Mortals & Deities (20 page)

“Impossible.” The word sprang from her lips. Never before had Elith felt so empty, naked. Vulnerable. The teachings of the Twelve were solid on the points of the Aftermore. Hearing this woman, a woman who knew things no one should, say that all she believed was wrong. It was as if the very fabric of her being had been ripped to shreds like this old woman’s soiled clothing.

This time the woman’s laugh held no mirth, only scorn. “I am sorry, it is not impossible. It is the truth. You will never pass into the Aftermore. Of that, I will tell you with certainty, and neither you nor I can do anything about it. I can help you in other ways though, my dear. Aye, that I can.”

Elith could not focus. Reality slipped from her while she listened to the woman’s words. All her life she had studied the teachings of the Twelve—had always taken strength and solace that one day she would shed her mortal bonds and walk with the gods.

“Oh, you will shed your mortal bonds all right!” The old woman laughed so hard she bent over in a fit of coughing. With tears still streaming down her face, her coughing subsided to a mirthful giggle. She fell silent as she regained her serious gaze. “Time is short for me, my dear. If you wish to live through the next few moons, you must heed my words. Do not take the Mah’Sukai to Komar.”

Shaking her head from side to side, Elith took a step away. “I cannot do as you ask! Why do you say this?”

“You must! To do otherwise is certain death. The Mah’Sukai has a path set before him—a path that he will choose to take. You must walk that path as well. He is seeking answers. And when he finds those answers, so too will you find a cure for what ails your mind. It is the only way for you to become whole once more. The only way for you to break free of the bonds that hold you. That have held you from time long lost.”

Shock and horror waged against fear and panic at hearing the hag’s admonition. Could this woman be correct? How could she not? She knew things, things she could not know. Yet, her advice seemed…well, it seemed to fit with what Elith had struggled with since before leaving Komar. The more she rolled the woman’s words around in her mind, the more the words fell in place with the feelings she fought. Her thoughts of leaving the priests, of throwing off their oppressive shackles. This must have been what these feelings had been preparing her for. This felt right. True. For the first time in her life, she made a choice. A choice to do as
she
wanted. To follow her
own
path. To do what she felt was good and just. The revelation made her feel whole for the first time in many long moons.

The old woman raised a dirty, rag-covered hand and pointed. “There is your Mah’Sukai, my dear.” Her finger aimed past Elith’s shoulder, causing her to turn. A man wrapped in a plain cloak walked past and Elith blinked. The old woman was correct. That man was the Mah’Sukai she sought. Elith walked forward and did not turn back when the old woman spoke once more. “Remember what I have said. The only way you will survive the moons ahead, the only way you will be free and whole once more, is to follow him to
his
destination, not yours.”

“Yes, except…” Elith turned to ask the strange woman what the Mah’Sukai’s destination was and gave a start—the old hag stood right in front of her.

Reaching out her filthy hands, she grabbed the sides of Elith’s head and her limbs stiffened. “This will help ensure the mind of this vessel stays intact. At least until you arrive at your destination.”

Pain laced into Elith’s temples and her vision blurred as all thoughts fled. When her senses cleared, she found herself on her hands and knees, panting as if she had just run for leagues. Lifting her head, Elith found that the alleyway sat empty. The cart of rotten food, the lame dog, the smelly old beggar woman, all gone as if they had never been at all.

An icy hand of terror gripped Elith. Thoughts of her insanity washed over her. On shaky legs, she rose to her feet and walked to the end of the alleyway, running her hands along the walls to ensure they
were
solid. Each building that formed the dark alleyway stood at least four stories tall and provided no way for a beggar woman with a cart and a lame dog to ascend. Spinning, her foot slipped on something squishy. Looking at the bottom of her foot, she wrinkled her nose at the piece of rotten meat stuck to the sole of her soft leather boot. She kicked the filth off and rushed toward the main street and the Mah’Sukai. Rounding the corner, she saw her target in the partially deserted street ahead. This close to him, she could close her eyes and point at him without error. All of her training had been for this purpose. She needed to get a grip on herself.

