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by Sarah Hawke

“I will listen,” she said eventually. “But do not let your guard down, not even for an instant.”

  “I don’t plan on it,” Valuri said with a dark grin. “Come on, old man. Show us to your village, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Zalheer nodded, and it seemed like it took all the willpower he could muster to drag his eyes from Kaseya. “Of course. Please, follow me…”

  He turned and started down the path. The girls followed right behind him, but I took one last look at the Roskarim bodies littering the snow around us. I might have been able to fend them off on my own if I had overchanneled—I had done exactly that a month ago at the bandit fort and then again on Ayrael’s ship after we had been taken prisoner. But the process had left me weak and drained both times, and I always ran the risk of triggering a serious backlash—one that could potentially cripple or even kill me. Plenty of sorcerers had vaporized themselves while trying to harness so much power at once, and all of us shortened our lifespans tremendously even when we succeeded.

  Yet Zalheer didn’t look winded in the slightest, and somehow he had survived to his seventies—an almost unprecedented accomplishment for a sorcerer. Kaseya must have been right about the power of the moshalim . I couldn’t even began to imagine what kind of channeling techniques this man had mastered over the years…

  Taking in a final deep breath, I started down the path. The trip was basically a prisoner escort. Kaseya kept her sword drawn the whole time, and Valuri pointed one of her crossbows at the old man’s back. I started to get worried that the other villagers might panic when they saw us, but the closer we approached the more empty the place looked.

  “The Roskarim are this close to your doorstep, but you haven’t even built a palisade?” I asked, glancing between the ramshackle houses. “How do the people here expect to defend themselves?

  “They don’t,” Zalheer said. “I am the only one left.”

  I froze in place. “Wait, what?”

  “The barbarians took the other villagers months ago. By now the men and boys will have been integrated into their army. The women were likely taken farther north to serve as breeding stock.”

  “Escar’s mercy,” Valuri breathed. “I thought you were supposed to be their protector?”

  Zalheer stopped and turned. “I watched them for almost twenty years. But when the Vaer Tal’Shira arrived, my magic failed me. I was powerless to stop her.”

  “And yet here you are without a scratch,” Kaseya said, her jaw still clenched. “How convenient for you.”

  “As I said, she is convinced that I will join her crusade against the Matriarch.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Kaseya asked sharply. “You could have finished what you started fifty years ago!”

  Zalheer paused and gestured towards one of the nearby houses. “I will explain everything, I promise. But we should move inside the wards. The barbarians know better than to approach without the Vael Tal’Shira at their side.”

  He turned and continued down the last stretch of the path. Valuri and I both looked at Kaseya for guidance. I could see the war raging across her face—a part of her still wanted to kick the old man to his knees and behead him for his crimes right then and there. But thankfully her reasonable side won yet another battle, and she pressed onward.

  Once we actually reached the village, I finally understood why the Roskarim had learned to stay away. There might not have been a palisade or any armed lookouts, but Zalheer had inscribed dozens of warding glyphs all around the settlement. They were nearly invisible to the naked eye, but when I reached out through the Aether I could feel them brimming with an unbelievable amount of dormant energy. What I didn’t understand was how he could maintain so many of them at once. The sheer amount of concentration required was…well, impossible , to put it mildly.

  “Nice little welcome you have prepared here,” Valuri said, leaning down and placing her hand upon one of the glyphs. The resulting detonation would have almost certainly vaporized any normal person, but her eyes began to glow as she fed upon the dormant energy and effectively disarmed the trap. She wasn’t actually hungry, of course—she just wanted to remind Zalheer of exactly what he was dealing with.

  “I admit, I did not expect you to be traveling with one of the Corruptor’s minions,” the old man said. “In my visions, the two of you were always traveling alone: Kari Vata and Maskari , their bond growing stronger with each passing day.”

  “I can’t decide if that’s creepy or romantic,” Valuri muttered. “Since you’ve apparently been spying on them, I think I’ll go with the former.”

