Book 5, Chapter 45: The Struggles

On the fourth day, I awoke to distant banging, shouts.  People rushing by my door, footsteps first then the bright light of torches as they passed, footsteps moving away.

The banging had a heavy base.  Not polite knocking, but a maul or battering ram hammering the large door at the entrance to this hallway.  It could only be the wizard’s soldiers.  Their deadline was up, the men they’d sent to guard me hadn’t checked in or returned.

The door to my cell flung open, hitting the wall hard.  The abbess and three other ladies in the doorway.  “Come with us, now!”  She tossed some slippers in my direction.

“What if I don’t?”

“How do you think they’ll treat you?  You’re no longer safe here.  We are retreating to the keep.”

Two of the women rushed toward me, pulling on my elbows.

“Alright, alright.”  Got off the bed, put the sandals on.

They each grabbed an arm and pulled me along hurriedly.  The abbess led the way, we rushed through the hallway, toward the bath.  Three younger ladies, if women in their fifties could be said to be younger, stood there holding nocked bows.

The abbess spoke to them, “Go to the hallway.  Loose at them as they come, but do not linger.  Do not get captured by them!  And don’t fight them directly.  These are soldiers.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said one of them.  They moved off.

I got dragged along, through the side door some of the elderly ladies had entered during the ritual here.  But something about the abbess caught my attention.  Her hair was not white in the torchlight, but greyish.  As we moved along, passing torches, her hair appeared salt and pepper.  And she moved faster, more fluidly than before, back straight instead of the slight hunch.

Maybe she got some rest?

I asked, “Why are you fighting the soldiers?”

“Four days isn’t enough time.”

“For the ritual?”

“The mage is too rushed.  He’ll ruin everything.”

“Tell me about the ritual.”

“Perhaps later.”

I let them move me along at their speed.  I could resist, cause some problems for them, but the ladies dragging me seemed well exercised and full of strength.  They’d probably best me eventually.  But I could slow them down enough for the soldiers to catch up.  That, though, didn’t seem like a good idea.  Tye wanted something from me and he was willing to fight elderly women over it.  Pretty unlikely that he had my best interests in mind.

It’s not like I trusted these nuns, either.  But with more time, maybe I could get answers.  Yet this did seem like the best chance at escape.  Once they barricaded us in the keep, they’d likely toss me into another cell.

We passed several more cells on each side until reaching the end doors, exited those into the courtyard.  The abbess rushed us across the fields toward a large square building.

As good a time as any.  I dropped my weight to fall, causing the women holding me to stumble.  Then I pulled one toward me, smashing my head into her nose.  Screeching, she grabbed her face.  I wheeled on the other one, punched at her face, but she quickly moved aside, still holding my arm.  I pulled her toward me, stepped around her, swept her leg, tossing her to the ground.

The abbess grabbed my collar from behind, “What are you doing?  The soldiers are almost upon us!”

I slammed my foot onto hers, ramming my elbow into her gut.  She doubled over and I bolted.  But I didn’t know where to go.

The door we’d just exited from burst open, armored men stepping out.  One shouted, “There!”

Now I was running away from both nuns and soldiers.

“After her, ignore the old women!”

I ran toward the outer wall.  I didn’t know where Morry was, but if I could get over that wall, my magic would return, and I’d have a lot more bargaining power.  Plus, I’d vaporize me some nuns.

Running, I realized that the soldiers being here meant they’d killed or subdued the archers.  Damn, these guys were not on good terms with each other.

My energy soon began flagging from my poor condition.  I didn’t know how long I could outpace them.  And then I realized that I was running deeper into the complex and further away from the entrance.  The building I’d been in was an X shape, the keep to the left of that, I was likely heading toward their cathedral.

I veered left, to a direction behind the keep.  Probably a wall there.  No idea how I’d climb it, but there had to be stairs somewhere along it.

The soldiers changed direction, beelining toward me.  Behind them, a bunch of women carrying spears or sword-staves, I couldn’t tell in the fading light, raced toward them.

Breathing fast, heart racing, I passed the keep, the outer wall a distance off.  Morry, I had to get there for his sake.  Thinking of him gave me renewed energy.  But as I got to the wall, there was no way up.

It connected to the keep where I was and I’d just stuck myself in a corner.  Crap!  I could have gotten to the wall by going inside, but without knowing the layout, it would be another maze unto itself.  And it was likely full of evil nuns.  I set off along the wall searching for stairs or ladders or anything.

Three soldiers turned the corner and saw me.  I ran harder, but they raced in the direction I was going.  The lead guy overtook me, stopping in front.  He said, “Be a good girl and come with us.”

