CHAPTER TEN
The final attempt to retrieve the bone mask has come, but will Thera’s plan work? Will the powers of the Sacred Artefacts be enough?
Probability is conceived in preparation.
It was a nice thing to tell herself – and all the better for being true. But in the end, only part of the story.
The knives were belted with quick release knots. The sacred items covered in a lamp black to stop a stray reflection, buckled in to her bandoleer, right boot and her hair’s braid.
She didn’t worry about the items. She knew they would serve the function they were fashioned for.
The flaw in every item was the person wielding it.
Still. Her preparations were nearing done.
But that didn’t stop her mind from trying to picture all the ways the next few hours could go wrong. Thera didn’t blame her mind, it was doing it’s best to protect her. But once all the preparations were made, ruminating only brought one closer to ruin. It was time for action.
Thera stilled her mind with glacial breaths.
“All must pass.” Thera spoke the ancient words to herself.
Knowing your going to die gives some of the spice to life. Would anyone care as much, quite as much, if they knew that wait long enough and the chance would come back around again?
Knowing your going to die is part of the human conditions. It is the prefix to all forms of deep entertainment. Nothing like the knowledge of your own mortality to encourage the craft of some engaging tales so that you can, if just for a moment, escape the weight of one’s own impending conclusion.
Knowing you are going to die is perfectly natural.
Preparing to die, however, was not.
As Thera thought on these ideas and others like them she turned a coin in her hand, sat on her bed in the makeshift room that she had made her home these last weeks. Or had it been months? Thera had lost track of time here.
The hard piece of metal would have to keep in contact with her bare skin for it to work.
She had been doing more than turning over the coin. She was turning over the best way to ensure the coin stayed secure through every moment of the next battle.
There was one obvious answer to this… she’d just been hoping for a far less obvious answer.
After all, skin is double sided.
—
Some time later after nearly passing out from the pain, Thera rose back to her feet and replaced her knife into its sheath. She felt surprisingly sturdy, running a hand over the slightly raised skin of her sternum, smooth and unmarked. The Plume of Life bottle that she’d recovered a few weeks back was still mostly full - it had only taken a light spray to heal the incision in her skin. The feeling of metal against flesh and bone was an uncomfortable one, but Thera had a final task that could wait no longer as the brightness of the dawn spilled through shuttered windows.
The Catacombs awaited.
The bright gems on the skulls teeth gleamed in the dark. A dark made all the more pressing by the binding thread sewn through the sockets of the skulls nose, the sockets of its eyes.
Thera absently touched her fingers to the cold at her chest.
Behind the skull a double crown fashioned a regal air and the fired sun ornament that bound the bone in ornate chains had a solemn yet feminine air.
Her chest itched and as she tried not to scratch at it she wondered at the regal composition.
She brought the skull to it the statue with the crescent moon pattern repeating through the marble and summoned her next Navigator . As with all the navigators she bore no resemblance to the skull that powered her, though there was something that Thera couldn’t quite place that linked the two.
Wasting no time beyond basic introductions Thera used the Divine Brush to change her appearance she brought the new Navigator, Odette, up to speed on the situation and the plan and fielded her questions.
Running a blue star-flecked hand across the arm of a companion statue, Odette sighed.
“I wish my sisters could join me in this battle in our true forms, rather than these shadows of self. You say that you’ve been unable to sew no more than one of us to this reality at a time? ”
Thera shook her head, moving the brush across her body in long sweeping strokes.
Moving from the statues, Odette moved across to look again at Thera’s hard won spoils from the last months. “Why not wield the sacred artefacts to destroy those stopping the witch queen from reaching truth death?” As the brush touched her torso, bandoleer with its vials of poison faded and blended in to her new appearance. The tears in her clothes showed skin wrinkled and tinged blue and patched with liver spots. She had already worked on her legs, making apparent ‘rags’ of her clothes and hiding her knives.
“As long as they draw breath, they have a chance to redeem themselves. To change their path. I won’t take that chance away from them if I don’t have to.”
Odette nodded, and as Thera tucked the Divine Brush away she took Odette’s outstretched hand and portaled to the land where the witch queen ruled.
---
Calculations were interesting things when watered them with meaning. How much poison to kill a woman of X size. How long it would take a woman of X size to drift Y distance on a specific day at a specific time, if the wave’s were not blow high with wind.
The flaw in calculations is the same as the flaw in sacred items; the wielder.
Thera had began to crawl down to the water front to put her plan into action. She knew now that the witch queen would sense the living walking towards her...so Thera intended to drink the poison on the lee-ward tide to drift in amidst the barrels of slowly turning sacrifices. The sacred item in the shape of a coin that was stored against the bone of her sternum should then heal the poison and bring her back after being dead only a few minutes.
