Wrath of the White Tigress (6 page)

Despite his depleted body, arousal flared through Jaska, followed by twisted urges to cause her pain. He stumbled and shook his head. When nothing improved, he summoned his willpower and mastered these strange, wicked impulses that felt disturbingly familiar.
 

"I am Jaska Bavadi . . . a palymfar. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, my lord, I have heard of your ways and your appetite. Now come and take what is yours in exchange for the lives of my father and sister. At the least, be merciful with them."

Realizations struck Jaska in rapid succession, followed by recollections of the nightmares he had suffered when sleeping the last several days.
 

The White Tigress had spoken true.
 

"Get up . . . put your clothes back on. I only want food and drink. I'm not sure what you think I am . . . or what you expect me to be. In fact, I'm not sure what I have been, but today I am a true palymfar and no harm shall come to you."

All three stared incredulously, until he said, "Please, I am weak . . . I need help."

As if waking from a dream themselves, the merchant Elanzar and his two daughters Ysemi and Charay shook their heads. Then they rushed about, retrieving hard tack and dried meat strips from their packs. Devoted worshipers of Selial Earth Mother, they didn't think of refusing help, even to one such as Jaska Bavadi.

Charay started a dung fire and prepared herbs in a bowl for a healing tisane. Ysemi arranged the food for him and poured fresh water and wine into a wooden bowl while her father set blankets on the ground and made a pallet. They helped Jaska eat, for his hands trembled and his condition was worsening. He could hardly chew, so they softened his food in water. Then he allowed Charay to remove his burnoose and torso armor.
 

"She knows the healing arts," Elanzar explained.

"What healed this wound?" she asked. "The scabs are strange."

"Divine magic . . . but the goddess didn't have the strength . . . to fully repair the tissues."

Charay accepted his strange answer. After all, it was no more bizarre than anything else that was happening. "How long ago was this miracle performed?"

"Perhaps five days. I've walked with little food or water since, little sleep."

"How are you still alive?"

"Willpower. I must survive. And now I must learn the truth."

"What truth?" Ysemi blurted out. Her father scowled but said nothing for he was also curious.

"I must learn about . . . about the palymfar, about what they've done. What I've done."

The three glanced at one another in astonishment, then the old man began. "The palymfar have brought a wondrous age of prosperity to Ha-"

"No," Jaska snapped. "I must know how it really is. Don't tell me Salahn's lies. He has deceived me for too long."

Wide-eyed, Ysemi said, "You are infamous for the torment you visit upon your enemies. You are the Slayer, and there are so many stories that I don't know which ones are true. They are all terrible though."

Elanzar interrupted his daughter, and as tears fell from Jaska's eyes, he described the palymfar's reign. Before Elanzar could finish, Jaska fell into a raving stupor. Charay calmed him by stroking his brow while Elanzar and Ysemi held him down. Eventually, he fell unconscious.

"What's happening here, father?" Charay asked.

"I don't know, but it's as if the man has woken up and all his life before belonged to someone else or was all but a dream."

"Is that possible?" Ysemi asked.

"I don't know, child."

Charay frowned. "We may never know. His wounds are taking him. The strain he placed on his body was too much. I can do no more."

"I can help him, though," said a woman walking down the road toward them.

The three turned to see a white-robed priestess escorted by a fully armed templar. Judging by her attire and the templar's insignia, they were adherents of the White Tigress.

"I am Zyrella," the woman said. "The last true priestess of the White Tigress. With your help, child, I can heal him."

"But are you sure we should?" the templar said.

She turned to her companion. "Ohzi, we must learn what the White Tigress wanted from him."

A warm glow emanated halfway up a rock wall on the north end of a dry canyon. Along a narrow ledge was a cave not visible from the canyon floor. Firelight flickered on the walls inside and illuminated hunting scenes and animal lords painted by tribesmen centuries ago. Many of the scenes depicted species long extinct from the region, their populations decimated by the inexorable approach of the northern desert.
 

