Talla's Fallen Temple

Edited by the incomparable Mr. Ken Scades.

*****

The trick of meddling between an ascendant Goddess and her Synergist, a mystery Zhair'lo had decided to call "Talla's problem", was on Zhair'lo's mind for the entirety of the following day.

He wanted to commune with her in the space where the two of them could share thoughts, but found himself unable to do so. Most of the Camp had gone out on a large Hunt, leaving Zhair'lo behind on account of his Seal Breaking duties. With nothing else to do, he was out on the range, sharpening his skills with bow and arrow.

As there was no one to disturb him, Zhair'lo was at his most tranquil, the state of being in which he was best able to communicate with Talla. The problem was not on his end.

Talla, however, must have been quite busy, because he was unable to reach her.

Zhair'lo's brain could only spin around in circles on the matter of the Synergist. They both agreed, along with Talla's fellow agitators, the transparent syrup was the key to the situation.

A woman, he well knew, needed all nine Perfections to become a Goddess. According to Talla, a Temple needed a Goddess to keep the magic flowing through her minions to the men of the city she wanted to control. When a Goddess died, a Queen would have to step in, get the six upgrades she needed to complement the three Perfections she would already have, and become the new Goddess.

"Ascension" was what they called it.

That was all well and good.

The point was that this required six batches of Synergist and six separate upgrades. That much was clear to everyone who cared to know about the subject. How many times had he been reminded that a man could only carry a single Discipline; that his body must Seize to the right Discipline during the upgrade ritual?

So there would need to be six rituals.

There were just too many variables, however, and Zhair'lo could resolve none of them without the knowledge that Talla and her friends were hopefully collecting.

Could the upgrades be done all at once?

He pictured six altars on one side of a room, a naked woman on each, with six men transferring magic to a seventh woman on an altar across the way. Could they go by turns, ejaculating on different parts of her body?

Did a woman require recovery time between upgrades?

The spacing between attempts at Seal Breaking seemed to suggest such delays were necessary, but there was no way the Temple women could allow month long intervals when a Goddess was ascending. If that they did, it would take almost half a year to make a Queen into a Goddess.

And what of the Synergist? Where was it kept? Who guarded it? How well? Were there multiple stores of it, each Queen or Sorceress with her own emergency stash?

Frustrated, he sunk another arrow in a straw target.

The verdict was simple: not enough information.

Zhair'lo was tired and his arms were sore. There was no shade out on the range and he'd been doing nothing but shooting for most of the morning and well into the afternoon. Deciding that enough was enough, he headed into the lodge hoping that Master Lyric would have something for him to do.

Past the neat little rows of short fences and flowers, he entered the building through its front door. There was Lyric, as always, in his small office, with documents in front of him.

"Anything I can do for you, sir?" Zhair'lo asked helpfully.

There was a pause in which the older man seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

"You look tired, Zhair'lo," he said, never glancing away from his documents.

"I'm not -", Zhair'lo started to protest, but was cut off.

Lyric did not look up when he interrupted Zhair'lo.

"I suggest you take a nap."

This was a hint of monumental proportions, but what was his Master getting at? Was Zhair'lo not doing his job properly? Was Lyric annoyed that the Hunt was a man short?

It couldn't be any of those things. As the Master of the Camp, Lyric's job was to be blunt in assessing those under his charge. He wasn't supposed to quietly harbour any ill feelings. What would be the point of that?

Continuing to read the document in front of him, Lyric raised one hand and extended a finger vaguely in the direction of Zhair'lo's room.

"Nap," he Zhair'lo entirely from his attention.

Zhair'lo twitched a shrug. What with the heat and his exertions, he probably could find a few bells of sleep. It wouldn't kill him to get some rest. Possibly, if he was very lucky, this extra layer of tranquillity would let him get through to Talla.

The afternoon was pleasant, so when he reached his room, he left the wooden shutters open. A soothing breeze played over the trees in the distance, causing the drapes to billow occasionally, and the fragrance of lilacs wafted up from the somewhere below. It really was one of the most refreshing places he had ever had the good fortune to live and he was going to regret at least that part when it came time to join the Fighters - whenever that was going to go through.

