The Agency, Volume II

by Sylvan, Dianne

  The Priestess didn’t fight as he dragged her into the room where all the crystals hung and sat her down in the corner, jerking her arms behind her back and binding them more tightly.

  He stared at the rows of stones, at the precisely-written names over each one. He held his hand in front of them, and memories from each played at the edges of his consciousness; his empathic gift seemed to have gotten even stronger, if that was possible. The joys and sorrows of dozens of Elves, all locked away in favor of a circumscribed existence of brainwashing and submission, scrolled out before him.

  He glanced back over his shoulder at the Priestess. “I really ought to kill you,” he said. “How many others are there in the Council?”

  She looked away, refusing to answer.

  Smiling tightly, he said, “Valana…you do understand that I know how to use most of the equipment in this building?”

  Her face lost all color. “You would not harm me. You were a Healer, a rethla, once.”

  “How kind of you to remember. I’m sure you remember what else I am. You helped the Council try to take it all from me—but I notice that none of you have crystals on this wall.”

  Kir’s hook was empty, and at first he couldn’t find his own, but then he noticed another empty slot off to the side, with his name over it—his real name, not the one they’d given him. He thought back to the crystal, and said, “Mine was larger, and a different kind of quartz. Why?”

  Valana leaned her head back against the wall in defeat. “The others will come for me. There are five other Council members, and the Guardians will find a way in. They will kill you. Whatever you hope to accomplish here, you will only find death.”

  The knife hit the wall two inches from her face, and she cried out and flung herself backward.

  He stared down at her with the look that had caused so many of the Clan to fear him.

  “Answer my question,” he said calmly.

  She was crying again, but she stammered, “Th—the usual quartz wasn’t strong enough. The smoky quartz cast a deeper veil between the identities. But it’s more volatile. It was only meant to be temporary.”

  “And why is that?”

  “They meant to kill you,” she said, hiding her head in her arms. “As soon as they had what they needed, they were going to kill you and wipe your life from the Clan.”

  “And by ‘they,’ you mean, ‘we.’”

  She shook her head hard. “I was not in charge of the plan. The Alchemist, Breden, managed the memory alterations. Once the rites of purification were finished I was no longer involved.”

  “I see. So I have you to thank for the torture, but Breden to thank for the amnesia. But why am I the only one who needed a different stone? Surely there are others in the Clan with powers like mine—I wasn’t exactly unique among Oak.”

  Valana gave him a strange look, and said, “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “What you are.”

  Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “What exactly am I?”

  Her expression changed completely, and she actually started to laugh, a high, hysterical sound that was probably the only mirth ever to be heard in this building.

  Before he could demand an explanation, the walls shuddered, and from a distance he heard shouting—the Guardians were trying to get in.

  There wasn’t much time. He closed his eyes, centering himself. They were going to kill him, that much he knew; the best he could hope for was that they would shoot him on sight and not try to get any more information out of him. He wasn’t going to let his last act on this Earth be a betrayal of his real Clan.

  But first things first.

  He turned to the wall of crystals and reached into the pocket of his borrowed uniform to pull out the only thing besides the knife he’d brought with him into the village: a rock the size of his palm.

  Valana saw what he held, and pleaded, “You cannot. You will cause anarchy—the entire Clan will destroy itself. We only did what we did to save them! Imagine living with the memories of such death and destruction, and then the peaceful life we have given everyone here.”

  Rowan looked back at her. “I have lived with it, Valana. I have lived with my past for decades now. And until you piled another form of violation on top of all the others I had suffered, I was healing. Happy. After all we have endured as a people, to take away the memory of those who died, and of all that pain, cheapens the lives of the lost…and in turn we lose everything. Who we are, the meaning of our lives, the meaning of our grief. The past makes us who we are and enables us to choose a future.”

  The walls shook again, this time with the creaking noise of wood about to give way.

  “They will kill us,” Valana said, desperate entreaty in her voice. “If they remember what we’ve done, they’ll execute the entire Council.”

  He nodded at her. “Yes, they probably will. You taught us obedience and fear, but you forgot to teach us mercy. May the Goddess have mercy upon you if you are innocent, and may She strike you down swiftly in guilt.”

  Then, he turned away from her, and smashed the rock into the first crystal under the header “Guardian.”

  Outside, he heard a muffled cry, and the pounding against the door stopped, but Rowan didn’t—he broke another crystal, and another, down the row, fragments of stone flying out everywhere, one striking his cheek. He shut his eyes to protect them and kept going until he had broken every crystal in the group, then moved on to the Healers.

  The silence beyond the door was profound; he heard the thump of knees on the floor, or perhaps someone passing out, and then voices raised, one by one, in screams of horror and sobs of realization.

