The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 19
Worth of a Stone
“Killing time poisons eternity.”
– Arcadian proverb
“Shae?”
For a potentially fatal moment, Maeve didn’t recognize her false name. Elsa leaned over the rim of the grave and touched her wing.
“Shae, you can stop now,” she said. “The hole is plenty deep.”
Maeve straightened and looked down. Sure enough, her frenzied digging had considerably deepened the pit. How long had she been clawing at the hard-packed sand? A skinny Arcadian man reached down to her, helping Maeve scramble up out of the grave.
The swollen Stray sun was already dipping down toward the eastern horizon. It had been mid-afternoon when Maeve climbed into the ground. She frowned at another day almost gone without enough information to take back to the Blue Phoenix. Elsa took the princess’ hands, squinting critically at the bloody scrapes there.
“You’ll need some cold water and bandages on these,” Elsa said. “Or you’re going to get an infection.”
“Is that not desirable?” Maeve asked.
The tall Mirran shook her curly green hair and led Maeve back toward the church.
“Oh no,” Elsa said. “The dirt here is full of bad things. They can turn your nails black and peel off some of your skin, but none of them will kill you. Come inside and I’ll clean them up.”
More pain wasn’t the point of the church, Maeve supposed. Anything short of death was just a petty annoyance. Maeve glanced back at the graveyard. Four of the Nihilists — three humans and a Lyran with matted calico fur — lifted the cloth-wrapped corpse and lowered it feet first into the grave. The dead man thumped and then sagged against the walls. Everyone picked up heaping handfuls of dirt and threw them down into the hole, quickly refilling it. The calico Lyran trotted off into the desert in search of a new headstone.
Elsa whistled and Maeve turned away. Back inside the church, Elsa sat her down on a bench made of a gray siltstone slab propped up on a pair of stout cargo canisters. The other Nihilists gave Maeve a wide berth, perhaps out of respect for her recent endeavors, or maybe just trying to avoid the stink of the dead man still clinging to her. Elsa left for a few minutes and then returned carrying a cup of water with some precious cubes of ice floating in it, and a strip of clean cloth. Elsa wetted the fabric in the cold water and dabbed at Maeve’s fingers.
“Should you not use hot water?” she asked.
A knight’s training involved a little field medicine, not much more than splinting broken bones, patching up wounded wings and a few basic pain-killing charms. Maeve recalled Orthain telling her to use water as hot as possible to wash open wounds, preferably steeped with willow bark for the pain and starkroot to help clean out any potential infections.
“Not for things that grow in the dirt here,” Elsa said. She fanned herself somewhat theatrically with one hand and smiled at the fairy. “Germs on Stray like the heat, yeah? They stay warm at night in the ground because the cold kills them off.”
Maeve wasn’t a doctor and she accepted Elsa’s explanation with a shrug. It sounded reasonable enough and Elsa appeared trustworthy. Despite the foreboding church that had become her home, Elsa was a gentle and kind woman and her devotion to Gavriel and his teachings seemed a waste.
She deserved better. Elsa’s open innocence had cost her dearly. Maeve remembered the terrible scar hidden by the Mirran’s hair. Her husband had done that to her and Maeve found herself hating the dead man.
“The Church of Nihil keeps an extensive graveyard. I confess to being surprised,” Maeve said. “I am humbled by the many dead in this sacred place.”
She was worried she might have overdone it a little bit, but Elsa just bobbed her head in agreement as she dabbed cold water onto Maeve’s cuts.
“There are many in the ground here,” Elsa said. “I’ve buried a lot of them. Some die here at night. Some die from being sick. Some die from fighting.”
“Fighting? Like Gavriel’s battle with your husband?”
“Yes.”
“And the police of Gharib do nothing?”
“No,” Elsa answered. “Lord Gavriel tells us they’re just another problem. They are scared and lazy, so we have to do it.”
“Cleansing the city?” Maeve asked. “Did your people fight the Sisterhood?”
“Sisterhood…?” Elsa gave her a blank look.
“A group of women. They would have worn armbands marked by an elongated red triangle, the symbol of their faith.”
Elsa nodded. “Yes, that was their sign.”
“When did this happen?”
“When I first came to Stray… Two or five years ago.”
So the Nihilists had hunted the Sisterhood. The Sisters fought back and lost. How did one fight opponents who didn’t fear death? Battling these Nihilists would be like warring against a legion of Logan Coldhands. A shudder worked its way down Maeve’s spine. The story was probably much the same all over Stray. Anthem told Xia that the Sisterhood had vanished from all of the major cities and it was now clear why.