Zhair'lo lay on his back, calmed his mind as much as he could, and reached out for Talla. As much as he tried, however, she clearly wasn't in a state of mind to communicate.

Eventually, his exhaustion overtook him and he fell asleep.

-===================-

Talla had access to no such tranquillity.

Today, the military trainers in Form had decided it was time to move on from the bow, with which she had shown a level of skill superior to her sisters, to the bo staff.

"In combat," the leathered commander intoned as she stalked across the line of girls, "your staffs would be tipped with blades. For today, it will be dangerous enough to let you wield a simple, tapered dowel."

Forming up in lines the girls did as a force of habit by now. Every one of them knew which line to stand in and how far she was from the front of that line. The fact that they were lining up in front of straw dummies mounted on wooden blocks, rather than stalls in an archery range, changed nothing in that respect.

By her reputation with the bow and arrow, the four others in Talla's group had long since decided to let her stand at the front of their line. Next to each dummy, holding a pair of sticks just about as tall as the girls themselves, stood an instructor.

"Should the Temple ever come under attack," the commander called out. "Your duty will be to stand on the walls and loose arrows into our enemies. In the unlikely event they breach our walls, you will take up a staff. Today, you will learn the simplest attacks. You will go over them again and again until they are perfect."

She heaved a last sigh, almost as if she was disappointed in them in advance.

"You may begin."

There was an instant increase in the amount of chatter as the individual instructors took over, handing the bo staffs to whomever was first in line.

Talla was no longer surprised at the change in tone. Where the commander had been all about bluster, scolding and a frankly frightening level of barely controlled violence, the instructors were much more like actual teachers.

'Okay,' she admitted to herself, 'more like the teachers who carried whips in their belts, but teachers all the same.'

"Hold the bo like this," the woman said, placing one of her staffs in Talla's hands. "The simplest move for you to learn is the thrust. If you imagine a dagger at the end of staff, the goal is to plunge that dagger directly into your enemy."

The instructor stood with her legs shoulder width apart and her right side toward the dummy. She pulled the bo back at chest height until her left arm was extended as far as it could go and her right fist rested between her breasts. With a sudden twitch, both her arms drove the staff point first into the dummy.

"That's the goal," she warned. "Don't expect to be able to land that straight off. One step at a time. Once you master the arm motion, I'll teach you to use your legs to get more momentum."

Patiently, she took Talla through the steps of holding the bo, keeping her fists clenched tightly, followed by the proper way to pull it back, holding it against the bare, upper part of her breasts, and finally the technique for crisply sending it forward.

It was obvious, Talla realized, that there was no aqueduct of knowledge flowing into her brain this time. Zhair'lo had clearly not imparted any skill with this weapon. Perhaps, when he joined the Fighters, he might have some advice to send her way.

As it was, she wasn't spectacular with the gods damned stick. She wasn't even good with it. The shaft felt heavy and awkward in her hands. The movement to take it back along her body and send it forward wasn't coming naturally - she kept wanting to swing it away from herself instead.

"Good for a start," the instructor said. "Rest your arms for a bit. Next!"

'Good for a start' was an exaggeration. At least Talla felt so until she looked around and saw that the rest of the girls were no better.

'This is how they've felt for the past several days,' she realized. 'Useless and uncoordinated. Robbed, by the Temple, of the grace and skill that should be ours by nature.'

Her shoulders were sore, but their tension dissipated while she waited for her second turn. When the bo came around to her again, she was a little better, but her shoulders got sore much more quickly. She was made to practice the thrust a few more times before being taught how to make a double slice.

"Remember, the goal is to cut with the tip of the blade, slashing sideways for the opponent's face or throat. Don't wait to see if the first blow strikes - immediately swing the opposite end back to other side of the face."

The Form woman demonstrated the technique, delivering two jarring strikes to the straw dummy in quick succession. She nodded to Talla, indicating it was her turn to try.

Attempting to use a bo was one of the most frustrating experiences in Talla's life. Here was this Officer, striking like death itself into the heart of the straw dummy, and Talla couldn't replicate her motions to save her life.

'Literally,' she thought, 'I literally couldn't do this if my life depended on it.'

