by Regina Watts
“Weltyr sent me here to defend an innocent life,” I assured the demon, leveling Strife once again for another charge. “Whatever the durrow people have done, Valeria is not responsible for the sum total of their crimes.”
Is a sovereign not the representative of its people? With a wave of its good hand, a shining purple shield appeared before its body. Strife impacted upon this astral barrier, sending a wave of energy through its surface as it absorbed the blow. Gritting my teeth, I glanced at the hand lying limp on the floor and thought fast. Another prayer to Weltyr poured from my heart, but the snarling spirit-thief paid this one no mind.
Perhaps the problem lies with you, Burningosul—perhaps you feel that the races the durrow subjugate are truly lesser. Perhaps you believe we are worthy only of slavery; of extermination.
I ignored it, my lips still moving, this prayer far longer than the prior ones. Behind the spirit-thief, its hand twitched upon the floor.
Your god certainly seems unconcerned with all the death you brought to my people, it continued, a spell of its own slowly lighting its remaining fingertips. How pathetic mortals are, relying on the generosity of invisible beings! What could such entities possibly care for one such as you, or the life of the Materna? This foolish obsession with such antiquated notions is what keeps all the species of this planet from reaching the peaks to which my people have struggled to bring you. Why please the gods when you can displace them?
I ignored it and completed my prayer. As I did, the severed hand twisted upon its fingers. Weak without the tension of tendons attached to an arm, it nonetheless managed to drag itself forward along the floor. From the safety of his shield, the spirit-thief completed its spell sooner than I’d hoped: lightning shot from its fingers and into Strife’s blade, burning my palms and racing up my very skeleton while I screamed in agony. Hideous laughter filled my mind only to be stopped abruptly when the hand caught hold of its cloak and, at a faster pace, scaled the spirit-thief’s body.
My skin sizzling with the aroma of smoking meat, I realized I had been brought to my knees by the pain only when the lightning had passed. Head throbbing, every muscle in me tight with the electricity and searing with burns, I had no choice but to chant a healing prayer while the demon’s hand worked as a suitable distraction. As Al-listux worked to yank the hand from its cloak before the appendage could reach its face, Weltyr’s grace flooded my body with a relief far superior to that granted by any natural endorphin or healing plant.
It were as though light itself surged through my veins. My tensed muscles relaxing, the headache faded in an instant. While I clambered to my feet, the beast tossed the hand away. The animated fingers twitched while it landed beside the toolbox.
I’ll give you a last chance to turn around and pretend you saw nothing, the spirit-thief told me, its tentacles already glowing with yet another spell. Should you persist in this foolhardy effort, I can promise that you will not even live to regret it.
“You’re a powerful sorcerer, Al-listux—where were you when your brood was falling to my sword? They might have lasted a few minutes longer, had you been with them.”
Hissing, the beast’s mental echo rose in a chant I did my best to shut out—but in the end, there was little need. The animated hand, lacking any intelligence but for my will and Weltyr’s, had dragged itself upright and pulled the freshly-greased pin from the lowest of those hinges. The explosion as the trap’s mechanism was disturbed was tremendous, and I still fill with dread to think what would have happened had I not spilled Trystera’s wine and been sent back to our chambers for a fresh change of clothes. The gods truly work in mysterious ways, and it was that same boon that permitted the trap to work for me rather than against me.
As the fireball flooded the hallway, Al-listux managed no more than a glance over its shoulder and a sharp cry of surprise before being knocked forward by the explosion and blasted into the sitting room. Even I was blown back, knocked completely off-balance while shards of marble and pieces of decimated plant rained down around me. Having slammed my just-healed head, I groaned and tried to sit up.
The spirit-thief, even injured, was upon me quickly. Its shield had absorbed the energy of the explosion and so it was, like me, left with only the damage of having fallen. Able to overcome this, (no doubt, thanks to whatever energy allowed it to fight this well with a freshly missing hand), the beast once more snapped its tendrils around my face and sent them slithering into my nose and ears. I cried out on instinct and a few managed to enter my mouth. The ache in my head increased twentyfold and, as I screamed in greater pain, a hideous vision unfolded before my eyes.
