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  “Her level of training is remarkable,” Eduin said to his father, after two weeks. “And the way of fighting too; it doesn’t resemble our way at all. It makes me think of the Wanderers. Vio mentioned that she knows one of them.”

  “Dochia.” Foy was thoughtful, and his fingers drummed the table. “Idonie said that she is the most powerful Wanderer in Frankis, and part of their Council. That’s all she was willing to say.”

  “Idonie is a fine girl, but the Wanderers have their own rules.”

  “I have never asked her to break the rules, and I never will. The Wanderers never do anything without a reason. If Dochia trained Vio, she must consider her ... special.” Foy looked at his son, his eyes crinkling with silent laughter.

  “So, you finally believe me,” Eduin grinned.

  “When did I say that? Young men are unreliable, and even unstable, where beautiful girls are concerned. See how much you can learn from her.”

  Eduin was attracted to Saliné, but he also tried to stay away from her. She could be no more than his mistress, and she looked too proud to accept such a relationship. He kept his feelings to himself, unable to see that whatever charm or magic she held, it worked against him.

  Chapter 9 – Dochia

  Dochia’s new life in Nerval was both different and hard to bear. Meriaduk, the High Serpentist Priest really did look like a snake to her, and she had to pretend to be a loyal Serpentist acolyte. It was the task Ada, the Second Light of the Arenian Wanderers, and the strongest living Wanderer, had given her. She was ordered to come to the Sanctuary and help Codrin to stop the Fracture. After years of collecting information through Visions or by using spies, both Wanderers and Assassins had come to the same conclusion: this Fracture was about the nomads using Talant artifacts to conquer the continent for the Serpent God. It was not enough that the Khad of the nomads could muster an army of two hundred thousand riders; they had now things like the Maleteras to help them communicate at distance. And Dochia still did not know what other artifacts Meriaduk had been able to bring to life in the Sanctuary.

  There was also the issue of Ai’s magic powers sneaking around and inside her mind, which was so similar with what the Maletera did to her; yet she could not complain about Ai, at least not yet. The young woman – Dochia guessed that she was young, even very young, as they had never met – seemed to be strange but kind. And powerful too. Dochia still remembered the moment when Ai spoke directly in her mind for the first time, on that day when she entered the Sanctuary, to meet Meriaduk. The magic in the Maletera was evil, dirty, like Meriaduk, who used it on her. Ai’s magic was not. At least not yet. And they never spoke, in the real sense of using sounds, when there were people around Dochia. The Wanderer, who had quite a logical mind, could not understand the reason for that rule, as Ai had enough magic power to speak at distance, making herself heard even when she was faraway. It was also true that Dochia never actually knew how far Ai was when she spoke to her. The elusive young woman could be in the next room, or in the next building, or Fate knew where. Or the Serpent.

  “Why won’t you speak to me when other people are present?” Dochia asked her for the tenth time. They were alone, and she could hear Ai’s voice filling her room. There was no point from where she could identify the voice, it was everywhere in the room, another kind of magic that made Dochia wonder.

  “It’s dangerous,” Ai said, again.

  “Why is it dangerous?”

  “Because it’s dangerous.”

  At least Ai never tried to take over her mind; as Meriaduk had done, using the Maletera, and left her unconscious for three days, when she was in the Alba Hive of Silvania. It was only Dochia’s strength that saved her from having her mind corrupted and becoming a slave of Meriaduk. The memory of Splendra, the Third Light of the Frankis Wanderers, was still fresh in her mind. The poor woman had acted like Meriaduk was always in her mind, telling her what to do. And even fresher were the memories of the servants she saw in the Serpent Temple, what Meriaduk called the Sanctuary. Most of them were enslaved by the Maletera and they could not oppose Meriaduk’s will, or that of his most trusted priests. They took any woman they wanted at will. The women never resisted. There was pain and disgust in their eyes, but they never resisted. Dochia once heard a woman complaining to another about the dirty things one pervert priest did to her. The woman stopped talking when she came close; Dochia was an apprentice priestess, working for Meriaduk, and hated by the servants, as most of the priests were. Ai was not like Meriaduk, never tried to enslave her, yet Dochia still feared her. A little. Or maybe more than a little.

