by Alana Serra
“Would you permit me to bless the lands surrounding your keep?” he asked, his head canting as a dog’s might.
“Why don’t you come to Ebonhold and tell me more about what that entails,” she said with a smile. “I’ll tentatively say yes, though. I can’t imagine it would hurt.”
Liam had done some grumbling about that, but she’d ignored him. Normally she would have thought to turn to Wesley for information on all things magical, but he was closed up as tightly as a clam’s shell. She could feel him watching her, always observing, but he rarely spoke. A fair trade-off, she supposed, since Liam didn’t seem inclined to keep his opinion to himself.
It was something she got another earful of as they made camp that night. “Inviting superstition into Ebonhold is a terrible idea,” he said, providing no context whatsoever.
It took Rhia a moment to remember he’d been cross since she’d agreed to invite the gnoll shaman to the keep to bless the lands surrounding it. “I don’t see the harm. Worst case, it does absolutely nothing. Best case, we get some benefit out of it.”
“Worst case it makes him and his people believe they’re protected by some supernatural force when they certainly aren’t,” Liam groused. “They’ll die uselessly clutching their talismans.”
“How does a paladin even come to believe such things?” It was the first thing Wesley had said in hours. Unfortunately it was something Rhia agreed with.
“Don’t bother asking him,” she muttered, poking at the embers of the fire. “I already tried.”
“The world isn’t built on spirits and fairy tales, warlock. Not even the most devout paladin orders believe in leaving our fate to the goddess. We—they,” he corrected through gritted teeth, “teach initiates to fight with a blade so that they may rely on themselves and not some mystical entity who barely knows they’re alive.”
She didn’t miss the fact that he identified himself as part of the order. It was obvious there was no love lost there, but perhaps some loyalty still? Not that she’d ever be able to ask. He held his secrets close.
“That’s a very cynical view to take,” Karak said, feeding the fire a few more sticks.
There was some argument about faith that Rhia mostly stayed out of. She’d been raised to believe in and worship Belisan, but she wouldn’t exactly call herself a devout follower. And now… now she’d met the avatar of a Dark God and was one of his servants. Closing her hand around the stick she was using to skewer a piece of rabbit, Rhia forced her thoughts away from that reality.
She might have been given power and purpose by Aeredus’ hands, but she was trying to do good with it.
And where has that gotten you? All of these people want the guild eradicated, which is exactly what he wants you to do.
It was a thought that plagued her even as she lay down to sleep, and one that couldn’t stop playing through her mind as she closed her eyes. There had to be a way to help these people without giving Aeredus what he wanted. Corruption in the guild that she could root out, perhaps. It couldn’t be the entire organization. They were Belisan’s foot soldiers, as much as the priests and paladins. Maybe even more so.
Considering all she’d seen, though, it was a cold comfort, and it did little to set her at ease as sleep finally took hold.
They’d headed east from Ebonhold, passing through the Fertile Lands and the Denrest Mountains en route to the coast. With as land-locked as Esrinas was, Rhia had never even seen the ocean, and she was eager to do so now. As they rode closer to a village of peixos, the bipedal fish folk, it was like nothing she could ever imagine.
The sky seemed to kiss the water, the two meeting as lovers at the distant horizon. The ocean itself was a clear, bright blue, the tide lapping lazily against pure white sand. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky and the sun shone brightly, reflecting off the rolling waves. In the distance, she saw something leap out of the water. Too large to be a simple fish, too small to be a whale. A dolphin, maybe? She’d never seen one before, not even a stuffed one.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Karak asked, standing beside her.
He breathed in deeply, his chest expanding, and Rhia did the same. The air was tinged with salt, the moisture of it misting against her skin. There was a hint of seaweed, a taste of something briny, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“It is,” she said with a smile. Some girlish part of her wanted to wade into the water, swish her skirts about her legs and just splash around. “Have you seen it before?”
Karak nodded. “My father was a fisherman. He took me on his boat with him when I was young. I think I would have stayed at sea if he hadn’t died.”
She frowned, looking over at the man. His expression openly showed his grief, and Rhia felt it deep in her heart. “I’m sorry, Karak,” she said, resting a hand against his back.
He turned to smile at her, his tiny tusks protruding beneath his lower lip. “It was a long time ago. And besides, I was an awful sailor. I got seasick nearly every trip.”
She laughed at that and shook her head, then just enjoyed the rhythmic motion of the tide as it approached the shore. A sea bird called, swooping down from the cliffs and snagging a fish from the water. Even with that front row display of the natural cycle, the whole scene was peaceful.
Until it was interrupted by Liam.
He’d gone further down the beach to speak to the peixos, as Karak had no experience with them and for some reason Liam understood their language. Another mystery she wasn’t going to unravel any time soon.
“The high priest wants to speak with you,” he said, nodding toward a tiny island that Rhia could just barely see in the distance.
There was a temple built upon it, white coral stone gleaming in the sunlight, three spires stretched to the sky like the prongs of a trident.
“Can we walk there, or will we have to take a boat?” she asked, trying to get a better look at the distance.
