Chapter Six
“I know . . . but in truth, Krais, I cannot discipline you,” Pelai told him, and waited to see his reaction. It certainly was not a statement she had ever expected to say. She could only imagine how he received it.
“You . . . what?” he asked, thrown for a loop by her words. “You can’t? But . . . I have to be disciplined! You’re confusing me, Doma. First you say I need to be punished, and now you say I don’t? That you cannot . . . ?”
“In the eyes of your father, yes, you need to be punished,” Pelai agreed. She shook her head, forestalling his confusion, and tried her best to explain. “What I felt when I assessed you . . . You’ve been punished, in the eyes of the Goddess. Specifically, for the things for which you were judged by the Hierarchy this morning. Your punishment has come from a higher power, and mere mortal efforts are no longer necessary. The only reason why I hesitate to lift the suppression of your powers and send you to your own home is because of your father. Him, and his fellow Partisans who support his demands that you be punished excessively.
“What we need is what lies in the heart of the word verisimilitude. Having the appearance of being truthful,” Pelai stressed. “An illusion which will withstand casual inspection and seem real. Does putting it that way make sense to you?”
“I . . . I think I understand,” he allowed, bowing his head. “So I have to remain your assigned penitent anyway.”
“That would be the easiest way out of this mess, but only as far as appearances go,” Pelai admitted. “Which brings me to what the Goddess commanded you to do.”
He flinched, and she saw him flinch, but Pelai did not ask directly what Menda had told him to do.
Instead, she asked, “Have you been submitting to Menda’s wishes all this time, all six months since leaving the Convocation?”
Krais nodded, relaxing a bit.
“And have you been acting against your old nature, restraining your dominance and your arrogance by willingly submitting without complaint?”
He nodded, a little more cautiously this time.
“Well, there you go. You have punished yourself by restraining yourself . . . something which long observation has told me is not normally in your nature,” Pelai stated dryly. He flushed, but didn’t argue the point . . . which proved hers. “Our Goddess came to me in a dream with a prophecy, which I suspect is about you and your brothers. And just now, She told me through the assessment that you do not need to be my penitent, because you have been Her penitent.”
“But . . . according to Menda, I still need to submit to a punishment. I haven’t been actually punished yet,” he pointed out. “I have to be punished, for my prophecy to come true.”
Now she asked him the question she had avoided earlier. “Penitent Krais, what exactly did Menda say to you? Consider this an official part of your punishment, telling me what She revealed to you.”
Flushing, he clenched his jaw for a moment, then breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and recited a poem. One that startled Pelai from its near-familiarity.
“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.”
Pelai blinked a few times, absorbed what she just heard . . . and cleared her throat. “That’s rather interesting.”
“I figured out most of it,” he told her. “The mountains of Nightfall Island are granite, and they built—or carved—a set of chambers underneath one of the mountains near the city. That’s where they hosted the Convocation, beneath the granite. Redemption’s face . . . is . . . I think it was when I spoke with the Queen of Nightfall. Or rather, when she spoke to me, shortly before the Convocation began.”
“Oh?” Pelai asked, curious. “What was that conversation about?”
“She somehow realized I was there to assassinate her. I don’t know how. She chided me for being too tall for the line—they were doing something with their water system, removing the salt and compressing it into coffin-sized blocks that had to be hefted and passed by hand from the artifact creating them to a storage building . . . and I was too tall for the group she was in, helping her people with the work,” he admitted. “She chided me for that, then told me any attempt to kill her wasn’t going to work, because basically the Gods were on her side . . . and then told me again to go get in some other line, because she didn’t want me hurting my back.”
“How odd,” Pelai murmured.
“How surreal,” Krais corrected. “She didn’t yell at me, she didn’t call for any guards or mages, and she didn’t try to attack me . . . at that point,” he allowed. “We got into a fight later, and she used this mirror thing she had to shatter Gayn’s arm.”
“I thought his arm was damaged from a storm at sea?” Pelai said, confused.
“It was. The mirror-attack was the first break, and their Healers set and healed his arm. It was mostly whole by the time we left,” Krais clarified. “Then when we got out to sea, he broke the arm all over again, but we didn’t have a specialist Healer on board.”
“So it healed wrong. Got it,” she murmured. “So . . . this queen of theirs . . .”
“Queen Kel-lii of Nightfall,” Krais supplied. “A very strange woman who apparently has no magic, and comes from another world. Short—well, they’re all short, compared to us—and reddish gold hair, blue eyes, freckles, and strange clothes. She has the backing of all the Gods . . . and from what I heard, was responsible for dissolving a God. Erasing Him from existence.”
“That would be Mekha,” Pelai stated, nodding. Surprising him a little from the way he blinked in confusion. “That part, I already know about. He wasn’t a true Patron Deity, and was acting more like a leech, nothing more than a manifested parasite feeding on the magics of his supposed people. So the host nation ruled Mekha wasn’t a God anymore, and commanded the true Gods and Goddesses to dissolve him from existence. That was a little over six months ago. His former nation more or less immediately picked a new Patron Deity, and have been worshipping Her as hard as they can, so as to be ready for Naming at the next Convocation in three and a half years.”
