The Catholic Jedi

Last time, things got steamy. This time, they get awkward. Join Nala in this chapter of my serialized dark fantasy, Our Sister’s Mage.

This is my draft, so expect to see thing change in the final version. Have a thought to make it better? Let me know in the comments!

New here? Start with Chapter 1.

Our Sister’s Mage – Chapter 6

Nala thanked Deidre it wasn’t so cold that morning as she opened her door into the hallway.  Waking early was never easy, and readying the shrine was always cold, so any increase in temperature was a boon.  She longed for the summer as the air warmed and the sun rose earlier.

She also wanted to sleep more.  Her rest had been disturbed ever since the Dark One appeared, of course, but it hadn’t returned to normal after its rescue. Nala found herself on edge still.

The door thudded shut behind her as she looked down the hall, away from the kitchen.  Soft candle light drifted under Inkeri’s door.  She’s up early.  The mage had not woken before dawn all week. Nala wanted to speak with the mage more about the Venandi, but Inkeri was not around, and did not seem talkative with the young acolyte.  At least she didn’t still seem angry about Nala remaining at the dock during the rescue.

Nala turned the other direction, padded down the hallway, and pushed open the door to the kitchen.  She yelped and shuffled back.  The low fire in the hearth illuminated a tall man with long, dark hair as he stuffed a bite of bread into his mouth.   

He faced her, eyes wide. “Bad time to be hungry,” he said around the bread.

Before she could scream, he dropped the bread, spun, and bolted toward the door to the worship area.  He tripped over the bench at his feet, and then slammed into the table. A pitcher and a few cups dropped to the ground, shattered, and sprayed ale across the room.  He recovered and began again, this time avoiding the furniture.

Her mind, suddenly awake, sped through the scene.  There was a man in the kitchen!  What was he doing?  Had he been in the hallway?  Where was he going?  “Stop!” 

He didn’t look back as pushed through the wooden door into the worship area. 

“Cleric Kennet!” Nala dropped her unlit candle and started after the man, her shoes sliding on the ale covered stone floor.  “Inkeri!”

She ran through door and followed him into the worship area. Did she know him?  He seemed familiar.

The man continued straight across the room and toward the door to the garden.  Dim starlight provided the only light, and he narrowly avoided running into another bench.  His long hair swept behind him as he attempted to escape.

“Nala!” Inkeri called from somewhere behind her.

Good, she’s alright! Nala’s light feet carried her past the familiar benches as the man crashed through the outside door, knocking it free of the small latch which kept it in place.  Moonlight bathed him in the instant before he turned left.  It was the man she’d seen in town at the stream; the one with the wicked smile.

 Nala darted into the garden.  She’d want to tell the mage where he’d gone.

Shoeless, he laughed and continued straight east past the rows of flowers, aiming to go down the side of the hill instead of taking the stairs.  There was a cliff on that side; there was no safe path down.

She kept him in sight as he ran through the flowers and into the trees beyond, the ground cover growing denser with each step.  Nala stumbled over a branch and slowed.  The hill ahead began to drop and he continued to speed forward, apparently unaware of the upcoming fall.

“Nala!” Inkeri called again.  It sounded like the she’d made it outside the shrine.

“Inkeri!” Nala yelled back, then slowed more to watch the man as he sprinted toward the edge.

With feet to spare, he stopped.  He turned and looked back at Nala.   Then he winked. 

Nala realized she didn’t have a plan for what to do when she caught up to him.  She hoped Inkeri would get there soon.  She stopped and raised her hands to defend herself, if he attacked.

He grinned. Then disappeared.

The smell of burnt leaves wafted over Nala as she blinked against the darkness, and the cold outside air finally registered against her skin. 

