Chapter One
Synod gathers, tell them lies:
Efforts gathered in your pride
Lost beneath the granite face.
Painted Lord, stand by her side;
Repentance is the Temple’s grace.
“Failures!”
Krais frowned and tried to turn away, but his father’s voice chased him down the corridor, down below the ship’s deck. The crate in front of him had fallen from the stacks, two of the ropes having frayed and snapped in the cargo net meant to hold it safely in place.
“How dare the Goddess give me such worthless sons—pathetic failures, all three of you!”
No, don’t touch it—don’t touch—! His fingers scooped and clutched, and the lid popped free just as he got the crate halfway upright. The bulk of the weight forced the crate to tilt and drop, and his arms just . . . they just reflexively closed in, rushing his hand into the opening. Those fingers came away sticky, smarting at a stab of pain from the sliver of potion-coated glass that raked across his fingertips.
Lust speared through him even as the wounds burned and ached. He clenched his hand around the flogger filched from the bo’sun’s chest, raised it to beat his own back—No, don’t do that, it didn’t work! It didn’t—
Pleasure exploded across his back, soaking in bloodied ribbons down through his limbs. It mixed badly with the sound of his father’s voice ranting and cursing his sons. Especially Krais, his firstborn. Painfully aroused, Krais struggled to find a defense, an argument, a . . .
A voice threaded through this nightmare of a dream. A voice that painted shimering letters across the turmoil within his mind, like the liquid gold of sunrise on waves.
Hush, little writer; don’t say a thing!
Granite reveals redemption’s face.
Accept your penance with no objecting.
Silence leads you to the right place.
Menda? Speaking of a prophecy . . . ? Not the full prophecy, of course; his Goddess did not recite all eight lines in his mind, just the first four. In fact, he couldn’t even see Her, though there was a slender, tanned woman at the edge of his vision. The wind played with her wavy brown locks, and with the sculpted, flower-petal skirts of her calf-length white dress. He tried to approach her, but she remained the exact same distance from him however fast or slow he tried to walk.
. . . A dream. This was a dream. A jumble of memories from six months ago.
That realization pulled him back into the waking world, into a realm of ropes cradling his muscles, the scents of salt and tar, fish and seaweed, of unwashed clothes and sweaty, salt-rinsed bodies. The lingering ache in his shaft, aroused by his suffering, warred with the pressing need in his bladder for a refreshing room. Not that he’d get one on board a ship, since the only choices they had were a slops pot or aiming over the rails, but . . .
Pain jabbed him in the thigh, a poke from something unpleasantly pointy. Twitching fully awake in his hammock, Krais swung his arm up and out of the hammock netting, striking at the offender. His fist hit something meaty, and he heard his youngest brother, Gayn, yelp from the bruising thump. He would have struck again, cracking his eyes open, but the natural rocking of the ship versus the hammock swung Krais out of range.
“Ow! You stupid smear! That hurt,” Gayn complained, stepping farther back out of range to rub at his shoulder without risk of a second smack. He rubbed awkwardly; the arm that had been broken six months ago had been set properly by the Nightfall Healers, set and healed, but a bad storm two weeks ago had badly rocked the ship. The youngest Puhon brother had cracked his arm hard on a doorframe. He wasn’t the only crewman injured, but this time, something had gone wrong in the re-healing.
That injury gave him constant little aches along his outer forearm, making the youngest Puhon brother irritable. Krais knew he should give his sibling some slack in the sails. Whatever had gone wrong, a standard bone-healing spell wouldn’t fix it, though they had all tried; all three brothers, the ship’s captain, the ship’s mage, who wasn’t a fully trained Healer since that wasn’t a strong affinity in his magic . . .
Chronic pain—however low-key—could drive anyone into a chronically irritable state. Until his own suffering, Krais hadn’t understood just how exhausting any form of constant stimulation could be. He and his brothers had always been quite healthy, and had never had to struggle for more than a few weeks at most with any injury, any illness, any source of suffering.
But even accounting for the ache goading Gayn’s anger, Krais’ brother was a pain, not just suffering from one. Gayn had always been a little too like their father, Puhon Dagan. Krais had tried to be like him. Foren had tried. Gayn simply was. Their father had looked down upon his sons, watched their efforts, and had most often praised the youngest of the three Puhon boys. That praise had only encouraged Gayn to emulate their sire all the more.
He also was not going away, and he didn’t look the least bit repentant about the pencil gripped in his injured hand. Gripping something seemed to ease the ache, in a weird way. It was, however, a reminder that Gayn could use the writing stick on him again.
“Don’t poke me and I won’t hit you, you pointless pencil,” Krais retorted. He did so instead of making some sort of concilliatory reply, justifiably irritated at being robbed of much-needed sleep. The closer they came to the shores of Mendhi, the more these jumbled nightmares plagued him.
Since Gayn didn’t look like he would be going away, Krais unrolled from the hammock—on the far side of it from his brother—and frowned at at his sibling. He did so while steadying himself against the rhythmic sway of the ship, one hand touching the nearby wooden planks of the bulkhead. The glow from the mage-globe by the door hadn’t been turned up, but neither did daylight shine through the porthole outside.
