The Guild (44 page)

Rexei shuddered as those burning streaks of fire were turned toward her.
“Thissss . . . boy? You give thissss boy to me?”
The other side of Nurem’s mouth quirked up in humor.
“I
acsssept.
”

Reveal yourself! Now!

T
he shout, in Guildra’s voice, spurred Rexei into pushing to her feet. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say, then seized on the word
boy
. “I’m
not
a boy! I’m not a
young man
, either,” she added firmly as Torven scowled at her. She didn’t know why her Goddess wanted her to do this, but she quickly worked on the buttons of her trousers as she continued. “I’ve never
been
a male—all this time, you’ve been duped by a
woman!
”

Whirling around, she dropped her trousers, pulling down her undershorts as well, and mooned Torven, the demon, and over half of the ex-priests. The look on Elcarei’s shocked face was worth the fear that she would be brutalized for her revelation, but it was the demon’s response that caught everyone’s attention. Nurem snarled, hissing at her with jaws that gaped four times as wide as any human’s, revealing nested rows of too-sharp teeth lining that unhinged jaw. He clawed at the bubble-sphere separating his universe from theirs and glared at her as she hastily yanked her pants
up and faced him again, fumbling to get everything buttoned back in place.

Beyond him to the left, she could see Torven, his palm scraping slowly down a face screwed up in a grimace of rage. “Stupid . . . moronic . . . ! Why didn’t anyone
check
to make sure she wasn’t a
she
?!”

“What does it matter?” Elcarei called out. “Feed
her
to the demon!”

“The demon has already accepted a
male
sacrifice, that’s why!” Torven yelled back, whirling to face the middle-aged, blue-robed priest. “If we feed her to him
now
, he’ll be able to break the bindings and escape our contr—”

BANG bam POW!
Tufts of munitions smoke puffed out from the passageways. Priests and apprentices cried out in pain, some dropping with hands clasped to reddish stains, others whirling to confront this new danger.

“Torhammer!” Elcarei snarled, spotting the captain of the Precinct. Rexei remembered the face of Captain Torhammer from the Consulate meetings, and she felt both worry and relief. The captain was more than competent as a warrior, as were his men, but none of them were mages like the priests in this chamber.

“
You!
” Bishop Hansu accused, pointing at a younger man with brown curls, green viewing lenses, and a distinctive pointed nose, one which Rexei knew she would’ve remembered if she had ever seen him lurking around the temple. She wondered who he was, if Hansu could be so upset at his presence among all others.

Others appeared all around; she recognized the chief leftenant, Rogen Tallnose, but most of the others she didn’t know. She loved them, however, for most had hand-cannons pointed at the priests, and hopefully some hadn’t wasted their only shot. The ones who weren’t in leather-and-plate-armored coats were somehow casting energies from their hands, some of them female like her.

“Retreat!” Archbishop Gafford shouted. “Full retreat!”

Those that could still move whirled and ran for the mirrors displaying those odd views. Inside his bubble-sphere, Nurem hissed and clawed at the membrane separating their worlds; he lost the shape of his semi-handsome form, resuming the same horrific monster visage as before. Backing up from that side of her own bubble-ward, Rexei turned and pressed her hands against the shield, striving to
hear
the tones it made so that she could match them and slip through.

Before her hands could do more than sink wrist deep into the shield, a woman in steel armor and an open, black-lined cloak cleaved through the air between herself and Rexei with a mirror-bright sword. Though her long blade cut nothing, touched nothing but air, entire sections of paint were somehow flung off the stone floor. Rexei knew the woman. Knew her name was Orana . . . something. Orana Niel. But Rexei had
no
context as to how she knew the other woman, other than having seen her face somewhere. Whatever spell had been used to cut out chunks of her memory had been very concise in some areas and a bit vague in what it removed from others. The demons, she knew about; her chosen Goddess, she had always known. But . . .

“You! Longshanks!
You
planned this!” Torven accused, making Rexei turn around to see what he was up to. He was doing something with a small sack of powder pulled from the pouch strung on his belt. Scattering it in a circle, he called out over his shoulder. “Well, guess what,
Guild Master
of the new priesthood? I’m leaving this mess for
you
to clean up!
Bazher faroudoel!
”

Light flared up from the powder and the mage somehow dropped down out of sight.

She has the words. You have the will
.

Rexei
knew
that was a message from her Goddess, but she didn’t know
what
sort of a message it was. The sphere trapping Nurem inside the ward-circle was starting to bulge; he had somehow
regained the half-handsome, half-humanoid shape from before, but his claws were pushing against the soap bubble of the Veil, deforming it in an effort to tear through. Another slash of the sword behind her popped the bubble capturing and confining Rexei . . . just as three of the mirrors exploded, making people yelp.

“Champion!” Captain Torhammer called out. Two more mirrors popped. “What’s going on?”

“They’re destroying the mirror-Gates!” Orana called back. “And with the primary demon summoner gone, it’s going to be difficult to get the Veil resealed.”

“. . . Guildra said
you
have the words,” Rexei said, turning to face Orana. The last two mirrors exploded as well. She flinched but continued, “And that
I
have the strength. But I don’t know
what
words.”

“Ah. Just a moment . . .” She shifted her two-fisted grip on the sword and dug one gauntlet-covered hand into the robe’s sleeve. “Where is it . . . where is it . . .”

A sickening
pop
behind them made Rexei whirl around. The Veil-bubble was gone. For a moment, the demon-Monster returned, swelling to fill the containment sphere, then Nurem controlled himself, shrinking down to merely twice as tall as a human this time. “
I willl have my sssacrificssse, sssweetling
,” he hissed, and
liiiicked
the transparent magic that was all that held him in place.
“The agreement wassss made.”

