The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (32 page)

A score of men charged from his right,
another from his left, both were shouting, both ignored him as they
crashed together. A man's arm fell next to Otom, severed at the
shoulder, the white bone sharp and protruding. Blood spattered
Otom's face, warm and sticky. He might have vomited (he wasn't
sure). He ran, barely feeling his legs.

The battle was mostly behind him now, but
the ground here still burned, the grass and gigantic leaves of the
Dryad Tree catching like dry tinder. Otom tripped and fell, the
ground rushing up to meet him, and as he untangled his leg he
turned to see what he had fallen over.

It was Ris.

Ris lay face-down on the ground, his long,
black hair tangled and caked with blood. The madman tried to push
himself to standing but Otom – his desire to flee completely gone –
grabbed the only weapon that was available to him. He drew the
branch of the Dryad Tree out of his shirt and gripped it in
powerful fists. The end he had cut was slanted and sharp, and the
wood felt strong enough.

Purely out of instinct, and without a second
thought about anything – not Allura, not his parents, not himself,
not Silence, not fleeing this terrible place – Otom drove the sharp
point of the branch through Ris's back with a mighty two-handed
strike. Ris sank back down to the ground, blood oozing from the
wound.

Otom stared down until the blood had made a
large pool and Ris had stopped moving, then he turned his victim
over, his intention to laugh fully in his face.

But it wasn't Ris. It was a woman.

I'm . . . a
murderer!

Otom was deafened by a thunderclap that
seemed to come from everywhere. Something crashed into his mind
with a powerful force. He staggered back as if struck by a
blow.

His mouth hung open as he
stared now, his thoughts tangled and painful.
I killed someone. I'm a killer. I'm a murderer.
Her hair had looked the same as Ris's. Otom could
have sworn . . . And all the feelings he had never known he had
kept inside since his parents' murders came bursting
forth.

He gripped the sides of his head, digging
his fingers in. He convulsed, sobbing uncontrollably. He backed up
from the scene. Everything looked blurry to him now because of the
tears in his eyes.

He wandered confused for days, not knowing
where he was going or how he even stayed alive, complex guilt and
loss mixing together. The battle, his quest, Allura; everything was
a strange memory. The thoughts seemed urgent, but Otom could not
force himself to act on them. His body and mind were not his own.
He grieved for the woman he had murdered, he grieved for his
family, and he grieved for himself.

When Otom awoke from his stupor, a month had
passed and he knew Allura was as good as dead.

He gathered what little he could of himself
and limped north, vowing not to stop until he reached the farthest
point. Vowing to pay to God what he never could to Allura.

All the while a new phrase
echoed in his mind:
You knew you couldn't
save her.

O
tom had spent the next thirteen years in the Kilgane
Monastery, only emerging when the mark on his arm had bid him to.
Otom had lived one life, then he had lived another. Now he was on
the third iteration of himself, the man who constantly reinvented
himself to escape his past.

It wasn't until the Monastery that Otom had
deduced, through study, what had truly happened to him on that day.
The thunderclap he had felt had been the death of the Dryad Tree;
it had been the magical blow that had finally ended the armies.
None of them really knew what hit them, but Otom did. The battle
wasn't even mentioned as major in any of the texts that made their
way north. It was forgotten, written off. Few, if any, had ever
known what they had destroyed that day.

And Otom had realized then just how buried
the magics of the world were. After he had taken his first Vow he
had developed his own powers, but there had only been one Monk to
teach him, and even then not very much. He had started to wonder if
he belonged at the Monastery.

Otom could have gone back to Pakken after
his mind had cleared, but it would have been to Allura's
unforgiving corpse, and the sad, empty eyes of Silence. Otom had
chosen his path. For better or worse he had chosen his path.

And now he'd been Chosen. The faith in God
and magic had led him here to be sitting in the top of a tree such
as he was. An odd path indeed.

