by David Hair
‘Sivraman and Darikha-ji created the gnosis when he created the world,’ Ramita announced proudly. ‘That is clearly what this statue is saying.’
Alaron turned on her crossly. ‘No! Baramitius discovered the gnosis—’
‘Discovered. Therefore it was already there.’ Ramita looked at him truculently.
He rolled his eyes and turned back to Puravai. ‘How can an old Lakh statue have anything to do with the gnosis?’
The monk looked at them both. ‘I am not going to take sides – you may both be right. The real lesson of the statue is this: the god is holding the elements of the gnosis outside his core body, but within reach, yes? Omali statues often have many arms, to show all the powers that the god can reach.’ He put particular emphasis on reach.
Ramita got it first. ‘You are saying that we should hold our core as pure energy and reach for the affinities without pulling them into us?’
‘Exactly.’
Alaron stared at the statue and tried to picture himself: a core of gnostic energy with all the Studies in reach, like balls of light linked to him by ‘arms’ – cords of energy forming conduits to the power. ‘I think I see it,’ he admitted.’ I get it – and I think maybe I could learn to do it too. He felt his pulse begin to quicken as the possibilities magnified. ‘We have to grow arms to hold the elements.’
‘And more,’ Puravai replied. ‘You must open the eye in your forehead. You must master living things and free your soul.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Best you both get busy.’
*
They did get busy. For Ramita, it represented a magical, spiritual time. From the moment she had been given to Antonin Meiros, her life had become a strange learning journey, but each phase had been brought to an end in violence. In her married life in Hebusalim she had learned languages as well as how to be a wife, a period ended by her husband’s murder. In the next phase, on the Isle of Glass, she had learned about her newly flowered gnosis with Justina, though they’d had little time to do more than teach her a few basics and do some early exploration of her affinities. Justina had told her that her enormously strong gnosis – born from pregnancy manifestation whilst carrying the twins – had allowed her access to powers that often eluded better trained magi, but the fact remained that she was a neophyte.
This third phase, as a mother and a novice mage, was characterised by the alarming exposure to new sensations and experiences. Each day was filled to the brim with wonders and new discoveries. Under Puravai’s guidance they teased their affinities back into reach and tried to use them without pulling them inside and changing their core aura. She could scarcely believe the things she was achieving. And with the joy of her twins sharing her room, she’d not been so happy for a long time. She just dreaded that this phase too might end in violence.
Part of her enjoyment was seeing Alaron Mercer blossom. She could see how downhearted he’d been – and even offended – by having a non-mage turning all he had been taught on its head. He’d been upset that she’d made faster progress at first. But now he’d got his head around it, he was enthusiasm itself.
After they had regained touch with their normal affinities, Puravai directed them to concentrate on those elements they’d not previously been able to reach, trying to balance Fire, Water, Earth and Air, never allowing one to overwhelm the others. Progress was steady as days blurred into weeks and she began to think her head would burst. Between caring for her children, regaining her physical health and strength and this new learning, she was exhausted, but she also felt immense fulfilment.
It was a shock to realise that almost three months had passed. It was Jumada already, late spring, and the mountain goats had returned to the slopes to graze the patches of pale green. Every day the villagers brought gifts to the monastery: food and cloth and other necessities. They were small, wiry people with narrow skulls, almond-shaped eyes and unkempt black hair sprouting everywhere; they wore elaborately patterned blankets and shawls.
She caught movement in the garden below: Alaron, practising with his sword. Something in his stance reminded her of Jai, her brother. She thought that they would get on well. And that thought led to wondering where Jai was now – was he still with Keita, and had they got home safely and found Mother and Father? Were they all well? And the twins – they must be six by now! And the two surviving triplets – they’d be eight! I can’t believe I’ve not seen them for two years! The next moment she was dabbing at a haze of tears while loneliness welled up.
At least I have someone here … He was increasingly pleasing to look at, especially now, clad in a crimson novice’s robe that left his shoulders, arms and legs bare. His limbs were muscled now, and as tanned as his face. His chest was broader and his shoulders more square. His face looked different too: older, leaner, the jawline more pronounced, his cheeks more sunken. The effect was, well …manly. Somewhere in the past months, the last of his boyhood had gone.
She looked away as that nagging temptation to lie beside him returned. He liked her, she knew that, maybe more than just liked, and she was beginning to feel pretty again. The dark circles beneath her eyes were fading and she no longer looked so tired and wan. Her breasts were still full – he was sneaking looks at them when he thought she wasn’t looking. Her waist was narrowing and her backside was taut again, as it had been in Aruna Nagar Market when she’d worked so hard and never had quite enough to eat. The Zain way of life, the food, the exercise, even the meditating, was making her stand taller. She was stronger and more flexible and her vitality had returned, even her feminine energy, the womanly desire that moistened her yoni on sleepless nights.
He wouldn’t say no to me.
But she held back, haunted by all that was at stake.