He nodded. “I didn’t see the dissolving, but we did hear about it. At the time it happened . . . we kind of . . . We escaped and made extra trouble for our captors. . . . But eventually we were dragged to the chamber hosting the Gods, and . . . that was when Menda spoke to me.”
Seeing him shiver a little, Pelai nodded. “Menda spoke to me as well, right after I returned from helping the people of Mekhana with a problem of their own. That was a handful of days after the Convocation began. At least, it looked like Her, an amalgamation of all Temple images of the Goddess of Writing. She spoke to me in a dream, and gave me my own prophecy. One that is remarkably similar to yours.”
“Oh?” he asked, echoing her earlier query.
Nodding, Pelai recited it from memory.
“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.”
Krais quirked his brows. “Yours sounds very much like mine . . . but your verses are even more enigmatic. I, at least, could figure out that if I did not protest my impending punishments, to bend without breaking before my father’s constant windstorms of overheated words . . . I could maybe be the one who will save humanity. At least, I hope I will somehow be that brother . . . though if it is speaking of my brothers, I fear what will happen to Gayn and Foren.”
She immediately saw why, and nodded solemnly. “Because if you are the one who saves, then one will end up betraying everyone, and the other will somehow abandon everything, whatever that means,” Pelai agreed. “I wish mine were that simple to figure out. All I can think of is the other situation that is going on in the world maybe has something to do with this—the other prophecies. One of which involves eight Guardians, and one of which clearly involves the Guardian of the Temple . . . which has been Tipa’thia, and which very soon will be me.”
“What are these other prophecies?” he asked, curious.
Pelai started to answer, and found herself smothering a yawn. “ . . . Pardon me. I was woken up in the middle of the night to begin the transfer of the Guardianship of the Temple Fountain. I need to go to bed soon. . . . The important one that deals with me, the one I can remember, um. . . . Ah, I remember:
“Synod gathers, tell them lies:
Efforts garnered in your pride
Lost beneath the granite face.
Painted Lord, stand by her side;
Repentance is the Temple’s grace.”
“Painted Lord? And Temple?” he asked softly, frowning in thought.
Pelai started to say more, then checked herself, understanding dawning. “Wait . . . it’s not talking about me in those first two lines. It’s talking about you. Krais, you are the Painted Lord! All this time, I’ve been confused about the granite bit, but it’s clearly talking about your prideful actions and intentions that got lost when you lost that fight—“
“—When I lost the fight under the granite mountains of Nightfall, yes,” Krais stated, following along and echoing her words. “But I didn’t know about that prophecy at the time, and I still don’t know how it relates to you, or . . . well, the only thing I can think of is that I have to somehow help you as you protect the Temple from being under attack.
“But . . . Wisdom faked will try to know,” he recited, “and then the bit about the Writ and secret knowledge hidden in scrolls . . . Those lines sound like they’re talking about someone trying to fake their way into the Restricted Halls of the Great Library. And . . . I don’t know, maybe sound-based magics will be involved somehow?” he added.
“Your guess is as good as mine. But none of this really settles the fact that your father . . . or wait, maybe it does,” Pelai mused. She rubbed her chin for a moment, then smothered another yawn behind her hand. Ending the yawn, she nodded. “I’ll just have to pretend to punish you, as we considered earlier. Seemingly bending in compliance to Dagan’thio’s will, but not actually breaking any laws under it, laws of God or Man. And then . . . I don’t know . . . have you search through all of the Restricted Halls, looking for someone who is trying to gain access to information that deals with demons somehow.”
“Demons?” Krais asked, blinking. “I know the world is going to be in trouble somehow, but . . . demons? Outworlders that come from a Netherhell? How do you know about that? Your prophecies didn’t mention any demons.”
Pelai rubbed her brow, frowning. “Right, right . . . sorry, I forgot you didn’t know what I’ve been up to—I have a lot of prophecies to keep track of, and I don’t even know them all. I don’t know how the librarians manage it . . .
“Anyway,” she said dismissively, lowering her arm and returning to the topic at hand. “One of my fellow Guardians elsewhere around the world has had a reliable, um . . .”
He waited a few moments after she fell silent, then prompted, “ . . . Umm?”
“It’s sort of a visual way to foresee the future,” she tried her best to explain. She wasn’t in her early twenties anymore, and couldn’t stay up all night without consequences. Struggling to focus, Pelai rubbed at her brow again, dropped her hand to her mouth to smother a yawn, then continued, folding her arms across her leather-clad chest. “And, well . . . he spotted an intermittent demonic invasion happening. Coupled with various prophecies from around the world, and it seems that we can do some things to thwart it, but we’re not completely sure what we have to do . . . and . . . uh . . .”
Again, he waited, then raised his brows.
“And that does it. I am out of energy,” she complained, as much to herself as to him. “My head is swimming from exhaustion. The rest of this can wait for tomorrow. I had very little sleep last night, I got woken up and had to cast magics for several hours, and then had to run a full day on top of everything else. I feel forty-one, not thirty-one, right now. Bordering on fifty-one.” Unfolding her arms, she shifted forward on the couch, gathering the energy needed to rise. “Since I don’t have to discipline you harshly in Menda’s eyes, tomorrow is more than early enough for figuring out the rest of this. I’m going to bed now.”
