“Did… did she say what I t-think she just said?” Naomi asked in shock, reaching out and grabbing Jasmine’s hand. “She made her kill people who loved her?”
“I don’t think… I don’t think that it was just them that loved her,” Jasmine said softly, her hand tightening around Naomi’s until she heard a gasp, and quickly relaxed her grip with an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. I… I don’t know what to say,” Naomi said, shivering.
“Neither do I,” Jasmine said, taking a deep breath, then quickly hurried forward to catch up, her embarrassment almost like a forgotten dream at this point as she almost dragged Naomi behind her. “But I know this much. I have to say something.”
“Yeah,” Naomi agreed, guilt filling her voice. “I’ve been terrible to her.”
Jasmine couldn’t respond to that, as she focused on catching up, then slowed, taking a deep breath as she watched Xandra, trying to find the words that would help, and couldn’t come up with any. So at last she looked up at the sky and spoke again.
“You’re wrong. It isn’t a mistake to have someone love you, Xandra. You aren’t in the Domain of Ashen Hopes anymore, and she can’t do that to you anymore,” Jasmine said, forcing every bit of confidence she could manage into her voice.
“We’ll have to see. My soul is still damned,” Xandra replied simply, not even pausing in her march down the road, her back straight as an arrow.
Jasmine couldn’t come up with a reply to that, as Xandra wasn’t wrong. She could only wonder, how would she survive something like what Xandra had described?
The question would probably haunt her, Jasmine suspected, and found her hand tightening around Naomi’s again, which the other priestess returned.
On the other hand, it only increased Jasmine’s respect for the woman. How many people could truly let themselves help others after being through something like that?
So she followed, continuing to think long and hard.
Chapter 29
Xandra had trouble bottling up her memories again after her conversation with Jasmine. Not that it could really be considered a conversation, when she’d been essentially the only one talking. The memories… she could hardly express how much it hurt to have them come out again, and she hated to show weakness to others, but she hadn’t been able to suppress them anymore. Her Mistress had wounded her too deeply.
In particular, she had trouble forgetting their eyes. The dead, accusing eyes looking up at Xandra, her arms covered in their blood. That, and the whispers of her Mistress in her ear, softly explaining exactly how it was her fault that it had come to this. That it was all Xandra’s fault for choosing to associate with them. Oh, she knew that wasn’t true, but that didn’t mean that her subconscious believed it. Three years wasn’t enough to throw off a thousand years of conditioning.
It was at that point that Xandra caught sight of Nef’s home, and she felt her back tense a little more. The last thing she needed at the moment was to deal with Nef, but she didn’t have much of a choice under the circumstances, so Xandra gritted her teeth and continued forward.
The house was a simple log cabin, at least on the outside, but Xandra knew better than to believe that, her gaze flicking to the hill behind the cabin, one which was devoid of trees, and with numerous moss-covered standing stones erected around it at regular intervals. Xandra had examined those stones only once, and if she had any choice in the matter she’d never examine them again. Then the wind changed, and she stiffened as the scent of sulfur and blood reached her.
“We may have trouble ahead,” Xandra said, and was slightly startled at how the implication of danger helped her shut the memories away, as the mental box snapped shut firmly.
“What? Where?” Jasmine asked, reaching up to grasp her holy symbol as she looked around.
“I said may. I smell sulfur and blood on the wind. That often means demons to me, but there are other things that smell like that. Fire dragons, salamanders, an angry phoenix…” Xandra shrugged, reaching down to make sure a wand was readily available on her belt as she continued, “It really doesn’t matter which it is. Considering the location, I suspect demons or fire elementals.”
“Why… oh, right. You said something about this Nef living on a spot where planar boundaries are thin, didn’t you,” Naomi said, sounding a little more focused at this point. “Most dragons aren’t from other planes, while elementals are.”
