by Guy Estes
"This," Anlon told her, "is but a prelude to what lies ahead, Sister dear. My sword and armor are every bit as powerful as yours, as is my talent. You did hold the upper score in our little game, but once again we are tied. The final battle should be most interesting."
CHAPTER 25
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Baezha awoke in a room that was very wide with a high ceiling. A giant bookshelf took up an entire wall, and off to her left was a laboratory. A complex tangle of glass tubes, beakers, pipes, and flagons occupied about one quarter of the room. Perhaps the most disturbing thing, though, was the wooden table. It was made of stout pieces of hardwood, and it was decorated with thick leather straps. In the middle of the room stood two columns that were a foot taller than Baezha. They were made of tan stone that appeared to have been swirled before it solidified. Small specks of green and blue were scattered over both of them. This apparatus, Baezha knew, was how they had known where to find her and her sister. Anlon's wizard had been able to conjure up an image of their whereabouts between the two magic pillars.
"What is your professional opinion?"
Baezha turned to see who the speaker was. It was a gaunt old man in a white robe. He was tall and raw-boned. There were bags under eyes so blue they were nearly colorless, and his facial bones were made prominent by the sunken cheeks. Baezha assumed that he had lips, but she could not see them. His mouth appeared to be merely a slit in his face. His knuckles were large and knobby, like the roots of a cypress tree.
"Impressive," Baezha said.
"Yes, it is, if I do say so myself. I am Mathias. I requested that Anlon put you in my care. I have great plans for you."
"And what might those be?" Baezha did not really want to know, for the elaborate
thaumaturgical equipment gave her a hideous clue.
"My power is already great. I intend to increase it exponentially. As far as I can tell, you are the first Chosen to be born with magic as a major gift. I intend to extract that from you and add it to myself."
"I'm surprised Anlon would allow you to do that."
"Anlon is like any other warrior, despite his unusual skill, and all warriors are wary of magic. I gave him an explanation laced with too many technical terms for him to comprehend and he assented. He really isn't that interested in you. It is your sister he wants. I've known him since birth, and never have I seen him so obsessed. I must say," Mathias chuckled, "the wound Aleena inflicted upon him was indeed amusing!"
Baezha kept herself from shuddering, but it was difficult. His laugh was a dry rustle, like a burial shroud blown through a crypt.
"In any event," he continued, "it is time to get to work. The sooner I can conclude my experiments with you, the sooner I can quite bowing before that armored brat. Come along, now, and get on the table."
Mathias walked over to the table that had been giving Baezha such a bad feeling. She remained where she was. Mathias looked back at her and sighed.
"Of course. I knew better than to expect you to make this simple."
He motioned to his giant servant, and the silent man moved towards Baezha. Though denied access to magical forces, Baezha still had her own mind’s psychic abilities at her command. She used it to hurl the big man across the room and into a wall. She was then frozen in place, in both body and mind. She left the ground and sailed through the air until she hit the table. The straps instantly snapped around her ankles, wrists, and waist while she struggled to get her breath back.
"I have no interest in games," Mathias told her. "You have something very precious and rare. I want it. You will give it to me. If you refuse, I will take it from you, and I assure you, the experience will be most unpleasant."
"Anything you get from me you will have to work for, maggot."
Mathias smiled, something that Baezha thought was curious for a man who seemed to have no lips.
"I was hoping you'd say that. It is work I find most pleasurable."
Baezha felt his essence growing. She reached for the power she had always known so well, but she could not reach it. She could feel it, note the unique thrums of each and every string of energy there, but she could not wield it. Likewise, Mathias’s assault denied her access to her own psychic power. It would be like Aleena going for her sword and discovering she had no fingers. Mathias' essence crawled over her like a great, invisible amoeba. Baezha had only her will to shield herself with, something that seemed to amuse Mathias. His essence oozed across her will, then grasped its edges and pulled. Baezha hung on, but her shield was torn from her spirit's grasp, leaving her totally vulnerable. Mathias probed her soul, picking up her most private thoughts and memories and looking them over, then setting them aside. Baezha felt as if she were watching a wolf slavering over her baby, and when she went to rescue it she discovered that she had no limbs. She was completely and utterly helpless. After amusing himself with her personal thoughts, he came after Baezha's very spirit. Baezha wanted to fight him. She tried to fight him, but she couldn't. It was like standing before a committee of her teachers for her final oral exam and suddenly discovering she’d gone mute. She struggled and writhed within the leather restraints, but Mathias was not deterred. He spread over her and covered her, like a plague covering a country. Baezha had only felt this alone once in her life.
But she was not entirely alone. Aleena lay in a cell, recovering from the beating Anlon had given her. As she lay there, unconscious and injured, her spirit could feel Baezha's. She felt the terror Baezha felt. She homed in on Baezha's essence like a mother homing in on her lost children. She could see Baezha strapped to a table, and she was covered with a vile purple substance. Through the putrid slime, Baezha's eyes were wide with terror. Aleena's spirit moved to scrape the slime off of her, but she could not. All she could do was watch and feel. The purple slime, she deduced, was Mathias' spirit overwhelming Baezha's.
