by Kim Wedlock
"Then tell me right."
Her compelling voice halted him again. His retreat faltered, feet immovable even by his sudden if premature bridling, body frozen despite the heat of his defensiveness. But he found himself reluctant to overcome it.
He had little clue as to why. He knew no good would come of explaining his actions, the intricacies of his belief and the justification of its demands, and he found that she was the last person he wished to offer that explanation to. Her young mind was absorbed in death, trapped in it, but even had it not been he knew there was no way that she, a healer, could ever appreciate his position. And he had no desire to degrade her opinion of him any further.
And yet...she was also the only one who was giving him a chance to explain himself. The only one willing to listen. He found himself desperate to seize that opportunity - but to what end was she asking?
Anthis considered her for a very long moment. He ignored the judgemental gazes of the others while she fixed him with patience, and soon lowered himself back down beside her, slow and still quite undecided beneath his cascading thoughts.
"There is a...prophecy," he replied cautiously, wondering when his mouth had developed a mind of its own, "among Craitism, which states that the sulyax will come again - the 'end of times', in elven. It's said it will be the result of dying faith and the leading of selfish, violent and indulgent lives. It's widely believed in accordance with Craitic teachings that Zikhon will overpower Vastal in their eternal struggle and finally lay waste to Her creations - us - just as He did the elves." He found her eyes hadn't dimmed. "The...Temple uses it to frighten people," he continued, no less doubtful as to the wisdom of doing so, "into living kind and peaceful lives, as we all rightly should, and maintaining faith in Vastal in order to keep Her empowered against Him. But there are...more and more who turn away from the temples to live for nothing but their own benefit. Many worry that it's the start of the sulyax, but there is a...small handful of us who are standing up to it, rather than rolling over and accepting it."
She nodded shortly. "Yes. You believe in the aid of a demigod. Vokaad."
His guarded frown flickered, still trying to decide to what degree mockery lay in her eyes. "Something like that."
"And you believe that by providing him with particularly vigorous souls, he will use them to prevent this 'sulyax'. How?"
"...Definitively, I don't know. Some believe the spirits will form a guardian, others that they'll create a weapon. I believe they're..." his eyes shifted ever so briefly onto the others, who at least no longer appeared to be listening, "...forming a shield. And after everything I've heard today, I'm increasingly convinced. I don't see what kind of weapon or guardian could stand against four gods."
"But you believe that a shield will?"
Had that been curiosity, or scepticism? "It wouldn't have to fight, just withstand an assault. It's easier to brace than it is to attack..."
"Mm." Her gaze didn't waver in the silence, and though it had begun to seem more thoughtful than cynical, it still made him shift uneasily.
Petra's bitter laugh soon rose from nearby, and he decided he preferred the unbroken stare. "You're ridiculous!" The duelist hissed. "You spend your life uncovering facts, and yet all this time you've been sucked into a sick fairy story!"
He snapped towards her, his eyes darkening while a caustic retort readied on his tongue. But though she dared him with a raise of her chin, something barred his teeth before it. He returned to his previous position, turning his back more directly towards her, and found Eyila's eyes still fixed diligently upon him.
"But you believed Zikhon to be responsible for the disappearance of the elves," she continued, unperturbed. "You were wrong about that."
"Yes. But the prophecy itself has never said anything about gods by name. It was Craitic assumptions. And if it wasn't Zikhon that destroyed the elves but the other gods instead, then nothing has really changed."
"But does this not throw the Craitic beliefs into question?"
A crack formed in his brief, creeping victory. "...It does..."
"And if the Sulyax Dizan stems from it, does that not mean that it, too, is affected?"
"It has never been tied to the belief of two opposing gods, only the prevention of another--"
"But you follow Craitism too, do you not? Like most of your people? I've seen the talisman of Vastal around your neck."
