by Joe Jackson
The old wooden planks of the pier were rotting and unstable from centuries of neglect, so Kari and her friends dashed along them as quickly but carefully as possible. The rumors that one could see the Temple from Brigham had proven untrue, but there was no missing it from the beach. Up on the sierra, at the top of the tallest part of the rocky expanse, sat a white marble temple that glowed in the sunshine. It was hard to make out much detail from where the friends stood, but there was no mistaking where they were headed. Kari led her companions into the abandoned village once they got off the treacherous pier.
Kari looked around and tried not to fall into despair. She remembered the seterra-rir people well from her stops at the islands of Salkorum three years before. To see one of their old towns in such a state of abandonment and neglect struck home. They hadn’t been routed by disease, natural disaster, or famine: they’d been chased from this place by their own kin, the other rir species. For someone who had fought to defend not just the rir but all the mortals of Citaria for most of two lifetimes, it left a bitter taste in Kari’s mouth to see that her own people had tried to wipe each other out.
Sonja’s head perked up and she started off to the north through the ruins. “Did you hear that? Someone just called for help!” she said.
Kari hesitated but then started to follow along, as did the others. She hadn’t heard any call for help, and from the looks on her companions’ faces, neither had any of them. She thought perhaps Sonja was hearing things: that she had left her telepathic and empathic awareness open and was hearing something from the past. When Sonja passed between two buildings and then gasped and fell to her rump, scrambling backwards, Kari was sure that was what was happening. Still, Kari dashed forward with her swords at the ready to make sure there were no hidden attackers while Aeligos grabbed careful hold of his sister and tried to talk her down.
“Easy, Sonja, easy,” the rogue said. “You need to close off your mind; you’re just seeing things from the past.”
Kari was glad he knew how to talk her down. She glanced around the area but didn’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary. She checked the sand and loose soil for any sign of tracks or footprints, but there was nothing. Sonja’s reaction certainly seemed to explain why the people thought the island was haunted, and consequently why the army built a beachhead to the south rather than repairing and using the old village. Kari was about to turn back to her friends and suggest they move on when something caught her eye.
Across the way, between two buildings, she’d seen the golden, slit-pupiled eyes of a pale syrinthian again. She might have cast any suspicion aside had she not seen Turillia in Sorelizar, Si’Dorra, and even Anthraxis when she was on Mehr’Durillia. She caught only the most fleeting glimpse before the vision of the half-syrinthian, half-succubus woman was out of sight again. Kari moved off to see if she was imagining things, or if Turillia really was there.
“Kari, where are you going?” Aeligos called after her.
Kari heard him take up pursuit, but she kept her eyes forward and made her way quickly to where she thought she’d seen Turillia. Kari kept her swords at the ready, but even as she turned the corner of a burned out shell of a house, she glanced at the dirt and saw nothing. Not only was there no Turillia, there were no tracks, no sign that the woman had been there at all. Kari knew the succubus assassin was skilled, but walking across damp soil without leaving any trace was something that took arcane trickery to accomplish. It was possible Turillia could’ve used such to fool Kari, but then she didn’t see, hear, or smell any trace of the woman either.
“What’s wrong?” Aeligos asked when he reached Kari’s side.
“I could swear I saw Turillia again,” she said, and she sighed when she saw the confusion on his face. “The succubus assassin I killed in Barcon; we saw her a few times when we were on Mehr’Durillia. And now I swear I just saw her here! Either she’s alive and she’s following me, or she has a twin or other sibling that is.”
Aeligos touched Kari’s shoulder gently. “You’ve been under a lot of stress, and no doubt you were under a lot when you were on Mehr’Durillia,” he said. “It’s fear trying to give your mind something to focus on; try to deal with it. Don’t ignore it, on the off chance your instincts are telling you something, but don’t let it drive you crazy.”