  “When will I find out why it’s dangerous?” Dochia asked. In time, she had realized that sometimes, by reformulating the question in a slightly different way, she could convince Ai to give her more clues, like being rewarded for something she could not yet understand.

  “When you are ready.”

  I will never be ready.

  “Let’s go, now. I want to show you another part of the Sanctuary.”

  “How large is the Sanctuary?” That was another question which never received an answer.

  “Very large.”

  Dochia opened the door of her room and went out into the corridor, knowing that from now on, Ai would speak in her mind again. She asked once if Ai was always in her mind, even when they were not speaking to each other.

  “What should I do that?” Ai answered with her own question. “There are more interesting things to learn than your thoughts, and it’s time-consuming. Why do you fear me? I always let you know when I enter into your mind.”

  “But you can enter without letting me know.”

  “I could try, but I think that you would sense it. You have a strong mind, and you are trained. I never met a Wanderer before. Are all of them like you?”

  “We are as different as people in general are different.”

  “Turn to the right,” Ai said in her mind, and Dochia started, the memory of the past conversation fading away.

  She turned right. As Meriaduk’s acolyte, she had a large room close to the core of the Sanctuary, and she knew this section well enough to understand that they were leaving the central area. After a while, she turned right again, into a different corridor. The length of these passageways always unsettled her; the most impressive one she had seen was almost three hundred feet long. Even the Royal Palace in Muniker, the largest construction she had ever entered before coming to the Sanctuary, was a small place compared to this. The main dome alone, which Meriaduk called Prainos, would host half of the Royal Palace.

  “Turn left now.” Dochia obeyed and walked for another minute. “Wait.”

  “Why?”

  “There are two priests in the next corridor.”

  Dochia was surprised; that was the first time that Ai had let slip a negative thought about the Serpentist Priests. Did Meriaduk try to enslave Ai? Was she able to overcome the Maletera too?

  “I can hear you.” Ai’s voice was childish and exuberant, like she was amused by Dochia’s thought. “Ask me to open the door.”

  “What door?” There was no door in front of her.

  “Just ask me.”

  “Open the door,” Dochia said, and a crack appeared in the wall in front of her. It was just a slit at first, into which she could barely squeeze her hand. It widened slowly, leaving an empty space, resembling a door. Dochia felt her throat dry with fear. There was fear in her eyes, fear in her mind. She felt paralyzed, and she had to muster all her long training just to keep her legs moving. Eyes closed, she breathed deeply a few times and forced herself to step through the door. The door closed behind her, and Dochia turned quickly, deep fear gnawing at her. The door was no more, and her hands fumbled over the wall, trying to find the crack and open it. “Ai, open the door,” she rasped, not realizing that she was speaking aloud. The door opened, and Dochia’s breath slowed down. In a few moments, she was calm again.

  Dochia understood magic; after all, she was able to see the future.
It came to her with almost no effort. She knew that a Seer was able to fly over the land with his mind and see faraway places. And he could control his Farsight. She knew about the unclean magic of the Maletera, which could control minds, and was so similar to Ai’s magic; but what had just happened was different, this was touching something material, opening a hole in a wall, then filling it back in. She knew of no magic that could create a door in a wall. She knew of no magic that could directly affect the material world. For the Wanderers, magic was always about the mind. The implication of what she had seen was staggering.

  “What do you want me to do?” Dochia finally asked.

  “There is no one here, so we can speak normally again. Turn right and walk to the end of the corridor.”

  “Why are there so many corridors?” Dochia asked, walking again.

  “Because they needed them.”

  “Who needed them?”

