CHAPTER 41

"You are a liar and an abomination." She whispered through clenched teeth. "All truth comes from the Golden Lady." She struggled to her feet, despite her weariness.

"Katarina, you're exhausted." Devon argued in that smooth, gentle way of his, prompting another wave of tiredness to wash through her. "You're tottering on your feet. Please, lay down and rest."

Part of her wanted to. Her arms and legs were leaden; her muscles were weak and rubbery and filled with the hot gritty sand of exhaustion and constant exertion, the kind of feeling she got after a particularly vigorous workout coupled with a long lesson in combat skills in the practice yards. Her body begged for rest, her eyes burned with fatigue and her lungs gasped for breath as she strained against the overwhelming lethargy that sapped her strength.

She forced herself to take a deep breath and struggled to concentrate on standing upright. She forced her eyes to focus on Devon and shock doused her chest with icewater. Devon was casually holding the long knife that had upset her so long ago- holding it easily and comfortably.

"You..." She gasped with effort. "That knife." She struggled with her lips, numb and heavy.

He let out a short, exasperated sigh. "It's a tool I made." He finally admitted. "It allows me to channel my abilities better." He explained. "You weren't too far off the mark last year, you know." he allowed, and waved the knife a little. "Swords, spears, knives, even guns." He remarked with disdain and nudged Katarina's gun, the Eagle's Talon on his desk, "They're just things. The true weapon is the mind." He touched the knifetip lightly to his temple. "Willpower. The strength of the mind is what turns things into weapons, Katarina. This knife helps turn my mind into a weapon. A real weapon." He added. "Sooner or later I'll break through the threshold that limits me and I'll be able to craft a ring, or a button or something less conspicuous that allows me to do the same thing, but until then, this will have to do."

He gestured at the chair. "Sit, Katarina." He commanded, and she struggled to resist. Even as she fought, her body was moving against her will towards the chair.

"It takes a strong will to resist, Katarina, and my will is strongest here." He confided, and perched on the edge of his desk. "Katarina, you and I aren't enemies." He said after a moment. "I admire you. I love you. You've never done anything that hasn't impressed me." He remarked quietly. "You're amazing in your single-minded determination." He let out a short bark of a laugh that sounded strange to her ears. "Even now you resist me with that indomitable character." He observed. "But I digress. Your strength, your beauty, your eloquence... simply breathtaking" he chuckled. "I even snuck in and saw you singing in the choir. Such amazing talent and potential." He lauded. "I want to help you. Encourage you. Help you draw out the deepest reserves of strength. Help you grow and flower into the singularly amazing person I know you can be, Kat." He urged.

"Don't... call me that." She hissed at him furiously.

His eyes widened in surprise briefly, and then his head lowered. When he raised it again, it was filled with an indescribable sadness.

"I know that's a singular privilege you've only offered to those you trust." He remarked listlessly. "The Nauders girl, Frederika." He added. "I'd hoped that you..." He trailed off, and then his jaw clenched.

"I'd thought that we were close enough for that, Katarina." He stated with a long suffering sigh. "I'd thought- no, hoped- that we'd moved beyond the role of instructor and student. That you perhaps felt in some way the same as I." His hand tightened on the long knife.

"Doesn't.... Doesn't matter, now." He decided. "Right. All that matters is will, and right now, my will is the strongest." He stated, and then smiled. "My will is the most powerful will." He declared. "You can find no purchase, no strength to resist me. Katarina, you will listen, and you will not fight me." He commanded gently.

Katarina had reached the limits of her ability to fight against his strangely hypnotic voice. His will battered at her like relentless waves against the rocky surf. She struggled to find some scrap of strength, some shred of will, some force that she could use to stand against him, and came up empty. Grimly, she began to recite the Petition of Hostilita, the warrior's formal invocation of the powers of the Goddesses' protection and plea for aid and strength. She got as far as bella premunt hostilia when suddenly she stopped. What came to her, strangely, was a memory of Aleima, from back in the forest.

