Heretic
Part Two
Chapter 19
Hahmn raised his arm towards the sky, the tendril of blood lifting and shaping into a scythe-like blade. It fell like a guillotine as Isaand rushed forward to meet it. Holding his staff at either end Isaand held it up before him and the scythe bit into its center.
“What are you doing? You shouldn’t be able to stop this with just a staff,” Hahmn shouted in frustration. Isaand’s arms ached as he held onto the staff, and from where the blade met it a bright white geyser of sparks sprayed out along with a harsh grinding sound.
Isaand felt Szet’s power draw his awareness inward, down into the wood of the staff, letting him see closer and closer till the individual grains of wood stretched out like thick ropes bounded together by the thousands. The blood-blade sliced through them, but Szet’s power repaired and tied them back together almost as fast as they were cut.
Isaand spun in a half-circle, letting the weight of Hahmn’s weapon slip past him to slash deep into the ground. At the same time, he lashed out with the end of the staff closest to Hahmn, stabbing it towards his stomach. He heard a grunt and Hahmn bent double from the blow, his head lowered and his left shoulder blocking Isaand from the rest of his body. Isaand grabbed out with his hand, reaching for Hahmn’s right arm where the blood flowed from.
Hahmn barreled into him with his greater bulk, shoving Isaand backwards, and swung his arm. The blood-scythe tore across the sandy surface, sending a spray of grit into the air. Tapping into Szet’s power Isaand dove to the side, and time seemed to slow as his awareness quickened. The blade swept by slowly, missing him by inches, and Isaand rolled up to his feet. Hahmn started to swing around again, but the weight of his blade overwhelmed him and he stumbled back, just as Isaand fell back to one knee.
The righteous anger Isaand felt was still there, but fear, and a wild panicky realization that he was out of his depth was threatening to take over. A warrior, a trained fighter of any kind, would probably have managed to follow up on that blow. Isaand was no warrior, and he didn’t have any weapon other than his blunt staff with which to fight. Now that he’d gotten so close, he realized how stupid it had been to charge in at Hahmn while the man had a superior weapon with greater range. I should have made him come to me, Isaand though, I should have gotten my knife off my belt, I should have had a plan.
His one advantage was that he was hardly the only one so inexperienced. Hahmn had been a small-town cleric, a speaker and a mediator. Isaand doubted he’d ever been in a fight before today. Though Awlta had given him a great weapon, he did not have any knowledge in its use, or he would have easily bypassed the flimsy protection of Isaand’s staff and slaughtered him by now. He’s worried, Isaand reminded himself, thinking back to the man’s visual anxiety at the start of their conversation. He doesn’t know how to do this. I have to use that.
“Sendra!” Hahmn’s voice cut through Isaand’s thoughts, as he began to back away towards the cave, his weapon held high and ready to defend. “Kill him!”
A jolt of fear ran through Isaand as he cursed. Of course, if Hahmn didn’t have the desire to kill him, he’d take the easier option.
Vehx roared in warning and Isaand turned towards him just in time to see the massive golden-light serpent darting towards him with his jaw gaping open. All thought that the Sendra was sworn to him vanished under that terrifying sight, and Isaand tried to run. Vehx was much too fast. The golden fangs snapped shut around him, tearing through the ground to either side. Isaand huddled there, realizing he was suspended inside of Vehx’s translucent mouth. A second impact shook the ground immediately after, and Vehx whimpered as a piece of his neck the size of an elephant was torn and crushed, sending a spray of golden light bursting out like blood, to float slowly away in the air as little globes of illumination. A multicolored shimmer hung in the air, and the single massive eye of the Lsetha became briefly visible, staring mockingly at Isaand from the other side of Vehx.
Instinctively, Isaand reached out and touched Vehx, willing him to heal. He felt the spark as the energy pooled inside of him began to flow out. It was no good. The power Szet had given him was limited by the size of Isaand’s soul, and he could see at once that he could empty every drop of it into Vehx and not be able to heal the wounds he’d taken so far. The Sendra had too much mass, made of the ephemeral substance of the soul.
