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half-baked-stories · 26 days ago

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The Acolytes (3,841 words)

They filed in like solemn schoolchildren, one after another after another, heads bowed and hands clasped before them. A hum filled the air, vibrating through the marble colonnades, quaking the crystal formations that flanked the High Council’s dais, and ringing in the highest, coffered domes of its vaulted ceiling.

Nimue always wondered where it came from, that otherworldly thrum. She felt it deep in her bones, in her skull, radiating with otherworldly power.

She asked one of the Senior Acolytes, back when she was still just a Fledgling in rank, but received a scornful look for her troubles. Perhaps it was some sacred knowledge to which she wasn’t privy. Perhaps they didn’t know, and were too ashamed to admit it. Now that she was herself a Senior, and force-fed more information than she could ever hope to digest, she suspected the latter.

The line came to a halt, each of her classmates turning in place until they all faced the center of the vast, round chamber. The High Council was already seated on the central dais, bathed in soft pastels as the crystal formations pulsed softly with light. Three men, three women, plus the Chancellor, although the latter stood apart from dais altogether. His robes were darker and plainer than any of the Council, and he surveyed the arrayed faces of students with uncharacteristic grimness.

Nimue knew him as more of an administrative than authoritative figure, a congenial hall-monitor that moved about the temple campus with his hands clasped in satisfaction behind him. It was the first time she’d ever seen him without a smile.

None of the Council were smiling, either. By itself, not unusual, but the mood was palpably heavier than normal. Darker.

They’d gathered everyone for a reason, and not a good one.

The hum died slowly, subsiding back into the marbled floors, the glowing crystals. Imyra, one of the women of the Council, was the first to speak.

“Acolytes. You wonder, no doubt, why you’ve been called to this convening. We wish it was for a gladder occasion.”

She stood in place, voice ringing from every column.

“Some of you already aware that two of your own, Senior Acolytes Demieres and Alessande, were dispatched from the temple two weeks ago, bound for the Great Reaches. They traveled without weapons, carrying only needed supplies to our colleagues there, and were tasked with bringing home new artifacts for study. A mission of peace. A mission to improve our understanding and reach.”

Another pause, this one punctuated by a slow, grave look around the populated curve of the room’s perimeter.

“...and yet,” she said, stepping down from the dais, moving with stalking grace. “On their return home, they were intercepted. Ambushed and captured by scouts of the Obsidian Hall.” Another look around, this one assessing. “We have tried, as your teachers and guides, to impress upon you the true nature of the Obsidian Hall and all those who study and practice within it. The blackness of their intentions. The malice in their hearts. It brings me no pleasure to stand before you today, bearing evidence — plain, irrefutable evidence — of the lengths to which our foes will sink… and why it’s so vitally important that you, my Acolytes, remain steadfast in your studies, and vigilant when you are eventually dispatched from the temple as High Mages.”

Nimue’s head turned by a half-inch as the tall doors at the chamber’s far end split inward, and two men — Acolytes Demieres and Alessandre, she assumed — were led in by four temple guards. The Senior Circle was large, several hundred students in size, so it was little surprise she didn’t recognize them. They were both tall, seemingly hardy of build, although it required the effort of all four guards to move them at anything faster than a stiff, shuffling gait.

Neither looked injured, at least from afar. There were no bruises, no abrasions, no evidence of a healer’s recent handiwork. Their vestments, though dirty and roughened from travel, bore no blood, and no evidence of abuse.

As they were forced through a slow tour of the room’s perimeter, Nimue finally saw what was so desperately amiss with both men: they stared straight ahead, expressions fixed and unflinching, their eyes so cauled by filmy white as to show only the faintest evidence of pupils beneath. There as no pain. No fear, no anguish. Only absence remained. They were corpse eyes, without soul.

“Look,” Imyra intoned, and a ripple of whispers chased the room.