"Anyone can recite the prayers the Church teaches. Do they mean anything?" She asked Katarina with a smile. "Maybe they do." She answered her own question. "But which do you think is more important? Reciting the words, or praying to her with the fullness of your heart?"

A storm of half-realized wishes and desires, urgent needs and unformed thoughts rushed through her, the overwhelming horror that she had no way at all of fighting him on her own.

"When you can't run, you crawl." She prayed, unaware she'd spoken aloud. Devon eyed her with a confused, puzzled look. "When you can't crawl, you find someone to carry you." She stated listlessly, and then repeated it. "Oh Goddess." She managed, but could not progress any further; her strength collapsed, and she sagged into the chair, limp and unresponsive.

Devon eyed her carefully. What was that, before she passed out? He wondered curiously. He carefully touched her cheek with a fingertip, but she didn't respond. He nodded to himself. He didn't have much time.

Katarina drifted in the black. She could vaguely feel Devon's touch on her skin, could feel it as an abstract sensation as he laid her on the carpeted floor.

"You are a torchbearer, bringing the holy light of the goddess to the dark corners of the world to banish shadows with Her truths. When you have no strength left in your limbs, you speak the word. Her Word. The Light of the Goddess is a blessing to the righteous and a bane to the fallen. When you have no breath left with which to speak you spit in the eye of darkness in defiance." A voice echoed warmly in Katarina's mind. The words were familiar, the voice was one she knew but couldn't place. Frederika? Aleima? Alayne? Her mother?

Katarina struggled to open her eyes, and found Devon kneeling by her side.

"My will." She whispered, and his head jerked up in shock, thick beads of sweat splattering her chest.

"My will is weak." She whispered, and a nervous grin spread across his face in jerks.

"That's right." He replied in a voice that was clotted and rough. "My will is strong." He replied, and she spat in his face. Suddenly new power seemed to blaze up within her, flooding her limbs with renewed strength. Blazing, golden strength pumped through her veins, cramming her body with volts. She bolted upright as he recoiled from the spittle, and shoved him away from her.

"My will may be weak, but Her will is stronger!" Katarina shouted as he scrambled to his feet. She surged forward as he backpedaled away from her, raising a warding hand.

"There are other truths in the world?" She mocked furiously. "Bullshit. There's only Her truth. The truths She reveals to us when and where She decides we are ready." She swung at him, left fist flickering like lightning and he squealed as it connected. Her followup jab was ducked as he hastened to put the desk between the two of them, hands raised placatingly.

"Katarina, please-" He pleaded, and she kicked his knife so that it skittered across the carpets and under a bookshelf.

"Speak, blasphemer. Speak, heretic." She encouraged, and gestured with her fists. "These'll answer you just fine."

"Look, Katarina." He tried, and gestured with his hands to indicate he was unarmed. "Look, I was wrong, okay? I misspoke. Bad choice of words. Still, there's no cause for violence, is there?" He pleaded. She gave him a condescending look and tugged at the laces on her bodice with one hand wordlessly.

"Oh come on!" He yelled exasperated, hands raised. "I grabbed your bodice when I was laying you down on the carpet. I didn't touch you inappropriately. I would never touch you inappropriately."

They circled the desk warily.

"That power of yours is unnatural. It's not sanctioned by the Golden Lady and is used wholly to manipulate the unwary." She tore open the desk drawer and pulled out her gun, newly bonded to her. As she did so, Devon let out a tisk of frustration and dived for his knife as she thumbed cartridges into the barrels of her gun.

Devon scrabbled for the knife- with it he could put up a barrier between them that would prevent her from shooting him. Then he'd be able to take the upper hand. Suddenly he could feel her boot in his back, shoving him down into the flooring.

"As a Witch Hunter in service-" She paused to clear her throat- "In service to the Golden Lady, I pronounce summary judgement: I name you blasphemer. I name you abomination. I name you heretic. I name you Witch, the punishment of which is death."

