by David Weber
And yet, there was also a sort of fitness, almost a logic, to Paratha's chosen course, for the Crone was the Avenger. She was the aspect of the goddess most steeped in blood and vengeance. Her Third Face, most apt to merciless destruction. There were those, including one Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, who felt that the Crone all too often verged upon the Dark Herself, and so perhaps there was a certain resonance between this chapel and the shadowy web which rode Paratha's shoulders and soul.
"Tell me, Major Kharlan," she asked casually, "have you been in Lillinara's service long?"
"Almost twelve years, Milady," Paratha replied.
"And how long have you commanded the Voice's guards?"
"Only since she arrived here," Paratha said, glancing back over her shoulder at Kaeritha with another smile. "I was assigned to the Quaysar Guard eight years ago, and I commanded the previous Voice's guards for almost a year and a half before her death."
"I see," Kaeritha murmured, and the major returned her attention to leading the way through the temple.
They passed through the chapel, and Kaeritha felt the accumulation of Darkness pressing against her shoulders, like a physical presence at her back, as she moved deeper and deeper into the miasma of corruption which had invaded the temple. She was afraid, more afraid than she'd believed she could be even after she'd deduced that Quaysar must be the center of it all. Whatever evil was at work here, it was subtle and terrifyingly powerful, and it must have worked its weavings even longer than she'd believed possible. The outer precincts of the temple, and those members of the temple community furthest from the centers of power, like the gate guards who'd greeted her upon her arrival, were least affected. She wondered if that was deliberate. Had they been left alone, aside from just enough tampering to keep them from noticing what was happening at Quaysar's core, as a part of the corruption's mask? Or had whatever power of the Dark was at work here simply left them for later, after it had fully secured its grasp on the inner temple?
Not that it mattered much either way at the moment. What mattered were the barriers she sensed going up behind her. The waiting strands of power, snapping up, no longer threads but cables. The fly had entered the web of its own volition, arrogant in its own self-confidence, and now it was too late for escape.
She glanced casually over her shoulder and saw more than a dozen other women, the ones who'd reacted most strongly to the touch of Paratha's Darkness, following behind. They looked as if they were merely continuing whatever errands had been theirs before Kaeritha's arrival, but she knew better. She could See the latticework of diseased radiance which bound them together, and the shroud about Paratha was growing stronger, as if it were less and less concerned about even attempting to conceal its presence.
They passed rooms and chambers whose functions Kaeritha could only guess at, and then they entered what was obviously a more residential area of the temple. She had a vague impression of beautiful works of art, religious artifacts, mosaics and magnificent fabrics. Fountains sang sweetly, water splashed and trickled through ornate channels where huge golden fish swam like lazy dreams, and a cool, hushed splendor lay welcomingly all about her.
She noticed all of it . . . and none of it. It was unimportant, peripheral, brushed aside by the tempest of Darkness gathering all about her, sweeping towards her from all directions. It was a subtler and less barbaric Darkness than she and Bahzell and Vaijon had confronted in the Navahkan temple of Sharnā , and yet it was just as strong. Possibly even stronger, and edged with a malice and a sense of endless, cunning patience far beyond that of Sharnā and his tools.
And she faced it alone.
Paratha opened a final pair of double doors of polished ebony inlaid with alabaster moons, and bowed deeply to Kaeritha. The major's smile was as deep and apparently sincere as the one with which she'd first greeted Kaeritha, but the mask had grown increasingly threadbare. Kaeritha Saw the same green-yellow glow at the backs of Paratha's eyes, and she wondered what the other woman Saw when she looked at her.
"The Voice awaits you, Milady Champion," Paratha said graciously, and Kaeritha nodded and stepped past her through the ebony doors.
The outsized chamber beyond was obviously intended for formal audiences, yet it was equally obviously part of someone's personal living quarters. Pieces of art, statues, and furniture—much of it comfortably worn, for all its splendor—formed an inviting focus for the vaguely thronelike chair at the chamber's center.
