“What’s she saying?” asked Miranda.
“She’s been talking about the nature of good since she awoke,” said Dominic. He looked at Nakor. “When you first began this temple, and when you told us what you would do, I was skeptical, but knew we had to try. But what we see before us now is absolute proof the power of Ishap needed to be shared with the Order of Arch-Indar, for there, before us, sits a living Avatar of the Goddess.”
Nakor laughed. “Nothing so grand as that. Come.” He led them through the seated crowd and came to stand before the young woman. She ignored him and continued talking.
Nakor knelt and looked into her eyes. “Is she repeating herself?” he asked.
Dominic said, “Why, yes, I believe so.”
“Has anyone written down what she’s said?”
Sho Pi was sitting to one side and said, “I have had two acolytes recording her words, Master Nakor. This is the beginning of her third iteration of the same lesson she taught.”
“Good, because I’ll bet she’s getting hungry and tired.” He put his hand on her shoulder and she faltered in her speech.
She blinked and her eyes seemed to change focus, and she looked at Nakor and said, “What?” Her voice was different, what one might expect of a mortal woman of her age, without the magic that had made it soothing and wonderful a moment earlier.
“You’ve been asleep,” said Nakor. “Why don’t you get something to eat? We’ll talk later.”
The girl got up and said, “Oh, I’m stiff. I must have been sitting like that a while.”
Nakor said, “A couple of weeks, actually.”
“Weeks!” Aleta said. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’ll explain everything to you later. Now go get some food and then a long nap.”
After she left, Dominic said, “If she’s not an avatar, what is she?”
Nakor grinned. “She is a dream.” He looked at Pug and Miranda, and said, “A wonderful dream.”
Miranda said, “But Nakor, she’s still here. Zaltais is gone.”
Nakor nodded. “He was a thing of the mind from that other world, projected into this. Aleta is a normal woman, but something reached across worlds to touch her and used her to hold back that blackness.”
“What was that blackness?” asked Dominic.
“A very bad dream. I’ll explain over dinner. Let’s find something to eat.”
Dominic said, “Very well. We have food in the kitchen.”
As they were walking, Nakor said, “By the way, we have to change a few things around here.”
“What?” asked Dominic.
“To begin with, you must notify the Ishapians you are no longer a member of their order.”
“What?”
Nakor put his arm around Dominic’s shoulder and said, “You look very young, but I know you’re an old man like me, Dominic. Pug told me the story of the time you and he went to the Tsurani homeworld. I know you’ve seen lots of things.
“Sho Pi over there is a perfect choice to teach the young monks how to be monks, but you are the one who must teach Aleta.”
“Teach her what?” asked Dominic.
“How to be High Priestess of the Order of Arch-Indar, of course.”
“High Priestess? That girl?”
“That girl?” repeated Nakor. “She was an Avatar of the Goddess a moment ago, wasn’t she?”
Miranda laughed, and Pug put his arm around her shoulders. It was the first time in a long while he had felt like laughing.
Erik said, “We can only assume Subai got through to the magician. By all reports they simply stopped fighting everywhere about the time all the corpses fell over.”
Earl Richard said, “Thank the Gods for that.”
“I wish we still had cavalry,” Erik said reflectively. “I have a hunch we could get men up to Ylith without much trouble.”
“Well, order up a unit on foot and see how far they get.”
Erik smiled. “I already have. And I’m sending Akee and his Hadati through the hills toward Yabon.”
Richard said, “Do you think we’ll ever know what happened, truly?”
Erik shook his head. “Probably not. I’ve been in battles where I still don’t know what happened. We’ll probably read more reports on this fight than we want to, and I’ll write a few of them myself, but truth to tell, I have no idea what really occurred.
“One minute we were struggling to beat back an army of dead men and crazed killers, and the next the dead men all fell over and the killers were walking around slack-jawed and apparently without minds. I’ve never heard of a fight going from hopeless to easy in a second before.” The very tired young Captain said, “But to tell you the truth, I don’t really care now that the fighting’s stopped.”
“You’re a remarkable young man, Erik von Darkmoor. I’ll mention that in my report to the King.”
“Thanks, but there are a lot of men out there deserving of praise more than I.” He sighed and looked out the tent door. “And many of them won’t be going home.”