by Joe Jackson
Sonja shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I can’t tell.”
“I believe a couple of months,” Uldriana said, “though our kinds are different and I may be mistaken in either direction.” She turned back to Sonja. “This is a good sign; already you can sense the flame of life when it is barely more than a spark. If your senses are this finely tuned already, then it will be much easier for me to teach you to take stock of the world around you and manipulate it to your will. However, we will take things slowly; should your application of force exceed your knowledge of your power, then you may become a danger to yourself and those around you.”
They continued in their lesson, but Kari lost track of it, concentrating more on the news that she was pregnant. Now she felt even more foolish for having come to the underworld: had she known or suspected she was carrying, she wouldn’t have even thought about setting foot here. She was happy, though: ecstatic that she and Grakin had managed to conceive a second child despite his illness. Kari tried not to dwell on his illness, and instead she tried to dwell on the dreams she’d had during her mission in Barcon, and of the visions of a beautiful little girl those dreams had brought. She wondered if perhaps the dreams had been prophetic.
Danilynn came over and laid her hand on Kari’s shoulder with a smile. “Would you like me to examine you?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were a healer,” Kari said. “Sure, go ahead.”
“I’m not a healer in the same capacity that your mate is,” Danilynn said as she laid her warm hand on Kari’s lower belly. “Being trained in the temple, though, we’re all expected to be able to assist with whatever needs the people may bring before us, including a woman who is with child.” She closed her eyes and concentrated for a short time, maintaining her hand’s warm perch on Kari’s belly. “Hmmm, I think Uldriana is right: it’s still early in the pregnancy, but everything seems just fine. Is there any pain you would like me to analyze or calm?”
Kari shook her head. “I’m just sore everywhere; I guess having hunted a half-succubus assassin while pregnant has a lot to do with it.”
Uldriana looked over briefly when Kari mentioned a half-succubus assassin, but she went back to her lessons with Sonja. Danilynn examined Kari’s privates with her consent, and the priestess seemed satisfied that everything was proceeding well with the pregnancy. That was good news; Kari simply hoped she would be able to escape Mehr’Durillia without harm and have her baby safely and in good health back home. Kari’s thoughts were interrupted when Danilynn placed a hand on her shoulder again, and she felt a surge of warm power flow through her. All of the aches and pains that had dogged her since the trip to Barcon numbed, and Kari thanked the priestess for her help.
Kari turned her attention back to Sonja and Uldriana, and their lessons for the night came to a close after a little while. “Do you have any children of your own?” she asked the mallasti girl. “I didn’t see any little ones in your family’s tent.”
“Nay, Karian; I have seen only nineteen summers,” Uldriana answered. “My people are not permitted to take a mate or produce children until we have seen at least thirty.”
“That seems like a long time, but then I guess you are immortal,” Kari said.
“Immortal? No, we are not immortal,” the mallasti woman said. “My people live for as many as four and a half eras…millennia, I forget, in your tongue. It is a long time compared to your own people, but we are not immortal.”
That came as a surprise to Kari. Her Order believed that the demons didn’t age once they reached maturity, despite being born the way mortals were: that they lived on until slain by a misfortune or in combat. “Do the others live for the same amount of time? The other peoples of Mehr’Durillia, I mean,” she asked.
“Some, yes, but it is not true for all,” Uldriana answered with a yawn. Kari had seen the teeth of mallasti before, but seeing them all at once in a wide yawn was somewhat intimidating. The girl looked like she could deliver a vicious bite if she wanted to. “The elestram and erestram have the same lifespans as my people; the valirasi only live for about as long as your people, and the syrinthians, too, only live for a century or perhaps a little longer. Sylinths and harmauths live as long as five millennia, but most live about as long as one of my people.”
“But the kings are immortal?” Kari pressed.
“The kings are immortal in the sense that they do not age; but they can be killed, as I have explained, for they sometimes murder each other,” Uldriana answered, her mood becoming somewhat somber. “They seem to grow younger and stronger every turning of an era; any hope that they might grow old and die is a foolish one. It is getting late. We should return to my family’s tent and get some rest.”