He nodded, accepting the break in their conversation. “I could use some sleep myself. And maybe it will give both of us more clarity on how, exactly, to handle all of this. . . . Ah . . . where do I . . . ?”
“The farther you go from my presence, the more drained you will feel from your powers being suppressed under my chokehold,” Pelai reminded him. That was how Disciplinarians kept wayward mages leashed. He would be able to travel up to a couple of miles from her presence, but no farther than that. And so long as the Disciplinarian kept his powers capped, a Disciplinarian would always be able to tell in what direction and how far away a penitent had fled.
“Suppressed? But you said you don’t have to keep me under . . . oh. Right,” Krais corrected himself. He rubbed at his own tattooed brow. “It’s been almost a year since I was around any of your kind. Any Disciplinarian who touches me will be able to determine if my powers are being suppressed. Even just a brief pat on the arm will be proof of whether or not you’re doing your full job, and my father will check to make sure I’m being punished. I must accept the punishment of having them suppressed . . . and Menda knows I do accept.”
“You only have to accept suppression up to a point. I can selectively allow you access to certain levels of magic, or to certain tattoo spells,” she pointed out. “It’s an advanced technique not every Disciplinarian can master, but I have. It’s a requirement to be in the top twenty-five of the ranks. I’d do it now, but I’m too tired to concentrate.”
“That’s right,” he agreed, smothering his own yawn. “I remember Father saying that’s why he picked you to be Second Disciplinarian over Doma Belaria; she hadn’t mastered it at the time, though she has since. That, and he knew you were a possible pick for the next Guardian, so he was hoping to entice you into thinking and acting as a fellow Partisan by giving you a . . . a high rank under him.”
His second mid-speech yawn triggered another of her own. “Mmhmm . . . but you keep yawning, and this isn’t getting us to bed. You can have the choice of sleeping on this couch down here, on the felt matting on the floor if you want to punish yourself a little . . . or you can share my bed if you want a soft, broad surface. Chastely,” Pelai added, leaning forward to gather up boots and socks. “I do like your new self, Puhon Krais, but let’s save the sexual pleasure for your mandatory punishment sessions.”
Cheeks flushing, Krais opened his mouth, then caught his breath, biting his lip against any sort of comment. Or rather, specifically, any sort of protest. Pelai rose to her feet and nodded, acknowledging his determination.
“Your ongoing submission to the Goddess is duly noted . . . but your father will be expecting to see you covered in bruises and welts, and to sense your magics being suppressed. So . . . since you haven’t grasped your dominant-but-bottom nature before this point . . . I think I shall make your ‘punishment’ a series of sessions teaching you how to understand, accept, and even appreciate your true nature.”
“Ugh.” Krais muttered, rubbing at the frown creasing his brow. He didn’t actually protest, but it was a near thing.
Pelai arched one of her brows at him. “Your father doesn’t have to know that you’re enjoying your ‘punishment’ sessions, Krais. He only needs to see the results of them having taken place.”
“Is that part of telling the ‘synod’ lies?” he asked, rising. “And may I presume I am free to use the refreshing room, and so forth?”
“I don’t know if it is included in that part or not,” she told him. “Hindsight has better vision than foresight or midsight. But yes, you can use the refreshing room. There’s one down here, and one upstairs between the bedrooms.”
That had him frowning while he followed her as she padded barefooted toward the stairs. “You said bedrooms, plural, but you mention only your bed . . . ?”
“The other room is currently being used for storage. It will take a day or two to tidy it and set it up with a bed for you,” Pelai told him, flicking the hand not carrying her boots and socks dismissively up the stairs. “So you’ll just have to pick the couch down here, which is not very broad and not very long, or sleep on the floor with only a kneeling mat, or share my bed. Which is sized big enough for three people to sleep without touching.”
“Why that big?” Krais asked her.
“Purrsus,” she explained succinctly, before expanding a little. “The current Elder Librarian, Anya’thia, once told me—this was before her elevation—that, at least according to the writings of several dozen observers throughout the centuries, housecats have always possessed the mystical power of being able to occupy far more of any bed or other lounging surface than their diminutive size should allow.”
“So you had a large bed made?” Krais inquired. “Specifically to make room for your pet?”
“So I kept the large bed that was left behind by the previous Disciplinarian to occupy this space,” she corrected. “Purrsus showed up about a month later, just as I was getting used to the freedom to sprawl when I sleep. He cured me of all that sprawling, too, so I shouldn’t accidentally kick you in my sleep. I might do so deliberately if you think sharing it is license to stray beyond the rules I’ve laid down.”
“I don’t stray without clear invitation . . . and I’m glad I made friends with him,” the eldest Puhon brother murmured mock-gravely. “He has far more right to share the bed with you than I do, after all.”
“Don’t get too sassy. I still haven’t flogged you tonight,” she pointed out. “I’m tired enough to skip it, but I could change my mind.”
