by Watson Davis
“Where am I?” Sifa asked.
“What else did she have with her?” the woman asked. “Her dagger? Her necklace?”
Sifa now recognized the voice—Rector Tolyo’s voice. She tried to scrabble backward, up the steps she lay on, but could not move with her ankles and wrists bound.
“You mean besides this dickhead?” the orcish young man said, gesturing to a spot beside Sifa, but with the man still examining her head, she couldn’t turn to look. The orc said, “She had a shepherd’s crook. No money, though. Neither of them had any money. And speaking of money, there was a reward.”
The doors at the end of the basilica blew open, the bronze slamming against the stone walls. Sifa raised her head, looking past the man’s head through those open doors. Outside the clouds roiled, dark and dangerous above the walls of the plaza and the roofs of the city beyond. A man’s face appeared in the clouds, a man with his lips puckered as though blowing the winds, brow furrowed, his beard spiky.
“Close the doors, you useless worm-heads!” Rector Tolyo shouted. “What is wrong with you people? And you,” she pointed at the young orc, “bring me that dagger, or I will plug you into Her web and give you work sucking dicks dockside!”
Sifa gasped, staring at Rector Tolyo, feeling her blood rising into her face.
The young orc raised his hands and backed away, a dangerous glint in his eyes and an angry sneer on his lips.
“Go!” Rector Tolyo said, waving her hand at him. “We don’t have all the time in the world.”
The man, the spidery man she’d seen walking down the street with the belly and the pointy teeth, reached his icy hands around Sifa’s head, looking away from her as his fingers worked at the back of her neck. He smelled of fresh soap and powder, but Sifa feared he was working some magic to attach a tendril to her soul, that she would lose her memory of being who she was.
“An interesting configuration of traits,” the man said, standing up with Sifa’s necklace dangling from his fingertips. “But your potential. The Empress will be pleased.”
Sifa blinked, exploring her thoughts and mind, wondering whether she’d been changed, wondering how she’d know. She twisted her head to stare over at Shiyk’yath, who lay on his stomach beside her, his face a lumpy, bloody, unrecognizable mess, his wrists tied together, his knuckles raw, and with cuts on his forearms.
“Just so, Dyuh Mon,” Rector Tolyo said, inclining her head to him, crossing her arms over her chest. “I thought she might be a child of Earth and Stone with her eyes and her horns.”
“Dyuh Mon?” Sifa gasped.
“No, this is her home realm,” Dyuh Mon said, ignoring Sifa. He raised her necklace, now appearing to be just a string. He allowed it to swing from side to side. “But this? This was your problem, Rector. Did you not think to examine it?”
“Of course I examined it,” Rector Tolyo said, her voice rising, her tone strident. “Do I look like an acolyte? I took it from her and studied it. It is some small charm with almost minimal magical power. Nothing important.”
“But Dyuh Mon’s a hero,” Sifa said.
“Did you take it from her before or after your truth spell?” Dyuh Mon asked, still ignoring Sifa, staring at the necklace as he swung it back and forth.
“I...” Rector Tolyo’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember.”
“That does not belong to you,” Sifa whispered, glowering up at the two of them. “Give me my necklace back.”
“A small charm?” Dyuh Mon snorted and reached out to where the gemstone should have been. He cupped it as though he could see it, and the gemstone glowed in his hand. He let the string fall. “Quite a powerful gemstone, actually. Not surprising.”
“Gemstone?” Rector Tolyo said, chuckling. “What are you talking about? There’s no gemstone.”
Dyuh Mon whispered and his hands glowed, sparkling with magic. He took the string and held it once more, the stone now clearly visible and glowing gently. “This gemstone. It dampens certain spells, specifically scrying and identification spells, as well as amplifying some others. Quite a powerful thing. It will have to be studied and its secrets teased out. I imagine that it is not the child who is immune to your magic, but that this stone absorbed it and dampened it, if it didn’t entirely dispel it.”
“Sifa,” Shiyk’yath whispered, his speech slurred.