It appeared that Master Puravai noticed such things too, for he pulled her aside one afternoon after gnostic lessons, not long after she’d shared some of the truth with him: including exactly who she was, and her husband’s final instruction, that she should seek out Vizier Hanook. She left out only the most dangerous details: the Scytale, and her relationship with Kazim and Huriya. Puravai had accepted her story as he accepted everything else: with wry equanimity.
Now, as Alaron left to wash, he said quietly, ‘Ramita, soon you will be moving on, as we have discussed.’
‘We are happy here,’ she replied, ‘but we know we can’t stay for ever.’
‘You must go to Teshwallabad, as you planned,’ Puravai said. ‘I should tell you now that the vizier and I are known to each other. He was a Zain monk – he trained here, alongside me, when we were both much younger.’
Ramita raised her eyebrows at that. ‘What’s he like?’
‘He is a serious man, as he should be, but witty and droll as well. He is a complex, goodhearted person. But I will tell you this: he will ask that you wed someone of power in the mughal’s court. That is inevitable: the Lakh royal family have long coveted the gnosis, so long as they can obtain it secretly. How would you feel about such a marriage?’
She had known it would come to that, at some point. ‘I am well used to being bartered for, and I know my value. The marketplace of Aruna Nagar teaches such lessons early.’
His face was sympathetic. ‘When I see you like today, happy and excited, I see the bonds between you and Brother Longlegs growing tighter and it gladdens my heart. If these other things did not matter, I would rejoice for you both.’
She dropped her eyes. ‘Al’Rhon is a good friend. No more than that.’
‘But he wishes he were more to you, and so do you. Ramita, I must warn you that the time you spend learning the gnosis together will deepen your affections. As you progress, you will begin to work mind-to-mind, and that will involve sharing secrets and desires. This will drive you closer so that, unless you guard your heart, it will end in either love or hate. You must be careful.’
She looked away, suddenly scared. Do I want to fall in love again, ever? To a foreign mage? She wasn’t sure. But such questions led to others: Could I now marry
someone who isn’t a mage? Could I now marry someone ordinary? I’m not the simple girl who fell in love with Kazim any more. I am Lady Meiros, mage and mother.
And I like my goat …
She blinked back tears. ‘It won’t be hate.’ For all his irritating, pedantic precision, his annoying superiority and scepticism and his silly competiveness, for all his ridiculous puppy-dog eagerness and his complete inability to do his hair and dress properly … ‘He is too good a person to hate.’
‘Then if it were love, it would be a dangerous love, and it might ruin the marriage Hanook will arrange for you. The mughal’s court is dangerous, and even the gnosis can’t protect someone in such a hostile place for ever. No one there will tolerate a Rondian mage as a rival.’
‘What should I do?’
‘That is up to you. You are a woman now, and your choices are your own. Just be aware of the consequences. In my experience, in matters of the heart what is lost is more damaging than what is gained.’
She wondered whether a matter of the heart might have driven him to this life of celibacy and privation.
‘Thank you, Master. I will consider what you say.’
9
Rejoining the War
The Rimoni Empire: The Fall
How did the Blessed Three Hundred conquer an empire? Through the power of Kore.
BOOK OF KORE
Three Hundred Ascendants: more power than any army could contain, let alone one largely bereft of archery or cavalry, and with no experience in dealing with such foes. Though the Ascendants at this time were wielding only Thaumaturgy, and had yet to discover periapts and other tools of the modern gnosis, they were unstoppable.
ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS
Northern Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Safar (Febreux) to Awwal (Martrois) 929
8th and 9th months of the Moontide
The village was on the road to Hytel, just a cluster of buildings where relay horses were stationed to support the Gorgio and Dorobon supply wagons moving produce south to the capital. It was a way-station of little import, just a few dozen Jhafi servants and stablehands under the dominion of a patrol of Dorobon legionaries. But tonight the best room in the rough tavern housed a Dorobon battle-mage.
Elena crept forward as the light drained from the sky, her mind linked to Kazim’s on the other side of the village. There was a guard at the stable doors and another in front of the inn. The villagers had dispersed to their own huts, except for the whoremaster, whose string of Jhafi girls he kept to service the Rondian soldiery were being kept fully occupied.
They’d been watching the village for four days. It was a full night’s flight from their base and they’d hidden the skiff nearby, ready to depart as soon as this job was done. This ‘job’. Even thinking that way conjured up the old Elena, who did such ‘jobs’ for a living. The coldly calculating and ruthless Elena.
She was wrapped in an illusion of shadows; she passed the corral without the beasts reacting, stealing up on the stable guard, her knife ready in her hand. He never saw her coming.
You join the army knowing you could die.
He was middle-aged, and sweating in the alien heat. She gripped him from behind and flashed the razor-sharp blade across his neck, slicing effortlessly through his jugular vein. Blood spurted; he choked, quivered then sagged. She propped him upright against the feed-trough and moved into the shadows.
From there, she slid along the outside wall of the stables, around a bend and into another alley on the far side, a narrow space running alongside the rear wall of a barracks. There were no open windows; they’d been closed against the reek of the rotting refuse in the alley. Rats scattered as she crept past. She heard desultory singing from the tavern as she cautiously extended her senses to the rooms above. There was crude laughter emanating from one room and rhythmic grunting from another. It was the third room that interested her. A pale blue light shimmered against the glass and she could sense the discharge of power like breeze on her skin.