I was now properly cut off.  The wall to my back, keep to my right, a soldier to my left, his friends coming to box me in.  I backed up till I hit the wall.  Maybe I could dodge him, run by.

The nuns, with their weapons, rounded the corner and raced towards us.

I relaxed.  Taking deep breaths.  “Alright.  But you’ll have to beat all those women behind you.”

He looked at his friends, saw them drawing swords and turning around.  Despite their advanced age, the nuns kept a good pace, about to crash into the soldiers.  The lead women held their sword-staves over their head.

He drew his blade, side-stepping left quickly and slashed through the lead woman.  She collapsed with hardly a scream, holding her stomach.  Others took her place and the soldier was quickly outnumbered.

The guy beside me rushed over to back up his friends and that was my opening.  I raced off along the wall.  Some of the women chased after me.

This was crazy!  A bunch of elderly women actively fighting young and fit soldiers.  And running around carrying weapons.  I’d laugh if I wasn’t so desperate.

I was getting weaker.  Slowing as I ran.  They’d catch me soon and I couldn’t fight that many.  But I had one advantage.  They didn’t want to kill me.

Then my luck turned – a small guard tower on the wall!  I rushed into it, darker now, could barely make out stairs, and forced my tired legs to take them two at a time.  I’m young, damnit!  I pushed and pushed and heard the women charging up after me.

The staircase zigzagged back, nuns just below me.  But I made it to the top, got to the edge of the wall, leapt up to go over it and barely caught myself before falling to my death.  A drop off further than I could see in the dark.  I’d reached the cliffside of the complex.

Hands grabbed my shoulders and arms, pulling me back, and I gave up.  All I could think was that I’d failed Morry.

One of them punched me in the gut and I doubled over, coughing.  “If you’d come with us, we’d have made it to safety!”

Holding on tight, they dragged me along the wall back toward the keep.  The fighting continued in the courtyard below, but it was hard to see.  I could just make out several people on the ground, two soldiers, their armor glinting ever so slightly, still fighting.

***

“She nearly made it over.”

“Yet you caught her in time.”  The abbess was staring at me while she received a report from the woman who punched me.

“Only because she paused at the cliff.”

“Strange indeed.”

I shook my head.  What was strange about not killing yourself?  Maybe the ritual they had planned was somehow worse.  Ugh, not looking forward to more torture.  This world really is just the worst.

They’d bound my hands, thankfully in front, sat me down on a chair.  Yet there was little hope of escape, given that more than thirty women were in this room alone.  More throughout the keep.  I wondered how many were in the temple complex as a whole.  Now that I think of it, perhaps I should be calling it a nunnery.  Bizarre, drug cultivating, warrior producing nunnery.  And not very nice nuns at that.

These women weren’t the elderly crones who’d bathed and poisoned me, though.  Still on the older side, in terms of fighting fully armed and armored soldiers, given that most seemed in their late fifties, sixties even, but they moved with the easy grace of trained warriors.  Some were stretching, limbering up, perhaps for the upcoming battle.

It seemed they lived for the fight.  Even the abbess had enthusiasm in her bones.  Her back was straight, posture perfect, and she commanded these women without hesitation.  Maybe it was how sick I’d been when I arrived, but she didn’t appear as aged as when we first met.

A knocking at the large, double doors to the keep.  A woman by the door slid a piece of wood open, and there was a tiny window to talk through.

The wizard on the other side.  “You agreed to four days.”

“You forced us to.  You knew we needed fourteen.”

“It’s not for the ritual you need so many.”

She shook her head, “Nevertheless.”

“Do you have provisions?  Enough for ten days?”

The abbess looked around and each woman nodded to her, as if agreeing to some dangerous pact.  “We do.”

“Then,” he said, and turned around, walking away from the door, his voice growing fainter, “you have ten more days.”

Even I could tell he was lying.

***

The abbess went around the room, giving orders, saying a kind word to the injured, patting others on the shoulder in reassurance.

“Hey,” I said to the woman next to me, “I can help with the wounded.  Untie my arms and let me.”

She smiled, “You already are.”

“What?”

Just then, the abbess sat down beside me.  “They’re going to breach the door in a couple days.”

“Ah.  He’s off to get his army sitting outside your walls?”

“Most certainly.  Why didn’t you escape when you had the chance?  Does the abbey call to you?”

“Call to me?  Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  Her eyes were different.  Eyebrows black instead of white, eyelashes, too.  “Why are you and the wizard arguing over time?”

“I never thought I’d live to see it.  We have stories, of course.  I used to think of them as stories.  Given these events, it’s clear now they are histories.”

“What is wrong with you?  Untie me and let me help the injured.  I can stitch their wounds at the least.”