Given how tired he felt, Krais thought he might have slept only an hour or so at most. There should have been no reason for Gayn to disrupt his sleep. “Why did you wake me so early? What’s happening?”
Gayn wrinkled his flat nose, the subtle lines of his facial tattoos making him look a tiny bit wrinkled, and thus quite a bit older than his tender twenty-one years. “You didn’t wake up when Father started yelling at us through the mirror next door. You should’ve been there, getting yelled at, instead of Foren and me. He yelled extra hard at us for your faults.”
“Suffer. It’s my turn to sleep,” Krais stated, frowning at his sibling as much for news of yet another scrying as for the rude interruption.
Their father refused to let up on expressing his disappointment in his sons. Their failure had been prophesied by multiple Seers, but no, that wasn’t good enough for Puhon Dagan’thio, Elder Disciplinarian of the Hierarchy. Nothing would ever be good enough for the Elder Disciplinarian of the Hierarchy. Not even his own sons.
Krais was exhausted from years and years of fighting for his father’s admiration, his father’s love. He no longer cared to give and give to their sire, with nothing consistently or frequently returned to him or his brothers in reciprocation. A stranger had cared more for his well-being than his own father. A stranger Krais had been sent to kill, and who knew he’d been sent to kill her, had shown more care for him than his own flesh and blood.
Having no intention of staying awake long enough to be yelled at again, Krais dismissed the yet-another-scry-scolding news. Instead, he adjusted the hammock netting so he could return to sleep. Just when he got it untangled, the tallest of the three Puhon brothers entered the cabin. Twenty-six and a thumb’s width taller than Krais, Foren ducked a little on entering. The ship carrying them was Mendhite made, so the doorways were taller than those found in most other nations, but he was still quite tall even for a Mendhite, and the rocking of the ship made anyone over six-and-a-half foot-lengths duck. All three brothers exceeded that.
All three were tall and strong, like their father. Smart and loyal, like their father. Hard and cold, like their father. . . . Except Krais could not bring himself to follow blindly anymore. He was still tough, but he was no longer quite so hard and cold. Still, his brothers were not going to let up on him. They were loyal to each other, but being raised mostly by their Disciplinarian father, with their own mother choosing to aid her husband in being equally strict with her sons, they had not grown up with any soft sides. Disciplined, but not soft.
“Did you come to dip your pen in my blood as well?” Krais asked dryly, eyeing his middle-born brother. “If you’re going to write out my sins, do so silently. I need my sleep.”
Foren narrowed his dark brown eyes, so dark they looked black under anything less than full light. “I should, given how you weren’t awake to take Father’s ire from Gayn. No, the lookout in the crow’s nest has spotted the Second East Lighthouse of Mendhi. The captain and the navigator both calculated we’re less than six hours from port if I keep the sails full with enspelled winds.”
“That means we’ll be at the heart of the city before the break of dawn,” Gayn murmured. He cradled his arm, rubbing at it. For once, he looked hopeful rather than irritated. “I can get a competent Healer to look at this thing.”
“We did the best we could when it rebroke,” Krais pointed out with a sigh. Tired and just wanting sleep, he fussed again with the hammock netting. “We have no more priests of the other Gods on board. Our own went home months ago. Our duties are nearly discharged . . . and then, Menda willing, we’ll find the time to recover from this whole debacle.”
Foren frowned at him. “You began all of this with more enthusiasm than either of us.”
He tried to say, I’m about to be punished for something beyond my control. But a voice echoed out of his memories, ethereal, immortal, and accompanied at the corners of his eyes by the swirling scrawls of hundreds of languages. The tongues that had been spoken and written at the Convocation of Gods and Man half a year ago.
. . . Hush little writer; don’t say a thing . . .
Instead, Krais merely said, “I am tired, I have less than six hours in which to sleep, and I doubt we will get any more sleep for a full day once we arrive. We will need to make a report in person to the Hierarchy on our failure in foreign lands . . . and explain the cost and expense of staying abroad for several months more than we should have, after having our entire fleet commandeered by the Gods.”
“Well, I can’t sleep,” Gayn countered, scowling at him. “I don’t see how you could. The Hierarch—“
“I know very well that the Hierarch, the Elder Exchequer, the Elder Priest, the Elder Disciplinarian”—their own father—“the Elder Librarian, and for all I know, even the Elder Agriculturalist will all want to how we failed, why we failed, and how we can somehow shoulder the blame for their plan,” Krais retorted. “We never had a chance. Not when the Gods Themselves decreed it. But they’re just going to blame us, whipped on by the Elder Disciplinarian.”
Foren actually smirked a little at Krais’ play on words. Gayn, however, frowned. “Do not mock the solemn responsibilities and duties of Father’s training and position. If I weren’t needed to help him in other ways, I’d whip you myself for speaking so disrespectfully of the Hierarchy!”