Kari and her friends followed the girl without question. It was a nice development that she was talkative, and an even better one that she would teach Sonja. The mission was starting to pay off already, and they had yet to even see to Se’sasha’s rescue.
Chapter XII – Into the Birthplace
The next morning passed slowly, a tense time for Kari and her friends while they watched Uldriana bid her people and family farewell. The people of the village were neither open nor warm with the rir women, except for the younger children, who took a great interest in their off-world guests. Kari heeded Uldriana’s advice about keeping her distance and not trying to touch the children without invitation, though the children didn’t seem at all afraid of the strangers among them.
The interest of the youngsters culminated around midmorning with Kari being shocked in the backside by one of the mallasti children, something that spread laughter among the village’s youths. Kari wasn’t sure whether to laugh or get angry; it hadn’t hurt all that much, but being shocked in the buttocks by a demon child was quite a surprise. Before the adults could even take the children aside to discipline them, Uldriana explained that her people were immune to their own static-shock wiles, and thus it was a game to the children. Still, the child was sternly chastised by his mother, so Kari made sure to let them know it wasn’t a big deal.
The morning was slow, but it did eventually pass, and Uldriana let Kari know when she was ready to depart the village. When Kari went to retrieve her pack from Uldriana’s home, the girl’s mother came out of it and began yelling at Kari before she’d ever reached the entrance. Kari didn’t need Sonja’s help to decode what the mallasti woman was saying or feeling: she was angry and terrified at the same time. She had made no secret that she despised having Kari and her friends staying in her home, and her mood had pervaded the tent over the two nights they slept there. Kari didn’t have any trouble figuring out what the issue was: on top of Uldriana walking into danger for total strangers, she was going with a demonhunter, and her mother was obviously fearful that Kari would murder her daughter.
Kari thought of her promise to protect Uldriana the day before, and she wondered if there was anything she could say to soothe the mallasti mother’s anxiety. Part of her wondered why she even cared, but Kari was a mother, too, and she could well understand the feelings of the mallasti woman. Kari just couldn’t understand the fact that the demons had those feelings in the first place. She watched Uldriana guide her mother away and speak to her soothingly in their tongue, but the woman didn’t seem any less upset, and in fact began to cry after a few minutes.
Kari stood by, completely speechless. Sonja and Danilynn were surprised by the display as well, but they moved past into the teepee to get their belongings. Uldriana held her mother, and Kari wondered if there was anything she could say. “Tell her I’ll bring you home,” she said, and the mallasti girl’s eyes came up, narrowed again in an uncharacteristic scowl. “Tell her. I’m a mother myself. I promise that I’ll bring you home; I won’t leave you in Sorelizar when my work there is done. I’ll bring you home to her before we leave.”
“You promise?” Uldriana repeated, and her eyes wandered as she seemed to try to place exactly what the word meant. “An oath?” Kari no
dded, and Uldriana spoke to her mother soothingly in their language once again. Her mother still seemed to take little comfort in those words, and after another couple of minutes of holding her daughter, she turned and spat on Kari. She barked something angrily in their language and then disappeared into their teepee.
It had been a long time since anyone spat on Kari, aside from the venomous spit of a sylinth in combat. She walled up her anger well and refused to retaliate. She told herself that if the situation was reversed, she might have done the same. It was hard for her to assign any value to the life of a demon, but that Uldriana was loved by her mother was undeniable. Only once in all the times Kari had hunted and killed underworld demons had she ever thought about their families and what their mothers might think: in her previous hunt, after she killed Turillia. To see the relationship between Uldriana and her mother gave Kari pause, and reminded her of what Erik had said about Makauric during their mission on Tsalbrin. He’d been afraid to befriend the brys: afraid that liking the brys would’ve made him hesitant to do his job properly. Now Kari understood exactly what he’d meant.
