“Perhaps if you tell me everything I want to know,” High Priestess Kiara said venomously, “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
She came striding forward, and I held my ground as best I could despite the deeply entrenched, profound fear in me.
“Where is Umbrion?” she hissed at me.
“Y-y-y-you have n-n-no idea wh-wh-what kind of d-danger—”
“Where is Umbrion!” she bellowed, and I flinched away from her. “Do you think I’m inclined to show you mercy? The only reason I haven’t ripped you open like you did the Queen is because you know things I don’t!”
I cowed, but only for a moment.
“Those wh-wh-who end-d-danger m-me endanger them-m-mselves,” I said, flexing my hands to keep them from trembling and betraying my fear. “I am a G-G-Godspeaker. Um-m-mbrion w-will raze this t-t-temple and k-k-kill everyone in it if y-you hurt me.”
“Is that a threat, Godspeaker?”
“No,” I growled, “it’s a w-w-w-warning. Do not f-f-f-force the N-Night Father’s hand! Wh-what d-do you think happened to the p-p-party you s-s-sent after m-me in Annolum?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. Her shoulders were shaking with rage, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. She looked like a cobra, wound up tight and ready to strike.
“I w-w-want n-no more b-blood spilt,” I said. “B-b-but if you h-hurt me, I c-c-cannot guarantee y-y-your safety.”
“If you don’t want blood spilt,” she said, dangerously, “then perhaps you shouldn’t have killed half of Ellorian.”
My throat tightened. “I d-d-d-did not b-break Ellorian.”
She struck me with surprising force; a burst of pain across my cheekbone, and I tumbled onto the ground. My ears rang from the pain redoubling from the wound on the back of my head; for a moment, I could barely see.
“Do you not understand the situation you’re in, traitor?” she asked me. “I am not gently asking for your cooperation. You will tell me what you know or I will make things very difficult for you!”
I did not immediately understand what she meant. At least, not at first.
“T-t-t-torture?” I said. How novel. Don’t put my life in jeopardy, just make me wish for it to end from the pain. I wondered if torture would summon Umbrion the same as a knife to my throat, but I would have rather not found out. “How v-v-very priestly.”
“How dare you preach to me,” she hissed. “There were children in that city. Families and young lovers and infants all snuffed out in an instant. What sort of moral high ground is that?”
“I d-d-d-did not break Ellorian!”
A hand in my hair; she pulled my up with a sharp, painful tug, and new waves of pain rattled through my head in all directions. I yelped sharply and scrabbled for a hold on the wall.
“My family was in Ellorian,” she growled at me. “My younger sister travelled all the way from here to see your confirmation. She was eighty seasons old.”
My throat tightened even further. I grit my teeth and shut my eyes, willing away the images of the streets buckling, of the jets of burning steam, of the city being swallowed up into the springs.
She released her grip in my hair by throwing me forward onto the floor. I landed on a hip with another jolt of pain.
“Tell me his plans,” she hissed at me. “Tell me where he’s striking next.”
Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have told her. Slowly, I pushed myself to a sit and turned around.
“D-d-does R-Rolen know about this?”
She steeled her face, but didn’t answer. Her silence was more telling than anything she could have said.
“Y-y-you are a High P-Priestess, you answer only to-to-to him, b-but you w-went behind his b-back? You threaten t-t-torture w-without his knowledge?”
“Do not preach to me, traitor!”
“Y-you w-w-want information; I w-w-will speak only wi-with him.” I turned forward, away from her, shut my eyes and willed my vision to stop swimming.
“You’re not worthy to be in his presence!”
“Th-then r-r-risk the l-life of everyone in th-this b-b-building and t-torture me,” I snarled. “How m-m-m-much b-blood is your v-vengeance worth?”
Silence, for a moment – then a frustrated scream. She stormed from the room and slammed the door behind her, so loudly that I jumped.
The room was dark again. My head was still screaming in pain. And now that I was alone, all the terror came creeping back in ebbs and flows like the tide.