Zyrella chalked her own symbols onto the walls: twisting runes that channeled the geomantic forces in her surroundings and called upon the divine powers of the great deity Kashomae, the Gentle Savior. After Zyrella finished, Ohzikar fastened a sheet of canvas over the cave entrance. Then he joined her at the back of the cave where water, shimmering like liquid fire, trickled into a small pool.
 

"That should mask our firelight." He frowned at the small pile of brush, dung, and coal. "Not that we'll be burning much."

"I'll conjure sunlight into a stone tomorrow." Zyrella didn't let on to Ohzikar that she was utterly spent. Making a sunstone would tax her, and an apprentice sorcerer could handle such a task with ease.

Ohzikar turned his gaze to a pallet set into a nook two-thirds of the way back into the cave. There, Jaska the Slayer tossed and moaned and salivated through high fevers and nightmares that kept him too exhausted to rise and eat. Zyrella had healed his wounds, but his damaged psyche kept him immobilized.

"Palymfar will come for him soon," Ohzikar said.

Zyrella pictured Jaska's brilliant amber eyes, and a shudder of passion spread through her body. As she mastered this strange, bewildering attraction, she knew she would revisit the feeling and could never abandon this man who was supposed to be her enemy and the most evil person alive, save for his master.

"Does it really matter whether he is with us? They will come for me anyway. Hopefully by then he can help us."

"No good will come from him."

Zyrella stroked Ohzikar's hand. "You heard what Elanzar and his daughters said. Jaska saved them and would not abuse them, claiming he was a true palymfar."

"Enh. He was just lying to earn their trust. He needed their help."

Zyrella groaned and walked over to her patient. Charay had helped her tend him during the most critical hours as Zyrella patched his wounds with magic. She didn't know how long Jaska would be incapacitated. He might yet worsen and die, though she believed him too resilient for that.

Ohzikar sorted through supplies and checked over their gear. His foul mood had worsened since the family's departure. Their company had distracted him from brooding about his fallen brothers. Ysemi had followed Ohzikar like a puppy, as most youths did, and he had taught her everything he could about watching for bandits and choosing safe campsites. Then he had instructed all three refugees on wielding the short swords and knives they had taken from the dead bandits.

In exchange for their help in transporting Jaska to the cave, Zyrella had blessed them and their donkeys. She also gave them the bandits' meager rations since Ohzikar had taken food, money, and gear from the packs of their fallen comrades. He had also recovered Jaska's pack, which they had happened upon by chance.
 

Suddenly, Jaska's eyes snapped open. Firelight cast them a brilliant gold and showed the madness within. He wrenched his hands, kicked his feet, moaned and thrashed. Sweat poured from his forehead, saliva drooled from his lips. A soul-tearing scream burst through his inflamed throat. "Qaavvrraa!"

Ohzikar pinned Jaska's hands when he began clawing at his throat. "What the hell's happening to him?"

Zyrella stroked Jaska's brow. "I'm not sure."

Jaska yelled repeatedly for his qavra, writhed, and snapped his teeth together. Ohzikar leaned his weight onto him. Zyrella dipped a cloth into the spring and wiped Jaska's brow while chanting a simple spell of calming. After half an hour, he settled and returned to sleep.

Ohzikar stalked outside to watch for enemies. After resting a bit, Zyrella joined him. "He will sleep for some time now, I think."

"Has his evil nature returned?"

Zyrella sat back and admired the thousands of stars that twinkled in the sky above, except for a patch currently hidden behind the full disk of the shadowed moon. With her charcoal surface, Zhura gleamed only enough to stand out from the black of the sky.
 

"I'm afraid he craves his qavra like an addict craves opiates. And his qavra is laced with binding spells that Salahn used to control him."

"We should destroy it."

"A qavra can't be destroyed with any method you and I have access to."

"Then toss it into the river."

"No. Its powers are benign as long as he isn't wearing it."

"But can we keep it from him? Do you trust him that much? Do us all a favor and throw it away."
 