A mage?

~~~

“He is not a mage.”  Cleric Kennet paced in the small confines of the kitchen.  His green robes did not drift across the floor as usual, as his shoulders tensed toward his ears.  He glared at Inkeri, who stood with her arms crossed in the door to the hallway.  “He has not been in the Venandi in over twenty years.”

“But he teleported.” Nala stood on the opposite side of the room, confused.  The man wasn’t an intruder, but Inkeri’s lover, who could teleport, but now wasn’t a mage?  “Only mages can teleport.”

“We’ll get to that,” Cleric Kennet snapped.  He spun and continued.  Nala had never seen him move so quickly.

Ulla swept in from the storage room with a box and towels. She dropped a towel on top of the largest puddle of ale, then calmly bent to collect broken shards of plates and cups   The Kalderi remained unhurried, even as the tension in the room grew.

Cleric Kennet pointed at Inkeri, voice rising in volume. “You ought to be helping her. This is your fault.”

Ulla smiled up at the Cleric before Inkeri could respond. “I don’t need any help, Cleric Kennet.  Maybe you all could take your discussion to a larger room?”

“I will not talk about this in the worship area” he said.  “Someone might hear that our beloved heroic mage had sex with an apostate right here in the shrine.”

Nala’s ears burned with embarrassment for Inkeri, Cleric Kennet, and the shrine.  She didn’t know who the man was, but Cleric Kennet had never called anybody an apostate.  Was he a Harbinger?  Surely Inkeri had not slept with a Harbinger of the Divine.

Inkeri kept her arms crossed and leaned against the doorway.   “They’re going to hear you out there anyway.”

“Who is he?” Nala asked quietly, hoping to make more sense of the morning.

Cleric Kennet reddened, but didn’t drop his voice. “And what is he doing in Vasti?”

And why did you sleep with him in the shrine? Nala wondered.

“His name is Wesley,” Inkeri said to Nala.  “And he’s living here peacefully.  Minding his business.”

“I doubt that very much.” Cleric Kennet said.

“Why?” Inkeri asked. “Because he decided not to be a mage?”

“You can’t just up and decide not to be a mage!” Cleric Kennet clenched his hands. “Not at that stage.  You know that.”

Ulla stopped picking up pieces, but didn’t look up.  Her son was a mage; did she know any who had quit?

Inkeri said, “Clerics always think they know how the Venandi work, but you have no idea.”

Nala had read about Venandi who had quit.  They usually died.  Why would they leave after the Goddess selected them, anyway?

“It is a tragedy the Venandi did not hunt him down and arrest him,” Cleric Kennet said.

“For what?” Inkeri asked. “We let our students leave, if they want.”

“After what he did—“

Inkeri stood upright and dropped her arms.  “That was three years before he left.”

“I suppose you’ll still say it was an accident?” Cleric Kennet waved his hand in the air. “That he didn’t plan to leave all along?”

“Of course it was an accident!” Inkeri stepped forward.  “He was trying to help!”

What was the accident?  Nala thought better of asking; now Inkeri’s face grew red to match Cleric Kennet’s

“Helping got that boy killed!” Cleric Kennet yelled.  “What was his name?”

Inkeri stepped forward.

Cleric Kennet didn’t move. “Luca, wasn’t it?”

“Let it go, Kennet!”

“He was old enough to understand what would happen!”  Cleric’s Kennet spit flew at the mage.

“And so was Luca!”  They were both only sixteen!  Younger than this one when she stupidly didn’t leave during that rescue, and you let that pass!”

Nala’s neck flushed and she opened her mouth to defend herself.  Again.

“Can you all step back?” Ulla asked from the floor.  “I need to wipe down that part.”

The tension dropped somewhat at her intrusion, looking up so innocently from their feet.  She smiled, and nodded at Nala, willing the girl back.  Cleric Kennet shuffled a step away and Inkeri returned to the door frame.

There wasn’t any reason to bring up Nala and the docks again.  Nobody had died.  It sounded like somebody had when this Wesley did whatever he did as a teen.  Still, that was a long time ago.

“Did his symbol rebel? Can he still use it?”  Cleric Kennet remained angry, but his voice returned to an almost normal volume.

Inkeri shook her head and dropped her arms. “If a mage loses their symbol, the symbol doesn’t ‘rebel,’ as if it has a mind of its own.  The body just rejects it, like it would anything else burned into your flesh.”

“But does he have it?”  Cleric Kennet asked.

Inkeri would know.  She’d seen him naked.  But she didn’t answer and the tension rose in the silence.

Dedire no longer offered protection for those who abandoned their duty.  The metal holy symbol burned into their chest reacted the way it would on anyone else, which was badly.  She’d read it would burn anew, just as it did when applied.  It would fall off, or they’d rip it off, and the whole area would get infected. 

“How would he teleport without it?” Nala asked.

Inkeri and Cleric Kennet both stared at her interruption.

“There is another way.” Cleric Kennet turned and stormed through the door into the worship area.  “Let’s go look at the garden.”

Inkeri worked her jaw back and forth as she stared over Ulla and past Nala.  She clamped it shut and stared at her.  “After you.”

Nala pulled up the hem of her robe and crossed over the spilled ale she’d slid on earlier, now sticky as it dried.  Inkeri’s boots stomped behind her as she entered the worship area, where Rosemary sat on the front bench pretending not to listen.  She caught Nala’s eye and smiled as she passed.

Cleric Kennet finally slowed as he crossed the room, the movement aggravating whatever pains a man of his age must have.  His shoulders remained rigid in anger though, and Nala couldn’t blame him.  Whoever this Wesley was, or used to be, should not have been in the shrine.  Inkeri definitely should not have slept with him at all, much less there!

The door to the garden remained open, the hinges damaged by Wesley’s flight.  Cleric Kennet stepped through without touching it, and Nala followed.  It banged against the side wall as Inkeri came through, shoving it out of her way.

Nala squinted against the sun as it rose on the other side of the trees, illuminating the garden.  Wesley’s path through he flowers lay clear; there was a dent in the brush where he’d fallen.  He was a tall man and he’d bent or torn free above-ground branches and trampled down anything on the ground.

Cleric Kennet stopped where Nala had that morning and put his hands on his hips.  “Not a mage at all.”

Nala stood next to him.  All the plants in a twenty foot circular area in front of her drooped and wilted, moving toward death, like it had not seen water in weeks and had suffered under the afternoon sun.  The leaves on the three oaks in the area also reached toward the ground, with a few already falling.  The ground itself lay scorched in a symmetric pattern, like lightning had struck there.

“It wasn’t like this earlier,” Nala said.  What caused this?

“The ground probably was,” Cleric Kennet said, “but you weren’t looking for it and it was dark.  The rest takes some time.”

Inkeri joined them and her eyes scanned the ground.  She took a step back and crossed her arms again, but couldn’t cover her surprise.

“He’s not a mage,” Cleric Kennet repeated.  “He’s the Blight.”