“Well, technically I’m not protesting anything,” Krais reassured her, lifting his hands in surrender. “I’m just going to point out that you’re very tired, and might not be able to land your blows with the precision such a punishment would require.”
“Clever, but right now, flattery will just get you yawned at.” Opening the door to her bedchamber and the wool-stuffed pallet on its raised slat-board platform, Pelai gestured at it, and at the floor. “You can sleep on the bare floor in here, or on the far side of the mattress. If you push me or kick me out of bed, I will flog you and make you sleep on the floor.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he promised mildly. Very mildly, compared to his old personality. “And even if I did, I’ll change the dream right away.”
Pelai decided she actually liked him like this. Relaxed enough to jest, rather than full of pride and excess stress.
“Get yourself ready for bed, Penitent. I’ll loan you a set of sleeping clothes, and we’ll pick up more of your things tomorrow,” she added, crossing to her wardrobe and pulling out a strip of bleached linen for the fresh fundo he needed, along with an abbreviated version of a taga for the sleeping tunic that went over it. Everyone in Mendhi wore the garments at night, regardless of gender. Unless it was exceptionally hot and muggy in the summer, when only the fundo would be worn. “I presume your gear was taken from the ship to your father’s house?”
“It was . . . and thank you for the sleepwear.” Accepting the items, he took them with him to the refreshing room tucked next to the smaller storage bedroom.
Knowing he would have to strip and wrap the Mendhite-style loincloth without magic, Pelai muttered the cantrip that removed her leathers, and a second one that gave her a fresh underwrap and the thigh-length taga suitable for sleeping. And a pair of cloth bracers to cover her control tattoos. They were faint, and closely matched to the color of her skin, but it helped to further hide them so that no one could attempt to copy them. Not that the tattoos would work at more than half-strength without the blessing of the Goddess to back them up, but rules were rules for Disciplinarians.
Most Disciplinarians. Pelai wasn’t too sure about Krais’ father. Readied for bed, she pulled back the sheet and thin cotton blanket that were suitable for this time of year, and separated out one of her three large pillows for him to use. It would be annoying to not have all three to cuddle for support as she slept on her side, but it was only for a night.
Tomorrow’s punishment could begin with him rearranging the storage room so that he could sleep comfortably in there, rather than in here. For now, she simply lay down on the half of the bed she preferred, wriggled onto her side with one pillow under her knees, the other under her head, and tried to get comfortable without the third to clutch to her chest.
Pelai woke, disoriented. Something felt . . . wrong. Wrenched, and empty. Breathing deep, she shifted—and gasped, scrambling back, when her warm, firm pillow mumbled and shifted, too. A pillow far too warm to be stuffed with duck feathers, and yet far too large to be Purrsus.
“Zakah!” she ordered. Squinting against the abruptly bright lights, she heard an oddly deep whine from . . . the man in her bed. The man she had been using as a body-hugging pillow. The man who, with his tangle of black hair and tattooed sun-brown hide, was none other than Krais, son of Puhon Dagan’thio, Elder Disciplinarian. Her penitent.
He whined again and shifted his nearest arm over the eye not mashed into his borrowed pillow. Then nuzzled into arm and pillow, trying to burrow away from the glare of the mage lamps. That . . .
. . . That is remarkably cute. Sitting on her hip, propped up on one palm, Pelai lifted the other to her lips to try to hide her smile. Arrogant was her usual go-to word for the eldest Puhon son. Annoying was another. Handsome, oh yes, especially with the muscles she could see in his arm, in his back, in the rounded rump under the bedding and his borrowed sleeping taga . . . but cute?
Well. Menda knows that Puhon Krais just has hidden depths all over him, these days . . . Wait, why did I wake up? Did Krais wake me . . . ? Pelai frowned in thought, and rubbed at the sleep sand caught in the corners of her eyes. I . . . felt a jolt. A sense of loss . . . and then like a great wind washed over me, billowing all around. I was already dealing with part of it, but now it’s all blowi—
“Tipa’thia!” she gasped, and fumbled out of bed, tossing the blankets aside. That prompted another grumble out of the man in her bed, but Pelai ignored it. She grabbed for a fresh set of leathers before realizing she could get into them with magic, disoriented by her need for sleep and her alarm at what must have happened. “Sartorlagen!”
That apparently woke up her charge. Pushing up on an elbow, squinting her way, he asked, “Doma . . . ? What’s wrong?”
“I think Tipa’thia passed. Come or stay. It’s your choice,” she added, a bit distracted by the mix of instinct and the need to probe at all the power pushing at her. It did not whip and whirl like the wild energies of the Vortex; the Temple Fountain felt strong but tamer. Not placid exactly, but less turbulent. Stronger, though. Stronger than it had been yesterday. Stronger than all the times she had practiced with a portion of the Fountain’s magic passed to her.
Krais uncurled himself from the bed, knuckling sleep sand from his own eyes. “I’d need my kilt.”
Spotting his where he’d left it on top of a chest, she snapped her fingers to clean it, and snapped them again, adding in the dressing-spell, along with a firm visualization of how the garment would fit around those lean hips. Thankfully, he had come to her wearing a pre-stitched kilt, a practical sort of garment that buckled around the hips. Not the careful hand-pleating and belt-draping of a more formal garment, the kind left unstitched so that every detail of the brocade could be admired. She even included sandals.