A woman in the glowing white robes of a Voice of Lillinara sat in that chair. She was young, and quite beautiful, with long hair almost as black as Kaeritha's own and huge brown eyes in an oval face. Or Kaeritha thought so, anyway. It was hard to be certain when the poison-green glare radiating from the Voice blinded her so.
"Greetings, Champion of Tomanâk," a silvery soprano, sweeter and more melodious than Kaeritha's, said. "I have yearned for longer than you may believe to greet a champion of one of Lillinara's brothers in this temple."
"Have you, indeed, Milady?" Kaeritha replied, and no one else needed to know how much effort it took to keep her own voice conversational and no more than pleasant. "I'm pleased to hear that, because I've found myself equally eager to make your acquaintance."
"Then it would seem to be a fortunate thing that both of our desires have been satisfied this same day," the Voice said.
Kaeritha nodded and bent her head in the slightest of bows. She straightened, rested the heel of her right hand lightly on the hilt of one of her swords, and opened her mouth to speak again.
But before she could say a word, she felt a vast, powerful presence strike out at her. It slammed over her like a tidal wave, crushing as an earthquake, liquid and yet thicker and stronger than mortar or cement. It wrapped a crushing cocoon about her, reaching out to seize her and hold her motionless, and her eyes snapped wide.
"I don't know what you intended to say, Champion," that soprano voice said, and now it was colder than a Vonderland winter and sibilant menace seemed to hiss in its depths. "It doesn't matter, though." The Voice laughed, the sound like fragments of glass shattering on a stone floor, and shook her head. "The arrogance of you 'champions'! Each of you so confident he or she will be protected and guided and warded from harm! Until, of course, the time comes for someone like your master to discard you."
Kaeritha felt the power behind the Voice pressing upon her own vocal cords to silence her, and said nothing. She only gazed at the Voice, standing motionless in the clinging web of Dark power, and the Voice laughed again and stood.
"I suppose it's possible you truly have found a way to interfere with my plans here, little champion. If so, that will be more than a mere inconvenience. You see? I admit it. Yet it isn't something I haven't planned against and allowed for all along. The time had to come when someone would begin to suspect my Mistress was playing Her little games here in Quaysar. But, oh, Dame Kaeritha, the damage I've done to your precious war maids and their kingdom first! But perhaps you'd care to dispute that with me?"
She made a small gesture, and Kaeritha felt the pressure on her vocal cords vanish.
"You had something you'd care to say?" the Voice mocked her.
"They aren't my 'precious war maids,' " Kaeritha said after a moment, and even she was vaguely surprised by how calm and steady her voice sounded. "And you're scarcely the first to try to do them ill. Some of the damage you've inflicted will stick, no doubt. I admit that. But damage can be healed, and Tomanâk —" it seemed to her that the Voice flinched ever so slightly at that name "—is the God of Truth, as well as Justice and War. And the truth is always the bane of the Dark, is it not, O 'Voice'?"
"So you truly think these stone-skulled Sothōii will actually believe a word of it? Or that the war maids themselves will believe it?" The Voice laughed yet again. "I think not, little champion. My plans go too deep and my web is too broad for that. I've touched and . . . convinced too many people—like that pathetic little puppet Lanitha, who believes Lillinara Herself commanded her to help
safeguard my minor alterations so the war maids get what should have been theirs to begin with. Or those angry little war maids, each so eager to 'avenge' herself for all those real and imagined wrongs. Or your darling Yalith and her Council, who don't even remember that their documents used to say anything else. As you yourself told their fool of an archivist, those who already hate and despise the war maids—those like Trisu—will never believe that they didn't forge the 'original documents' at Kalatha. And the war maids won't believe they're forgeries either. Not after all my careful spadework. And not without a champion of Tomanâk to attest to the legitimacy of Trisu's copies . . . and to explain how Kalatha's come to have been altered without the connivance of Yalith and her Town Council. And I'm very much afraid you won't be around to tell them."