  “The people who built the Sanctuary.”

  “Were they from the Talant Empire?”

  “There was no such Empire, but yes they were from what you call the Talant Empire.”

  “Then what should I call them?”

  “Turn right now.”

  Why is she keeping so many things secret? Dochia turned, and another door opened in front of her. It was like before; the door wasn’t there until it was there. She entered the new corridor, and the door closed behind her. This time, she strained to hear the closing door; Dochia had no terms yet with which to describe the process, but it was opening and closing. The sound was faint, resembling heavy cloth rubbing over wood. The ‘door’ didn’t look like a door, and it didn’t sound like a door either. “How can I open a door without you?”

  “You can’t.”

  “I can’t, or I am not allowed? What can I do if I am caught here, and you are away?”

  “You can’t be caught here when I am away,” Ai laughed, “because you can’t enter here. After you learn more about the Sanctuary, I will teach you how to open some of the hidden doors.”

  Hidden doors... There are special places where you can pass through the walls, Dochia thought. Perhaps the material of the walls is weaker or thinner, so the magic can make the hole. Or the wall was made by magic and you only need to know where and how... “Does Meriaduk know how to open the doors?”

  “He knows how to open some of them.” There was a sudden irritation in Ai’s voice that surprised Dochia. It was the first time she had felt such an emotion from the invisible young woman.

  “I apologize, if I upset you.”

  “You did not upset me, but what you will see now upsets me,” Ai said, and another door opened on the right. Dochia entered a small room which had no doors. “Ask me to open the door.”

  “Open the door.” Through the new door, Dochia entered a new room, a square one, thirty feet wide. Passing through the door, she saw that the wall was no thinner than the rest of the structure, so it was perhaps a magic wall, not a real one. She touched the wall; it felt solid. She shook her head, then searched through the new room: there were two open spaces in the opposite wall, like it was missing its doors, and she heard voices.

  “Go to the space on the left and look outside, but don’t let yourself be seen. Meriaduk is there.”

  Fifty paces from the opening, Meriaduk was standing in front of a table that looked more like a very long bench, but only three feet wide. There were five priests with him, and all six of them had their back to Dochia. Two of them were Vicarius, his most powerful and loyal priests. There were only seven Vicarius in the temple. On the table, there was a fourteen-year-old boy, his hands and feet tied to the table. There was a belt tying his waist too. And there was a strange sound, something invisible was whooping, quite loudly. They were in a dome that Dochia had never seen before. It was smaller than the main one, but was still a hundred fifty feet in diameter and seventy-five feet high.

  Dochia did not know the boy, but she saw the blood running from his nose, mouth and eyes. She saw his small body contorting in pain. She heard his cries. And she saw a Maletera in Meriaduk’s hand. He was holding it a foot above the boy. “No,” she whispered, and unsheathed her dagger.

  “Don’t interfere, Dochia,” Ai said in a low, urgent voice which stopped her. Ai had had never spoke like this to her before.

  “But they will kill him, and he is so young.” Dochia shook her head, and tensed her body, ready to attack Meriaduk and his five priests.

  “He can’t be saved; his mind is already gone, but if you get closer, they will learn that you have the blood too, and next time you will take the place of that poor boy. And you can’t take all of them with a dagger. They have some powerful weapons.”

  “What does it mean that I have the blood?” I need to learn more about the weapons...

  There was a short pause before Ai said, “The Sanctuary responds to people’s blood. If one’s blood is strong enough, that person can do things here. Like reactivating a Maletera.”

  “Are they ... closed? Sleeping? The Maleteras.”

  “In a way, and you need someone with strong blood to wake and command them. Meriaduk’s blood is strong enough to command them, but not strong enough to reactivate them. He needs help from other people who have the blood. People like that boy, or people like you.”

  “Does he know about my blood?”