Sonja and Danilynn emerged from the tent, and they watched Kari wipe the spit from her face and breastplate curiously. Kari took her pack from Sonja and slung it over her shoulder, and she ignored their questioning glances while Uldriana went inside the tent. Kari looked around the village, and found that none of the mallasti people would even look at her. Never had she felt ashamed to be a demonhunter; she didn’t now, but there was something in the pit of her stomach she couldn’t explain. How had demons made her feel like the bad guy?
Uldriana emerged after a couple of minutes dressed in a light tan traveling robe. It was obviously hand-made by her people, and it had belts and straps and pouches here and there for gathering things on a journey. It was also an appropriate color for traveling the golden grassy lands of her home realm: it would help her camouflage a little better. She carried no obvious weapons on her person, but Kari stared at the mallasti woman and reminded herself that between the claws, those powerful jaws, and the arcane power that flowed through her blood, Uldriana was far from defenseless, armed or not.
The last farewell of her people was brief, but when they left the village and Kari looked back over her shoulder, she could see the people were all watching them depart. Kari found she didn’t care that they were demons on this matter: they were fearful for their daughter and friend, and Kari felt for them. Uldriana didn’t seem particularly happy to be leaving her people, but her expression was that neutral, almost disinterested one that was so common in the village. She seemed to sense eyes on her, and she turned to look at Kari while they walked.
Distraction seemed a good course of action. “What are these totem poles for?” Kari asked, and she gestured to the decoratively carved pieces as they passed the outer boundary of the village.
“It is the sign of our people,” Uldriana answered, no trace of impatience or sarcasm in her words or voice. She paused and gestured toward the nearest of the totem poles. “Note there are four distinct animals carved into the wood: the bear, the elk, the snake, and the hawk. The hawk sits atop the pole because he is our…how to say it…he is the symbol of our village. We are the ‘People of the Hawk.’ The three other animals represent our neighboring villages: the People of the Bear, the People of the Elk, and the People of the Snake.”
Kari found that interesting, but she didn’t press their guide further about it. Instead, the demonhunter turned and looked at Sonja over her shoulder. “When are you going to put up your masking spell?” she asked.
“Already done,” Sonja said, glancing to the north.
“This masking enchantment of yours…how does it work?” Uldriana asked, and she slowed in her walk so Sonja caught up and walked side by side with her.
“From a distance, it will make us transparent,” the scarlet-haired woman explained. “It doesn’t cover the other signs of our passing like the grass moving or any tracks we leave, but it’ll still be hard to spot them from a distance. I also have it dampening the sound of our voices, so only those who get close will be able to hear us, even here on the plains.”
Uldriana nodded. “And now you have done this without the aid of your book or the arcane strands around us,” she said. “Your confidence grows as you unlock the arcane power in your blood; this is good.”
“I still don’t understand why I was able to do some things and not others, even when I was using my book,” Sonja said. “I mean, you said that it was because I was doing twice the work needed to produce the effects, but why did some things like wards and shields work, but others didn’t?”
The mallasti girl stopped and turned to face Sonja, and placed her hand over the larger woman’s heart. “This is where your strength lies,” she said. “You are very intelligent, but there is a strength and a purity in your heart we do not often see. Your heart seeks first to love and to defend, and the arcane power in your blood responds to your call in those situations because your heart is stronger than your mind. Unlike your hunter companion, whose heart and mind have been trained only to kill.”
Kari bristled at that, but Sonja answered the challenge before she could. “That’s not true,” her sister-in-law said. “Kari’s spent her entire life defending others, whether from your kind, or my forebears, or whoever. You’re wrong about her; she has a purer heart than I do.”
“Is that so?” Uldriana asked.
Kari paused before rising to the challenge. The girl was staring at her with that impassive expression, and in light of that, the question sounded less like a challenge than an honest desire for confirmation. “I know my kind are called demonhunters,” Kari said, “but we hunt problems, we don’t go out looking to cause them.”