"Perhaps not," Kaeritha said calmly. "There are, however, other champions of Tomanâk, and one of them will shortly know all I know and everything I've deduced. I think I could safely rely upon him to accomplish my task for me, if it were necessary."
The Voice's brown eyes narrowed and she frowned. But then she forced her expression to smooth once again, and shrugged.
"Perhaps you're correct, little champion," she said lightly. "Personally, I think the damage will linger. I've found such fertile ground on both sides—the lords who hate and loath everything the war maids stand for, and the war maids whose resentment of all the insults and injustices they and their sisters have endured over the years burns equally hot and bitter. Oh, yes, those will listen to me, not your precious fellow champion. They'll believe what suits their prejudices and hatreds, and I will send my handmaidens forth to spread the word among them. My handmaidens, little champion, not those of that stupid, gutless bitch this place was built for!"
She glared at Kaeritha, and the knight felt the exultant hatred pouring off of her like smoke and acid.
"And to fan the flames properly," the false Voice continued, her soprano suddenly soft and vicious . . . and hungry, "Trisu is about to take matters into his own hands."
Kaeritha said nothing, but the other woman saw the question in her eyes and laughed coldly.
"There are already those who believe he connived at—or possibly even personally ordered—the murder of two handmaidens of Lillinara. He didn't, of course. For all his bigotry, he's proven irritatingly resistant to suggestions which might have led him to that sort of direct action. But that isn't what the war maids think. And it won't be what they think when men in his colors attack Quaysar itself. When they ride in through the gates of the town and the temple under his banner, coming as envoys to the Voice, and then butcher every citizen of Quaysar and every servant of the temple they can catch."
Despite herself, Kaeritha couldn't keep the horror of the images the false Voice's words evoked out of her eyes, and the other woman's smile belonged on something from the depths of Krahana's darkest hell.
"There will be survivors, of course. There always are, aren't there? And I'll see to it that none of the survivors anyone knows about were ever part of my own little web. The most attentive examination by one of your own infallible champions of Tomanâk will only demonstrate that they're telling the truth about what they saw and who they saw doing it. And one of the things they'll see, little champion, will be myself and my personal guards and the most senior priestesses, barricading ourselves into the Chapel of the Crone to make our final stand. Trisu's men will attempt to break into it after us, of course. And I will call down the Lady's Wrath to utterly destroy the chapel's attackers . . . and everyone inside it. Of course, it may not be the Wrath of the precise Lady everyone will assume it was, but no matter. The blast and fires will neatly explain why there are no bodies. Or, at least, none of our bodies."
She shook her head in mock sorrow.
"No doubt some of Trisu's fellows will be horrified. Others will be charitable enough to believe he simply ran mad, but some of them will feel he was justified in burning out this nest of perversions, especially when the question of forged documents comes to the fore. And whatever Tellian and the Crown may do, little champion, the damage will be done. If Trisu is punished while protesting his innocence and flourishing his proof of forgery, then his fellow lords will blame his liege and the King for a miscarriage of justice. And if he isn't punished—if, for example, some interfering busybody champion of Tomanâk should examine him and find he's telling the truth and had nothing to do with the attack—then the war maids will be convinced it's all part of a cover-up and that he's escaped justice. And so will be many within the Church of Lillinara."
"Was that your plan all along?" Kaeritha asked. "To sow dissension and hatred and distrust?"
"Well, that and to enjoy the pretty fires and all the lovely killing, of course," the false Voice agreed, pouting as she studied her polished fingernails.
"I see." Kaeritha considered that for a moment, then cocked an eyebrow at the other woman. "I imagine it wasn't too difficult to assassinate the old Voice once Major Kharlan became the commander of her bodyguards. I don't know whether you used poison or a spell, and I don't suppose it matters much, either way. But I would like to know what you did with the Voice who was supposed to replace her."
The false Voice froze, staring at her for just a moment. It was only an instant, almost too brief to be noticed, and then she smiled.