She must take back control of her mind.

Her goal was in sight! Now was not the time for uncertainty. She could snatch up this Mah’Sukai and drag him back to the villa. Once there, the priests could take him back to the Temple—to the Father. Surely, he would mend whatever was wrong with her if she did!

Still, fighting past all her training, all her instincts to do what the Father wanted her to do, the old beggar woman’s words echoed loud in her head. If the woman spoke true. If the feelings she held deep inside her could be trusted. She must not do as the Father had ordered. Glancing over her shoulder at the empty alleyway, she shivered.

Was that smelly woman even here? Or, was this just more of her mind rotting away?

The answers to those questions would not be answered while she stood here gawking at an empty alley. She moved out into the street and weaved her way through the few people still out this late. Quickening her steps, she closed the gap between her and the Mah’Sukai.

If she is to find answers, it is with the Mah’Sukai.

Darkness fell upon the winding, congested city streets of Mocley, and Arderi Cor felt more alone and lost than ever. A tenday of wandering the city, feeling the filth of the Mah’Sukai pulling at him, knowing the creature lurked nearby, yet not being able to find him, weighed upon his shoulders. His feet ached in his dust-covered boots, and his shin still throbbed from when he had run into a small wooden cart pulled by an old lady he had not seen. To add insult to injury, once Arderi helped pick up the woman’s scattered apples from the ground, the old lady rewarded him with a rap on the rump from a thin stick she carried. Not a hard hit, just enough to show she wished him gone and to be quick about it. He was sure he had a cut where his leg had banged the edge of her cart.

Cityfolk have no manners!

And that was just one of many ills of the past few days. If he was not dodging a horse- or ox-drawn wagon piled high with sacks or boxes, he was being yelled at by sedan-chair bearers as they ran their passengers to some place that just happened to be on the other side of where Arderi was walking. If it was not a crowd as thick as thorny undergrowth shoving him along with mutters and curses to keep moving, it was a mounted rider threatening to trod him down under their horse’s hooves. The city was immense, and the throngs of people filling it to bursting seemed to have no end.

After his early morn training with Ragnor, he spent the first few aurns of the day wandering through New Town. Took longer than mayhaps he should have staring up once more at the Grand Coliseum. Its massive round columns rising up the outside of the curved bowl of the building resembled slender saplings when viewing the structure as a whole. Though, in reality, it would take several men holding hands to wrap themselves around the columns. Whenever he passed the building, it held his attention for aurns.

He had eaten a halfmeal of some type of reddish fish purchased from a woman carrying a tray of them. Then he marveled at some of the stone and marble buildings of the Crafter’s District. Entering the Bazaar, he walked aimlessly through the stalls, benches, tents, carts and people selling more wares off trays—the sheer number of items for sale from all over Talic’Nauth numbed his mind—until his stomach reminded him that lastmeal had come and gone. He stood watching the sun glint off the tall spires of the Palintium until the last rays had vanished and stars prickled the night sky. Then he ate a greasy meat pie sold by yet another man from a tray. The man said it came from the finest cuts of cow slaughtered just this morn, yet Arderi had never seen cow meat with this texture before.

I do not wish to think too hard on what creature may have contributed to the filling of the pie.

More than once he found himself wanting to enter the Palintium. Each time, an odd urge would well within him, pulling at him—nagging at him to go into the holy building. Yet, he could not force himself to go inside. Whenever his feet moved to take him in that direction, the weird meeting with the old priestess at the Palintium back home surfaced in his memory, halting him. Eventually, he drifted away with the last crowds after they finished their nightly prayers.

Now he twisted and turned his way through the Warehouse District, its wooden buildings thrown up without any rhyme or reason to their placement that Arderi could see. Without notice, a wide street would turn into a thin alleyway or stop altogether at the door to an inn or smithy or shop or just the side of a large, dark warehouse. Unlike some of the other areas of the city, the Warehouse District did not have many streetlights, and a man could walk in shadows for several paces between pools of light.

