The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (47 page)

Loch sighed and looked up to the base of the neck, where Dairy rode alone. “How are you doing up there, Dairy?”

Dairy turned back to look at her. In the light of the Dragon’s glowing wings, his face was flushed and smiling. “I can feel the muscles in his back bunch up and then release between my legs every time he flaps his wings, ma’am!”

“That was a little more than I needed, kid, but good for you.” Loch tossed him a salute, then slapped the Dragon on the side. “You will be kind.”

I will be an absolute gentleman
. The voice rang just as loudly, but felt confined to Loch’s head this time.

“There!” Veiled Lightning called, pointing. “The temple!”

Squinting down past gray peaks speckled white with glittering snow, Loch saw the golden glowing butterfly shape of the temple nestled at the top of a mountain pass. Not far from it, a speck of glowing violet light hung in the air. “And that would be Heaven’s Spire.”

“Where to first?” Tern called. “I assume we want to stop the voyants from activating the crystals and blasting the temple.”

Silhouetted against the night sky, Loch could make out the glowing crystals on the underside of the city. They weren’t supposed to glow at night. “Tern, Hessler, can you tell me anything about the
lapiscaela
?”

“They’re not supposed to glow at night!” Tern called back.

“This was your team of master criminals?” Veiled Lightning shouted again.

“Cut her some slack, Princess. She’s your biggest fan.”

“Something is charging them,” Hessler called over, “likely in preparation to fire. That can’t be safe for anyone in the city, though.”

“Well, then, I’m assuming Desidora is already there trying to stop it. I need you and Tern at the temple in case there’s a way to shut it down on your end. Princess?”

Veiled Lightning glared. “I would rather not let you out of my sight at the moment, thank you.”

“Good to see you learning.” Loch patted the Dragon’s flank. “You get all that?”

I did. I will bring you and whoever wishes to accompany you as far as I can into the city of the ancients, then carry the rest to the temple.

“Appreciate it. As far as you can?”

The city’s wards do not react well to beings of my size. Do you really believe you can stop this, Lochenville?

Loch opened her mouth to answer, then winced as something on the underside of Heaven’s Spire exploded and fell down toward the ground below, a silhouette that could have been a person, lost almost immediately in the night.

“I believe,” she said, “that you could maybe flap a bit faster.”

Desidora felt the shock of impact, the rush of wind and darkness . . .

. . . And then a soft springy bounce as she sank deep into red satin sheets.

She blinked.

The room was intimate, with room only for a great bed and a few small tables where scented candles rested in pink and orange crystal bowls, casting intimate light across the chamber. A bottle of sparkling white wine sat in a bucket of ice on another table, and a silver platter held a fluted glass, already full, next to a bowl of strawberries and a dish of brown sugar.

“So,” said the woman at the foot of the bed, lifting a glass of her own, “how do
you
think the job is going so far?”

Desidora pushed herself up to a seated position, her hands sliding on the satin. “Goddess.”

“Sister.” The woman at the foot of the bed smiled. It was a friendly smile, playful and flirtatious without implying anything serious—which was good, because the woman at the foot of the bed looked exactly like Desidora herself, from the auburn hair and sun-kissed skin to the ever-so-slightly crooked nose and the arch of her eyebrows.

“Is this . . . am I dead?”

“Not yet.” Tasheveth, goddess of love, looked up at the ceiling, where candlelit shadows danced. “The magic of the hammer shielded you as you got blasted through the foundation of the city, and you are now falling from Heaven’s Spire to your death below.”

“And . . . you’re speaking to me in my mind?” Desidora guessed. “I’m going to snap out of it when this is over and find that just a moment has passed?”

The goddess laughed. It was Desidora’s laugh, only a bit less inhibited, and Desidora didn’t think of herself as that inhibited in the first place. “I’m afraid mortal minds can only think so quickly. Time is passing at about normal speed. Don’t worry, though. You were a ways up there.” She gestured at the glass on the platter. “Drink?”

Desidora’s fingers hurt. She looked down and realized that she was clenching the satin sheets hard enough to bleach her fingernails white. “So I’m going to die.”

“I’d say that’s up to you, Sister.” Tasheveth hopped up onto the bed and settled back next to Desidora, sighing as she eased back into the pillows.

Desidora could feel the warmth of her goddess lying next to her. She rolled over to look into eyes that matched her own, only half-lidded with relaxed amusement. “Are you going to give me the power of Byn-kodar again?”

Tasheveth looked over, still smiling. A little curl of auburn hair dangled over her face. “No. Have you tried the strawberries?”

Desidora shut her eyes against the angry heat that made them sting. “Why not?”

“Why not, indeed? Do you know how hard it is to make someone imagine the taste of fresh strawberries?” Tasheveth inhaled deeply. “Everyone thinks they’re sweet, but you need to get the right amount of tartness, or else they’re just wet candy, and the texture is all wrong for candy.”