Kari nodded and turned to pat his face. Her foot caught at something in the dirt, and she squatted and dug out whatever it was. She came up with a ragged old doll, mostly rotted away with time, but enough of it remained for Kari to recognize the child’s toy for what it was. When she looked up at Aeligos, she could plainly see that he understood exactly what emotions the toy had evoked in her, and he helped her back to her feet. Kari tossed the ragged old toy into the ruined building and tried to get it off her mind.
“What happened here?” Kari muttered, not really expecting an answer.
“Fear overrode common sense and morality,” Aeligos responded. “It’s a fairly common thing, but not to this degree. I mean, our people have been dealing with the same thing since the first of us was born, but there was never a war to get rid of us as a whole. I can’t help but think there had to be something else involved with all this, and for Gori Sensullu to have stayed silent while his people made war on each other…it doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it certainly doesn’t,” Kari agreed, and she and Aeligos made their way back to the others. When Kari and Sonja’s eyes met, the scarlet-haired woman turned her gaze away as if ashamed. “It’s all right, Sonja. Let’s head up to the Temple and see what we can find out.”
They detoured south first, and Kari introduced herself and her friends to the military unit stationed on the island. Major Peter Millar was in charge there, and though he was courteous and quite respectful of Kari’s place as head of the Demonhunter Order, she wasn’t impressed with him. A fishing boat had docked at the village pier and unloaded several people, and not one member of his military unit – scout or otherwise – had come to see who they were. If this was the type of “protection” the Duke’s military was offering the Temple, then Kari would have to have a talk with the Duke when she got back to DarkWind.
Fortunately, Kari knew there were also a couple of hunters stationed up by the Temple to help keep watch over it. She hoped those two were of more use than the Major or his unit, and the Major’s assurance that nothing out of the ordinary had happened since his arrival didn’t ease Kari’s suspicions at all. For all he knew, a ship full of Mehr’Durillian pirate demons could have landed on the far shore and urinated all over the Temple, and the Major probably wouldn’t have had any idea. Ultimately, Kari decided not to bother picking a fight with the officer, and she and her companions headed toward the Temple.
There was a rocky road that led up the side of the sierra and into its spine, and Kari and her friends followed it all the way up to the Temple. The closer they got, the more impressive the structure looked. While it was not as large or as decorative as Gori Sensullu’s grand temple in Sarchelete, it was a flawless piece of architecture and construction nonetheless. Even after thousands of years of standing at the top of a peak on a sun-drenched, windy island that was subject to coastal weather and salt-water corrosion, its white marble walls and face showed no signs of wear whatsoever.
The sun stayed over the horizon for a long while thanks to their elevation, and Kari and her friends reached the Temple long before sundown. Kari was immediately concerned: there was no sign of any demonhunters camped at or near the front of the Temple. She supposed they might be camped off to the side somewhere, or perhaps down the sierra beyond the Temple itself, but the closer they got, the less likely that seemed. When they made the final approach, Kari could see that there were bedrolls and the remains of an old fire pit near the door, but none looked like they’d been used in a week or more.
Aeligos turned to the side and walked along the rocky edge of the path, and after only a few moments he swore under his breath, which was uncharacteristic for him. “Kari, yo
u’re going to want to take a look at this,” he said.
Kari was pretty sure she didn’t, but she walked over and climbed up beside him anyway. Just as she’d feared, there were two bodies lying crumpled unnaturally down the side of the rocky decline. There was one human and one rir, and after looking at them for a minute, Kari could see that their heads, while near their bodies, were not attached. She put her hand over her eyes and tried to beat back her sorrow with a deep breath and a long sigh. Aeligos’ hand falling on her shoulder helped a little bit.
“Are they dead?” Sonja asked when she climbed up beside them, but her question didn’t need answering. She could clearly see for herself the moment she laid eyes on the bodies. She looked back up to Kari and Aeligos. “Taesenus?”
“That’d be my guess,” Aeligos said, and Kari agreed silently.