“There’s a sandbank that stretches out to it. It’s partially underwater, but no need to take a boat,” Liam explained. “Just don’t let yourself be bothered by getting your skirts wet, princess.”
While Liam had been somewhat subdued thanks to having a purpose on this trip, she still felt the urge to hold his head under the tide for a while. Just long enough to make a point.
“I can cast a spell if you prefer to stay dry,” Wesley offered.
“It’s fine.”
Her ire was mostly directed at Liam, and she hiked up her skirts a bit as she walked toward the sandbank, following the line of it toward the island and the temple that awaited.
It was absolutely gorgeous inside, in a way Rhia hadn’t expected. Some enchantment was keeping water in the walls of the coral, allowing fish and other sea creatures to swim through the porous surface. It was strangely soothing, casting a blue-green, wavy glow over a floor that was made of gleaming marble.
The high priest waited within the main chamber, with several other peixos flanking the room on either side. They all wore long robes that skirted the ground, the fabric seeming as if it was woven from seaweed and the reeds that grew a bit distant from the shore. There were shells affixed to the belts and shiny little trinkets and baubles that had perhaps washed up when the tide rolled in.
The peixos themselves were also not what she’d expected. They were far more humanoid than she would have guessed, despite having sleek, fish-like scales, prominent gills on their necks, fins where their ears might be, and a coloring that covered all the blues and greens of the ocean.
The high priest—marked as such by a more decorated, intricate robe, and a crown of shell and bone atop his head—had the face of a wizened old man, the fins that grew out from the sides of his heads long and two-toned. His gills opened and closed as he breathed, and when he spoke, his jowls moved in an animated fashion.
“Lady, you honor us with your presence.”
His voice was—for lack of a better word—bubbly. Not upbeat, but as if he spoke with a mouth full of air and water. There was some
thing strangely endearing about it.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me. My guardians and I have been traveling east from Ebonhold to better understand the conditions our people are living in.”
It still felt strange to say that. Our people. But she supposed they were her people now. No one else was looking out for them, clearly.
“Terrible things happening inland,” the high priest said, “terrible things. I’ve heard the gnolls have gone feral? I spoke to one of their shaman not two moons ago. He was a very kind, spiritual fellow.”
“He is,” Rhia agreed. “It’s not under their control. He believes their land is being poisoned and driving them mad.”
She left out the guild’s involvement, and to her surprise, none of her guardians tried to correct her. Not even Liam.
“Well, we are at ease here, I’m pleased to say. Our greatest trouble at present is the fact that the moon is not strong enough to pull the tide as far ashore as we need for our traps to function, but I doubt that is something you can fix.”
There was a gleam in his eye as he looked at her and Rhia smiled. “It might be. I could certainly try, but no promises.”
He laughed and that bubbling sound continued, forcing Rhia to bite her lip to suppress laughter of her own. Somehow she didn’t think he’d appreciate being found adorable.
“There’s nothing we can do, though? Nothing you need? Trade agreements you’d like opened up? Other groups you’re having issues with?”
“Well, we—”
The sound of a horn cut him off. It bugled low and loud, deep enough to rattle Rhia’s bones and fill her with a creeping sense of dread. She had no idea what was amiss, but a horn like that wouldn’t be used for anything good. It was a warning.
Liam was quick to move, brandishing his sword as he took up position by the entryway. Karak took the opposite side, and Wesley used the steps built into the coral to get a higher vantage point through a window, his hands glowing with purple-black energy.
“We’ve got company,” Liam said, a hard, cold edge to his voice. “From the guild.”
“That’s impossible,” the high priest said as the others sprang into action. “We are protected here. Well out of the way from the guild’s usual trail of destruction.”
“It’s possible there was a bounty taken out on your people,” Karak said, pain flaring in his voice.
“But why?”
Rhia wanted to know the same thing. Looking to Wesley, she took up the window on the opposite side of the temple. She couldn’t prime her magic without knowing what she was up against, and surely there must be some other way than this coming to blows.
They were doing their jobs. Acting off of bad information, likely. Someone who’d posted a bounty because they feared the peixos. A fisherman, maybe, who wanted his competition cut down. She could talk to the guild, tell them they weren’t hurting anyone.
As she watched, though, she didn’t see people who were interested in reason. It was a small group, just five adventurers that she could see. Their equipment looked fairly sparse, so they likely hadn’t risen very high in the ranks. Even still, the peixos were no match.
Guards rushed to meet the adventurers, spears and harpoons at the ready, but they were cut down like wet paper. Swords and axes cleaved through flesh, killing them where they stood. The men and women doing it seemed to pay little mind to who they were attacking, moving from person to person without a second thought.
And to a certain extent, she could sympathize with them. They’d been paid to do a job and had found armed peixos here. They didn’t know these people were peaceful. How could they? Humans were never taught about the creatures they considered to be monsters. Rhia had learned more about orcs and gnolls and peixos in the last week than she’d learned in her entire lifetime.
She would have had sympathy for them. But the adventurers didn’t stop with the armed ones.