The snare Otom had set on the ground drew
tight and he heard a muffled cry of surprise.

Well,
he thought.
Time to see who my new
companion is
.

He shimmied down the tree, his descent
tougher by far than the climb had been.

D
omma was free and determined. Ormon Stipson's murder was
behind her, the mystery of it no longer holding her in its thrall.
The theories she had come up with, and what Potter had said to her,
had twisted her mind until she had simply given up. Maybe he had
been right. Some things were better left untouched.

And some things are better
when they
are
touched.

Today she strode determinedly down the
street, on her way to the hospital and her meeting with Potter. The
note he had written her informed her of a hospital storeroom that
wasn't used anymore, and of the stairs in the back of that
storeroom that led even lower.

A secret love nest in a
district hospital?

But she had heard of stranger things.

She'd tried to have a conversation with God
about this last night, but it had gone very much as usual. She
poured her heart out and the response she got was nonsensical and
frightening. She was tired of baring her soul down that avenue.

Domma walked in the front door of Potter's
hospital. She made her way to the storage room. It was filled with
strong smelling herbs, leather restraints, and shackles. If one
looked at it in the right frame of mind it almost seemed like a
small little dungeon.

She began moving things away from the back
wall in an effort to uncover whatever panel was indicated in
Potter's note. She was actually becoming quite excited. It was like
a treasure hunt for love! This was all part of Potter's sweet
little romantic game.

Her hand brushed over a section of the
wooden wall that felt as if it had a small gap behind it. She put
her fingers in the gap and pulled with considerable force. The wall
grated open slowly, revealing an incredibly dark space behind
it.

The floor had a slight downward slope to it
as she ventured inside, looking for the torch that Potter had said
he would leave there.

“Hello?” she said, her voice echoing
oddly.

She pulled her hood back, her heart pounding
wildly.

She felt a sudden, blinding pain in the side
of her head and then she was stumbling sideways, hitting the other
side of her head against the wall. She screamed, dropped to the
ground, and passed out.

D
omma opened her eyes and saw nothing. Only darkness greeted
her. Her head ached terribly. The air around her was cold and dry.
She tried to move her arms but couldn't. They were chained above
her, and her ankles were chained too.

“Potter?” she said into the darkness.

“Who is that?” answered a female voice,
startlingly close.

“Forstina?” Domma asked. The woman was
another Sunburst cleric.

“Domma?” another voice asked.

“Metta?! What's going on?”

“I don't know,” Metta sobbed. “Oh, God,
Domma, we've been played.”

“Played by who? What's happened to us?” Her
thoughts weren't quite forming right, her ears still rang from her
concussion.

She knew that somehow things had gone very,
very wrong for her.

“My Tristo did this to me,” Metta
wailed.

Somewhere else in the dark room another
woman coughed and started to mumble.

How many of us are down
here
? Domma thought in a panic.

“All who are down here respond to me,” she
commanded.

“Aye, Sunburst,” said Metta.

“Aye, Sunburst,” said Forstina.

“Aye,” said another voice that Domma
recognized as another Devotee named Disanai. “I saw them take
Ursula, too.”

“Five of us?” Domma said.
Her heart sank.
That's the entirety of us.
Every single mage of the Sunburst Temple.

“What do they want from us?” Metta
asked.

“I don't know,” Domma said, “but Potter will
put a stop to-”

“Wake up, Domma!” Metta yelled. “Potter's
gotta be in on this whole thing!”

Domma was silent, feeling her wrists and
ankles pulse with blood. Her faith came to her in a flood. She had
sinned, and now she was paying for it. “No,” she said, squeezing
her eyes shut as tears leaked from them. “I'm sorry, Lord. If you
free us, we will never stray again.” She tried expending some
energy to Communicate, but God was silent, probably watching and
judging.

“Til'men,” Forstina said.

As for
me
, Domma prayed silently,
I am old enough to be wiser than this. If you
save me, I will do your bidding for an eternity, your most loyal
servant from now until I die
.