 
"No, Ohzi. We may need that qavra. He may need it. Jaska's is the most powerful qavra I have ever seen, and it holds a link to Salahn, a link we might be able to exploit. If nothing else, once Jaska is recovered, we may be able to eliminate the bindings in the stone so that he can use it again."

"We have little time to break him of this addiction, Ella, and we will die if we stay here too long."

"What else is there for us to do? We can't return to Epros and hide forever. The White Tigress thought Jaska worth our sacrifices, and if anyone could defeat Salahn, it would be a redeemed Jaska Bavadi."

Ohzikar sat in silence for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was somber, barely audible. "Perhaps you're right, but I cannot forgive him our brothers' deaths or the sins he committed. And, you know, he won't be our hope as a redeemed man. We need a man so scarred by his sins, so determined to cleanse the evil he has committed that he will breathe fire and shake the foundations of the earth if need be. Worst of all, to defeat Salahn, he will need your help."

"And yours."

Ohzikar threw his head into his scarred hands. "And mine."

Zyrella put her arm around him, kissed his ear, and whispered. "You can let go."

He nearly sobbed but then gathered his composure. "No, I can't."

"Our brothers would weep for you."

"But I was their captain. I cannot mourn them."

Zyrella well knew that templars were supposed to follow the ideals of stoicism. Still, Ohzikar was a sensitive and caring man. He needed to let go. Zyrella would have told him that it didn't matter anymore, that none but her could see his weakness, but Ohzikar needed his self-respect.
 

And what of herself? She was holding in those same emotions that ate away at him. Perhaps she could help them both.
 

"Ohzi, may I weep for our brothers on your behalf?"

A tender half-smile curled his lips. "Yes, mourn them for the both of us. They were the best and most loyal friends. Servants of the goddess to the last."

Ohzikar put his arm around her and cradled her head against his chest for several hours, until the cold wind dried her tears.
 

~~~

Four days passed. Jaska barely drank the soup poured into his mouth. He raved and thrashed until Ohzikar bound his hands and feet to keep him from hurting himself. Zyrella, despite her exhaustion, scribed runes of silence to dampen the sounds that left the cave.
 

Ohzikar served as their lookout and repaired his armor and shield. Zyrella meditated and danced subtle spirit-katas to restore her internal energies. She slept long hours and ate voraciously. Otherwise, she took care of Jaska and recited to him the Codex of Kashomae the Gentle Savior, who was the spirit-mother of the White Tigress.

A mournful gust moaned through the canyon. The canvas sheet snapped taut with sharp cracks. Zyrella's sunstone, a simple quartz rock embellished with the rune of Taal Eos the Sun King, burned at quarter-strength, the equivalent of a single candle. Ohzikar slept bundled in a blanket at the entrance. Jaska, for the first midnight yet, slept peacefully. Zyrella rested her head against the lumpy, damp wall. Though she intended only to nap, she drifted into a deep sleep.
 

Zyrella dreamed she flew above the prosperous land that was the only home she knew, a land quite different from arid, violent Hareez in which she hadn't lived since the age of three. Below her, the golden, autumn-harvest fields of Epros' valleys wound around hills topped with ancient ruins and modern citadels. Olive orchards and grape vineyards dominated by tile-roofed villas stood interspersed among the grain fields. Throughout the land, farmhouses and granaries clustered together into neat villages, each built around a central green and a communal well.

Zyrella soared above Arga, a village on the southern coast. Her heart warmed to see the familiar, quaint homes, the vineyards and fields, a score of modest fishing vessels, and herds of sheep trailed by young men with staves and dogs. On the tallest hill, the ruins of an Eirsendan shrine lay beneath a grove of sprawling oaks. There, among the vine-wrapped marble pillars and moss-covered flagstones, Zyrella's grandmother had instructed her in the arts of being a priestess to the White Tigress. They had used the shrine with the blessing and support of the local priestesses of Yaraya, a wolf goddess also mothered to divinity by Kashomae. Yaraya had taken pity on the White Tigress' refugees, and her magics had protected Zyrella from Salahn's scrying as long as she remained in Arga.