If nothing else had ever made her understand that a frontal assault on the Temple, or even on a single Goddess, would be pointless, this would have made the point crystal clear.

The other girls, taking their turns, were no better.

'You've stolen this from us,' Talla thought. 'And you'll dole it back out to us, sprayed onto our bodies with a load of semen, if we're good little girls.'

She was a giant, unstoppable waterwheel through the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. But it wasn't water that flowed over her. The entropy that powered her was the inexorable downward flow of a river of pure anger. She pushed herself past the point the instructor expected of her, repeated the motions over and over again until there seemed to be blisters not just on her hands but in her mind as well.

By the end of it, perhaps, she felt a bit better about her ability to stab an oncoming adversary.

"You seem quite determined," the instructor said, as they neared the end of the day's training. "There are many powerful warriors among Endowment. Perhaps you aspire to be one of them."

With exhaustion keeping her head down, Talla could only look up with her eyes through the stinging sweat that blurred her vision.

"Do you know Shanata?" she breathed back to the Form woman.

A knowing look came into the older woman's eyes.

"Many here know that name."

"She's my sister," Talla retorted, and stabbed the staff one more time into the straw dummy before walking to the back of the line.

The other girls gave her a wide berth as she passed them. Talla didn't care for that, but she was gratified to hear the next girl in line having to grunt with considerable effort to pull the staff back out of the target.

Maybe, just maybe, if she got angry enough, she might eventually get the hang of this. Her lips hardened.

Talla much preferred her seemingly natural ability with the bow and arrow.

-===================-

Zhair'lo slept through most of Talla's frustrating afternoon and was never the wiser to her struggles. Quite to the contrary, he woke up feeling refreshed and hungry.

When he went downstairs to the common room, he found that the rest of the men who had been out on the range were back inside. Because the main body of Hunters were out on a Hunt, the remainder of the lodge's inhabitants had managed to fit around one large dining table.

"Just in time, Zhai," Lyric waved him to the empty seat at his right.

Even though the gears in his head were just starting to turn, Zhair'lo immediately realized something was odd. The first indication was that dinner was well in progress and yet no one had come to get him. Nor did anyone remark on the fact that he was rudely late to the table.

The second, and far more jarring, oddity was that they had saved him a privileged seat despite his tardiness.

Zhair'lo's empty plate was passed across the table from one pair of hands to another so that it could be loaded with a broad sampling of the many dishes Is'ka had created for the evening. Fully loaded, the shallow wooden vessel was back on his place mat before he could even sit down.

"Eat, Zhai," Lyric advised cordially.

The man was an enigma. Normally so strict, what was getting him to relax the rules this evening?

Even in his slightly dazed state, munching down his food quickly in order to catch up to everyone else at the table, Zhair'lo found the conversation to be almost intentionally light. It was no more than typical Hunter talk. To discuss one's own exploits was not polite, so naturally the men were taking it in turns to tell humorous, daring or crude stories about each other.

For a moment, Zhair'lo found himself wishing Kenji were here instead of out on the Hunt. Kenji was the only one, after all, who knew a story about Zhair'lo.

He berated himself for a moment. That wasn't proper thinking for a Hunter, was it? Instead, he should be thinking of stories he could tell about others. Such was proper etiquette.

Though Zhair'lo racked his brain for such an anecdote, he could come up with none that involved anyone else at the table, for there was also an unwritten rule that stories are told only about those present.

As the plates were cleaned off, Zhair'lo having caught up, Is'ka disappeared into the kitchen. Lyric nodded to one of the men at the far end of the table, which was his cue to extinguish several of the nearest torches.

With the table now lit only by the distant fireplace, it was Lyric who spoke.

"Now, Zhair'lo here."

His words came in that mildly sarcastic, slightly critical way that always succeeded in drawing chuckles from those listening.

"He came to me out of nowhere, a red scroll and an assignment. Some kid, looking for something new."

Master Lyric was making it sound as if Zhair'lo had come to the camp by his own request. It wasn't that he had joined the Hunters on purpose, although he'd certainly taken to it once he'd seen the scroll. But he couldn't argue with the fact that he'd been looking for something new.