She ran her fingers through her long hair, “But this, this is proof.  What all of us, each and every one, came to this abbey for.  And none of us, not a single one, believed it.  Yet it’s true.”

“Will you please tell me what you’re babbling about?”

She gave me a look of pity.  “Can’t you see?  Isn’t this knowledge you possess?  This temple is made to house gods.”

“I’m not a god.  I’m just, I don’t know, really powerful.  And extremely unlucky!  If I was a god, things would be very different.”

“There’s no need for,” she stood up, “you to render aid to our injured.  They won’t be injured long.”  The woman gestured others over, “take her to a cell on the top floor.  We’ll hold her as long as we can.”

As they dragged me away, I couldn’t help but look at the injured.  A lady holding her gut, blood on her hands, suddenly sat up, pulled her shirt up to look at her wound.  Nothing but smooth skin.

***

Pacing.  That was what I was left with.  I didn’t mind, I enjoyed pacing.  Ok, I did mind.  Stuck in a damn cell in a damn keep in a damn temple in the middle of mother-fudging nowhere.  And cold.

They’d tossed me into this cell last night.  A bed with a thick mattress, blankets, a writing desk and chair, and a fireplace without any wood.  This high up in the mountains, even in summer, last night was chilly and I didn’t sleep that well.  Knowing that the wizard’s army would soon be battering down the doors didn’t help.

Pacing, I pondered.  The old lady couldn’t be insane.  I saw the injured healed before my eyes.  Ergo, this place could heal.  And she was looking younger.  Both of these, she seemed to indicate, didn’t happen before I got here.  Nope, she fully believed that I was something she’d never experienced in her life.

And my powers could grow grass, herbs and flowers, on bare earth and aged wagon wood.  I didn’t want to admit it, didn’t really want this experience at all, but I had no choice.  Somehow, I was healing these people by being here.  And the women were desperate to keep me here longer, from whatever ritual the grand magister had planned, I was clearly beneficial to all of them.  The answer was obvious, but absolutely impossible.

The door unlocked, opened.  The abbess walked in with a tray of food in her hands and jet-black hair on her head.  Less wrinkles, fuller lips.

My chance to discover the answers I’d already reasoned out.  “Why are you getting younger?”

“You’ve finally caught on.”

“Just out with it already.”

“Because you are here.  This place, it exists for beings like you.”  She entered the room, set the tray down on the flat table by the writing desk.  “While you are here, people become younger.”

“Well, that’s a trick.  Will you all de-age enough to become toddlers?”

“If we overstay, yes.  Tomes as ancient as this temple tell us that the oldest gain youth the fastest, and it appears that is correct.  The younger one is-”

“-the slower they de-age?”

“Yes.  You can see why we need to keep you here.”

“For ten more days.  Why that many?”

“If you were eighty, wouldn’t you want to be twenty again?  Perhaps even younger.”

“Not younger, trust me on this.”  I moved toward the door, but she quickly returned to the exit, cutting me off.  I said, “And the injured, it seems my presence heals them.”

“Yes, again.”

“What about those killed last night?  Will the dead return, too?”

“No.  At least, I haven’t read about it.  And they remain on the ground outside.  Can you bring them back?”

I almost answered in the negative, but decided to go with, “I’m thinking about raising them instead of resurrection.  A legion of the dead at my command.  I may just do that.”

She backed up a bit more, then quickly shut, locked and barred the door.

***

It’s funny.  All these people, thinking I’m a deity, and here I was, eating.  I’d done my business into a single bucket when I was in that awful wagon.  Then, tossed the ick out of the cage.  I shuddered, thinking of that.

When the Spaniards under Cortez began their campaign of conquering the Aztecs, it’s said their white skin matched how the Aztecs described their gods.  Probably, in my view at least, because amongst the Aztecs, pale skin would have equated with staying out of the sun.  Kings and priests didn’t toil on the ground to produce food, but their peasants sure did.  Their skin would naturally be darker.  Thus, the gods were modeled after their society’s understanding of the way of things.

But the Aztecs didn’t really consider the Spanish to be gods.  For one thing, the Spaniards stank.  And their poop smelled like poop.  They sweat, were bit by mosquitoes, shifted their weight from one leg to the other and ate and drank like any other person.  Nope, that was a myth spread by the Spaniards, created out of arrogance.

I certainly stank from time to time!  And used the lady’s room.  How could I possibly be a goddess?

Yet, here I was, de-aging people and healing the goddamn wounded.  I shook my head.  Yeah, maybe, alright, maybe I was a god.  What more proof did I require?

But, why, why did I have no memories as a deity?  I couldn’t, just couldn’t, believe Bechalle made me into a deity.  Insanity!  No amount of knife carving produces a goddess.