“You can learn! Keep it up, and I might not criticize you as much,” Xandra replied, continuing forward at a slightly more cautious pace, her gaze flicking back and forth. The angle of the wind changed again, causing the smell to fade, and Xandra’s eyes narrowed. If she wasn’t mistaken, the smell was coming from behind Nef’s home. Xandra just wasn’t sure what she should expect. She wished she dared wear her Mistress’s items still, but she didn’t want her cultists magically tracking them. If anyone could give attackers the information needed to defeat Xandra, it was her Mistress.
“I still wish you weren’t so sarcastic all the time,” Naomi muttered, prompting a snort from Xandra.
“If wishes were fish, we’d all be dying, buried in rotten fish,” Xandra retorted. They were getting closer, about close enough for Xandra to see the building clearly… and at that moment, Nef emerged from behind the building, causing Xandra to relax, if only slightly.
Kel’Nef wasn’t that unusual for a Karakar in most respects. Like most of her kindred, she had pale skin and bright red hair that fell to the middle of her back, though hers wasn’t too curly comparatively, and her skin was nicely tanned. The Karakar’s blue eyes widened on seeing Xandra, then she smiled broadly, which accentuated her beauty. She was wearing a simple outfit that would suit a common woodsman, though dark blood was spattered on it in several locations, while a sword hung at her left side and an ink pen and notebook in a worn leather holster was on her right.
“Xandra, you came to visit again! Oh, I can hardly wait to catch up!” Nef exclaimed in her musical voice, sounding delighted as she turned to face Xandra. “And you brought others! Dare I hope you found some friends? You do so need the company, my dear, after everything that you’ve been through! Ah, I’d give you a hug, but I don’t want to get blood all over your clothing. We can do that in a bit. Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?”
“There’s no need for a hug, now or ever,” Xandra replied calmly, her stomach tightening slightly as she eyed the blood, which looked both fresh and a bit darker than normal. It also didn’t belong to Nef, if she wasn’t mistaken. “I smelled blood and sulfur. Did something happen?”
“Hugs are always needed. As for ‘something’, of course it did! A trio of slaughter fiends decided to pay me a visit without an invitation. It was quite rude of them to try that, you know. They probably wanted to eviscerate me and eat my innards,” Nef said brightly, a note of sorrow creeping into her voice as she clicked her tongue and continued, “When conversation proved impossible, I was forced to chastise them firmly. And since Ell has been asking me about fiendish physiology, I decided that it was best to make the tragedy of some use, and took notes. I do need to clean up, so I do not recommend stepping out back unless your companions have strong stomachs.”
“What?” Naomi asked, sounding faintly horrified, and Xandra interjected quickly.
“You don’t want to know. If she said that you need a strong stomach, yours isn’t strong enough,” Xandra said, looking back at Naomi with slightly narrowed eyes. Naomi looked shocked, while Jasmine’s eyes were wide, and she had a tightly controlled expression. Then she looked back at Nef and continued, “This is Naomi, priestess of the Phoenix Queen, and Jasmine, holy maiden of the same. I have brought them to you to consult on an extraplanar invasion in Loth.”
“An extraplanar invasion? In Loth! How incredibly fascinating! I have so many questions for you,” Nef exclaimed, clapping her hands together as her eyes began shining. “Oh, it needs to be ended as quickly as possible, of course… all those poor people
in its way. But anything of the sort needs to be studied in-depth. I thought Loth had exceptionally strong planar boundaries! Please, come in, come in! I’ll just quickly wash up and make tea, then we can discuss your problem!”
Nef turned and darted through the door, almost faster than Xandra could follow her, and the elf felt herself relax slightly. It was almost like she’d been given a reprieve on a prison sentence, she thought.
“What was that? I thought she was nice!” Naomi said, sounding a little horrified.
“I told you that she scared me,” Xandra replied tartly. “Nef knows more about the various extraplanar beings and societies than anyone has a right to know, and no one should know that sort of thing and come out of it normal. Yet she’s one of the kindest, most supportive people I’ve ever met… and that terrifies me.”
“But… she said that she took notes on slaughter fiends. What did she mean?” Jasmine asked, looking at the door to the cabin nervously.