Vehx pulled away, rearing up and slamming down into the lake a hundred yards away, sending a huge spray of water up into the air and leaving Isaand behind. Hahmn was edging closer, and lashed out with his blade the moment the Sendra was gone. Isaand batted it aside with his staff clumsily, feeling more of his power drain away as the staff was kept from being destroyed. Eyes no more than slits of red light, Hahmn advanced upon him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dozens of voices warred for dominance in Ylla’s head. Scared minds cried out to run, to hide, to beg for mercy. Angry voices wanted her to shout and stamp and waste her energy lashing out at everyone around her. Clever thoughts urged strategy, practical ones watchfulness, and madness suggested the impossible.
Letting it all bounce around inside of her, Ylla stood and smiled and calmly considered it all.
The little-girl soul that the rest of her was bound to was frightened, ignorant, useless, so she pushed it down and drew out a few that might be worth considering. The soul of a proud soldier looked out of her eyes, judging the tactical situation, noting the positions of higher ground and poor footing and places that could be easily defended. He was of little use though. What was left of him saw his commander in Isaand, and thought only to follow his orders and stay out of the way. Ylla dismissed him, slipping the thread of his thoughts back into the intricate weave of her mind. The next was a cruel and vicious street-killer, hands stained with the blood of the innocent and pockets stuffed with stolen wealth. That one saw her enemy and sized him up, and gave her the ideas she needed.
Ylla’s head ached at all the thoughts filling it, so she pushed them back down, having learned what she needed. She felt at her belt, but the curved knife Isaand had given her was gone. Taken by someone after she’d collapsed, or lost somewhere along the way, she didn’t know. She’d have to get a weapon somewhere else. Her eyes swept over the shore and locked on the figure of the slim, fit woman crouching at the other side of the godspool. She held a short spear in her hand, small enough that it would fill Ylla’s hands well. Good, she thought.
The woman turned towards with a jump, holding her spear defensively as Ylla stepped up beside her without speaking.
“Ylla!” the woman said. “This is very dangerous, you need to come with me. We’ll… get over on the edge of the island, as far out of the way as we can get-”
You know her, a voice in Ylla’s head said, and she considered. Memories flashed. The woman who’d thrown the rope on the ferry, helping Isaand back aboard. She’d talked to the others as well. Ylla hadn’t known what was going on, but now she realized she’d been discouraging them from asking any questions about Isaand’s healing powers. Protecting them. The thought made Ylla tired. It felt like something that had happened months ago, not just a few days.
“Give me the spear,” Ylla said, trying to grab it. The woman pulled it away instinctively, confused.
“What? Why? Come on, let’s get further away-”
“I need the spear. Isaand can’t win by himself. No one will expect me to do anything, I’ll take him by surprise.” A memory flashed, of creeping up behind a drunken man and sticking a cloth over his mouth while she stabbed a dirk up into his kidneys. Her hands felt sticky, but she blinked it away and held out her hand again. “Give it.”
The woman objected, and Ylla opened her thoughts to suggestions. One of the men’s souls attached to hers gave a vivid mental image of wrapping his hand around her throat, squeezing while he kept the other on the spear, pushing her to the ground until she ran out of breath. No, that won’t work. I’m much too small. There was an idea, though. Another soul, a mother of young children, supplied an idea, and Ylla seized on it at once.
“Please, I have to help him!” Ylla shouted, her voice wavering as she faked a sob. She flung herself into the surprised woman, grabbing her hard around the stomach and shaking as though terrified. The woman hesitantly put her arms around Ylla, murmuring words of encouragement. Ylla slipped one of her feet under the woman’s leg and hooked it around her ankle, then pulled back as she pushed forward, throwing her off-balance. They both went down in a tangle, and Ylla leaped up with the spear in her hands.
