Yut-ta led them to a small, relatively whole structure with a new thatched roof and windows on the side and back. They hunched to sneak below them, then plastered themselves against the bumpy sandstone beneath the largest opening. The view overlooked a crumbled stone wall and the ruins downslope, lit to a hot orange by the special torches. How odd, the enemy stood in the center of Kjiven’s power, yet feared what he wrought so much they used magic to keep it out.
Did that not mean the yondaii knew the corruption corrupted, and yet they still honored the one who created it?
Dragging her attention back to the interior, Vantra released Kenosera’s hand and floated up, thinning her essence so those inside would not notice her—hopefully. She peeked over the edge of the sill and moved no higher.
The shaman arched, his fingers stiff in agony, then fell back to the mattress as deep green swam over the symbols. The stretcher bearers regarded him, then a rufang hovering over the bed upon which he lay. They had a bright beak that transitioned from gold at the tip to burgundy at the base, and reddish skin and fur that had a gold sheen. They dressed in a simple, natural tunic and had multi-colored rope wrapped around their biceps, wrists, and legs, with matching strings braided in their hair and stubby tail. Their brightness, compared to the darker colors worn by the others, hinted they were someone other than a fighter.
They shook their head, and the others vacated. Two guards watched them, then quietly closed the door.
“Zepirz.” The rufang sounded worried. They reached for him, healing power circling their hand; he grabbed their wrist, squeezing tight enough they cried out in pain.
“Nab deia,” he hissed, spit fleeing his lips.
“Zepirz,” they pleaded.
Vantra looked at the closed door. She could sense the guards’ spears, a nasty bit of magic that survived the blare of the torchlight. She wished Lorgan hid with them, because he would understand why. Kenosera and Yut-ta peeked as well, then slid down the wall. She hunched down with them, unable to set her racing thoughts in order.
“He needs help,” the hooskine reluctantly admitted. “Those marks are tearing him up. I’ve seen the same thing in acolytes trying to leave a cult.”
Kenosera offered the shard to her, and she pushed it back into his chest; they might need its protection, and she had the feeling Zepirz would reject her offer—one she had to make—and summon the guards. She floated through the window, wincing at the air; the corruption flavored it with muddy despair.
Despair. It played on despair.
The door banged open, and she froze, thinning her essence in a fear reaction. A changeling ghost whisked inside, her green robe fluttering despite the lack of wind. Vantra stared at the tangle of brown embroidery decorating her skirt and the de-barked twigs holding her bun in place. Strans’ priestess, though she did not bear the marks the yondaii did. She carried something else, something darker.
She ignored the subtle, distrustful glares from the guards and pushed the healer out of her way.
“You are needed,” she said, shaking out her long sleeves.
“He goes nowhere!” the healer protested, squeezing between her and the stricken rufang. “He is unwell, Priestess Navonne!”
“Ayara, we’ve not the time,” Navonne snapped, her tufted ears twitching. “The enemy infiltrates our sanctum. It is time to defend.”
“He can’t stand.”
“Oh?” She looked down her pert, cat-like nose at the shaman who, again, arched in pain, and flipped her hand. “Do you doubt the blessings, Zepirz? They would not pain you, if you believed.”
“I . . . believe,” he choked. “I believe in Strans.”
And that was the problem—Kjiven was not Strans.
“The others have no such difficulty.”
The others did not have firm convictions concerning Strans. She frowned after she thought it. Her mother claimed divine magic was perverse, which other Sun leaders despised. She said it too easily warped one’s thoughts and deeds, a strange sentiment coming from Ga Son’s high priestess, but one she held because she saw the damage things like suntanning caused. Why suffer skin cancer as a side effect of a ‘holy’ act when the syimlin accepted prayer in other settings besides blaring midday sun?
But perhaps that explained the shaman who stuck his staff into her. His faith rested in the darkness that Kjiven promoted, and it ate him. Zepirz’s did not—and the corruption could not completely take him.
Did he have Strans’ true blessing? She studied his stiff form as Navonne and the healer had words. If he had visited the shrine at Luck’s Hold and received that blessing first, the touch of the Twisted One might have staved off much of the darkness that infected his fellow yondaii. How could she tell?
Well, she had met Navosh. Why not search for something that felt like he did? She sifted through the marks Zepirz had—and found a soft touch of fresh forest in the center of his chest. Oddly, the other marks circled it, but did not encroach.
Vantra flinched as the door slammed shut; she missed the end of the yelling match. Ah well; Zepirz stayed on the bed, and the healer glared after the woman, hands clenched, shuddering in rage. Hopefully she did not return; she did not want to outrace another changeling while she felt so raw.
She floated to the bed, slowly bleeding back into view. The healer’s eyes widened, and they opened their mouth to scream. She held up her hands, hoping they realized she meant no harm; Zepirz snagged the being’s tunic and pulled. They looked at him, and he shook his head.
“You know Strans is not Strans.”
Zepirz eyed her, his orbs glazed in pain, while the healer gasped.
“How do you know that?” they asked.
“I rescued Navosh.”
A tear trickled out of the corner of Zepirz’s eye. “Navosh?” he asked before another rush of agony wracked his body.
“The false one grants false marks. But I see the true Blessing in the center of your chest.”
The healer relaxed. “It is there,” they agreed. “Strong and vibrant, despite the other marks.”
