Chains of a Dark Goddess (26 page)

Biting her lip and frowning, Ilsimia crossed the room. She ran her hands along his shoulders. “Do not say such blasphemous things, my love. Do not doubt. This is how evil gets to you. It creeps into your mind and uses your fears and sadness against you. Be strong against it.”

“I feel lost,” he said.

“You have
me
. Kedimius, if you can get past all this ... When it’s all over, you will be stronger for it. Then you can become the man Seshalla wants you to be.”

He turned and looked into her pleading eyes. “I do have
you
,” he said, trying to smile. “I haven’t forgotten that.” He kissed her meekly. 

“Let me ease your pain. I can distract you for awhile with an old and sacred magic.”

“What magic is that?”

“The power of love which the Goddess gave to us.”

Chapter 36

High Priestess Aleui finished the midnight ritual in the temple. Only a handful of dedicated worshipers were present. Usually the high priestess was an experienced matron. Not Aleui. At thirty-one, she had earned the position through charisma, manipulation, and a pure talent for precise rituals and potent spell-casting. She was fanatically devoted to Harmulkot and had been ever since she was a small child who could never sleep at night, a child with a mind filled with poems and strange ideas. She had the essential look of a priestess of Harmulkot: tall, wispy, and moon pale. Her eyes were a deep blue, her cheekbones high, her lips crimson. Her black hair was cut down to mere stubble. 

Aleui went to the inner sanctum and prayed before a statue of the goddess. She prayed for the people of Mûlkra, for salvation from the crusaders of Seshalla who would come in the Spring. She said the same prayer four times every day.

“I will stand against them and die if I must, my Lady. I would see them stopped and your glory returned. I am doing what I can to turn lip-service back to devotion, but your city is diseased, your people’s spirit diminished. If only you could return to us, my Lady.”

“I am here, Aleui,” said a rich voice from behind the statue. “I have returned. And I
will
save
my
city.”

Aleui stumbled back, tripped, and fell.

A shadow hovered in front of the statue, matching it perfectly. Then Harmulkot, as a ghost, moved forward.

“Your prayers, my high priestess, are answered.”

Aleui gathered her composure and stood tall, her head held high. “If you are who you claim to be, you will know those signs that must be given.”

Harmulkot smiled warmly. “You were well chosen.”

Harmulkot uttered words in the language belonging only to her priesthood. She made signs with her hands, signs imprinted in the brain of Aleui during her initiation years ago. 

Aleui nodded. “Now the Deathly Image, my lady.”

A foot-tall, bronze statuette of Harmulkot sat on a pedestal in the corner. It was unpolished and covered in dust and patina, for no one could touch it without dying, save for Harmulkot herself. The pedestal with the statuette on it was carried out in public yearly and tested on a criminal.

“I am a ghost, Aleui. I do not have my true form again. Not yet. My hand will pass through it.”

“If you bless me,” said Aleui, “I will be able to touch it and survive.”

“Are you prepared to risk that?”

“I would risk
anything
to see our city’s faith in you restored.”

Harmulkot hovered near her and said, “I bless you, Aleui, and proclaim you to be my high priestess in good faith and measure. You may touch the statue.”

Bravely, Aleui grasped the Deathly Image and lifted it from the pedestal.

She didn’t die. 

Tears streamed from her eyes as she caressed the statuette in her hands. She knelt before Harmulkot. 

“My Lady, my Goddess, thank you! You have returned. We are
saved
!”

“I was never all powerful, Aleui. And I have far less than I once did because so few have faith in me. And as you can see, I am still cursed, for I can bear no physical form.”

“But you can inspire the people and lead us. You can aid our Queen, your descendant. She needs bravery and wisdom.”

“This Queen is an impostor,” said Harmulkot. “No one with my blood has sat upon that throne in centuries. Besides, I cannot give wisdom to a stone nor bravery to a weasel.”

“Then what shall we do? Will you become the Queen again and rule as a ghost? Will the people understand?”

“You and I shall rule this city together, Aleui. And my champion will lead our army.”

Breskaro stepped into the inner sanctum. 

“I present to you Sir Breskaro Varenni, risen from the dead to fight for us against his former people. He is our champion. He brought my qavra here. A qavra that shall now be borne by you,
Aleui
.”

Breskaro held out Harmulkot’s qavra. “Come Aleui, take this qavra. You will bear the magic and form of your goddess. You will take her counsel directly to the people.”

“What of
my
qavra?” said Aleui, fingering the emerald stone that hung by a silver chain from her neck, the only one she had ever worn.

“I will take yours,” Breskaro said.

Harmulkot touched the emerald stone with ghostly fingertips. “
Vadagaras the Serpent
.” Her voice turned oddly praiseful, her eyes distant, as if she stared into the past. “You will like
his
qavra, Breskaro. He was treacherous and cunning. His qavra lends itself well to magics of stealth and deceit. He was a superb tactician, too. And his qavra is still nearly as strong as my own.” 

They exchanged stones. With tears in her eyes and bewildered smile on her face, Aleui took Harmulkot’s dark amethyst stone. Breskaro hung the emerald qavra around his neck. The wire basket holding the qavra was a silver net of intertwined serpents. 

“Did he mean something to you, this Vadagaras?”

“He was my lover once. Before his will failed.”

With shaking hands Aleui hung Harmulkot’s qavra from her neck and ran her fingers tentatively along the thin chain. Her eyes were alight with awe.

Breskaro left the inner sanctum and walked out into the attached courtyard which only those allowed in the inner sanctum could access. Aleui followed.  

“What of the Queen?” 

“I will see to that,” Breskaro said.

Breskaro chanted the
spell of the wings of a bat
and leathery wings sprouted from his back. He followed with the
spell of personal obscuration
and the
spell of silence
.