Not that way. Both hands, towards the back end of the spear. Angle it forward, and turn your body sideways to make a smaller target. The words were delivered gruffly, the remembered training of some old soldier. Ylla adjusted her grip as necessary and began to jog across the sandy island, hunched low. She ignored the shout of the woman behind her, and smiled once more.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Isaand started chanting under his breath as Hahmn came forward. The miracles he had available were limited, but maybe one of them would be of use. Hahmn flicked out his hand and the blood retracted, shaping from a great scythe into a smaller, narrow pointed blade, wrapped around his arm many times like a coiled rope. Isaand took the opportunity to rush in, swinging his staff.
Hahmn grimaced and thrust forward with an open hand. The blood flew outward like an arrow loosed from a bow, crossing a dozen feet in an instant. A gurgling cough escaped Isaand’s lips as the weapon pierced his chest. With the same awareness he’d had before, time slowed as Isaand felt the point slip between two of his ribs and penetrate muscle and lung. His breathing wheezed as the lung deflated, and the point carried through to stab out his back.
Isaand tasted blood in his mouth, but he managed to wrap his fingers around the slick bloody spear protruding from his chest and finish his chant. Szet’s power flowed into the spear, the same miracle he’d used to shatter the weapons used by the warrior of Amauro. The blood bubbled and roiled as though boiling, then lost its solidity all at once, splashing down into the ground. While Hahmn stared in shock Isaand staggered forward. His chest was healing, lung filled with air and the muscles knitting back together, but the skin remained broken and his own blood was leaking in a thick line down his bare chest.
“AWLTA UHN TARMA!” Hahmn shouted, raising his hand again. The blood soaked into the soil hardened and sprang up in hundreds of thorns an inch or so long, stabbing into Isaand’s naked feet. The miracle took him completely by surprise and he fell sideways. Hahmn stabbed his dagger into his hand again, down into the wrist, and blood spurted upward again, shaping into a new weapon. This one was axe-like, only a few feet past his fist, with a fat blade two-feet wide. He’d learned, Isaand realized. His earlier weapon had been intimidating, but its length and size unnecessary. Hahmn had a heavy weight and strength advantage, and Isaand had no lethal weapon on him. All Hahmn had to do was get close and not let up, and he’d win.
Isaand struggled upwards as Hahmn came forward, slamming his axe-hand down on Isaand’s staff over and over. Szet’s power kept the staff from breaking, but as always, it did not repair the total damage, and splinters rained with every blow. The staff cracked, splitting in a thick crack down the middle. Desperate, Isaand swung it in an attack, slamming it sideways into Hahmn’s leg. It was like hitting a tree-trunk, and the staff snapped in two at the impact. Hahmn ignored it and slashed, opening a deep cut on Isaand’s thigh. He felt the bone crack and fell forward, unable to support his weight. His hand flicked out.
Hahmn struggled as Isaand managed to grab hold of his bloody, slashed arm. With a familiar glow, Isaand poured Szet’s miracle into him. Not one of the defensive powers Szet had given him to protect himself, but a standard healing. Hahmn flinched, shocked, as the miracle closed his wound, the blood flowing back into his arm, his weapon lost.
Isaand had no time to celebrate. Hahmn shoved him, and he fell back onto his back, helpless, his staff falling away to the side. Hahmn loomed overhead, holding his triangular dagger with both hands and raising it to thrust it down on Isaand.
Quickened, Isaand slid aside and the blade only scratched his shoulder as it past, but Hahmn fell hard on him, holding him down on the ground. Isaand struggled, dropping his staff and grabbing Hahmn’s head with his free hand, gripping his hair and pulling. Hahmn’s wide face fell forward and Isaand’s saw a starburst as his head bounced back into the dirt. He tasted more blood, and his nose felt squashed and cracked. He made a fist and swung it again and again against the side of Hahmn’s head. How did it come to this? The thought came to him as if from another person, and he felt as though he could look down and see himself struggling not to die, to kill another man. He’d never have believed this was his future. I was supposed to be a bard, a teacher, a healer. I wasn’t made to kill.