But that was before she crested the hill and witnessed what was waiting for her in the sand court of the witch queen.
Corrupted and quivering navigators at their feet, portals at their back silhouetting them, two figures stood in discourse with the witch queen.
One of them wore a crown that seemed to tear at the air above them. They wore fine spun clothes in white and gold.
The other was dressed in armour of overlapping black metal and held their helmet under their left hand, just above the long sword that hung there.
Both sword and crown pulsed with a weight that seemed to pull at the world...just like the witch queen’s mask.
And between them, slowly turning to address one then the other, was an armoured warrior who had just spoken her name.
Thera ducked out of sight again as the warrior began to turned to answer a question. Her instincts had read his attire and found him dangerous. His sword in a shoulder baldric for the killing draw. His grace even in slow movements. The coiled energy. She felt this warrior would see in his periphery what others missed in front of them.
He was dangerous.
And her name was in his mouth.
Assassin? Assassin. A leap, but not a huge one. Her work for the Sanctuary had been going on for long enough now that it was not surprise it drew attention.
She had to withdraw. Prepare. Set her defences. They could clearly portal so they could come at her from…
...from anywhere.
A vision of the next few months captured her minds eye. Blade after hired blade appearing in the middle of the day when she was alone. In the middle of the night, when she slept or recovered.
The tension building in Thera’s gut spilled over to her jaw and her lips pulled back in a rictus. She would not play the victim. She would not wait. She was not prey.
‘Problem or opportunity but that thinking made it so’. All three of the sacred items were down there. This was not a time to run.
This was a time to kill.
Well. So much for the plan.
Thera didn’t know how long the three would remain here so she had to move fast.
Thera activated the Ring of Secrets and began to whisper into the closest guards mind.
‘There is someone who looks like a run away in the dunes.’ she whispered.
Secrets were just things not many people knew. The Ring didn’t need them to be true.
The guard came and they moved through the usual rigmarole of cry and capture. She had considered this plan but dismissed it. The probability of alerting the witch queen had been to high. But now the queen was distracted with her guests…
Thera was frog-marched, stumbling, to the edge of the beach where half submerged cages of drift wood broke the will of prisoners.
She waited until she was in the cage and just until the thick wooden door was about to shut before leaping at the guard and scratching at her chin. The woman took a step back and drew her sword. Thera, left hand on the cage, tilted her head right and brought her right claw in the air, telegraphing her movement.
The guard struck the inviting target and Thera’s neck split like an over ripe peach. Salted blood kissed salted sea and she collapsed backwards into the cage to the guards rich curses for the stupidity of prisoners.
There was a sudden flash of memory as Thera’s brain began to shut down. A snow kissed slope leading to a river. A circle of hewn logs. A branch and rush roof. Naked flame in a blackened stone circle. Reliable iron hot with use. Eggs sizzling. A shadow moving closer to her in her periphery. The shadow of a smile on her face in greeting, even as she kept her focus on breakfast. A flame under the iron that grew and grew.
Until all her vision was one flame, one light, one…then nothing.
Thera stood up from her dead body and looked down.
It had stayed in the cage, the open cage of drift wood. She waited but...yes. The tide wouldn’t be working it free any time soon.
The spirit of Thera walked back to where the sacred items were gathered and as she did she began to collect the threads of death and un-death which bound the witch queen to her tormented followers.
Finally, when all of the tarnished gold lines were in her hand, she began to work on them. Whispering the words of power she had learn’t in the catacombs she slowly pulled each thread free of its mortal anchor and she twisted each threat inside out. Made of it the opposite of what it was. No longer a vessel for like, but a conduit for death. Then. As she arrived at the meeting between the three she used her last moments in the spirit realm to gently, every so gently, bind the death-sworn threads to the neck of the man who carried the sacred sword.
Then Final Payment completed its full turn and she was snapped back to her body and a lung full of scolding salt water. Throwing up the bill pulled at her stitches and she took free a knife to cut the now spent coin out of her chest. The salt water promised to wash the wound clean but she could feel the deep fever that had set in to her bones like a vagrant in a once fine house.
Thera stumbled her way up the beach. The coin had worked but her limbs were weak and her disguise had washed away with her life. She didn’t bother bringing out the Divine Brush to replace it.
“Hello!” She waved, stumbled, caught herself on one knee and rose again. Didn’t bother to brush the sand from her skin.