  “You called out to me through the Aether,” I said, as we stepped up onto the porch of his house. It was and surprisingly spacious compared to most of the others, and when he pushed open a door I saw the embers of an old fire still smoldering inside. “You wanted to summon me here even though you’ve admitted it’s exactly what Ayrael wants. Why?”

  The old man gestured for us to take a seat at the dining table. Other than the fireplace and cooking pot, the downstairs almost looked like the floor of a library. Bookshelves lined nearly every wall, and I spotted a few more atop the stairs on the second level.

  “Jorem asked you a question,” Kaseya said, jabbing her sword towards his chest. “You will answer it—now!”

  Zalheer eyed her blade, but again I didn’t see even the slightest flicker of fear cross his face. “I already told you,” he said. “I called out to you because the Vaer Tal’Shira is the only hope of destroying the corruptors and saving the Aether.”

  “You keep using that word,” Valuri said. “Isn’t Tal’Shira your last name?”

  Kaseya’s lip quivered almost imperceptibly. “Amazons do not take the names of our parents—surnames are bestowed upon us by the moshalim . When my sister was born, the seers believed she was the most powerful amazon born in a generation. She is Vaer Tal’Shira : the Daughter of Destiny.”

  I frowned. “But you share the name.”

  “Only after her banishment,” Kaseya said. “The moshalim believed that I would be the one to find her and bring her to justice.”

  “And for once, they are correct,” Zalheer said. “Though as usual, they are unwilling or unable to look beyond a single thread to the entire tapestry. Your sister is an inconvenience, to be sure, but she is not the true enemy.”

  Valuri snorted. “An ‘inconvenience ?’ You just said she stomped your ass and wiped out this entire village. Not that you seem particularly broken up about it.”

  “Why would he be?” Kaseya asked. “He is a rapist and a murderer.”

  Zalheer’s expression sank, and for a moment he looked like she had actually stabbed him. “Somehow after all these years, I made the mistake of assuming that Lysara would forgive me. I knew I could never return home, but I couldn’t imagine the scope of the lies she would tell about me. I thought that perhaps she would simply allow me to be forgotten.”

  “Forgotten?” Kaseya hissed. “You are the only moshalim to ever turn against our people!”

  The old man shook his head. “I never turned against anyone, my dear.”

  Kaseya’s arm twitched, but before she lunged and skewered him through the heart I grabbed onto her shoulder. “Let him speak,” I said. “This is what we’re here for, remember?”

  “We will get no answers from him,” she spat. “Only lies.”

  Valuri glanced between the two of them and crossed her arms. “Why don’t we take it slowly for a minute, huh? Who the hell is this Lysara person you keep mentioning?”

  “Fifty years ago, I was her Maskari ,” Zalheer said. “Today she is the Matriarch of Nol Krovos.”

  An anxious knot twisted in the pit of my stomach. From the first moment Solemi had mentioned Zalheer, I had assumed there would be more to his story. I already knew for a fact that Kaseya had been fed a whole boatload of lies during her childhood. Her people couldn’t even accept the fact that she was a sorceress! I saw no reason to believe that they had told the truth abou
t a renegade moshalim like Zalheer, either.

  Which wasn’t to say I trusted him, of course; I simply wanted to hear his side of the story. But now that we were actually standing here, I was started to dread Kaseya’s inevitable overreaction…

  “I did not kill any of our people, Kaseya,” he said, his shoulders slumping as if he were physically carrying the weight of his memories behind him. “I could have—a part of me even wanted to—but I didn’t. Not even after what they did to Marcella.”

  I frowned. “Marcella?”

  “The amazon he raped and murdered after she was pledged to someone else,” Kaseya said.

  “You don’t understand,” Zalheer growled. “That is not—” He paused and took a deep, calming breath. “That is not what happened.”

  “Then tell us your version,” Valuri prompted. “And you’d better make it good. Red here is chomping at the bit to throw you off this mountain.”