Then don’t, the voice said.
“Szet et era no kuur-” Isaand stammered out. Hahmn head-butted him again, and he felt something crack. He spat out blood and kept speaking.
“-et ko vamma-”
Pain flared as Hahmn drew the dagger across his arm, a shallow cut at a bad angle, but enough to make him bleed once more. He felt Szet’s power in a dozen places across his body, the strangely prickling itch of regeneration, and he knew the well of power he’d been giving was swiftly draining.
He didn’t have enough. Too many miracles, too much healing, too much exhaustion after two days of struggle. Szet had given him what he could, but he didn’t have the reserves to hold it all. Isaand reached out, trying to find something more, and realized he could feel something outside of himself, a connection, through the air, like distant fires seen through fog. Two of them were here, on this island, another to the south where the ruined village stood. He had a brief image of ghostly chains coiling through the air. With no time for questions, Isaand seized on one and pulled out all the power it could give him.
Across the island, Ratha gasped, writhing in pain and collapsing to the ground. A gray ethereal chain stretched from Isaand’s hand to her hip, where Isaand’s bandages covered the bite she’d received from the Lsetha. Blood spread across it, and red light spread up through the chain and into Isaand. He felt it invigorating him, along with a brief shocking connection to Ratha’s mind. An image flashed in his mind of himself, a cadaverous white-skinned figure with limp hanging white hair crouching overhead, chanting the words of a prayer as he healed her.
Power filled him. Isaand used it, channeling it into the miracle he was continuing.
“-istana pes-”
Understanding, he avoided the closer chain, fearing what would happen if he drew upon it, and reached for the one that led south. He took its power as well, an image appearing in his mind of the fisherman Tokaa, lying bleeding on the deck of the ferry as he healed him. He felt him in the south, cold and scared, holding his son and speaking words of encouragement. He cried out in sudden pain, and his wound began to bleed.
“–istanna Szet-”
With a wordless cry of rage, Hahmn pulled back and raised the dagger once more.
“-isa Szet… ettarra kau!” Isaand stammered out the last words, and pain flared in all his wounds as the miracle burst into being. Thunder boomed overhead along with a flash of lightning, and the water of the lake rippled out from the island in every direction. Hahmn’s face twisted, a hideous mask of warring emotions. Isaand felt the miracle within him, struggling to burrow through and reach his brain, but he could feel the insidious red substance of Awlta’s miracle within him, holding it back. The miracle was a pacification, meant to shut down any hostility and render its target unable to harm another. It wasn’t going to work, Isaand realized. Awlta’s power kept it from affecting her Lector.
But Hahmn could tell what it was meant to do, and Isaand saw the doubt within him. He hesitated.
“Look at us,” Isaand said, chest heaving. He was covered in blood across most of his body, aching, weak. Hahmn was likewise splattered with gore, his arm red from shoulder to fingers, the bloody stripes of Awlta’s power grown larger across his body as though it was straining to burst open. “All I want, all either of us want, is to help people. Why, Hahmn, why do you want to kill me? Not her. You.”
“I have to,” Hahmn said, as though speaking some terrible certainty. A divine proclamation, unstoppable. “I have to.” There was pain clear on his face, the beginnings of tears wetting his cheeks.
A voice cut through their stalemate, the Lsetha’s mental speech like a knife scraping across glass, leaving cracks in its surface.
“Kill him. Without Awlta you’re nothing. You can never go back to Merasca. Your followers will burn on the shore for The Child. The lake-folk will hate you as soon as they know it was you who poisoned their god and ordered their fishermen killed. They’ll blame you for the village’s destruction as well. Without Awlta, you’re nothing but a pauper. But she’ll make it better. There is a place for you still. A place prepared for you, her greatest servant. Kill him, and we’ll leave this blighted lake and you’ll go to a new place, a place worth living.”