Katarina had never fired her gun in an enclosed room, so the gunshot was a thunderblast to her ears. She staggered back from Devon's corpse shaking her head as a high sweet whine filled her ears. She couldn't hear the thunder of rapidly approaching footsteps, or the clamor as people shouted, searching for the source of the shot. She turned away from Devon's corpse and began buckling on the holster.

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Katarina opened her eyes; her cheeks were wet with tears. She wiped her face with trembling fingers.

"Stupid bitch." She muttered to herself, unconsciously dropping her voice and growling it the way her Master did. "Still crying over that asshole." She snarled. Indigo mumbled something from her bedroll.

Katarina eyed the girl as she sat up. According to the Church, the girl had failed her test. She was expected to survive on her own for a month, but she'd greedily ate Katarina's traveller's soup and raided her supplies. If she was lucky, Cyrillus would beat her publicly and force her to take it again.

The main question that bothered her, however, was what she should do next. Head back to Norn? That seemed the most reasonable. The problem was that she had no idea where she might be. How long had she wandered, sick and feverish? How far had she travelled?

Katarina eyed the stars overhead and whispered a prayer to the Goddess for guidance, and returned to her bedroll.

Katarina didn't dream often. If she did dream, she usually didn't remember them when she woke, so for her it was the same thing. In fact, before her meditative hallucinations in Aston, the last dream she remembered having with any degree of detail was shortly after the passing of her master, a short vignette where he told her, "Do not forget life, do not forget love, and do not forget me." So when Katarina found herself in a dream, she was baffled, shocked, stunned, and vulnerable.

She stood in some sort of palatial manor, in a room with thick green carpeting she sank into with every step. Children's toys littered the floor, a rocking chair was nestled in the corner. A woman in the dress of a Begierdian noble sat on the floor, dress arrayed out around her. She was a classical beauty, with a chiseled, aristocratic face, haughty cheekbones and sculpted lips, and hair the color of warm cream. Her eyes were red and puffy with crying, and she cradled a little girl in her lap. The little girl was perhaps five or six and the girl herself also bore the marks of tears. Her hair was the color of cornsilk.

Katarina froze in recognition: The girl was her. She was young. So unbelievably young.

She took a step forward. She hadn't seen her mother since she was six.

"Let me tell you a story, little Kat." The woman murmured to the girl and stroked her hair.

"No! I don't want a story!" the little girl complained. "I want Alse!"

The woman stroked Kat's hair comfortingly but didn't reply to the childish Katarina's demand. Instead, she told her story:

"Once there lived an old man and an old woman. They had a young son, and all were so poor that they often had trouble finding food. Times were so bad that finally they had only one grain of millet left to eat." The woman began, holding the little girl close.

"Ivan, take the millet to the miller and have it ground into meal", said the woman to her son." Katarina's mother said, imitating an older woman so shockingly that little Kat stopped struggling and looked up at her mother.

"Ivan went to the mill and had the millet ground into meal. The old woman cooked the millet and put it into a bowl to cool." the woman continued.

"Ivan, you guard the millet while your father and I have a rest", said the old woman, as she sat down for a nap. The father stretched out to nap on the bench, while the old woman sat in a chair." Katarina's mother explained.

"Young Ivan took his job very seriously; he stood over the bowl with a large stick, ready to take care of anybody who would dare to disturb their meal." Her mother narrated, her voice becoming intense as she described the boy's zeal.

"A hungry fly buzzed into the house and made straight for the bowl of millet. As soon as Ivan saw the fly, he said to himself "just look at that fly! I will fix her for trying to spoil our millet! He sneaked up on the fly and swung the stick mightily."

Katarina raised her eyebrow and smiled. Who would try to kill a fly with a stick? She wondered to herself.

"He missed the fly, but he did not miss the bowl of millet, which shattered and flew into pieces all over the room!" Katarina's mother exclaimed.

Katarina chuckled at that. That was a pretty straightforward conclusion. "The right tool for the right job." Katarina stated comfortably. "That's the lesson."