They had turned towards her, now. Those gathered in power and shadow. The witch queen had raised a hand to stop the advancing guard. The swordsman had his hand on the pommel. The crown of power had began to glow.
“What-” She spat the last of the salt out. “What is he demanding as payment?” Thera finally breathed out, nodding at the hooded assassin who was matching her advance in reverse. Backing away to the fire as she advanced.
“It must be a true cost, to summon all three of you here?”
The wearer of the crown moved to speak but she cut across him. He frowned. No doubt people had died for less. Thera knew she had seconds before being cut down then and there.
“You know me then? You know what reality I come from? I am not from the Web of Three.”
They exchanged looks, hunger entering the witch queens face.
“What if I gave you myself? Hmm? Wouldn’t that be better. A bet.” She grinned her salt washed grin.
“A bet?” The witch queen, in silky smooth tones.
“A bet. First I strike you. Then you strike me.” “With?”
“My knife.”
Glances were exchanged. Thera’s heartbeat thundered in her chest. Did the witch queen feel the difference? Did she feel the different vibrations in her magic, her eternal tie to life?
“What do you want?” Asked the voice from beneath the crown. A thin voice. Like money gone stale. Metal didn’t make the man.
“If I kill the witch queen,” - and here the sword bearer snorted at the term - “ you give me your crown.” And now the crown bearer sneered.
“And if you do not? Kill me that is?” Asked the witch queen.
“Then I’ll be dead and you don’t have to pay the assassin. I know. You expect a trick. A quick escape. I will allow the sword-bearer to come to my left, with his weapon unsheathed. That way if I attempt to flee the deal he can cut me down. Would that reassure you? In this, the place of your power.” Sneer on sneer. Why power bred disdain for rules she would never know but she knew it did. Just like she knew aspiring emperors were economical and tyrants could not afford to look weak in front of their ‘allies’.
“But if I win.”
“You won’t.” Thera smiled a sweet and tired smile.
“If I win, I want the Crown, Sword and Mask.”
Cloth rustled. Armour creaked. Moments stretched. Then, she laughed, low and dangerous, but of pure confidence. Confident in the stupidity in this child’s game.
“Deal. But you won’t use your knife. You’ll use his.”
Gesturing to her side, the man wearing the crown pulled out a rusty, small knife and tossed it at Thera’s feet.
Bending down to pick it up, Thera’s confidence wavered. Clamping down on the feeling, Thera gripped the handle tight as she spoke the final words.
“Deal”.
Thera felt the power of the contract swirl around her – that was something she’d learnt early on from some of the first Navigators. Contracts when in the Web of Three were different to her reality. They were not empty words to be honoured here. They were writ in the code of the land and stamped on to the soul.
With a sweeping gesture at herself, the witch queen was still smiling as Thera swiftly raised the knife, not waiting to close the distance. She did not wait for unknown sorcery to come into play. For a wheel within the wheel to spin against her.
The blade cut through the air with the same ease it cut through the witch queens eye socket, through the mask of gold and bone.
Sea-soaked wood finally collapsing – the sound that escaped from the witch queen’s throat.
Some things were absolute in life. You could not be a little bit dead. Not with true death. You were infinitely dead and that was that. The wonderful thing about infinity is that it has enough to go around, even when you split it.
Three things happened at once.
Thera cried out to the guards.
The sword-bearer understood he was about to be surrounded by armed men and tried to draw.
The Witch Queen’s death fell through the cords that bound her to the swords-bearer and overflowed into him. He faded like a flower pulled into darkness.
Thera couldn’t see the spirit realm from within her corporal body, but she could imagine the dark, hungry death that was washing through the sword-bearers body quick. So quick. Quicker even than he could draw.
She could imagine it and, in that ultimate skill of humans, imagining she could predict. Future-map. Which is why her hand was out to catch the sword from his limp fingers, even as the crown-bearer summoned his escape.
She caught, she spun and the economy of momentum she carved the long sword through the air and into the soft stomach of the crown-bearers side.
He tried to speak, then. That plunderer of sanctuary. But all that came from him were ropes of blood.
Thera donned the mask. Limped to the crown. Slipped it loose with the long sword and relished the sound of it sliding down her blade and into her waiting hand. She placed it on her nape and let the sword tip fall to the blood-black sands.
“I am your queen now.” The words, at first a whisper, soon morphed into a roar.
Feverish. Bleeding. Exhausted. Alive. Thera had donned the regalia of power and though victory did not taste sweet, under the salt of blood and sea. What of it, when she was alive to savour it?
Which is when the distant circle of guards screamed their wroth and drew their weapons as they charged her.
Stay tuned for the finale of Book 1 on the 21st September.
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