More like if you hadn’t failed the honor-tests of the Disciplinarians . . . for reasons unknown to anyone but the Goddess, Krais thought. He kept his mouth shut on that thought. Instead, he simply said, “It is late, and I will need my sleep. Especially since you seem to think I should be the one attracting all their energy and attention in this matter. Goodnight, Gayn. Goodnight, Foren. I am going back to sleep.”
Foren grunted, turned, and left the cabin, closing the door behind him. Gayn muttered under his breath, but moved over to the pallet set in a net resting partially on the cabin floor; his injury did not allow him to mount a hammock easily, so wrapping its sides in a sort of sling to keep the occupant from rolling was the next best solution.
Tugging on the edge of the hammock as he turned, Krais hitched his rump into place, then swiveled his body around, settling in with what by now was long-practiced balance. The swaying of the hammock mollified some of the swaying of the ship, lulling him toward rest.
Each brother had to conserve his magical strength where possible. The reason why it had taken them such a short time to circumnavigate the entire globe, delivering priests partially by ship and partially by mirror-Gate, was because each of the three Puhon brothers were above average in magical strength. Each had the capacity to shield their ship from any storms in the sky, any rocks below the waves, and any beasts or pirates thinking that their transport would be easy prey.
Despite being born to a nation filled with lakes, inlets, and bays, Krais hadn’t known there were so many nautical spells in the world until this voyage. Unfortunately, not a single one of them would be of any use at deflecting their sire’s unjust anger. He sighed and wiggled to get comfortable in the hammock, shutting out Gayn’s mutterings.
Except, he couldn’t. Just a simple phrase, “ . . . If I had made it to Disciplinarian . . .,” caught at his ears. Reminding Krais of the reason why he had failed to enter the ranks. His failure hadn’t been under the eyes of the Goddess of Writing, petitioning Her for the right to bear the secret sigils that would allow a Disciplinarian to interrupt and lock down another mage’s magics, as Gayn’s had been. As Foren’s had been, too; both younger brothers had found themselves rejected each in their own time, their own attempt during their initiate’s vigil in the Temple.
No, Krais’ rejection had occurred much earlier than that. To be a Disciplinarian, one had to be able to submit as well as dominate . . . and Krais could not do it. He could not submit. He couldn’t even fake it just to please his father. Faking the mindset that a Goddess would read midway through his training would not gain him the position Dagan’thio wanted his eldest son to attain. Even as a youth of eighteen, before his father had become the Elder, Krais had known that. Thirteen years later, he served instead as the head of a sort of private mage-warrior army of three.
But it was never enough for their father. Now the Puhon sons came home with a big, fat failure as the only result for all their effort. The Elder of Disciplinarians would not treat that failure lightly, however impossible it might have been.
Sleep did not come quickly for Krais, despite the comfort of his swaying, makeshift bed.
Pelai did not know how she came to be standing in a vast, rolling field of wheat. Nor why dozens of gondolas could glide through the rippling stalks as though they were waterways. In retrospect, the cattle grazing in the lakes and streams should have given her a clue. Wading through the golden, bearded stalks felt like wading through strangely scratchy warm water. Walk as fast and as far as she could, she could not keep up with the gondoliers poling through the fields like they were land-bound reed beds.
Villae dotted the landscape sumptous manor-homes surrounded by ornate gardens; white plaster gleamed off their walls, their golden and green tiled roofs peaking in arches at the ridgepoles and curling up at the corners. Redwood pillars supported the porticos and porch roofs, and blue and gray stone tiles lined the floors . . . which formed another point of oddity; she could see into the heart of every home. Here, a child played with a miniature wooden cart and the rag-animals used to pull it; tools for woodworking sat in the wagon’s bed. There, a father chopped up a book into little cubes and fed them one spoonful at a time to his baby, while smiling and telling tales to go with each morsel of information.
Okay . . . this is definitely a dream. Nobody would dare chop up a book within Mendhi’s borders, Pelai thought. Knowing it was a dream, of course, did not wake her from the dreaming. She waded through the wheatfield waters, her combat kilt brushing aside the sharp stalks, protecting her thighs to her knees just as her plate-guarded boots protected her from knees to toes. Her fitted vest covered her from waist to shoulders, leaving most of . . .
No, even her wrists were bare, she realized, protectively bringing them in close to conceal the special disciplining tattoos inked on their insides. The power to suppress and subdue at will another mage’s energies was not lightly granted to anyone. After nearly fourteen years of owning them, she held to the habit of hiding her wrists even in the privacy of her own home, so to be walking about in public with her wrists exposed—even just in a dream, in a broad wheat field/pond thing with no misplaced gondoliers near her—unnerved her.
A strong wind blew through, tossing her hair around her face in dark, writhing tendrils. She scraped it back, squinting against the sea-scented breeze, and watched the stalks of wheat bob and sway, bending and twisting unnaturally into letter shapes.
Hush, little Guardian; stand your ground.
Wisdom faked will try to know.
The sight is different from the sound.
Spoken words aren’t what scrolls show.
Those words . . . The wind whipped harder around her, dissolving the wheat, the boats, the buildings, until she hung suspended in a maelstrom, a whirlwind . . . the Vortex. Six months ago, Pelai had struggled to control and master a Fountain completely unlike the orderly, well-shaped one at the Temple. She had failed. She had not been able to reshape it in the ways needed, and had been forced to just maintain her grip, her own self-control.
