“You did tell him we just wanted a storm, didn’t you, not a global catastrophe?”
“It’ll stop soon,” she assured him, although she did not sound convinced.
The rain had been Lord Draco’s idea, conceived five nights ago in Cauthside while they waited on the ferry to take them across the Glass River. Their method of gaining entrance into the Citadel, without Joyhinia being immediately overwhelmed by the long list of people who required an audience with her, had been a matter for hot debate.
Garet Warner insisted that if Joyhinia was thought to be sneaking back into the Citadel, suspicions would be immediately aroused. She had to enter in a manner befitting her station. It was expected. But they could not risk someone speaking to Joyhinia. Her response was likely to be a childish giggle. And they certainly could not risk her in front of a crowd.
R’shiel had wanted to use the demon meld, but even Dranymire had baulked at that suggestion. The demons had been practising their meld, but it took a lot out of them and the Gathering was still to be faced. Brak had suggested a glamour, but that did not solve the problem of Joyhinia being seen publicly. A glamour would conceal her and that brought them back to the problem of sneaking into the Citadel.
It was Draco who had remarked that it was a pity they couldn’t arrange for it to be raining. No matter how important the personage, nobody would hang about, cold and wet, for a glimpse of the First Sister – and neither would they expect the First Sister to stand about waving to them. R’shiel had glanced at Brak with that dangerous light her in eyes that he was coming to associate with the demon child having an idea he knew he wouldn’t like.
“You could ask Bhren.”
“The Storm God is not like Dacendaran, R’shiel. He spends little time worrying about the Harshini, and even less time thinking about humans. The only Harshini I knew who could get any sense out of him was Lorandranek.” He regretted saying it the moment he uttered the words.
“Maybe I could ask him?”
“Ask who, what?” Garet demanded.
“Ask the God of Storms to make it rain the day we arrive at the Citadel.”
Garet stared at her for a moment then shook his head. “I don’t want to know about this.” He rose from the table in the Heart and Hearth tavern and took the stairs to his room two at a time.
Draco watched him go and then turned back to Brak and R’shiel. “He is uncomfortable with your gods.”
“And you’re not?” R’shiel shot back. She did not like Draco. Tarja’s father had been Joyhinia’s creature for thirty years. He had ordered the murder of R’shiel’s family and the village where she was born, and he had been quite prepared to put his own son, R’shiel, and three hundred rebels to the sword at Joyhinia’s command. But the man reeked of regret. In many ways he was like Lord Jenga – honourable to the point of foolishness. One mistake had set him on a path so far from his original destination that he was almost completely lost. The man was trying to claw his way back, to somehow make amends, but neither Tarja nor R’shiel was ready to forgive him. Brak trusted him more than Garet Warner. Garet had his own agenda. All Draco wanted was redemption.
“I’ve seen enough to believe your gods exist, R’shiel, although I do not worship them.”
“You’re more adept at turning on your own kind, you mean,” R’shiel snarled. Brak laid a restraining hand on her arm.
“Stop trying to pick a fight, R’shiel.”
Surprisingly, she did as he asked. Deliberately excluding Draco she turned to him questioningly. “How do I speak to Bhren?”
“Very carefully,” Brak had replied, only half jokingly.
“See, I told you it would stop!”
Brak forced his attention back to the present to discover the rain had eased to a light drizzle. “Thank you, Divine One,” he said under his breath, although it was unlikely that Bhren was listening.
“We should get moving,” R’shiel advised, glancing warily at the guards. Brak nodded and followed her into the street, still holding the glamour tightly around them.
It was nearly two hundred years since Brak had been in the Citadel, and the changes wrought in that time depressed him. Once this had been his home, before the Sisterhood had snatched it from the Harshini. As a child, he had played with demons among the vast gardens that were now replaced by cluttered housing. He had gone exploring in the ancient woods surrounding the Citadel that had long been cleared to meet the voracious human appetite for firewood and lumber. Humans had obliterated all the beauty of the Citadel, all the elegant hallmarks of Harshini architecture. Only the temples and the Halls of Residence remained of the original city, but they too had been corrupted, their artwork painted over, their graceful lines distorted by later additions to their structures. Brak was glad the Harshini could not see the Citadel now. It would bruise their souls to see what had been done to their home.
“I can feel it,” R’shiel breathed in wonder. “I can feel the Citadel.”
“He’s reacting to your presence.”
She frowned, trying to reach out with senses not yet mature enough to identify what she was experiencing. The Citadel was welcoming her home, just as it had watched over her for most of her life. Until now, she had not been aware of the power that enabled her to feel his presence.
“I thought only gods could tell what I am?”
“The spirit of the Citadel is a god,” Brak explained. “An Incidental god, not a Primal god, but a god nonetheless.”
“You mean he’s like Xaphista? He’s a demon that grew powerful enough to call himself a god?”
“No, the Citadel is unique. He came into being as the complex was built. He is the essence of the place. Its soul if you like.”