He grunted, reached back, touched his rump in an odd gesture, and nodded. The reason came out of his mouth. “Thank you for not giving me a fundo-wedge.”
Pelai quirked her brows at him, blinked—and then remembered. Right. Siblings. “I take it your brothers did that to you a lot, growing up?”
Krais snorted, amused. “Foren did it to me two afternoons ago, when I woke him so he could be up in time for the nightwatch shift on our ship. Gayn did it to him the previous day, and to me three days before that.”
That got her to fold her tattooed arms across her leather vest. “And how many times in the same span of days did you do it to them?”
Without flinching, he admitted, “Two or three times. I’m sure you did the same with your siblings . . . at least, I think you have siblings, right?”
“Yes, I have siblings, but we gave up doing that sort of thing in our early teens. My parents were strict about quelling misbehavior,” she said, gesturing for him to follow her out the bedroom door. “We are family, and are meant to get along with each other, not pick at each other.”
“My parents encouraged competition. I think I like yours better,” he murmured.
Purrsus trotted up to Pelai when she reached the ground floor. She gave the cat a few strokes, but patted the feline in dismissal after just those two. It wasn’t until they were outside on the garden paths, navigating by the little crystals that lit the gravel just enough to see which way to go, that she realized something. “Damn . . . Family Day is in three days. And though you are a penitent in the eyes of the law . . . and worse in the eyes of your father . . . your crimes were not any sort of abuse aimed at your family. You are permitted to visit them for at least half the day on Family Day each week. Will your father expect it?”
“I’m not sure. He might expect us to stay and be beaten on Family Day. Now, my mother will be the one expecting us to visit,” Krais told her. “She will complain to him if we don’t, and he will order you to have us appear . . . and he will most likely examine us to make sure we have been punished. Now that I think about it . . . he would be clever enough to avoid mentioning us needing to visit. He will just let Mother do the demanding, and just inspect us silently while she interrogates us on what we’ve suffered so far.”
“Under the guise of family obligations,” she murmured, agreeing with his assessment. Smothering a yawn, Pelai added, “Clever. So when does your family usually meet on Family Day? Mine never meets in the mornings or midday. Bread still needs to be sold in the mornings, if not always baked on a Family Day,” Pelai added. “They still rent space in the ovens for those who don’t want or have the room to do their own baking. That means we usually meet for supper.”
“So it’s basically up to you to show up on time?” Krais asked.
“My brother and sister work with our father in the family bakery. But both Mother and I have other jobs,” Pelai stated. “And Isel has a fellow she’s courting; he works as a tailor’s assistant, so she often goes with him to his family’s gatherings at lunch—Isel is the middle child of the three of us, and Paham is the baby.”
That made Krais frown in confusion. “Wait . . . I thought you had two sisters and a brother. That there were four of you, not three.”
Pelai shook her head. “No, it’s always been just the three of us. But I can see your confusion. Paham realized he was male when he was twelve, and petitioned the Healer-priests to help him change. The petition was granted, and they finished the last of the transformation spells five years ago, when he turned seventeen.”
“Ah, good. I’m glad he’s fully himself, now,” he murmured, and fell silent, thinking.
“So . . . when does your family meet for Family Day?” Pelai prompted after a moment.
“We usually meet for luncheon,” he told her. “Mother’s family meets for breakfast, and sometimes we go with her, but the one we’re obligated to attend is our own parent’s.” Krais walked beside her, thinking for a few moments. Finally, he said, “Perhaps you should come with me, so you can demonstrate your disciplining of me? It’s not common for an outsider to come to Family Day, but it’s not actively discouraged. Father has invited other Disciplinarians to attend, and Mother the occasional librarian friend.”
“It’s a thought. At the very least, I’m glad Family Day is not tomorrow . . . or later today, technically,” Pelai added, squinting up at the night sky. Sister Moon lay shrouded somewhere to the east, but Brother Moon glowed behind a thinner veil of clouds halfway to the west. “Am I ever going to get a good night’s sleep, at this rate?”
“I don’t know,” Krais murmured. “Wait—someone’s coming on the path.”
Pelai heard the crunching footsteps a moment later. Whoever it was hurried at a fast pace, twice as fast as their own steps. After a moment, she made out the taga-clad figure, and raised her voice. “Healer Robyn?”
The woman slowed, squinted, and called back, “Doma Pelai?”
“Yes. Tipa’thia . . . ?” Pelai asked, drawing closer. Close enough to see the Healer stop and bow her head. Grief crawled over her skin in a cold shiver.
Robyn lifted her hands, conjoined palms angled up and pressed together along the edges of her little fingers. As she spoke, she pressed those palms together, symbolically closing the book of the life she discussed. “I’m afraid Giasenno Tipa’thia has passed in her sleep. Goddess grant her a much-deserved rest, after such a long life.”
Pelai echoed the gesture, miming the closing of a book. Her eyes stung with grief. “She lived a full life, as well as a long one; may she be granted rest.”