Sifa peered back at him, leaning toward him. “I’m here. I’m so sorry.”
“I am sorry,” he said, wincing. “I couldn’t protect you.”
“No,” Sifa said, and an anger grew inside her, an anger with herself for being so stupid and naive. “This is all my fault.”
The skies rumbled, the very earth shaking with the thunder. A series of bolts of lightning struck outside. One blasted into the roof of the temple, ripping open a hole in the tiles. Two of the stained-glass windows shattered, and the shards rained down on screaming priests and priestesses who fell to the ground, covering their heads with their hands.
The gemstone in the necklace flared to life with blinding light.
Dyuh Mon tossed the necklace away and pirouetted down the stairs, almost dancing, an intricate movement of arms and legs, singing a song as he descended with great currents of magic coalescing around him. He threw his arms in the air, and a sphere formed around him and then grew, expanding until its outer edge left the temple entirely.
Dyuh Mon stopped and turned to Sifa, glaring. “That should keep us safe from your lightning strikes for now.”
“My lightning strikes?” Sifa growled, her body trembling, her breathing ragged. She strained at the bonds on her wrists and ankles, squirming to get free.
Dyuh Mon said, “The empire will be all the greater for your sacrifice.”
“LET ME OUT!” SIFA SHOUTED at the door, an arched door of wooden planks bound together with iron bands and shimmering with magic.
She kicked at the hay piled up in the corner of the stone floor of her small square cell and then stomped to the door and kicked it. A spray of lightning bolts stung at her foot and ankle like a swarm of angry wasps, and she hopped away holding her foot. Tears of frustration streamed down her cheeks, her heart pounded. She was so close to her father that he burned in the core of her soul.
She searched for the calm center of herself long enough to study the spell on the door, but it eluded her.
A frigid wind blew through a window set high in the wall—so high she couldn’t see through it, couldn’t jump up and grab the lower edge of it and climb up. Her throat ached from her screams. Eyes squeezed shut, she bowed her head and touched her horns to the wall. She searched her heart, trying to pull her attention away from her father. She found Ka-bes, a frustrated and angry knot in Sifa’s soul, not as far away as she expected her to be, but her father dominated her senses—so close, so very close, somewhere in this very tower.
Her hands balling into fists, she leaned back and screamed her rage and anger. Peals of thunder answered her fury, shaking the tower. The wind howled through the window, raindrops pattering against the stone outside. The floor beneath her feet trembled. Flashes of light from the lightning blasted into the room through that window, but only the light.
She kicked once more at the hay on the floor, she pawed at it with her feet. She stared at her feet, at the door, and grinned. She pawed at the floor again, lowered her head, and launched herself forward, head first, ramming into the door with her horns.
She staggered back, shaking her head, stars exploding before her eyes. Two images of the door overlaid each other. She stepped back to the wall, blinking until her vision cleared.
The door had bent, and several planks of wood had cracked almost all the way through, the iron warping, the magic popping and seeping away.
“Come on,” someone bellowed outside her cell. “Get us out of here. It’s not safe with this storm.”
“Shut up!” someone else said.
Sifa filled her lungs with air, her nostrils flaring, and she stared at the door, concentrating her r
age. She pawed at the floor and lowered her head, and propelled herself at the door once more, this time tensing her body with all her strength and all her rage, thinking of Ka-bes, thinking of the poor people of Ofo, thinking of all the years she’d been denied her father only to be this close and denied once more.
She plowed through the door, splintering it, blowing it outward. Bits of wood and iron flew away from her, spraying into the wall across from her cell and down the corridor. The spell on the door discharged, the magic striking into her, stabbing into her, hundreds of bolts of lightning lifting her into the air and holding her there for three long heartbeats before dropping her.
She found herself on her knees in the corridor, her head swimming as she tried to orient herself, panting for breath, her arms quivering.
“What in the Nine Hells was that?” a man hollered. “Did the damned lightning blow a hole in the tower? I’m telling you, we are not safe in here!”
“Shut up already!” another man roared.