A great red organ, throbbing like a beating heart yet unlike anything of mortal anatomy, clung to the walls of some dark cavern; a symphony of voices screamed in agony and I knew somehow that they were the captured spirits of those the thieves had claimed in this same way; Hildolfr stooped over me the morning before the extermination of the spirit-thief brood, that most sympathetic of my three traitorous companions regarding me gently with his one good eye.
“Wake up, boy,” he said in his gruff way, hand upon my shoulder while he shook me awake.
The hideous scream of the spirit-thief was what truly awakened me. Its tentacles, not having done their job to completion, swiftly withdrew from my face as the demon stumbled back from my body. Delirious, I lifted my head in time to see it clutched its previously wounded arm: a crossbow bolt protruded from the black cloak and, almost uncomprehending, I glanced toward the door where Fiora stood, ready for another shot.
“Burningsoul,” she called, “can you kill it?”
Strife had been knocked from my hand by the blast—I reached for the handle, so close, yet not close enough. With an animal snarl, the spirit-thief pulled the bolt from its shoulder and hurried to a nearby window whose glass had been blown out by the explosion.
Don’t think yourself safe, Paladin, the spirit-thief warned me, disgusting fleshy wings throbbing out from a pouch in the creature’s back and protruding from the black cloak it wore. You and the Materna are doomed—I’ll see to that, myself.
Before Fiora could lay another bolt in its back, the beast clambered from the window and took to the air as naturally as a bird. I stumbled up with the help of the guard who hurried over to assist me, and together we beat a fast path to the window. The spirit-thief, still dripping its corrosive blood, glided across the glittering city of El’ryh beneath the black stalactites that were its only sky. Soon it was too far away to be seen, and I released a breath I had not even realized myself to be holding.
“The coward,” said Fiora, her lips curled in displeasure. Lowering the crossbow, the guard swept her gaze up and down my body. “How are you? It didn’t get to you, did it?”
“No—by Weltyr’s grace, I am still myself. Ah, Fiora! Thank you, thank you for your assistance.”
“I’m only sorry I didn’t hear something sooner…hard to miss that explosion, though.” The durrow elf regarded the ruined hallway and the rubble still occasionally dropping from the ceiling. “I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that it wasn’t worse. That berich—that was the spirit-thief?”
I nodded, my expression grim. “Who knows how long it’s been sneaking about in Nibel’s guise, assuming its old form only to corrupt other members of the palace and use them for its own ill intent—by Weltyr, I’m so glad I happened back here when I did.”
“Meanwhile, I feel like a fool for letting the blasted thing into the Materna’s chambers in the first place.”
“Don’t,” I told her, touching her arm and eliciting a quick glance but ultimate acceptance of the camaraderie earned not by station but by battle. “You couldn’t have known—no one could have. It’s why this demon has been so successful at remaining in the Palace for such a long time.”
Nodding slightly, Fiora looked one more displeased time at the rubble around us. “Why don’t we wait in the anteroom—I’ll call for my superiors.”
Soon, while I took
a well-earned seat in one of the benches arranged for those waiting for a private audience with my mistress, the guard stood at a desk in the corner that was designed to check those visitors in. From this, she removed a strange black box that glowed as she took it in her hand. After a few seconds, it emitted a noise that I recognized to be another durrow’s voice. More dwarven technology of some kind, I supposed. I had little interest in speculating on such things while my head was awash with such agony and the cool marble wall behind me proved such relief.
Soon enough, Fiora’s call was answered. A pair of high-ranking guards, their status discernible by the sigils upon their helmets, arrived in the lift with tight-faced Trystera—and, to my relief, Valeria herself. The Materna set eyes on me and, seeing my state as I swayed to my feet, gasped softly to herself. Without the least care for the company surrounding us, she pushed through the guards, calling, “Rorke!”