But the woman continued instead, "I will get even with that fly, thought Ivan." the woman's voice deepened into an angry growl. Katarina's eyebrow raised and she hunkered down in a squat to hear more.

"Spying it in the air near the old woman, he again swung his stick. He missed the fly again, but he did not miss his mother. She fell to the floor, truly asleep, with a big bump on her head." the woman continued, and Katarina chuckled.

"Now look what you have done, you naughty fly!" cried Ivan as he redoubled his efforts to catch her. The fly sat on the forehead of the sleeping old man, and Ivan again swung his stick. Once more, he missed the fly. But, he did not miss the innocent old man, who also fell into a deeper sleep with a big bump on his head."

Katarina blinked. What story was this? What lesson could possibly be learned from something so asinine?

"Ivan chased the fly all over the house, breaking and upsetting everything. Finally, he threw his stick at the fly. He missed the fly, but he did not miss the window. The stick went through it, and the fly followed right after."

Katarina gaped at the older lady in stunned silence. There was an altogether different lesson to be learned from this story than the one Katarina had decided.

The door to the room Katarina was in with her mother and her younger self opened, and a broad-shouldered older man came in with a pair of women, one with an almost metallic sheen to her auburn hair.

"Bianka." the man began, his voice clotted with emotion. Katarina eyed him. He was a tall man, but slim. Like his wife, he was dressed in the finery of a nobleman. He had rich, dark hair that fell around his face and shoulders like a mane.

The woman looked up. "Yes, Rickard?" She asked, and then she spotted the two women, dressed in the livery of Cardinal Clerics. Instantly, her demeanor changed. Her brows lowered, her jaw clenched.

"What are they doing here?" She snarled angrily. She raised her voice. "Unless you're here to return Alsabet to us, get out!" She shouted hotly. "You aren't welcome here."

"Bianka, please." Rickard urged gently.

"I've got nothing to say to them, Rickard." She replied, arms tightening around the young Katarina. "They've got nothing to say that I want to hear. They took our daughter away, Rickard!" She reminded him hotly.

"Bianka, listen." He urged again. "You know they had to. Alsabet was born a mage."

"I don't care!" She yelled, tears streaming down her face. "She was our daughter, and they took her from us! I don't ever want to see them again!"

Rickard glanced between the Cardinal Clerics and his wife, torn between them.

"Cardinal Francesca, maybe if you explained why you're here..." He offered lamely.

The woman with the coppery hair sighed and folded her hands at her waist.

"Madam Pavlenko, we're aware of the heartbreak we've caused." She began diplomatically. "And for that you've got my deepest sympathies. But today we've come with glad tidings."

Bianka gave her a wary look. "You're returning Alsabet to me?" She asked, and the little Kat whimpered.

"No." Cardinal Francesca replied with a self-deprecating cough. "And this has some small bearing on Alsabet. I understand that this is a ... sensitive subject with you, but I beg your indulgence." Francesca replied simply.

"What?" Bianka snapped.

"When we took Alsabet, we also tested Katarina."

"Katarina's not a mage." Bianka immediately snapped, her arms tightening protectively around her daughter.

"Of course not." Francesca replied smoothly. "In fact, she's just the opposite. She has an extremely high natural resistance to magic." Francesca replied smoothly. "Normally by itself it's not anything of note, likely the Church of the Golden Lady would've approached you much later to offer Katarina a position."

"A position? What?" Bianka asked quizzically.

Francesca nodded. "The Church regularly looks for people that have resistance to magical influences. You understand why, right?" She asked, and Bianca let out a breath. "For your Inquisition." She answered darkly. Francesca shook her head. "Not just for the Inquisition. You may not be aware, but we also have a punitive force that hunts mages-" she began, and Bianka frowned.

"You want Kat to be a Witch Hunter." She spat thickly. Francesca raised her hands defensively.

