by James Stone
‘Girl.’ Magmaya tried to duck, but the High Priestess looked as if she was following her every move. ‘You were in the tower, you—’ She wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘No, you started this fire—what gives you the right?’
‘The right?’ Her lips trembled.
‘The right to kill my people?’ Deih scorned. ‘The right to set my home alight when you couldn’t do the same to Fabius’? He was the reason behind this—he brought these semi-demons down upon us!’
‘You know I couldn’t have done that!’
Deih cackled. ‘You could’ve tried!’
‘I was afraid.’
‘You don’t know the meaning of afraid,’ she said, and tears began streaming down the High Priestess’ face in some vain attempt to extinguish the flames. ‘I should have never trusted a foreign whore to do my dealings. She doesn’t know her own principles, let alone someone else’s.’ She shook her head.
The fire raged behind Deih, higher and higher until she was a beast aflame, undeniably divine. Perhaps Magmaya had been serving the wrong gods all along; maybe she should have prayed to her to take her south. Maybe she would bring her fire and ruin once this was all done.
‘You started this?’ Anclyn looked up to her. ‘You started this fire?’
‘Anclyn…’ Magmaya faltered. She couldn’t summon the words any longer.
Footsteps thundered through the room behind the Priestess, but Deih didn’t move. She simply locked eyes with Anclyn and watched her greasepaint weep like broken water.
‘A girl of summer.’ She frowned. ‘It has been too long since I’ve met one of my own. Tell me, do you remember the rain—no—oh, on the First’s ashen earth—tell me you knew me before I became this haggard goddess all men must fear.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Anclyn lied and wiped the powder from her cheeks. They watched as the High Priestess smiled, and the flames seemed to dance to her every whim.
She was still smiling when the Divinicus blade entered her back and left it through her womb.
Twenty-Six
There was another way out.
Magmaya would have rather been dreaming, though; the world around her had become a fiery hell. Its touch was without mercy, and just looking at it too long threatened to leave her blind. At least if she had been dreaming she could’ve forgotten the fire, but then again, even the sweetest daze would have surely become a nightmare in time.
She wished she was back at Ranvirus and watching the snow fall with Rache by her side. Don’t go, she should have screamed, but the girl wasn’t listening; she was travelling south with the angels. Don’t go! It was too late to call; the girl was at Highport with a palm that blazed like hell. Don’t go…! It was pathetic to keep trying; the girl was in Belliousa, and the First Temple was burning around her.
‘Magmaya,’ a voice called, and she was awake again, the shimmery face of Anclyn staring down at her. ‘Magmaya, which way?’
There’s a chamber beneath the Temple, she had told the handmaiden, and from there, a path; it splits in two, and one of the forks leads off into the light of the sun.
It was her last hope—she had gone too far to give in to the angels. She could still hear Akanah’s voice as he stormed the halls with his men. ‘Traitor!’ he had screamed. ‘Foreign whore!’ he’d rattled on, but when he had looked to the limp corpse of Deih, the world had been transmuted.
The High Priestess had been more beautiful in death than she had in life; even as she’d lain in a pool of her own ruby blood, she had still been grinning, wiser than them all.
‘Gods do not die,’ she remembered Siedous had said.
‘This one did,’ she heard Fabius reply.
There had been cries from the Belliousans and screams from the heavens, and it had felt like the sky was going to fall on them, but it had only been the angels that did. Magmaya had watched as Akanah had torn his great sword through one of them—an unarmed preacher, still a boy.
A halo doesn’t make you an angel. It doesn’t even make you a man, she realised.
Anclyn had remained silent ever since, and whenever Magmaya caught her eye, all she saw in the handmaiden was a watery pool of despair. She may have saved Fabius, but she had killed everyone else.
Anclyn, Anclyn! She almost heard herself call; she was supposed to be her friend, but now, it seemed she was gone too. It was fruitless trying to talk any sense into her. All she could do now was escape; otherwise, all of it had been for nothing.
