It was impressive the way the ceremonies had continued and the feast was still in full swing despite the noted absence of the so-called saint at the head of the table in her reserved seat of honor. The authority the arch cleric wielded over the members of her temple was so complete and unquestioned that even the disappearance of the guest of honor had gone unquestioned and barely noticed, and nearly no one even gave the empty chairs a second glance, that is except for Gloria. I was smugly satisfied that my planted seeds of doubt had seemed to start to sprout and she was beginning to look around her world and the people of the temple she broke bread with and realize that they were all drawn in under the spell of charismatic leaders and perhaps the harmonious feeling of wonder they felt in their chests was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Not that it would matter I supposed, this would all be gutted and the girls likely dead or carted off for uncertain destinies to distant realms soon enough.

“Attention,” the arch cleric said, sharply rapping her glass with the silver spoon she had been using to eat her dessert. “Today has been such a wonderful and monumental day, but I have wonderful and exciting news to top off this spectacular occasion.”

Her smile was wide and sincere, meant to inspire excitement and joy in the hearts of the women in the temple. The effect was immediate and infectious, excited gasps echoing through the feast hall. Their eyes bore into her with their complete attention, ready to hang on her every word. My trained eye and honed magical senses could pick out exactly how she was achieving the effect, the lines of her magic so subtle that I could almost overlook them if they did not gently brush up against my own resistant magical aura. The young girls and women in the room either did not know how to protect themselves against such subtle invasion or perhaps had been taught not to for the arch cleric, but either way they allowed her magic to infiltrate their bodies and minds to command their complete focus. Her abilities reminded me a bit of Evonia, but even she had not been so bold to so openly use her mind invading abilities on others in public venues. I admired the arch cleric for her willingness to so effortlessly control the masses before her without acknowledgement of or apology for the intrusion into the recesses of their minds.

“Tomorrow morning, as early as the first rays of sun kissing the edges of the horizon, we are to go on a pilgrimage. A walk to show our devotion and give thanks for the gift given to us of the new saint that has been sent to us from our dear goddess.”

The room erupted in soft, excited murmurs once more and she gave them a quick moment to get the chatter out of their systems before continuing.

“We will walk all day to a secret, holy location that I have not disclosed before anyone in this room, but has been kept in secret. Our goddess, Amara, breathed the knowledge of this holy place into my dreams several nights ago and I believe this is a sign that she desires us to find the spot and perform an ancient and powerful ritual.”

It was my turn to be thoroughly intrigued by her words. This woman sounded confident and sure of what the plan forward was, it was a far cry from the sobbing woman I had so delicately and awkwardly held the hand of while she bawled like a small child for being abandoned by her top cleric and her new saint in the face of an invading army she had no hope of surviving against. It had taken several pots of tea and a few secretive sips from a hidden flask of strong smelling alcohol hidden in an inner pocket of her robes to right her enough to get her to be ready to face facts that she needed a plan and quick. I had assumed that the plan would involve just the two of us sneaking out in the middle of the night and leaving the temple to fall, but perhaps this woman had a much deeper sense of duty than Aela and could not stomach leaving so many women behind to die.

“All are welcome and in fact required to join, of all ages, no chores or other duties will be required tomorrow,” she continued, her voice still strong and soothing.

The magic flowing from the arch cleric had become thicker and more heady, she was filling it with strong suggestion and intent so that her next words would go without question. Even Gloria’s wide, questioning eyes had glazed over and a contented smile pricked at the corner of her lips.

“As soon as the light begins to darken the horizon we will assemble at the back gate and bring no possessions. We will need none for our ritual and the goddess values those who are practical and do not let worldly possessions slow their pilgrimage. We will wear our finest ritual regalia and in the absence of passing the requirements for the regalia, your finest ceremonial temple outfit.”

The arch cleric sat down once more, signaling her announcement was concluded and a wave of excited sighs and chatter washed across the room as the magic receded back into the core of her body. Though everyone else in the room seemed to have been enlivened by the idea of a pilgrimage and a ritual, the announcement appeared to have sapped the woman of her energy and her flask reappeared for a flashing moment, then was again tucked back in her robes. She made a face as the strong smelling liquor flowed down her throat and she returned to her normal stoic expression as she surveyed the room, probably on the look out for anyone who showed any signs of being discontented with her plan.

“That was a wise idea,” I murmured to her very softly, though I did not think it would matter if I yelled it in her ear for all the room to hear. The girls seemed too enraptured with tomorrow morning to pay anything else any mind. “You are good at what you do.”

She laughed lightly through her nose and washed down the remnant of her surreptitious drink with the sickly sweet berry juice that had been served with the dessert. The drink was so syrupy and offensive that she made an even worse face and looked to regret the choice. She pushed the drink away and waved over a woman who had been hovering nearby waiting for people to be done with plates and cups so they could be taken away.