I drew my knees up to my chest and leaned against the wall. I had to get out, but I couldn’t use Craft with my hands shaking so badly. I shut my eyes and willed away the creeping darkness in my own mind.
Soya, Perenor – gods – where were they?
The door was magically sealed.
Either that or my Craft wasn’t good enough to open a lock. Regardless, it had the same result: I was trapped.
I won’t go into too much detail about the effects of prolonged confinement but to say that they were not pretty. I enjoyed solitude, but only by choice. Having it forced on me – for what turned out to be over a full day, in a near jet-black and dead-silent room – was more profoundly psychologically damaging than I care to admit.
I was not brought food. Occasionally, I would hear people muttering on the other side of the door, but none of them ever came in. Likely they were too scared that I would bring down the building on their heads.
I thought a lot about Soya and Perenor, wondering were they were, hoping beyond hope for their safety. In another situation, I might have prayed, but too much of my faith was gone.
I spent a full day and night cold and hungry and dirty, abjectly and utterly alone. I was reaching the point of questioning whether or not I was actually dead, and death was just a dark and empty room where you sat alone for eternity, until the door opened.
My first hope was that it was food, but the figure cut out from the bright light of the hallways was taller than any nervous, jittery servant.
“Gods, Kiara,” said the figure, whose voice I recognized at once, “what have you done to him?”
“Nothing.”
His Holiness Rolen of House Chastain, Godspeaker to Aemor, strode forward, and in the darkness I could more easily make out the familiar details of his face.
“Be careful, Your Holiness!” said someone – a guard, I could only assume. “He’s not safe!”
“Have you not let him out of this room, Kiara?”
“He’s Godspeaker to Umbrion!” Kiara answered. “What was I meant to do, let him roam free?”
“You were meant to not capture him!” Rolen spun on a heel to face her. The High Priestess – I could see her now, awash in the light from the hall – buckled under his anger. “What were you thinking? Do you really believe this is the sort of behavior the god of love and compassion would condone? Do you think this is emulating Aemor?”
“Your Holiness,” she protested, “he betrayed Aemor! He betrayed all the gods!”
“Umbrion betrayed the gods!”
“He’s Umbrion’s Godspeaker! He—”
“For seven hundred seasons, you have been my High Priestess, Kiara. In all that time, have you still not learned what a Godspeaker is?”
Kiara didn’t seem to know what to say.
“We are servants,” he said, “not conspirators! He has as much agency in Umbrion’s actions as you have in mine!”
“He – he may know something,” the High Priestess said, quietly, sounding defeated.
“And it wasn’t your place to find it!” Rolen shouted back. “I know what this is, Kiara! And to your wounded heart it would sound like wisdom, but a war of gods has no place for Andel tacticians, no matter how great our stakes in the war may be!”
I realized, at that moment, that Rolen was on my side.
And it felt strange – almost surreal – to hear someone defending me so ardently. Perhaps the best defense would always come from a place of empathy.
And when Rolen tur
ned again and looked down at me, I hope my face conveyed the gratitude my tongue could not express.
“Are you all right, Silas?” he asked at last.
It was a weighted question that demanded a long answer. I didn’t response.
“No,” Rolen sighed, “of course you aren’t. Silas, I’m sorry, but I don’t… I don’t know what to do with you.”
That didn’t bother me as much as perhaps it should have. I didn’t know what to do with me, either.
“I can’t let you go, I can’t keep you here… You should have never been brought here in the first place.”
He sighed, looked briefly over his shoulder at Kiara.
“But I’m Aemor’s steward, and it’s my charge to show compassion, even and especially when it is difficult. Perhaps we can come up with a solution together.”
He knelt down in front of me and offered both his hands.
I’d heard stories, of course, of the profound and ell-encompassing solicitude of Aemor’s Godspeaker – doubtlessly the reason Aemor had chosen him at all – but it was a different thing to experience it, especially when it was so profoundly needed. I found myself blinking back tears as I put my hands into his. He helped me to my feet.