‘Yes. We need to get upstairs with as little fuss as possible.’
‘Straight in the window?’
‘No. Look carefully – there are wards. See the glow around the frame?’
‘I could blast through that.’
‘Yes, but it would rouse the whole place. Let’s delay that moment as long as we can.’ She inclined her head to the next corner of the building. ‘We’ll go in the back way.’ She slipped along the wall to the kitchen door again.
He followed, reaching out to stroke her hip as she paused by the corner.
The back door led directly to the kitchen. The door was open, revealing young Jhafi men sweating over pots and pans of food. The air was thick with steam and heat. It was too small to pass unseen, and that wasn’t the plan anyway. She motioned for Kazim to move ahead of her and he stepped into the kitchen and brandished a metal disc with a jackal’s head embossed into it. Hadishah. The kitchen hands backed away, and as they passed, Elena jerked her head towards the back door. They took her meaning and left swiftly and silently. No one looked back.
I hope they have the sense to just grab their things and leave.
A staircase behind the taproom led to the upper storey. Elena lowered her hood and took the stairs silently, reaching the upstairs hall unimpeded and spotted a well-muscled, shaven-headed Jhafi man, a handler for the whores, there to ensure the girls weren’t beaten and that the soldiers paid. His head turned to her as she came into view and his eyebrows raised as he realised he was seeing a white woman.
She smiled at him as if her presence were the most natural thing and showed him her hands, palms outspread. There was a coin in her right hand. The Jhafi man blinked and rose to his feet. ‘Lady, I—’
She used telekinesis to send the coin flashing into his right eye socket and it struck with a nauseatingly liquid splat. Blood sprayed and the man slumped back into his chair, the coin lodged in his brain. She darted forward and propped him up as Kazim appeared behind her.
She nodded to the far door. The gaps were leaking blue light.
She knew little about this battle-mage, only that he was from the Dorobon III legion. She’d glimpsed him from a distance during the day and watched him sending a bird south. He was young, brown-haired – reminiscent of her nephew Alaron. The fact that he was handling birds meant he was probably an animagus, and therefore most likely an Earth mage. His blood-strength was unknown and so were his affinities. She didn’t like that.
She went to his door and pressed her hand to the wooden surface, feeling energy pulsing through, binding the barrier closed. The wards were competently set, and stronger than she could manage – a pure-blood then: a daunting prospect. She could hear the faint scratching of a pen.
Enough delaying. Let’s get this done.
She knocked, while calling aloud in Rondian with a thick Jhafi accent, ‘Good sir, good sir. I come.’
The writing noises ceased, and a male voice called, ‘Go away.’
‘Sir. Manager send me. Free for you.’ She knocked again, harder. ‘I have tight and juicy yoni, sir. Anything you want, I do.’
‘For Kore’s sake,’ the man inside sighed. Behind her she felt Kazim settle beside the middle door, in case someone came out. She heard a chair shift inside, then footsteps. The door pulsed faintly with energy as the wards were disabled, then it was pulled open a crack.
She rammed her shoulder into the door, slamming it into the man’s shoulder and half-turning him while she pushed a dagger through the tiny gap into his chest. It struck personal shields, but tore through his robes and left pectoral muscle. He yelped and staggered backwards.
‘Wha—!’ He gest
ured, slamming telekinetic energy at her, but she was already on him and hammering another dagger blow into the middle of his chest. Light crackled like splintering glass across his torso and the blade snapped. He shouted again, and she heard someone call from the next room. His eyes filled with crystalline light and mesmeric swirls wove across his irises as he locked eyes with hers.
She reversed the broken dagger and slammed it into his belly with a bolt of energy wrapped about it, and his body convulsed from the force. As his shield shorted and flickered, she pivoted and booted him under the jaw: the timing was perfect and his neck snapped. He crashed backwards and sprawled limply across the floor.
A voice called out from the desk where the man had been sitting, ‘Luman? Luman?’ There was a faint outline of a face in a shifting pile of sand, and eyes searching blindly. The dead mage had been engaged in some kind of communication spell. She blasted it away with raw energy, then snapped the dead mage’s periapt chain and pocketed the gem, and took his dagger to replace her broken one. He looked barely twenty, his vacant face all innocent stupidity.
Too bloody easy.
A woman screamed from another room and Elena drew her sword and ran into the hall. Kazim was standing over a naked Rondian man with a bloodied chest. The far door, the one by the stairs, opened and another Rondian emerged, clad in breeches and holding a longsword.
Stupid weapon for an enclosed space, she thought as Kazim blocked the first blow and drove his scimitar straight-armed into the man’s stomach, all the way in and out the other side. He kicked the man off his blade and vanished into the room. Elena ran to the stairs, glancing left to see a Jhafi girl on the bed, wrapped in a sheet with her mouth wide open. She screamed again when she saw Elena and hid her face.