R’shiel digested the information silently as they approached the Temple of the Gods. Brak did not know what the humans called it now, but once it had been the centre of Harshini life – the place where any god, no matter how powerful or insignificant, could be called into being. He had played with gods and demons in that Temple, back in a time when life held a great deal of promise. Back in the days before he understood what it was to be half-human. Back in the days before he had killed Lorandranek.
“What did Dranymire mean about the Harshini needing access to the Citadel to protect themselves?”
“You can’t kill a Harshini here, R’shiel. The Citadel won’t permit it.”
She looked at him, her violet eyes wide with astonishment. “You’re kidding?”
“No. But don’t get too exited. That protection doesn’t extend to half-bloods. You and I are just as mortal as anybody else, here.”
“So if the Harshini could come back to the Citadel, they would be safe from the Kariens? Even if they cross the border?”
“It’s the only protection they have, other than remaining hidden. Their inability to kill is painfully real, R’shiel. There’s a story I heard once about the First Purge. A mob of humans attacked a Harshini family trying to flee the carnage. They raped the women, butchered the children and then handed the last Harshini standing a sword. They knelt in front of him and offered him their exposed throats, taunting him to kill them. He dropped the sword and threw himself on the ground, hoping they would take his life too. He couldn’t ask them to do it, the prohibition against violence includes suicide.” He did not realise how cold his voice had become until R’shiel looked at him with genuine concern.
“It’s not just a story, is it, Brak?” she asked softly.
“No.”
“What happened?”
“We arrived too late to save him. But the humans who attacked them never lived long enough to gloat about their deeds.”
“You killed them? How, if the Harshini can’t kill?”
“There were a lot more half-bloods in those days. Before the Sisterhood, mixed marriages were not that uncommon. We were young and hot-headed and didn’t take the Purge lying down.”
R’shiel thought about that for a moment. “Where are the other half-bloods now?”
“You’re the only one left.”
“Until you came along.”
R’shiel did not ask anything further on the subject, for which Brak was grateful. He glanced at the low, grey sky and realised that R’shiel had been correct in her assertion that rain would force the Gathering indoors and that the Hall was the only other possible venue.
She was still insisting they coerce the Gathering into accepting Joyhinia, but Brak had held off showing her how to do it, until the last possible moment, hoping she would change her mind. He lacked the power himself, to coerce a large group of people, but he knew the technique, although working it left him sick to his stomach. Since her stay at Sanctuary, under the careful guidance of Korandellan and her Harshini tutors, R’shiel had learnt much about her ability. But she was still a babe-in-arms by Harshini standards. A babe who was acquiring knowledge she lacked the judgment to use wisely, at a frightening rate. So frightening that Brak found himself being very careful about what he did in her presence.
She had come a long way since Shananara had tried to teach her simply how to touch her power. That day by the Glass River, more than a year ago, seemed to be part of a much more distant past.
If the Citadel’s desecration had cut him to the core, then Tavern Street was like rubbing salt into the wound. The whole cluttered street, which had once been a wide, tree-lined avenue, wore an aura of shoddy greed. With the rain, the feast in the Amphitheatre had been washed out and the tables laden with food had been moved to the verandahs outside the taverns. The street was packed with people venturing out into the fading drizzle to avail themselves of the Sisterhood’s generosity. Red coats mingled with grey-robed Probates, green-robed Novices and the more varied colours worn by ordinary people. There were only a few blue Sisters in sight. Most of them had chosen to stay indoors, rather than fight the crush in the rain. Of the white-robed Sisters of the Quorum, there was no sign at all.
“Isn’t there somewhere else we can go?” Brak asked, eyeing the crowd uneasily. They had planned to take rooms in a tavern close to the Hall of the Gods and stay out of sight until the Gathering at sundown.
“But we were supposed to meet Affiana here.”
“She’ll wait for us.”
R’shiel thought for a moment then nodded. “The Amphitheatre will be deserted with the food moved down here. The caverns should be quiet enough.”
R’shiel turned her horse and led the way, although Brak could have found his way blindfolded. The caverns had been stables once, built to house the ancestors of the Hythrun sorcerer-bred horses. They rode into the torch-lit tunnel and dismounted, leading their horses deep into the caverns where they were unlikely to be disturbed. Brak looked around the empty, hollow rooms with a sharp sense of loss.
He shook off the feeling and turned to R’shiel. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“There’s no other way, Brak.” The darkness hid her expression, but it could not hide her excitement. Since returning to the world of humans, the differences between the demon child and mere mortals were more evident each day. Those differences were beginning to make her feel a little too superior for Brak’s comfort. He could remember feeling the same way, when he was her age, and he discovered how much his power set him apart. But that kind of arrogance was dangerous to R’shiel and everyone around her. She needed to be brought down a peg or two, as he had been, and soon.
“What you want to do is wrong, you understand that, don’t you?”
“It is necessary.”
“Are you prepared for the consequences?”
“What consequences?” For the first time, she didn’t sound quite so certain.