Magic was forbidden inside the Council Chamber, on pain of expulsion, but Nimue would have almost risked it for the opportunity to cast a Reveal over them. Surely the Council would have already done so, coaxing out the secrets of whatever spells enshrouded and imprisoned them. One had to know and understand before one could undo.

So why the delay in curing them? Why make them suffer, parading them among their peers like condemned men before a gallows crowd? The affected Acolytes would have stories enough of whatever horrors they endured… was all this just to prove a point?

Imyra’s voice droned on, and Nimue realized she’d tuned out an entire swathe of her speech.

As she blinked back into focus, she heard, “--can only offer our heartfelt gratitude as we give these empty shells—these wights, untethered from their souls— the mercy of a swift and painless death.”

“You’re going to kill them?”

The words were out before she could stop them, and louder than she thought possible.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming silence of the chamber, or the room’s cathedral acoustics, but Imyra stopped cold to look at her. A second later the Acoltyes’ robes whispered and shuffled as each of them turned in place, or leaned out of alignment, to do the same.

Imyra’s graceful stalk brought her slowly nearer. Nimue never realized how severe the woman’s features were up close, her hair pulled back into so tight a knot that each individual strand looked ready to snap with a piano-wire twang.

She stopped before her, hands overlapped at her stomach.

“You have something of value you wish to contribute to these grave proceedings, Acolyte…Nimue, isn’t it?”

Well, she was in it now, wasn’t she? Here lies Nimue Obserian, Acolyte of the Temple of High Mages, done in by her own inability to keep her mouth shut. Just like her mother always predicted.

Nimue should have held Imyra’s gaze unflinchingly, squaring herself up to accept whatever punishment was forthcoming. Should have. Instead she looked right and left, trying not to notice the staring, tight-lipped astonishment of her classmates to either side.

Right. Time to salvage this or go home.

“With all due respect, High Mage,” she began, and Imyra’s brows vaulted high.

“You don’t say.”

“With all due respect… these men risked their very lives for the temple. For us. All of us. Do we not owe it to them to save them?”

Oh, now she was angry.

“Is the suggestion that we did not already try, Acolyte? That I and the High Council were remiss in our duty to them?”

“I didn’t say that, I—”

“Then speak plainly,” she barked, voice carrying up and up, echoing and repeating with accusation. “Tell me what deep, unique wisdom or insight you have learned, Acolyte, that all the rest of us, with our decades upon decades of real-world experience, never did.”

Nimue’s lips pursed, her breath hard and fast as she gathered herself, then tried again.

“It isn’t about what I know and you don’t. It’s about…Loyalty. We owe it to these men to keep trying. Unto exhaustion. Until every possibility has been explored, every dim hope pursued to its demise. Until there is no further evidence that anything of their essence remains.” She quailed into a series of rapid, timid blinks, then said, “Loyalty is what sets us apart from the Obsidian Hall. That is what I have learned, High Mage.”

It was a clever rebuke, and hard to come back from without seeming hypocritical. Imyra didn’t like it, but she couldn’t refute it.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to.

“High Mage,” said the Chamberlain, appearing at her elbow, as if from shadow. “If I might have a word?”

Imyra’s black gaze stayed fixed on Nimue for seconds longer before she turned archly away, letting the Chamberlain guide her aside for the duration of a low, urgent, muttered exchange

Nimue didn’t dare sigh in relief, sneaking another look to her right and left as the other Acolytes continued to goggle at her as openly as they dared. The noose wasn’t quite around her neck, just yet, but she could already see the internal calculations of how long she’d struggle and swing before she was finally and truly dead. They’d be taking bets, if they could.

When Imyra spoke again, she nearly jumped from her skin.

“You are fortunate indeed, Acolyte.”

Nimue breathed out. “Madam?”

“Chamberlain Jarl brings it to my attention that you are in the Senior ranks. Very nearly ready for graduation, aren’t you?”

“Very nearly,” she agreed, hesitant.

