Word of Truth

by Rhett C. Bruno

  Whitney shrugged. “It wasn’t relevant until we got to the part where we saved her.

  “It couldn’t be more relevant,” Torsten said.

  “And hey, those upyr hated Nesilia as much as we do. The enemy of my friend is my enemy, or however it goes.”

  “I agree with Sir Unger,” Mahraveh said. “The Buried Goddess is a deceiver to her core. I’ve met her.”

  Hearing that finally seemed to break Sora out of her blank stare. She eyed Mahraveh curiously, but still remained quiet.

  “How are we supposed to know she isn’t in the mystic still?” Bit’rudam said. “Just as she controlled the one who drowned Latiapur?”

  “Gray skin or not, that’s a valid point, Torsten,” Sir Mulliner said.

  “Wait, I’m lost,” Lord Jolly chimed in. “They were with Nesilia when she took over Sigrid’s body, and then Rand summoned her to us with a blood pact on the late Sir Danvels?”

  “We don’t know he’s dead,” Torsten said.

  Jolly conceded the point with a wave of his hand.

  “I don’t know what’s so hard to understand,” Whitney groaned. “Yes, and yes. And we need to get close to Nesilia again so that we can wake Sigrid up inside her own head using Lucy’s Lightmancing, then bind Nesilia inside of this.”

  Whitney reached into his pocket, pulled out a gem, and plunked it on the table. With his enchanted vision, Torsten couldn’t perceive color in all its magnificent shades, but for him, the gem seemed to be draining all the light from the room. It was midday, the hot summer sun blaring in through the open wall, and yet now it felt like twilight.

  A handful of people gasped, flinching, and backing away.

  “What in Iam’s name is that?” Lord Jolly demanded.

  “They brought it here for her!” Sir Mulliner barked.

  Master of Rolls Caspar Brosch, however, moved closer and whispered, “Curious.”

  Bit’rudam placed himself in front of Mahraveh, hand on the grip of his scimitar. Whitney tried to argue. Tum Tum too, but the shouting intensified until Torsten wasn’t sure who was saying what.

  “That be me father’s Brike Stone,” whispered Al. Their dwarven master of coin stepped forward from the corner where the more unnecessary-for-defense Royal Councilmen lurked. But, even in the face of the end of all things, contractors, smiths, and all the citizens whose work would help prepare the city for war required the gold from Yarrington’s coffers.

  “My thoughts precisely,” Brosch said, still at a whisper.

  “The what?” Sir Mulliner asked.

  “My father’s greatest treasure. Said to be the heart of the last dragon, after his ancestors tricked it into tradin its soul for our riches.” He made his way around the table and reached out for it.

  Whitney slapped the dwarf’s hand away and said, “It’s ours.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “We uh… borrowed it. From yer father,” Tum Tum said. “Yer Alfotdrumlin, right? Lorgit’s youngest? He be an old frie—“

  “My father would never give that up,” Al said. “Not to a friend. Not to his own sons. He believes the power of the last dragon has allowed him to live all these centuries.”

  “It’s bad enough with a mystic, now they threaten to draw the Three Kingdoms into war against us?” Lord Jolly said.

  “We’ll give it back,” Whitney argued.

  “You don’t give anything back,” Torsten couldn’t help but retort.

  “They are clearly attempting to fool us,” Sir Mulliner said. “They should be locked up in the dungeons.”

  “We speak the truth,” Lucindur implored.

  The fighting and accusing continued. Torsten hushed and begged for everyone to quiet down, but he should have known better, filling a room with peoples and races, all of which had slighted each other for centuries. Nesilia had cornered them and transformed Yarrington into a tinderbox without a trusted King to keep the peace.

  Was Sora the fuse?

  The two dwarves pushed each other. Whitney pointed a knife at Sir Mulliner and Lord Jolly. Mahraveh bit her lip and glared at Sora with malice. Bit’rudam, the same. The too-young Royal Council members joined in for the sake of not feeling left out. Lucindur, for what’s it’s worth, attempted to calm things.

  Sora continued to sit quietly, not engaging, out of the argument. Torsten knew she had Whitney wound around her fingertip. He was a thief, but he wasn’t malicious. If she was a pawn of the Buried Goddess, she could get him to do anything.