Beside her, Krais did the same, murmuring, “May her life’s story be an inspiration to all who are waiting to be reborn.”
Robyn arched a brow at that. “I didn’t know your father was a reincarnationist.”
“My mother is,” he demurred. “My father’s agnostic about it.”
“Somehow, that makes sense,” Pelai murmured dryly. Grateful for the brief distraction from the grievous news, she sniffed to clear her nose, her mind calming down. “Robyn, am I needed in Tipa’thia’s chambers?”
The Healer shook her head. “We’re already tending to the body, so there’s nothing for you to do. We will send word to her family in the city as well, and will arrange to return her things to her kin with the help of the mages at the Temple. Your only duty until the memorial is to tend to the Fountain’s needs, and the memorial will be a week from now.”
“Did the Elder say what she wished done with her shell after she left it behind for the Afterlife?” Krais asked the Healer.
Robyn nodded. “Her wish was for her shell to be cremated and used to help fertilize the tulip garden. She left plans with the Temple gardeners for mourners to bring bulbs or potted flowers to add to the collection.”
Pelai nodded. Having known Tipa’thia was ill for months meant that she could think clearly despite her sorrow; most of her grieving had been done while her mentor still lived. “The Elder Mage loved Aian tulips. She always said they were deceptively simple, and incredibly exotic. And she was a pragmatic woman, so using her bones and ashes to fertilize the soil for them makes the most sense.”
“Have you considered your own shell’s needs? Both of you?” Robyn asked politely, eyeing the two younger Mendhites. “You may be young, but tragic accidents happen.”
“I once thought I would have some sort of memorial marker for my great deeds, and just leave my useless shell to be dumped in a mass grave,” Krais murmured. “Lately . . . I’m beginning to think I should try to give back to the world, instead of just assume everything is mine to take. I think perhaps having my body cremated to help a garden grow would be appropriate.”
That sharpened Pelai’s interest. “And the deeds marker?”
“I have committed no deeds good enough to be worthy of one,” he demurred.
Robyn frowned at that. “Didn’t you and your brothers bring down that rogue mage of Port Ellor, Mahen Garen, two years ago? The one who was holding the whole village hostage by experimenting upon their children with transformation magics if they didn’t indulge his slightest whim?”
“Mahen Guron,” Krais corrected quietly, looking away. “And my brothers and I didn’t do anything heroic. The real heroism came from the mages who unwarped the children, allowing them to live as themselves, and the Healers who unwarped their minds, giving them what they needed to recover from the trauma of their transformations. My brothers and I just attacked someone as a group, three against one. That’s hardly heroic.”
The Healer drew in a breath to argue. Pelai quickly raised her hand. “Thank you for attempting to defend his actions as heroic, Healer, but he is not your patient; he is my penitent. Now . . . if I am not needed in Tipa’thia’s quarters . . . then I am needed at the Fountain, to make sure it still responds to me fully after her passing.”
“Of course. Goddess bless you in your Guardianship . . . Elder Pelai’thia,” Healer Robyn stated formally, bowing as well as addressing the younger woman by her new title. “The old Guardian has passed. Long may the new Guardian live.”
“Thank you, Healer,” Pelai murmured. She didn’t feel like an Elder in that moment, but she expected that confidence in her new rank would come with time. Breathing deep, she squared her shoulders, nodded to herself, and gestured for Krais to follow her. “I’ll see you some other time, Robyn. Thank you for your efforts in making Tipa’thia’s last few nights comfortable.”
Nodding, Robyn headed back the way she had come. Pelai and Krais followed her for some of it, but detoured to keep going on the path rather than duck into the northwest wing attached to the sanctuary of the Temple proper. Only when they were alone did Krais speak. “My condolences, and my congratulations, Pelai’thia. Tipa’thia will be missed, but no one—not even my father—has doubted your ability to fill her duties as the Elder Mage of Mendhi.”
“I find that reassuring,” Pelai admitted. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her name having the suffix of rank attached to it, but suspected that, too, would grow comfortable in time. “However, I suspect he will not like the way I will oppose his Partisan agenda.”
“He will not believe you have Mendhi’s best interests at heart if you are not striving to put our nation first among all others,” the eldest Puhon son warned her. “And there is nothing wrong with wanting that for the nation.”
She shot him a look. They had already gone through this argument. Krais held up his hand, staving off her scorn.
“I know that there are wrong ways to go about it. That is, I realize it now,” he allowed. “I am simply trying to share with you my father’s mindset. He doesn’t see that what he wants is wrong . . . and to be completely fair, the goal isn’t wrong. He just . . . doesn’t see that his methods to attain that goal are wrong.”
Opening the door into the back hall, Pelai shook her head. “Partisans are near-impossible to argue with. They refuse to admit that other viewpoints are valid, and outright ignore that some of them are more logical and viable.”
“The reason why the Partisan movement has spread so far is that there is no real opposition to them. No single group that is strong and organized enough to challenge their beliefs—a case of might makes right. Father refers to the few other groups as if they are juveniles who don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s very . . . authoritarian . . . Why are we stopping in front of the mural?” Krais asked her.