It didn’t even matter half the paths had been blocked by flame, it seemed to do no harm to walk through them. The burning wouldn’t hurt until after she died, so what was the use in trying to avoid it? In death, there will be a cure for everything, she decided. In death, it won’t matter what happened here. Whether or not they escaped the winding corridors of the First Temple, it would all be the same.
But Deih had died! Now nothing will be the same, she told herself.
‘Magmaya—’ the handmaiden began as they neared the bottom of a stairwell.
‘I hear it too,’ she said, cutting her off.
All had been silent since the clash at the atrium, save the crackling of the fires, but now, something else was growing amid the flames. Footsteps.
‘We’re going to die,’ Anclyn stammered.
‘No, we are not.’ Magmaya clasped her hand over the handmaiden’s mouth. ‘Stay here.’ She tugged the ritual blade from her cloak and shuffled up the stairwell.
Once she’d reached the top, she hurried across to a small alcove and stood, silent as the wind. But even there, the fires insisted on burning the water from her eyes and her soul from her body. Soon there would be nothing left but cinder.
Magmaya could still hear Anclyn mumbling at the bottom of the stairwell, but then, there were footsteps again, louder, and that’s all that mattered. Don’t give up now, she told herself, but she was feeling her legs tremble all the same.
A moment later, the footsteps stopped. The alcove was gone. A red cloak was darting at her. Magmaya parried the first blow, but she wasn’t so lucky with the second. It was like her shoulder had been set alight as the Belliousan’s knife seared through her skin. She watched herself begin to bleed again.
Then, the knife was out of her shoulder and coming for her neck. She ducked beneath the first blow. Parried the second. But there was no third—the Belliousan appeared to have wedged her weapon in stone of the wall.
Magmaya threw herself forward. The ritual blade was at her head. The Belliousan was sidestepping.
And then there were hands wrestling her own; different perfumes, different sweats were pouring over her. Brittle nails were forced beneath her skin, while wrists twitched like a pair of intertwined lovers, neither inclined to finish. Not until there was a knee between Magmaya’s legs and she was staggering back, holding herself.
The pain was like a crashing wave, up her legs and through her throat, but she hadn’t a moment left to think. The Belliousan was advancing on her with her own blade, the flames rushing around her, and Magmaya hadn’t a choice but to pull herself up. She felt an elbow beneath a rib and a wrist against a collarbone, and then the knife was on the floor, ringing out like something sickly.
Magmaya’s back was burning. It might have been on fire, but she didn’t care—she couldn’t care. Her elbow tensed. Then her fist was in the Belliousan’s face, once, twice, three times. There wasn’t time to relent; Magmaya grabbed her by that red cloak and forced her into the wall; cheeks were gashed by stone; blood pooled in the hieroglyphics.
And then something strange fingered at her teeth; she was pressing the Belliousan against the wall still, but there were fingernails burrowing in her lips like a thousand tiny knives. Then, she had no choice but to turn to the floor and watch their blood spill.
It was there she saw the ritual blade and dove to the ground. Hard stone and brittle metal cut her fingers as she cupped it, but she found some strength in her to stand. And when she did, the Belliou
san struck her again, somewhere. But not before Magmaya pressed the bloodied steel through her arm.
And then there was a scream—a little girl’s scream, but for all Magmaya knew it might have been her own. And with it, there was something hard against her shoulder, and she found herself on the floor again, head spinning and knife clattering away.
The Belliousan was lying against the wall, holding her shoulder and bloodied face. But there was someone else above her, reaching timidly for the ritual blade. A handmaiden.
‘Anclyn…!’ Magmaya felt herself call. ‘Get… Kill… She’s still alive. Anclyn!’
‘No!’ The handmaiden waved the blade around, forcing herself between her and the Belliousan. ‘She’s my friend—Keriah! Keriah, you’re hurt… Where’s… Zoiln… Zoiln…?’
The Belliousan’s eyes began to well, and she glanced down sombrely to her lap. Magmaya’s view of the First Temple had become thick like fog, but through the sound of her empty breath, she saw Keriah’s broken face turn to rage.
‘My brother…’ she turned to Magmaya. ‘You killed him!’
