The duelist 12, p.2
The Duelist 12, page 2
Just then, the doors to the manor opened, and Jenner, Rylan, Bodin, Nemis, and Vel-Rala strolled in. They were being led by Bonnie, who Amaya must have sent down to the docks to escort the group up to the correct manor.
“Dad!” Rylan called out when he saw me, and I braced myself for the impact of his tackle-hug.
Somehow, he’d gotten even taller since I’d last seen him. He was only a shade shorter than me now, and only pubescent skinniness kept him from being as heavy. Even so, I stumbled back a half-step when he hugged me, and I laughed heartily as I hugged him back.
“Good to see you, too, buddy!” I said when we parted, and I patted Rylan on the shoulder. “Jenner’s letter said you found the Archives?”
“We did!” Rylan answered eagerly. “It was all thanks to Vel-Rala and Mr. Jenner, though. I just made notes for him.”
“You did everything that would have been expected of an apprentice Archivist,” Jenner told Rylan in a smart tone. “And you did it impeccably.”
I saw Rylan’s face flush at the praise, and he stepped aside so Jenner and I could greet one another. The koala-man’s fur tickled my nose as I hugged him, and his grin was wide with anticipation of delivering a lecture-story about their adventures and all they’d discovered.
“You’ll never guess where we found the Archives, though,” the koala-man told me as we parted.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Under the Tree of Knowledge,” Jenner said with a snort. “Ironic, don’t you think? It’s an ancient, enormous tree on Eng, meant to symbolize the accumulation of knowledge and how it strengthens us, and they used it to deprive the Peoples of knowledge.”
“That is pretty ironic,” I agreed with a laugh, but it was also kind of genius. I suspected no one in their right mind would have gone looking near a sacred tree, for fear of damaging it by digging.
“Thank Mercedes you did find the Archives, but should we retire to the family room?” Zoie suggested as she hugged Vel-Rala, whose baby bump was also becoming more obvious, so the two of them hugging was a bit of a struggle. She then addressed the cockatoo-woman. “You can assess my new nest. I’ve had to make it bigger than the last one.”
“Oh?” Vel-Rala asked, and her eyes widened. “Why’s that?”
“Well…” Zoie said lightly, and she glanced meaningfully over at Shay, who grinned at the assembled group and placed a hand over her stomach with a small laugh.
“What?” Rylan screeched, and his mixture of shock and delight was everything I’d hoped it would be. He rushed over to Shay but then stopped short a couple feet in front of her. “Y-You’re pregnant? I’ll be getting more baby siblings?”
“Probably just the one,” Shay told him, and she patted his cheek with another little laugh. “Natavians tend not to have litters.”
“Just one is great!” Rylan assured her, and his eyes became as wide as saucers as Shay gently placed his hand over her stomach. Then his voice turned very soft and gentle. “Hey there, little one. I’m your big brother.”
“I’m sure they’re just as eager to meet you as you are to meet them,” the phoenix-woman promised, and she ruffled Rylan’s hair. “But right now, I think Mr. Jenner wants to tell us about what you all found on Eng.”
“Oh, yeah,” Rylan said, and he turned to me with a firm nod. “It was crazy!”
All of us filed into the family room and took our seats. Zoie and Shay tugged Vel-Rala into the mothering nest, and I could see the cat-woman was pleased to have all three pregnant women in the same space. Amaya sat next to me and let her head rest on my shoulder, and my arm went around her automatically. We’d always known the buried Archives would have secrets the Order didn’t want to reveal, because the Order had been the ones to bury them, so this would probably be a bit difficult for her.
I kissed the oryx-woman’s blonde curls as Jenner stood in the center of our group like a professor about to deliver a lecture. He was practically brimming over with the desire to share information.
“Thanks to Vel-Rala’s prophetic abilities, and my knowledge of the Eng-folk’s tunnel systems, we managed to locate the buried Archives and recover them in their entirety,” the koala-man told us all. “So I’m sure it comes as no surprise to all of you that Vel-Rala has indeed been confirmed by those documents as the true Prophetess of this age.”
