by Alia Luria
“You’re welcome,” Mia replied after Taryn finally finished her diatribe regarding how she was able to integrate and live among their group of heathens and secure the most valuable artifact the Druids ever had known. Mia tried to keep the animosity from her voice, but she was growing weary of Taryn’s magnanimous talk and couldn’t help herself.
“Oh, please,” Taryn replied. “You were merely a means to an end, a puppet to pull the strings on.”
“Oh, really?” Mia asked, trying to keep her voice casual. She had mostly regained the sensation in her left hand, the tingles giving way to a burning and finally a warm feeling. Slowly, so as not to draw notice to the movement, she slid her arm down, dragging the knife along under Cedar’s clothes, hoping she would snag neither cloth nor flesh. Simultaneously she made a show of grasping ineffectually at the tip of the Shillelagh. Her intention was to appear as if she were trying to prevent it from digging farther into her shoulder as well as help Taryn to assume Mia had no strength remaining.
She twitched her head slightly toward SainClair, and his chin moved downward ever so slightly in response.
Borus coughed then, and the others looked over. “Gah, all this chattering is gonna do me in afore one of yer staffs does,” he said in a loud voice.
Mia stifled a smile and watched closely as Taryn’s head swiveled toward Brother Borus. “You were always a moron,” she snapped at him, her voice hard and clipped. All signs of syrupy sweetness had drained away.
“Aye?” he said, his eyebrows rising comically. “Well, if I recall, ye liked my cooking nonetheless. Yer no different than any of us, lassie.”
“Fine, have it your way,” Taryn said. “Kill them,” she snapped at the Druids who were restraining Brother Borus. When she turned back to face Mia, she could see Taryn’s face had gone from flushed to wan.
“I’d like to see ’im try ta kill me with that sodding stick,” he scoffed at the nearest Druid, who was holding a wooden quarterstaff.
While Taryn recovered her composure, Mia wriggled her arm completely free and lunged toward Taryn’s foot with the knife. Taryn’s right hand was still wrapped around the Shillelagh, and as Mia forced herself up, it dug even more painfully into her shoulder. Mia thrust her shoulder into the stick and pushed while wrenching the Shillelagh simultaneously with her right hand. Taryn let out a grunt of surprise and toppled backward, landing hard on the floor, one hand still clutching the handle of the Shillelagh and the other clasped around Compendium. Pain thrummed through Mia’s body like a bolt of lightning that struck every finger and toe on her right side. The cry that erupted from her throat didn’t sound human. It was the roar of an enraged animal. She twisted herself toward Taryn’s prone form and swiped at her with the knife. Taryn disengaged from the Shillelagh and kicked at the knife with a boot.
“You,” she hissed through clenched teeth, her voice growing shrill.
She reached for the Shillelagh again, but Mia deftly moved it from Taryn’s reach and pulled it toward her body as she tried to rocket to her feet. Mia’s movements were much more elegant in her mind, but then, her movements were frequently more elegant in her mind. Nevertheless she was on her feet, the Shillelagh held weakly in her right hand and the knife in the other. She wanted so badly to shift some weight against the Shillelagh, but she doubted her shoulder would take it. She was still dizzy from the pain. Taryn was quick to her feet as well but possessed no weapon. And yet she still had all the leverage. Shouts rang out around the cavernous room. The clerics wouldn’t be killed without a fight. Mia caught Borus charging a group of Druids with his bare hands before her focus returned to Taryn.
Taryn handled Compendium carefully, her mouth twisted into a wicked grimace. “It appears I’m still at a bit of an advantage,” she said, taking a small step forward. She fingered the spine of the book with one hand and ruffled the pages with her other, a look of envy clouding her golden eyes. Compendium was still frozen on the map of the Druid fortress. “I know how much you rely on it. If you’d done a little more talking to those around you and a little less to this ancient stack of paper, maybe your boyfriend over there would still be whole.”
Mia flinched at her reference to Cedar. She kept silent, though, unsure what to say. Compendium was useless to Taryn, but it was everything to Mia.