“Are you blind? Did you see any blood that was hers on her? That sword is not for show,” Xandra replied, heading for the door grimly. “I suspect she dissected their bodies so that they didn’t go entirely to waste. I also suspect that if we hadn’t shown up when we did, you’d never have seen this side of her, and would have thought I was being overdramatic. Fools, the lot of you. Cain and Mora too, for that matter.”
Neither replied to that, showing that they’d learned a little more, and Xandra pushed open the cabin door, which instantly revealed that there was something wrong with the building. The entryway alone was bigger than the entire cabin’s exterior, and two windows pierced the front wall, allowing light into the room, which was odd because there weren’t any windows on the exterior of the cabin. Not to mention that the walls inside were made of stone, not wood.
A large, round wooden table sat on a rug in the middle of the room, with an elaborate lace doily in its center on which burned a candle that filled the room with the scent of a pumpkin pie. Each of the four chairs had different cushions with patterns that had been hand-stitched, and several paintings adorned the walls, each showing beautiful landscapes. Xandra studiously avoided looking too closely at any of the cushions, paintings, or the doily for that matter. After the last time, she didn’t want to look that closely again. At least the cabinet of porcelain dishes was relatively safe to look at, or the elegant music box against another wall.
Instead she focused on the kitchen that was through an open doorway to the back, with an array of carefully organized herbs drying as they hung from a rack on the ceiling, while the iron stove had a kettle sitting on its surface. There were several more doors, but Xandra ignored them, unslinging her pack and setting it next to the door. Then she took the seat nearest the door and braced herself. She wanted to be almost anywhere else at the moment.
“This… doesn’t look right,” Jasmine said, looking around. Xandra snorted, shaking her head.
“What tipped you off? The windows? The size of the room?” Xandra asked sarcastically, sitting back in her chair. “I have no idea how it works, but Nef’s home manipulates space. I sometimes wonder if it’s even fixed to the location outside.”
“You… seem a little more on edge than normal. Is it because of earlier?” Jasmine asked, looking a little taken aback. She hadn’t moved toward a chair yet, and Xandra inhaled as the box of memories she’d almost forgotten about threatened to burst open.
“I’ll thank you not to bring that up right now. The last thing I want is to have Nef prying into that again,” Xandra told her tartly, her eyes narrowing slightly. “She’s like a dog with a bone when she hears about something interesting. She’ll never let go, and drag it out of you whether you like it or not.”
“Huh. So… she’s one of the few people you’re afraid of?” Naomi asked, frowning as she considered the table, then shrugged and took a chair to Xandra’s right. Jasmine followed, taking the next chair, somewhat to Xandra’s irritation. That would put Nef to her immediate left, which meant she wouldn’t have the safety of a table between them.
“I wouldn’t say afraid. She unnerves me,” Xandra corrected, sniffing softly as she shifted in place. “There are some things that are simply unnatural. She’s one of them.”
“If you say so,” Naomi replied, looking almost smug, which irritated Xandra.
Xandra declined to give her more comments to twist, instead sitting there and doing her best not to look at anything that might be more than it seemed. That mostly meant looking up at the chandelier above the table, tiny crystals embedded in its surface, each glowing with internal light. She relaxed slightly, following the whorls idly… then stiffened as she realized that she recognized those whorls, and that the entire chandelier was some sort of magical device aligned with an upper plane of light. Xandra dragged her gaze away, internally swearing. This was part of why she hated visiting Nef. Everything had a meaning in the woman’s home, which made it impossible to relax.
“There we are! There’s nothing like a quick wash after a bit of exercise!” Nef announced, stepping out of a side room with a grin, which practically dragged Xandra’s gaze to her. On the other hand, the incredulous look on Jasmine’s face nearly brought a smile to Xandra’s.
Nef looked much like she had before, though her hair was slightly damp and pulled back in a ponytail now, while the blood was gone and she was wearing a pair of black trousers, a green tunic, and her sword belt, along with a pendant with a large gold locket hanging from it. The woman had her notebook in hand, though as they watched she snapped it shut and slipped it and the ink pen into its holster.