  “Marcella was Lysara’s closest friend,” Zalheer said. “They grew up together; they trained together. Once they were old enough, they even became lovers while they waited for the Matriarch to select their Maskari . The three of us were all the same age, and we knew we were likely to be paired soon. After we completed our respective trials, we spent a lot of time together as a group. That is when Marcella and I fell in love.”

  He sighed and braced himself against the wall before his eyes eventually locked upon me. “If you are Kaseya’s Maskari , then you must know something about our traditions. Amazons are not permitted to take male lovers who are not their bond mate. He is to be her first and only lover until she dies in his defense or is otherwise rendered incapable of fulfilling her pledge.”

  “I’m familiar with the custom,” I mustered, my mind flashing back to the first time I had slipped inside Kaseya and unwittingly claimed her virginity. The thought made my cock stir, which further proved my shamelessness. I could probably get hard at a funeral with sufficient motivation. What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Let me guess: the two of you started fucking before she was actually pledged to anyone,” Valuri put in with her characteristic lack of tact.

  Zalheer’s cheek twitched. “We became lovers, yes. We honestly believed that the Matriarch would bond us together anyway—we already possessed a powerful connection.”

  “Except she didn’t.”

  “No, she didn’t,” he replied softly. “I didn’t realize it until later, but Lysara had grown deeply jealous of our relationship. Somehow, she convinced the Matriarch that I should be her Maskari instead, and she arranged for Marcella to pledge herself to a brute named Korek.”

  Zalheer’s lip quivered in rage. “We were more surprised than anything at that point. We wanted to contest the Matriarch’s decision, but of course that wasn’t possible. So instead we promised each other that we would never speak about what had happened between us. We had a duty to Nol Krovos.”

  He shrugged. “For a time, I thought everything might actually work out. Lysara was a loyal amazon and served me well. But then I saw the way Korek treated Marcella. He would throw her down and take her in the middle of the street. He would publically humiliate her over and over again. He didn’t treat her as a precious gift and loyal companion—he treated her like a pet.”

  “You lie!” Kaseya hissed. “The moshalim would never allow that to happen.”

  “They didn’t approve of his behavior, but they did nothing to stop him,” Zalheer said. “He was a skilled channeler, you see, and most of the elders believed he would sit on the council with them one day. He probably would have, too, if he hadn’t learned that Marcella was a sorceress.”

  Kaseya’s face drained of color. “What?”

  Zalheer turned back to me. “I don’t know whether she told you or not, but on Nol Krovos only males are thought to possess the gift of sorcery. The moshalim have always explained this with nonsense—they say the gods empower the amazons with great strength and martial skill but shield them from the corruption of the Aether. They are meant to use their bodies to soothe the moshalim and temper our worst impulses.”

  “That hardly seems fair,” Valuri muttered.

  “Of course it isn’t fair—it’s not supposed to be.” The old man grimaced in disgust. “Once Korek learned the truth, he severed his bond with Marcella and demanded she be executed as a heretic.”

  “Executed ?” I stammered. “For what?”

  “For the crime of having the Aether in her blood,” Zalheer said. “The others said it marked her as a heretic. Some believed it meant she was possessed by a demon.”

  “That’s insane!”

  “Insanity repeated enough times through enough generations is often indistinguishable from the truth.”

  Valuri grunted. “You’re not wrong about that.”

  “I refused to accept the moshalim’s decision,” Zalheer went on. “I begged Marcella to leave Nol Krovos with me. I wanted to flee to the mainland and live together in peace. I thought she would agree, but honor makes a far sturdier prison than iron bars.” He visibly braced himself. “She allowed them to pass their judgement. And when I saw the smoke from her burning body billowing from the gallows, my heart cried out for vengeance. I wanted to destroy them—I wanted to destroy them all. But instead I left and vowed that I would never allow an innocent sorcerer to suffer Marcella’s fate again.”

  A sickening silence settled over us, but eventually Kaseya stepped forward and glowered at him. “You lie,” she rasped. “The gods would never permit such a transgression. You’re the one who killed Marcella. You killed them all!”

