A Thrall Perfected

Mara's eyes opened slowly as though they weighed at least ten times more than they had the last time she awoke in her bed. Her limbs felt just as heavy and her mind felt as if it was struggling to free itself from a morass. She closed her eyes again and fought through feelings of betrayal and anger.

She promised me I could choose. She promised me I could choose and here I am.

Her heart sank and she thought that as long as she stayed in the cocoon of solitude that came by doing her level best to not allow the world inside, then she didn't have to accept the realities of it. She stayed quiet. She focused on her breathing. She remembered Bryana's promise, for whatever that was worth now, and tried to focus on her future, whatever that would be.

She remembered.

Bryana said you'd forget.

That was enough to bring her eyes open again, more easily this time, to look up at the ceiling, noting that the wood above was darker than in her own little place. She was definitely elsewhere. She looked around, her neck only slightly stiff at the movement. Light streamed through the window, enough to tell her it was daylight and probably cloudy outside, but, with the unplanned loss of time, she found herself having to wonder if it was the same day she remembered when she rode out of town on a horse not hers.

The bed was large, feeling like an island unto itself and, from her place in the center, there was some protest from her body as she rolled from it and planted her feet on the floor. She put a bit extra thought into trying to stand up before she made the attempt, but it worked out well enough. The initial wave of dizziness passed quickly and, after a few tentative steps, she felt sure-footed enough to progress through the bedroom, through the small living area and towards the sound outside the open door.

Not far from her and the blanket of snow between them she saw Devin chopping firewood. Her movements were fluid even there. One piece of wood taken from the pile with one hand, placed in the center of the stump, then her arm swung in a half-circle, cleaving the wood in a single strike. Once done, she would pitch them into an already sizable pile and move on to the next. "Where's Imir?"

"She just returned from a hunt. She's behind the house tending to the kill. Even after your change we expect to be here for some time."

Her limbs now completely feeling like hers again, she noticed an added weight on her right arm. Looking down, she saw a bracelet of burnished silver with symbols layered upon symbols. Her index finger ran over it, feeling the texture of it, wondering if she could somehow make sense of what was there. It had it's own warmth and, touching it, she felt a sensation tickle her flesh not unlike the power that rushed through her when she took Bryana's hand. She also noted that she saw no clasp of any kind.

Devin looked up form her work to watch her for a moment. "It is Her gift to you. The magic within is as powerful as She. It's Her conduit to you. No magic in this land can remove it and no tools of man can damage it. If it were cut from your body it would become useless metal. It is forever."

There was no reason to doubt her words. "Did we...get here the same way we got to the woods?"

"Through Her magic, yes."

She wrapped her hand around it, feeling it move and feeling that connection again. "So," she began, unsure of how else to express her uncertainty, "what happens now?"

"Your change will begin at Her pace. It's not for you to decide."

"How will I know when it starts?"

A flash of contentment crossed her features, "You will know."

She walked towards Devin as the other continued to work apace, the snow just deep enough to leave prints with bits of grass showing. A simple glance and the woman seemed to be able to read the question on the other's face and she smiled in what was the first genuine look of emotion that she remembered seeing from either of them. "This surprises you."

Mara looked around the small cabin. It was a nice bit of land. She could hear a small stream in the distance and farther beyond than that she could see the profiles of snow covered mountains. The wind was mostly still and it didn't seem much colder than before. She didn't know where she was, but she was definitely beyond even the woods. She wondered at the limits of the magic. Could she be literally anywhere in the world? She suspected so, but, looking around, it was just a small, unassuming cabin sitting on a lovely piece of land covered in snow. "I guess. Maybe. I suppose I was expecting..."

The ax dropped again. "That we move on from one adventure to another without end? Sometimes that is the case, and, when it is, we serve. But it is often this. She sends us on tasks that She especially values. Not everything She does is something like requires us." Another log met its fate with a sound that sounded like a rip of the air. "When we're not needed we live a simple life in one of the places she has secured for us." She again seemed to read Mara's features. "She intends for us to live until we're needed. As she told you, she has no use for empty things. That means cutting firewood, keeping our home, and all of the other things that normal people do that you wished to avoid."