The Vortex of, well, the land was no longer Mekhana, no longer had a name, though one day it might call itself Guildara . . . that land’s Fountain had shaken her confidence on being able to control the Fountain of the Temple of the Painted Warriors of Mendhi. Forcing herself to stay calm and still, keeping herself focused in the dream, Pelai watched the winds and waters of the Vortex ripping things into horizontal strips and stripes around her. If the Temple Fountain ever went rogue . . .
It will not go rogue, she reminded herself. Guardian Alonnen explained that his Fountain was the result of generations of poorly trained mages weaving obfuscations and illusions to hide themselves from their God . . . their ex-God, rather. My hubris lay in thinking that one Fountain would be exactly like any other. I will remember that I was never harmed by the Vortex, as any weaker mage might’ve been injured, even incinerated. I simply could not master the complex chaos of that place.
Our Fountain is a model of calm purity. . . . Is that what You meant by telling me that “Wisdom faked will try to know,” my Goddess? she asked the dream, calming her thoughts so that she could listen and watch for the words of Menda. I now know that my false confidence needs to be tempered by experience. Through it, I know true wisdom . . .
With inner calmness came exterior calm. The shredded bits of landscape slowed and slid back into place around her. Wind still ruffled the fuzzy heads of wheat, dancing them in rippling gusts. For a moment, she watched a clutch of elderly and younger men stepping off the deck of a ferry barge, their clothes dusty from travel, their staves worn at the bases from striking the surfaces of a thousand roads. Wherever they went, whether it was the tread of their worn sandals and boots, or the scrape of their clothing and cloak hems against the wheat now covering everything, the wheat looked blighted and moldy.
Then a clutch of stalks right in front of her bent themselves into Mendhite characters, recapturing her attention by forming a very clearly marked No.
The wheat stalks parted abruptly, as if plowed aside by the prow of a spell-speeded boat. Whatever invisible hands parted the landscape, it arrowed straight to the men in the distance, circled around them hard enough to kick up seeds and stalks all around, then shot straight back to her . . . and geysered up around her, kicking her into the air, too. Flung up high, she looked down for one moment at the shape of the wheat flattened around the scholarly men, some sort of circle with stubby rays around the edges, a shape that looked annoyingly familiar . . . then she came crashing down.
Naranna Pelai jolted herself awake before she could splatter on the ground. Always a good idea, when dreaming. Unfortunately, jerking up into a sitting position prompted a disgusted yowl from Purrsus. Not that she could really see her cat, though she felt his weight and heat curled up atop her bedding by her hip, but she felt his annoyed swipe at her through the thin blanket and sheet that were all the warm summer night needed.
She heard him yawn, felt him pushing his paws against her thigh as he stretched, the retraction of his dainty feet as he curled up into a ball again. Heard him begin to purr, a sound louder than the slowly calming beat of her heart. Squinting protectively, Pelai leaned over and touched the runes that controlled the crystal on her bedpost. Purrsus grumbled at the low but still intrusive golden light she summoned. His black leather collar, studded with lapis stones picked to match his eyes, gleamed faintly, until the shadow of his dark gray foreleg lifted up over his dark muzzle, just so that the cat could hide those blue eyes from the evil, awful, horribly rude light.
Sympathizing, Pelai waited a few moments for her own eyes to adjust, then found the pencil and tablet of paper she kept by her bed, so that she could write down everything. Gods and Goddesses did not deliver prophecies personally every day. Not to ordinary citizens. Not on ordinary days. But six months ago, the Convocation of Gods and Man had been restarted after roughly two centuries of inadvertent hiatus. During those two weeks, many people around the world had heard the voices of their local Patron Deities murmuring in their hearts and their heads.
For some reason, Pelai had been included in the numbers of those given such revelations.
She had seen two prophecies, not just one. In writing, of course, on a great sheet that looked like an ancient palimpsest. Parchment, the inner skin of a sheep or goat, carefully separated and treated to turn it into a thin but tough page, one suitable for writing upon, scraping clean, and writing again with ink, layer after layer carefully used and reused in the parsimony of the ancient days, before wood pulp paper had been invented and industrialized via specialized mage workers to make it relatively cheap.
Her verse was easy to remember:
Hush, little Guardian; stand your ground.
Wisdom faked will try to know.
The sight is different from the sound.
Spoken words aren’t what scrolls show.
For one will walk away from humanity,
And one of them will betray humanity,
And one of them will save humanity.
Love, not hate, is what must grow.
But beneath that, scraped faint on the palimpsest of her dreams, so that only her trained memory could remember the different letters beneath the shape of her own, had lain the traces of another:
Hush, little writer; don’t say a thing!
Granite reveals redemption’s face.
Accept your penance with no objecting.
Silence leads you to the right place.
To hot-aired hate, bend unbreaking.
Heroes can rise from fallen grace . . .
For one of you will save humanity,
Another of you will betray humanity,
The third will walk away from humanity.
