by Nhys Glover
“We did our best. That Devourer’s water magic was just too much for him. Even someone as strong as a half-daemon couldn’t survive the full force of one of those barrages. I’m glad we ended those bastards.” Laric’s snarled words were feral, and I knew his feelings were true, even if there was no truth to most of his words.
“Get her water for when she comes around,” Landor ordered gently, always the healer considering other’s needs.
“What will we do now? The Goddess expected us to save the world. Now... Now we have no way to do that!” Zem snarled, his voice filled with pain so real I wanted to reach out and comfort him.
The vision faded and the mist cleared. The scrying bowl was just a bowl of water once more.
“Well?” demanded the priest so fiercely I thought he was about to hit the lad.
Shaking and stammering, the childling told the priest what he needed to hear. “The... Key that was found is now... dead and buried, killed by a priest... who used his water magic against him. The daemon’s lover is overcome... with grief and the rest seem lost, not knowing what... what to do.”
The priest looked triumphant, his dark eyes alight with fire. “You are sure that was what happened? That the Key is really destroyed?”
The lad nodded anxiously, water slopping over the side of the bowl. “Aye. They know they’ve lost. They don’t know what to do now.”
As I stared into the gloating face of the priest, I felt the world shift under me. Once more I found myself beside the fire. I knew Redin held me, and I turned my head to look up at him, smiling my reassurance and gratitude to him.
‘We’ve done it, haven’t we?’ Flame said into my mind.
‘I think so. They did not see the funeral but they saw the grave being filled, us here beside the fire, and your men’s performance. I believe they are convinced Sky is dead,’ I replied in my head.
‘That’s my thoughts too. When I went into that bastard’s mind I could see he was convinced. Now The Jayger will have to know as well.’
‘You were there? I did not feel you.’
I heard Flame’s amusement in my head. It lightened my mood. ‘I’m getting very good at sneaking around in people’s heads. Carefully placing ideas with just the right image to accompany them has become my specialty. If I could have done this when I was on the streets I would have... Well, I might have avoided a lot of pain.’
I could feel the remembered pain as if it were my own for the briefest moment before she dismissed it. What had happened to her? What had her life been like back then? The strong and feisty woman I had come to know seemed invincible. Yet clearly there had been a time when she was not. One day, if we survived all this, I would ask her to share it with me. I needed to know how she did it. How she went from a hurt childling on the streets to this warrior woman she now was.
No further words were said as we went back into our parts for this play. Everyone went their separate ways to find their beds, and I returned to my lonely spot halfway up the beach. Once enough time had passed that not even a desperate seer would remain interested in us, I stole away into the forest.
Avoiding the grave, I followed the barely there path Sky had shown me when this plan was coming into being. After what felt like forever, and when my feet felt bloodied by all the sticks and rocks I’d tripped over in the darkness, I finally found him.
“Gods, my love, you look terrible,” he exclaimed softly, as I flew into his welcoming arms.
I laughed as I cried. “Just what every woman wants to hear from the man in her life.”
“I am not a man. A human man, at any rate,” he answered me as he rained kisses on my shoulder, neck and cheek.
“You are more than a man, you are a beautiful male conjured from my most wonderful dreams,” I said, laughing through my tears. I felt intoxicated, as if I had drunk a cask of wine all on my own. It felt like I was in the arms of a man I had thought dead. A man more precious to me than my next breath.
“Do you think it worked?” he asked, holding me against his heart.
I nodded, breathing in his scent, a heady mixture of forest and man... or more than man.
“I had a vision and saw them getting this poor childling to see for them. The seer saw your grave, and then me collapsed by the fire while everyone talked about your death and what it would mean to us now. It was perfect. There may be others, of course, who witnessed the funeral or before... I do not know. But we know at least one took Flame’s suggestion and sought out your fate. Now, as long as they do not see you here, alive and well... we are ready for the next stage.”
“Mayhap you should not be here. If a seer is looking on...”
“If a seer is looking on in this moment they will see you alive, whether I am with you or not. We have to believe they will not. It is all we have. And sending me away now when we have no idea how much time we have left together would be too cruel.”
His kisses became more impassioned at this last thought. They rained down on my head as his hands stroked up and down my bare arms. He didn’t want to leave me any more than I wanted him to die. But we might have no say in it. Ultimately, all we could do was play our part and hope we were strong enough to prevail and survive.
“You are everything to me. You know that, do you not?” he growled out, lifting my face so he could rain more kisses over it before closing on my mouth.
All I could do was nod. I had known he loved me almost all my life.
I just wished it could be enough.
Chapter Fifteen
FLAME
I lay with my men, talking out our plans in our heads. We’d decided that it wasn’t safe discussing plans aloud anymore. Who knew what seer might be listening in? It was the reason we’d passed on our instructions mentally to everyone. Even one misplaced word might mean the failure of our hoax.
‘So at least one priest who is not a split being knows that Sky is dead? And one seer,’ Zem was saying.