“How many of the Sisters did Gavriel have killed?” asked Maeve. “How many are buried out there?”
“Not a lot. There weren’t very many. Maybe twenty?”
That was just here in Gharib… but it wasn’t nearly enough to fill the graveyard behind the black cathedral. Unhindered by lazy and corrupt police, Gavriel and his Nihilists had killed hundreds more. This world wasn’t safe for Kessa and her child. Even if the Nihilists believed that the Sisterhood was gone and no longer hunted them down, any perceived transgression against the Church of Nihil would place Kessa in mortal danger. Gavriel’s people worshiped death in all its forms…
“Thank you, Elsa,” Maeve said. “You have helped me more than you can know.”
Maeve took the Mirran’s striped hands in hers and squeezed gently. Elsa gave her a grateful — and confused — smile, then gathered up the water and unused bandages. She hurried off to find other tasks in service to the cathedral.
The last two days of work had paid off and Maeve finally had her answer. The Church of Nihil was a twisted cult, too dangerous to Kessa. Maeve looked up through gaps in the cathedral ceiling. The sky had darkened and the air was rapidly cooling to an icy cold that made Maeve think of Logan.
Once full night fell, Maeve would slip out of the church and return to the Blue Phoenix and report the news to Tiberius. They would have to begin the search again.
Xartasia had condescended to walk beside Gavriel instead of flying back to the Gharib cathedral. She wore her white cloak and veil once again, covering her black hair. Xartasia walked gracefully next to him, floating like cotton down on a breeze. One of her small, perfectly smooth hands rested delicately on Gavriel’s arm. He moved slowly and couldn’t support much of the fairy’s diminutive weight. The years had robbed him of so much strength…
Gavriel had covered himself, too, layered in the black robes of his order with the hood pulled up. His withered old body couldn’t withstand the cold of the desert night. Xartasia leaned close, deceptively intimate for the benefit of the few who still roamed the streets at such a late hour.
“You must learn greater patience,” she told him.
“I’m an old man, princess. I don’t have time to be patient anymore,” Gavriel said with disgust in his rich voice. “I’m not really interested in keeping my enemies alive. I want them dead. I want everyone dead.”
“Death holds a place of high honor and divine purpose for both of us, but there are moments in which life can better serve our needs. You should not have killed those men so quickly. We might have been able to make use of them.”
“I don’t need anything from anyone, Xartasia.”
“Do not be a fool, Gavriel. You have for many years needed me. I was your teacher not so long ago…”
“And I paid my respects for a full year, just as your traditions demanded. You gave me no charity. What I had, I earned,” Gavriel said. “I’ve taught your magic to students of my own since then. But you have an undischarged debt to me, princess.”
Xartasia dismissed his objection with an airy flip of her feathered wings.
“You have taught one, old friend, and that boy was no student. He was an accident,” Xartasia said. Her intense violet eyes caught Gavriel’s sunken gaze. They burned with an almost palpable flame. “That boy learned from you only because he was a part of your charms. He felt every spell you had to direct through him and discerned how to wield your spells for himself. We should not have used a living vessel for your magic. You lost everything when the boy ran away.”
“The boy?” Gavriel asked. “He had a name. Duaal Sinnay.”
Gavriel peered at Xartasia suspiciously. He couldn’t read her expression behind the white veil, and her twilight eyes were always mysterious. Of course, even if she were standing naked before him, Gavriel wasn’t at all certain he could discern the fairy’s mind. For a princess of her people, Xartasia seemed to have many enemies and hid herself from them well.
“If it was such a bad idea to use a living tool like Duaal, then why are you lecturing me about killing that streetwalking trash?” Gavriel asked.
“Only for killing them too soon,” Xartasia said. She might have smiled behind her veil. “There are ways to retrieve the power lost when the child left. But taking it will require effort.”
“What kind of effort, exactly?” Gavriel asked. “I’m not getting any younger while you wait to make your point.”
“Taking your power from one place — even such a wellspring of energies as Duaal — is inherently weaker,” Xartasia answered. “You must hold your power within yourself, so it cannot be taken from you once again. I will teach you to take what you need.”
They were nearing the Gharib cathedral. The quiet marketplace was behind them and even the scant shops and homes at the edge of the city were becoming fewer and far between. Against the darkness of the night sky, the deeper blackness of the cathedral reached up toward the stars like a skeletal hand.