But all are needed to save your whole race.
She was not a Guardian. Yet. But not for much longer. Guardian Tipa’thia’s strength faded with each month, each week, and of late, each single day. Any day now, Tipa would either die or resign. Mages could perform miraculous spells and could retain a semblance of vitality for a long while, but even the strongest of mages eventually burned out. Human lives were only ever so long, and with rare exception, never surpassed even a century in length.
So the first, stronger-written verse should apply to her, to something she would have to do or learn in the coming months. Something to look up in the Great Library no doubt. The half-hidden verse applied to someone who needed redemption, to someone who needed to bow without breaking. To a submissive, perhaps, but more likely to someone who would be assigned to her for disciplining. Otherwise, why would she be allowed to glimpse it?
Which makes perfect sense, because Dagan’thio is insisting his sons need punishing for their failure . . . and if ever there were a trio who needed a lesson in repentance and redemption, it’s those three overgrown brats.
She did not have a good opinion of any of them. The middle brother, Foren, tended to just slope through life, following the lead of others. Like a puddle of ink, spilling down into the lowest, most comfortable spot, uncaring of the stains he left behind. The least objectionable of the three, but Goddess, she wished he’d grow a spine and think for himself!
The youngest brother, Gayn, actively parroted his sire. Everything he did, he did so colored by the attitude that if the Elder Disciplinarian could get away with something, so could he. Crapping all over everything just like a Mendhite parrot, too, and squawking about subjects he shouldn’t have any say in handling.
Unlike his brothers, who could and did bow to the will of others, Krais wasn’t the least bit bendable. Too rigid, rather, since the eldest Puhon sibling went about his father-assigned tasks ruthlessly. She had been there on the day Krais had been ordered to submit to Disciplining of his own free will. Had seen him refuse to kneel to anyone. Pelai actually preferred that kind of spine, that kind of independence . . . but oh, she wished the stupid warrior would put some thought into the causes he supported, the actions he enforced!
Annoying, all three of them . . . and all three will be mine to discipline, when they finally come home. Lucky me . . . Oh, the joys of being the senior-most Disciplinarian on permanent duty here at the Painted Temple, on the outskirts of Mendham. Outside of the Elder Disciplinarian, of course, but the law was the law. No matter how much Dagan’thio might wish to take a whip to his own sons, the law firmly prevented that.
Shifting her hand to the silky, long-furred cat curled up by her hip, Pelai gently petted Purrsus. His head came up briefly and a soft, sleepy, prrrpt sound escaped, before the feline sighed and returned his soft, dark-muzzled head to its place between his paws. A noise in the distance pricked at both their ears, bringing Purrsus’ head up. The sound jangled again. Someone . . . ringing the bell outside her front door? At this hour, in the middle of the night?
Tipa’thia. It could be the Guardian herself, though walking this far was a dubious prospect. Her health wasn’t the best anymore. Or maybe the Puhon brothers are home early, and their father is demanding they be punished right away, despite the fact it’s the middle of the night. Dagan’thio doesn’t let the schedules of lesser beings disrupt his own desires.
Hearing the bell ringing again, Pelai sighed and scooted out of bed, shrugging her shoulders in the way that activated her garbing tattoos even as she moved. Between one breath and the next, her sleeping tunic vanished, replaced by the black-dyed leathers of a Disciplinarian. Leather kilt, leather vest, knee-covering boots, tattoo-covering bracers, and a belt with the flogger of her calling hooked onto it.
Had she been a member of the Painted Army, her leathers would have been boiled in oil until hardened brown, and tooled with the runes and sigils needed for protecting their fighters in combat. A sword or a pair of daggers would have taken the place of the flogger. And had she been a simple citizen, her clothing would have been woven from sensible, lightweight wool or cotton and dyed in cheerful hues, not made of potentially sweat-inducing leather. A Painted Warrior could wear any shade of leather he or she liked, so long as it didn’t bear the pei-slii tooled and lined in gold paint like hers did, but nobody wore leather without cooling runes in the tropical nation of Mendhi.
A pity my leathers are only gauged for hot weather, and not for that cold, mountainous land of ex-Mekhana, she remembered, hurrying down the stairs. They’re only farther north by, what, a thousand miles at most? But, brrr, much higher in elevation instead of sensibly at sea level, and quite, quite cold in winter.
Reaching the front door as the bell jangled a fourth time, she touched the rune that activated a brighter version of the outside lights than softly glowed out there currently, and opened the panel. The woman on the other side looked only vaguely familiar, some Temple staff member. The taga she wore, a soft, finespun, cloud-gray wool, draped in folds from pins on her shoulders down to the rope sandals wrapping their way up her shins. The fabric, gathered at her hips by a braided leather belt, had been bound with woven trim featuring the traditional pei-slii of the Painted Temple; a sideways, striated teardrop with a tip that curled in an exaggerated spiral, reminiscent of ink, scroll, and feather quill all in one.