Her words bit into a soft spot and her voice carried that ire, "What makes you think...?"

"I am a slave, not a fool, Mara. With your own words, you say that you weren't being harmed where you were and, yet, you took Her hand. You took it because you knew that your life was destined to be ordinary and you wanted more. Your life will be more in ways you cannot imagine, but it is also this. But even this is wondrous in its own way, and it is all thanks to Her."

"I was you, Mara. I was you in every way, but I will bet that my life was even more meaningless and uneventful than your own. Even if nothing ever happened to you personally at that whorehouse, I am willing to bet that every night there was at least one thing to talk about, and share. There was a fight or you heard a story that amused or appalled you. Something happened around you that was worth laughter, disgust, or even mention. Not for me. I spent my days running freshly laundered linens that no one ever used into rooms that no one ever used. Little of note happened, much less nightly, that was worth sharing. Even if it had, I had no family to share it with anyway. All I and my fellows did was pass around the gossip from the High Houses and imagine what it would be like to be part of them. I did basically nothing, and I was paid well for it. It was boring, but somehow it consumes you. The routine becomes what you're used to, then it becomes comfortable. Then, one day, you find that it defines you to the point where you don't know who you are or what you would do without it."

Mara knew the truth of that well.

"Then, one night, She came to me in a wash of light. She needed me and Her call wasn't something anyone can truly resist. If She demands you, She will have you. Once I felt Her power, and Her need, and Her love, I was filled with purpose and peace. I wanted and ached for Her." Devin didn't try to keep that love and need from her voice. Even speaking of Bryana was like a chance to make love to her.

"Now, I am content in ways that no one who is not one of Hers can comprehend. I wait to serve. When I do not serve Her directly I am allowed to live as others do, but there is still that contentment, love, and purpose. I can sit and watch a sunset and enjoy doing so very much when, not so many weeks ago, I would have told myself I would never have had time to do before. She cleared away all the clutter of nothingness in my mind and my life by taking me."

"I envy you this time, Mara. You'll always be able to look upon it and relive it in your mind with joy, but the true turning only happens once."

"Was Imir like you, too?"

"I was more in some ways and much less in others," she said, making her way to them. Mara found the blood all over her hands and arms unsettling, but, then again, she'd always stayed away from hunting. She was not so naive as to think her dinner volunteered to die and do so cleanly, but she left it to others to do the gruesome work of making it ready to be put to the fire.

Imir seemed to know that, too and she looked sympathetic for a moment. "I apologize for my appearance, but dressing game is messy work and, given your conversation, not entirely beside the point."

She supposed she shouldn't have wonder at the notion by now, but she did. "You heard us talking?"

"Every word. Look at my hands, Mara."

For the reasons she'd already considered, she had conspicuously avoided doing so.

"Look at them." The words had the sharpness and force of a command that surprised her since they didn't even raise their voice beyond a conversational tone in the midst of the mayhem when they reclaimed Salli. She forced herself to look at the bloody, still dripping mess that were her hands and barely fought off the urge to gag.

"There was much blood on them even before the morning that I slit the throat of one of Queen Evaline's pages and attempted to murder her." Imir's dark eyes were untroubled by the shock that had taken hold of Mara's features. "You seem surprised."

She was. There were rumors that she'd heard from the bar, from people who claimed to work in the castle or otherwise be in the know, so it was more a shock that it was true and not just drunken bluster. It made sense to keep it quiet. It wasn't in public, so there was no reason to create a panic by announcing it. "That really happened? You did that?"

