“Not now, my vaishineph.” A feminine voice with weight of rolling thunder pushed its way inside Ajira's mind.
“There will be time enough for that later.” The voice said.
Ajira bowed her head, though there was no one around to see it, and refocused her thoughts on the task at hand. She pushed back her crimson colored hair and raised the hood of her stolen vestments to conceal her face, then she began to move about the hallways of the culthouse looking for a door that did not want to be found.
The inside of the culthouse was the opposite of its façade's blank simplicity. Every hall was arched with lattice work and lined in sculptures. The furniture was made of imported woods and decorated with golden embellishments. The flooring seemed to be marble magicked by relic power, impossibly smooth and impossibly dark, absorbing the sounds of every step and of every vagrant echo coming from deeper within the culthouse’s chambers. Small fountains tinkling away in prayer alcoves provided the only real sound. Chambers upon chambers held nothing but magicked food that would never spoil and accumulated treasures that would never be used. Ajira wished the culthouse spent as much time distributing food to starving mouths as it did platitudes to desperate minds. She walked quickly but not hurriedly, a narrow difference of pace she had learned from when she had worked at a wealthy House of Sighs years ago. Occasionally Ajira passed by koh, the priests of Veye, who were wearing the same hooded vestments that Ajira did. The koh did not break off their furtive conversations with one another, nor did they look up at her as she passed by, and so none of them noticed how out of place Ajira's barely concealed curves were in a loshai, a male only space like a culthouse. The vestments she wore and the unimaginability of her femininity were enough of a disguise.
“Out of mind, out of sight.” The voice in Ajira's mind said.
Ajira walked passed a humming room to her left, and she could not help but look inside for a moment though she knew what she would see. It was an ayinal, a god’s eye, where the koh gathered the tithes from all the people within a hundred miles in every direction. Swirling down from an open roof was a phantom stream of liquid light and mumbling sounds. The stream circled the room once before pouring itself into an ark at the room’s center. The ark sat atop a dozen gears which rotated around bringing a line of small vases to be filled each in turn from a lip at the ark’s base. Ajira was close enough that she could pick out individual words from the cacophonous mass within the stream. They were prayers offered to Veye in hope of better lives. Some were the prayers of children. Most asked for little more than another day of life to live and bread to eat. Ajira could not help but feel sick, to see these precious dreams gathered like a commodity, to be kept in storage for the koh’s desires. She idly wondered if she had been fond of prayer in her mortal life, and how many of these vases her piety had helped to fill. Ajira shook her head, and left before she had the chance to think about it anymore.
Ajira rounded a rapid series of turns and came upon a dead end, flanked on either side by life sized statues of Veye's guardians, the akamal. The ten foot tall man-like beings seemed to look down at Ajira with disdain on each of their four bestial faces. The space between the statues along the black wall was empty.
“That is not very subtle.” Ajira said beneath her breath. Ajira waited until two of the koh passed by and then approached the black wall. She let out a long exhalation and stretched her fingers, and then, in a pattern she had been practicing for days, she performed a daipelah, a hand prayer. The first and third finger of her left hand and the third and fourth finger of her right hand took turns drawing roog sigils in the air, before she reversed the fingers on either of her hands and repeated the motions backwards. The change in the black wall was nearly imperceptible, but it had softened, and what had once been a solid slab of magicked stone only a moment before was now a velvety curtain waiting to be parted. Ajira tucked her cramping hands away in her oversized sleeves. Ajira sighed, somewhat disgusted with herself for having performed the prayer, even if it was necessary for the task at hand. Then she stepped through the wall. It felt like spider webs across her flesh, even through the thick wool of the vestments. Ajira suppressed a shudder and she emerged on the other side of the wall just as it began to reshape itself into solidity.