“It is.” Vantra waited until Zepirz collapsed. “I can cleanse you of the false marks by the false deity who wears a stolen mantle, but it’s your choice.”
He slapped his hand against his chest, his palm over the true mark. “Why should I trust you? You wallow in the marks of syimlin. They came here uninvited and stole from us our lands and our youth.”
“My mother was a priestess of Sun, that’s true,” she said. “I’ve followed him my whole existence. And from what I know of Dryanthium and the Elfiniti, leaders took what they wanted, with no care for who already lived here. I can’t change the past or extricate its poison. What I can do is eliminate the false one's marks.”
Zepirz hissed, his gaze sliding past her, and she firmed her lips before glaring at the window; Kenosera slipped through, then Yut-ta, and they remained pressed against the wall as shadows walked past. Neither the shaman nor the healer called out, and she took that as a good sign.
“You still walk with her?” Zepirz gritted, clacking his beak at the two.
“Yes,” Kenosera said. “And I’ll not look back. I left my childhood home against my family’s will because they wished to sequester me, and I wanted to see the Evenacht. There is much more to these lands than a small community where petty hate and sowing distrust is the only way to hold a fleeting grasp on leadership.”
Yut-ta nodded. “My family didn’t understand my fascination with the Sun, but I wanted to become Lojkac’s acolyte, so I did. He didn’t steal me from them—I followed my own way.”
“Lojkac.” Zepirz winced, his fingers curling in pain. “He is known to the Wiiv. He never belittled or transgressed our laws.”
Noise from outside interrupted them. Vantra floated to Kenosera and grabbed the shard. “I can help, but it’s up to you. I can see the marks feeding on you; it’s the same corruption that’s in the forest, and it will eventually override you.”
“She is right, Zepirz,” the healer said. “As I have told you, many times over.” They turned to her. “I have tried to heal, but I am not strong enough to sever the influence.”
“That’s enough, Ayara,” he said with sharp annoyance.
“No,” they replied with a stubborn glare. “I told you the Twisted One speaks the false words of another. Those,” and they pointed at the dark marks, “are not his Touch.”
“They are Kjiven’s,” Kenosera said.
The two beings stared at him. “Kjiven?” Zepirz asked, his eyes wrinkling in disbelief.
“He wandered after the flood, lost in pain, and others took advantage of that. They convinced him to take Strans’ mantle. It doesn’t fit, and now the forest reflects that badness. We’re going to return it to its proper bearer.”
“Sincerity may still be lies,” Zepirz said, his voice hoarse.
“It’s not just Kjiven,” Vantra said, rubbing at her chest. “There is another touch, warping what he laid. We don’t have time. Yes or no.”
“Yes,” the healer said.
“Ayara!”
“Yes,” they said with firmer conviction.
Zepirz closed his eyes. “What have I become, to have a ghost offer such help?” he asked, bitter disgust clouding the words.
“Then, perhaps, I should?”
Vantra started and stared as Navosh moved past her. How had he gotten there? Had he asked Katta to send him to the stricken Wiiv’s side? She looked at Kenosera and Yut-ta, but their shock reflected hers—no answers there.
Zepirz gaped, his beak trembling, as the deity laid his hand gently over the one in the center of his chest. “But you are of us,” he said, strained.
“You know your tales,” Navosh said. “My mother is evaki, my father an ex-syimlin. I am both. Some believe that makes me neither. And you? What do you believe?”
The scent of fresh rain infused the air, and Vantra touched her nose. She should not perceive that and wondered how much power Navosh had regained after his rescue. Zepirz raised a hand, brushing his fingers through the air as if he could touch the sensation, then dropped it, awe replaced by anger.
“I believed you would drive the interlopers from the forest. But you won’t.” The green in the marks strengthened as sullenness suffused his words.
“No, because if I did, I would need to go with them. It is your choice. Accept a gift from a man who is neither, or drown and become a husk like the other yondaii.”
“Accept,” the healer insisted. A gentle, amused smile alit on Navosh’s lips.
“Do you follow Ayara or your darker path, Zepirz?”
The rufang clenched his hand. “Why can I not help cleanse the forest?”
“Because harming ghosts is not really what you wish. You want tradition and culture to mean something more to the youth who disregard their influence. You want them to realize their strength is forest-born, not a product of external making. Yet they see a better life outside the leaves, one you know is a false promise. But, as frustrating as that may be, they must learn those lessons for themselves. Fierceness in defense comes from seeing the good and the bad and knowing the good is worth the pain. Catering to the vacant who yearn for nothing but conformity is a stagnant pool, rotting from within—and that will never convince the willful to stay.” His bone-weary sigh tugged at Vantra, and from Zepirz’s expression, it affected him, too. “The Labyrinth does not care about tradition and culture, for the dwellers have always morphed and transformed, becoming a different culture and a different people over the long years. It sees the ghosts within this cycle, and what seems a devastating invasion to you is a normal one for it. It knows this current trouble will end with another cycle replacing it, endless in repetition, a forever-song of change.
“You know this. The Wiiv once lived in the embrace of the lands Dryanthium drowned. You now live in Greenglimmer. Your people have changed since their flight, and they will continue to do so until your descendants become so different, you would not recognize them as Wiiv. It is in your songs and tales, in the strangeness of the ancient stories. What do you choose, Zepirz? Time is short.”
“I choose to follow you.”
Navosh chuckled. “We shall see, how foolish that may be.”