Pelai stroked the image of the swan. It shifted, opening the entrance. “Come in, but stay back by the walls. You may be magically suppressed, but I don’t want you messing with any of the runes physically. There are certain safety spells that might be triggered, and you have zero defenses right now against any automagic attacks.”
“Cheerful,” he muttered, but followed her into the dimly lit room. The door slid shut behind them with only a faint whisper of sound. Moving around the spirit-screen wall, he stopped and blinked, staring at the glowing runes hanging in midair and the pulsing sphere wrapped in layers of runes at the heart of the long, low, square chamber. “Goddess. . . . This is remarkably beautiful . . .”
“Tipa’thia told me it always made her think of pastel beams of light scattered on velvet black,” Pelai murmured, wending her way among the runes. They formed a sort of insubstantial, transparent maze that nonetheless needed to be navigated. “Not that we use velvet much in Mendhi. It’s too warm a fabric, most days. But I heard that in Aurul, off to the northwest, they wear it in the winter months.”
“I’ve seen some of the priests we helped to return home wearing velvet robes,” Krais confessed. “The one that was brought to represent the people of Mekhana, he wore multiple layers of the stuff. He might have overheated if he hadn’t had runes stitched into the fabric for comfort, I think. If you had seen him, you’d know just how much wealth he wore.”
She nodded. “I know what he would have looked like. I saw other priests of Mekha via scrying spells when I visited their kingdom six months ago. They’re not all that far from the Sun’s Belt region, but they are placed high in elevation, and their winters get very cold and snow-laden. All that fabric keeps them warm in winter.”
“You visited them?” Krais asked. “You were allowed away from your duties for that long?”
“It was a quick trip, through specific magical means you don’t need to know about, for tending to a magical problem the people of Mekhana were suffering,” she stated, approaching the edge of the Fountain. “Tipa’thia authorized it, and I wasn’t even gone a full day, so Dagan’thio didn’t need to know a thing about it. He still doesn’t.”
“I hope they were grateful for your help with their problems,” he called out to her. “The Mekhanans, I mean.”
“I ended up not being as much of a help as they’d hoped. Their Fountain is . . . chaotic. Particularly compared to the very orderly ways of our own,” she admitted. It wasn’t much of an answer, but then most of her attention stayed focused on the Fountain.
Everything looked and felt normal. Cautiously, she lifted her hand to the terminal boundary . . . and felt the magics accept her presence just fine. Relieved, she withdrew her hand. She didn’t need to be in the Fountain at the moment; she needed instead to check on all the runes sorting and controlling the flow of energies that spewed from the singularity point, making the sphere look like a constantly rippling opal bead the size of her family room.
Turning away from the Fountain, she began pacing around the room, her eyes gauging the runes and comparing them to her memories of the way they had looked over the last three years of her apprenticeship. Nothing stood out at a cursory glance, so she spared a bit of attention to ask a question. “Do you know what happened to that Mekha priest? The one that attended the Convocation? Guardian Alonnen would probably like to know if he’s headed back to his homeland, where he could cause trouble for the ex-Mekhanans.”
“I do know something of what happened, actually,” Krais confessed. “I heard he sold his velvet robes to some priest of a water god for a lot of gold. He then accepted the Gods’ commandeering of our ships to be given a ride away from Nightfall, but he said he was not returning to Mekhana. He claimed he wanted to go to Aiar or Guchere, or basically anywhere far from his original home, just so that he could start a new life in a new land, rather than return after his god was dissolved at the Convocation. I think he took a berth on the fourteenth ship of the fleet, but I can’t be sure—I know he boarded our ship so he could take a mirror-Gate to the next, and had plans to string a few Gates . . . but I don’t know where he went after that. I just know he had no intentions of returning to Mekhana.”
“I suspect that was rather wise of him. The latest reports from their Guardian of the turmoil in their land spoke of ex-priests who didn’t flee finding themselves killed by rioting citizens, shot with crude spells, or the engineering weapons their people craft intead of spells, or hung from trees . . . even a few that died from hard-flung stones. The southern stretch of their land has organized itself into an incipient kingdom, but the midlands and northlands are still beset with fighting. Alonnen thinks the far north has lost territory to their eastern neighbors, not just to internal strife, but he’s having difficulty getting that end of ex-Mekhana to communicate with its southernmost kin.”
“The history tutor my father hired for myself and Foren—he retired before Gayn needed him—used to say that a civil war is anything but civil,” Krais said, watching her from his place by the exit. “As terrible as war is when waged between two nations, war within a nation is worse. Brother turning against brother, mothers against daughters. . . . Every writing I’ve read on the subject mentions how it leaves deep wounds within the culture. It’s such a personal battle, because the winner knows the loser’s weaknesses, and uses those to punish their errant citizens. I pray that never happens to Mendhi.”
“Pray instead for the Pashai,” Pelai called back over her shoulder, examining yet more runes.
“The who?”
“The people of Pasha, one of the kingdoms of Shattered Aiar, to the east,” she explained. “They’re embroiled in a civil war right now. Guardian Daemon has been keeping the rest of us abreast of it. So far, it hasn’t been too devastating, but that’s because there are too many contenders for the throne of their late king to really mount any large armies. So it’s all skirmishing while they try to eliminate each other.”