“How many of my kind have you killed, hunter?” the girl pressed, folding her arms over her chest sternly.
“Six,” Kari answered. “I’ve only ever fought and killed six of your kind, and every time it was because they came to Citaria to kill my people. It’s not like your kings send your people to my world to look at the scenery, Uldriana. You can get upset with me if you want, but those six of your people that I killed…they killed a lot more of my people before I got rid of them.”
The mallasti girl looked back and forth between Sonja and Kari a couple of times. “So you, too, are a defender?” she asked Kari, though she did not wait for an answer. “I find this strange; there is a more dangerous air about you, much more so than your companion.”
Kari considered what she could or should tell the mallasti girl. She thought perhaps if she was completely honest, Uldriana would return that courtesy, and perhaps tell Kari a lot of things before they even rescued Se’sasha. “I’m the highest ranking hunter in my Order,” she admitted quietly. “I’ve been at this a long time, but that hasn’t changed why I do what I do.”
Uldriana shook her head. “Still, I do not get the same sense from you that I do from your companion; there is something dangerous and vengeful within you, so much so that I can sense it just standing before you. We shall see if what your companion says is true,” she said, and then she turned to Danilynn. “This one I understand: she is a priestess, and she carries the strength and the convictions of her deity with her. She, too, seems dangerous, and perhaps even vengeful, but there is a serenity to her sense of purpose that pervades her, more so than you, hunter.”
“Don’t call me that,” Kari said, drawing Uldriana’s gaze back to her own. “While I’m on your world, just call me Kari. I’m not a hunter while I’m here; I’m just a traveler and, hopefully, a negotiator.”
“Yes, you are correct,” the mallasti girl returned with a deferential bow of her head. “Let us not dally; it will be some distance we must cross to reach the city of Saristor, on the border of Tess’Vorg and Sorelizar.”
Morning transitioned into afternoon, and Kari found the terrain of Pataria beautiful but quite a pain to cross while sore and pregnant. It was hilly terrain, and half the time was spent ascending. The
downhill portions were no less strenuous on Kari’s back or legs. The sun was strong and the air was warm, but there was a persistent breeze that kept things bearable. Kari had no idea how the mallasti tolerated the heat with their heavy coats, but Uldriana was too embroiled in her lessons with Sonja for Kari to be able to ask about it.
The demonhunter spent a lot of time speaking with Danilynn, and asked the priestess what had occupied her time since the Great War’s end. As Kari had expected when she first learned of the relationship between Eli and Danilynn, it turned out that Danilynn had traveled to the holy city of Sarchelete after the War’s end, where she took up working in the temple. She explained that she had been waiting for years for Eli to come find her, and had all but given up when Kari showed up with him at the temple that fateful afternoon. Above all, Danilynn said that it was good to be out and seeing the world again instead of serving in one place.
Kari wondered what it was like to live and work in a temple. Even Grakin and Kyrie lived outside their temple in a house, so the concept of priests and priestesses who not only worked in a temple, but also lived in it, seemed foreign. Did they go out after their prayers and meditations to socialize with others in the city? Were they barred from romance with their fellow priests and priestesses, or were they expected to find mates among their own priesthoods? Kari supposed it had to be nice, on the one hand, to never have to worry about finding a “job,” or about feeding, clothing, or housing one’s self, but on the other hand, she wondered how sheltered the priests ended up on account of it.
Danilynn seemed a pretty worldly woman, but then she hadn’t lived her whole life in the temple, just the few years it’d been since the Great War’s end. She’d been an adventurer before then, one who ended up embroiled in a plot to bring a demon king to Citaria. She’d no doubt gone through a lot in foiling that plan, and Kari wondered how much Danilynn might be willing to talk about it when Eli wasn’t around. More to the point, Kari wondered how much Danilynn might be willing to talk about Tor, and his relationship with Emma. As she glanced at Uldriana, though, Kari recognized this was neither the time nor the place for such topics.