“Bring up a bottle of wine from the cellars,” she requested, “something good enough for the celebration. Go deep in the cellar to find it, I’m certain I’ve seen something very old and rare down there on one of my inspections. If the anointing of a new saint isn’t the proper time to dig into the wine cellar for the true treasures, then that proper time will never come.”

The girl nodded her head vigorously and left to go fetch the bottle. Another girl quickly scooted her standing position over to make sure the arch cleric always had someone around her ready to do her bidding.

“I cannot leave them,” the arch cleric muttered under her breath before expanding her magical will slightly to block out any prying girls nearby that might decide to listen in. “I am like a mother to them in a way, they look to me for guidance and hope. I could not stomach the thought of leaving them here to whatever the fae would decide they were good for.”

“Probably their deaths to send a message,” I said, perhaps not as tactfully as I would have otherwise been, but I was still tired from healing the servant girl's wounds the night prior and I was itching to leave and get far ahead of the fae while I still could. “I do not know overly much, though that much is clear. Strange that I do not know more about them considering that I have been in very close contact with them twice now.” I shivered as I remembered feeling their icy magic crawl across the floor towards me and my mind locking onto the certainty that it had meant my doom.

The woman’s face turned down into an even deeper frown and I could tell that she wanted me to elaborate on everything I knew, but was not comfortable with us talking in the middle of an active, busy feast. Despite having spent a few hours this afternoon sitting together in the small cottage on the edge of the property, we had done little talking beyond the basics of what was to come and then a lot of reassurance that with swift action at least the two of us could survive. As soon as the dusty bottle of wine arrived, she feigned inspecting the label carefully, then leaned over and presented it to me.

“That doesn’t seem very special, now does it?” she asked me, voice heavy with the suggestion that I play along.

“Oh, I would not think so,” I said with a shake of my head. Surely your cellars should hold a much better vintage, at least a better year. If I recall, that year was lean and the grapes were of subpar quality.”

The arch cleric nodded her head and waved away the girl who stepped forward to try to take the bottle from her. “No, no, it was not wise of me to send someone who is not even old enough to be drinking alcohol off to find my wine for me. I will go myself with my new friend to pick a wine fitting for a saint.”

Following her lead, I rose and followed her through the back of the feast hall and out the door where new plates of different desserts than the ones we had just eaten were being carried in. It looked like they were transitioning from berry based confections to stone fruit and I wondered if the plan was to go through every single different kind of fruit before the feast was declared complete.

“The flowers of the trees and bushes make fruit, thus they are sacred and holy gifts given to us by the goddess Amara,” the arch cleric said, noting the curious expression on my face and making a correct guess. “It is perhaps my least favorite part of these events. If I’m lucky I can get one good savory course in before it goes straight to desserts. There are just too many types of fruit to work our way through to the end and it would be considered perhaps a tiny bit sacrilege to stop before everyone has sampled all of them. I personally have never been much of a fan of sugary desserts, a bit ironic considering where I’ve ended up.”

Once we were able to find a break in the servers, we slipped through the door then made an immediate right and she opened a door right outside the main kitchens, revealing a staircase that descended into the darkness. A slight cold breeze wafted up from the cellar and the smell of dampness, wood, and a bit of sweetness had been carried up with it. With a snap of her fingers, a small point of light appeared at the arch cleric’s fingertips and she descended the stairs with me close behind, making sure the door to the cellar was closed tight so it would be obvious if anyone was trying to sneak down to overhear our uncensored conversation. The bottom of the narrow stairs opened up into a large room with the walls covered in wooden shelves holding bottles of wine that were a wide range of colors and styles. It seemed like several of each year’s batch had been kept and left to age for a later date or perhaps even just to be markers of the past to show growth and progression of their craft. The fruity smell had become more sickly sweet and yeasty in the room itself, its source coming from a line of very large wooden barrels lined up in the back of the room and next to the stairs that were loosely corked and could be heard burbling with fermentation from time to time.

The arch cleric led me to a small table in the middle of the room that was littered with scraps of paper and haphazardly capped brown opaque jars that looked sticky to the touch, likely the station at which girls would take the freshly bottled wine and affix labels to display the type and year bottled. She motioned for me to sit, then she struck one of the matches left behind on the table and lit the large pillar candle in the middle of the table, then wandered off to look at the wines on the shelves. After marching up and down what looked like the older sections of the collection, she pulled one bottle from the shelf and returned, setting it in front of me. It looked to be a copy of the same wine she held in her hands.

“Only fair you have the same one, that way we can both drink to our continued good health and luck,” she said with dark chuckle, “we’re going to need it.”

“We will,” I agreed. Getting a good grip on the long piece of cork that was stuck up from the lip of the bottle, I pulled hard and the bottle opened with a satisfying pop. “I think you may end up feeling foolish for putting yourself at risk trying to rescue any of them.”

The woman grunted and opened up her own bottle, the combined aroma more musky and spicy than sweet. She took a long swig from the bottle, then set it down on the table between us.

“Since you have been more agreeable and forthcoming than my own trusted cleric, I wonder if you will indulge me a bit more and tell me what you know about the fae and what they want.”