She lowered her hands. "I did. And more. She was only the latest victim on the path of my life. I could fill the nearby stream with all the blood I'd spilled in my not so many years in the world. If I could have been haunted by the screams of my victims or the looks on their faces, I could never have slept again, but, I slept well with the peace of a job well done. That, and I enjoyed killing for its own sake. I had the power to take everything from someone and they couldn't stop me. There was a thrill in watching the life fade from their eyes or of listening to that death rattle. I could do what I did because I possessed no conscience whatsoever. Now I do."

"I do because I could not escape Mistress. She tracked me and took me as penance for what I'd tried to do to your queen. She is my conscience now am thankful for it every day. "I see the world in ways I never did before. I see people as people and see their value. I no longer see people as targets or things to be used."

Mara saw the devotion and the certainty in those dark pools, remembering the gaze that she nearly felt on her body coupled with the sensation of metal at her throat. "But you would have killed me."

"Because She demanded it and it serves Her purpose. I would not have taken pleasure in it."

"You would have felt nothing at all?"

"Not true. I would have felt..." Her searching eyes suggested the search going on behind them for the right words. "Correctness and peace, but not pleasure. She took the bloodlust from me."

That sat in her belly as a hard weight with jagged edges. She had done nothing. Part of the reason she took Bryana's hand was because she felt like she was

was

nothing. Mara told herself not long ago that it didn't matter if someone chose for her, but the one doing the choosing might just decide that she would kill a nothing, and she would do it with correctness and contentment, and no care as to what she left behind.

Suddenly someplace not just here not just now felt ideal and she had an urge to see if she could find that stream. "Is it all right if I take a walk?"

"You are not a prisoner here. Go as you please."

Her hand went to the metal around her wrist and the sensation of it on her flesh and the power within it belied the truth of those words. She set out and after a few steps she began to hear the rhythm of Devin and the firewood once again. As she headed into the woods, she idly wondered how far she'd have to go before they couldn't hear her anymore. Dismissing it, she let the pleasant white noise of the stream draw her. It was something soothing to focus on in the face of the uncertainties roiling within.

She found it, following a stretch of it that was fairly straight and she looked on to see how, in the distance it began to take this turn and that, like a snake navigating uneven terrain. Once in a while Mara found a rock and gave it a toss into the stream, breaking the tranquility with the occasional plopping sound. Finding something in that to keep her mind and her body busy, she collected rocks as she went and, almost as though it was meant to be, she found a gray-brown rock smoothed enough to sit on for a while with enough smaller stones around it to keep her going for a while.

Settling in, at first she just threw rocks into the water to watch them arc and splash into the water. After a time, she began to make a game out of things, attempting to skip them across as her grandfather had taught her, then aiming them at two rocks that were peeking over the surface of the water, then at the limbs of a half-broken, dead tree on the opposite shore. She could just tag a couple of the limbs that hung above the water. Mara pitched another and watched it skip before a voice brought her back to the moment.

Second thoughts?

Her eyes darted and her head swiveled to see who was there with her before her hand went again to the bracelet on her wrist and realized that no one was there with her as a being to touch or stand before. Rather than answer the question, she chose to pose a basic one of her own, "Where are you?"

Not far,

she promised.

I'm preparing things for you. The remaking of your body is a complex thing, steeped in magic and alchemy that's beyond the other mage guilds, and most other mages. It, however, is well worth the effort. Imir and Devin have proven very useful to the world.

"You mean, to you."

Her voice carried the timbre that came with sudden discovery.

There are those second thoughts. But, yes, to me. I try to do things that benefit the world. Sometimes that means reshaping a horrible bit of humanity into something useful. Sometimes I do set out to save the world, and I've done it a few times now, as a matter of fact.

"Should I thank you?" Those doubts gave the question a caustic edge that Bryana didn't seem to notice, or simply decided she was indifferent to.

No. I did what had to be done, as I always do. Sometimes saving the world means saving one person's world, like helping to heal a paralyzed young man so he can have a full life. Sometimes it means just walking a girl like Salli home so she can have a life that she chooses and not one that circumstance forced her into.

"And deciding that someone needs to die."

There was an honest chuckle to be heard then, as though Bryana chose to bow to the absurd.