  Then, everyone went suddenly silent when Dellbar the Holy grasped the outlandish gem and rotated it in his hands. Torsten wasn’t even sure when he’d managed to sneak over so close. Though, he was used to him stumbling drunkenly into things. He still wasn’t used to the sober version of the High Priest.

  “Hey, don’t touch that!” Whitney yelled.

  Dellbar turned on him. He hadn’t eyes with which to glower, but the grisly holes in his face got the job done. Whitney fell right back into his chair.

  The High Priest clasped the stone with both hands. He shuddered for a moment, his face wrinkling deeper. Then, without a word, he sauntered calmly to the great window framing Mount Lister. Every eye was on him now. He stopped there, facing out for a few seconds, and Torsten’s superior hearing allowed him to hear Dellbar mutter in a pained voice, “In the hands of Your children now, eh?”

  He chuckled to himself, shoved the stone into his pocket, then turned. Only, it wasn’t to the entire room. He focused on Sora specifically. “So, that’s how we destroy Nesilia?” he said. “We tear her and the upyr apart with Lightmancery, and bind her in this?”

  “Yes,” Sora answered.

  “Hmph. As simple as it is not. It is said that dragons once served as the messengers of the gods until the Feud claimed so many, they went extinct. I can feel the power emanating from this. Whether or not it is what legends say, it can only restrain her for a short time.”

  “We hope,” Lucindur added.

  “It has to,” Sora said. “There won’t be another shot at her with something else. If we can’t separate her from Sigrid and bind her, we’ll all die.”

  “How do you know that?” Torsten asked. “We can withstand her army. Dellbar and the priests will figure out how to banish her demons. We can hold.”

  “We can’t,” Sora said.

  “We can.”

  “You know that we can’t,” Sora attested. “You of all know. We’ve all seen parts of her army, and when it’s all here? Even Liam the Conqueror couldn’t survive this. Our only hope is destroying her, and that stone gives us the best chance.”

  “Exactly,” Whitney said, boasting a proud smile. “So, by all means, if you all have something better hiding in Yarrington’s coffers like a spare bar guai or the kidney of a god, let us know.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “No? Nobody? Thought so.”

  “So, what? We’re going to leave our future in the hands of a potentially possessed mystic and a thief?” Lord Jolly said, a sly smile on his face. He glanced at Casper Brosch, the Master of Rolls, who still looked shocked from the sight of the stone. “Do you think I didn’t ask for the records of Whitney Fierstown before coming in here?”

  Whitney perked up and leaned forward. “What did they say?”

  Jolly ignored them. “I’ve already lost one home this week, I will not lose another.”

  “I agree,” Mahraveh said.

  “And me,” said Bit’rudam.

  “Ah, now we all care about lost homes,” Whitney said.

  “If me father was on the fence and now joins her over this, I won’t be able to talk him down,” Al added. “And no offense to any of ye fine people, but this ain’t me home to die in.”

  Whitney groaned so loudly it bordered on performance. “Oh, would you fools all stop it? I didn’t get chomped at by a wolf, nearly burned alive, and get half my shoulder chewed off by goblins to not use that stone.”

  Torsten raised a hand to preemptively stifle the opposition that would
inevitably come from Whitney letting his opinions be known.

  “If you’re all right, and telling the truth,” he said, “then what’s your plan for getting close to Nesilia. She conquered Latiapur without even showing up. Her mystic, or sister, or whatever that red-robed witch is, seems perfectly capable of carrying out an attack. Plus, now with Babrak on her side, and her new Arch Warlock leading another Drav Cra horde south, how do you possibly plan on getting near to her?”

  Whitney jammed his elbow onto the table and pointed. “I’ll tell you how…” His words trailed off, and with his other hand, he scratched his chin.

  “She’ll come to us,” Sora said.

  “Yes,” Whitney said. “This is ridiculous. If you all knew who Sora was, you’d be on your knees, not—“

  “Don’t.” Sora laid her somehow-unscarred hand upon Whitney’s shoulder and did what Torsten thought impossible—silenced the thief in an instant. She stood.

