 
TALES OF LORIO AND ISSIDRIS: A PARTING OF WAYS

By

GEORGE STRAATMAN

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2018 George Straatman

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other Smashwords Titles by George Straatman

THE CONVERGING

THE CONVERGING: MARK OF THE DEMON

THE CONVERGING: CLOSURES IN BLOOD

JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND OF SHADES

ABJECTION ALONG THE ROAD TO APOTHEOSIS (JOURNEY BOOK 2)

CIRCLE OF THE WITCH

THE CHAINS OF CAPITULATION (JOURNEY BOOK 3)

THE FINAL CONVERGING: AN IMMORTAL HEART ASUNDER

A FALLIBLE GODDESS AND THE ENDURING SORROW (JOURNEY BOOK 4)

Follow me on Facebook (George Straatman, Journey through the Land of Shades), Twitter (Geoconverge) and Georgestraatman.weebly.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Jeanine Henning for her amazing work in providing the stunning cover graphic for this novella. I would also like to thank Leonard Clark for providing his help with ferreting out the gremlins from the text. Finally, I would like to thank Ron Whitnall for graciously providing his insight on the degree to which I managed to hit all of the pegs I'd set out for myself when writing this story.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

When I first conceived the idea of writing Tales of Lorio and Issidris, it was my intention to write a series of novels chronicling the fantasy adventures of these two characters (of whom I am particularly fond) from the Journey through the Land of Shades fantasy series. These novels, I envisioned, would be a recounting of the exploits of the immortal Lorio and the mortal Issidris...think of Xena and Gabrielle...or perhaps, Xena and Xena, but without the self-deprecating sense of humor or the quirky silliness that characterized that pair's rambling adventures.

I have a tendency to write in a non-sequential manner and this concept first appeared on my creative radar as I was writing Wake of the ShadowCaster, the sequel to Islena Doraux's Journey tales. I actually began writing ShadowCaster before the third novel in the Journey series was even completed.

Those familiar with the series will know that Lorio was a prominent figure in Islena's dark and epic odyssey.

Issidris Il, the stoic and lethally violent assassin, crossed paths with Lorio in ShadowCaster and the pair became unlikely and inseparable friends. I was so impressed with this paragon of violent mayhem that I slyly managed to contrive a pretext for writing her, however briefly, into A Fallible Goddess and the Enduring Sorrow.

What all of this preamble means is that I had elaborate plans for these two intriguing characters and the incredible life they would live as they wandered through the Antiquated Land and the greater world beyond.

Time and circumstances have a way of making a mockery of our most zealously held ambitions. I am no exception and so my grand vision for Wake of the ShadowCaster and The Tales of Lorio and Issidris Il will have to be distilled down to this one short story: Tales of Lorio And Issidris: A Parting of Ways.

There are those who would wonder...why bother at all...why bother writing a story that is lacking the requisite history and contextual reference to endow it with meaning? While the point is valid enough, I fervently believe that the story I'm about to tell will resonate with anyone who has ever shared a meaningful and enduring friendship with someone and has shared definitive moments and experiences over the course of a lifetime lived together. For those who have had the good fortune to have experienced this special bond, the bitter-sweet emotional poignancy of these extraordinary women's final tale...mutually experienced by one at the end of her life and the other at the relative beginning of hers...should be a touching journey that will resonate long after the final page has been turned.

Personally, I always imagined that, one way or another, this would be the final story I would ever write...and so without further preamble, I give you...

The Tales of Lorio and Issidris: A Parting of Ways

1

Two women walked in companionable silence down the otherwise deserted cart path, along the center of which grew a knee-high tangle of weeds...a sure sign of infrequent use. The two women were framed in the diffuse golden light that slanted from low in the sky despite coming close on the mid-day bell. Early fall had come to the Kirgan Islands...a sparsely inhabited archipelago of islands that lay at the very eastern edge of the known world, bringing with it pleasant warmth and gently eddying breezes. In a month's time, fall would relent to winter and these islands would be incessantly scoured by howling winds and cold rain that would make life here an inimical endeavor.

The two women walked beneath a pristine cerulean blue sky...the kind of sky beneath which all things seemed possible and no obstacle encountered along any road would be insurmountable. The island over which the two women traipsed was known as Krieg, a sparsely populated island that sported a small fishing village of one hundred and five intrepid souls, who were content to dwell on the very periphery of civilization. It was this small, nameless village for which the two women were bound with a mind to procure a fishing dory to ferry them to Brinden Outlook.

Brinden Outlook was so named because the tiny island...a half day's foot journey across at its widest point...was the eastern most piece of land in the known world. Beyond its eastern shore lay the Sea of Permanent Departure...a vast ocean of inhospitable, storm-wracked waters from which no sailing vessel had ever returned.

No settlement had ever been established on the island in the three millennia since it had first been discovered. The only man-made structure to ever have been erected on Brinden Outlook was a crude, but sturdy dock that jutted out from the sandy western shore of the island.

Though no one had any real desire to live on the forlorn island, it nonetheless played host to an endless procession of visitors: philosophers, mystics and dreamers who would journey to the eastern shore, drawn by an irresistible compulsion that even they could not fully articulate.