“You thought you were so special when you activated this thing,” said Taryn. Her face appeared flushed. She took another small step toward Mia.
Mia wanted to lunge at her and grab Compendium from her hands.
“The illustrious bloodlines,” Taryn said, fingering Compendium’s pages and opening it to the center. “Perhaps you’re worried I’ll do this?” she questioned. She spat into the center of the book then wiped a dirty hand around in the saliva. “Aw, it doesn’t like me.” She held the book out for Mia to see. The page was marred but blank. “I guess the Rosewaters aren’t illustrious enough.”
“You know very well Compendium is blocked in this room,” Mia replied.
Taryn smiled. “Perhaps, then, I should make my point differently. Now that this page is ruined, I suppose I should tidy things up a bit.” She pulled downward on the page she had defiled and tugged hard at it. Mia flinched, expecting the thin, ancient page to rip from the book. Her heart pounded.
My friend. She willed Compendium to respond. The book really was like a friend to her. It had been there during her toughest moments. It had led her into the darkness and back out again. And now it was going to remain silent as Taryn tore it apart, piece by piece, before Mia’s eyes.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to Compendium,” Mia said. “The Shillelagh is coming with us. It wasn’t yours to take, just like Compendium isn’t yours to deface. You’ll regret interfering in the Order, and you’ll regret anything you do to that book.” Mia pointed the knife clenched in her hand at Taryn.
She only sneered.
Despite Mia’s tough words, she flinched as Taryn tore at the page she held in her fingers. The paper bent in her hand but didn’t rend.
That’s it. Fight, my friend. Perhaps you can still hear my thoughts. If so, fight.
Taryn’s hand tugged sharply again at the page, but still it didn’t tear. Mia glanced quickly around the room. Cedar was still unconscious on the ground. SainClair and Borus had disarmed a couple of the Druids of their quarterstaffs and were in a melee with the remaining Druids. The Druid bowmen had been dispensed of first and lay motionless on the floor. Mia couldn’t tell if they still lived. Young Brother Mallus lay in a crumpled heap, blood seeping from his crushed skull, an injury that would have been impossible to survive. She forced down the bile rising in her throat.
“We have to go!” Mia shouted.
“Aye,” Borus exclaimed.
SainClair grunted and dodged a staff aimed at his head. He rolled to the left and came back to his feet. Mia’s eyes returned to Taryn. She had given up trying to tear Compendium and was now moving away from Mia toward the nearest hearth in the room.
“I’ll burn it!” she yelled, her voice carrying over the sounds of exertion and clacks of fighting. “Give me the Shillelagh, or I’ll burn it.”
“Oh, and you’ll let us go on our merry way if I do?” Mia asked.
She smiled coldly and tossed Compendium into the hearth. Mia watched, frozen, as the book settled into the orange glow, darkening slowly, its pages curling gently from the heat. She fought the urge to push Taryn aside and retrieve it from the flames. Instead she threw the knife in her hand. It landed in Taryn’s right shoulder, forcing her back a step. She screamed in pain. Mia’s own shoulder ached from its injury and the exertion.
“That makes us twins,” Mia said.
Taryn clutched at the knife, but her hands slipped on the blood. “I’ll see you burn in the Core!” she yelled.
“Not without this,” Mia said, shaking the Shillelagh at her. “Now! We have to go now!” she called to her companions. Mia carried the Shillelagh over to Cedar and gently grasped his inert hand. It was cool to the touch
but still held a faint pulse. Borus and SainClair were at her side in an instant, each grasping on to one of them in a chain formation.
“One, two, three!” Mia brought the Shillelagh up. “Take us to the outer courtyard of the Compound of the Order of Vis Firmitas,” she yelled, and knocked the stick twice against the hardwood floor. A howling vortex opened up around them the moment the staff stuck the solid wood beneath Mia’s feet.