  Each stone that shattered emitted a brief pulse of light, and he felt the power of the memories as they were released to their rightful owners—Bards, Healers, Gardeners, everyone, one by one, suddenly seized with the truth of their identities. He knew that the trauma would be too much for some of them, but there was no alternative; memory magic had no gentle counterspells. At least they would all know the truth, whatever happened.

  Finally, his arm aching and his face bleeding from shards of crystal, he struck the last one, and dropped the rock, narrowly missing his foot. Exhaustion hit him at the same time as the panic rising outside; an entire Clan of Elves waking up to what had been done to them was not something an empath needed to feel.

  He leaned heavily against the wall on his forearm, hands clenched into fists, bolstering his shields as best he could. He was so tired…

  Suddenly he heard a rustling sound, footsteps, and something slammed into his back—weight, and pain, and he fell forward and down the wall, a lance of agony through his back and a wail of rage at his ear.

  Wrenching around, he flung Valana off of him. She had wrestled free of her bonds and pulled the knife from the wall, and he could feel the blade tearing through his muscles, blood gushing out in its wake.

  She climbed back to her feet, his blood streaking down her robes, and said, hatred lacing every word, “I told the others to kill you when they brought you in. I told them. You are an abomination to the Goddess and should have been destroyed. At least I will know when I die that I acted in Her name where no one else could.”

  He managed to twist around and pull the knife, which clattered to the ground, his hands uncooperative and weak. Pain coursed through him in time with his heartbeat—the blade had missed his heart, but it was bleeding in torrents. He knew he couldn’t stop it…as he couldn’t stop Kir’s death in his arms, only yesterday, blood everywhere, just like now…it was so hard to breathe…

  His awareness was fading in and out of the room, but he could hear pounding noises down the hall as the Guardians resumed their work. Memory or no memory, they were coming. Distantly he heard gunshots, and more screaming; chaos, as Valana had predicted. How many more were going to die because of him? Clan Cedar…Kir…who else?

  Finally he heard the door fly open, and footsteps rushing in, heavy boots, the metallic sounds
of guns. Valana screamed, and the Guardians opened fire. A second later her body hit the ground.

  “This one’s alive!” he heard…but it was strange…the words were strange, angular, staccato instead of lyrical.

  “Get a medic in here!”

  He felt someone kneeling next to him, pressing something into his back to staunch the blood. “Hurry,” came a woman’s voice. “He may have a punctured lung.”

  He knew that voice.

  “Easy,” she said. “We’ve got you…can you hear me?”

  He thought for a second it must be Naia, but as careful hands turned him over, he caught sight of long, dark hair coming loose from a ponytail, and smoky hazel eyes.

  “Oh, my god,” she whispered when she saw his face. “Oh, my god.”

  She leaned down and kissed him full on the mouth, and when she lifted her face she was crying, smiling, and gripping his hands so tightly he could feel it even through the pain.

  More footsteps, and the sounds of equipment cases being opened. His vision was cloudy but he saw something being brought in that he recognized as a stretcher.

  “It’s all right,” the woman said, stroking his face. The touch was so comforting, and grounding, that he leaned into it with what little strength he had left, staying with her voice as she murmured encouraging nonsense to keep him conscious.

  “Knife wound,” a man said briskly. “He’s lost a lot of blood. SA-24, get me two units of E-positive while I start a line. What’s the status of the mobile surgery unit?”

  “Ten minutes,” came the reply. “The rest of the convoy’s on its way in. I just hope we have enough sedatives for everyone who needs them.”

  The woman added, “There are three Healers who seem to be doing okay. They can help.”

  He felt a needle in his arm, and a moment later warm sleepiness stole over him, the pain in his back melting into numbness. The woman held onto his hand, and the others lifted him up onto the stretcher.

  The last thing he saw before he drifted off was another woman in the doorway, armed to the teeth with ivory skin and a wild mop of black hair streaked with bright red, grinning from ear to ear.

  Part Thirteen

  The Shadow Agency arrived to find Clan Yew falling apart. They expected to meet resistance at the borders, but there was none; they expected armed guards or at least sentries, but all they found were two black-clad Elves lying on the ground sobbing. The village was full of the same—Elves on their knees, Elves who had fainted, Elves holding onto each other and weeping, some sitting and staring off into space, unresponsive.

  Sara had no idea what it meant. No one seemed to be able to answer their questions. The Agency swept through the village, securing house after house, but there was no objection, no battle. Whatever had happened here, the battle was long lost.

  Finally she and Beck came upon a Healer who was alert enough to move among the huddled Elves and, from what it looked like, knock them unconscious.