This was nothing new, because Jenner had sent that particular bit of information ahead in a letter, but it still sent a small thrill down my spine to hear it had been irrefutably confirmed.
“It is the job of each Prophetess to decree who will be her successor’s successor,” Jenner continued. “To avoid personal bias, such as the desire to have a daughter or niece become the next Prophetess, the prediction is always one generation ahead. So, the Prophetess before Nova’s mother, Esta, prophesied Vel-Rala would be the one after Esta.”
“And Amaya repeated a fragment of Prophecy during her examination as a child,” Anwaar said with a look over at her sister. “A Prophetess who came from the Ocean.”
“She did.” Jenner nodded. “Though so far, we still lack the specifics of what that actually means, we can confirm the rest of the Prophecy could only mean Vel-Rala is the current Prophetess. The records also contained fragments of history that the Order or the Council wanted… suppressed.”
“Like the Ousting of the Lycaen Ashers of Blood, I presume?” I asked, and the koala-man nodded.
“It goes into some detail about the ruse that lured Chief Mata to the Council Hall, and how the eight Lycaen Ashers were captured, their families slaughtered. The details on the Curse over Lycae were extensive, but there was nothing about how it might be broken.”
“That’s alright, we can figure that out when we tackle the Curse over Eng,” I said. It seemed logical the key to breaking one Curse would also be the key to breaking the other.
“What about what the Order wants with the Prophetess?” Amaya asked, and her face had taken on that nervousness it always did when she was worried about someone she cared for.
“The Archives tried to phrase it more… I suppose you could say ‘nobly,’” Jenner answered. “But quite simply, they want power and control. The Prophetess is the mouthpiece of Mercedes herself, and therefore has immense influence over the Peoples. If the Prophetess is not under the Order’s control, then she jeopardizes the Order’s position as the one true way to serve Mercedes.”
“That explains why the Alda brothers were so intent on having a Prophetess, then,” Anwaar said in a grim tone. “They already had a High Priestess in their pocket. Having the Prophetess would have made their influence unchallengeable.”
“I don’t suppose the Archives had any idea about which specific High Priestess was working for the Aldas?” I asked the koala-man as I tapped an irregular rhythm on my knee with my free hand.
“Well, seeing as the Council and the Order are both based on Alem, and we know Kavo Alda is also on Alem, I would suspect it’s the High Priestess of the Alemic Temple Order,” Jenner said with a shrug.
Anger flared inside me at the memory of Kavo Alda’s intrusion. Luckily, thanks to Amaya and Anwaar being geniuses, they’d been able to place a protective spell over the manor so no one could enter or leave without its owner’s permission. My permission. But Kavo was still out there, and he’d still waltzed in here, calm as anything.
“Oh,” Amaya then said in a soft voice, and I turned to look at her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s just… I know the Alemic High Priestess,” the oryx-woman told me as she blinked her rain-colored eyes. “Leda. She was the one who examined me for my augur abilities, the one who said I had great promise.”
“She was also the one who suspected you would be the next Prophetess and put you through all that grueling training,” Anwaar said in a slightly cold tone. It was unusual to hear disapproval in her normally calm voice. “And the one who would have sanctioned you going through the ceremony.”
That ceremony was apparently ‘mandatory’ for a Prophetess to go through, so she didn’t go mad with her power or some nonsense. But, seeing as we knew the Order just wanted to use the Prophetesses, it made sense that leaving them with no loved ones to interfere with their job would make them easier to control. Someone who didn’t love anyone would be more easily plied, and less likely to resist.
“I know,” Amaya admitted. “But she taught us when we were children. I thought she truly would have cared about serving Mercedes. But if she’s just been working for the Aldas this whole time…”
“The Order’s higher levels are full of people who used honest faith to supply their own greed,” I said to the oryx-woman. “It doesn’t make that faith any less pure, or you any less of a loyal servant to the Goddess. All it does is make the High Priestess a coward, preying on people’s good intentions.”