She felt rather than saw the crack of the explosion, and a wave of nausea washed over her. The bile rose up from her gut and threatened to burst forth from her throat as the world spun and churned around them. She tried desperately to close her eyes, but they were frozen open in her head, her body rigidly locked into position. A moment later, the movement ground to a halt, and they were outside among the trees, the forest silent except for the echoing of the crack of the Shillelagh. The rigidity in Mia’s body subsided, and they all collapsed to the ground, groaning.
“That was awful,” Mia said, her voice cracking and gasping. She willed herself not to be sick.
“Cedar had the right idea traveling with his eyes closed,” said SainClair, and promptly vomited.
Mia’s vision was a blur. Did the traveling do something to my eyes? She rubbed them and realized tears were streaming down her face. After that, all she could manage was a sob. A sob for Compendium, a sob for Brother Mallus, and a sob for Cedar, who lay broken and bruised beside her—all of it a product of her carelessness. The sobs wracked her body, and she curled into a ball, face pressed into her knees.
“There, there,” said SainClair’s voice near her ear. “We’re home now,” he added, but Mia could no more stop the tears than dam an ocean. SainClair lifted her body off the ground, and she let herself be carried in a way that she hadn’t since she was a small girl cowering after that stalker attack. Her carelessness had been at fault there as well. With Mia weeping in SainClair’s arms and still clutching the Shillelagh, and Cedar unconscious and slung over Borus’s shoulder, they made for home.
Through hiccups and tears, all Mia could say was, “I saw it burn.”
36 Cleric
Lumin Cycle 10153
Mia sat alone in her chambers looking out over the mountainside visible between the thicket of trees shading her open window. Upon their return with the Shillelagh, she was removed from the barracks and settled in her own rooms. She wasn’t quite sure whether she was a prisoner, but she hadn’t felt much like leaving her chambers and rarely ventured forth. A full month had elapsed since their confrontation with the Druids. Since then, time had passed in a haze. She spent some time recovering from her arrow wound. The medics had to remove a number of Shillelagh splinters from it. This caused the others to joke that her arm might go off on adventures by itself while she slept.
“Perhaps they missed one,” Brother Cornelius said to her after she woke in the medical ward, his eyes sparkling. “You’d best keep an eye on that appendage,” he added with a chuckle and patted her face gently. She smiled weakly but couldn’t muster a laugh. Not much was funny these days. As far as she was aware, Cedar was still in recovery. It took two weeks for him to regain consciousness, and Brother Borus told Mia the ruined right eye couldn’t be saved. This didn’t surprise her, given the pulp that haunted her memory when she thought of it. She visited him as much as she could at first, held his hand, stroked his hair, and talked to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back once she had learned he was awake. She never had shared with him her feelings, but what was the point now? It was all ruined. She couldn’t bear to have him look at her, supposing he still wanted to. She wasn’t sure what she would say to him when she finally saw him again, but she never let her mind dwell on it for long.
Compendium, also, was never far from her thoughts. She had watched it singe, its pages browning and wrinkling. Her legacy, her family, her history. All gone in a spark. She wanted to vomit every time the image of the book charring to ash in the hearth flashed into her mind. She grieved for Compendium and the companionship it had provided. False or real, it didn’t matter. It had become an extension of her; Taryn could have cut a lung from Mia’s body with the same effect. SainClair tried to console her, but his gentle words and concern only compounded her guilt, for it was his family and legacy lost as well as hers. And so she hid from the Order and told herself they didn’t deserve the pain her face would visit on them.
Lost in her piteous musings, Mia didn’t hear the first knock at the entryway to her sitting room. A loud throat clearing followed by a stern but steady knock alerted her that she had company. Normally Hamish would have signaled her long before anyone bothered to knock, but the silly fluff face was off having a romp with SainClair. She sighed and looked back to the doorway from her chair by the window. Dominus Nikola was standing inside the entrance.
“May we discuss something?” he asked in his calm, firm voice. It reminded Mia of Compendium, and she swallowed hard.
Silly, for there was emotion behind Nikola’s words.