  Zalheer sighed. “I will not attempt to convince you of things I cannot prove. All of this happened a very long time ago.”

  “But there is proof,” I said, my brow creasing in thought. “Kaseya is also a sorceress.”

  Her head whipped around to face me. “I told you that I am not—”

  “You can only lie to yourself for so long,” I interrupted. “You can sense the Aether, Kaseya. You could feel Zalheer’s presence long before he showed up to help us. Why do you think that is?” I shook my head and turned back to the old sorcerer. “Marcella wasn’t the only one with the gift, was she? I bet most of the amazons have it.”

  “Not most,” Zalheer said. “All.”

  I swallowed. “All?”

  “It is the great secret of Nol Krovos, buried by centuries of moshalim lies and Matriarch complicity. I don’t claim to know why or how the tradition began, but the members of the Red Sisterhood are selected to serve because they can sense the Aether.”

  “I don’t understand,” Valuri said. “What is the point?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? The moshalim fear their power. By selecting the most powerful amazons and neutering them with the tan’ratha collar, they eliminate their competition. They are allowed to rule Nol Krovos without question.” His grey eyes focused upon Kaseya. “They have enslaved you without shackles. You are all prisoners of your own minds.”

  “You are delusional,” she whispered, shaking her head. “You whisper the same poison as my sister.”

  “Ayrael is a bitter woman consumed with vengeance,” Zalheer said. “But that doesn’t mean she is wrong about everything. She stumbled upon many of these truths herself—they are what drove her from Nol Krovos.”

  “Enough!” Kaseya growled. She glared at him for another long moment before she swiveled back to me. “Listen to more of his lies if you wish, Maskari , but I will not.”

  With that, she stormed out of the room. I ran a hand back through my hair and swore under my breath.

  “Great,” I muttered. “Just great.”

  “Do you think we should go after her?” Valuri asked. “I’m a little worried she might do something stupid.”

  “She just needs some space,” I said, hoping I knew what I was talking about. People did crazy and unpredictable things when their core beliefs were shattered. I had watched several priests lose their faith right in front of me over the years, and the result was
never pretty.

  “She will either learn to accept the truth, or she will be destroyed by it,” Zalheer said.

  I whipped my head around and shot him a withering glare. “Thanks. You’re a big help.”

  “I wish it did not have to come to this, but we simply do not have time to wait for her to adapt,” he said gravely. “The forces of the Corrupter gather even now, and they will make their move far sooner than anyone in your city believes.”

  I took a deep breath and shifted my attention back to the old man. He could have been lying; he could have been working with Ayrael directly, for all we knew. His entire story could have been pure bullshit designed to lull us into a false sense of security. But I didn’t think so. If her people were willing to lie to Kaseya about her powers, I saw no reason why they wouldn’t be willing to lie about plenty of other things as well. Even if Zalheer had spun his story for our benefit, I had no doubt that it was more accurate than the version she had told us earlier.

  In my experience the simplest explanations were almost always the correct ones. And this situation was no different.

  “You said that this ‘Corruptor’ will poison the Aether and the world in darkness,” I said. “You know something about the Inquisitrix’s plans?”

  “I know enough,” Zalheer murmured. “I felt the shadow of her presence long before I could give it a name. She is a spider sinking her fangs into the Aether until her venom can spread across the world.”

  “Colorful,” Valuri commented. “What the fuck does that actually mean?”

  “I assumed you of people would know. You are her spawn—you carry her corruption in your veins.”

  “I know that she wants to conquer Highwind and rule the Northern Reaches, but that’s not exactly news to anyone,” Valuri said. “I also know she’s a raging hypocrite who has no problem with magic as long as it serves her purposes. There are plenty of sorcerers in Vorsalos—they’re just all women, and they all serve the Inquisitrix.”

  “Then you do understand,” Zalheer said. “Good.”

  My eyes flicked between them. “Well, I don’t!”