"What makes you think anyone did anything 'with' me? There was no need. It's not as if I were the first oh-so-perfect, straight and narrow priest or priestess to realize the truth, you know. Or would you pretend that no others have ever joined me in transferring my allegiance to a goddess more worthy of my worship?"
"No," Kaeritha acknowledged. "But it's not as if it happens very often, either. And it's never happened at all in the case of a true Voice. Nor has it in your case. You were never a priestess of the Mother—or did you truly think you could fool a champion of Tomanâk about that?" She grimaced. "I knew the moment I Saw you that you were no priestess of Lillinara. In fact, I'm not entirely certain you were ever even human in the first place. But the one thing I'm positive of is that whoever—or whatever—you may be or look like, you are not the Voice the Church assigned here."
"Very clever," the false Voice hissed. She glared at Kaeritha for several seconds, then shook herself. "I'm afraid that sweet little girl suffered a mischief before she could take up her duties here," she said with pious sorrow. "I know how dreadfully it disappointed her—in fact, she told me so herself, just before I cut her heart out and Paratha and I ate it in front of her." She smiled viciously. "And since it bothered her so, and since I was in some small way responsible for her failure, I thought it incumbent upon me to come and discharge those responsibilities for her. A duty which I am now about to complete."
"Ah." Kaeritha nodded. "And just where do I fit into these plans of yours?" she inquired.
"Why, you die, of course," the false Voice told her. "Oh, not immediately—not physically, that is. I'm afraid we'll have to settle for just destroying your soul, for the moment. Then I'll replace it with a little demon whose essence I happen to have handy. He'll keep the flesh alive until 'Trisu' gets around to attacking. Who knows?" She smiled terribly. "Perhaps he'll enjoy experimenting with some of my guards. I'm afraid you won't be around anymore to observe the way he broadens your sexual horizons, but no doubt he'll be amused. And then, when Trisu attacks, you'll die gallantly, fighting to defend the temple against its desecrators. I think that will add a certain artistic finish to the entire affair, don't you? With a little luck, it will bring your entire church into the fray against Trisu. Won't that be lovely? The church of the god of justice helping to destroy the innocent man who didn't have a thing to do with your fate? And whether that happens or not, the opportunity to treat one of Tomanâk's little pets to the experience she so amply deserves would make this entire investment of effort worth while in its own right."
"I see," Kaeritha repeated. "And you believe you can do all of this to me because —?"
"I don't believe anything," the false Voice
told her flatly. "You've been mine to do with as I chose from the instant you stepped into this chamber, you stupid bitch. Why do you think you haven't been able to so much as move your head, or shift your feet?"
"A good question," Kaeritha conceded. "But there's a better one."
"What 'better one'?" the false Voice sneered disdainfully.
"Why do you think I haven't been able to?" Kaeritha asked calmly, and both swords hissed from their sheaths as she catapulted towards the other woman.
The sudden eruption of movement took the false Voice completely by surprise. She'd never even suspected that Kaeritha had simply chosen not to move or speak when she became aware of the power crushing down upon her. Whoever—or whatever—the "Voice" might be, she'd never before tried to control a champion of Tomanâk. If she had, she would have realized that no coercion, no spell of control or compulsion, even backed by the power of another god's avatar, could hold the will or mind of one who had sworn herself to the War God's service and touched His soul as He had touched hers. And because the false Voice hadn't realized that, she was still staring at Kaeritha—gawking in disbelief—as two matched short swords wrapped in coronas of brilliant blue fire drove through her heart and lungs.
A scream of agony cored with fury ripped through the audience chamber as the creature masquerading as a Voice of Lillinara fell back in a scalding gush of blood. Kaeritha twisted her wrists before the swords slid free, and even as she did, she went forward on the ball of her left foot while her right foot flashed up behind her. The heel of her heavy riding boot smashed into the person she'd sensed charging up behind her. It wasn't the clean, central strike she'd hoped for, but it was enough to deflect the attack and send the attacker crashing to the floor with a whooping cry of anguish.