Iridni’s strength began failing as the air crackled with magic, the hag warding in front of her, her companions preparing at her side. Beneath the weight of her sun-brightened armor and the body of Mr. Sexton she bore on her back, the Pelorian dragged one booted foot in front of the other, lurching toward the grinning hag, its green and putrid form illuminated with the glowing hues of arcane protections. For uncounted years, the monster had preyed on foolish men seduced by its illusions, women desperate to be mothers, and innocent children, while its malignity grew. This morning as Pelor’s sun crested, that sorcery was at its zenith: the hag prepared once more for victory and to feast on the flesh of all who opposed it.
Aching yet from the crushing maw of the crocodile, her soul unnerved by the mother and child she had killed in the lair, the young priestess thought of the terror-stricken faces of Matty and Jacques when the infernal toys had come to life. Here, before her at last, nothing stopping her or separating her from her foe, no cowed innocent for the monster to hide behind, was the foul creature who had sought to twist Iridni’s charitable efforts to serve its most terrible evil. Anger girded her, including anger and heartbreak that the hag knew what most to offer her to make her yield.
Could the hag have truly returned Iridni home to the Prelacy and reunited her with her family, freeing her from this land that in her heart she hated and that was slowly withering her? No…it was only trying to tempt her, and in any event it would mean abandoning everyone else—here and far away in the Tenements—to the hag’s mercy. And her letter to Zephyr: Know…that I never willingly parted from you. The hag wished to make her a liar and an oathbreaker.
The distance shortened, and the hag watched Iridni’s tortuous yet unerring beeline with almost bemusement, its cadaverous arms always gesturing, its serpentine tongue coaxing evil from the Weave.
Encumbered as she was, could the Pelorian even get close enough to the elusive hag to strike her down?
Approximately 25 feet remained between them. Iridni’s own slender arms now raised like resilient reeds straightening after a buffeting wind, but they held aloft neither her reliable shield nor Radiant Servant. She felt the Voodan bones quiver in the pouch at her hip and then sensed their essence flow into her gesture, increasing its potency. The pouch became lighter. Still the magicks of the others sizzled and hummed, lightning before the approaching storm.
The violet eyes of the priestess that had been so focused during her approach rolled back in her head, her god imbuing her small and shaking body with destructive force, and from the Pelorian’s supplicant hands a dire pulse erupted and hurtled toward the hag. The blast struck the sneering creature in the center of its midriff, and for a moment its baleful expression contorted…as agony such as it had never known in all its centuries of unabated cruelty consumed its monstrous form. The scream was both feminine and diabolical when the vortex of Iridni’s surge began to tear the hag asunder, and, as it shrieked, a foul cloud billowed from its open mouth toward the young woman and her companions.
“Die, bitch,” the priestess sighed, and for once the Pelorian’s heart felt not the smallest pang of pity.
The convulsing, imploding hag shrank and disappeared into the cloud of its dying breath. After the acrid belch dissipated, nothing remained but embers and ash.
The myriad sounds of incantations had also died away. Iridni stood at a distance safe from the vapor, breathing the pure sea air, her expression one of fatigue, but also grim satisfaction. She broke her calm silence at last to speak to Whiskers: “Thank you for retrieving me from the water, sir.” Explaining to both Zephyr and Loric how she had lived to kill the hag was going to be difficult.
Sister Caelia studied the immolation. “Your magic is very potent, ma’am.”
Iridni looked at the reserved Halan. “It is Pelor who is strong, not I.” In truth the heavily plated woman felt as though her knees might buckle beneath her at any moment.
“Although perhaps you should be more cautious; in the cavern you annihilated both the child and her mother.”
Caelia’s words returned the knife of guilt into the priestess’s entrails. “I’m not sure what happened….that prayer should harm only my enemies.”
“It is fire and death raining from the sky, ma’am. Why would it only affect your enemies?”
The Halan was wrong in her description, perhaps confusing Iridni’s magic with some other, for her own had but caused the ground around them to shake. Nevertheless, the priestess knew that the quaking earth had damaged much more than she intended, killing Annette Brosse and the hag daughter she had borne. Though the two meant Iridni ill, were they any more of a threat to her than the miscreant waifs she so often spared in the Quartier Ouvrier?
When the hag unleashed its army of minions, the young priestess had been too eager to destroy evil and neglected to protect the weak.
The body on her back sagged; she had failed another as well. “I must carry Mr. Sexton to the hospice.”
Caelia continued to berate her: “The child was likely hagspawn, but there were further measures we might have taken in case she was not. The mother was a victim, fallen to the hag’s seduction.”
Was she? Annette Brosse had misled her besotted husband, allowed the hag’s magic to corrupt the toys she helped craft, and granted a monster access to her own womb for procreation. Even so, Iridni would have spared Brosse given the chance, and she had sought to take the changeling into her arms and away from that devils’ nest only to be refused.
Sister Caelia was still talking: “I destroyed the child’s corpse as a precaution, as well as burning out the cave so that no trace of the hag’s taint remains.”
“Perhaps that taint is why they were struck down, but I never intended to kill them.”
Eare was busily gathering the ashes of the hag into a bottle and now corked it. “Whiskers…know any place here that is likely to be undisturbed?”
“That is not how destructive magic works, ma’am. It is not selective. Should you cast that spell now, we would all be harmed.”
Iridni considered the veiled girl, so near her own age but already of such certainty about everything. She almost envied Caelia’s self-assuredness about the priestess’s own abilities. “You were spared were you not?”
“I was not close enough to be affected.”
Often wrong…never in doubt. “I won’t demonstrate, but I have used it many times safely.”
Whiskers growled. “You caused an earthquake in an unstable cavern, Ren. What did you think was going to happen?”
“I am too tired to argue with you. And Mr. Sexton’s body is heavy.”
In reponse the Halan incanted and vanished, without any offer to tend to her fallen brother in faith. Iridni hardly cared, for despite all Whiskers’ mysterious deference to the flighty Caelia, the Pelorian had seen her contribute mostly speeches, while twice consuming the restoratives that might have revived Mr. Sexton.
Whiskers faded into the shadows.
Eare gave Iridni arcane speed and strength, and she began to labor down the beach toward the sailing ships with the other two Wayfarers, bearing what remained of the little man who had relied on her home.