“We’ll get you cleaned up,” he said, gripping my wrists reassuringly. “We’ll try to—”
He stilled suddenly. I wasn’t sure why until I felt the air start to stir around me, a current rise around us. I remembered this feeling, and all at once I knew what was happening.
“Your Holiness?” said Kiara from behind. “Are you all right?”
Rolen and I exchanged a knowing look. My heartbeat hastened, thrumming in my ear.
“Hold fast,” he told me, shortly before his eyes were filled with golden light. I wondered if my own eyes had so changed.
His expression cleared, blanked, but the grip on my wrists tightened, and I shrunk away when the golden gaze of Aemor, god of love and compassion, landed on me.
“Brother, come out.”
It was Rolen’s voice, but the words of a god, and when I heard them, the only thing I feared more at that moment than speaking to a god was a god speaking through me.
“N-n-n-n-n-n—”
“Brother,” said Aemor through Rolen, “I have your Godspeaker. You cannot hide from me now.”
No, no, no, no, I chanted again and again, hoping that maybe this time he would hear me, please no, please no, please no.
“What’s happening to him?” the guard asked Kiara.
“Gods above,” was all the High Priestess could say.
“You have avoided your family for long enough, brother. Answer me.”
“N-n-n-n—”
But my words dried up, and I felt that white-hot pressure expanding inside of me, and before I even had the chance to sob in impotent fear, I felt Umbrion overtake me.
He swiveled my eyes first down to my wrists, then up at Rolen. He tugged my mouth downward into a dangerous scowl.
“Get your hands,” he snarled through my voice, “off of my Godspeaker.”
My hands slapped away his arms. Though the gesture was brief and short and sharp, and even though Aemor, through Rolen, barely reacted, the movement sent an audible shockwave through the room – CRACK.
Both guards just outside the door collapsed in a clatter of metal armor. The High Priestess was thrown back into the wall. The heavy wooden door snapped off its hinges and went crashing into the opposite wall of the hallway with a deafening sound.
Aemor lowered Rolen’s hands to his sides. He did not look back as the others struggled to pick themselves up.
“We need to talk,” Aemor said.
“Apparently,” Umbrion answered. “I can hardly do anything without hearing your nagging voice in my ear. I should kill you for what you’ve done to my Godspeaker.”
Aemor narrowed his eyes, not in anger, but in confusion, as if he didn’t understand the concept of killing.
“I did nothing to your Godspeaker,” Aemor answered. “I merely sensed your magic on him and seized an opportunity that presented itself. If you have heard me calling for you, why have you not answered?”
Umbrion drew the corner of my mouth into a smirk. “That is a question wrongly asked, brother-mine,” Umbrion said. “It is not why I do not answer, it is why you insist on calling me.”
“I am owed an explanation.”
The rage in Umbrion was sudden and brutal and all-consuming – CRASH!
A great sound of breaking stone and shattering wind. The front wall of my little room was blown away as though it was no more yielding than parchment, and huge chunks of rock went crashing through doorways and tumbling down the hall.
“You are owed NOTHING!”
Rolen took a half-step back in surprise. After a moment, the surprise shifted to anger.
“Mother would speak to you,” Aemor said.
“I owe Mother even less!” Umbrion snapped back.
“You’re being childish,” Aemor chided.
“And who are you to pass judgment on my actions? What do you know of everything that led me here?”
“You killed their queen, brother. You took away their immortality. Have you not heard their frantic prayers? You have terrified them.”
“Good,” was Umbrion’s only answer, dark and harsh.
“You are bound to protect them! Mother—”
“I am bound to no such thing,” Umbrion said. “What I have always thought was my greatest weakness has become my greatest strength. I am not bound to Mother’s Light like you. I never was.”
Aemor dropped Rolen’s face into a frown, as though he didn’t understand – or perhaps, as though he understood, but the explanation offered no clarity.