"I've seen all kinds of eager in my time. Competent and not. Flash in the pan and the slow blue flame of pure alcohol. I've seen a tonne of naturals come my way in the years I've been training men to Hunt."

A wistful look overcame the old man, as the firelight glistened in his eyes. There were, Zhair'lo realized, a great many more years behind those eyes than a normal lifetime could have put there. What, he wondered, had this man seen that so added to his age?

"It has not been my experience, however, to meet someone so young, so nimble and so thoroughly determined to make himself an expert at the craft that I teach."

Zhair'lo found himself suddenly captured in the gaze of those shadowed yet shining eyes. Unable to turn away, he merely gazed back at the man.

'What's going on back there?' Zhair'lo wondered at the old man's eyes. 'Am I disappointing you by leaving?'

For a moment, his resolve to join the Fighters wavered. Wasn't Lyric's Camp the perfect place to live? The room, the breeze, the camaraderie? Wasn't this what every man wanted? To take his ease in the evening after a hard day of work? To share stories of past accomplishments over a pint of ale? To wait for the arrival of women by night?

But Zhair'lo didn't want women. He wanted Talla specifically and he wanted to break the grasp of the people who stood between the two of them.

His will hardened, and so perhaps did his gaze, because Master Lyric's expression tilted to a resigned smile.

"We hear that he took a deer down by putting an arrow through the side of its neck. Here, gentlemen, we have a man among us who will take our craft well outside this house and deliver it far and wide."

The men greeted this with a rousing cheer and pounded their flagons of ale against the ancient and much abused wooden table. The mood lightened considerably as Master Lyric took his own pint in hand and raised it over his head.

"Zhair'lo M'han," he intoned warmly. "Long may he run."

Zhair'lo felt his cheeks redden. No one had ever raised a toast for him.

"Long may he run!" the men echoed back and everyone, Zhair'lo included, took back a draught of alcohol.

There was a short space of time, immediately following the lowering of the flagons, when Zhair'lo might have said something. 'Thank you', perhaps, or a longer devotion demonstrating his gratitude to Master Lyric and the assembled Hunters.

It would have been easy, given the dim lighting, to say a few words - any words at all - but he was interrupted as a hushed, expectant silence fell over the men and all attention suddenly turned to the kitchen entrance behind him.

A place was quickly cleared in the centre of the table as Is'ka passed a tray over Zhair'lo's head. Upon it were several clay dishes, each no wider than the palm of a man's hand and no taller than three of his fingers. Most notable were the low, blue flames that burned on the surface of each dish's contents, and the small blue sparks issued from underneath the flame.

"A little whiskey, a little sugar," Is'ka explained.

"Seems a waste to burn whiskey," one of the men remarked to a chorus of chuckles.

"Better to caramelize the sugar," the chef chided. "Sacrifices, sacrifices."

"What is this, Is'ka?" Zhair'lo wondered aloud. "I've never seen it before."

"Dessert, young man," Is'ka answered, sprinkling more sugar into the flames. "A recipe I learned from a traveller a long time ago. He called it a 'flambé' of some kind. I could barely understand the man, as it happened, but we both understood how to use a kitchen."

As they watched, the flames dwindled and burnt out. Is'ka handed the small clay pots around the table, starting with Master Lyric and Zhair'lo, and going around from there. Zhair'lo was surprised to find the container cool despite how long the flame had been burning in it. The surface of the dessert had turned to a glistening layer of smooth sugar.

"It smells delicious," Zhair'lo remarked.

"Dig in, then," Is'ka declared as he took his seat. "I don't make this very often, given the amount of work it is."

"And the whiskey!" someone piped up.

Is'ka shook a crooked finger down the table. "You're drunk enough already, boy."

The dessert was delicious, a blend of eggs and milk topped with caramelized sugar. Another toast was offer to the chef.

"Gentlemen," Master Lyric called out. "To the kitchen, so we can have this place in order before the women arrive."

Chairs scraped and bodies rose. A dozen men could make quick work of clearing a table and all were soon gathered in the kitchen. At Is'ka's direction the dishes, plates and pans were scrubbed, cleaned and dried in less than a quarter of a bell.