"Usually we wait until they're much older." She replied simply. "Frankly, we had just delivered Alsabet to the Miskatonik when we were requested- ordered, really- to turn back around and come back here." She sighed. "The Church has received several divinations that your daughter Katarina needs to be brought to Darnell as soon as humanly possible."

She let out a defeated sigh. "If there were any other way, I wouldn't be here." She said in a simpler tone. "But two diviners- She began, and then stopped. "One in Darnell, and one in Yamato, both of them had the same divination. We need your daughter to come with us. Please." She said again.

Bianka looked to her husband. "You knew this? Before they came in here, you knew this?" Her voice raised with each word until she was shouting. "You want the Church to tear our family apart?!" She screamed at him.

"No!" She shouted at the two clerics. "You're not taking her!"

"Calm down Bianka." Rickard urged. "They're asking, not taking her."

"They're not taking her." Bianka declared furiously. "They've stolen from us enough already."

He glanced at the two clerics.

"They're not stealing her, love." He replied simply. "We'll talk about it. If we decide that it's in Katarina's best interest to stay here, she'll stay here."

The room wavered, growing dim. Katarina blinked in confusion. She glanced around and met the gaze of the little girl, who was staring at her, eyes wide. Katarina felt a jolt of adrenaline flash through her. The little girl had seen her!

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Katarina woke, rolling from her bedroll in a delirium of panic. Indigo herself rolled out of bed, her hatchet at the ready.

"What is it?" She whispered tightly, glancing around the campsite. "Monsters?" She whispered tightly, eyes flicking left and right. "Mutants? Beastmen?" She hissed, and Katarina shook her head.

"Breakfast. Put that away before you hurt yourself." She advised simply.

As Katarina ate her breakfast, she pondered the dream. Was it a lesson from the Goddess? A memory? She hadn't seen her mother in the ten years she'd been a Witch Hunter. She paused in her thoughts as a realization washed over her. As a Witch Hunter, she was perhaps the most free agent of the Church. She could go anywhere in pursuit of her duty. Why hadn't she visited her family? She thought back to the dream. It seemed as though the lesson was that the greatest harm could come from the best intentions. Would she cause problems by visiting her family? There was also the order from the church to drop what she was doing and report to Darnell.

Norn, then. She decided, but then another thought occurred to her.

"Are the Children still around here?" Katarina asked Indigo, who gave her a baffled look. "Children? I haven't seen any kids around here." She replied.

"No, I'm not talking about children, though I imagine there's quite a few of them." Katarina replied testily. "I'm talking about the Children of the Lady." Indigo rewarded her with another baffled look.

Katarina nodded. "You haven't met them." she decided, and then offered an explanation. "There's a tribe of people from Begierde and Einsamkeit and Tannit and the like. They prefer to travel the woods than live in cities. They live and love and pray to the Golden Lady."

Indigo shook her head. "I've never heard of them before." Katarina nodded at that. "Let's go see if they're nearby." She offered.

"Sure." Indigo replied simply. "I'll pick up camp." She offered, and Katarina nodded.

Katarina eyed the girl critically. She wore a snug-fitting vest that left her shoulders bare and showed a lot of cleavage, an extremely loose and free-flowing skirt that swirled and shifted with every movement, and layered cloth bracers.

"You're probably going to die." Katarina judged. "You're not dressed for the weather." She gestured around the valley, and the girl made a face. "They're not teaching me enough." She urged. "They don't take me serious. They thought I was going to get knocked up or fail out before the test." She rolled her eyes. "And if I somehow manage to pass, I'm betting they think I'll be just as dead as the rest of them. Be real with me: How do I prove them wrong?" She asked.

"Stop fucking around." Katarina replied simply. "They leave out information in the lessons intentionally to weed out the weak." She explained. "You have to ask for more. Demand more. Eventually, if you're persistent enough, they'll 'yield' and send you to the Wardens that are stationed in Darnell." Katarina replied. "If you go into the woods with what they teach you at face value, you will die." Katarina finished.