“There we are, I just needed to make note of my final thoughts regarding the fiends, my apologies. Now, before we get down to proper introductions, what tea would you like? Peppermint? Ginger? No, no… I see hints of stress in all of your expressions, and Xandra… you’ve been crying? Tsk, we can’t have that. A nice pot of chamomile tea is in order,” Nef said briskly, not even pausing for them to reply. “Now, would you prefer biscuits, cookies, pastries, or a nice bit of ham, lettuce, and tomato on a slice of sourdough?”
“How… oh, nevermind that. You’re far too observant, Nef. I’ll take biscuits and some of the raspberry preserves, if you please,” Xandra said at last, giving up and sitting back in her chair, her head beginning to throb. “You give me a headache.”
“What about the two of you? Jasmine and Naomi, yes?” Nef asked, already pulling some biscuits out of the oven. Xandra wasn’t sure where they’d come from, though she suspected that Nef had put them in the oven when she came inside initially. They could barely see the woman moving in the kitchen, with her quick, precise movements. “I heard about the two of you from Xandra, and your fascinating visit to the Domain of Ashen Hopes. Not how I would want to visit, but we can’t have everything, can we? Food first, though. You can’t have a proper discussion on an empty stomach.”
“I… well, I think the cookies sound like they’d be good to me. Though perhaps I should go with the sourdough? I didn’t have much of a breakfast,” Jasmine said, looking at Xandra in confusion.
“And I’ll have the sourdough as well. It sounds good,” Naomi agreed, staring through the doorway at Nef in fascination.
“Excellent! I’ll have all of that out in a jiffy, ladies. Mm, progress, I knew someone had to like Xandra other than me,” Nef said, a note of smug self-satisfaction in her voice.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Xandra demanded, her eyes narrowing suddenly.
“It means that I knew someone had to be able to look past that thorny, icy facade you like to put on and associate with you in a way that wasn’t purely business,” Nef replied instantly. “And don’t try to claim you don’t care. If you didn’t care, you’d have headed north as soon as you’d gotten the letter from me, or you’d have gone to the Great Library to begin with.”
“And how do you figure that?” Xandra asked, ignoring the way the other two were staring.
Almost at the same time the teapot whistled, and there was
a soft clatter from the kitchen, then Nef stepped out, carrying a tray on one hand that was piled with food and the teapot. The woman stepped over to them precisely, and she set a plate of beautiful, fluffy white biscuits with a small amount of raspberry preserves next to it in front of Xandra, then a cup which she quickly and precisely filled with fragrant tea before depositing a knife next to the plate.
“Like you said, I’m observant,” Nef replied pleasantly as she met Xandra’s gaze. “Now eat your biscuits, dear.”
Xandra opened her mouth to reply, then paused, seeing the steel in Nef’s eyes. Other people just saw how pleasant she was most of the time, and at first Xandra had seen the same thing. Then Nef seemed to have realized something, and now… now this was what she had to deal with.
So Xandra sighed, and picked up the tea to take a sip. It galled her that the flavor and smell did help her relax, even if only slightly.
“Here you are, ladies. Don’t stand on ceremony, go ahead and start!” Nef said, turning to the others and setting their food in front of them, then a plate in front of the last chair, which held one of the ham sandwiches on it.
She quickly returned the tray to the kitchen, then returned, dusting off her hands. She always moved with the grace of a dancer, Xandra thought. Or maybe like a viper.
“Now, before we get any farther, I should introduce myself,” Nef said, and gave a deep, graceful bow to Jasmine. “I am Kel’Nef, adjunct archivist of the Great Library of the Karakar. Welcome to my home, and I am at your disposal.”
Straightening just as gracefully, the elf took her own seat and took a bite of her food with obvious relish, then swallowed before adding, “Now, then, tell me about this invasion.”
Chapter 30
“…then Cain showed us ranks of the plant-creatures coming out of what looked like a portal, along with a fair folk overseeing it all. The fair folk noticed the spell, and dispelled it after a few moments,” Jasmine explained, pausing as she tried to dredge up more details, then added, “Um, the portal did look like it was between the arched branches of two trees as well.”
Dusk Gate (Soul Bound Book 1) Page 22