‘Aye. It went off like clockwork. I’m glad I had the sense to follow Shardra when she went into her vision. She could have told us what she saw but we wouldn’t know for sure that the priest had believed the seer. I even located a conduit inside the priest. It was throbbing blood red while he was considering his discovery. If there had been time, and if I hadn’t been afraid I’d get lost on the pathway, I would have followed it to The Jayger. It had to lead to the bastard. It looked just like the one that led to the Goddess, except it was red rather than silver.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t. If Shardra had come out of her vision while you were following it, you could have been stuck. The only safe way is to have Redin take you onto the Nether Plane,’ Laric said, clearly still remembering how I almost got lost when I went into the nightmare of one of the priests.
‘I’m starting to think I don’t need the Nether Plane now. I’ve made a connection with the priest on the Physical Plane and, just as I can find Airsha whenever I think about her, I think I might be able to connect with him that way now as well. It’s not quite the same when you connect to essences in the Nether Plane. I can’t explain it, but until I’m actually with someone in the physical realm, looking at them from the outside, I can’t imagine them well enough to connect with them. Or that’s my thought, anyway.’
‘So, because you’re in the essence of a person on the Nether Plane you can’t see what they look like well enough to then find them on the Physical Plane?’ Prior clarified.
I shrugged physically and hoped that translated to a mental shrug. ‘I think that’s how it works. We can find people on the Nether Plane, but getting there is the hard part. We need Redin. However, on the Physical, I can go to anyone I know just by thinking about them. But I have to have a picture of them in my mind. And you don’t get that when you’re inside someone’s essence.’
‘Let’s try it then,’ Zem suggested, and I saw him linking his hands behind his head as he stared up at the star-filled sky above us. He was lying on my right side and Prior was on my left. Each night a dif
ferent pair slept next to me, and it happened without planning. Or I thought that was the case. I certainly hadn’t heard anyone discussing our sleeping arrangements.
We’d lost a little of the heady bliss that being inside the Goddess together had given us, but we were still bound far closer than ever before. Talking in our minds was as easy and automatic now as it was speaking aloud. Maybe easier. And yet, we each protected our inner thoughts. So, instead of a constant stream of babbling voices in my head, there was silence much of the time. In that quiet I could contemplate my own thoughts. Only when one of us chose to speak to the rest of us in our minds did that silence end. Like now.
‘Are you up to it?’ Landor asked me, ever concerned for my wellbeing.
‘Aye, the hard work was done yesterday. Today has just been about play-acting. The quick trip with Shardra was no effort at all. I think we’re getting stronger the more we do it.’
‘Like muscles get stronger with use,’ Zem confirmed.
‘So I go visit that awful priest and see what’s happening.’
There was a general agreement, and I felt it the moment they all locked onto me. I closed my eyes, and was interested to see that I still saw the stars behind my lids. While I contemplated the vastness of that night sky, I slipped away and began journeying. I brought my focus to the priest, remembering all I’d seen in that barn-like room and what that priest had looked and felt like.
In the next moment, I was staring out of another’ eyes. My host was ranting at a subordinate who had done something wrong. What?
I scoured the mind and discovered that the seer lad had fallen as he was led away. He’d been so weak after the vision that he’d barely been able to stand, but the priest who took him back to his room had not considered his weakness, and he’d fallen and cracked his head open. A healer was working on him, but it was unlikely he’d survive.
Not that he’d had much power left in him. The batch of seers they had now were so much weaker than the Soothsayer had been. Each one was snuffed out, or sucked of their power, after only a few visions. That was why they had to be conservative with their use.
But the need to know what was happening to the Key had been like a nagging ache for a full day before he finally gave in to it. And now he was glad he had. Their success was assured. The Key was dead. Did it really matter if they no longer had the ability to see what the enemy was doing? After all, nothing could stop their master now. The Jayger could only succeed. The Goddess was beaten. She just didn’t realise it yet.
I looked around the priest’s mind. After a few moments, I saw what I was looking for: the blood red cord that likely led to The Jayger. This time, though, it wasn’t pulsing.
‘Not now,’ Zem said into my head.
It was the first time any of them had spoken to me when I was journeying like this. It showed how desperate he was to stop me.
I did his bidding because I was also wary about going into The Jayger’s mind.
In the next breath, I was back in my body and opening my eyes to view the stars above.
‘You know if you go into The Jayger’s mind it may be very different to the Goddess’. She was safeguarding us. The Jayger won’t even know you’re there, and if he does he’ll swat you like a bug,’ Zem told me tersely.
‘I know. But if we’re going to encourage It to take up Airsha’s challenge, I might have to use the same approach I used with the priests—a subtle thought placed into the mind accompanied by an image and a need.’
‘You don’t know how Its mind works. How would you have placed a thought into the Goddess’ mind?’ This was Prior, who had recently started siding more with Zem than he used to. At the beginning it had been Zem and Landor on one side and Prior and Laric on the other, maybe because they were the last two to become my husbands.