You act as though I have some insane compulsion to murder and will send my minions to kill anyone that sleights me.

"You don't?"

It is a last resort, not a first. I will point out that your former employer is two employees short, but is still very much alive. I did not lie to you and you know I didn't. I even demonstrated to you the ease with which they can take life if need be. You still made the choice that put you here.

But it is different seeing hands drip blood and know that you will be as indifferent to it as Imir.

Mara paused in slightly bewildered contemplation. "Do you see everything they do?"

When I choose to. When I feel the need to. For the most part though, they are free to live as they please until I have need of them. Even when I don't look in on them or direct them, I know what they will do and how they will be.

She didn't understand how that might be and just assumed that the magic was the answer in some way. "What's the difference between them and some murderer on the street?"

You mean to ask me that, don't you? What's the difference between me and some murderer on the street? The answer to that is 'nothing' insofar as all people that do dark deeds of any kind are trying to meet their needs and goals, like money or power. The only difference is scope.

There was a pause as she chose to change her approach.

Tell me, are you fond of the queen? Do you find her a good, kind, leader, and a benefit to Erette?

She did and she dared say most would agree with her. "What difference does that...?"

She is a murderer as well. She has done things that lesser people would be imprisoned for. She has ordered those she rules by right to kill others. The man who kills a rival for his woman is doing it for himself. When Evaline orders people to their deaths or to do things that she has the right to have them do that others do not, she's doing it for the greater good as well. She does these things for her people and her kingdom as much as anything else.

She shook her head, "So you're the queen now?"

She has power to wield, as do I. I wield mine on her behalf occasionally, for I think of her as my queen in the same way as you do. Her kingdom is larger than mine by far, but we are alike in some ways.

There was a pause, her eyes briefly wide as she grasped the enormity of that throwaway comment and she touched the bracelet again, "The queen knows that magic like this exists in the world?"

She does, and it is to her benefit and to that of Erette that she makes use of all the tools at her disposal knowing others are doing the same. As she has put it so eloquently, we are a shield always and a sword only when need be, much like the army itself.

But, Mara, I do not think of myself as a queen, for that's the path that leads to darkness that I came from.

There was a pause that often came with the admission simply because she had never made peace with the person she was, and, to be blunt, she never wanted to.

I came from a place not unlike Imir. There's at least as much literal blood on my hands as she had before I found her, and, metaphorically, much more. I want to be able to leave the world better than I found it when I pass, hopefully, many moons from now. Sometimes that means crushing enemies without mercy when they leave me no choice...or walking a young lady home from a whorehouse. I hope that, if the faith is true, that when the Goddess puts my soul to the scale, its evil will not outweigh her virtue.

Her voice turned suddenly scornful.

Forgive me for waxing philosophical in so self-indulgent a manner. I'm not even religious, though one of my friends is and she's clearly becoming a bad influence.

Mara noted a subtle change in tone that suggested deep affection for that bad influence.

Yes, I will sometimes set you to tasks that you find distasteful now, but it will never be done with no care. I will not tell you that, when it comes to those distasteful things, that I will never benefit, but I will never be the only one that does. It will be for something greater, too.

"Like using us to undo the damage you've done?"

There was a pause again, this one drawing into something so long that it made Mara wonder if she was still listening.

There's truth there.

The voice in her head seemed to honor that idea.

We all use the tools at our disposal to make our way. I must say that you are surprisingly astute for a barmaid.

She snickered. "Because I'm a barmaid. I listen to people lie to themselves and each other all night, every night, from, 'I'm secretly sitting on a fortune,' to, 'By the Goddess, that's the biggest one I've ever seen.'"

Mara laughed at that and thought she'd heard Bryana do the same as she found a hefty rock and pitched it, a little pleased by the arc she got out of that one. "It won't matter what I think of why you're doing whatever it is anyway, will it?" It wasn't quite a question in the face of already knowing Imir and Devin long enough to know the answer.