The chamber in front of Ajira was large and domed, too large given the apparent size of the culthouse from outside. Dozens of tables and workstations were arranged around the room in concentric circles with a large ark sitting atop an altar at the room's center. The altar was plain stone, but the ark was made from gold and sapphire colored steels, and pulsing veins of some dark liquid ran in lines across its surface. There was something wrong about the room, Ajira noticed. There was a cloying scent in the air, thick and sweet, but the acrid kind of sweet of rotting flowers or freshly spilt blood. And with the scent there was something that pulled mightily on Ajira's mind, a throbbing force that the room's domed architecture seemed designed to heighten. But Ajira also realized a more immediate concern. There were three koh attending to the arcane chest and they did not look pleased to see Ajira come in through the wall.
“What is this.” The eldest of them said, more a statement than a question.
“They may be destroyed.” The voice inside Ajira pronounced with a thunderclap of judgement. Ajira allowed herself a wry smile and cast off her stolen vestments in a single flourish. Beneath she wore sheer silk leggings and a slim fitting leather cuirass banded with seraphin scales. The eyes of the koh bulged with scandal and then frosted over with contempt.
“A woman.” The eldest said.
“A foreign woman.” The second said with redoubled disgust, his eyes on her bundle of fiery hair.
“Come to soil Veye's halls with her whorish steps.” The third said. “Or to sabotage the dalaihan’s secrets.”
Ajira knew, old men they may be, foolish, prudish, and cut off from the world too, but a lifetime around relic power and magicked spaces kept their bodies full of vitality until their dying day. And the koh practiced moholodai, dream fighting, spending their sleeping hours unconsciously learning hand to hand combat and the use of killing relics. Ajira’s focus grew razor sharp to cut into the challenge before her and she charged without a word, as she had her own secrets as well. The voice in her head purred in a ripple of thunder.
The third koh pulled a knife from his vestments and threw it end over end at Ajira. The knife blazed with light and heat as it arced toward her chest. Ajira slid beneath one of the tables and watched the knife pass overhead before leaping back to her feet and continuing her full speed sprint. The third koh made a contemptuous gesture with one of his hands and Ajira could hear the blazing knife sing in obedience, freeze in the air, then reverse direction towards Ajira's back. Ajira ran straight for the third koh, faster than he had anticipated, and stopped inches away from him with her face in front of his as though she might kiss him. He panicked on a level more deeply ingrained than the part of him controlling the blazing knife, and he fumbled for what to do as Ajira dropped to her knees and watched the relic weapon plunge deep into his chest and sear his heart to ash.
The third koh hit the ground and Ajira was on her feet, grabbing the hilt of the blazing knife, spinning into a fighting stance, and slashing at the second Koh’s throat. His shocked had passed however and he was ready, stepping into the attack and parrying Ajira’s strike with the flat of his hand. He punched twice, striking the inside of Ajira’s arm, and she felt the limb go slack and the weapon fall from her hand. The second koh caught the knife in mid fall and advanced on Ajira with it. Ajira slid backward and pulled a short sword from her back. The second koh thrust twice and swept a leg low. Ajira evaded the thrusts with precise turns of her hips, then slashed low with her short sword and felt its edge bite into the second koh’s calf. Ajira pressed the advantage and stomped on the second koh’s downed knee, smashing the bones there. The second koh wailed in pain and made a wild stab for Ajira’s belly. At the same time Ajira saw the first koh out of the corner of her eye knock and fire a glittering arrow that boomed as it took flight. Ajira grit her teeth and chose to evade the arrow, turning to the side and letting it zip by inches before her eyes as the second koh’s knife punctured her armor and dug into her stomach. There was a flash of pain and Ajira rolled away before the knife could burn through her. She came up to her feet holding the wound.
The second koh clawed his way to his feet using a nearby table and leaned heavily against it, panting. The first koh stepped forward with another arrow knocked. Ajiah looked behind herself, and noticed the destruction the first arrow had wrought. A cone of tables behind her had been smashed to pieces as if caught in a battering flood. Water splashed across the ground and wooden shards were floating away. The first koh narrowed his eyes at Ajira’s wound. The flesh had been punctured but there was no blood. Instead, slow burning wisps of frost colored fire leaked out between Ajira’s fingers.