She wasn’t a priestess Pelai immediately recognized, but then it was fairly dark, even with the crystal glowing on the edge of her doorframe. Still, the colors of those pei-slii designs were mostly light purple, while the brooches holding up her taga had been crafted from golden curled teardrops enameled in white. Light purple embroidery meant a Healer-priestess, and the two white pei-slii feathers meant she had been formally assigned to serve Tipa’thia herself. But she wasn’t immediately familiar.
“Doma Pelai?” the woman asked.
“Yes. Is Tipa’thia ill again?” Pelai asked. “You’re one of her Healers, yes? Assigned this last month . . . ?”
The woman nodded, her round face catching the light of Sister Moon rising off to the east. “Healer Robyn, assigned this last week. I’m afraid her condition is worsening. The other Healers and I think she has only a few days left. She woke with a premonition in the middle of the night, and wishes for you to . . .”
Footsteps made both of them turn and look out across the night-shadowed grounds, with the Healer falling silent, clearly not wanting to discuss the condition of a patient in the presence of an outsider. Pelai tensed, wondering who else would be coming up the path to her quarters at this hour. It was possible they came to visit someone else, of course; her quarters were merely one of several built side by side in a row along the shore of an ornamentally gardened lake on the edge of the Temple grounds. Possible, but not likely.
The fellow who approached wore the brown of the army. That narrowed Pelai’s eyes. She definitely did not recognize him, but that was okay; she had far more dealings with the Healer-priests of late, thanks to Tipa’thia’s illnesses, than she ever had with the army. Unless it was an officer in need of disciplining, of course.
From the markings on his shoulder guards, the tall, muscular male held the rank of an akim, the lowest rank of officer. The ones trusted to handle matters appropriately without bothering anyone of higher rank. Bird-dogs, in other words, sent to find and carry around whatever the hunter couldn’t be bothered to fetch himself.
“Doma Pelai,” the man stated as soon as he came to a stop. “The Elder Disciplinarian, Dagan’thio, has received word that the final ship in the long-absent fleet has confirmed the sighting of the lighthouses of Mendhi. The Navy estimates they will be here by morning.”
Pelai didn’t have to guess why this poor man had been sent off in the middle of the night. “Let me guess. After he received it, the Elder Commander had you relay this news to the Elder Disciplinarian, who told you to come here, wake me up, and inform me to be ready by dawn?”
Despite the less than bright glow of her porch light crystal and the tanned brown of the man’s Mendhite-round face, he blushed visibly. “You are to come with me to report to the Elder Disciplinarian for instruction on how to discipline your charges once they arrive.”
That narrowed her eyes for a moment. Pelai didn’t have a lightning-fast temper—no Disciplinarian ever would, since that hazard was weeded out early on in the training—but she could get rather hot. Thinking quickly, she smiled and said, “Thank you for informing me of the long awaited arrival of Dagan’thio’s sons, Akim . . . ?”
“Akim Jodo Belak,” he told her, straightening into a more formal posture.
“Thank you, Akim Jodo,” she stated, using his family name paired with his rank to help make it seem like she was taking this moment quite seriously. She was, just not in the way her superior clearly wanted. “I now deputize you to go back to the Elder Disciplinarian in my place, to take careful written notes on everything he wishes to be done to them, and to deliver those notes to me before I am to meet the Puhon brothers for their Disciplinary evaluations in the morning.”
His lips parted soundlessly for a moment, almond brown eyes blinking in confusion, before he stammered, “But I—you cannot—you are summoned by the Elder Disciplinarian!”
“I am certain that, as it is the middle of the night and he is groggy from sleep, he has forgotten that he cannot give any orders on how his own sons are to be Disciplined. So you are to go back to him, and ask him what he wants done, and to write in your own handwriting as an impartial witness how, exactly, he hopes they will be disciplined,” Pelai explained patiently. “I will be available for making my independent Discipline evaluation in the morning, and will take his thoughts into carefully neutral consideration at that time. I am not available right now.”
“But he commands you to come, Doma!” the Akim protested, though the certainty in his voice wavered.
Tipa’thia hadn’t had much energy for politics in the last several months. The elderly woman’s strength and attention for such things had been slowly waning for several years before that as she aged past the point where magic could sustain her inner energies. But she had been the Guardian of the Temple for decades. Part of Pelai’s instruction over the last three years had included how to pay attention to political maneuverings . . . and how to cover one’s kilt in the case of being asked to do something potentially illegal.
Above all else, Tipa’thia had stressed to her tattooed pupil that the Elder Mage, the Guardian of the Temple, must remain free from corruptive influences. Admittedly, Tipa’thia was not interested in correcting the injustices that the Elder Disciplinarian was attempting to enact on his sons, but that was due to her failing health. A health that was so bad, she had sent for Pelai in the middle of the night.
“I am second in rank among Disciplinarians, Akim,” she informed the protesting sergeant, stressing his own lowly rank. Technically all Disciplinarians who passed out of their journeyman stage were equals, save for the Elder, but in practice there were many different levels of competency, power, and proficiency displayed. She had not been given second-rank in vain. “You have been deputized to go in my place and take written notes. I will keep abreast of when the Puhon sons will be arriving, and make myself available at an appropriate hour for their proper evaluation shortly after their arrival.”