Xartasia seemed about to say more, but then she stopped and watched the sky with wide violet eyes. Gavriel followed her gaze just in time to see a white-winged shape soaring overhead, away from the Church of Nihil. He squinted. It had to be an Arcadian — there was no bird on Stray with a wingspan like that.
Why was Xartasia staring? There were fairies all over this dustball planet. The princess watched the departing shadow long after the night had swallowed even the faintest trace of white feathers.
“Eru nai’i Shae…” she murmured. When Xartasia turned back to Gavriel, she was smiling. He could see it there in her sparkling eyes. “Patience. Remember the worth of a stone.”
“Yes. A boulder will sit on a mountainside for centuries without complaint until the landslide comes, carrying it away down the mountain to crush what lies below,” Gavriel said, nodding. Decades ago, he had told the Arcadian princess that story himself, a parable from the treacherous mines of his dismal gray homeworld. “Damn it, alright. Show me what to do and I will have the patience to do it.”
They walked in silence again as Xartasia gathered her thoughts. When they finally arrived at the cathedral, Bren roused himself from his sleeping pad beside the door. He bowed deeply.
“Are you thirsty, Holy One?” Bren asked.
Gavriel nodded, but Xartasia was carefully removing her white veil and paying no attention to the glassy-eyed Nihilist doctor. She watched the slumbering shapes scattered across the cathedral, but none of them approached. Most slept fitfully in the cold, ragged blankets pulled up around them as they shivered. A few of the Nihilists remained awake, but there were no lamps lit and no one of them seemed to have noticed Gavriel’s return.
Bren called out for Elsa to bring them something to drink. The Mirran woman delivered three glasses of water, and Bren handed them to Gavriel and Xartasia, then took the last for himself. Elsa bowed and retreated into the darkness.
“What brings you back to us so soon, my lord?” Bren asked Gavriel.
“Have any other Arcadians come to the cathedral since we have been gone?” Xartasia interrupted.
Bren jumped, startled at the sudden attention from the striking fairy woman. He thought for a moment before answering. “Ah… Yes, Lady Xartasia. Twelve of them in the past two days.”
“Did any of them have black hair?”
Bren blinked and then shook his head. “No, my lady. All blonde. Except for you, of course.”
“Are you certain of that?” she asked.
“Yes, Lady Xartasia,” Bren answered.
Gavriel knew from long experience with Xartasia that there was deadly importance in that question, but he didn’t know what it was. He scowled.
Elsa waited in the darkness of the cathedral with her head cocked, listening. Lady Xartasia was a new arrival to the Church of Nihil, but already second only to Lord Gavriel in authority. Still, Elsa didn’t quite trust the pretty Arcadian. Most of the fairies Elsa had met were sad. It made her sad, too, but nothing she did or said ever seemed to help. Lady Xartasia wasn’t sad, though.
She was angry.
Even Lord Gavriel was different since Xartasia arrived. Elsa had always been scared of him, but at least he ignored her. Gavriel freed Elsa from her husband, but that did little to make her less frightened of the intense old man. She loved him — all of the Nihilists did — but figured it was better if she admired him from far, far away.
When Xartasia looked at Elsa, there was something frightening in her purple eyes. It was a sort of easy, casual dismissal, as though Elsa were some small, disgusting thing on a floor she was scrubbing. Something that, while annoying and inconvenient, was easily overlooked because it would soon be gone. Not that Lady Xartasia would ever clean a floor… Just thinking of it made Elsa giggle to herself. She put her hands over her mouth to keep quiet.
She wasn’t doing anything wrong, not really. No one had ever expressly forbidden Elsa to listen to church business, but it was probably better if Lord Gavriel and Lady Xartasia didn’t know.
Xartasia must have been asking about the new girl, Shae, who had come in yesterday morning. Shae’s hair wasn’t as golden as the other fairies. Some of the parts closest to her head were still black, as though Shae had been in a hurry coloring her hair yellow. Why did it matter if Shae had black hair?
Elsa didn’t know why Xartasia was looking for Shae, but it was a bad idea to make the great lady wait. It would be best if Shae went to her now instead of waiting until morning. Elsa tiptoed through the cold, restless darkness to where the new fairy had lain down for the night, but when Elsa reached Shae’s flat slab of gray siltstone, it was empty.
The Mirran searched around the church, wondering if Shae had moved. There was no sign of her anywhere, though. Elsa contemplated telling Lady Xartasia that Shae had left, but that didn’t seem like a good idea.
Instead, Elsa slipped silently away to go get some sleep. Shae seemed smart. She would know what to do when Xartasia finally found her.