  “He knows that you have the blood, as the Sanctuary let you enter without being helped by a priest, but he thinks that you have weak blood, because you are not from Nerval. He can be really stupid sometimes. If you go close to that table, he will know. There are things on the table which can read your blood, even at a distance. They are called Blood Sniffers, and they will warn him. Once you become a novice priestess, he will test you and then he will know, but by then you can no longer be used like that boy. Priests are never used that way. Meriaduk can’t rule without them.”

  More dirty magic. Why did the Talants create this? What kind of sick minds did they have? “I still don’t know what it means, to have the blood.”

  “It means that you are the offspring of the people who built the Sanctuary; that’s why this place recognizes you, Meriaduk and his priests. You can’t be a priest, if you don’t have the blood.”

  That’s why Ada sent me here. But how did she know about this? She told me about the Sanctuary, but she did not seem to know much about it. She knew that I would meet Ai. “There must be many offspring out there. I am from Frankis, Meriaduk is from Nerval.”

  “It’s not that simple. Not all offspring have the blood, and there are three more Sanctuaries on the continent. Let’s go now.”

  “How can I stop this?”

  “What do you mean by stop this?”

  “Stop them from killing children. Stop the Maleteras. They are evil. No one should be allowed to do such things. Those who created the Sanctuary had sick minds. I want the Maleteras destroyed.”

  “I am glad that you said that.”

  “Then help me destroy them.”

  “This is what I am doing, Dochia, helping you close them again. The Malteras are only things, and things are not evil. They can be used in a good way. It’s one’s mind which makes the choice between good and bad.”

  “How is this helping me?” Dochia asked, ignoring the talk of the ‘good way’. She needed more time to think about it. Maletera can be used for communication.

  “If you want to fight something, you must learn its powers. You must understand the Sanctuary, and how the Maleteras and other things work. Let’s go now; they will soon move away from the table.”

  Taking her eyes from the dying boy, Dochia finally saw the box on the table. Made of glass, it was almost invisible and going as long as the table, a foot square in section. Looking more attentively, she realized that there were two boxes, each covering almost half of the table. There was an open space in the middle, ten foot long, where the body of the boy lay. He is dead, Dochia thought bitterly. One day, I will make Meriaduk pay for everything. At fixed intervals, she
saw objects in the boxes.

  “Are the things in the glass boxes all Maleteras?”

  “Some of them are, but there are different things inside. There were a hundred Maleteras, and twenty were activated. Twenty-one now. Five of them have been lost.”

  “I destroyed one of them,” Dochia said.

  “The one on the shore of Kostenz Lake? I am glad that you did that, there was no way for you to disable it.”

  “Taking over people’s minds is a terrible thing. Do they have other powers too?”

  “Communication, but you already know that. We have to go now.”

  There was urgency in Ai’s voice, and Dochia walked briskly toward the opposite wall. She stopped, waiting for the door to open. “Ai, open the door.” She was still startled by the sudden hole in the wall, but walked through it without hesitation.

  Guided by Ai, Dochia returned to her room, memorizing the path through the maze of corridors, and the approximate positions where a door could be created to get into the next corridor. She could not open the doors, not yet, but she was beginning to learn more about the Sanctuary, and she had a powerful motivation to do so.

  “How are they using the blood to ... reactivate the Maletera? I saw no blood on it,” Dochia asked after closing the door of her room.

  “The blood gives power, but it’s the mind which opens the Maletera. Meriaduk takes over the captive and merges their minds under his control. His mind is not strong enough to open a Maletera, because his blood is not strong enough. Most children die at the first attempt. Adults, depending on their power, can be used two or three times.”

  “How many times could he use me?”

  “More than the others, your blood and mind are strong. In some ways, you are even stronger than Meriaduk. In others, you are weaker.”

  “Is he stronger than you?”

  “In some ways, yes. In others...”

  “How old are you?” Dochia asked on impulse.

  There was a brief moment of pause that was uncommon for Ai. “I am sixteen years old.”