‘I never,’ she exclaimed, coughing. Her heart was aching at the notion, but she almost didn’t have the energy to care anymore. ‘I don’t…’
‘You failed Deih.’ She spat blood. ‘You let those false angels roam free, and now she’s dead! You killed her, and you killed my brother. Nothing ever good comes from you shits coming south!’
‘Keriah.’ Anclyn tried comforting her, but she was pushed aside.
‘No!’ Deih’s servant said. ‘The High Priestess will be born again as Angelica. You will regret leaving the north, you filth!’ She turned back to Anclyn and cried, ‘Run away, dammit! That girl’s a wildfire.’
‘I did what I could,’ Magmaya pleaded, feeling the life drain from her. ‘I never wanted your brother to die, but—’
‘But what, Maggy?’
‘We’re getting out of this cursed place,’ she said, the smoke choking her lungs. ‘The angels are holding the atrium, but there’s another way.’
‘You think you know this place better than I do?’ Keriah smirked and turned to Anclyn. ‘My offer still stands, girl. You need not follow this wench anymore.’
‘I…!’
‘Stay away from her, handmaiden,’ she warned. ‘She would sell your soul to get out of here.’
Magmaya felt tears well behind her eyes—she didn’t want this! She had met this girl once—how had this happened? The last thing she would have given up was Anclyn. She would’ve sold her own soul for the handmaiden to escape.
‘If you want to die here, then so be it,’ Magmaya said and forced herself to stand. Keriah did the same, but her knees were trembling, and she toppled back down to the floor.
Anclyn was screaming. Deih’s servant was in a fit of tears. The First Temple was on fire.
Keriah looked to the handmaiden with one last plea. Her hands were making the wall bloody, and she was tripping up in her own sweat. But a moment later, she was gone.
Magmaya sheathed the blade in her robes and crossed back over to Anclyn, holding her as she wept.
‘What was that?’
The handmaiden was silent.
‘What did she mean?’ she insisted. ‘The offer still stands…?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Anclyn shook her head. ‘I’m not dying today.’
Magmaya bandaged her shoulder with a piece of charred tapestry and picked herself up again. After that, the corridors seemed to go by silently, though the smoke was quickly becoming suffocating. She hadn’t expected such ferocity from Anclyn, but she had been wrong to underestimate her. Now she was striding ahead, following an imaginary guide as Magmaya coughed and spluttered behind.
‘I wish I had killed Fabius,’ she said, but the handmaiden just kept on walking.
‘What about Kurulian?’ Anclyn asked after a while. ‘Would you have killed him too?’
‘The Legatus?’
‘Don’t play me for a fool,’ Anclyn snapped. ‘That vial you put in my greasepaint— it’s the same one he wore. You don’t serve those bastards for all your life and forget these things.’
‘He was kind to me,’ Magmaya protested. ‘He helped me leave Ranvirus. He wasn’t like the other angels—he was aware of their mistakes. Anclyn, I never wanted to lie to you.’
‘Mistresses lie to me all the time,’ Anclyn scorned. ‘But if you think what the Divinicus do are mistakes, then you are blind. Did you see the boy Akanah killed? He wasn’t even a man grown.’
Magmaya found herself grow quiet and carried on slowly. But the corridor ended all too fast, and they soon arrived at a stairwell, leading down into an inky blackness. She wished she could’ve stayed for a second longer, scrape another footstep, or just have one more moment before she had to forget. But she found herself taking another step and another after that. It hurt, but wouldn’t it have been worse to sit alone in Ranvirus and watch the stars go by, wishing she was one of them?
The clockwork doors appeared before her as they had a lifetime ago—but a halo of fire encased them now. The rows of Temple Guards had seemingly stayed valiant until the end, but all they were rewarded with were burning red cloaks as they slowly withered atop the stonework.
‘Here?’ Anclyn asked.
Magmaya nodded, fumbling about the remains of one of the Belliousans; she found a ring of keys, swept them up in her fingers and pressed them into the doors. She pushed them open with her feet and stumbled over the corpses until she found herself inside.