She stared him down until he sighed and turned away, trudging back up the path to go do a very unpleasant thing: tell a member of the Hierarchy someone said no. Pelai held up her hand in silent, subtle signal to the Healer. Only when she was sure the soldier had gone did she nod and finish closing the door to her home, locking it with a simple press of her palm upon the security rune next to the knob.
“I apologize for delaying, but hopefully that will remind the Thio that his attempt to interfere in how his sons are to be evaluated for disciplining is against the rules,” she murmured to the priestess, Robyn.
The other woman shook her head, her knee-length taga rustling far more quietly as they walked together up the path than the faint creaks and squeaks and strip-skirt slaps of Pelai’s uniform against her own legs. “The Goddess knows what’s wrong with him. Ever since this whole mess with the Convocation started . . .”
It was Pelai’s turn to shake her head. “No, he’s been this way for the last three or four years. Just . . . not as obviously out of line. The rest of us should have spoken up earlier. If he keeps going in these directions, someone will have to call a conclave about him. Maybe even a tribunal.”
“Of the whole Hierarchy?”
“What? No, of course not . . . at least, I hope not,” Pelai murmured. “The Disciplinarians should take care of our own first. Hopefully, the orders I gave the akim will get the Elder to wake up to his wrongdoings.”
“I won’t hold my breath, though I will hold my hope,” the other woman returned dryly.
She fell silent for a few minutes while they navigated the gardens and buildings of the Temple grounds. They walked along paths bathed not only in the dim glow of crystals on little posts set knee-high on the edges of the gravel, but also by the light of the half-full Brother Moon high over their heads, and the rising, full Sister Moon coming into view on the eastern horizon. Finally, Robyn spoke again.
“I think she intends to retire as soon as you arrive. It would help immensely where the strain on the Guardian’s body is concerned.”
That’s going to be awkward, Pelai realized as they entered the Temple itself through a side door near the rear of the building, far from the grand front entrance with its towering statues of Painted Warriors holding aloft the ornate portico in carefully sculpted and colored, if weathered, stone. As soon as I am officially Pelai’thia, Guardian of the Temple, I technically stop being an underling who can take on the disciplining of the Puhon brothers.
If I’m no longer within the hierarchical branch of the Disciplinarians, that means Dagan’thio could assign one of his cronies to discipline his sons . . . and no doubt instruct them behind everyone else’s backs to go overboard in said punishing.
She believed in her heart that the Puhon brothers should not be punished. Over the last year, ever since Guardian Kerric had first contacted Tipa’thia and the others about a coming demonic invasion, Pelai had seen the inevitable in the words of God-touched Seers from a dozen different lands. If the Convocation of Gods and Man happened—and it had—then that invasion had already been forseen as happening within the grasp of another land. Which it had, in former Mekhana. She had been there, trying to help control the Vortex. She had seen the demon-princeling being summoned.
It was possible to go against a prophecy, to misinterpret it, and of course to try to avert it. Some could be thwarted, and many had been changed. Others had turned out to be a bit more inevitable.
The entrances to the inner sanctum looked like somewhat realistic paintings of doors on the walls. There were no knobs, but none were needed; anyone who had the blessing of the Guardian could pass through them. Out of habit, Pelai shut her eyes. Seeing a painted wall rushing at her face always made her want to flinch and stumble, trying to check herself before she smacked into a solid surface.
Of course, if I ever do smack into one of these wall-doors because my eyes are closed, that’ll hardly inspire confidence in the next Guardian, will it?
There were other ways to instill less than clear confidence in a Guardian. Tipa’thia had berated her half a year ago for not being able to handle the Vortex Fountain. Pelai had managed to get it through the elderly woman’s stubborn, thick head just how chaotic that other Fountain was, but the disappointment—based on expectations of a neat, orderly Fountain—had carried over for a month afterward in their interactions.
The two did not always agree, but Pelai respected Tipa, the woman, as well as Tipa’thia, Elder Mage of Mendhi, Guardian of the Temple of the Painted Warriors of Mendhi. When the two reached the inner entrance to Tipa’thia’s private quarters, Pelai braced herself with a deep breath, closed her eyes, and passed through yet another painted wall-door.
The other side smelled of herbs and unguents. Magic was a complex cycle. Animals—humans especially—generated it, plants enhanced or suppressed it, and when—not if, but when—a human died, they took some of that energy with them on their trip through the Dark to the Afterlife. It came back out again with every new birth, whether it was of a foal in the pasture or a seed in the field . . . but it also came spilling out wherever a rift in the Veil between Life and the Dark opened.
Some of these rifts were natural-born, literally born in the body of a Living Host, who carried around the seed of a Fountain until their death or careful separation from it. At that point, the Fountain-seed had to be constantly moved, or it settled in one spot, anchored itself, and turned into a permanent Fountain.