The room began to lighten then, the source
of it coming from above Domma's head. She looked up into the
blinding light and noticed it was coming from her own arm. Her
sleeve had fallen away and there on her skin was a glowing blue and
yellow symbol of the sun in the sky. She could only look
quizzically, her mind unable to puzzle out what was happening.

She looked around the room with the help of
the new illumination. Metta, Forstina, Disanai, and indeed Ursula –
the fifth Devotee – were chained to the wall in a semi-circle.

“Oh, Domma,” breathed Metta. “What is that?”
Her face was etched in the shadows of the strange new light.

“Fantastic,” Potter said as he entered the
room. He laughed. “Oh, I couldn't have hoped for anything better!
Domma, that mark is your salvation. However, I'm afraid for the
rest of you it spells death.”

P
otter came into view with four other men.

“Tristo!” Metta begged. “Tristo,
please!”

A tall man came towards Metta. He brandished
a knife. “It would be best to be quiet, Metta.” He didn't say it
violently, but with maddening serenity.

“But I don't understand what's going on,”
the girl wept.

“Metta, pull yourself together,” Forstina
said. “Let us go,” she said to the men.

One of the other men walked up to Forstina
and cuffed her hard. Her head snapped back and she was silent.

Tristo then walked very close to Metta. The
girl was struggling at her bonds, her face a pitiful wreck of
emotion. Tristo grabbed the front of her robe and began to drag his
knife down it, cutting through the cloth without a care in the
world.

“Don't, please,” Metta sobbed. Her robe lay
around her ankles and Tristo began to play at her chest wrappings
with the tip of his knife.

Domma began to feel around at her shackles,
bending her wrist down to try and find some latch she could pull.
There was nothing on either side. She glanced back at the
situation. Forstina and Ursula were passed out, heads hanging down,
long hair draped over their bodies. Disanai had said not a word,
fear overtaking her. She was conscious, but not lucid. Metta's eyes
leaked tears. She stood petrified as Tristo tickled at her with the
knife.

“Potter, please,” Domma begged. “Whatever
you desire from us, don't let this be part of it. This can't be
what you captured us for.”

“She's right, Tristo,” Potter said, holding
up his hand. “You're wasting our time here. And, quite honestly,
you're sickening me.”

“Please don't touch me anymore,” Metta
whispered. She dry heaved once. “Oh, God.”

Tristo sighed, stepping back from his
victim. “You all could have had her,” he said to the other men.
“After me, I mean.”

“That's disgusting,” Potter said. “Domma
would like us to get on with it. She is the one who is marked, so I
guess we'd better listen to her for now.”

Domma didn't like the tone in Potter's
voice. Buying time now seemed like an incredibly appealing idea, no
matter what the price.

Potter pulled something out of his pocket,
holding it carefully in his hand. It was very hard to see the
object in the dim room. The shadows from Domma's glowing forearm
mixed with those of the single torch the men had brought. It made
the thing that Potter held look alive.

The thing in Potter's
hand
is
alive.

FOGLIN, Ormon Stipson's mind had said.
Foglin, Domma's mind told her.

She recoiled as Potter stepped towards Metta
with the squirming insectoid. “Sometimes the little ones need help
getting inside,” he said.

Metta's face had gone terribly white. Her
eyes were wide open and focused directly on the tiny Foglin in
Potter's hand. She was shuddering.

Potter!” Domma shouted. But it didn't stop
his slow advance on Metta. “Potter! Leave her be! Can't you see
she's just a girl?”

Metta was trying valiantly to close her
legs, but her metal bonds wouldn't let her.

“Oh, they don't like to go in that way,”
Tristo said. “Don't worry, Metta. I'm something of a sawbones in my
free time. For what will always be ours, my love.” Then he grabbed
Metta's neck, jammed his knife into her eye socket, and began
twisting as Domma gagged and had to turn away.