“Ugh,” Krais muttered, the sound just loud enough to echo slightly in the quiet of the Fountain Hall. “Royalists. I’d rather be a Partisan. At least with our Hierarch, he or she always has eight other Elders who can choose to band together on an issue to oppose their rulings. With Royalists, you just have to hope whoever inherits the throne is compassionate and sane, because the only way to depose them is by arresting or killing them, and hoping your rebel forces are strong enough to oppose any loyalists—birthright does not guarantee intelligence or leadership skills.”
“True . . .” Pelai slowed, frowning at a set of dark brown runes. They seemed to be pulsing oddly. She watched for several seconds, and tried to remember what the control runes were supposed to do with the Fountain’s magic. Something about gardens? No . . . that wasn’t it. Sighing, she gave up and turned back toward the Fountain. “I’m having trouble with one of these runes. I’m going to have to go into the Fountain and try to trace the problem from within the system. Do you need me to conjure you a seat?”
“A cot would be nicer.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t I know it. I am attuned to the Fountain, but I do not have full control over all of its systems. We never completed all the tattoo transferences.”
“Tattoos?” Krais asked, curious.
She gestured vaguely at the pastel markings around her even as she made her way back through the maze of hovering glyphs. “The system has been set up to be regulated by a sort of tattoo-based awareness. If I have a tattoo for it, I am aware of what it is doing, and can sort of . . . massage the area to get it flowing correctly.”
“Sort of like standard Painted Warrior tattoos, but . . . it’s an indirect effect?” Krais asked.
“Indirect, yes, if you mean as in it has nothing to do with my actual body and actions, yes,” she admitted.
“I didn’t see any unusual tattoos on your skin,” Krais pointed out. “Are you sure you’re attuned?”
“The very first spell is a spell that hides them—here, have a look,” she added, and held out her mostly bare arms. Her Disciplinarian tattoos were once again covered by leather bracers, the cloth ones having been left behind when she swapped from sleepwear to her daily clothes. But with a little bit of concentration, she let the illusion cloaking the newest ones drop.
Unlike all her other tattoos, the hidden ones glowed with energy. An entire book’s worth of character-glyphs decorated her hide in patches and paragraphs that had been scribed in some of the writing marks from Mendhi’s Middle Ages, well after primitive pictographs were used to literally represent words and actions, but long before the phoenetic lettering they used today had been officially adopted. The ideograms condensed a great deal of information into a very small area, but one had to be a dedicated scholar, a librarian, or a high-ranked mage to be able to read them. Most of her spare time in her early twenties had been spent learning the Middle Text runes, since translation spells didn’t always convey the full depth of meaning inherent in them.
She didn’t know if he could read the writing without a spell. Not all powerful mages bothered to learn, even here in Mendhi. She did know she was too far away for him to easily see the individual characters, but that didn’t matter. The point of showing him her control runes lay in showing how each grouping of runes glowed pastel, obscuring the non-glowing inks bound into her skin. That was the biggest reason why they had to be hidden, on par with hiding the fact that there were runes that could control the magic of a Fountain directly.
“That’s . . . very colorful,” Krais observed tactfully. “You can turn it off now—or hide it. I imagine the first Guardian to have those things had to wear black cloth outlander garments to be able to sleep at night, before figuring out they needed to be hidden.”
The dry observation caught her off guard. Chuckling, Pelai nodded. “I imagine he or she did. I don’t know who came up with it. I just know it makes regulating the magic as natural and easy as breathing—something I can do either consciously or unconsciously. That in turn allows me to be the Elder Mage, directing magical efforts across Mendhi.”
“You said you don’t have full control?” he asked. “Is that dangerous?”
“Not under normal circumstances,” she reassured him. Another bit of thought made the glowing runes dim and vanish, though of course they still decorated her hide. Or perhaps her soul. “It’s just time-consuming, because I will have to check repeatedly in person on the Fountain every day, to make sure nothing is being blocked, or starved, or backed up. Too much pressure from excessively throttled and regulated magic can be dangerous, just as too little control can be dangerous.”
“Will you be picking an apprentice to train under you?” Krais asked.
“Are you thinking you’d be picked for the job?” she asked dryly.
“I doubt I’d ever qualify,” he retorted. “Even Father knows that only the most scrupulous of mages are considered for apprenticing to a Guardian. My stupid willingness to do anything to make Mendhi great, including the willingness to commit murder, disqualifies me immediately.”
“You have changed,” Pelai told him, approaching the boundary between the regular spaces of the Fountain Hall and its magic-saturated center. “I remember you being annoyed Tipa’thia would not pick you three years ago, when she decided to start training her successor.”
“Even an idiot can gain some wisdom in due time,” Krais reminded her. “So, do I get a cot, or just a chair?”
“There seem to be at least a couple of runes in need of regulating,” she said, carefully reaching through the barrier again, this time moving in with her whole body, not just her hand. “I don’t know how long this will take, but I will conjure something big enough for you to stretch out on before I begin.”