The Last Goddess

by C.E. Stalbaum

  ***

  Tiel Aranis walked solemnly through the corridors of Jehalai. He had expected them to feel familiar and perhaps even comforting compared to the bustling streets of Haven, but instead they were cold and foreign. Even the monks he had spent years training with seemed more like ghosts than real people. It felt like he didn’t know them at all. Perhaps he didn’t.

  “I realize this won’t be easy for you,” Master Bale said as he led Tiel into his private chambers, “and I realize there’s probably nothing I can say to make it easier. But I apologize anyway—if I expected things to turn out this way, I would have told you months ago.”

   “Months,” Tiel replied softly, “but not years? Not when you first recruited me?”

  Bale sighed and lowered himself into a plush chair on the right side of the study. It was spacious, at least compared to the modest rooms the others lived in. He kept an array of musty books and rare antiques on shelves scattered throughout the room, but other than that the only significant decoration was his collection of small statuettes, one for each of the Five True Gods.

  “We still serve an important function here, Tiel,” Bale told him after a moment. “We protect the history and knowledge of our order, and we strive to serve the Goddess any way that we can.”

  “So do the Edehan temples and their priests,” he countered. “And they don’t lie to their initiates.”

  “It isn’t that simple, I’m afraid.”

  Tiel scoffed. “It seems simple to me. You lie to people to get them to join. You abuse their faith in Edeh to get them to commit years of their life to a lost cause before telling them the truth. It’s sickening.”

  Bale locked his eyes onto the younger man. Like any respectable mentor, he had a glare that could strip paint from the walls if he so desired—and right now it was blazing in full form. “You’re young and angry, so I don’t expect you to understand. The people need the Kirshal, Tiel. They need hope, and the legend gives them that. It lets them believe there can be a better tomorrow, and that is worth living to see it.”

  “And why do you get to make that decision for them?” Tiel asked sharply. “Why did you get to make that decision for me?”

  “Despite what you may think, your time here was not wasted. You learned more in four years than you would in twenty at that rustic temple in Vakar. You have already done good things, and your faith and strength will allow you to serve Edeh for a long time to come.”

  “That’s a glib rationalization and you know it.”

  “It’s the truth,” Bale said softly, “whether you want to admit it or not.”

  Tiel turned to glare at the statuettes and ground his teeth together. Anger had never found much of a place in his life, and as a result he wasn’t sure how to handle it. He wanted to scream and smash everything in front of him…but somehow, despite every muscle in his body telling him to lash out, he felt the worst of it draining away. Rage wasn’t going to change what had happened to him, and for the sake of the others he needed to keep his cool and find out what was really going on here.

  The others—people he had known for barely a week, and yet right now he cared more about what they thought than the monks he had spent four years of his life with.

  “You still haven’t told me everything that’s going on here,” Tiel said eventually, twisting back around. “You were hiding something important back there. They will figure that out, you know. They’re quite clever.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Bale assured him. “But right now I’m more concerned about this imposter they have brought with them. What have you learned about her?”

  “We told you she doesn’t remember anything, not even her own name.”

  “Easy to claim, difficult to prove. She’s never given you reason to think otherwise?”

  He shook his head. “No. Rook believes her, too, and he seems like a good judge of character.”

  The old man leaned back in his chair, and his eyes narrowed in thought. “So is she an innocent victim or a collaborator? I’m inclined to believe the latter.”

  “Based on what?” Tiel snapped. “You don’t know her at all. She saved our lives more than once on the way here. Without her, we would have all been cut down by Faceless.”

  “Yes, she destroyed them with a wave of her hand,” Bale murmured, “and you thought it was a miracle.”

  Tiel frowned and he took a step forward. “How did you know that?”

  The man’s face hardened. “Because I have seen it before with my own eyes. She is not the first to wield this power, and unfortunately I doubt she will be the last.”

  “What power? I thought the Faceless were impervious to magic.”

  “A widely accepted myth,” Bale said softly. “But nothing can ever be truly separated from the Fane. A spark of life endures within their broken shell, and it can be extinguished just as any other.”

  Tiel licked his lips and folded his arms across his chest. “The Faceless have given the Darenthi military supremacy across Esharia for a hundred years. If they had a weakness, surely someone would have exploited it by now.”

  “As I said, she is not the first, and she will not be the last.”

  “Then why haven’t I ever heard of this before? Why hasn’t someone else destroyed the Faceless?”

  Bale’s gray eyes glimmered. “Because of us.”

  Tiel blinked. “What?”

  The Kirshane Master sighed and closed his eyes. “I told you earlier that the Kirshal spoke to us about the end of the Septurian Empire. She described the Sundering as a great tearing of the Fane that left thousands dead. This was not entirely unknown to us.”

  “It didn’t sound all that different than what we’ve read in the scriptures,” Tiel replied, forcing himself to take a seat across the table and relax.

  “It wasn’t, but that’s not what I mean. This magic—this power the Balorites unleashed upon Septuria—it it still with us today. The first Kirshane sought to destroy all traces of that knowledge, and ever since we have continued their efforts. For the most part, we have been successful. But there have been some…exceptions.”

  “Something else you never bothered to tell me.”