The candles had been extinguished, but the light of the inferno outside kept the chamber warm and bright. The room was untouched by the flames, however, and there was a chill about the air that made Magmaya question if the fire was even real. The chamber in the heart of the First Temple was a different world and would surely be the last place the heat would reach.
‘It’s damn cold.’ Anclyn held herself as she wandered in behind. ‘I don’t even know what we’re looking for.’
‘Torth Fulton.’
Magmaya left Anclyn by the entrance and scurried over to the mausoleum in the chamber’s centre; the once vibrant flowers had wilted, and the incense had died to a sickly wisp. She hauled open the door to the tomb, but this time the darkness didn’t bombard her—the silence did.
The dead thing was still there, soaking in a yellow ocean, unwatching. Atop his memorial, a single candle still glowed. As she stepped back, another world unearthed itself, and a sickness groped at her chest. The less time I have to spend here, the better, she decided.
‘Where are we going?’ Anclyn asked from across the chamber. ‘The angels will find us if we take any longer.’
Magmaya snatched up the candle and remembered, Time doesn’t pass here, that’s what Deih had said. But Deih was dead, and now, the seconds appeared to tick by in the chamber—had it all been a witch’s trick?
‘This way,’ Magmaya said and led her by a curtain of winding pillars and down a corridor that seemed to grow an extra mile for every step she took. Grimacing faces in the walls stared them down, but they were all quickly banished by her candlelight. The glow of the inferno was gone, though—all that remained in the ocean of black was a single orange pinprick, enough to ignite their eyes.
The hallway should’ve been lit from the exit beyond, but Magmaya couldn’t make out a thing in the distance—perhaps a door was closed, or something was blocking it. But the corridor was too dank and cold—there was no sign of fire. Perhaps the way out wasn’t so engulfed in flame as she feared.
‘Deih took me down here,’ Magmaya said, her voice echoing off the tight walls. ‘There was a fork in the corridor—one path led up into the light, and another led deeper into the Temple. She led me to a chamber where she poisoned and framed me.’ She paused. ‘I should have gone the other way.’
‘She’s dead now, and you’re alive.’ Anclyn shrugged. ‘Maybe you made the right choice.’
‘I can’t be sure o
f that,’ Magmaya said. ‘We haven’t escaped yet. The Divinicus will hang us for deserters if they find us.’
‘The mainlands and their obsession with deserters,’ the handmaiden mocked. ‘In the Summerlands, if we saw a bear, then we turned our tails, and we were better off for it.’
‘I don’t know about you, but it’s been a while since I’ve met a bear,’ Magmaya joked, but the smile that came after seemed to hurt.
It won’t be long now, she told herself. She could at least remember Anclyn was smiling; there would be light up ahead soon.
But much to her horror, as the path continued on, there was no sunlight streaming in. She could make out the twist in the corridor where the fork should’ve been and the path that led to Elysia, but there wasn’t an archway or stairwell leading up into the light. In the dim shadows, there was nothing but the grime of the First Temple’s underbelly.
No! she cursed herself. It couldn’t have been so simple—she deserved to be thrown to the flames! Her heart was sinking faster than she felt it fall, and the coloured lights were blinding her.
She couldn’t help but taste her tears—even they felt far realer than the light had. The passageway had been too heavenly and convenient; it had been a wash of a white and warmth. There was no way out—the other path led to a dead end in Deih’s Elysia. The way back led to fire and entropy.
Magmaya wanted to fall to her knees and scream, but she couldn’t find the strength in her to take even one more step. Instead, she just stammered and crooned the handmaiden’s name, her eyes beginning to water. She wanted to let the tears flood from her, but what would Anclyn think then as her valiant saviour fell to the floor?
‘I’ve made a mistake,’ she said at last.
‘What?’ the handmaiden half laughed. ‘How do you mean?’
‘There was a staircase here, I remember the staircase!’ she screamed. ‘There was light shining down from it, and it was right here!’ She beat her foot against the stone where there should’ve been an opening. ‘It was right—bloody—there!’
‘Magmaya, there’s no door.’ Anclyn shook her head. ‘There are no stairs. It was farther on—yes! It was farther on… yes?’