“Manna.” The first koh said, as if the word were a disgusting vulgarity.
“A vaishineph?” The second koh sputtered. “Here?”
“Who is your aihalan? The first koh asked, aiming his weapon. “Which minor god gave you life? Tell us, so that we may sing hymns of Veye’s triumph this day.”
“What difference does it make to you, koh?” Ajira said.
“Rightness makes a difference to me!” The first koh said, anger touching his voice for the first time. “We are shakod, you are profane. Your aihalan will fall to bended knee like all of the others before Veye’s word.”
“You know nothing of Veye and you will know nothing of my aihalan.” Ajira said, trying to buy more time to think.
“I am a koh of Veye.” The first koh said, something dark and hungry shadowing his face. “His wrath is my wrath. His will is my will. His word is my word.”
Ajira shut her eyes and felt the wound in her stomach knit itself closed. She stoked the burning rime that ran through her veins, felt her heart pound like a hammer on an anvil, and parted her lips just enough to exhale. And then Ajira Whispered.
A scintillating vapor the color of glowing ice left Ajira’s lips, went coiling through the air, and then plunged into the third koh’s dead eyes. The third koh’s body jerked upright and grabbed the first koh’s leg with a monstrous strength. The first koh shot his flooding arrow but his aim was disrupted and Ajira leapt to the side. The arrow blasted away another half dozen tables in an explosion of force and water. Ajira reached out a hand and another vaporous tendril followed her pointed fingers to the table the second koh was leaning against. As if the table was clay in the great and invisible hands of a master potter, it was reshaped into a large and living wooden spider, strong enough to drown the koh in the thrashing of its many splintered legs. The second koh’s eyes exploded in fear and then vanished beneath the spider’s mass as it leapt upon him and savaged his face and chest. The second koh struggled, but with his ruined leg he could find no leverage and no purchase on the smooth ground. Ajira heard him gurgling his last as she strode past him and the spider began to slow and become more like a table again. The first koh kicked away the corpse of the third, and fired another arrow. Alabaster vapor snapped the arrow in flight. Ajira leapt the remaining distance between herself and the first koh and came down slashing. The first koh abandoned his bow and gave ground, blocking with precise slaps of his hands as he tried to create some space.
Ajira hissed as she struck, advancing ruthlessly, turning one spinning kick into another as she moved across the floor like a dancer driving her partner ever backward. Ajira knew the first koh was stronger than she, likely a better fighter as well if it came down to a long exchange. Ajira knew that the first koh knew it as well, and she could see the frustration in his face slowly give way to calm, then to knowing determination, then to a moment of advantage. Ajira left a space wide open in her guard and accepted the koh’s powerful punch when it smashed against the center of her cuirass and crushed her chest beneath. Ajira could feel the bones there crack and her breath go out from her. But as she fell back in exaggerated pain and the first koh raised his hand to deliver the finishing blow, another line of vapor raced from Ajira’s lips to the third koh’s body once more.
The first koh’s hand stopped fast above his head as pain blossomed on his face and fear tore at the corner of his eyes. The third koh’s body had risen again to stand behind him, its arms wrapped around his shoulders, its mouth biting down hard on his neck. Ajira did not waste her opportunity.
“Goodbye, word of Veye.” She said. A tempest of vapor whipped from Ajira’s lips and swirled around her arm. A coiling ball of lightning crackled into being in Ajira’s outstretched hand. Shadows ran across the domed room as the ball writhed and grew, fed by Whispered words and the exultant laughter of the thundering voice in Ajira’s mind. For a moment, a pair of great eyes, terrible in beauty and hungry with desire, appeared over Ajira’s head. With a gesture, the ball of lightning in Ajira’s hand became a lance that shot clean through the first and third koh, leaving nothing but a blackened ring in their torsos. The bodies hit the ground in a smoking pile. The elemental power in the room fizzled down to nothing, and there was nothing left in its wake but the faint scent of spring clouds.
Ajira took a deep breath and coughed hard, trying to clear some of the pain in her chest.