~~~

Nala leaned over the only document in the shrine which referenced the Blight.  The script was tiny and hard to read; the effect of a tired copyist bored with their duties, according to Cleric Kennet.  They’d received it three years earlier and she’d read it then, but thought to review it after the appearance of this Wesley.

Four candles and an oil lamp offered a bit more light than the single window in the far back room of the living quarters.  The room sat net to Inkeri’s, at the end of the hall, and was twice the size of any of the bedrooms.  A wooden door remain propped open so Nala could see down the hall, though it lay dark as the door to the dining area was closed.  Shelves, desks, and stacks of paper lay somewhat haphazardly around the space.  Cleric Kennet wasn’t much for organization.

She dropped her head back to the parchment.  The Blight.  They didn’t call themselves that, of course, but the Clerics had named them, apparently based on the destruction they brought to the ground around them.  No one knew if they had a name for themselves.

“Keep an eye out for their practitioners in rural areas.” The report was an informational bulletin from the Church of the Goddess, probably sent out to every shrine on record.  “We’ve all but eliminated them from cities, so they flee to villages and towns, seeking coin there for their dark services.”

What were these dark services?  Did they call the Dark Ones?  Was Wesley the cause of the Dark One in Vasti?

Cleric Kennet had been too angry to explain, but he thought it likely.  Inkeri teleported at the edge of the cliff when he started yelling, and had not returned to the shrine in the hours since.  Cleric Kennet went back to the worship area to pace.  Nala did what she always did when stressed – try to figure everything out all at once.

The door to the kitchen swung open and Liam’s outline appeared in the hallway.  He strode toward the library and offered a tired a smile at Nala.

“Did you walk all the way up here to see me?” She asked.

“Of course.” Liam slumped down into the chair across from her, or as much as he ever would slump. “And I had to speak with Cleric Kennet about the party.”

“So, not for me.” She smiled.

“I’m still happy to see you, though.”

“How is the party planning going?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said. “Mayor [name] is very particular about the details.  She wants to impress Inkeri.”

“Of course she does.  But Inkeri won’t care.” Inkeri didn’t care about sleeping with a heretic, she sure wouldn’t care about a party.