The arms she wound around me were not just a relief, but the finest of rewards. I glanced only once at the stern vizier before daring to wrap my arms around my mistress in turn, savoring her embrace and the soft flesh of her back before she leaned away to take my face in her delicate hands. “Oh, sweet Burningsoul—what’s happened?”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to move you to temporary quarters until your chambers can be repaired, Madame,” answered Fiora, who very kindly did not so much as bat an eye at the perhaps inappropriately intimate embrace of the mistress and her slave. “The hallway has taken substantial damage, as you will see.”
“I can’t stand to,” answered Valeria, releasing me to speak face-to-face with her entourage and the guard who saved my life. “I won’t see it. Call on me when it has been fixed, no sooner. What trap was it?”
“A loaded hinge,” I told her, “fixed with some kind of spell—placed there by the conspirator, Nibel.”
On hearing this, the vizier looked at me more sharply. “The berich?”
I nodded. As that same mistrustful servant of the Materna looked at the woman who had come to my aid, Fiora confirmed for me. “Aye, the berich dwarf. It’s all my fault. We see him about so often that I didn’t look closely at his assignment papers.”
“Even if you had,” I dared interrupt, “I’d wager they would have seemed in perfect order. It was no berich, Madame.” I looked seriously into the face of my mistress, knowing she would understand the significance when I told her, “A spirit-thief had been wearing his form about the Palace to do foul business undetected. Al-listux—a powerful sorcerer. Its magic permitted it to survive just long enough for it to escape. I’m as blessed by Weltyr that I kept my life as I am that I caught the demon in the first place.”
“A blasted spirit-thief,” the vizier repeated, glancing toward the shut door of my lady’s chambers. “No wonder…no wonder all this has been going on for so long.”
“It tried to turn me to do its will—no doubt the assassins responsible for the attempts upon Valeria’s life were similarly corrupted. If not for Fiora, I myself might have put my lady in danger.”
“A good thing you were on duty,” said the vizier, nodding at the guard, then reluctantly looking me in the eye. “And a good thing, I suppose, that you so clumsily spilled my wine.”
While I withheld the somewhat embarrassing truth—that I had been thinking at the time she was the conspirator, or at least somehow related to the matter—Trystera turned her attention to the guards. “Remove my slave from my quarters and find a guest apartment for us on the fourth floor. The Materna will require more suitable housing than their small spaces.”
With a bow, one of the guards left to obey. Meanwhile, the vizier continued to Valeria, “It is my strong suggestion that we suspend your duties for the present moment, until the matter of hunting down and slaying this spirit-thief has been seen to.”
“Permit me,” I began, but the vizier cut me off with a scoff.
“We have plenty enough guards for that, Burningsoul. Lucky as you were to make headway against this—thing, this task is better left to those slayers who are trained in the execution of spirit-thieves.”
I bit my tongue, annoyed, unable to explain that I only found myself in a situation such as this to begin with because I had, mostly on my own, claimed the lives of the rest of Al-listux’s less powerful brood. To my surprise, however, my lady leapt to agree with me.
“Burningsoul is more than capable of finishing the wounded spirit-thief,” said Valeria, “and I for one would like to see the creature’s death with my own eyes.”
Balking, Trystera asked, “You mean you wish to be involved in the hunting of this thing, Materna?”
“It would help me sleep at dark if I could observe firsthand its final moments. Surely you can appreciate that.”
“Then we’ll bring you its head,” said the vizier tersely. “What an outrageous thing to say! For the security of the city and your own personal safety, I must insist that you remain in the Palace—in my chambers for as long as possible, until we’re able to confirm its death.”
“Would you make the Materna of your city, the servant of Roserpine upon Urde, a prisoner in her own Palace?”
Though the vizier looked stricken by this—almost fearful that she had overstepped a boundary, I thought—her features soon firmed again. “I have served as vizier to more Maternas than you,” she reminded Valeria. “And there are times when my decisions have been better-weighed and more well-informed than even the most loyal of the Dark Queen’s servants. I will not permit anything to happen to you, and will not see you put yourself in danger. As the spirit-thief intimately knows the ways of our Palace and could take the form of anyone at all, I insist that you remain in my quarters—and remind you that the Palace guards do not answer to you, or even Roserpine. They answer to me.”