"...I...do... But my research has made me long-aware that the elves regarded Zikhon differently to us, so I learned early on not to view them as rigidly as everyone else. But my faith in the lessons and values it teaches has never waned - and it won't, whether Craitism has just been proven wrong or not."
"Mm."
He tried once more and even harder to read her thoughts, and only just managed to bite back the curse that jumped to the tip of his tongue as Petra remarked rancorously that killing was quite absolutely not among Craitic teachings.
Eyila, however, narrowed her eyes. "That's why you target the people you do, isn't it? Killers. People who have turned so far from what they should be that they're not 'people' anymore. You're working to make the world a better place before the sulyax can happen."
His green eyes brightened in hope, but with no clear difference to her sharp expression, he settled himself quickly, suddenly teetering on a knife's edge. "That's the way I see it," he replied softly, willing her, and the others, to understand that with all his might. "I assure you, despite the evidence, I find killing even people like that no easy thing."
Petra grunted. "Then maybe you should just not do it at all."
"No," Eyila said thoughtfully, "he should."
Anthis's eyes snapped onto her, as wide as the moon in his surprise, and both Petra and Garon's were quick to follow with the same immeasurable astonishment. Her own squinted further in consideration as she tilted her head, her straight white hair rolling over her shoulder. "There's nothing immoral about his motives."
"Then explain the high!" Petra squeaked, making the men flinch as she scrambled swiftly to her feet, her young face twisted in utter disbelief. "He's rewarded for it! It's not done out of the goodness of his rotten little heart, he's part of a cult! Morals, ethics - he claims them, but he still kills people for his own benefit!" She stared at her, then at Garon, begging them both to explain what she had misunderstood that allowed these two to take the matter so calmly.
Eyila, however, was still unrattled. "Would anyone's soul serve the purpose?"
"To varying degrees," he replied.
"And you would be rewarded for them all?"
"...To varying degrees."
"Then, do you also choose these people because of the reward?"
"Of course he does!"
Anthis didn't spare her a glance. He focused himself entirely upon Eyila, gripping her with honest eyes, tempering his tone to chase away any hint of mistrust, grasping what he hoped was a chance at understanding, as faint as it was. "I choose the people the world won't miss. Whose existences can absolutely be put to better use in death than in life. I take no shame in what I do, but make no mistake, I don't consider it an easy judgement to pass. I have never done it lightly and I am always fully aware of the consequences, for myself and for others who will be affected by it. But they all have prices on their heads. They would be killed by someone, and they'd continue to kill other people until that happened. And though they're despicable, they're also free-spirited, and souls with that kind of value mean I...have to 'deliver' less often."
There was no change to her eyes. "And the reward?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but this time his tongue resisted. Petra laughed bitterly.
Eyila, however, simply nodded. "You would be lying if you said it wasn't a factor, but you would hate yourself if you admitted it." Then her gaze finally broke, slipping onto her hands in her lap as her lips began to bow. But they curved upwards. Sadly, but upwards, and the disappointment that had replaced the pressure of her eyes upon him was in turn replaced by aston
ishment. "My people believe our spirits ride the Winds when they die, protecting the world until they reach the Frozen Gates."
"Yes, I remember..."
"That's not the same!"
Eyila met Petra's flaming stare with a brief, apologetic smile. "Only because my people didn't kill them," she replied softly, "and if they did, it wasn't for that purpose." Her piercing eyes then returned their grasp to Anthis. "You could take any lives and be rewarded for them. But you don't. You clean up the worst you cityfolk have created, facing them alone despite its dangers for the good of everyone else. I think that's noble."
"What?!"
She dropped her eyes again, her smile remaining so small as to be imagined while she cradled no doubt countless thoughts that would explain how she had arrived at such a preposterous conclusion. But she was prepared to reveal nothing, and further stunned them by looking back to Anthis with what could almost be considered a fraction of warmth. "I think I understand now," she said slowly, her fingers clasping absently around the oryx-horn pendant she'd taken from her uncle's body, and her gaze seemed to soften onto the very air around them. "And I appreciate your honesty."
