by Jena Rey
Tabor’s dark eyes widened as he whispered. “Dark One’s blood!” He pulled away from Ephema, knocking her from her feet in his haste. He strode from where she fell to the door, rubbing his arm and touching his stomach as though it bothered him. He seemed unaware of Ephema’s fall, focused only inward. Darian understood the feeling, though he put himself between Ephema and Tabor, just in case the man took the truth badly.
“As you can see, Brother. Healing. True, honest to Goddess healing. I, too, was rather stunned when she helped me. It’s…like nothing I can describe.”
“This is impossible. She didn’t just…” He waved at his wrist. “I broke that eight years gone now, and it feels like new. I broke a rib ten days back and it no longer pains me. Much less the cut.” Tabor’s knees shook, and he dropped to the ground, staring at his newly healed skin. “No one can do this. They’re all… How is this possible?”
Ephema stayed on the floor, though she picked up another rag, wiping Tabor’s blood from her fingers. “My mother.” She offered quietly. “And hers. We have always heard the voice of the Mother. Father says…said…that a divine bloodline and the mountain protected them, and his blood would protect me no matter where I placed my feet.”
“Always heard the voice.” Tabor shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “That’s just…huh. Bloodline.” He finally raised his head and looked her straight in the eyes again. Darian could almost feel the tension between the two. “Bloodlines are important, but that doesn’t explain how you’ve managed to avoid the madness that’s affected every other worshipper of the Mother Goddess of Life, Ephema. The Goddess Lianna was driven mad by her battle with the Lich, and all of those in contact with her are immortal and insane. New worshippers cannot swear to her without losing their senses as well. Now, it’s forbidden to even try. The Sisters are a blight nearly as bad as the Lich. So how is it you are not mad?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, sitting cross-legged and keeping Darian between herself and the Knight. “My mother wasn’t insane, and no one ever told me that I should be. They just told me I had a gift and that it was important. I know everyone is taught the Mother is mad, but the voice I hear is just lonely.”
Darian moved to sit beside her, stretching out on the stone floor as he didn’t have the same flexibility she did. “Ephema, we’re not just taught that they’re mad. We see it. I’ve personally encountered Sisters of the Mother twice since my training began. The first time, they…” He paused, opening and closing his mouth. These memories were almost as hard as the memories of the convoy.
“They what?” Ephema rubbed the cloth at the stain on her skirt. “I need to understand.”
Darian sighed. “There were three of them. They had come across some travelers. They’d chained them and taken turns carving agonizing curses into the travelers’ bodies. By the time the Sisters grew bored and left, any trace of humanity was gone in those poor twisted souls. One of them literally melted away as we watched, his body turning into paste. He was still screaming until his face was gone and he couldn’t. I still remember that scream.”
He shuddered and continued. “The other two we were able to put out of their misery quickly enough to ease their pain and keep them from rising. The next time I met the Sisters, it was a cleaner encounter. They attacked a caravan I was accompanying. They took the guards first, and two of our Knights held them back, but you can’t kill the Sisters. The best you can do is distract them. The Knights gave us the time we needed to escape before they died.”
Ephema’s face paled as she listened, but she didn’t try to stop him from telling the grisly tale. She twisted the cloth between her hands until her knuckles went white. “I see.”
Tabor nodded, still rubbing his arm. “He speaks true. I’ve seen similar and worse from the Sisters. I hate them worse than the undead. At least the undead you can lay to rest.”
“You keep saying Sisters. I was told we were Daughters of the Mother. Maybe…” She took in a breath, loosening the cloth. “Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe the Sisters are someone else.”
“The Sisters are simply what the Daughters are called now, Ephema.” Darian’s voice was quiet. “Few survive contact with those that call favor to your Goddess. Before the Lich destroyed so many of the Gods, the Daughters were the healers to the world. The other gods and goddesses focused on other aspects of duty; the Mother Goddess of Life gave healing to her disciples. They were blessed and then she went mad. No one has been gifted with divine healing for at least a century. No one, that is, but you.”
“But, my mother could.” She swallowed, dashing tears from her eyes. “That’s not how it should be.” She scrambled to her feet, leaving the rag behind. “I need…I need to think.” She dashed away, slipping through the doors into the chapel where her footsteps grew silent.
Tabor rose, glancing at Darian. “We can’t lose her, not knowing this. And she can’t stay here. We need to take her and that scroll to the Great Temple in Hawthan. There’s more going on here than we can handle ourselves without further guidance.” He opened and closed his hand, then rubbed his arm. “The possibility that healing could be returned to the world, I never thought I would see it in my day.”
“It’s amazing, but restoring the power would take a lot more than just one woman, right? The Goddess would still have to be healed.” Darian stood and dusted himself off. “Is that even possible?” Without waiting for an answer, he walked in the direction Ephema had fled. “I’ll go see where she went, but I’m not going to force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, not yet. Because you’re right,” he glanced at Tabor. “There’s far too much at stake right now. I think it will be better if she goes where she needs to be willingly.”
