Blood magic perverted the tenets of the Light. When the Regency embraced this power, it discarded the rigidly held dogmas of the Illuminari’s past and moved forward with a Purpose that corrupted life and bound it to its will. This ascendancy in the absence of the Lightblessed drove away the Light just as much as the hatred of the Shaman instilled fear in the populace.

Chapter 36

Water cascaded down in a soft sheet in front of her, circulating and purifying the bath Trynneia sat in. She couldn’t figure out how the water remained warm, for this communal bath was larger than some of the ponds she’d seen. It would take ages to heat a quantity this large. From Igol, she’d learned of this recessed alcove, deliberately crafted in years past for the relative privacy of the Lightblessed. The waterfall served as a barrier of sorts.

Colors had slowly begun to merge again with their objects, allowing her vision to become something normal once more. Whatever was in Regent Shingto’s caff seemed to have begun healing her where her own powers had faded. The dizzying overlay faded but the thrum remained strong as ever, a buzzing in her ears and chest that felt very deliberate, pulsing with purpose.

Despite the water’s warmth, Trynneia shivered. She felt alone, vulnerable, and almost as terrified as she had during her journey through the desert.

“Buck up, buttercup!” she imagined Ditan saying, with that goofy grin on his face as he might hand her a flower in his coy, shy little way. She missed him terribly. He’d blush and turn brown of embarrassment to see his best friend treated with such deference, and feel woefully inadequate, she was sure. “Don’t let all this go to your head, or you’ll think you’re as important as your Light god,” he’d admonish. She closed her eyes.

Beyond the calming splatter of the waterfall, she felt more than heard the door click shut. A murmur rose in the air around her of whispers gently talking in her ear with words she could not comprehend. They tasted faintly of cinnamon.

“How are you feeling, Your Grace?” Regent Shingto asked. Her heart fluttered in spite of herself, nerves and uncertainty sending waves of trembling through her body.

“Tired,” she offered, opening her eyes to the sight of the Regent folding her robe into a small bundle, setting it on a chair, then slowly stepping down into the water herself.

“Igol told me he’d brought you here. I wanted to speak with you away from other ears. I have no doubt the other Regents have heard of your arrival at the Atrium.” Trynneia felt the gentle splashing of the woman’s body as she approached, and the urgency of the whispers increased, filling her nose with their spicy scent. Shingto submerged and began to swim closer. When she surfaced, she slicked back her brown hair behind her ears.

Trynneia wanted to avert her eyes from the reds and maroons that swirled about the Regent, but everything about the spectacle heightened her obsession. Even as other colors danced about, they played with an uncertainty that belied the very ageless face of the older woman, and Trynneia watched as an aura grew around the Regent. For once, she felt thankful for the water falling around her to hide her tears at the beauty.

Regent Shingto stopped just on the other side of the cascade, leaning against a ledge there that separated the alcove from the main bath. Draping her arms over, she trailed her fingers lazily into Trynneia’s half.

“I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve endured, Your Grace,” Regent Shingto began. They locked eyes. “We’d heard rumors over a year ago of a practicing shaman near your village. I tasked Lord Elanreu with his apprehension. I did not know he’d sent Modius.”

Trynneia broke her stare, trying instead to take in the aura around the other woman, but her eyes were drawn ever away, ever skyward as flecks of light spun away.

“Your Grace?” Trynneia reached forward with her lightly wrapped right hand, its bandage soaked through with water and blood that dripped down to the bath to be further diluted. The girl didn’t hear, instead wiggling her fingers to touch some fancy only she could see as it coasted through the air to the thrum in her heart.

Perturbed, the Regent continued. “I must categorically reject your request to become a Priestess of the Light, Your Grace, for obvious reasons. You were born Lightblessed. Lightblessed!” Agonized, the woman watched the young girl and wept. “After so long…” She climbed over the ledge and slid down waist deep to approach Trynneia.

Trynneia fixated on the woman again, feelings of danger and screaming agony clutching at her chest with her approach. The whispers surged around her and she wanted to cry as they melted in her throat with icy slickness, suffocating her with their desperation. She cringed back even as she continued to reach further forward, the immediacy of her situation warring with her fascination at the colors and the thrumming.

Regent Shingto touched the puckered, oozing wounds of her runes, blackened and withered as they sunk into her flesh. Tracing gingerly, those fingertips left behind a clash of ice and fire in her skin, and as Trynneia watched, auras flickered about, trying to exist yet quenching themselves just as swiftly. Regent Shingto touched her chin, tilting her face up to lock eyes once again.

“Shaman are outlawed everywhere in our regency, Your Grace.” Water trailed off the woman’s wrist, splashing between Trynneia’s breasts upon the witch’s mark that festered there, stinging her. “Was our message delivered?” The woman’s tone had dropped, no longer as comforting, instead feeling sinister.

Trynneia stared into the woman’s brown eyes, and the faint tone of red that flushed around them, weary from crying. She thought of all those heads in the crates, knocking, knocking, and sleeping beside them so many nights. Thump thump, thump thump, Eilic leering with that sidelong gaze. His mother, an animated corpse, bringing death to everything she touched. How had she died?

“How was it that a backwater village like yours harbored that man for so long? Never mind your little goblin friend, though he was just as guilty. Your Grace, how did you permit it?”

“He helped the farmers all around, Regent. My mother knew him my entire life. She permitted him to practice, and sanctioned his actions,” Trynneia replied, finally hearing the woman. “Driver’s presence was a boon to all of us.”

Regent Shinto’s head snapped up at the name. “Driver?” she asked, considering. Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll ask again, Your Grace. Was our message delivered?” Cold malice infused her request.

