung herself at the fire, reaching into the hot flames, singing eyebrows and eyelashes. Her skin bubbled as she patted down the flames, which finally extinguished left much of the book intact.
Between the pages was truth and knowledge that could protect her from ever being hurt again. An itching spread across her body as she healed. The ugly burn blisters popped before fading.
Toxiv remembered her mother’s last words to her. ‘Nothing is worth the risk of creating another like Shovock. I regret him every day, not for his heart, but his nature.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ Toxiv whispered into the empty, cold room while clutching the journal to her chest. As long as I rule, the healers will never bear children.’
14
Toxiv
Three hundred and five healers lived in Lightened Sanctuary. The rest of the six hundred or so inhabitants comprised of servants, soldiers, and various strategists and advisors that helped Toxiv keep the twenty healer temples and sanctuaries throughout Senya running smoothly.
It was no easy task. King Cevznik had ceased funding them decades ago, and provided no explanation for doing so. Now they relied on the money of estate lords, who requested perverted favours; rich men, who were allocated one healer woman to rush to their aid whenever needed; and the copper donations from the poor.
Two nights after Shovock’s death—the corpse fires raging outside—Toxiv’s apprentice, Healer Euka, burst into her room. ‘High Priestess, a carriage has arrived.’
Toxiv dressed herself, slipped on her shoes and made her way down into the Sun Hall where she met Josephar, a doctor and surgeon from a small neighbouring estate located five miles to the south. Josephar had a meek, but reassuring demeanour, thick grey beard and gentle brown eyes. Healers referred women to him when their afflictions were serious.
‘You risk your life coming here, Josephar,’ Toxiv said, taking his hands in greeting. ‘Although if you fall sick we will—’
‘Hush. Think nothing of it. It has spread,’ he said gloomily. ‘Ten of my estate workers have the symptoms.’
Toxiv frowned, letting her friend’s hands go. ‘Impossible. We gated off the village before the disease spread. I set up a boundary line of Lightend soldiers. No one has left Lightend Village, or en
tered.’
Josephar pressed his lips together in that grave way he often did. ‘A tavern owner to the east has contracted the Death Plague. All the visiting patrons, some whose homes are far away, show symptoms.’
‘Then we cannot control its spread.’
Josephar inclined his head. Healer Euka had been standing quietly behind the high priestess.
‘Healer Euka,’ she said to her apprentice, wake the temple. Bring everyone here. Have my carriage prepared. I travel to Juxon tonight.’ The apprentice hurried from the room.
Lightend Sanctuary soldiers were too few to stop the plague. She needed an army.
Josephar stepped forward, taking Toxiv’s wrists. ‘This disease has nature’s deadly sting. Only healers can save our people now. How many healers across all temples?’
Toxiv shook her head. ‘Two or three thousand perhaps, maybe more.’
He stared at her knowingly.
She felt the breath whoosh from her lungs. ‘Oh, with hundreds of thousands of ill, and the disease’s swift spread…they will be overrun.’
Hopelessness filled Josephar’s face. ‘I’m sorry.’
The healers would never be able to save them all. What have you done, Shovock?
One by one, all healers of every rank—priestess, superior, healer, apprentice—filed into the Sun Hall. They were irritable and sleep deprived. In the last two days, every servant woman had become unwell. A quarter had died, others were left blind or lame and few recovered in full.
Toxiv raised her hands. ‘I know you have not slept much this night. But hear me now, we must open the sanctuary gates—’
‘We will be overrun!’ one of the soldiers called out.
‘I healed five men this day,’ one of the younger healers of only sixteen declared angrily. ‘Each one slicked with pus, vomit, and waste, and you want us to heal more?’
Toxiv remembered Shovock’s journal, and hardened. How dare the healers complain! They were alive, privileged and wealthy. Perhaps it was time for the younger healers to face the realities of the world.