“He has suggested, in his wisdom and—dare I say it, mercy—that perhaps we ought to serve you your Final Trial early. Since you seem to have learned so very much already.”

Nimue didn’t quite follow her, but trembled her head in a nod.

“If the Council is so inclined...”

She smiled, all teeth and no mirth. “Brilliant. Then I look forward to you showing us, Acolyte, the length and breadth of your evidently vast knowledge. Hopefully before it causes your own ruin.”

Imyra didn’t give Nimue the opportunity to respond. She clapped her hands at the level of her shoulder, and with delayed reflex the other Acolytes snapped to attention at the room’s perimeter, facing smartly forward.

“As for the rest of you,” she announced, voice commanding the room with its reach and reverberation. “In the coming days, I urge you to remind Acolyte Nimue of the importance of self-reliance as she approaches this, her Final Trial, the ultimate and essential proof that she is — as you all must be — ready to wear the mantle of a High Mage.”

She paused, clarifying primly to Nimue, “...which is to say: no cheating.”

And again, to the rest of the room, “You are dismissed. May the Great Light be with each of you.”

“And with you,” they droned as one, a chorus almost lost beneath the shuffling, whispering egress of boots and vestments.

Nimue, still too stunned to respond, stumbled under the press of Acolytes behind her. The Chamberlain stepped in, catching her elbow, and extracted her from the procession before it could carry her too swiftly out the door.

“Not you,” he chided, but with a smile.

“Chamberlain Jarl—”

“Shh,” he hushed, tapping the air with the flat of his hand. “Let the room empty out.” He looked past her, the whites of his eyes vivid. “Including the Council. I think we’ve seeded enough gossip for one night, don’t you?”

She hid her face in her hands, stifling a groan.

The Chamberlain took pity on her, standing in patient silence as the students snaked out of the room and—after a few minutes of bitter, muttering conversation amongst themselves—the High Council took their leave as well. Nimue was left alone with him, at last.

Well. Him and the two condemned men.

Jarl observed her without disappointment or anger, letting her stew in her own quiet misery before clasping his hands at his back.

“Well, Imyra said most of everything there is to say, I think. Perhaps more crisply and succinctly than I would have, but…” He shrugged. “You got the gist of it, I trust?”

Nimue looked past him, to the two wight-eyed Acolytes still standing where the guards had parked them like carriage horses. There was no indication at all that they’d heard the pronouncement of their own fate or—if they had—that it meant anything to them. She couldn’t bring herself to be glad for their ignorance.

“If I understand her meaning,” she said. “I’m being tasked with curing them. With bringing them back from the depths of… this. Whatever this is.”

He turned to look at the men as well, sighing.

“On the surface, yes, that’s the broad stroke. With your success, of course, you’d be granted your mantle. Even Imyra, who does love to hold a grudge, would be only too pleased to entitle you as a High Mage, after that feat.” His eyes returned to her, once again with scrutiny. “Which is to say, of course, it will not be easy.”

She said quietly, “I’d gathered that.”

“No no.” One finger wagged at her with fatherly admonition. “You misunderstand, or perhaps just underestimate, what I mean by not easy. Even with full faith in your abilities, Nimue, there lies before you a deep, dark ocean of unplumbed magic. And, like any unknowable waters, you will be tasked with finding safe passage across it before the creatures lurking in its depths come for you first.”

Nimue tried to swallow that, but it stuck in her throat like a hard, dry pill.

She said, “Come again?”

He rocked, thoughtful, on the balls of his feet.

“What do you know about Wighting?”

“What do I know about it?” He jaw worked wordlessly for a few seconds. “I know…of it.”

“Hm. Probably a failing on our part that we don’t teach you the ins and outs of such magic. Now isn’t the time or place, but… suffice it to say, one does not merely hollow out a body without also—in time—inviting itinerant spirits into it, like hermit crabs looking for more suitable shells.” He twisted at the waist, looking at the Acolytes in question. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps some vestige of the men they were remains inside them… hidden. Buried. Eroded, but not beyond restoration. The point is, at some point the soul will either give up, and slither off this mortal coil, or… something. Something. Will investigate the space it occupied, and make itself at home.”