“I’ll fetch them up, and we can give them a proper burial,” Sonja said.
“Funeral pyre,” Kari corrected, turning to her sister-in-law after a moment. “We’ll give them a hunter’s funeral: no bodies for the necromancers or the demons to play with. I’ll take their tags back to the Order, and we can give them a military funeral there.”
“All right, Kari,” Sonja said grimly, and she floated down with her arcane power to go retrieve the bodies.
“Who is this Taesenus?” Se’sasha asked when Kari and Aeligos returned.
“To put it in a way you’d understand, he’s the son of our Overking,” Danilynn said, and Se’sasha’s eyes lit up with sudden recognition. “We managed to kill Seril, who was like the Overking to us, and we’d all thought her son was dead, too. Now, if he’s alive, I’m not sure how much we can trust the assumption that his mother is, either.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Kari said. “In any case, it seems he’s back to what he was doing the first time he got killed, so we’re going to need to find some way to do it again. The two hunters that were guarding the Temple here were killed, and by the looks of it, it was him again.”
“How long have they been dead?” Danilynn asked. “Do you think they were killed before or after we fought him?”
“Before,” Aeligos said. “Hard to make out much detail from up here, but they’ve been dead a while. I can’t believe the soldiers down below didn’t even notice.”
“I’d like to walk down there and strip that idiot of his rank,” Kari said. “I guess I’ll have to settle for getting the Duke to do it. I mean, I understand this was probably a boring and stupid assignment for them, but they cost two of my hunters their lives, and they weren’t even aware that someone could’ve broken the seal on the Temple.”
“Yes, you’ll have to explain what this is all about,” Se’sasha said, eyeing the door.
The face of the Temple had tile mosaics on the left and right: on the left was the image of Gori Sensullu, unsullied and unmarred by the sun, the wind, the rain, or the salt of the sea. On the right was a beautiful golden-eyed, white-haired terra-bengal woman that surely had to be Tisa Ch’Brakkh. Between the mosaics was the grand doorway, which was engraved with an odd writing and a six-pointed star. Closer inspection revealed that each point of the star had a niche about the size of a person’s fists clasped together, and in the center of the star was a hemisphere that stood out from the marble face.
Kari inspected the writing, but it looked like chicken scratch to her. She could read a few different languages that were comprised of symbols rather than individual letters and words like the common Citarian trade tongue, but whatever was written here was completely alien to her. It wasn’t even the language of the czarikk or the syrinthians, the latter of which Kari couldn’t read, but would’ve recognized from her time in Sorelizar. Whatever was written, there was a lot of it, and Kari had to wonder if it was prophecy, directions to open the door, something historical, or if it was, in fact, just gibberish.
“Any thoughts?” Kari asked Aeligos, or anyone else for that matter.
“I don’t recognize the writing,” the rogue said, his tone making it clear that that shouldn’t be a surprise. Se’sasha and Danilynn echoed him. “I find it interesting that it hasn’t reacted to your presence in similar fashion to that portal when we struck it. Maybe you should try touching that hemisphere in the center? I don’t know what’ll happen, but if you’re supposed to be part of the key, it can’t hurt to try, right?’
“Part of the key?” Se’sasha repeated, her golden eyes taking Kari in curiously. “You are able to open this Temple somehow?”
“If I had the six other keys, yes,” Kari said, gesturing toward the niches at the six points of the star. “I’m guessing they go in there, and then I can open the door somehow. I’m afraid no one ever bothered to explain it to me. As it stands, I found out because of Emma.”
“If the Overking wants this Temple open, there must be something immensely powerful within,” Se’sasha said. “Now I understand why you needed my help to counter the schemes of the kings.”