"I--uh, you're...wel...welcome..." His eyes were too wide to blink and yet he still couldn't locate his bearings, so it was fortunate that the invasive creak of the door swinging open again spared him the need to speak.
With the ring of drawn weapons, everyone leapt sharply to their feet, food and quarrels forgotten as the air turned to lead and they fell once more under the scrutiny of pastel-green eyes. The elf-woman who had led them - Tekhest, Anthis had learned - strode in with the same contemptuous rigidity, a manner they suspected she wore even while she slept, and fixed each of them in turn. Her eyes spoke of nothing but mistrust.
"Where is Rathen?" Garon demanded, caring little for her disparagement as he positioned himself between her and the others. Her leer did not change.
"He'll be along. Though he is exhausted and needs his rest; his body and mind have been through more than you are capable of imagining. We have healed him, of course, but with his human constitution, he won't be very mobile so soon. You will have to stay here for a while."
Their concern was almost immediately replaced by a much more striking confusion as Rathen stepped in behind her, right as rain if a trace tired around the eyes. By the frown he shot her, it seemed he was just as baffled by her claims.
But Tekhest did nothing to address it. Her robes barely creased as she turned, casting an apparently cursory glance around the vault as she did so, no doubt noting every minuscule detail, and disappeared back out through the door, satisfied that the bare essentials of the matter had been relayed.
As they were shut back into darkness and the light of a single torch, all eyes fell quizzically onto Rathen, who offered them only an honest smile. "I'm fine." But the slight spring in his step as he made his way urgently towards the basket of food begged to differ.
Petra followed him closely. "What happened? You've been gone for ages and no one would tell us a thing..."
"They wouldn't tell me anything about you, either." He snatched out a helping without fussing over bruises or charred edges. "When I was able to ask." His tone was bleak, his tongue sharp, but there was an unnatural liveliness in his usually dark eyes that uneased the others more than had he returned with white skin turned silver and tapered ears. They watched as he tore ravenously into the bread.
"Rathen...what did they do to you?"
"They dragged that damned curse out," he spat with sudden vehemence, "over and over and over again. They didn't tell me what I had to do with it, no pointers, not even hints, nothing. They just cast some spell or something, recited some accursed nonsense and forced me in and out of it, no respite." He shook his head and snarled, but the brightness of his eyes hadn't dulled in the slightest.
"You don't seem like you've...transformed... Not even once..."
Rathen sighed wearily and leaned back against the wall, chewing the excessively crunchy bread with a little more composure. "They healed me," he said once he'd swallowed, "like she said. Better than Kienza ever has, actually. It's remarkable - I've never felt this good..." A smug smile flickered across his lips. "They underestimated my 'human constitution'."
"Or have they done something to you?"
"Like addled his brain?" Anthis interjected, for which he received fierce looks.
"You are awfully trusting of this," Garon agreed, but Rathen immediately shook his head, his eyes finally darkening.
"Oh I don't trust them one bit. They spoke elven the whole time, whispering and snapping and chuckling amongst themselves, they didn't once look at me with anything less than open contempt, they didn't stop to let me eat--"
"We noticed."
"But," he looked at them all earnestly, "they've proven that they can help me. And they're probably my only hope." Though they were expected, he bristled deeply at their dubious, uncertain glances. His tone blackened. "Yes, I get it. But not one of you can imagine the terror of knowing that at any moment you could completely lose all control of your body and mind. Or the guilt that comes with knowing that sixteen people had been killed blindly by your own hands while you recall nothing of it. Imagine discovering second-hand what you'd done while being given no explanation for it whatsoever, except the assurance that it could happen again in a moment's notice.
