“On the night of the full moon, you will sacrifice the Faraswa girl beneath the light of my Seal. Given how much you care for her, the act will agonize your soul so thoroughly no secret of the Void will remain hidden to you, and the Axiom you have been striving for will be yours.”
For a full minute, Kelafelo sits there in silence, shocked, sickened, horrified by what she has heard. Then the horror mutates into a violent storm of anger that leaves her clutching her quill so tightly it breaks in half. “You heartless monster. This is why you bought her, isn’t it? Why you had me grow attached to her? You knew what you’d ask of me.”
The Anchorite gives her an ugly snarl. “I told you there would be a price to pay when you limped here with half your guts hanging out of your belly, didn’t I? Well, the time for you to pay has come. But I don’t see why you are so upset. This will ultimately benefit you more than it does me. You will add to my power through this sacrifice, but you will receive the greater gift.”
Kelafelo knows she’s not going to pay the Anchorite’s price. She knows where that decision is going to take her, but she keeps it off her face. She has learned to hide her thoughts from the old woman, and she does not wish her to sense the half-formed plans already running through her mind. “I must think on this,” she says. “You can’t expect me to agree without thinking about such an act first.”
The Anchorite gives a careless wave. “You’d be better served by not thinking about it at all, but be my guest. The full moon is two weeks away, in any event. You have until then to prepare yourself.”
Without another word to the old mystic, Kelafelo rises from her mat, folds it, picks it up, and walks off. “Aka!”
“Yes, Mama?”
Akanwa has been running after the chickens all afternoon, and her bare feet are caked with dust. She’s grown into her own over the months, and little by little she has carved herself a place in what remains of Kelafelo’s heart. At the sound of her name, she stops running and beams at Kelafelo, clutching a wooden doll in her fidgety hands.
Kelafelo returns the girl’s smile, wondering how she once struggled to see that she is beautiful. “Come, Aka. Let’s warm some water for your bath.”
“Okay. I’ll get the firewood.” And Akanwa bounces off merrily, wholly innocent of the evil that has been meticulously planned for her.
For the rest of the afternoon, Kelafelo is aware of the pair of milky eyes watching them from beneath the witchwood tree, but she pays no attention to them lest they see through her.
37: The Maidservant
Lake Zivatuanu
On a beach along the Zivatuanu’s southeastern shores, the Maidservant quietly surveys what remains of the death squad she has just rescued from a heavily armed Tuanu patrol.
She was shadowing the Yerezi mystic’s waterbird through the Void, matching, mile for mile, its progress deeper into the jungles of the Yontai, when she sensed a fierce battle raging southeast of her position. Upon drawing closer to investigate, she discovered that the death squad she’d sensed earlier, unlike the other groups who’d been pursuing the Yerezi boy, had not given up chase at the borderlands but had instead decided to follow him along the lake’s eastern shore. A Tuanu patrol had intercepted them not long after.
Now they know why the other groups chose to turn back.
Before they were ambushed, they boasted one disciple and twenty men, each riding a giant kerit bear. The disciple is dead now, only a dozen of his men are still walking, and just one kerit came out unscathed. The rest are either dead or bleeding out on the beach.
By the red skulls on their faces, she knows the men are a squad of reavers—a militia pledged in service to the Dark Sun and currently under Sand Devil’s command. Just the sight of them wearing those masks makes the Maidservant’s blood boil with maddening anger, but she cools it with the knowledge that she has a greater aim to achieve. She is not here to kill them.
The stench of blood and offal swirls with the breeze. The lone unwounded kerit is feasting on a Tuanu corpse by the wash of waves on the sand while the surviving men nurse their wounds or finish off the animals too injured to be of further use.
The Maidservant picks her way across the bloodied beach and toward the squad’s captain, who is at present kneeling next to a younger man lying supine on the sand. As she approaches, she notices the ghastly wound festering on the younger man’s leg, wet with a black discharge. Given how he’s shivering and drenched in sweat, she figures that whatever injured him was poisoned. He’ll be dead inside of an hour.
“Captain,” she says, coming to a stop nearby.
The captain raises his dirt-smeared face. He’s taken off his mask, so she can clearly see the sorrow lining his heavy brow. He’s holding the younger man’s hands between his own like they’re something precious, and there’s a clear resemblance between them.
A father and son, most likely. Problematic. She wants the captain focused and useful.
“Those forsaken Tuanu used some kind of poisoned magic bow,” the captain says in a gravelly voice. “One shot was enough to take down our beasts. If not for you, we’d all be dead.”
And all she had to do was appear. The mystic-fearing Tuanu cowered into the jungles as soon as they saw her emerging from the Void in a chaotic vortex.
“Captain, you are alive because I have use for you,” she says. “You serve me now. Understood?”
The captain’s eyes fall to his shivering son, then come back up glistening with worry. “Yes, Maidservant. You are a chosen one of the Dark Sun, and we serve you in that capacity.”
Not a very subtle way of saying: We won’t turn on our master for you even though you saved our lives. Brave of him to say something she could easily take as an insult.
She chooses not to. “How many of your men are incapacitated?”
The captain searches the beach, his solemn gaze lingering on the bodies in red masks. “Five dead, three injured. My boy’s the worst of them.” He squeezes his son’s hand when the young man starts coughing uncontrollably, and the Maidservant sees the spark of determination that comes alive in his eyes. “We’ll send all three injured ahead on my beast. He’s the only one they didn’t hit. He’ll get them home in time.” The captain is about to get up when the Maidservant decides to douse that spark with ice-cold water.
“I’m afraid that won’t do.”
His voice hardens. “Why not?”
“We will leave the injured behind. I will take you, the surviving beast, and the men who can still fight. We will continue our pursuit of the Yerezi mystic through the Void.”
His eyes widen with shock at first but quickly narrow in anger. “My son—”
“Is already dead, Captain,” the Maidservant finishes. “The best you can do for him is end his suffering and go after the one who led you here. We have a mission, and it is pulling away from us as we speak. Can I count on you, or will you fail me and your lord?”
A war plays out in the captain’s eyes, but he is a reaver, and he knows where his loyalties must lie. Eventually, the weight of resignation settles on his face, and he looks down at his son. His voice comes out like broken glass. “I am with you, Maidservant. Please give me a moment alone with my son.”