Now, though, Prior’s incisive mind had found a match in Zem’s, and they often took one side while the more emotion-focused Laric and Landor took the other. It wasn’t an obvious divide, and certainly not something as painful and divisive as when Zem hurt me, but it was there.
‘I think I did. I think she was aware of my every thought while I was in the library.’
‘So The Jayger might too. We can’t risk It knowing what we can do,’ Prior argued.
‘The Goddess was aware of me because I was one of hers. If I was inside the Jayger I would be an alien entity It likely wouldn’t even register. Especially if It’s focused on Its own creatures feeding It information every moment of the night and day.’
That had them thinking.
I knew I was right. But what I hadn’t said was that I wasn’t sure if I could handle being inside that alien force. I was part of the Goddess. Even though she was overwhelming, I was on familiar home-ground in her mind. But going into the Jayger would be like... I didn’t really know what to expect. But I feared it could be like being dissolved. The priest’s nightmare still continued to fill me with terror and wariness.
What had happened to those priests Laric and I had left behind? Had their fellow priests put them out of their misery or left them there to die, caught in their nightmares. I shuddered at the thought.
‘Stop thinking about it, Flame. It doesn’t help anyone,’ Laric said tersely.
I could feel his pain at what he had inflicted on those men. Even though they were the enemy; even thought they were barely human; and even though they would have done terrible things to us, given the chance; I knew Laric hated what he’d done.
How had I ever thought of him as an unfeeling monster who enjoyed others’ pain?
‘Because you didn’t know me. And maybe because I was like that at the beginning. I thought anyone I gave nightmares to deserved it. Until Airsha. I hated what I did to her.’
‘Water under the bridge. We have all done things we’re not proud of. I think we need to sleep and then tomorrow discuss the next step,’ Zem said, and I knew he was thinking of what he had done to me.
Though I no longer felt any bad feelings toward him, I did like that he was still troubled by what he’d said and done. It made me believe he wouldn’t repeat it. I wasn’t sure I could survive him cutting me down again.
I thought all this with my shields up. These were not thoughts for anyone else.
The next morning we followed our plan, acting as if we were rudderless now we had lost our Key. I took note of Shardra. Although she still looked sad, I saw colour in her cheeks that wasn’t there the day before. Her night with Sky had reassured her, I guessed. Though there were bags under her eyes, which meant she’d gotten very little sleep.
After breaking our fast with the others, my men and I wandered back to our own firepit. Everyone knew what we were doing, but nothing of it was spoken aloud. So much of what was to happen in the next stage was going to occur beneath the surface. For us, at least. Airsha’s part would be more dynamic.
But before we contacted Airsha we needed to know how far apart we could be and still work together. So, after our meal, we took to the air and spread out across the island, telling the others aloud that we were going exploring.
Once I reached my destination, I sat on a deserted beach and focused my mind. After a few calm moments, I spoke to my men.
‘Can you hear me?’ I asked, a little tremble evident in my inner voice.
This was our biggest challenge thus far, and I was feeling very alone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been alone like this, in my head or physically. I knew I could defend myself if need be, but having my men around me wasn’t just about safety. It was about... support. They were the net beneath me, in case I fell.
For a long time there was silence. Maybe we were too far apart. Would we need to move closer? Maybe we’d been over-confident and should have started more conservatively.
Then, just as I was about to give up and climb back to my feet, I felt it. My men fuelling me.
Again I spoke into the silence. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Aye, I hear you fine,’ Zem said with satisfaction.
‘Count me in,’ Prior said.
‘Last as usual,’ Laric commented dryly.
‘Last but not least,’ I shot back with amusement.
‘So we can talk. Can we do more?’ Zem asked.
I focused on Shardra back at the camp, and immediately found myself in her mind, experiencing her memories of her night with Sky. Hastily I withdrew, but not before seeing just how large his cock was. Good Goddess, how did she manage to take all that?
I heard my men sniggering, so I dismissed the thought and pushed out further. Could I reach Calun?
In the next instant, I was on an airling flying high over the mountains. Calun was worried about how the convoy transporting the childlings and their nurses was faring. Clifflings had been less trouble since the full force of the new government had been turned on them, but raids on unsuspecting travellers were still possible.
‘How goes it, brother?’ I asked.
Calun jerked and swore colourfully. ‘You need to give warning when you do that, Flame. You scared me shiteless.’
I grinned. ‘Sorry, brother. We are experimenting again. Me and my men are leagues apart right now, but I’m still able to reach you. We have also worked out a plan... a con, actually. It will involve Airsha. So if you see her soon, tell her to expect me in her head in the next day or two. She will be issuing a challenge, so word will need to get out across the whole world.’
‘A challenge?’ Calun asked curiously.
‘Aye. She’s going to challenge The Jayger, and direct It our way.’
‘But he knows it will be a trap. He won’t fall for that again.’
‘He will if he thinks the Key is dead. He... It will feel unstoppable.’
‘How?’
‘Later. Share this only with Airsha and make sure she says nothing of our plan aloud. The Devourer priests still have a few seers, and they will be watching. Nothing said aloud.’