Trynneia remembered the blade being placed into her mouth, the rage of shame and hatred coming unbidden to her once more as the blood witch gripped that dagger with a cold, dead hand. She unconsciously touched her breastbone to soothe the pain the dripping water had caused.

“I don’t know that any message was delivered that was worth repeating, Regent.” She growled at the other woman. “I don’t want to think about it.”

Shingto grabbed the girl’s hand and drew it away from her breasts, looking down at the mark with a mixture of sadness and curiosity. Cautiously, she touched it herself. Trynneia pulled away from the touch as a red aura of fury wrapped around the Regent’s arm, and she smacked it away with all the strength her atrophied muscles could muster.

“Don’t touch me!” she yelled, her voice echoing dully in the bath chamber. Unconcerned, the Regent touched her again, agony spreading into her chest, down past her breasts to her lungs and stomach.

“What’s done is done, Your Grace. This is what must be done now,” Shingto said, pulling her close until their chests met. “Shhh. Don’t let your friends and family die for nothing,” she continued, cradling the shaggy remnants of Trynniea’s hair in her palm.

The whispers had become shrieks, deafening the girl. She felt her strength sag again as the woman cradled her to her bosom. So sure she was that there was a message that it was all she could do to stare at the colors pulsing in a violent torrent around the Regent, penetrating the red and maroon aura that gathered as Shingto bent to her throat and bit.

For a moment, she didn’t know what to think, giving in to the sensuous feel of the tongue and teeth against her neck, and the throb of her pulse as the woman pulled her even closer. Every survival instinct kicked in as her veins lit with an uncontrolled power, and a white haze of clarity caused her to violently shove the woman away. Blood spurted through her fingers as she clutched at the wound, feeling her life drain away into the warm bath.

The clamor coalesced around her as the dull thudding of her life’s journey rushed to its conclusion. Blues and greens hovered above the water’s surface, clinging to the murky red that began to spread beneath. She grasped at them, feeling an intuition she hadn’t felt in days, drawing the colors to her and within her. At once both outside herself and within, knowledge guided her as the water swirled up around her wounds, closing them off and stanching her bleeding. Flesh knitted imperfectly, the wound leaving its mark. Air tamped down, drying her off and lifting her free of the bath to lay her upon the ground.

Trynneia gasped, her sense of comfort around the woman shattered even as the voices crawled into her mind. Run, Your Grace! Stay, Your Grace. Live, Your Grace! Light’s Judgment. Light’s sanction. Your time is no more. Stay a while, and listen. Fight!

“Your Grace,” Shingto said, Trynneia’s blood still coloring her mouth. “It’s not what you think. Stay a while, and listen.” Light dimmed and grew, pulsing with that familiar thrum, visible in a way only to her. “I see now the message was delivered. I am so, so sorry.” The Regent wiped at the blood on her lips.

Trust given too easily is swiftly betrayed. Yet enemies surround you, who to trust, who to trust? There can be no trust where there is only a lie, a liar, and the lied to. What you seek, only you can find. But what do you seek? Fire and life and the Light, and the Purpose of the driven, or the Driver.

Trynneia felt her senses overwhelmed as the woman pulled her close again, and the warmth filled her neck. “Listen.” Thrumming, throbbing, a red halo covered her limbs, drowning the weakened whiteness around her, moving from the Regent to her.

“Who was your mother, Trynneia? (She didn’t call me Your Grace?) Was it Rendrys? (How do you know her name?) How did she hide from us?” Trynneia pushed with weakened limbs, unable to extricate herself from the Regent’s grip. Her hands slid away, and the wounds on her right hand openly bled once more. “I know your truth, Your Grace,” the Regent whispered seductively in her ear. “When will you know it?”

Regent Shingto cradled Trynneia in her lap as the girl began to convulse, holding her tight to keep her from thrashing back into the bath. “This is all just a bad dream, Your Grace,” she cooed. “I command you to forget.” She smiled.

“Nooooooo” Trynneia hissed through her clenched teeth. So many colors everywhere! Command us, we are here! Water bubbled, reacting to her emotions as the convulsions waned. Danger! A geyser fountained across the bath, blasting half the water into the air against the far wall where it slapped violently before draining back into the pool basin. The room shook.

“Shhhh, Your Grace, don’t give in to the voices.” Though Shingto spoke, Trynneia heard Rendrys’ voice instead. She punched at the woman, writhing free of her naked grasp. The Regent let her go. “This is why you’re an abomination, Your Grace. Can’t you see?”

Everywhere it was all she could do to see, to hear, to taste, every sensation flooding her limbs and body as the voices talked and talked, to no one in particular. But always to her. Or was it to everyone? She could not tell. Trynneia screamed, shutting her eyes and clamping her hands to her ears. The building shuddered at her call. Everything confused her.

The naked woman stood before her, blood and water turning gray and muddy with the dust that began to drift around the room as rock and wood ground against itself. “I’m not an abomination, Regent.” Trynneia denied the accusation. Wind picked up around the two, and the colors continued their raging tempest. “I am NOT an abomination!” she yelled, again and again.

“Your Grace,” the Regent began, grasping her once more, yelling against the tumult. “You are a shaman.” Trynneia searched the sky above her following the shape of a butterfly as it fluttered about, all motes of color in oranges and blacks, so clear she smiled. “You are skytouched.” The woman’s flesh against hers caused the bloodied wound at her breast to sear in agony as the Regent began to cry. “This is why you must be subject to Light’s Judgment, for there were three shaman from your village. That curse has withered your body, fragmented your mind, and corrupted your soul,” she whispered, “And you can never be Lightblessed.”