Sekadi said nothing else then, only made patterns in the water with the edge of her blade.
After a time, she left him, fading into the long shadows like blood seeping into a charnel field.
* * *
“He still lives,” said Mosuoe Nemisa.
Sekadi was on her perch, looking down on the temple, thinking. She was no more surprised to see Mosuoe Nemisa than she was that she hadn’t tracked her arrival.
“I could not do it, Mosuoe,” said Sekadi, not looking down.
“So, I see,” said Mosuoe Nemisa.
Sekadi watched as the big male, carrying a bedroll and a water skin, left the Pilgrim’s quarters. She marked each of his steps as he strode once again toward the pool.
“He’s not like us,” said Sekadi
“He is a great warrior,” said Mosuoe Nemisa.
“But he is not like us,” said Sekadi, still watching as he knelt beside the water. He drew his sword from its great black sheath, laid it across his knees and assumed the position of openness. “He carries the spirit of his dead mate with him.”
“Yes,” said Nemisa. “Yes, he does.”
“It would be dishonorable to kill him,” said Sekadi after a time.
“Indeed,” said Mosuoe Nemisa. “And why is that?”
“He uses all his strength to hold her,” said Sekadi. “He has nothing left.”
“So he is weak,” said Nemisa. Sekadi nodded. “And it is dishonorable to kill the weak.”
Again, Sekadi nodded. There was too much feeling in her for words just then, a condition easily noted by her master. Nemisa let her sit awhile and mull. Then,
“Mosuoe?” said Sekadi.
“Novice?”
“He is weak,” she began, her mouth having a hard time with the words. “Yet he bested me, nearly killed me.”
“That was only his body, novice,” said Nemisa. “Do you mark the difference?”
It was clear that she didn’t. Nemisa had expected as much. The final mystery was always hard for the young to grasp, especially when they were as gifted in the Arts as Sekadi.
She let the time tick between them and the child wrestle with her thoughts.
“Do you know why your father sent you to us, Sekadi?” said Nemisa eventually.
Sekadi remembered the conversation, how her father had ordered her to go, how she’d railed against him, and how, despite her railing, she had been trundled off to the distant monastery while her brothers and sister went off to fight.
“He wanted to protect me,” said Sekadi but the words were thick in her mouth, distasteful. She’d fought against the thought and mostly won even before coming here. Her father was weak, like this male. Her father, fearing the coming war, the war to which he’d happily consigned all of her siblings, had sent her off to this forgotten anachronism of a place to keep her from harm. She loved him but hated the weakness in him, the dishonor. If only she knew the place inside him where the weakness lay, then she would cut it out of him herself. Sekadi fought the tears of rage and despair that welled in her eyes. What in the hells did her father have to do with anything, anyway?
“Your father is an honorable warrior,” said Nemisa. “He wants you to be so as well.”
“I am,” said Sekadi.
“You are honorable, yes,” said Nemisa. “But not yet a warrior.”
Sekadi wanted to scream that she was a warrior, that none of her peers could match her despite her small size, that none but the masters and this newcomer had bested her despite her size, despite the inefficiency with the crescent blade her body forced upon her.
What she said was, “Why not?”
Nemisa’s smile at that was unusually warm, almost soft.
“There is more at our hearts than battle, novice,” she said and pointed to the big male, still kneeling, still hoping to find rest for his spirit, still failing. “He knows. He’s out of balance right now but he knows what is at our heart. Just as your father knows. Just as you may know one day.”
“Can you not just tell me, Mosuoe?” said Sekadi.
Nemisa shook her head. “No, Sekadi,” she said softly. “But I have confidence that you will learn the answer in time.”
“I hope I will make you proud, Mosuoe.”
“You will,” said Nemisa. “Or you will not be the warrior either I or your father hope.”
Sekadi said nothing. It was clear she didn’t know what her master was talking about. Not yet. Having no more words, the novice turned her face back to the distant warrior, on his knees, searching for and finding neither balance nor peace.
Nemisa left her there, threading her own way back through the familiar stones of the mountain down to the temple that had been her home for so long.
The Queen, the Demon, and the Mercenary
By
Ronald T. Jones
Ajunge the demon-sorcerer narrowed his scarlet eyes in contempt. Five hundred horsemen clad in armor, bearing lances, thundered across the grassy expanse toward the high tower occupied by the twisted mage. The tower was unlike any structure that existed in the land of Zanjii. Smooth sides, windowless, stark, blindingly white, the edifice shot up into the sky like a gigantic sword. There was no protection around the tower. No walls, no moats, no sentries on duty. There was not a single construct to give hint that the demon-sorcerer had taken defensive precautions against attacking armies.
Ajunge’s contempt deepened, etching heavy creases in his serpentine face. Why take defensive precautions against foes he did not respect? Ajunge muttered a spell. A red aura surrounded him. Each word pouring from the demon-sorcerer’s mouth increased the aura’s luminosity, bathing the apex of the tower in a fiery lighthouse glow. The circular glow stretched into a band of light directing onto the plain below right in the path of the oncoming horsemen. The horses slowed and reared up in panic before the wall of light. Several horsemen tumbled off the backs of their mounts.
When the light vanished the Zanjiian horsemen were stunned to find themselves facing an army where nothingness existed seconds earlier. This was an army whose