One of those women had been born somewhere to the east on the continent of Aiar, a former empire that had been shattered by extraordinary circumstances over two hundred years before. The current Living Host had made her way to the southeast, to a place called Nightfall. Puhon Krais, Puhon Foren, and Puhon Gayn had been sent to capture her, secure control of her Fountain-seed, and bring it back to Mendhi, so that they could use its energies combined with their own permanently anchored Fountain to open the Convocation of Gods and Man. To bring Mendhi back to supreme prominence through religious, political, and magical superiority.
Half the Hierarchy wanted to drag Mendhi back into world prominence. The other half thought they were quite prominent enough; belief gave power to the Gods, and Menda was revered at the very least in passing as the Goddess of Writing in every other corner of the world that understood the value of the written word. Tipa’thia could have been the deciding vote, but she had been ill for a very long time. Her increasing lack of involvment in the greater world had led to this mess.
It occurred to Pelai, crossing from the front chambers into the back rooms to Tipa’s bedchamber, that these quarters would soon be hers. A disquietening thought, but the Guardian always lived within the Great Temple itself, the only non-priest to do so. Decades of decorative and personal touches lay everywhere. Writing desks with inkstones and inkjars, quills of a specific type of bird alongside glass dipping pens, brass nibbed pens, charcoal and graphite pencils, oil pastels . . . and all the drawings and quan-style poems the woman had created over the years. By comparison, Pelai’s quarters were quite austere, but she was less than half Tipa’s age, and hadn’t yet acquired the possessions one accumulated simply through the sheer passing of time.
Entering the bedchamber, Pelai took in the thicker than usual pallet on the bed, how narrow and long it was, and how fragile Tipa’thia looked. Her skin had wrinkled more and more in the last year, a sign of lost reserves, lost vitality. Now the lines and hues of her tattoos looked more splattered and disjointed than smoothly connected. Withered, with the life-energy being sucked out of her.
A man sat on the edge of the bed, clad in lavender clothes. The trim on his taga alternated in dark purple and light pei-slii. He held the elderly mage’s hand gently in his. At Pelai’s appearance, he looked over his shoulder and nodded. “Good, you have arrived.”
“Elder Healer Luo,” Pelai murmured, fear creeping up into her throat. He was not the Elder Priest of his department within the Hierarchy, but he was the foremost Healer within their sub-group, and thus set all the policies for healers across the nation, had access to all the records and information on potions, powders, and spells for keeping someone well. To see him here, personally, in the middle of the night? “ . . . Is it that serious?”
“It is time to make the transfer of Guardianship, Pelai,” Tipa’thia stated. She didn’t open her eyes, and her voice came out a little more gravelly than usual. But it was still strong. “I am told it must be done slowly, one piece at a time, instead of more efficiently doing it all at once. An annoying thought, since I am ready to be relieved of this burden right now.”
“Her health cannot withstand any shock right now, such as a sudden release from the burden of her duties,” Luo murmured. “Control must be transferred slowly, with pauses for recovery at regular intervals. This will prolong the effort and be more draining in its way, but it will be a lesser pain to endure. Right now, I am giving her my personal energies to help supplement her magical reserves, and I will levitate her to the Fountain so that she will not waste her physical reserves. Above all else, she must not die while still in the Fountain. The Library’s records on such things are rare, but suggest it is a very bad idea.”
“We have discussed that, yes,” Pelai confirmed. “I have enough skill in Healing magics to lend her some of my personal strength to cushion whatever will happen. And I am ready to begin whenever the two of you are.”
“I will clear the way,” Robyn murmured, “and hold all but the last door open. The Elder Mage must open that one herself.”
Tipa’thia nodded, a shaky little jerk of her head. Luo murmured a spell that lifted her gently, and Pelai moved into position behind the pair. The other two Healers remained behind, doing something with the bedding, either from actual need or simply from the urge to do something useful while they waited to see if their charge lived or died.
According to Library records, the most common form of death for a Guardian was dying by accident somewhere outside the event horizon of their Fountain, somewhere out in the rest of the world. When that happened, their Fountain reverted to its most commonly used state. Over time, however, it would grow wilder and wilder, its normally focused, channeled energies spilling free and warping the world around it. That required a new Guardian to surpass any lingering protections and hopefully be a strong enough mage to enter the singularity wellspring; if they could, they needed to attune to the energies so those could be tamed, a long, arduous, strenuous, dangerous task.
Dying while inside a Fountain as its Guardian sealed the singularity. Plugged the rift. Cut off the flow of the Font. Such a death twisted together all of the energies spilling into the mortal world and shut them off . . . because the death of the Guardian tied into all those energies pulled the Guardian into the Dark where those energies came from, and pulled those spilling energies back into the Dark, where they would have to find some other exit point.
That was not commonly known information, because Guardians, while powerful, were still mortal and thus fallible. In fact, the only reason why the Elder Librarian had allowed Pelai to read those text stemmed from her need to understand that Tipa’thia was not allowed to die while within the Fountain. Even the best of Guardians could be surprised, ambushed, assassinated . . .
It wouldn’t be an explosive death, but it would be a far worse failure—a legitimate failure—to accidentally cause the termination of an established Fountain than merely failing to secure a Living Host for acquiring a second singularity point. Grim thoughts for going into this task, but necessary to keep in mind.