“I am done, Aemor,” he hissed, and the words were venom on my lips. “I am done sulking in the shadows and the fear and the self-loathing that you left me in.”
“What—?”
“I am done hating myself for what you let me become. I am choosing to embrace it, and I am taking you all down with me.”
There came a sudden scream behind Aemor, but neither he nor Umbrion seemed particularly interested in it. My mind was racing, and I knew that the chances of getting out of this without someone dying were shrinking by each terrible second. In my mind, I was racing through my priorities. As soon as Umbrion left me, I need to find Soya and Perenor, get out of Iriallum as fast as possible, get to Avenos – would there be a boat I could take?
“Umbrion,” Aemor says, “your foolishness is going to destroy this world!”
Umbrion canted my head to one side.
“Silas!”
It was Soya’s voice. And gods, I wanted to look at her, run to her, flee with her, but Umbrion kept my eyes focused with needle-sharp intensity on Rolen.
“And still you are surprised, brother, that I managed to come to hate you.”
Pressure built within my chest, and no, no, no, no, I had felt this before, I knew what this was. I wanted to scream at the gathered onlookers run, run now, he’ll kill you all, but Umbrion was still in complete control.
“Guards!” said Kiara frantically, and the guards, some of them still picking themselves up, hurried toward Perenor and Soya. I could barely see them out of the corner of my eye.
“Still you are confused as to why I rise up in anger.”
But the guards, well-armored though they were, were no match for my brother and his runed staff. With a few well-timed bursts of energy, I could see him take them all out at once.
But the High Priestess had Craft of her own – a pair of sparring daggers, it looked like – and she proved more of a challenge for him. I couldn’t make out the details of the battle past flashes of light. Umbrion’s own Craft, in any case, was becoming deafening.
“Ten thousand ages of pain and solitude met with callous dismissiveness, and you wonder why I fight back!”
“Not that I don’t love a man who can wield a staff,” Kiara shouted over the roar of the energy, “but your timing is just awf
ul!”
“We’ve come for my brother!” Perenor called back.
“He’s a bit busy destroying the temple!”
Indeed, I was. The entire building was starting to quake, great rumbles from the earth interspersed with tremendous cracking and creaking in the stone and mortar from all sides.
“NO MERCY,” Umbrion screamed through me, and he focused what I knew must have been a killing blow to Rolen, but Rolen vanished just before it landed, and the energy expanded outward.
“Run!” someone yelled, and the cracking turned to the sound of crumbling, collapsing. “Stop fighting, leave the intruders! Run, run!”
Umbrion threw forward my hand, and there was a tremendous cataclysm of light and sound expanding in all directions, and with a terrible rumble of the living rock, I could feel the temple begin to capitulate, to break beneath my feet, and there was screaming and screaming and screaming—
There was a distant, soothing sound of rushing water; a gentle rocking; a warmth – from nearby, someone was humming. It was a familiar melody, but somehow distant, like a hazy childhood memory or fading dream. And for a moment, it felt as though I was being soothed to sleep.
It was the memories that did more to wake me, far more than anything in my environment. When they came clawing at the edges of my mind, I felt my heart knot in my throat, and I scrambled upright—
“Easy! Silas, easy!”
It was Perenor, on the opposites side of a small, utilitarian room. My muscles were sore from disuse and my head ached from the still-healing wound. My heartbeat refused to slow. The temple – Umbrion, Aemor – what—?
“You’re all right, you’re safe.”
I was most certainly not all right and whether or not I was ever safe was up for some spirited debate. We seemed to be alone, at least. It was the only comfort I could find – that Umbrion, if nothing else, was not actively inside me and forcing me to kill. Beyond that, I saw little that would make me feel safe.
“Wh-wh-wh-wh—”
“On a ship,” he answered. “The last ship bound for Avenos before the monsoon.”
That explained the rocking sensation – and likely the nausea, although that may have been from fear. I looked down at myself. I was still wearing the same clothes in which I had been taken prisoner, still dirty from several days without changing or bathing.
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