Desidora pushed herself from the bed and stalked away, arms wrapped tight around herself. “Do I have to beg, Goddess? Do I have to plead for you to bestow the curse upon me again?”

Something bounced off the back of her head. Desidora flinched, turned, and saw a strawberry land on the other side of the bed.

“When you received the powers of
Byn-kodar’isti kuru’ur
,” Tasheveth said, rising from the bed, “you prayed for me, begging for the gods to choose someone else, and I told you that it had to be you, that no one else could take that power.” She flicked strawberry juice from her fingers and sipped her wine. “I may have been less than entirely forthcoming about that.”

Desidora blinked. “You
lied
to your own priestess?”

Tasheveth blinked right back at her. “Hello, I’m Tasheveth, goddess of
love
, and you are?” As Desidora turned away angrily, Tasheveth kept going. “Of
course
I lied! How many times have you lied to bolster a young woman’s confidence or shaded the truth to put a couple on the path back to reconciliation?” Her voice softened. “The world is a big place, and it’s got a lot of sharp edges for people to hurt themselves. It
needs
someone who will cheat a little bit to give the little people a chance. It needs trickery and sneakiness, and not for profit or to prove how smart you are, like Gedesar, but because you want people to end up
happy
. That’s what I am. That’s what you are.” Her hand—the same slender fingers as Desidora’s own—came down gently on Desidora’s shoulder. “That’s why you were chosen.”

“Because I can lie?” Desidora shook her head.

“Imagine us giving that power to a warrior-priest of
Io-fergajar,
or a stern champion of Ael-meseth.” Tasheveth pulled gently, turning Desidora back, and her voice went hard. “Imagine the trail of bodies they would have left as they finally got the chance they had always wanted to bathe themselves in the blood of their enemies, all sanctified by the gods themselves. Imagine them tearing the souls from innocent bystanders, grim but determined, always telling themselves it was for the
greater good
, that they were the ones chosen to make the hard decisions no one else could stomach.” She nodded as Desidora flinched. “You don’t have to imagine. You’ve read the histories. Now . . . tell me that you think we should’ve given that power to one of them.”

Desidora shut her eyes again, blinking back the tears. “I don’t.”

“Tell me that you think it’d be better off with them than with a trickster priestess who would use it reluctantly and put it away as soon as she could.”

“I don’t.”

“Tell me,” Tasheveth said quietly, “that you see a way to save lives and restore peace, but that you don’t want it.”

Desidora opened her eyes and stared into her own face.

“I do,” she said. “I’m sorry, Goddess. I didn’t
want
to want it, but—”

“That’s why we chose you, my love.” Tasheveth reached out, took Desidora by the shoulders, and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Because you’d lock it away inside yourself far more tightly than we ever could have . . .”

“. . . until I needed it again.” Desidora smiled, and now it was Tasheveth whose eyes shone with tears. “I’ll miss you.”

Her goddess wiped her nose and forced a smile. “Damn it, Diz, I worked really hard on the strawberries.”

The night wind tore at her pale-green skirts and her auburn hair. The mountains rushed past her in a blur.

Desidora let the power come.

She landed in a crouch at the stairs leading up to the Temple of Butterflies, shattered stone blasting out like smoke around her. Her raven-black skirts and hair billowed out around her in a phantom wind, and her alabaster skin glowed like the moon.

She rose, and looked upon the horde of zombies that roared and gurgled and lurched toward her.

“Bitch,
please
,” said Desidora, priestess of Byn-kodar, and with a wave of her hand, tore away the magic that locked unwilling spirits into decaying flesh.

She walked through the dead up the stairs to the Temple of Butterflies, and no force of man or god stood in her way.

Twenty-Three

W
ARDS FLARED, MAGIC
crackled along the Dragon’s scales, and Loch rolled as she landed on the lawn outside the Archvoyant’s palace.

When she came to her feet, Veiled Lightning was beside her, brushing off her dress, while Ululenia, Tern, Hessler, and Dairy rode off into the night.

“Right,” Loch said. “Let’s see if we can find the control room.”

“Find?” Veiled Lightning asked.

“Yeah, the room I’m guessing we want is the main
control . . . place. When we hit Silestin, I was in a completely different part of the palace.”

A muscle by Veiled Lightning’s jaw twitched. “So how do you expect to
find
this room before your city destroys my temple, then?”

“Fortunately, my people often leave me these subtle little clues,” Loch said, gesturing at the smashed-open door leading inside. “Shall we?”

A few minutes later, Loch burst through the doorway and into the control chamber.

Voyant Cevirt lay unconscious on the crazily glowing floor near the chasm, while Archvoyant Bertram sat rigid in the center of a ring of control crystals. Piles of debris littered the ground, marking what looked like dead golems.