"That is what has been hanging over me for eleven years; it's ruined my life and robbed others of theirs, and no one, not even Kienza, has ever been able to tell me what it is or why it happens. And then Aria...she..." His eyes softened with grief, then hardened just as quickly, his misery lines intensifying. "No one is safe from me when it happens, and if it weren't for Kienza, or for Eyila, I wouldn't be, either. But these...elves, of all things...I believe they can finally change that. This is something only they understand, only they can do, and my mother...my mother..." he shook his encroaching disbelief away. He had no energy to wrestle with that claim. "I can do it, too. No one other than an elf can help me to get this under control and teach me to suppress it - and who's to say what else I could learn from them in the process? They're helping me to resynchronise with my magic, and that could help me to gain some greater understanding, the spell--"
"One thing at a time," Garon warned him.
Rathen suppressed a curl of his lip. "I know you're not inclined to believe it," he managed not to snap, though he could tell right away from their glances that his words were too soft. It was a scepticism he would have agreed with had he not spent the last ten hours in their unwilling but apparently necessary hands. But he sighed and let the matter go. "Look, at the very least, I have some small kind of control over my transformations now, and I understand why they happen."
"'Some small kind of control'?" Petra's young face furrowed. "Call me particular but that doesn't sound like enough."
"It isn't. I'm going back tomorrow."
"I question your wisdom."
Rathen's eyes widened in astoundment as they darted across to Eyila, who had now fixed him with her familiar scrutiny. "The very first thing I was taught as a healer was to never try to heal someone absolutely. It compromises the body's efficiency to recover on its own, which could prove fatal. Instead, I was taught to use my magic to work with the body and help it to heal itself." Her pale eyes shifted towards the door. "But these supposedly learned elves don't seem to follow the same principles."
The bright relief in Rathen's eyes subdued solemnly. "It's worth the risk."
Her hold on his gaze was solid, but though she hunted relentlessly for the words to oppose him, she quickly came up empty. She had seen his transformation in the desert, and she had healed as much of the aftermath as she was able to. And at that moment she could see the crackling energy in his eyes, his drive, his desperate determination to finally control something wild within himself and put others, those dear to him and those unknown, out of the danger he posed.
Her bronze lips closed and she turned her eyes away. No, she co
uldn't argue. His reasoning was extreme, but sound. She, too, would rather put herself in harm's way if it would spare others...
"Don't worry about me," he said softly. "I'll be fine. I promise."
"You know, I don't think we really have a say in this." Anthis released the door handle. "They've locked us in, and I doubt even magic could break it. We're not getting out of here tonight."
"I bet you're really broken up about that."
He ignored Petra's latest scornful remark. "I'd be lying if I said no part of me was pleased, but I'd rather be on that endlessly rocking boat, rolling around in that tiny bed than stuck in here for a whole night." His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Though, if Eizariin returns, perhaps I can learn a little more about the sul--event that ended the elves. It could help us narrow our search - assuming he knows where we are..."
"Who is Eizariin?" Rathen frowned at the others, but the sudden crash of magic in the air knotted his tongue and launched him to his feet. Eyila's similar reaction to the otherwise unnoticed sensation froze the blood of the rest, and the only movement in the darkened room came from the bearer of frightfully wild, pastel eyes that surged towards them, surrounded by a face so white it reflected the moonlight that clawed in through the small, high windows.
Anthis stumbled back in a panic. "Eizariin--"
The elf's sharp eyes pinned him in place, turning blood to ice. "You're searching for the Zikrahlehveyn."
Chapter 59
Nolan nodded from the shadows. It was the slightest and subtlest of movements, but enough to encourage his subordinate's stiletto to deliver another sharp, shallow cut across Denek's shoulder blade. The bound and bloodied mage hissed, but gritted his teeth against anything more.
Salus, Teagan and Erran observed in silence from the edge of the chamber as the question was repeated again, calmly and clearly, but as with every other, the mage's grating voice offered only sarcasm. They hid their mounting irritation. It would do little good to give him any kind of satisfaction.