“I understand your concern, young brother, but remember that our first oath is, and must always be, to Osephetin. If she is required to fulfill his will then I will see that she comes with us, even if I must carry her.” He shrugged, and his tone softened. “Convince her, Darian. I agree it will be better that way. I will see to our Brother here and send a message that they require a new Knight in Residence and disciples to restore this place fully. My instincts say we should not linger. Not given what you carry, and not knowing what we’ve seen today.”
“I understand.” And he did understand, even if he didn’t agree. Ephema was a person. Osephetin didn’t accept oaths under duress, Tabor couldn’t possibly mean that the Knights should take Ephema from her home if she didn’t want to leave. Could he?
The courtyard behind the Temple was small, featuring overgrown stone paths that led between three small doors entering the building at different points. One could not reach the road directly from here, making it a bastion of silence against the world. A stone well sat in the center of the clearing, the edges crusted with soft moss. Darian had found a functional bucket in one of the storage rooms, and it now sat to one side of the well. The walls surrounding the courtyard were too steep to allow the sunlight in, save for when it was directly overhead.
Ephema sat several feet beyond the well, the thick grasses rising up around her. She had removed her mother’s necklace and now clenched the globe so hard she thought her bones might crack around it. She wanted to deny what she’d been told. She wanted to believe the followers of the Mother were too strong in her light to partake in such atrocities, but some part of her knew the men were telling the truth. Her mother had always told Ephema that she was different, that they were different. There were reasons they’d kept her away from everyone high in the mountain, but she’d been too young, only fourteen turns of the seasons, when they’d left to ask the questions which flooded her mind now.
She tried to murmur a prayer seeking comfort, but nothing came to her lips except a pleading for the families of those the Sisters had murdered.
Footfalls against the stone pathway caught her attention. She recognized the pattern of the steps; Darian had already come to find her. A part of her wanted to hide, to flee back into the hills, vanish int
o her cave and just wait until all of this passed into distant memory. But the cave, despite being her home, held no answers to her questions.
The Knights might, and that changed everything.
She didn’t look up as Darian approached, though she flinched when he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and scooted away. Human contact felt odd after so many years alone even if she was mostly over her fear of him. His voice was soft as he spoke. “Ephema? Are you all right?”
Ephema shook her head, rubbing the globe in her hands. “I’m not sure. Maybe not. You’ve told me things I think I need to know, but I don’t want to know.” She sighed and finally looked at him. His eyes were kind, and his kindness gave her courage to continue. “When I healed you, you looked at me and you were just thankful. At least after you attacked me.” Wryness touched her voice. “The Knight in there… he looked at me, and I don’t think he saw me. He just saw what I’d done and his own hopes for what it meant.”
“Tabor hadn’t just had a caravan of twenty people slaughtered before his eyes and his own life nearly snuffed out, not a few minutes prior. I wasn’t sure what or who you were. And, in my own defense, I didn’t know exactly what happened or where I was.” Darian sat next to her, keeping just enough distance for her to be comfortable, but close enough not to have to raise their voices to be heard. “My last memory before you woke me was claws in my face and rolling down a mountain. I don’t even understand how you got me into the cave. I’m sure you’re strong, given how you live, but I’m not a small man. You can’t have carried me.”
She smiled faintly, unable to help herself as she thought of that night. “I healed you some. Then I rolled you onto my blanket, hooked it to my shoulders, and pulled you up the hill like a load of wood. It took a while, and you might have bounced on some rocks, but that seemed better than leaving you.”
Darian opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, then opened it again, then closed it. Finally, he laughed, a deep belly laugh that made him shake. He leaned back on his elbows, the laughter unlocking something inside of him and erasing some of the lines of strain from his face. It didn’t seem like he laughed often enough, and Ephema smiled in return. There were many types of healing and this one didn’t even require an incantation. “You were easiest to drag by your feet.” She put her necklace back on, letting the globe rest against her shirt. She fell silent, letting his laughter run its course.
He shook his head, looking up at the sky. “My mother would be proud of you. It’s not often I’m reduced to speechlessness.” He took a deep, cleansing breath. “Praise Osephetin, it’s been a while since I laughed that hard. I’m almost dizzy.”
“Laughter is good for you. It lightens the body and the soul.” She considered her questions and discarded them all, choosing something else to talk about. “You mentioned your mother. Is she living?” It wasn’t an odd question these days, especially for those who followed Osephetin. Many Knights came from families broken by the undead.
Darian nodded. “The last time I heard from her, she was, yes. My family lives in Hawthan, the capital city off to the southwest. My father and most of his family were born there, as was I. My mother came there when she was assigned to the High Temple as part of her duties to Osephetin.”
“Duties?” Ephema raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Is she a priest?”