Sifa lurched to her feet, shaking her head, blinking her eyes, snarling. The images of five human soldiers floated in her eyes. She blinked and there were three. She blinked again.
“You can’t escape from here, little girl,” the two remaining images said, both looking quite nervous as they pulled shortswords and daggers from their belts. “Get your Summoned ass back in your cell, or I’ll gut you and toss your body back in there. Don’t think I won’t.”
Sifa backed up, blinking her eyes and focusing on the one remaining soldier, a young man, clean-shaven, well-muscled and well fed. She pawed at the ground with her foot and snarled, “I am not Summoned!”
“Wha—” the soldier said, turning his body to present a smaller target with his dagger forward.
Sifa charged him.
He lunged forward, hacking at her with his sword, but the edge bounced off her horn, her head tilting sideways from the impact, but she corrected her course and hammered into him, smashing her horns into his midsection. She lifted him up off his feet and carried him down the hall to crash into the door at the end of the hallway. His sword and dagger fell from his fingers and clattered onto the stone floor, his bones cracking in the impact.
She tossed him aside with a flick of her head and stepped back, holding her fists before her face, glaring at him, ready to fight, ready to hit him once more, harder.
He lay sprawled on the floor, his chest and head resting against the wall, his body bending in a way a person’s body shouldn’t bend. Blood dripped from his eyes and his nose, and something black dribbled from his chin as he wheezed for breath—an odd, disturbing rattle with each intake of breath, as slight as it was. The light of his life seeped from him, expanding out.
“Oh, no! I’m sorry,” Sifa whispered, falling to her knees at his side, reaching out to touch his cheek as fresh tears poured down hers.
Ethereal hands appeared from elsewhere, sliding out from creases in the air she hadn’t noticed before, grasping his soul, and dragging it back to nowhere. His last breath hissed out of his mouth and he died.
She said, “I didn’t mean to... I’m sorry!”
SIFA SAT ON HER SHINS with her left hand over her mouth, and her right hand trembling for what seemed an eternity. The floor beneath her trembled from the crash of thunder outside.
“What in the Nine Hells is going on out there?” one of the prisoners said, pounding on his door.
“Sounds like a fun party!” someone else said. “I’d like to get an invitation.”
Shiyk’yath! I have to find him!
Sifa looked over the broken corpse before her, her hands picking at its clothes, pulling its hand back, whispering, “I’m so sorry.” She removed the keys from the belt and rose, bowing to the corpse before whirling and rushing to the first cell, but she felt no one there.
She went to the next cell door and, sensing someone inside, she knocked, asking, “Shiyk’yath? Are you in here?”
“No, but I’d really appreciate it if you released me.”
She tried each key until it unlocked, opened the door. A towering red-skinned orc with arms black up to his elbows darted out the door, whispering, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She bowed and went to the next door.
“Shiyk’yath?” She paused to listen but heard nothing, felt nothing. She sighed and proceeded to the next door, knocking on it, putting her ear to it and listening, but no one answered. She felt a person there, so she fiddled through the keys until she opened the door.
A thin human man darted out, grabbing Sifa’s hand and yanking her to the side, almost knocking her down.
Sifa pulled back, ripping her arm free, and she glared at the man, her lips pulling back from her teeth in a snarl, her head lowering, her vision blurry with unshed tears.
“Give me the damned keys, girl,” he said.
The orc grabbed the guy and jerked him back. “Check out what she did to the guard?”
He whirled toward the orc, snarling and raising his fists.
The orcish young man said, “Might want to let her finish what she’s doing.”
The human looked at the guard on the floor in a puddle of his bodily fluids and then glared at the orc. “Fine, but you and I still have a score to settle, Alizadeh.”
“Maybe this isn’t the right place or time.” Alizadeh shrugged, raising the guard’s sword in his right hand and his dagger in his left. “But if you want to die, come on then.”
The human pursed his lips, cocked his eyebrow, and said, “At least let me have the dagger.”