Several tentacles sprouted from Mathias and began to probe Baezha's helpless form. Baezha struggled harder, but all it seemed to do was give Mathias pleasure. The roots penetrated Baezha's spirit and began to flow into her, seeking out her deepest, most closely guarded thoughts. He found them, and he began to feed upon them. He sucked the knowledge from Baezha's mind and into his own, his essence glowing as it did so. More roots sprouted from him and entered Baezha. Soon, she was barely visible through the twisted mass of purple tentacles. Mathias twitched and jerked, and Aleena's spirit brightened as she saw him experience pain. She clearly heard her sister's thoughts.
You want my knowledge? I'll give you my knowledge!
Mathias had been feeding off of her darkest thoughts and memories, but now Baezha was sending him the memories of the pain she'd felt because of that knowledge. He was hit with her anger and hate, her grief and shame, but he regained control and was able to screen these out. He then returned to his feeding. Aleena sensed that he was very close to his goal, and he sucked the knowledge from Baezha faster. He consumed the last obstacle to what he wanted, and Aleena could clearly see it. Baezha's gift was there, as large and as bright as a star. Mathias sent a tentacle probing into the mass of undiluted energy. He made contact, and he shrieked a sound that Aleena could not even identify. His tentacle vaporized and he was blasted out of Baezha's spirit and across the room. He lay there, twitching and shuddering. Slowly, he got control of himself, and his big, silent servant helped him to his feet. Aleena's spirit was then cast out of the room and back into her body.
She woke and sat up. Her face was very sore, and she gently probed it. Her nose had already returned to its original shape, and she knew the bone would soon be repaired. Her lips were puffy and bleeding, but they, too, felt like most of their original form had returned. She could not see, however, and a quick passing of her fingers confirmed that the tissue around them was still swollen, holding them shut. She lay back and considered what she had seen transpiring in Mathias' chamber. She knew nothin
g of magic or mysticism, but she knew that she and Baezha were linked in a way that was perhaps mimicked only by twins. She knew that what she'd seen had been real. It was obvious even to her that Mathias wanted Baezha's gift. If he could add that power to his own, he could destroy Anlon. But as soon as he'd made contact with the Gift he'd been cast out, and Aleena had a feeling it was not Baezha who had done the casting.
She shrugged and noticed that she was not in her armor, but she was not worried. Anlon would return it to her, along with her weapons. He would want to maximize the challenge of their final duel, so that he could completely rid himself of the shame of losing. Aleena sighed and waited.
Baezha languished in darkness and tried to recover her strength. Mathias had entered her soul and examined her most private thoughts and knowledge as easily and casually as a buyer inspecting a slave. On an emotional and spiritual level, he’d stripped her clothes from her helpless body, bent her over and pried her open to see her innermost secrets, including every detail of the one thing Baezha had avoided telling Aleena. She wanted to tell her, but Baezha could not find the courage to tell Aleena how she'd become a nomad. Mathias knew, as he knew almost everything about Baezha. He knew the silly thoughts she'd had as a girl. He knew about her infatuation with her fellow student in the Druids' temple. He knew how she'd awkwardly approached the boy and he had so publicly spurned her. And he knew about the others, particularly Deirdre, tormenting her until her temper had its way and she'd retaliated.
This was what Baezha had not been able to tell her sister, for Baezha's retaliation had been the beginning of the end of life as Baezha, the child, had known it. Mathias saw how horrified Baezha was at the effects of her temper, and that was why he had no fear of her. She would do nothing to him. The last time she grew angry, it had cost her more than she had ever imagined, even in her worst nightmares. Mathias had invaded her mind and learned all of this before Baezha had been able to tell Aleena, and that was one of the many factors of Mathias' violation of her that made the warm glow of anger blossom within Baezha's soul.
Mathias walked over to her, still trembling with fatigue as well as from the shock of being hurled out of Baezha's spirit. He backhanded her across the face.
"What does it take to pry that cursed power from your pitiful soul?" Mathias raged. "What happened? How was I thrown out?"
They both knew it was not Baezha who had cast Mathias out. If she'd had access to the incredible reservoir of power the fortress sat on, she could have. In fact, if she had access to that power, he never would have gotten into her in the first place. She needed the key, but in her current condition, she hardly knew her name.
"I can see," Mathias went on, "that you will not surrender the gift peacefully, but there are ways I can persuade you."
He went to a table and returned with something hidden in his hand. He forced it into Baezha's mouth and she reflexively swallowed, too dazed to realize she should have spit it out.
"If this doesn't encourage you to hand over the gift, it will at least give me the satisfaction of depriving you of your beauty."
Pain blossomed within Baezha's stomach. It felt like the walls of her stomach were grinding together. The servant picked her up and followed Mathias out of the chamber. They passed through more halls and up a great, winding flight of stairs. They stopped to unbolt a heavy oaken door, then they carried her into the vast room within. It was a storehouse, piled with mountains of food, the sight of which doubled Baezha's pains. She curled up on the floor in the fetal position and they left her. Baezha had regained enough coherence to examine what Mathias had given her. It was something that he must have created solely for the purpose of torturing slender young women.