“No.” Darian smiled. “She is a Knight, and more. She is the Knight Proctor, one of the highest-ranking members of the order. I follow in her shoes, not my father’s. I’m no fisherman. No matter how hard my father tried to get me to learn the family business, I just wasn’t good at it. I swim well enough, but I don’t have the patience for fishing trips. Plus, being surrounded by the smell of the deep ocean for weeks is not to my taste.” He looked wistful for a moment. “My father was taken by the ocean, a few years back during a storm. A blessing, in a way, since the Lich’s reach does not go under the water, but I miss him. It took a long time for me to accept that his death was not a punishment for anything we’d done wrong, but an act of the natural cycle which is part of our Lord’s purpose.”
She listened, leaning closer as she took in his story. She’d heard the name of the city of Hawthan, the home of the High Temple, but she couldn’t picture it any more than any other city. She’d never gone beyond Aserian’s borders, though she knew the surrounding mountains well. His talk of the ocean was like something out of a story from her childhood. She simply couldn’t imagine a place with so much water. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“I have two. An older sister and a younger brother. My sister married young, found the man sleeping with the innkeeper’s daughter, kicked her husband out on his heel, and after some negotiation with the innkeeper…now co-owns the inn. Turns out her ex-husband hadn’t been honest with the innkeeper’s daughter either, and he was run out of town. She ended up happily remarried to one of the bouncers and has three kids she’s raising within the boundaries of the tavern.”
Ephema blinked and covered a laugh. She knew about the various taverns in town, but she’d never stayed at one. She only visited to sell herbs, and sometimes she bartered for an old blanket or other supplies. “Your sister sounds interesting.”
“She is that. She’s nothing if not her mother’s daughter. Honestly, the tavern’s done considerably better now that she’s running it. She has a really good head for business and since our mother is the Knight Proctor, the Knights frequent the tavern regularly, and the quality of the rest of the patrons has gone up. It’s bringing in more coin than ever.”
“And your brother?”
“He’s a librarian for the sages in the Temple. The man has an unholy love for books. He’s happiest when he hasn’t seen the light of day for weeks on end and is covered in ink. If my sister didn’t demand he come and visit at least weekly, we’d probably find his corpse sitting there, still reading, one skeletal hand turning the pages. No Lich could keep him from his duty, that’s for sure.”
“It is an odd thing to think of, to be surrounded by so many people.” Her amusement waned as the smell of wood smoke drifted out to them. “I only had my parents. We came to town a few times a year, but not often enough to really have friends. And then they left, and it is just me.”
Darian pushed up so he was sitting upright. “Do you know what happened to them? Any idea at all? How long have they been gone?”
“Father was…” She hesitated, trying to decide how much to tell him of what little she knew. “Father was a Knight. He and mother left when the other Knights were called away. Father promised they would be back when the snow melted and the first snowdrops bloomed. He said he and Mother were going to help his Brothers make everything right again. That when they came back, we wouldn’t have to live in the cave any longer. I watch for them every year when the seasons turn, but… Five springs have gone by, and I think…” She drifted off, unable to state what she was certain of. She didn’t think they were coming back, but if she said it then it would be real.
“I’m sorry.” Darian let the silence sit for a time before he stood. “Come.” He held his hand out to her to help her to her feet. “The past is what it is. What matters is the next morning. I, for one, am curious about the future. And I’d like to know what Knight Ianel learned about the Mayor. Shall we?”
Ephema looked at his hand for a moment before she accepted it and let him draw her upright. His grip was strong and warm, giving her strength, even though the contact was brief. Her stomach said she was more interested in food than in the Mayor. She used a lot of energy when she healed someone, and she was starving, but even that could wait. “All right.” She followed in Darian’s steps back toward the small door that led to the chapel. “Thank you. For talking to me.”
Darian held the door open, letting her pass him by. He met her gaze and smiled. “I don’t have your gift for healing, but conversation is something I can do. I would be happy to talk to you anytime, m’lady.”
Chapter Five
As they stepped i
nto the chapel Ephema and Darian found the temperature had increased several degrees. The gentle warmth was pleasant after the coolness of the outdoors. A small pyre burned in the fire pit, set well back from the hearth. It was obvious the pit for the Eternal Flame was designed to hold much more than this pitiful flame, but for now this was all that was needed. The remains of the priest could be seen in the flickering flames, and Ephema turned away from the sight. Though she knew it was a ritual all in the world came to, she wanted to remember the gentle old man she had known as he’d been while alive.
Ianel had joined Tabor in their absence, and he nodded at the pair as they entered. “Welcome, you two. Tabor filled me in during your absence as we assisted the good Bishop here.” He shook his head, eyeing one of the old benches before sitting on it. It creaked a protest, but held. “It turns out that there were many wrongs the Mayor was involved in. The issues surrounding him attacking Darian and denying him sanctuary were minor among them, but it was enough that his lies came tumbling around him. He and four of the council members were in cahoots with the false followers that were cast from the town. It’s a complicated matter involving theft and selling goods to the bandits that haunt the roads between here and the larger cities beyond, and that’s the most minor of his problems. The folk are not pleased with their Mayor and his friends and are open to true Disciples returning to the Temple.”