“Such sorcery!” Aleui exclaimed. 

Breskaro smirked. “This is dangerous magic, difficult to wield even under the best circumstances, and I can’t maintain it for long without collapsing. But I think a show of force is worth the risk in this situation.”

“No, you don’t understand. I have studied all my life and can’t come close to what you just did … not under any circumstances. And your incantations, they’re not the ones I use. They’re simpler. It’s almost as if — Oh. You must be Qaiar Zindari.”

“I’m not descended from the Qaiar.”

“Actually,” said Harmulkot, “though the bloodline is weak, you are descended from Qaiar. Just as Deltenya and Adelenia were. I can sense it in you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I assumed Nalsyrra had when she gave you the grimoire of a Qaiar Zindari. A normal human would have to adapt those spells and use extended castings. I think you can manage them because magic comes more naturally to you because of your heart.”

“It’s of no matter to me,” Breskaro said. “Now, I must go before my spell wears thin and fails me in flight.”

With that he flew away, leaving behind the smiling ghost of Harmulkot and her awe-filled and delighted high priestess.

Chapter 37

Fourteen councilors of Mûlkra sat around a table in a meeting chamber. Only Queen Marisan and High Priestess Aleui ranked above them. They were pensive. Rumors of deaths among their number had circulated. Then they were brought here by strange, shrouded soldiers who had showed up on their doorsteps with an invitation they couldn’t refuse. They were frightened but given assurances by a foreigner named Larekal that those eliminated were enemies to the city. 

Breskaro threw open the door and marched into the chamber with Whum following in his wake. The councilors nearly fled upon seeing Breskaro in his funeral mask with his sparking emerald eyes.

“Why have you brought us here?” demanded Chief Councilor Arkiss. “And what’s going on out there?”

“A new regime is taking charge,” said Breskaro. “That’s what’s going on.”

“By whose authority?” Arkiss said.

“Mine,” said a ghostly figure emerging from the shadows.

Chairs were knocked over as the councilors jumped from their seats and backed up against the wall. The ghost of Harmulkot moved toward them. Well they knew what she looked like. Her image was everywhere in Mûlkra. Yet they didn’t believe this was anything more than a trick. 

High Priestess Aleui entered the chamber. “It
is
Harmulkot,” she said.

“The goddess was banished from the city,” said Councilor Pepri. “She was cursed.”

“The curse is broken in part,” said Harmulkot. “I can emerge as a ghost from my qavra, but I cannot take physical form again. Not yet. So Aleui shall carry me forth.”

“Behold!” cried Aleui as she lifted the Deathly Image.

The Deathly Image was sacred and its power could be felt by anyone in its presence. Its purpose was to confirm, in Harmulkot’s absence, the identity of anyone who claimed to be a chosen one of the Goddess, or to confirm Harmulkot herself, since she had made the artifact after a rival infiltrated the city and impersonated her. Anyone who lived in the city was subtly attuned to the artifact’s energies.

The councillors bowed before Harmulkot. 

“Rise, councilors, we have much to discuss.”

“What of Queen Marisan?” asked Chief Councilor Arkiss.

“She will be publicly disposed,” said Harmulkot. “She is a traitor. And she is not of my bloodline.”

“She was gathering treasure,” Breskaro told them, “and planning to make her escape just before the city came under siege.”

“You know this for certain?” Arkiss asked.

The eyes stared coldly out from the funeral mask. “She told me as much when I
forced
her to talk.”

Arkiss shuddered. “Who is this man?”

“This man,” said Harmulkot, “is my champion: Sir Breskaro Varenni, returned from the dead to oppose his old faith and serve me. He has all the cunning he had of old and now knows powerful sorceries. He will lead our armies and demoralize the enemy.”

The councilors gasped and whispered among themselves.

“We need your support amongst the populace when we announce our plan. Aleui is calling for a gathering before the High Temple tomorrow. Be there and support our cause.”

“Do we have hope now of withstanding the Issalians come Spring?” asked Councilor Pepri.

“Hope?” asked Breskaro. “Yes. You have hope, but little more than that. And they will not come in Spring, they will come in Winter.”

“Then what point to all of this? We can’t be ready to face them in less than two months.”

“The point is survival,” replied Breskaro.

“But you said we have little hope.”

“Before I arrived, councilor, you had no hope at all. Now you at least have a little.”

~~~

A weedy commons the length and width of four city blocks faced the High Temple of Harmulkot. To either side of this commons were broad streets normally congested with merchant stalls but today cleared and patrolled by the newly reorganized military. 

Breskaro and Aleui, along with the Mûlkra’s top officer General Hugisen, had culled traitorous officers from the army and the city guard, also getting rid of those lacking in skill who had bought their way into commands. The remaining were pleased to see their ineffective Queen removed from power and to have a proven champion to lead them in battle. 

In Mûlkra people could trust a man returned from the dead and animated by sorcery. It was their peculiar perversity that such things that would horrify others did not much affect them. A few moments of surprise would always be followed by logical acceptance. 

By design, rumors had spread during the previous night, rumors of the Queen abdicating, of the Goddess returned, of hope against the crusaders. All across the city throughout the morning, heralds had proclaimed a royal announcement at the temple. So tens of thousands had gathered by midmorning, filling the commons and the streets. They had, for the first time in many years, a glimmer of hope lighting their faces.

Drums boomed and horns blared. High Priestess Aleui emerged from the temple and walked out to the edge of the thousand-and-one steps that led up to the temple. Through the use of the
spell of thundering voice
, everyone could hear her.

“People of Mûlkra! Hope is restored. Our Goddess has returned to us! Behold!”

With that, Aleui lifted the patina-covered statuette of Harmulkot and held it so that all could see. There were murmurs and shouts, shrieks of ecstasy and proclamations of doubt.