“Bullshit,” Ora muttered. She pulled out a scroll and pushed it at Rexei, who fumbled to take it and untie the ribbons holding the aged parchment and sticks together.

“
Priessstling withhh a sssword, are you?
” Nurem hissed, looking more amused than enraged.
“You thhhink you can sssstop me?”

The containment wards started to stretch. Below them, the lines of paint started to bulge and move. Rexei gulped and yanked at the ribbon holding the scroll shut. Orana stepped up next to
Rexei, sword now resting on her shoulder, her free hand on her armor-plated hip. She gave the demon a contemptuous look. “I have slain a
God
, little beast. The former God of
this
land. I will slay
you
if need be . . . but your demise will be swifter and more final at the hands of a
true
priestess of this land.”

Rexei managed to get the scroll the right way up, skimmed quickly over the instructions at the top, and started chanting. “I summon the spirit of my God . . . dess,” she called out, quickly adjusting the lines to better match this moment. She also tightened her gut in the way the Actors Guild recommended for making sure audience members in the farthest rows would always be able to hear.
“I summon the will of my people’s Patron!
”

“I summon the spirit of my Goddess!” she heard someone shout, echoing her words. A quick glance up showed it was the brunette with the green viewing crystals perched on his nose. He quickly circled his hand, looking at the others, the ones who had come to rescue her. “Come on—
help
her! Give the Gearman your strength! I
summon
the spirit of my Goddess!”

The others quickly if raggedly repeated his words, then continued with her second line. “. . . I summon the will of my people’s Patron!”

Quickly looking back down at the scroll in her hands, Rexei read off the rest of the lines, pausing between each one for the others to recite them in her wake. With each verse asserted, she could feel something welling up within her, and she clung to it, along with her image, her belief, in her Goddess.

“I bless this land in the name of my Goddess . . .

I bring the Goodness of the Heavens and their power to smite!

I sanctify this ground as holy in the name of Guildra,

And I purify the air, the rain, the day, and the night!

I am a believer with faith in my Goddess;

I believe with all my strength that She will protect us.

I bless this place in the name of Holy Guildra

And in the name of the Guilds and the values by which She exists.

I cast back into the Nethers all demonic intrusions,

And by my faith and by Her Great Blessings,

I seal now the Veil, cutting off all darkness and blight!”

Nurem screamed and clawed hard at the trembling, visibly weakening wards. Rexei felt only the tiniest tremor of fear, though. With the invocation’s assertions had come an answering, controlled anger. All the pain of having lost her mother and having to flee her family, all the stubborn determination to survive despite being so terribly young and alone, all the maturity she had learned and the lessons she had absorbed in how to listen and heed, obey and learn, how to create and
believe
first and foremost in herself, and now . . . and now, to believe in her Goddess . . . who stood
with
her, behind her, supporting her . . .

This demon was
not
going to win.

“I call upon Guildra, my Patron, my Goddess

To cast you
back into the Netherhell from whence you came,

And to seal forever this ground as Holy, not profane!

Be gone in the Name of Guildra!

Be gone in the Name of the Heavens!

Be gone in the Name of the people of Guildara!

Be! You! Gone!”

She flung up her arm, shoving her palm heel-first through the air.
Something
coalesced inside of her as she did so, and thrust outward with the force of her arm. A golden spark, shimmering with hope and faith and trust, seared straight for the weakest point in that claw-stretched, cracking ward—and slammed Nurem the
Monster back down through his bubble, down through the half-seen hole in the world, all the way down into the Netherhells. Golden sparks—smaller and less powerful, but appearing in the dozens, the scores—flung themselves inward from her fellow Guildarans, each a tiny spark of faith that caged the darkness, squeezed it down, down, down . . .

“
Be Thou Gone from this Blessed Place!
” Rexei asserted, putting every last inch of her life and her will, her magic, her music, and her faith, into her command.

A final, fat spark shot forward, expanded, devoured . . . and erased the dark stain of a sparklike rift from their side of existence. The contracting bubble of Light burst outward in a bright spray of harmless pale gold sparks. Where they fell, they erased all traces of paint, scrubbing away most of the runes on the ground.

“
Well
done, Gearman,” the woman at her side praised. She rested her gauntlet-covered hand on Rexei’s shoulder. “Well done, and well managed for prophecy’s sake.”

“Prophecy, hell!” Captain Torhammer snapped. “I recognized five of those places in those mirrors. We need to get after them!”

“No.” Rexei hadn’t realized she was going to speak, but the mention of prophecy . . . she could not remember the time or the place, but she
knew
that this was important. “No. Let them go. They will be dealt with. We have our
own
messes to manage.”

“That’s not your call to make—” Torhammer started to argue.

A chime rang softly right next to her ear, startling a yelp from Rexei and a visible twitch from the captain. Orana gave both of them a sheepish look. She tucked her sword inside her robe and pulled it shut, making the blade somehow vanish, then stuck her hands into her sleeves. When she pulled them out, the left one had no gauntlet on it, nor a vambrace, though it did have a bracelet with a strange hinged top. Flipping it up, she moved away a few steps as she spoke. “Yes, Pelai . . . ?”

Pelai . . . why is that name familiar?
Rexei wondered. The others were picking their way down toward the two of them, foremost the sharp-nosed, green-lensed fellow with the curly hair. At first it had been brown, but now . . . it was reddish gold?
When did that happen? It must’ve been an illusion spell. A smart choice around priest-mages . . .

“Rexei, are you okay?” he asked her, stepping through the gaps in the speckled remnants of paint, the ones which the swordswoman had made. “Do you . . . do you remember who I am?”