Jean Johnson - The Guild

“I don’t care about him either way, other than that he’s a good-enough Healer. But he probably won’t serve you willingly, so either let him go or drain him dry. As for myself . . .” He tried to smirk, though the silvery web material covering his mouth probably hid the effect. “I want power. Secular and magical power. A position of some rank in your order, a decent amount of money—obscenely decent, by preference—and of course a way to tap into some of the power that’ll be raised. And a nice title wouldn’t be amiss.”

“Of course,” the bald, bearded priest drawled. “And naturally you’ll escape the moment we set you free. We do realize how powerful you are. We’re not idiots.”

The gray-haired priest started to say something, then glared at the youth in the dark gray knitted tunic. “Aren’t you done yet, lackwit? Stop fiddling with the coals, and get out!”

The boy jumped, hastily scooped a few more black lumps onto the glowing orange white ones, and scuttled off, bucket clutched to his chest.

Hansu covered his brow with his palm. “I swear, we’re surrounded by inbred idiots . . . You were going to say something, Koler?”

“Swear a mage-oath,” the other priest asserted. “Bind unto your powers an oath that you’ll serve our holy order and conjure us a demon for power-binding unto Mekha.”

Torven narrowed his eyes. “I’m not swearing any oath casually . . . but if you’ll let me sit up and fetch pen and paper, perhaps we could draft a version between the three of us that will satisfy both sides. You know I know how to conjure and bind a demon for power-draining. A few minutes’ delay won’t harm anything either way.”

Koler, the shorter priest, narrowed his eyes under his bushy, age-salted brows. “If you know how to do it, then why haven’t you done it before? You claim you crave power and that this is a great source of it.”

Torven rolled his eyes. “Because binding a major demon requires a lot of participants? If it’s one tiny denizen of a Netherhell, that’s fine; one mage can do that . . . but the demon’s power is piddly, and a mage can bind only one or two personally before they start to threaten his control. A larger demon has exponentially greater energies that can be drained from its vast reserves, but many mages are required to subdue, bind, and control it.

“Most mages whine about how dealing with anything associated with the Netherhells is an abomination against the world,” he continued, while the other two considered his offer and mulled over his motives. “They wouldn’t touch such a project if their immortal souls depended on it—which they don’t. You’d be binding the power for your God to use, not for yourselves. Heaven couldn’t touch any of us . . . and They certainly won’t touch Mekha, or They’d have done so by now.”

“Heaven doesn’t give a damn about any of us,” Hansu scoffed under his breath. “If They did . . .” He broke off, sighed, and asserted firmly if a bit rotely, “We serve Mekha, and that is our reward. Fetch pen and paper, Koler.”

“If this isn’t a viable option, you’ll be plugged into our God without a second thought,” Koler warned Torven before turning toward the door.

“If it isn’t a viable option, that will be the fault of your colleagues, not mine,” Torven told him, clenching his fist as the older priest turned back with a scowl. “Check the Truth Stone still in my hand—I am not going to let any fault of mine damage my chances of gaining vast power.” He relaxed his fingers, showing what was undoubtedly an unblemished disc. He spoke the truth after all.

Koler grunted and turned toward the door again, and he was almost bowled over as a junior priest ran up the corridor, skidding to a stop in front of the gray-haired man. “Brother Koler!” the youth gasped, panting. “Brother Hansu! He’s gone!”

“What do you mean?” Hansu asked. “Who is gone?”

“Mekha! He’s gone! Not ten, fifteen minutes ago, He was in the power chamber soaking up everything like normal, then there was suddenly a great, shimmering light in front of Him, like a giant egg. He stood, said, ‘Finally!’ and . . . was gone! The light took Him, and He vanished, almost like He stepped into nothingness!”

Bound on the table as he still was, Torven couldn’t see the young man’s face clearly, but he certainly heard the bewilderment in that breathless, cracking voice.

“He just vanished, brothers, and no one knows why! We waited, and we waited, but now . . . now the symbols are going, too! ’Scuse me, I have to go tell the others!” A patter of feet took him farther down the hall.

Koler turned to watch the youth go, moving just enough that Torven could see the scowl on his face. It deepened as his gaze shifted to someone else outside the Aian mage’s view. “Haven’t you moved on , boy?”

Hansu frowned and started to say something—then reached out and clutched his fellow priest’s shoulder, hard enough to make the older man grunt. His other hand pointed straight at the carvings, and he hissed, “ Look! ”

His shoulder and sleeve blocked part of Torven’s awkwardly angled view, but the robe itself revealed more than enough. The runes and the gears, painstakingly stitched on the fabric and carved into the walls, were melting and fading. Vanishing. Being erased, the Aian mage realized, as the phenomenon spread, rippling across the walls and even the ceiling.

As the wave passed Torven’s toes, he felt the spells binding him to the altar weaken . . . and the webbing decay. Using a surge of his personal powers, Torven broke the last of the binding spell and quickly sat up, shifting to dangle his legs over the side of the stone table. He didn’t move farther than that, since his head pounded from a lack of blood after his sudden change in position, but it was enough to catch the attention of the other two men. Quickly, before they could re-enslave him, he held up one hand, thinking hard and fast.

“I suspect, gentlemen, that you no longer have a Patron Deity. Which means it is no longer necessary for you to bind and drain me. This . . . vanishing,” he added, gesturing vaguely at the walls, “matches some old records I have read about old Gods and Goddesses being disbanded. Which is a little odd, because that would normally require the Convocation of Gods and Man, which hasn’t been seen since my homeland was an intact empire two centuries ago . . . but it isn’t impossible. After all, there is no reason for Mekha and His symbols to disappear otherwise . . . and with no detectable traces of magic, I might add.”

“If that is true, then this is a disaster,” Hansu muttered, swiping his palm over his bare scalp. “Without Mekha to keep the peasants in line, we’ll have rioting in the streets! They’ll try to attack us—and I can feel that I don’t have the great power I once held . . .”

“Then it sounds like you need a powerful ally . . . and that you still need a power source ,” Torven reminded him, ignoring the faint groan from the Healer on the other altar-table. “My point earlier about other mages not wanting to handle such a source is still valid, particularly if you cross-gift the energies so that you are not tapping the creatures you yourself bind, but instead exchange powers with the beings tapped by someone else.

“I am still willing to work with your Brotherhood,” he reminded them. “It’s not as if you have anything to lose at this point, if the peasants will turn on you once they know that the wrath of their vanished God no longer holds them in check. Gather the others in a secure place, lay out these suggestions to all of them, and make up your minds. But do it quickly .”