On the eastern strand of beach, they would sit in solitude and contemplate the point of confluence where sky and sea came together...as if the horizon might provide some insight into what lay beyond the remorseless expanse of water.

This secluded beach was a place for reflection and unbiased introspection and it was on this secluded beach that the two women would share the final juncture of their incredible life together...though only one was aware of this fact as that juncture approached.

The pair walked along this sun-dappled path, bathed in warm sunlight. Deciduous trees of every variety lined the seldom used route and though they would soon be bare and forlorn, today they were ablaze with a hundred different hues of gold and red. The air was redolent with the scents of a world at peace...in a rare period of relative tranquility and harmony with nature.

The two women who traveled upon the path on this day were the living quintessence of harmony...two souls that were bound by mutual affection and love that nothing could tear asunder...except for time and death.

In physical appearance and temperament, the two women appeared to be diametrically opposite. Issidris Il was short in stature and her body was an androgynous construct of lean muscle and squat, powerful limbs that spoke of efficiency and physical capability. Her facial features were blunt and disconcertingly hard, framed by short black hair that now sported a liberal smattering of white and iron gray. A livid scar bisected her left eyebrow and smaller scars cross-hatched her muscular forearms. In general, Issidris' compact body conveyed a sense of the accrued tribulations she's endured over the course of her life...the early half of which had been characterized by deprivation and constant adversity.

Though Issidris' expression was inscrutable, her almond shaped eyes...a brown so dark as to almost be black...hinted at a daunting intolerance for nonsense. This impression was further enforced by the scuffed leather sword hafts that framed her face like a truncated X.

Issidris was a taciturn woman by nature, who kept a tight rein on her emotions. This economy of speech only meant that when she did speak it would be prudent to heed her words.

Her traveling companion could not have been more physically different had she been constructed by deliberate design. Statuesque and beautiful to an extent that was almost painful to behold for too long, Lorio's olive-skinned, raven-haired pulchritude could inspire the most ardent poetry...and erotic fantasy. She moved with a liquid grace that was mesmerizing...from the sway of her full hips, to the dance of her long thigh muscles and the lush promise of her full breasts. Her face was an amalgam of perfect features, dominated by great dark eyes that shone with intelligence and immutable volatility...like dark suns that could flare to incinerate everything that fell beneath their gaze.

Lorio was the type of woman who could inspire obsessive devotion with a kind word or a simple glance and yet the entire sum of her infinite passion had become unremittingly focused on the ostensibly plain woman who walked beside her.

A quarterstaff, fashioned from onyx-colored iron wood and fitted with stainless steel sleeves, was strapped across her back. Everything about this extraordinary woman's graceful, liquid movements intimated that she could employ the weapon to stunningly lethal advantage when required. Her generous lips were slightly parted in the glint of a sardonic smile that suggested a capacity for cruelty given the right circumstances. This impression was further corroborated by the aristocratic slant of Lorio's prominent cheekbones...though the woman and the notion of nobility were as far removed as it was possible to get. Hers had been the humble beginning of the eternally roving itinerant...a lifestyle that she had never eschewed even when she had been called Queen.

It was uncommon to come upon two women traveling alone anywhere in the antiquated world...except for the desert continent of Majeer, where a matriarchy ruled with an iron fist and acts of chauvinism were met with swift and remorseless emasculation.

It required only one glance at this pair for a perceptive ne'er-do-well to realize that any attempt to victimize these particular women would likely rebound upon the would-be assailants in spectacularly excruciating fashion.

Like their disparate physical appearances, the two women possessed distinctly different characters. Issidris Il was unflappable and taciturn, which conveyed the impression of emotional inaccessibility...thus bestowing upon the diminutive woman a forbidding aspect. By contrast, Lorio was a passionate, gregarious creature, who did nothing to conceal her feelings. She could be volatile and mercurial like ocean weather and one risked raising her ire at their peril. Often brusque and sardonic, especially when dealing with men, Lorio could suddenly bring to bear a vulnerable charm that would traduce the most vitiated of hearts. There was a capricious aspect to Lorio's ever-shifting nature that found its origins in her Lamish heritage...and the resonating effects of the sorrowful roads over which she had traveled...especially in the first twenty years of her life.

Yet, in the implacable Issidris Il, Lorio had found the one enduring constant who kept her grounded.

The other primary distinction that defined their natures...one that, in the context of what was to come, would prove to be monumental...was that Lorio was immortal, while the inexorable Issidris was all too human.

In this context and the often indecipherable system of laws and tenants that governed the process of binding attraction, perhaps the genesis of the pair's enduring bond could find its origins in the lives each had led before a collision of destinies had thrust them together. In truth, it was in this cauldron of wildly oscillating and often tragic experiences...those formative years of impoverished hardship and deprivation from which both had emerged stronger, though vitiated women, that their commonalities were forged.

It had been these commonalities...these inviolable threads of shared experience...that had made possible the intermingling of life paths for the pair, who upon first glance seemed as incompatible as it was possible for two sentient beings to be.