“Well done, my good and faithful vaishineph.” The voice applauded like the sound of rain hitting tile. “You are almost done.”
Ajira moved to the ark at the room’s center and ran her fingers along the pulsing veins that formed a crest on its surface. The veins were made of some kind of animal leather, but banded in copper, and somehow thinned and dyed to the point of transparency. Ajira pressed a pattern of veins on the lid and Whispered a frosted word. With the sound of a deep, echoing clank, gears inside the chest began to move and the lid began to slide off. When it was open, plumes of smoke and skittering green light escaped from it. The smell of acrid sweetness intensified a dozen fold and Ajira had to grit her teeth to stay standing. A creature emerged from the chest, feminine and nude, skin the soft pink of a newborn child. It had four, heavy breasts covered in black scales, claws for hands and hooves for feet. The creature’s eyes had spiral irises and its dark hair ran long to barbed tips. Despite the creatures unnatural and ferocious appearance, it seemed to whimper and recoil at Ajira’s approach.
“Demon.” Ajira addressed the creature with an air of forced formality.
The demon’s face was unreadable, but it crossed its arms over its breasts as best it could and huddled down, affecting the meek manner of a terrified animal. The demon tentatively sniffed at the air and it frowned in puzzlement.
“Vaishineph.” It said, its voice sounding like three voices harmonized, pained, aroused, and curious all at once.
“I am to free you.” Ajira said.
The demon looked at her but did not reply.
“What would you do if I let you go?” She went on.
The demon’s lip quivered.
“I would abuse these ktsae - these bags of dung called koh - in all the ways they abused me ten thousand times over.” The demon’s spiral eyes began to turn. “Then I would bathe in their blood, reap their seed and raise an army of monsters to devour their families in the night. And I would sing along to the chorus of their dying screams.”
“Well.” Ajira sighed. “We cannot have that. Exactly.”
The demon deflated in disappointment.
“You can slake your thirst for revenge on the koh, here, but you will not harm any mortals in the city beyond these walls, nor any other mortal ever again.” Ajira declared. “And when you are done with the men here, you will go to the capitol of Kalm, and find the prince Avvarand. You will take his seed as he sleeps and put it in princess Sae, as your kind is wont to do. Their royal affair has been hidden, this will bring it to light.”
The demon’s head cocked to the side and its body language spoke of confusion.
“And why would I do this?”
Ajira did not know how much mortal politics was worth explaining to the demon. She shrugged as she answered.
“Avvarand is otherwise engaged. His alliances will crumble under the weight of his indiscretion. And the cult of Veye, who raised Avvarand to the throne, will be shamed.”
The demon appeared to consider.
“I need another reason.” The demon said. “A passionate one. A fiery one. I need it. Give it to me. Give it.”
Ajira did not know how to explain.
“Avvarand is a warlord and a thug.” Ajira said. “A delay in Avvarand’s alliances will buy some time for the common folk to harvest this season for themselves, before Avvarand’s war machine comes through and consumes everything in levies and taxes.”
The demon clicked its claws together.
“You will contract with me, you will scheme and move seed, all so that the peasants can eat their food for a few more moons? All so that the peasants can forget about yet another war for a few more suns?”
“Yes.” Ajira said. Her back straightened.
The demon sniffed at Ajira again, its small, pink nose twitching.
“You feel about this reason.” It said with a breathy whisper.
“Yes.” Ajira nodded.
“Hmmm.” The demon clapped its hands and rose to its full height above the ark. “Agreed.”
Ajira held out her hand and gently cut her palm with her short sword. Tiny bits of frost fire danced atop the wound. The demon took Ajira’s hand in its own. The frost fire flared and a golden choker appeared around the demon’s neck, bearing a latch with Ajia’s name on it written in calligraphic print. The demon touched it with a claw and stretched its neck. The demon smiled, a wide, unnerving smile, and somehow, Ajira could feel the voice inside her smiling back.
“How strange, the way of the earth has become.” Ajira said. And then she smiled too.
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