  “It’s true,” she continued, now to everyone. “Nesilia possessed me when I attempted to enter Elsewhere and break every law the mystics should stand for. She thought we were kindred spirits. Both abandoned time and time again. Both misunderstood. Called by names we never asked for. Unloved. Forgotten. There was a point I even thought she was right…”

  Her hands trembled as she spoke, and Torsten noticed the embers dancing at her fingertips. His own slowly reached for Salvation, which leaned against the table beside him, ready to do whatever was necessary if the worst was to come.

  “I had to watch as she used my body to please herself.” After several gasps, she continued. “I watched her turn a psychopath named Freydis into her latest beloved weapon while she slaughtered Drav Cra not loyal to her. Then, she destroyed an entire city of dwarves simply because they were in her way.”

  She gazed down at Whitney, and a weak smile formed. He bit his lip.

  “I had to watch while she surrounded the people I love, with every intention of killing them, too.” Her voice cracked slightly. “And then Whitney and his friends—my friends—helped break me free. They reminded me how wrong Nesilia was before I gave in.”

  She looked at Torsten, then across the table all the way to Mahraveh. “So no, I can’t prove to any of you that Nesilia isn’t in my head, because I can’t prove it to myself. Everywhere I look, she’s there, her horrors like a shadow on my mind. I looked into the eyes of pure wickedness and hate, and they were my own. And that is exactly how I know that when her army comes for Yarrington to wipe every shred of Iam’s existence from this world, she’ll come for me first.”

  Sir Mulliner grunted. “Exactly what a pawn would say. Invite her right in.”

  “Quiet,” Mahraveh snapped, breaking a long silence.

  “How dare you—“

  “I looked into her eyes as well,” Mahraveh said to Sora, ignoring Mulliner. “I haven’t slept since. Generations of memories clog my head at all times… and yet, her eyes are all I see.”

  “Oh, now you believe her?” Mulliner groaned.

  “I have to agree with Sir Mulliner,” Lord Jolly said. “We can’t stake our survival on a prayer that Nesilia will senselessly expose herself. You go ask my family if Nesilia needed to be in Crowfall when that witch your ‘body’ helped train broke open our walls like an acorn.”

  “It’s not a prayer,” Sora said.

  “You can’t know that.”

  “She does,” Dellbar stated, stepping forward. After his long silence, Torsten had almost forgotten about him. But when he spoke, Torsten was reminded of Wren before Redstar got ahold of him. There was vim and vigor in his tone.

  “Nesilia will come for Sora for one simple reason,” Dellbar said.

  “And that is?” Mulliner asked, fully out of turn.

  Dellbar looked at Sora. “Because she rejected her. Right?”

  Sora swallowed hard, then nodded.

  “She spent an eternity buried,” Dellbar went on as he slowly rounded the table. “Her hate rising with every Dawning. And then she found a woman as powerful as she was unknown. And you rejected her. Not like Torsten or Mahraveh, who were raised their entire lives on their own faiths, with their own families to love. You were the orphan, far from home, and even you rejected her like she believes Iam did. For him.”

  Dellbar punctuated the sentence by placing the Brike Stone down in front of Whitney. The thief had been so enraptured that he yelped. Again, the light was sapped out of the room. Then, the High Priest took Sora by the shoulders and positioned his blind eyes straight in front of hers.

  “She wants you, for who you are,” Dellbar whispered. “But you aren’t where you’re born, or where you come from, or what you’ve done. Destroy her for hatred and vengeance, and you’ll become exactly what she wanted you to be. You’ll never win. Do it, instead, because you understand her more deeply than any of us here can ever know.”

  Sora’s lip quivered. A tear rolled down her cheek. Dellbar wiped it with one finger as if he wasn’t completely blind. Then, he stood, wearing a thin smile, and gave her arms a squeeze before using his cane to tap toward the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Torsten asked.

  “I think I may have finally figured out how we banish her demons,” Dellbar said.

  “We need you here.”

  “You don’t.”

  The High Priest reached the doors and knocked with his cane. Guards outside pulled them open, and like that, he was gone.

  Torsten swore. The drunken version of Dellbar made far more sense.

  Sora collapsed back into her chair. Whitney, the man who never shut up, remained silent, consoling her by rubbing her hand. It had been a year of strange sights for Torsten, and somehow, that felt like one of the strangest. It also erased nearly all the doubt in his head over whether or not they could be trusted.