Nimue tried again to swallow it, and again she failed.

“Something ill-intentioned, I’m guessing.”

“I would not want to be in close company, when it settles in.”

NImue crossed the chamber slowly, and Jarl drifted along behind her at a comfortable, casual pace.

“How… will I know?”

“Oh,” he said, quietly confident. “You will know.”

“How long?”

He opened his hands outward, helpless.

“I cannot say. We will open every far corner of the temple libraries to you, of course—you can’t avail yourself of the assistance of other students but, by all means, use every other resource available. I’m sure the information exists somewhere. It’s been an age since I myself studied the magic but… perhaps a week? If the soul is not restored in some appreciable way, by then, I would… tread carefully.” He smiled, sympathetic and pained. “At the very least, I would make sure he is well-secured at all times.”

Nimue studied the men, scrying their faces, her fingers twitching at her sides with want to get started. But…not now. Certainly not here. She’d already chanced expulsion once today.

Something occurred to her, and she turned on him, troubled.

“Wait. You said him. You mean them.”

He hesitated. Sighed.

“Imyra is not beyond reason but—being very honest with you—that does not actually make her reasonable. I could only convince her to allow you access to one of them.”

Nimue stepped back, a hand at her stomach.

“One of them? Which one? And what… what’s going to happen to the other one?”

Again he hesitated. Sighed. Nimue started to argue, but he shut it down with a hand splayed in the air between them.

“I have no part in this, no power, and no say. And before you contemplate the wisdom of appealing to the mercies of the High Council, I would advise you—no. Nimue. I would implore you: cut your losses. Be grateful for this chance. Pursue, as vigorously and earnestly as possible, the opportunity you’ve been given. But in all other regards, let it go.”

He looked at her kindly. Emphatically. “None of us would be any better for losing three Acolytes in this tragedy.”

She looked again upon both men, silent and still and soulless as the colonnades that studded the chamber’s perimeter. They were no older or younger than her, precisely where she was in her studies. They had all the same hopes and dreams and good intentions. They had family, somewhere, that loved them. That would mourn them.

And now she was committing one of them to death.

By what arbitrary factors could she even make such a decision? Pick the more handsome one? Or the one who didn’t quite catch her eye, thereby paying dues for all the times she wasn’t pretty enough to be someone’s first choice. Should she wonder aloud which of them had more family to miss them? Whose history was more tragic? Who was the better student, and more likely to redeem himself, if saved?

The Chamberlain watched her, unsmiling but soft, attuned to her conflict.

“Nimue,” he prompted.

“I must chose one?” she whispered.

“I’m afraid so.” He looked as well, breathing in deeply, then joined her in gazing at them as they unknowingly awaited their fate. “Which one will you save?”

*******

His name was Demieres Ashe, and the Chamberlain knew nothing else about him. Or perhaps he did, and kept it wisely to himself, foreseeing the knots Nimue would tie herself into over every small detail.

He was the more handsome of the two, she thought, and felt immediately bad about it. It wasn’t the only reason she picked him, but after leading him from the chamber, abandoning Alessandre’s to his fate, it was the only one she couldn’t forgive.

The whole affair was so much more complicated than she expected, both for better and for worse.

For one thing, the Chamberlain removed her from the women’s dormitory, secreting her — and her ward — in a far, disused storage room of the basement archives. Normally Nimue would have embraced the solitude, but there was little luxury to their new accommodations. It had what it needed—a small woodstove mounted on a stone hearth, two serviceable beds and room enough for her to work her craft—but not much else. The door was iron-barred, far heavier than seemed necessary for a storage room, but Jarl intimated it was a necessary precaution if things should go awry.

“Is this for my safety, or everyone else’s?” she asked.