What he'd given her made her body demand fuel with irresistible force, yet denied her body the ability to use that fuel. She would, in short, obliterate her figure very quickly, and it was a stroke of genius on Mathias' part. The Chosen could not lose their beauty but, strictly speaking, she wouldn’t, for beauty, with the exception of but a few traits, was culturally defined. In a few days, she would be a goddess by the standards of the northern people, for they liked their women well-fed. Unfortunately, by her standards, she would be a bloated sow. Baezha wept as she lay there. There was an excellent chance that this would be one more price she’d have to pay for what she'd done to Deirdre five years ago, when Baezha's world was crumbling and Deirdre had seemed to be the most likely culprit for Baezha's misery. In fact, Deirdre had been responsible for much of Baezha’s misery, but not all of it. And that did not justify what Baezha had done to her. In truth, it was what Baezha had done to Deirdre that had obliterated Baezha's world, not Deirdre herself.
CHAPTER 26
“There is only one decisive victory: the last.” – Carl von Clausewitz
“Know the enemy and know yourself and victory is never in doubt.” – Sun Tzu
Aleena had been sitting in her cell for two days, and while she had recovered from the beating Anlon had given her, captivity was beginning to take its toll. Ever since her experience with the slave traders, Aleena had been phobic about chains, cuffs, or any other type of restraint. Once, while helping her father in his forge, Ivarr had placed a length of chain upon her shoulder and was asking her to put it away when she tore it from her shoulder and threw it down as if it had been a viper. Ivarr saw what the problem was and instantly begged forgiveness. She would always carry the scars captivity had given her. Though she was not manacled, Aleena could feel a weight upon her wrists.
She overheard some guards talking about Anlon. With the proper tone of voice accompanied by a fluttered eyelash or two, she got them to talk to her. They welcomed the chance to show a pretty young woman what all they knew. They told her how Anlon had gotten the throne, and what he had done with it.
“I can understand executing rebels, but to gut a man while his daughter looks on,” one guard said as he shook his head. “That never did sit right with me.”
Aleena’s heart sank as she absorbed the news. Once again, she had been reluctant to kill, and innocent people had died as a result.
If you’d done your duty and killed Anlon when you had the chance, the Instructress informed her, all those people would still be alive, and that little girl wouldn’t have seen her father murdered.
It was my duty to commit fratricide?
That’s what the evidence suggests, was the Instructress’s remorseless reply.
Learning what Anlon had done with the second chance she’d given him had spawned a dark gloom in Aleena’s spirit, but by the next day that darkness produced anger, both at Anlon and herself. That, in turn, had transformed into scarlet hatred. In showing her brother mercy, she had doomed untold others.
How could you be so stupid as to repeat this mistake? The slave traders showed you the results of being merciful to the wicked, and of not doing your duty. Have you already forgotten? Did your return home soften and spoil you? You thoughtless, pampered bitch.
The next day a guard opened her cage and motioned for her to follow. She was escorted up a flight of stairs and out of the building. As best Aleena could figure, it was near sundown, but the darkness of the gathering storm made it difficult to be sure. Wind stirred her hair and lightening danced in the dust-reddened sky. They crossed the open ground to the structure that held the throne room, but when they entered she was guided to another, smaller room. Once inside, her suspicions were confirmed. The room was an armory, and her weapons and armor occupied a wooden stand.
"Gather your arms," a guard told her. "His Chosen has long anticipated this moment."
Aleena went to her arms and ran a finger over them, silently greeting them like long-lost friends. Then she put them on, feeling like she was crawling into her old bed after a long day. She hefted Firethorne and Shearbat, feeling their familiar weights in her hands. Then she sheathed them and followed the guards. She, too, had waited a long time for this. One way or another, this bloody quest was about to come to an end.
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The guards led her out of the armory and to a flight of stairs and told her to go up alone. Aleena started up the stairs, which spiraled up through the structure, a torch in a wall bracket every few yards providing a ruddy light. When she finally reached the apex of the stairs, she beheld an expansive room before her, though because the walls consisted of nothing but columns, she supposed room was not an accurate term for the place. It was well lit by four bonfires, one at each compass point, burning atop braziers aeight feet wide mounted on square columns six feet thick. Their light was reflected from a ceiling composed entirely of mirrors underneath the white domed roof, making the place very well lit.
Aleena recognized this place as the highest point in the fortress, the one she and Baezha had spotted as they entered the stronghold. It was an amphitheater, for ten rows of seats ringed the open area. It was a miniature version of Marcus' arena. The thunder had gotten louder, and bursts of wind gusted through, fanning the flames on the braziers. The seats were occupied by Anlon's ten closest supporters, and an older woman stood next to Anlon. He stood in the middle of the floor. His coppery armor glinted like the multifaceted eye of a demon. His golden sword was in his hands, and an orange cloak hung from his shoulders. Before her, a broad flight of steps descended to the floor. Aleena was putting these to use when he spoke.
"Ah, Sister dear. I'm so pleased you could come."