“I completely agree.” Jenner nodded smartly, but seeing as he was Engish, I imagined he’d never been overly concerned with matters of faith. He’d always preferred to keep his eyes on the ground, with books and inventions. “But we should still confront her if we can. If she is working with the Aldas, perhaps she can direct us to where Kavo is, or what he’s planning.”
“We certainly can’t leave her to roam around the Order,” Sha-Kane said with a frown. “Her influence is considerable. She is the most powerful figure within the Alemic Order, and possibly the Order as a whole.”
“The Sun Temple on Alem is the largest of the six, and it’s attached to the Academy,” Horus explained when he saw my quizzical expression.
I was momentarily confused as to why there would only be six Sun Temples, until I remembered the Curses on Eng and Lycae would have made their Temples uninhabitable.
“Having Leda on their side would certainly have given Kavo a significant advantage within the Order,” Anwaar said as her brow creased in thought. “Maya, didn’t she cut you off during your assessment?”
“She did,” Amaya said with the air of realizing something. “I was halfway through a fragment of Prophecy when she interrupted me.”
“Do you think you came close to revealing something about her?” Shay asked from where she was swaddled within the mothering nest.
“Possibly.” The oryx-woman shrugged. “I just figured she didn’t want too much of a Prophecy to be revealed to outsiders, like Gavlain.”
“That is definitely super fishy on its own, though,” I said. “That the Order would want these Prophecies kept quiet. I know only Prophetesses can translate them, but what’s wrong with telling the Peoples what the translations say?”
“The Order’s excuse has always been that the knowledge is sacred,” Anwaar said. “Or that too much knowledge would lead to harm.”
“I get some things being private, but the idea that knowledge can harm you is something only ever said by bad guys,” I said flatly, and I thought of how, on Earth, there had been things like book bans, or even book burnings.
I’d read 1984 in school-- or, my class had studied it anyway-- and one thing the teacher drilled into our heads over and over was the reason the Party had been so all-powerful was because the majority of the population hadn’t been aware of the Party’s terrible inner workings, unlike Winston. Something like eighty percent of the people had been kept dumb, with minimal information and no chance of a real education, so they would believe what anyone told them.
“We definitely need to have a talk with this Leda woman,” I said to the others. “Is there any chance she would agree to a meeting?”
“Unlikely,” Amaya admitted with a sigh. “You’re a Councilman, yes, but the Order isn’t beholden to the Council. They’re equals and opposites. You can’t demand entry.”
“But Maya, Horus, and I all studied at the Academy as children,” Anwaar pointed out. “Perhaps we could enter under those conditions.”
“I was expelled from the Academy, though,” Horus reminded his wife. “And, my love, we all look too old to be students. Rylan’s the only one who could pass.”
“I could go!” Rylan offered as he perked up.
“Absolutely not,” Zoie and I said at the same time, and he pouted, but there was no way I was going to send my fifteen-year-old son for a one-on-one chat with a High Priestess who also happened to be working for Rylan’s maniac father.
“We need someone with authority,” I said. “So, Anwaar, Amaya, do you two think you could hack it? I don’t want to put you in danger if you think Leda might be… volatile.”
I’d seen enough of the Aldas’ crazed followers to know there was a decent chance she wouldn’t be fully sane.
“That wasn’t precisely what I was getting at,” Amaya admitted, and when the rest of us all turned to look at her, she raised her head from my shoulder and gave a shrug. “The Order still thinks I’m the true Prophetess. So I can demand entry simply by turning myself in and demanding an audience with Leda to surrender myself to the ceremony.”
Chapter 2
“No way,” I said at once.
“Absolutely not,” Anwaar said at the same time, and she reached past Horus to where Amaya was sitting beside me and put a hand on the oryx-woman’s knee. “You can’t, Maya. You know what they’ll do to you if you go.”
“I do,” Amaya said with a nod. “But I also know what could happen to Aventoll if we don’t confront Leda. If we’re right, and she really is the one working with Kavo Alda, then we’re culpable for whatever she does while we know. If she does something terrible when we could have stopped it, then it’s our fault.”