Sifa ignored them and scurried to the next door. She knew someone was inside. Her hands shook as she tried key after key until it opened. She stuck her head in. She almost withdrew and moved to the next cell, but lighting flashed outside, lighting up the room. A grown man huddled in the corner with his swollen eyes closed, his face a battered mask. She said, “Shiyk’yath?”
He grunted and opened his eyes. “Sifa?”
Sifa tossed the keys back out into the corridor and rushed to Shiyk’yath, kneeling at his side, staring at his eyes dark with his own blood. “I have to get you out of here but I’m so close to him.”
“I’m just going to slow you,” he said, but he let her wrap his arm around her shoulder, and he pushed himself up, putting some of his weight on her. “You should go on without me.”
“Shut up, I’ve lost too much already,” she said, guiding him out through the door to the rumbling of the thunder outside.
Alizadeh hurried through the keys, with the other freed prisoner, Wu Cheen, crouching behind him, saying, “Come on, you devil-spawn slack-brain, hurry it up.”
“Shut up,” the orc said.
Wu Cheen inched closer and put his hand on the orc’s broad back. “They’re going to be sending guards up any time now.”
Sifa and Shiyk’yath limped and staggered to the door. Sifa leaned to one side, craning her neck, trying to see around the orc’s broad back.
The lock clicked.
The orc eased the door open. Wu Cheen darted past him, and stopped, surveying the area outside the door. “It’s clear.”
Alizadeh crept out next. He glanced back at Sifa, a wide grin on his face, and he winked, motioning her forward.
Sifa guided Shiyk’yath out the door into a circular room with two more wooden doors and an opening to a circular staircase leading up and down.
Wu Cheen dropped to his hands and knees and crawled down the steep stairs. Alizadeh whispered, “By Dispatro’s throbbing dick, man, what are you doing?”
The man disappeared. Sifa’s heart pounded and if she hadn’t been slowed by Shiyk’yath, she would have charged down those steps to find the burning in her heart.
A man’s voice said, “Who in the Nine Hells—?”
The sound of choking and gagging made Sifa wince. And then someone knocked on a door. Alizadeh ran down the stairs.
“Aren’t we going down there?” Shiyk’yath asked.
“And do what?” Sifa asked, try
ing to calm her ragged breathing. Her palms itched and sweat beaded up on her as though she were in the Ohkrulon sun at midday. She licked her lips. “You’re in no condition for a fight.”
Wu Cheen’s grinning face appeared in the opening to the stairwell. He stepped forward and bowed, presenting a short sword’s handle to her. “The next floor is safe, princess.”
Sifa flushed but took the sword.
“You make the strangest friends,” Shiyk’yath said.
“I don’t think he’s very friendly.” She slipped the sword into her belt and helped Shiyk’yath stumble down the stairs to the next floor, another floor with two doors and a stairwell leading down. One of the doors hung open. A guard and a priest lay dead on the stone floor, their weapons confiscated.
Sifa stared at the other door—the only unopened door in the chamber, a door that glittered with potent magic—and her heart sang with sadness and regret. She nodded to that door and whispered, “He’s in there.”
“He’s in what?” Shiyk’yath asked, holding his ribs, gasping for breath.
“My father.” She guided Shiyk’yath to the wall beside the door, and she studied the spell, a much more powerful spell than the ones on the other cell doors, a spell of raging hellfire and sudden death. She found a node and touched it, touched another one, and then choked off the flows, stopping the magic. She brushed the handle with the tips of her fingers, checking it for some trace of magic she hadn’t stopped, and then squeezed the handle.
The door creaked.
A bent, gray-haired woman sat in a rocking chair by a window that looked out over the city, revealing the roiling clouds, the driving rain, bolts of lightning flashing. Her chair moved almost imperceptibly back and forth, and her knitting needles clicked as they moved with quick precision and skillful confidence. A skein of thread lay on a stool beside her, and in her lap the garment she made. The thick collar of an imperial slave, a collar like Ka-bes’s, glittered around her neck, shimmering with magic.