Pyvic, wielding Ghylspwr, fell to the floor, grunting, as Loch came in. A badly mangled corpse wearing Gentle Thunder’s armor stood over him, a shining magical ax in its hands.

“Sorry I’m late,” Loch said, and the corpse turned to her.

“Thunder.” Veiled Lightning’s voice was choked, and she stepped past Loch toward the corpse and the ax.

“Veil.” It sounded like Gentle Thunder’s voice, but
Loch wasn’t sure the corpse’s ruined face even had a mouth anymore. “Veil, I’m sorry. The Republic soldiers did this to me. Arikayurichi is keeping me alive as long as he can.” The ax slammed down, and Pyvic, still on his knees, caught the blow inches from his face with Ghylspwr’s haft.

“He’s lying,” Loch said, even as Veiled Lightning kept going forward. “Listen to me! We’re on the same side!” She moved in as Veiled Lightning stood over Pyvic, who knelt defenseless, Ghylspwr locked against Arikayurichi. “When did he last lift his visor?” Veiled Lightning raised a fist that crackled with blue energy. “When did he—”

The blow slammed into Gentle Thunder, sending blue sparks shooting across his armor and knocking him back.

“Shut up, Isafesira.” Veiled Lightning did not look at Loch as she helped Pyvic to his feet. “I may be a fool, but even I can learn.”

“The ax wants Heaven’s Spire to destroy the Temple of Butterflies,” Pyvic said, bringing Ghylspwr back up to a guard. “The firing mechanism is tied to the control console over there. It’s trying to destroy the Republic and the Empire.”

“Trying?” The corpse, now even more mangled, rose back to its feet, the ax moving in a deadly spin. “The groundside amplifier is ready, and the matrix is calibrated for a forced burn. This city is a few minutes away from optimal firing position. I believe I have surpassed
trying
.”

“Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is!”
Ghylspwr yelled, and Pyvic lunged forward, hammer flashing. The ax blocked, swung, and lunged in to slam Pyvic back.

He was still on his feet, which was all that mattered, and Loch started circling toward Archvoyant Bertram at the console. “Princess!” Loch called, and tossed the Nine-Ringed Dragon to her. “Buy me a minute.”

Veiled Lightning slashed high, spun her blade in an intricate pattern, and then slashed down, tearing into the corpse’s leg.

As the corpse staggered, its guard down, Pyvic swung, and his blow caved in the corpse’s skull.

He didn’t bring Ghylspwr back fast enough to block the counterstrike.

He shouldn’t have had to. Very few fighting styles trained a warrior in how to defend himself from a man whose skull he’d just caved in. The haft of the magical ax slammed into Pyvic’s temple, and he went down hard, rolled, and went limp.

Veiled Lightning screamed and lunged. Her blade cut through armor, and her free hand hissed with lightning that shot blue sparks across the corpse’s armor.

“I cared for you as much as he did,” Arikayurichi said, and let Veiled Lightning’s blade catch in his torso. The ax snapped out, catching the princess with the haft and
slamming
her against the wall hard. “I take no pleasure from your death, Veil.”

Veiled Lightning grunted and staggered back to her feet, pain etched across her face. “Do not call me by that name.”

“I’m sorry,” the ax said again as he moved in, shouldering Veiled Lightning into the wall. This time, she hit the ground limp. “You’re good servants, all of you. Centuries of waiting and watching have made it easy for me to be bitter, but this isn’t your fault. You and the elves and the dwarves, you were made to serve, and when most of my people left, you had to fend for yourselves. But once we return to set things right . . .”

A scream of absolute agony cut the ax off, and the corpse turned to the control console.

Archvoyant Bertram sank to the floor, fingers bleeding, curled up and shaking uncontrollably, with bits of crystal still jutting from his skin.

Loch picked up Ghylspwr, tested his weight, and turned to the ax. “Sorry, I was too busy messing up your plan to really pay attention. You mind repeating that?”

They both charged each other.

The monks poured from the gates of the Temple of Butterflies. Golden robes shining in the warding lights on the walls, they came down the stairs, a line of corded muscle and disciplined power.

Desidora lifted one hand and clenched her fist, and the monks stumbled, hands clutching weakly at their chests.

“I could draw the life from every last one of you,” she said, voice colder than the river that flowed below. “It would be within my power, within my
rights
.”

Her pale fingers curled into claws, and the monks fell to their knees, their energy of their very souls wrung free from their bodies, coalescing in a swirling sphere of light between Desidora’s fingers.

She let them writhe as she ascended the stairs, her jet-black skirt trailing behind her and her silver-trimmed heels clicking on each step. She reached the top of the steps, the energy still clutched in her grasp. Her fingernails were black with tiny silver skulls painted on them.