“There are far too many variables for me to answer that question,” he said. “But not to worry. In the worst case, the door isn’t so heavy that we won’t hear the screams.”

Before the Chamberlain left, there was one final matter that required settlement: an Oath of Stewardship.

“When Acolyte Demieres joined the temple to begin his studies, he was required—as are all students—to make a binding Oath that the temple would, in good faith, maintain stewardship over him and his fate, should it ever veer off the chosen path. Either by his choice or… at the hand of outside forces. It’s a safety measure, you see, in light of the not-inconsiderable power placed in your hands, as students of magic.”

“And it was as his Stewards that you were going to kill him, as well, wasn’t it?” Nimue asked. An uncomfortable question, and he disliked her phrasing, but to his credit he didn’t shy from it.

“That’s part of the Oath, as well. Mercy is both our means and—when necessary—our ends.”

Now that Stewardship was passed to her.

“You become, now, the master of his fate,” he intoned, watching gravely as she signed the Oath, a pact as sacrosanct as the one that forbade magic from the High Council chambers. The stakes for abusing this one, however, were far graver than mere expulsion.

“I suppose that means I’m equally responsible if his fate is something other than salvation,” Nimue said. Jarl smiled grimly.

“I’m glad we understand each other.”

Once formal details of the arrangement were put to rest, Nimue still faced all new and unforeseen obstacles.

For one thing, ensorcelled or not, Demieres very much had to eat and drink. And toilet. And exist in spaces that could be either too hot, or too cold, without ever being able to move away, or express himself in even infantile ways.

The room was chilly, should he be closer to the fire? How often did he need to be rotated, to avoid browning on one side like a goose on a spit? What number of blankets at night were the right amount? When did he get hungry? Thirsty? How the hell would she feed him?

It was a steep and humbling learning curve indeed, mitigated only by trial, error, and a lot of averting her eyes. And several changes of clothes.

The first night, after an hour of coaxing the smallest possible sips of broth and water through his lips—and even then getting it all the hell over both of them—she sat knee-to-knee with him by the dwindling fire. Just enough of his pupils were visible through the white caul to see their absent fix dead ahead, but not so much that she could detect their color. Nimue gazed into them, hoping for some spark of recognition, some faint ember of hope still glowing in their depths. But there was nothing.

She put her hands up, patty-cake style, index fingers aligned. With a deep gather of breath into her lungs she closed her eyes, separating her hands as if clearing condensation from a misty window.

When she reopened them, the air around him glowed with magic.

Reveal spells were useful, but they were only the first step in the arduous process of not just understanding what sorcery was at work, but how to undo it. Under the veil of the spell, wheels filigreed with luminous, spun-gold runes appeared to rotate around him, each at its own pace, as if he’d been painstakingly installed into the gears of a doomsday clock.

“I should be used to this by now,” she murmured, reaching up delicately, pinching and pulling at the runes like individual spiderweb strands. Experimenting. Sometimes a rune stretched and pulled from its wheel, vanishing, leaving a gap. More often it was simply replaced with a duplicate. At times the entire clockwork of it seized up, rejecting her manipulation, and she had to start again. It was a game of memory and skill alike.

“...not the spellwork part,” she continued, finding comfort in the sound of her own voice. Perhaps he heard her in the distant storage room of his own mental archives. Perhaps it comforted him too. “Undoing someone else’s magic was one of the first things they taught us, as you probably remember. No, I mean… sitting here, talking to someone who can’t talk back. Who might not even be able to hear me.”

Nimue’s gaze drifted, focusing through the cartwheel spin of sigils, finding his face.

“I hope it turns out better for you than it did for them.”

What happened to the rest of this? As I get closer to finishing this story -- and eventually to proofing and preparing it for print -- I've pulled down all the additional chapters that were printed. Once completed, a link will be provided to the finished work. Thank you for following along, I hope you've enjoyed it!

#writing #creative writing #original fiction #high fantasy #fantasy

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