Sonja got the two dead hunters to the top of the rocky sierra. Kari and Aeligos found some spades among the hunters’ gear, but Danilynn ripped one of them from Kari’s grip and then wagged her finger in front of the demonhunter. Kari chuckled despite the situation, and allowed the priestess to treat her like a pregnant woman. Aeligos and Danilynn dug out a depression in which to stack some wood and other flammables to make a pyre, and Sonja flew down to the far side of the island to find some wood. Kari wasn’t sure if Sonja was flying with her wings or her arcane power; it seemed to be a combination of the two.
Kari walked over and picked up the tags from the slain hunters’ bodies. Ursula Moirez del Rey and Richard Sil’savarra were their names. Kari recognized the human woman: she had only graduated from the Academy a couple of years before, while Kari was on administrative duty. The terra-rir male was unknown to her, but that didn’t make his loss any less personal to Kari. He was a brother in arms, a fellow hunter, and as head of the Order, his life – or, more pointedly, his death – was Kari’s responsibility. With everything else Taesenus had done in his life, it was hard for Kari to imagine wanting to kill him any more than she already did, but as she held the hunters’ tags in her hands, she found a new depth to her fury.
Zalkar’s symbol began to glow through her breastplate again, and Kari glanced around suspiciously. She wasn’t sure what kept making it do that, but despite the fact that it usually raised everyone’s hackles – hers included – she enjoyed the feeling. It was like Zalkar was always a part of her now. That thought gave her pause, and she wondered if perhaps it had something to do with being head of the Order. She wasn’t an Avatar, but she was finding that Zalkar was reacting to her thoughts and desires anyway.
“I feel better knowing the Unyielding is around to help,” Aeligos said. “I think when Sonja gets back, we can take care of setting a pyre for these poor souls and then camp the night up here. In the morning we can study the Temple under nice, strong sunlight and see if it will offer up any of its secrets to us – or, more specifically, to you.”
“Yea, that sounds like a good plan,” Kari said. “I wonder if the funeral pyre will even attract the attention of that imbecile down there.”
There was a long silence while they waited for Sonja to come back, but it was finally broken by Se’sasha. “I am sorry about your brother,” she said quietly. “Going to the valley and fighting that madman…this was all my fault.”
Aeligos’ brows rose and Kari waved off the priestess’ words. “No, it wasn’t,” Kari said. “I’ve thought about that a lot. Only two people outside of this group and my Order knew where we were going, and only those two people knew I was probably going to have Taesenus’ second sword when we got there.”
“You think Amastri betrayed you to the Demon Prince?” Aeligos reasoned.
“Nothing else makes sense,” Kari said. “I’m not the thinker you are, Aeligos, but only Koursturaux and Amastri knew where we were going and what we’d have with us. Why else would Koursturaux have asked for that sword? It can’t
be coincidence that we brought Se’sasha back here and the price we paid for her was that sword, can it? We bring Se’sasha back, she has to go commune with her mother, Koursturaux knows where Se’ceria’s grave is and asks me to go get this sword. Then not even a week after I get the sword back from Lawrence, Taesenus shows up in a valley few people know about to take it from us? It seems like that was Koursturaux’ plan all along to me.”
Aeligos tilted his head and shrugged. “That’s a hard theory to argue against.”
“Well, this won’t go unanswered,” Kari said. “I know the Council said to leave Amastri be, but I’m going to send her head back to Koursturaux in a box. We’ll see how she likes that.”
The rogue held his hand up. “Not sure I’d go that far just yet,” Aeligos said. “While what you said makes sense, it’s still just a theory. Something to look into, yes, but not something to act on, and certainly not like that.”
“It would be most unwise to make war against King Koursturaux, particularly when you are so unprepared for such,” Se’sasha agreed. “If you wish to have any hope of ever defeating the kings on any level, you must approach it cautiously, after careful planning, and from a position of strength. Anger is not strength, Kari, no matter how much it may feel like it is.”
Kari sighed. “I know; you’re right,” she said. “I just…I could stab that woman for sitting there and lying to my face, you know? I mean, if she was a demon, I could at least understand it. But if she’s not and she’s that evil anyway, I think that actually makes her worse.”