“Are you sure you want to know anything from an evil woman?” I asked with a dark smirk. “I’m sure my niece told you all sorts of terrible stories about me and the awful and wicked things I have done.”

“Oh yes, you are in some ways quite famous,” she said with a nod and an amused smile slid across her features. “Is it true that both you and her mother cursed the woman of your family to bear only girl children to keep the line purely and unnaturally matrilineal?”

“Cursed? That is one way to spin it, I suppose,” I said with a light laugh. “I do not think it was a curse at all. It seems you might be able to appreciate the idea of not having to deal with men seeing that you are the leader of an all woman sect of your own religion.”

Far be it from me to correct the woman that technically I did not have a hand in the magic that had gone into determining the sex of future Yser children. I knew it had to be something deep and powerful that Evonia had sought out through her demonic contacts, it was not something that either of us alone would have been able to even come close to pulling off.

“That had to be a complicated bit of ritual and take quite a bit of time to complete,” she commented, taking another long pull from the bottle.

“It is not so bad when you have strong magical blood like the Yser women have flowing through their veins,” I lied.

“It is precisely that powerful blood that I would like to have you explain what you know. There are few people around who I would expect to truly understand the true workings of the world and the worlds beyond our own. You hold power and therefore information, I need that information.”

Over the course of the evening and several bottles of wine between us, I told the arch cleric the gist of everything that had occurred since I had found the girl to her being taken by Aela and the both of us being brought to the temple. The woman watched my face with rapt attention, taking in everything I was saying and processing it to match what she had already known about the situation. When I signaled that I was finished telling her all that I was willing to at the moment, she nodded, but stayed silent, compiling and processing the wealth of new information she had gotten from me.

“So she was a failed fae kidnapping,” the arch cleric finally said, then drained the remaining dredges from her bottle. “I knew there was something strange about her, but I could not place what the magical origin was. I suppose I had never come in contact with anything related to the fae before now.”

“Of course not, they don’t leave a trail and they make sure to take back whatever is theirs.”

“Aela led her straight to us knowingly and willingly, she has doomed the temple of her priestess to ruin and all the women within to death.” She made the statements without apparent anger or sadness, just simple statements of fact. “This is a heavy crime, one that the Church leaders are not going to look away from this time, she has really put a target on her back now.”

“This is not the first time she has gotten herself in trouble?” I asked. “I am not surprised, she has always been the type to do what is best for her in the moment and care nothing for what consequences her actions might have for those around her. Though I admit that I have no idea what she wants with the girl, she has to know that the fae will not stop until they have her back. As powerful as she fancies herself, she cannot stand up to a fae.”

“It is far from the first time she has done questionable things that have gotten her a summons to appear before the council and explain her actions. Though this time I don’t think the council will even bother with a summons, they would excommunicate her immediately and that will be a death sentence for her. There are many powerful people she had stepped on and discredited on her way up the hierarchy, I am certain that once she is no longer a sister in the light, they will go for her throat.”

“How very… heart warming and brotherly,” I said with a sarcastic snort. “I always knew the lot of you were not all happy and hugs like you try to play off to the common people.”

“Not even close,” she admitted, “a lot of us are cutthroat. We have to be sometimes, it’s not easy to get to the top and it’s only when you get near the pinnacle you stop being in so much danger from someone targeting you to progress their own agenda. It is like any other organization with a hierarchy, they are always people scrabbling up from the bottom to try to eventually become those at the top. I rather think the religious aspect is secondary or not even a factor for many of them.”

“Yourself included?” I asked as I leaned forward and gave her a serious look. “Surely a smart woman like yourself must see the truth of the world and the claim of gods looking out for us all.”

She inhaled deeply, then let out a long sigh that was half a groan. “That is more complicated than you make it seem. I know there are many different realms and creatures, probably more than I could even begin to fathom. Who am I to say that my goddess does not watch from one of those realms and is a being powerful enough to affect things beyond their own realm? Though as I say that I feel slightly silly because why would a being with that kind of power be at all interested in what we do? Perhaps she would be flattered by our devotion and offerings, but at the end of the day we cannot offer much and perhaps that is why the gods are often silent.”

It was really fascinating to see her go in and out of her indoctrination. She clearly had used logic to navigate her way through the fact that the gods perhaps did not exist, but at the same time it was what her line of thinking defaulted back to.

“Well will your goddess be silent at this ritual you plan tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“They will think she is showing them wondrous secrets and powers and if I am lucky it will get them to safety. I have to assume I can pull this off, I would hate to think I will only be able to get the two of us through and to the center of Harmony.”

“Harmony?” My eyes flew open, suddenly the drink was not so heavy on my senses. “The holy city and seat of the council? That is where you are planning on taking them?”

“It is the safest place,” she confirmed and it was her turn to lean forward and give me a look of mischievous intent, “besides I have a bet riding on whether you will burst into flames the first time you set foot in the city or not. My vote is on that you will, so please try not to let me down.”