He knew the Mah’Sukai hid somewhere in the city—knew that upon waking from the Traveling that sent him here from Bin’Satsu—he shivered at the memory of the pain that came with using a Quay’ka’gana. Yet, the strange tingling he carried in his head—like the buzzing of a bee’s wings deep inside his skull—told him what he hunted was in the city. Still, he did not know
where
. With a start, he noticed his hand caressing the hilt of Dorochi, and he frowned. He knew what his task was and what it entailed, of that there was no doubt. Yet, the reality of killing someone, even a person who was little more than a monster, was something he did not like dwelling upon.

A woman frowning at him gave him another start. It took him a moment to understand why she was glaring at him. Then, her eyes dropped to his hip.

Standing in the middle of a street thumbing a sword
is
cause for notice.

He forced his hand from Dorochi and gave the woman a half-hearted smile. Walking over to a bench that sat outside what looked like an inn—laughter and music spilled out of the windows and door along with the light of the large, open room inside—he sat down hard. The sword’s scabbard slipped behind him, forcing him to adjust it. With his elbows on his knees, he cupped his chin in his hands, and gave a glum stare at the people walking by.

Will I be able to? When the moment comes and I am there in front of this Mah’Sukai, will I be able to
kill
another man?

Since learning of the Mah’Sukai, he had formed an image of this person in his mind. Someone evil enough to abandon all that makes one Human for nothing more than power mystified him. How could anyone want to wield the power to destroy all existence? What would they look like? Fangs, talons and horns came to mind. Though, he never believed any of the stories he had heard as a child.

Ha! I didn’t believe in Drakons or the mythical Tat’Sujen Order either. And look where that got me!

Thoughts of the Drakon brought back memories of Master Rillion. He refused to bring up the image of that day high in the Nektine Mountains—it remained too painful an event to recall! Though, he did still grieve at not having known the man longer. The days he now spent at the Rillion Villa with Ragnor and Sindian and the widow, Mis’am Rillion, proved that Clytus had been a great man who loved and lived as passionately as any man could. This made him think of his father. Nix, Tanin was not a man of adventure and wars and secret orders. Yet, in his own humble way, his father lived his life much the same as Clytus had—with as much passion and love as a man could who was little more than a free slave.

That thought still curled his tongue. The realization that farming steads were at one point slave camps! And even several hundred turns of the seasons after slavery was abolished in this area, most outside a stead still saw those who lived, worked and died there as little more than that—slaves.

Yet, having lived in Mocley now, he saw no difference in the lives of “cityfolk” when compared to the people of his home stead. They still rose in the morn, worked all day, went home in the eve.

And if that is the definition of a slave, then everyone on the entire Plane is one.

Still, he admired his father. The man may never leave Hild’alan, never have grand adventures or wield mystical powers, yet he loved his family with passion and lived his life as well as any Arderi had seen here in Mocley.

Lost in thought, it took a moment for Arderi to notice that the buzzing in his head had grown—had been growing, now that he concentrated on it. Sitting up straight on the bench, he looked around. This street looked much like any other. Wooden buildings stretched away in both directions. One end of the street curved away, the other ended in a hard angle as the street turned to avoid the side of a warehouse. The crowds had diminished with the sun, though there were still more than he would find walking the streets of his home stead at this aurn. Then, his eyes locked on a man huddled in a dark brown cloak scurrying by. The hood covered the man’s face, not that out of the ordinary in itself. Yet, Arderi knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, he knew that
that
man was the Mah’Sukai.

His pulse quickened and his heart leapt into his throat. Watching the man stride past, Arderi waited for him to reach a good twenty paces distance before he stood and followed. At this distance, Arderi could not see much detail. The man stood of average height and build. His boots showing beneath the hem of his cloak appeared unadorned and travel worn. Nothing to pick the man out of a crowd. Arderi shrugged, almost disappointed to realize the man did not radiate evil.

Just an ordinary man.

Hitching Dorochi in its scabbard, Arderi pushed away thoughts of using it as he continued following the Mah’Sukai through the dark streets of Mocley.

An ordinary looking man he may be. Still, he is a man who can kill everything I love. And I will not let that come to pass.