“Certainly, sir,” she replied, gesturing to the chair by the hearth. She pulled her own chair to sit next to the one already hearthside and sat down. Dominus Nikola crossed the room in his deliberate, slow manner. She sometimes wondered whether he had to think through every step before he took it. That, or perhaps he had a touch of arthritis. In either case, she found herself absently rubbing her neck as she waited for him to take a seat.
“Are you still suffering some ill effects from your wounds?” he asked politely, his eyes following the motion of her hand.
“Ah, no,” she said after a moment’s thought. “At least I don’t suppose I do.”
He nodded at her response and gave her his usual smile. Although it was warm, Mia couldn’t tell what he was thinking deep within. “Is there anything in particular you wanted to discuss, sir?” she asked, adopting a cordial but distant tone.
His eyebrows rose slightly at that statement. “Are you trying to rid yourself of me so expeditiously? I just seated myself. And you have yet to even offer me any tea.”
Mia’s eyes grew round, and she frowned softly. “Ah, yes, my manners apparently suffered more than my shoulder did,” she replied, her sentence trailing off in a mumble. She stood to move toward the stones warming in the hearth. “Would you like some tea, Dominus?”
“Oh, no, I’m quite fine,” he said with a chuckle. “I was just having a bit of fun at your expense, my child.”
Mia wanted so much to smile and chuckle along with the Dominus, but she couldn’t muster the energy or mirth for it. With a tight grimace she fervently hoped didn’t look ungrateful, she settled back into her chair.
“To the matter at hand then?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck again.
“Ah, yes,” Dominus Nikola said, clearing his throat and settling back into the chair. His gray eyes held hers in a steady gaze. “I wished to discuss with you your continued role with the Order.”
At the Dominus’s words, Mia lowered her head and fastidiously examined a thread dangling from the wrist of her robes. Since her return, she had been wearing her acolyte robes and sash every day, but she hadn’t participated in life at the Order. She stayed away from Brother Cornelius and the Archives. She ventured down to the dining hall only at odd hours, and she rarely stopped to talk to anyone when she did. She had made so many promises. She had stood before the Order and asked them to take a chance on redeeming her, and she had let them down. They may have succeeded in bringing the Shillelagh back, but at what cost? There was no unkindness or pity in the eyes that tried to meet hers in the halls. There were no broken conversations as she passed. And yet she knew she hadn’t earned her place among them. She had worried that this day was nearing. After all, they had moved her away from the other acolytes into these beautiful but remote chambers. She told herself that perhaps it was to aid in her recovery, but deep down she sensed it was because she was no longer welcome.
“I’m so sorry, Dominus,” she said, her voice low and words struggling to emerge.
“I tried, but I failed. Just say the words, and I’ll pack myself and Hamish and be off.”
“Why would you do that, my child?” the Dominus asked. He folded his hands one over the other as he rested his elbows on the arms of the overstuffed chair in which he sat. He had asked Mia the question, but his eyes held no surprise or concern at her words. If anything, he looked slightly amused.
“Why do you ask questions that you already know the answer to?” she asked in response, evading him.
Another soft chuckle erupted from the depths of his throat. “If you’re going to try my patience and my nerves, I suppose you’d best offer me that tea again,” he said plainly, a white eyebrow rising up toward his close-cropped head. His light, jovial manner wasn’t improving Mia’s foul one. She moved to the hearth and busied herself taking two cups from the shelf above and filling them with water from a pitcher. She plucked two red, hot stones from the hearth with a tong and dropped them into the cups of water.
“Ginger or black?” she asked.
“Oh, ginger,” the Dominus replied with a smile, anticipation gleaming in his eyes. “I do so love the spice.”
The water in the cups was steaming from the hot stone resting at the bottom of each, and Mia dropped in a small cage of dried leaves and gingerroot to steep in each of the cups. She brought them over on a small tray with tiny carafes of honey sap, milk sap, and cream. Dominus Nikola took his cup and stirred the seeping leaves and gingerroot around. They sat in silence as he tended to his tea, eventually adding a dollop of cream and some of the honey sap before taking a sip.