Add that to waking up in this body and knowing it was not mine.  At the time, I’d thought I was a man.  That no longer made sense to me.  Not just because I had no memories of my past life, but because the transition to a new body . . . seemed normal.  Expected.

Who else – what else – can take a new body?  In a universe not my own?

I shook my head.  Alright, yeah.  I couldn’t quite admit it.

A deity.

This is just fudging great.  Who do I pray for, for help?  Me?  God damn it!  Me damn it!  Ok, ok, that didn’t really make sense.  Though if I could, in all seriousness, damn people, well I know who I’d be starting with.

I sure felt like an almost sixteen-year-old girl.  Really, just a few months away until I become a queen.  I’ve crushed those who would conquer my kingdom . . . and wasn’t proud of it.  Burned alive who knows how many men.

Sat on the bed then, head in my hands.

Didn’t know how to come back from that.  Could there be forgiveness, even by me to me, for such a vile, awful act?

I was a terrible blight on these lands.  If I hadn’t been here, ‘my’ kingdom would have fallen to the Ketzles and the Laemacians.  But these events were ever repeated throughout history.  People remember Rome, Macedonia, Egypt, The Middle Kingdom.  Not the conquered.  Never the conquered.

I set the bread down.  And the cheese.

Maybe the grand magister’s ritual was a good thing.  Maybe I was the one who needed killing.

***

On the third day in the keep, I didn’t want to get out of bed.  I did for non-godly bodily necessities.  And once I was up, it was easier to stay up.  My little cell was cold, and I contemplated destroying the writing desk for warmth.

Instead, I did some exercises, stretched, and considered.  If I could de-age people in this temple then I was the most valuable commodity that ever existed.  It made sense the nuns would want to keep me.

It did not make sense that the grand magister was not content to wait.  After all, he’d presumably get younger, too.  But maybe he was so young already that he’d become a child?  Or maybe age wasn’t something a wizard had to worry about.

No, he had some other plan for my person.  The grand magister and abbess discussed some ritual as a sacrifice they were to put me through.  Because the nuns wanted to delay that, the ritual must remove me from being in this temple.

Perhaps a dead god gave the wizard more power or something.  Perhaps he could drain the entirety of my youth-giving power at once and become immortal.  Nothing else made sense.  Unless he really, just really hated nuns.

I was certainly beginning to share that feeling.

A loud boom resonated throughout the keep, in the very stones it was made out of.  A few seconds later, another.  And on and on.

My window faced the other direction, so I couldn’t see what was going on, but it was clear.  Tye had opened the gates, let his army in, and they were now battering the doors down.  No amount of spry nuns were going to stop a trained military.  It was only a matter of time.

***

The chimney was too small for me.  The window had bars that weren’t rusty enough to break.  And a sheer cliff as high as the mountain itself.  Looking at the furniture, I could stack it all against the door.  But that would only slow them.

Maybe I could use a table leg as a weapon.  But once two or three soldiers get in here, they’d win.

I sighed.  Not a lot I could do.

Sat on the bed, feet dangling off, I tried to reach my power again.  Like before, I couldn’t quite touch it.

By mid-afternoon, the banging changed with a large, crashing sound.  The doors bursting inward, likely.  Loud cheers from outside the keep.  It became oddly quieter.  No sounds of fighting, distance sounds of wood breaking.

After a half hour or so, more banging, but somehow nearer.  Probably from within the keep.

It continued like this for most of the day.  The soldiers would reach a new barricade, destroy it, gain more ground inside the keep, another barricade.  Instead of fighting, the nuns had done their best to slow the advance.

I guess they wanted every last second of my gift of youth before the inevitable happened.

***

Before sunset, they made it to my door.  The speed at which they broke through the door made me envious – if only I’d had an axe!  Swords drawn, soldier after soldier entered, looking around.

For a moment, I considered hiding under the covers.  Maybe they’d leave me alone if my feet were carefully bundled.  It keeps the monsters away, after all.

“The princess!”

I put my hands up.  “I’m unarmed.  Not resisting.  Thank you for freeing me from the tyranny of awful nuns.”

That soldier, and another, sheathed their swords, roughly took me by the arms, and dragged me out down the stairs and out of the keep.  It was teeming with soldiers, but I saw no women.

Grand Magister Tye waited for me outside.  “Good.  We’ll proceed directly to the library and get this over with.”

“You’re looking younger,” I said.  “Eating lots of vegetables?”

“Bring her,” was all he responded with.

I was half tempted to tell the guards they’d regain some lost youth if they’d take me anywhere but where the wizard wanted me, but not a chance they’d believe that.