  He knew that look in Sora’s eyes. The pain of being violated. Having her entire life stolen. He’d seen it once, long ago, in the eyes of a girl taken from her tribe and brought to Yarrington. In Oleander’s eyes. There was something else there, in Sora’s eyes—something he couldn’t place…

  “Remind me again, how was he chosen to be High Priest?” Sir Mulliner asked.

  “Because, for once, the charlatans in Hornsheim trusted in Iam,” Torsten retorted.

  He couldn’t believe the words he’d spoken about his church, and yet, there they were, hanging on the air. And Torsten meant it. Dellbar had been a breath of fresh air from the start, with no worry for politics or gold. He barely wanted to be alive.

  “I like him,” Mahraveh said. “And he’s right. Sora is here, whether we like it or not. If she’s telling the truth, it’s our best shot. Nesilia spoke to me to try and lure me to her side, but she made a mistake. My father taught me to sense the weaknesses in everyone around me because even friends can become opponents like that.” She snapped her fingers. “For Nesilia, this isn’t a mad, murderous quest. It’s personal.”

  “It is,” Lucindur agreed.

  “Have I mentioned how much I love the Shesaitju?” Whitney remarked.

  A chuckle snuck through Torsten’s lips. Lord Jolly looked like he’d heard a horrid curse.

  “I suppose, I would have loved to be there to see father’s face after he found the stone missin from his vault,” Al said.

  “Aye, I wish we could’ve, too,” Tum Tum said. “But fear’s got the best of him now. It was a sad sight to see.”

  “That explains why he’s ignored any attempt to contact him,” Torsten said. “But it doesn’t matter. Here. This room. This is what we have to stand against the goddess: two knights, a mystic, a Caleef, a thief...” He continued like this, regarding each as he spoke their titles. “We might not all trust each other, but that’s the truth of it.”

  “Hear, hear!” Whitney hollered, banging on the table and sending more of the little figurines and carvings sprawling.

  Even Sir Mulliner showed a hint of amusement, then said, “What a ridiculous group.”

  “She’s hurt us a
ll,” Mahraveh said, standing. “Some deeper than others. My home. My father. I will do whatever it takes to stop her.” She moved to the model of Yarrington. “She may have revealed her weaknesses, but she’s also not a fool. She planned and built her army before rushing here for vengeance. She won’t come near the fight unless we draw her. I think if we—“ She stopped and looked to Torsten. “May I?”

  He nodded her along, all while wishing Pi had lived. They would’ve made an impressive pair one day.

  “What do you propose?” Torsten said

  Mahraveh pointed to Dockside and Autla’s Inlet. “Put me in charge of defending the waterfront.”

  “Are you sure that’s smart? We know from scouts that Babrak’s fleet is sailing around from the south. He’ll try to taunt you. We shouldn’t repeat Nesilia’s mistakes.”

  “This isn’t personal, I promise. If we win, Babrak dies either way. But we all need to win. Nesilia might try to flood out the low-ground around the harbor, like in Latiapur. My people are used to fighting on the water.”

  Torsten looked to Lord Jolly, the Master of Ships.

  “I can think of no one better,” Kaviel Jolly said. “My ships are at her command.”

  “Thank you, Lord Jolly,” Mahraveh said.

  “She will have many Current Eaters with them,” Bit’rudam said. “Wianu,” he corrected when everyone looked at him quizzically.

  “I’m sorry, that sounded plural,” Whitney chimed in. “How many of those monsters does she have?”

  “Enough,” Torsten said.

  “We’ll need one to devour the Brike Stone after we bind her,” Sora said. “The more, the better.”

  “Sora, I love you, but that’s the craziest thing you’ve ever said,” Whitney replied.

  “No, I like it,” Mahraveh said. “Your blacksmith, Hovom Nitebrittle and I had an idea when I helped him toss all the glaruium armor into the water. He wasn’t sure you’d like it.”

  “All plans must be heard,” Torsten said. He turned and found the old blacksmith standing amidst the Royal Council, quiet as always. Hovom may not have been on the Council, and he certainly didn’t dress like it, but he’d been around for a long, long time. There was no one Torsten would trust more in regards to outfitting his army.