She looked back down the stairs at the dying monks and the river rushing below.

“But I would regret that later,” she said in a voice that, while still cold, was controlled.

She flung the ball of swirling light at the temple gate, and it exploded inward as soldiers shouted and drew blades. She spared a glance back down the steps, saw that the monks were weak but alive, and nodded to herself.

She walked into the temple courtyard.

Soldiers charged her, and she tugged on the fabric of their souls until they fell, helpless. She heard shouting behind her, turned, and saw men on the wall trying to aim a flamecannon down at her.

She gestured, twisted its own energy back upon it, and it exploded with a wave of raw magical power that left the guards unconscious on the ground.

In the sky overhead, Heaven’s Spire shone like a great violet moon.

Desidora opened herself to the magical aura of the area. Even those blind to magic would feel it humming across their skin, and to one who had once served Tasheveth, it was like hearing every instrument performing in a perfect symphony. Heaven’s Spire crackled, ready to spit down fire again, and the Temple of Butterflies would catch that energy, magnify it a hundredfold, and blot the life out of the land for hundreds of miles.

It was simple, it was elegant, and it was very nearly ready.

Desidora followed the path of the energy to the inner sanctum up above the courtyard and walked up the stairs, ignoring the men gasping and retching behind her. The life-energy she had taken from them danced through her fingers. But they would survive.

“Shenziencis!” she called out as she reached the top of the stairs. “Queen of the Cold River! You would destroy two countries in your selfish pride! In the name of the gods, I charge you now,
surrender or die!”

The door to the inner sanctum swung open, and Shenziencis
was there, her coils bearing her up to a tall man’s height. Her scales were glossy, forest green that shone like emeralds in the courtyard light.

“I have already surrendered to a force more powerful than you,” she called back, sneering. “
You are held in cruel bondage.”

Desidora felt the magic coalesce around her, twisted it away, and drew it into the sphere light that danced between her fingers, the prize of life she had claimed from the fools below. “So be it.” She shaped the energy in her grasp to a bolt and flung it at Shenziencis with deadly accuracy.

An old man in golden robes and a crimson skullcap stepped into the path of the bolt. It ripped into him, leaving a scorched and jagged hole as he dropped to the ground.

Shenziencis did not even look down at the man who had died for her. “Kill.”

An armored Imperial woman leaped through the doorway, swinging a halberd as long as Desidora was tall.

Desidora dove back, ducked, saw the shackles of magical power binding the woman, and shattered them with a thought. The woman collapsed, gasping, and Desidora turned to the Shenziencis, smiling coldly.

A crossbow bolt hissed through the doorway and slammed into Desidora’s chest, and a cloud of choking gas wreathed her body as it hit. The shock sent her staggering back, coughing and blind, and the bolt clattered on the ground as she kept breathing the gas all around her. Then her foot came down on empty space instead of solid ground for the second time tonight, and she was falling, trying to pull the magic around her to cushion the fall as she had done before. But something was wrong. She couldn’t catch her breath. The magic wouldn’t come.

She hit the sand hard, and could only watch as dazedly—silhouetted against the violet energy of Heaven’s Spire—a man with a crossbow came for her.

“Powdered
yvkefer-
pouch on the head of the bolt,” he called as he came down the steps. “I imagine you’re having a hard time summoning that death magic right about now.” Halfway down the steps, he jumped down into the sand, landing in a clean roll. “Captain Nystin, Knights of Gedesar.”

Desidora coughed, trying to catch her breath. She couldn’t even see the shackles that bound him, couldn’t reach the magic that would let her break them. The powder in her lungs blocked her from doing any more than shakily raising one hand.

The man was still a silhouette in her vision, black against the light from Heaven’s Spire, which seemed even brighter now than it had been moments ago.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Nystin said, tossing the crossbow to the sand. “Push through it, work through the pain, and you can break her control over me.” He drew a thick-bladed dagger. “Bad news for you, death priestess. Right now, that snaky bitch isn’t doing a damned thing to control me. She could’ve ordered me to do this, and I’d have done it clumsily, like some cut-rate flunky, but she knows me well enough by now to know the things I’d be happy to do of my own free will.”

Desidora coughed again and rolled onto her side, scrabbling for purchase on the sand.

“All you monsters,” Nystin said, shifting the dagger so that he held it point down as he approached, “you fairy creatures and necromancers and death priests. You think you own this world because you’ve got power the rest of us don’t. But a little silver, a little
yvkefer
, and all your fancy tricks go away. And then what are you?”

“A
love
priestess,” gasped Desidora, and flung sand into Nystin’s face. He stumbled back, clawing at his eyes, and Desidora lunged from the sand pit to where a fallen soldier lay unconscious, his sword next to him. “And we cheat.” She grabbed it, turned, and swung it two-handed as Nystin stumbled toward her.