There were homes along the beach, raised on stilts to ward against the tide. She could only guess that the most vulnerable members of the peixos were kept inside. They posed absolutely no threat to anyone, yet she watched in horror as they were dragged out of their homes and killed, their worldly possessions looted on the spot.
“Search everything,” came a voice from further down the beach. “It has to be here somewhere.”
She couldn’t see the person speaking, but she’d know that voice anywhere. Deep and rich, it’d been such a comfort to her once. She rushed to the other side of the temple, past the priests who were beginning to cast some kind of protection spell. Standing beside Wesley, she forced her way in to get a better look, to confirm what she knew in her heart.
There, sitting atop a pristine white warhorse, his golden armor gleaming in the sunlight, was Desmond.
Chapter 18
She almost couldn’t believe her eyes. For a long moment, Rhia thought Aeredus might be playing some kind of trick on her, because the man who sat atop that destrier certainly looked like Desmond, but there was something… off about him.
His hair was cropped close, shaved at the sides in the military style. His armor was finer than any he would have ever been able to afford as a guard. His face was clean-shaven, every grim line etched perfectly. There was no teasing humor, no wide-eyed wonder. Just a hard man who was apparently commanding the guild’s adventurers to search for… something.
As he dismounted and walked further into Rhia’s line of sight, though, she realized there was no one else it could be. He held himself the way always Desmond had. Tall, proud, dutiful. He walked with purpose, and when he crouched to examine something in the sand, she saw that same pensive look on his face she’d observed so many times.
“Des,” she whispered, barely conscious of the fact that she’d said anything aloud until she felt Wesley’s regard on her.
She looked up at him, some possessive part of her wanting to keep this to herself, but there was no point. “He’s the one I saved. The one I made the pact for.”
Wesley looked out the window, his profile showing her exactly what he thought of her friend. Well, he could hang for all she cared. She had to go talk to Desmond, get him to stop this. He’d understand.
Jumping down from the window, she started toward the door. Wesley was right there, not a step behind her. He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her to face him.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “That man will kill you as soon as look at you.”
“He won’t,” she insisted. “If I can just talk to him—”
“Rhia, does he look like he wants to talk to anyone? The people who follow him are murdering everything in sight. Executing women and children. Look at him.”
She lifted her chin stubbornly, wanting to refuse him. But he’d drawn the attention of Karak and Liam, and now both were fixed on her. There was no way out of it unless she wanted to be insanely petulant, so Rhia looked again. At first, she saw exactly what she’d seen before. Desmond in all his golden splendor. He didn’t have the lion’s mane anymore, but he still looked just as regal.
Yet as she watched, he drew his blade from its scabbard. It gleamed a bright, pristine silver, and he thrust it downward—into the chest of a peixos who hadn’t been fighting him. One who’d been defenseless.
She sucked in a breath, a cold realization settling over her. She didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to see him as this indiscriminate murderer. There had to be a reason, but… what if Wesley was right?
“How did he react, once he saw what you’d become?” he asked. “How do you think he’ll react to you now?”
She couldn’t breathe. Her throat felt tight and her pulse was hammering in her ears. She would never forget the way Desmond had looked at her, like she was some evil thing he wanted only to destroy. He’d thought her a demon, some creature who’d taken over her body. He’d likely think the same now.
And if he didn’t? If she made him believe it was her? He’d still see her as a monster.
Yet to just leave him to his devic
es was to allow innocent people to die. To confront him was signing away her own life, and the lives of her guardians. She needed to speak to him, but how could she get close enough?
“Can you change my appearance?” she asked Wesley, her tone, her gaze, everything about her urgent.
“What? What are you—”
“Can you do it or not?”
Wesley’s mouth opened, the words faltering. Finally, he nodded.
“Then do it. And quickly.” When he hesitated, she looked him right in the eyes. “Please.”
“Do you have a preference—”
“Just change her,” Liam snapped out, cutting him off.
She felt a shudder course through her, as if she’d been doused with water. It ran down her body, starting with her face and ending at her feet. Putting her hand out before her, she saw bronze skin free of any corrupting magic. Rhia nodded her thanks to Wesley, then directed her attention toward all three of them as the peixos continued their ritual.
“I want you to subdue the adventurers. Not kill. Just subdue. Knock them out, bind them, chase them off. Get them to stop attacking the peixos in whatever way you can.”
“Without killing them,” Liam repeated dryly.
“Those are my orders, guardian. If you don’t like them, then leave.”
She squared off with him, stood tall despite Liam’s menacing bulk. He said nothing, but eventually gave the slightest nod.
“What about the paladin?” Wesley asked.
He was a paladin now, she realized. She hadn’t recognized the armor at first, but it was standard issue for higher ranking knights. How had he risen through the ranks in so short a time?
“I’ll handle him.”
“Rhia…” Liam said, a warning in his tone.
“She’ll call us if she needs us,” Karak said, jerking his head toward the door. “Come on. We have work to do.”
After some hesitation, Liam left with Karak. Wesley stayed behind for several moments longer, meeting her gaze. There was empathy there, she realized. So much that it made her heart ache.