“But you becoming the Prophetess is what Leda has wanted ever since you were a child,” Horus said, and he had a similar look of concern on his face as when Shay was in danger. I abruptly remembered that Horus had known Amaya for just as long as he’d known Anwaar, and he probably thought of the oryx-woman as a second little sister. “If you turn yourself over to her…”
“The entire Order has wanted this for years,” Anwaar said grimly. “We can’t let you do that, Maya.”
“You’re not ‘letting’ me do anything,” Amaya told her sister, and she pouted a little as she said it, like she was frustrated by everyone’s concern.
I knew she wasn’t especially proficient in combat, but I also knew she was far from helpless, and she probably didn’t appreciate everyone acting like she was.
“I know we’re not,” I said in an attempt to smooth things over before the conversation derailed entirely. “It’s just… we could be risking giving the Order everything they want, and if you hand yourself over to them… it’s a big risk.”
“But it’s the only option we have,” the oryx-woman insisted. “I can demand an audience with Leda, and she’ll have to receive me because I’m the Prophetess-apparent. She won’t question it, she’ll just be relieved I’ve ‘seen sense’ or something.”
“The ceremony,” Anwaar murmured, and she stared at her sister with a look of such pure sadness that it broke my heart a little just to see it. “If they carry it out…”
“They won’t,” Amaya said firmly. “I’m just asking for an audience with Leda, they won’t be able to prepare for the ceremony so quickly.”
“You don’t know that,” Horus insisted. “They’ve been waiting for your answer for months now, if not seasons. They’ll probably have everything ready to go at a snap of the High Priestess’ fingers.”
That was a chilling thought, that Amaya could be swept up and forced into the ceremony with a simple wave of Leda’s hand. The oryx-woman’s ability to love would be removed, or worse, the procedure would kill her since we knew she wasn’t the true Prophetess.
“We should take advantage of their desperation, because they’ll be less likely to question things too much,” Amaya said with the air of explaining something obvious. “You’re right that the Order’s been desperate for my answer, but it fell to Dawn when Anwaar and I came to Nata.”
“Dawn?” I asked. “Why?”
“Because she’s a Deaconess, and also our sister-in-law,” Anwaar answered. “She was tasked with hand-delivering Maya’s response to the Order, once she made her decision.”
“But,” Amaya added, “since we’ve been away from Nata, the Order has had no information on where I stand, or what decision I’m coming to. They’ll have been blind, so they’ll be eager for a bit of information. If I show up and say I’ve made my decision, and I’d like to speak with the High Priestess, they’ll be too relieved to question it.”
“That still seems like a rather… large risk,” Sha-Kane admitted, and internally I kind of agreed.
Amaya lauding her authority would be a pretty solid way into the Sun Temple, but it still felt like tempting fate to dangle the supposed Prophetess in front of the Order’s nose to get what we wanted.
“Well, if any of you have any better ideas on how we can gain near-total access to the Alemic Sun Temple and get an audience with the High Priestess, I’m open to ideas,” Amaya said with a wave of her hand and a small sigh.
“It does seem like the best option,” I told her, and I put an arm around the oryx-woman’s shoulders. “Or the least-bad option.”
“That’s my point,” she said, and her eyes glinted with resolve as she looked up at me. “We don’t have time to wait for a ‘best’ option to present itself, or for someone to think something up. We have to act quickly.”
“You’re right on that one,” I said with a rueful laugh. “But we can’t let you go on your own, at the very least. Let us come along as some kind of backup.”
“I’m not letting Vela anywhere near those people,” Bodin suddenly interjected, and a stricken expression crossed his face.
Beside him, Nemis looked as flamboyant and dangerous as you would expect a sea captain to look, and in the mothering nest, Vel-Rala was hugged even tighter by Zoie and Shay.
“We’re not letting them within a hundred feet of her,” I swore to the raccoon-man. “I promise. I don’t want the Order getting Vel-Rala any more than I want them getting Amaya. We’d never hand either of them over.”