  Bale waved a hand dismissively. “This was never well-known, not even within the senior ranks of the order. It was believed that the very knowledge of its existence was sacrilege, an eternal temptation to violate the most sacred tenets of the Goddess. The fact I knew about it at all was something of an accident; the last records of the technique were allegedly destroyed before I was born. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.”

  “So what is this technique, exactly? Surely it must be difficult.”

  “If only,” Bale said gravely. “That is one of many reasons it is so dangerous. The first Kirshane called it ‘Sundering,’ and that is how we remember that period in time. But ever since, we have given it a far more fitting name: Defilement. It is quite literally a desecration of Edeh’s Fane.”

  Tiel swallowed, his throat suddenly going dry. “What does it mean?”

  “The Flensing is Edeh’s check upon mortal power. To affect her world, we must draw upon ourselves. The sacrifice has a powerful symmetry, so to speak. A Defiler is able to circumvent the Flensing by drawing upon the very souls of other living beings. She destroys their lives in order to tear open a gateway to the Fane and touch its power. It is the ultimate expression of selfishness, the harvesting of others for personal gain.”

  “That seems…impossible,” Tiel whispered. “Why would Edeh allow this?”

  “Many evils endure in the world, and the gods do nothing to stop them.”

  “Yes, but this…” he shook his head. “This seems different.”

  Bale shrugged. “The first Kirshane ascribed it to Abalor. When she awoke, the Kirshal herself called him ‘The Great Defiler.’ She said this twisted magic was his last act of vengeance against Edeh for refusing to share her creations with him.” His eyes glazed over for a moment before he shook his head. “In the end,
I’m not sure it really matters. The point is that Defilers are very real, and they nearly destroyed the world once before.”

  “And you think Selaste is one of them.”

  “Someone has taught her the technique,” Bale said. “A Defiler can draw her power from a Faceless just like any other living creature. And because they have so little life to offer, so to speak, it is a trivial task to destroy one. It’s somewhat ironic that the quintessential weapon of the Balorites is best defeated through their own twisted power.”

  “So you think whoever taught her to Defile is the one who placed her in the coffin,” Tiel reasoned, his stomach tightening. “And that means she was probably complicit in the plan all along. Whoever did this wouldn’t have shared such a dangerous secret with any random mage.”

  “Definitely not,” Bale agreed.

  “Do you really think Prince Kastrius is the one behind it?”

  Bale pursed his lips. “I don’t know. The prince has many allies, and it is possible one of them could have uncovered this knowledge. But the only one who would know that for sure is Selaste.”

  “Can you restore her memories?”

  “What I told the others is true: it depends if they were removed or suppressed. Considering the delicacy of the work, I think it’s very likely they were merely suppressed—it wouldn’t be very useful to train someone and then have them forget everything you taught them. Suppression is easier and far less risky.”

  Tiel nodded, his mind reeling as it tried to catch up with everything the man was telling him. He reminded himself that Bale had lied to him once—had lied to him every day for many years, in fact. It was completely possible that he was lying again now. Tiel just wasn’t sure what he hoped to gain by it if he was.

  “So you plan to make the attempt, then?”

  “Tomorrow, once they are acclimated,” Bale said, tapping his cheek in thought. “You’ve spent a great deal of time with them over the last week. How do you think they’ll respond if she turns out to be an accomplice like I suspect?”

  “I…don’t know. We all—they all—owe her our lives. And I think they all pity her.” He frowned at the older man. “I would think you’d be more worried about her. Once her memories are back, she might try to turn this power on us.”

  “We can deal with her if necessary,” he said cryptically, “but I’d rather not have to count the others as enemies if I don’t have to, especially Rook. I need to know if he’s ready to hear what I have to tell him.”

  “About Defilers?”

  “No,” Bale replied. “Something much more personal.”

  Tiel’s stomach clenched even tighter. How much worse could this get? “What are you talking about?”

  Bale smiled tiredly and lowered his eyes. “You have proven yourself, Tiel, even beyond what I had expected. I know the journey wasn’t easy, but you did what you had to do to get them here.”

  “I…” he trailed off and bit his lip. No, Bale wasn’t getting out of this by hiding in a compliment. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  The old man’s eyes fastened upon him. “I told them the Kirshal was dead. That’s not entirely true.”

  “What?” Tiel breathed.

  “A spark of her power may remain.”

  “But you said she didn’t have any power,” he replied. “You said she was just a normal woman.”

  Bale shrugged. “Our expectations were very high. In some of the ancient scriptures, the Kirshal had wondrous powers far beyond those of even the most brilliant magi. Some believed she could literally restore Septuria with a wave of her hand. Her actual abilities weren’t quite so dramatic.”

  Tiel cocked his head. “Give me an example.”

  “Her touch could heal a vicious wound,” Bale said distantly. “She could even reach through the Fane and restore life to the recently deceased. Our mortal egos had expected something grandiose and jaw-dropping, but in the final analysis, what is more powerful than dominion over life and death?”

  The tightness in Tiel’s stomach became a full-blown knot. “And you think this power remains? How? Where?”

  Bale nodded solemnly. “Inside Nathan Rook.”