He shrugged.  “Appearance is everything, she says.”

“What will you have to do?  Will you get to eat?”

“Maybe,” he said.  “We’re setting up all the tables and making sure they’re all aligned.  Then we’re to make sure nobody gets too drunk, and when they do, they find their way home.”

She laughed.  “Everybody is going to get drunk. The Dark One is gone.”

“So true,” he said. “I don’t really mind, I suppose.  It is good experience.  And the soldiers like doing something to honor the Venandi.”

The Empire’s military and the Venandi had always been close, a fact which doomed the Clerics in the war with the mages a thousand years earlier.  Deidre had blessed the Venandi with their skills a hundred years prior to that war, and they immediately rejected the authority of the Clerics.  The military sided with the mages, and the Venandi and Church of the Goddess had been separate since.

Liam rolled his head back and forth and rubbed his neck.  “Cleric Kennet seems to be in a mood.”

“Oh?” Nala wasn’t sure what Cleric Kennet would tell Liam about the morning’s events.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him as angry as he was when I walked in.  He demanded I tell Lt Hayden he needs to see him, and he wants somebody arrested.”

“It is a man named Wesley.” Nala knew Cleric Kennet was angry, but he’d not mentioned involving the army in finding Wesley.  “He’s that man you thought I was looking at from our rock.”

“What did he do?”  It took a serious crime for the army to get involved.  Most legal issues were handled by the town.

“He uses deviant magic,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“He is able to teleport, and who knows what else.” She didn’t blame Liam for not knowing; she hadn’t known much before that morning.  “But it isn’t from the Goddess.”

“I thought teleporting was from the Goddess.”

Only Venandi were known to teleport, and they received their power from the Goddess.  “They don’t serve her and it doesn’t come from her.  We’re not sure how they do it.”

She stumbled on the “we” of the statement, as she’d only heard it that morning from Cleric Kennet.  Her mind wandered to how wonderful a real library would be, and the things she could learn at school.  Then her stomach sank at the thought.  She wasn’t ready to leave.

“I’ve never heard of them,” he said.  “I feel like the military should know about something that serious.”

“There apparently aren’t that many of them.”  And they didn’t do anything to attract the attention of anyone.  The Church of the Goddess needed to get rid of them anyway.  Cleric Kennet wasn’t as clear as why, but if the Clerics thought they were dangerous, they probably were. “They’re called the Blight.”

“Odd name.”

“They destroy the nature around them to use their power” Nala thought about taking him outside to show the pattern on the ground, but he looked tired.

He looked around. “Did he use it here?”

“Yes,” she said, “and he slept with Inkeri.”

A mix of confusion and something else crossed Liam’s face.  “Well, I’ll tell Lt. Hayden.  Not sure he can do much about it.”

“We think he may be involved with the Dark One.”  Another “we,” though Nala agreed with Cleric Kennet on this.

“Why?” Liam asked.

“Well, why else would he be here?  And why else would we have a Dark One?”

Liam crossed his arms. “What does Inkeri think?”

“She’s sleeping with him, so she thinks he’s great.”

He glanced over his shoulder down the hall. “Did she sleep with him here?”

“Yes, in her room!”

He scowled. “That is so strange.”

“It is disgusting,” she said.

“The sex?” He dropped his voice on the second word.

“No, that they did it here.” In the shrine.  Who has sex in a shrine?  With somebody like Wesley.  “And he’s a heretic.  She doesn’t care, though.”

Why didn’t she care?  She’d gone to school with him, but he’d apparently done something terrible there, too.

“Does his magic affect her?” he asked.  “Is that why she doesn’t care?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”  That was a disturbing thought.  If the Blight could affect others and what they thought, and he’d blinded a Venandi to his evil, it would be a disaster.  She’d never heard of such power, though.  “I’m not sure we know what his magic can do.”

“Great.  You be careful,” Liam said.  “If he shows up again, don’t talk to him.  Call for help.”

“From who?”  Inkeri was on Wesley’s side, and Cleric Kennet and Ulla were old.

His face sank.  “I’m not sure.  But be careful.  I’ll try to get Lt Hayden to take more of an interest in him.  Let us know what you find out about this cult or whatever it is.”

“Thank you,” Nala said. She stared down the hall, wondering how she could investigate the deviant without talking to him or involving Inkeri.