Arms crossed, Valeria glowered with great displeasure at her second-in-command. The vizier turned to the other guard who had arrived with them and demanded, “Bring my lady to my chambers and see to it that she’s comfortable.”
Nodding, the guard gestured toward the lift, saying, “Right this way,” while Trystera approached Fiora and commanded, “Show me the damage.”
As Fiora bowed and led the vizier into the chambers to demonstrate the extent of the rubble left by the explosion, the higher-ranking guard led us to the lift. While she hit the button to summon it back up, Valeria gritted her teeth.
“A prisoner in my goddess’s own Palace,” she said, fingers sinking tightly into her crossed arms. “Trapped in my servant’s chambers, unable to perform my duties—are we to bow to the mockery and assaults of all terrorists? This is unacceptable.”
“Perhaps it would be wise for you to lay low awhile, Madame,” I advised her, trying to keep both tone and wording diplomatic. Though she looked sharply at me, her arms became somewhat less tense as I went gently on. “Such acts of violence are often the catalyst for others. It would be too easy for the spirit-thief to corrupt someone from the city of El’ryh and send them into the Palace, ostensibly for some form of arbitration or advice. And…to be fair…” I chuckled in a humorless way, unable to help my smirk. “While I am sure I could fend off another attack if required, a few blooms of rest would be most appreciated.”
Nostrils flaring with her sigh, Valeria fully relaxed her arms and took my hand in hers. “Are you all right, Burningsoul?”
“By virtue of Weltyr, I will live—and sleep very, very well when at last I can have a bit of rest.”
“My treasure! My poor protector. How I hate the thought of anything happening to you—of what could have happened. How much worse it could have been!”
She looked pained, though by the possibility of my demise or by the fact that she could not kiss me in that second, I was not sure. The lift doors opened and we all stepped inside while I assured her warmly, “Perhaps it could have been worse, yes…but it wasn’t. I stand before you, praise my god and yours.”
Exhaling low, Valeria leaned her head against my arm. Before the guard could touch the rune tha
t indicated the 51st floor where Trystera’s apartment lay, however, my mistress commanded, “Wait—before we are to be brought to the vizier’s quarters, take us to the baths.”
“But Trystera—”
“Trystera does not wear the ring of Roserpine,” said the Materna tersely, lifting her fist to show the guard the indigo ring that I swore glowed brighter with her anger. “I will go quietly to Trystera’s chambers when the time comes, and stay there as though I am a slave of the very Palace I oversee—but before that, I and my own slave are both in sore need of the comfort of the baths. Accompany us if you would feel safer; better still, lead us there and call on Fiora to chaperone us back.”
With a hefty sigh and a long look at the ring, the guard lowered her head, turned back to the panel, and struck the more familiar rune that would lower the lift to the floor where the baths were. Valeria sighed in relief and said in a gentler tone, “I appreciate your flexibility. Please, don’t worry—I will see to it that Trystera does not punish you for obeying my command.”
The guard remained visibly wary, but made no further arguments and looked quite relieved to see the baths from a distance. The humid air was a relief to my aching senses as we entered the warm chamber, and it was so soothing that it became my entire focus—so much so that it took me a few seconds longer than it should have to register the amount of sighing, moaning, and name-crying going on around us. It would seem that, in light of the uproarious amount of fun all the banquet-goers were having, those who had slipped away to the baths had transformed the spa into the sight of an orgy outrageous enough to put my mistress’s to shame.
At the very least, durrow caressed one another in groups of threes, fours, and mores while we made our way to the private chamber set aside for my lady. I tried not to stare…but it was quite difficult, and the whole scene was so distracting that I realized only belatedly we had not been greeted by any slaves. There were so many durrow in the baths that they were all occupied with the inundation of guests, and so, to my relief, Valeria and I were left alone in the Materna’s warm rock pool.