  When faced with a dozen armed humans and a pissed-off vampire, the Healer nearly fled, but Sara cast Ardeth a helpless look, and he motioned for them all to back off.

  He spoke to the woman at some length, his tone soothing and reassuring, and his hand flew to his mouth more than once at something she said. Then he thanked her, embraced her, and let her go back to work.

  “What happened here?” Sara asked.

  Ardeth was beyond words for a moment, but then said, “Something you could say is very, very good, or very, very bad, or perhaps both.”

  He looked around, the plight of the others affecting him so much that he had to take a deep breath before he went on. “The Council has been stealing memories, turning everyone into a blank slate that could be imprinted with their Way. The entire Clan has had amnesia. None of them knew who they really were…until about ten minutes ago.”

  “What happened then?” Beck wanted to know.

  “Someone named Sethen, one of the Elves who enforced the law, went rogue and attacked the Temple. The rest of the guards have been trying to get into the Temple to stop him, but apparently whatever he did, it succeeded. Everyone has their memories back, and the knowledge is overwhelming them all. Some haven’t spoken or moved, some are going mad.”

  “We need to get to the Temple,” Sara said. “Whoever this Sethen guy is, even if he’s not on our side, we can’t let them kill him until we know more.”

  The others agreed, and the team headed for the Temple at a run, following Ardeth’s directions. Elven villages were all built according to the same basic pattern, so the Temple wouldn’t be hard to find, especially in a theocracy like Clan Yew—they’d want it out in plain sight where it could overshadow all else.

  Sure enough, they found the building surrounded by warriors with guns, but no one was trying to get in; like everyone else, they were reacting to the abrupt return of their memories. Sara saw one dead on the ground with a bullet in his temple.

  Someone had barricaded the Temple door, but it was hardly going to stop the Agency. The double doors sailed open with the crash of breaking furniture, and Beck led the way in.

  There, hiding behind an enormous stone altar, were four other Elves, these all perfectly fine. They weren’t dressed in black, and two had long hair, unlike everyone else Sara had seen. They had on fine, ornate robes in the shades of the forest, and were unarmed.

  “This must be the Council,” Sara said.

  Beck smiled. “Shall we open fire?”

  “No,” Ardeth shook his head. “The Clan must be allowed to decide their fate. And they may have information about what was done here that will help everyone recover. At the very least they can tell us what happened to Rowan.”

  Galvanized, Sara walked over to the Elves and demanded, “What did you do with him?”

  They looked at each other, confused and terrified, and Ardeth repeated the question in Elvish.

  One of the Elves, a male, muttered something to the others and looked away. None of them offered any information.

  “All right,” Sara said, “How about we try it your way, Beck?”

  Beck gave her another toothy grin and lifted Vera, aiming the gun at the Elf’s head.

  He made a squeaking noise and stammered a sentence or two, gesturing wildly at the doorway at the back of the room, which was painted an ominous blood red.

  “There,” Ardeth said. “That’s where they take them to be purified.”

  “I want this door open right now!” Beck ordered. “SA-14, get these people in cuffs and ready for questioning. 21, 17—go back out and send for the med units. We need every available body to help round everyone up so we can take care of them. I want triage set up outside this building in that big open space by the fountain. Find all the Healers you can and get their help. Ardeth, go with them; they need a translator.”

  He bowed, and followed the two Agents back out of the Temple.

  From the far side of the door, Sara heard someone yelling—the words were muffled but the anger in them was clear. “There’s someone in there!” she called. “Hurry up!”

  Between the remaining Agents and Beck, the door was off its hinges in a matter of seconds. Sara plunged through the doorway, gun drawn, and the others fanned out room to room to find the voice.

  Sara reached the last room first. She took in the blood all over the floor, the body, and the woman—who saw her and, with a scream of challenge, went for the knife—and without a second thought, shot her in the head.

  The rest of the Agents thundered into the room as Sara knelt beside the male Elf on the ground in a rapidly spreading pool of his own blood. “This one’s alive!” she said.

  It had to be Sethen, she reasoned. It looked like the other Elf had stabbed him in the back; he lay surrounded by broken crystal, and the wall was hung with dozens of cracked stones, each one set in silver with a name written over it. She’d heard about something like this—the stones were used in memory spells. It made sense given what the Healer had said.

  The Elf’s bre
athing was shallow and hoarse, and based on the location of the wound she thought he might have a punctured lung, but if they could stop the bleeding and get him sewn up he would most likely live.

  He whimpered and made as if to try and push her away, but she took his hand. “Easy,” she said. “We’ve got you. Can you hear me?”

  As the medic arrived and started work, she tilted the Elf’s head around to try and get a better look at his face.

  “Oh my god,” she breathed.