“Coercing humans is easy, R’shiel,” he explained. “People do it to each other all the time. They don’t use the same sort of power as we do, but they have other methods which work just as well.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“You remember when you were fighting with the rebellion? I saw you coerce those young hot-heads any number of times and you didn’t know anything about the Harshini power you had access to. Tarja convinced three hundred rebels to attack a full Company of Defenders in Testra with nothing more than rhetoric. Every mother who cajoles her child into eating stewed turnips is using coercion.”
“What’s your point, Brak?”
“The point is that you could bully the heathens into fighting because, deep down, they wanted to. Every rebel who attacked Testra at Tarja’s behest secretly dreamt of victory. Even the child who eventually succumbs to the stewed turnips has hunger giving him a push. Coercing people to act against their will, is an entirely different matter. You have to get past their natural inclinations and then force them to move in a different direction. You are robbing them of any vestige of free will, and free will is something that runs so deep in the human soul it’s like trying to get the Glass River to flow backwards.”
“You think I don’t have the power to do it?” she asked, sounding rather alarmed. “The Karien priests can do it.”
“R’shiel, you could level a mountain if the mood took you. Your power is not the issue. As for the Kariens priests, their ability is an abomination. Remember that Xaphista was a demon once. During their initiation ceremony they drink his blood. And it’s not some slaughtered animal’s blood they’re drinking either, it really is Xaphista’s. The blood links them to their god in the same way we’re linked to our demons. Through that link they can call on his strength to weave the coercion.”
“But the link must be pretty tenuous,” she said. “Where did they get the power to coerce a whole army?”
“Individually they’re weak, but as a group they can be devastating.”
“You’re not worried I’ll start worshipping the Overlord, are you?” she asked with a grin.
Brak could have slapped her for being so flippant. She wasn’t listening at all. “It’s what will happen to these people afterwards, that worries me. If you coerce them into believing Joyhinia wishes to retire in favour of Mahina, then that’s exactly what they’ll do. But tomorrow, or the week after, or a year from now, when you’re not around to suppress their natural feelings, they will begin to wonder why. They’ll know they’ve been tricked. Mahina’s reign is likely to be even shorter than the last time. One dissenting voice will turn into two, which will turn into ten which will turn into an avalanche.”
“I’ve already told you, we’ll send the most likely dissenters away...”
He shook his head in exasperation. “It won’t matter. You have no way of knowing who is susceptible and who isn’t. The ones you think most likely to object may take to the coercion like it was mother’s milk. But there will be others, people you don’t even suspect, for whom the coercion will last less than a day. There will be nearly a thousand Sisters in that Hall, R’shiel. You can’t watch them all.”
“Then we’ll do something to keep them quiet. It only has to last long enough for Mahina to issue the orders sending the rest of the Defenders to the front. She can resign after that and they can hold another election —”
“Do what?” Brak cut in.
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Maybe if they all got sick, or something...”
“You mean you’d create an epidemic just to keep the Sisters occupied?”
“I suppose. Nothing serious, just something that keeps them close to the garderobes for a few days.”
“I see. And when this epidemic spreads to the general population, as it will, what of the young, too weak to fight it? The old, too frail to withstand it? Are you ready to kill innocent people to keep your coercion from falling apart?”
“Then what do you suggest we do? We have to get the rest of t
he Defenders to the border!”
“Fine. Have Joyhinia issue the order. Have her resign, too, if you must, but the more complex the coercion, the more chance there is of it blowing up in your face.”
“But we need Mahina in charge.”
“Then put her in charge, but let her take control herself. If you impose an artificial control, the results could be catastrophic. Trust her to know what she’s doing. She got caught out once. I don’t think she’ll be so foolish this time.”
“What are you suggesting? That we get through the Gathering and then walk away?”
“Actually, I was thinking of running, not walking. One of the hallmarks of maturity for a Harshini is knowing when not to use your power, R’shiel.”
“I’m not Harshini. Not completely.”
“You’re not completely human, either, but that’s no excuse for acting like an idiot. Consequences, R’shiel. I ask you again. Are you prepared for the consequences?”
She was silent for a moment, considering her answer carefully.
“The consequences of not acting are liable to be worse,” she said finally.
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“No,” she agreed, then she sighed. “Alright, I’ll grant you that letting Mahina establish control in her own right is probably safer than imposing it artificially. But I will have to coerce them into accepting her appointment at the Gathering.”
“And then we leave?”
“I suppose.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting outside the Hall with our horses. It’s too damned dangerous for you here R’shiel.”
“Dangerous? Compared to what? The border, where there’s a war going on?” She smiled wearily at him. “Show me how it’s done, Brak. We’re running out of time.”
Brak silently admitted defeat. He had done all he could to deter her, short of refusing her the knowledge outright. But she had felt it once before, the night before the battle. If he did not instruct her properly, he knew that she would simply try to copy what the Kariens priests had done, and the result might be disastrous.
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