“Why does he have to die? We can just leave. He can’t stop what’s done with Ulm-etha. We’ll leave, and Awlta’s work will be done, it’ll just be slower-”
“No, you sniveling idiot,” the Lsetha interrupted. “He serves SZET. Awlta’s greatest enemy, OUR enemy. Kill him, or he’ll hunt you down and never let you live in peace. Do it-”
The Lsetha’s words cut out as a massive crash rang out to the north where Vehx slammed the other Sendra down into another island, sending the stones spinning through the air. Isaand saw a brief, confused image of the two Sendra wrapped around each other like two snakes, fighting and tearing. Hahmn paused, looking down at the knife in his hand as if he wasn’t sure where it had come from.
“I have-”
He was interrupted by a wet, sickening sound. Isaand’s eyes widened as he saw the point of a short wooden spear protrude from the center of Hahmn’s throat, coated red with blood. Ylla stood behind Hahmn, a wide grin on her face, hair swirling in the wind. She held the haft of the spear with both hands, and twisted it hard, wrenching it back and forth.
“You’ll be okay, Isaand,” the girl told him with an eerily calm voice. “I won’t let anyone kill you.”
Hahmn slumped forward, his throat working to suck in air and failing to do so. Isaand pushed his way out from under him and rolled him over, pushing both hands to his throat to slow the bleeding. His hands shook as the blood welled up between his fingers.
“Don’t die,” he told the Lector. “You fool, don’t die. I’ll heal you, and you can come with me. You can make up for all of this.”
He started a healing miracle, but he felt the numbness spreading throughout his body. He concentrated, and more chains appeared in his mind, spreading out far into the world, to the dozens of people he’d healed since Szet had saved him, all across Hrana. He called on them, feeling a connection as each of their old wounds began to flare up and ache. The power within him swelled like a bright sun within his chest.
His hands glowed with the light of Szet’s healing, but it would not go into Hahmn’s wound. Cracked, manic laughter sounded in Isaand’s mind. Awlta’s power was still within Hahmn, and it would not let him be touched.
Isaand felt it when Hahmn’s soul was gripped in Awlta’s talons and dragged away into the darkness.
Isaand felt a light weight hit his back, and then a dozen more. Rain began to fall all around him, light and cool. As it began, a trumpeting sound burst out across the lake, where Vehx still struggled in the air with the Lsetha. Pain and panic mingled as the Lsetha screamed and pulled down, dragging Vehx under the surface of the lake.
“It doesn’t like the rain,” Ylla observed, staring off into the distance with a blank look. Isaand knew what it meant. She’d opened her Godseye. “It’s… burning it? But it’s just water.”
“The bane,” Isaand said. “All Sendra… have a bane. Rainwater. That’s why it fled, when it had us before.”
The spot where the Sendra fought was hundreds of yards away, but through the clear water Isaand could see Vehx’s massive form glowing underneath. It was shredded, whole chunks torn away and left to float in the water, slowly disintegrating. The Lsetha didn’t seem to be harmed by the rain so long as it stayed under the surface of the lake. Isaand took a deep breath, and stretched his hand out towards Vehx, reaching for the chain that connected him as well.
Using his connections to all the people he’d healed, Isaand poured all of their power, everything he’d wanted to use to heal Hahmn, everything he had left, into Vehx. Vehx’s body flared with new golden light, shining twice as bright, and his roar swelled in exultation. He turned and flew upward, cresting the surface of the lake and leaping a thousand feet into the air.
Where the rain hit the Lsetha its invisibility was torn away, leaving its long thin body clearly visible in the night sky, pieces of it tearing away as the rain pierced it like arrows. It roared and screamed in pain, growing higher and higher pitched until it sounded almost like a scared child. Suspended high in the air, Vehx gripped its throat in his fangs and bit down, severing its head.
Isaand slumped and slowly lay down on his back, letting the rain wash over him and his wounds slowly heal. Ylla stared down at him, smile fading in confusion, then she knelt down beside him and took his hand, waiting.
Heretic 