Only if one was willing to draw back the curtain and peer into the defining inner darkness of these two indelibly scarred hearts would it be possible to fathom why the larger than life, brash Lorio and the reticent Issidris Il were...indivisible.

Lorio's first ingrained memory was watching in confused sorrow as her mother, whose face she could no longer clearly recall (save for the perhaps biased certainty that it had been fetching) had been lowered into a makeshift grave at the edge of a farmer's fallow field. Death had been a concept well beyond a very young child's sensibilities and as her solemn-faced father had led her away from the raw mound of fetid earth, young Lorio had no real notion that she would never see that fetching face again.

Her people...the Lamish...were a band of perpetual wanderers, who drifted throughout the known world like dust before the wind. Called the children of dust by their own people...and monikers far less generous by those from whom they stole or upon whom they plied their illicit trades...the Lamish wandering was more aptly described as flight...flight from well-warranted prosecution and less deserved persecution that their disreputable renown garnered.

Lorio had only been peripherally aware of this as she'd grown into womanhood. She was a wild spirit, inebriated by a constant flow of new experiences...new lands and often unfathomable inhabitants of those lands. She did not feel deprived for the want of that sense of place...of a firmly rooted foundation...that seemed so critically important to the people who lived in the towns and villages through which her people passed...or through which they were herded like vermin.

In retrospect, Lorio would come to realize that she reveled in the perpetual wanderer's lifestyle of incessant movement and if she never had a real bed or the other trappings of a sedentary life, young Lorio seemed completely unaffected by their absence. She derived ineffable joy from the campfire nights with their exuberant music and impassioned tales of the scarcely credible lore of the Lamish people.

Her father had been the leader of this particular clan and he had loved Lorio unremittingly...or so it had seemed as she grew through her teenage years. She had grown into a young woman who was beautiful beyond words and whose irrepressible spirit was fire and immutable passion. She had displayed an inimitable grace and athleticism that was uncanny. Through the distorted lens of reminiscence, Lorio could not clearly recall if she had taken up the quarterstaff at her own behest or at her apparently doting father's insistence.

Whatever the case, Lorio had mastered the weapon with a thoroughness and swiftness that was utterly astounding. That incredible proficiency had added a lucrative new facet to the clan's unsavory repertoire of profitable, but unscrupulous activities.

In forest clearings and farmer's fields all over the eastern continent, her people had cheered while Lorio savagely beat opponents to bloody unconsciousness. That her father had profited mightily from her victories or that many of her opponents were unskilled and involuntary had made little difference to Lorio, who had come to regard most fixed folk, as the Lamish had labeled the townspeople, with no small measure of bitter enmity. That the Lamish were deserving of much of the contempt heaped upon them was a fact lost upon Lorio, whose perception of the world was extremely narrow...a flaw that would continue to plague her through most of her unprecedented life.

It was during one of these brutal contests that Lorio would encounter a force of destiny named Islena Doraux and the arc of her life would be forever altered.

If the tempestuous Lorio could best be likened to a howling wind, then the mythical Islena Doraux would be described as a world-scouring tempest in comparison. The stories and tales of Islena's time in the Antiquated World were so prolific as to fill the shelves of a hundred great libraries. Some of these accounts even bore a passing resemblance to true events from this...the darkest juncture in the Antiquated World's history.

Many of the world's great chroniclers and historians had sought out Lorio, for hers had been a pivotal role in the age's great drama. To a one, they had learned that Lorio was intractably disinclined to speak of her time in Islena's company. For those too persistent to heed her terse warnings, they had come to learn in painful and emphatic terms that the Lamish immortal had no desire to relive what had been the most painful period of her life.

In the context of this tale and for the sake of brevity, let it suffice to say that Lorio had come to live for Islena during the course of their incredible journey...with a fervor that defied all reason. When Islena had abandoned Lorio and returned to her own world, the Lamish beauty had been eviscerated, her life left in utter ruin.

There were other significant mementoes that Lorio had been left with in the wake of what she had come to perceive as Islena's great betrayal and abandonment. The first of these endowments was immortality, a dubious gift from Myrhia, the emerald enchantress and history's greatest villain. Myrhia had ingrained this arcane seed in the fabric of Lorio's being in the hopes of ensnaring Islena. Both Islena and the emerald enchantress were now just resonating echoes of that dark time, but Lorio's immortality remained.

In her state of black despair following Islena's departure, Lorio had regarded this prospect as an odious curse, but upon meeting Issidris Il, she came to revise her opinion...for a time.

The second soul-scouring bequeathal from her time in Islena's company was the especially excruciating memory of her lost son: Brannok Dur, a child conceived when the still mortal Lorio had been raped in the vile dungeons of Perdwick not long after she had met Islena Doraux. Lorio had made the puzzling decision that she would give birth to the child as a symbol of hope and defiance beneath the pall of Myrhia's ruthless tyranny.

In the thirty-seven years since that bleak vow had been given, she had set eyes upon the boy...her beautiful son...on only two occasions. The first was when she had given birth to the child in the desolate wastes of Purgatory. She had held him briefly in her arms before that bleak realm's goddess, Otaru Ree, had lifted him from her arms as a price of passage for the party with which she was traveling to be allowed to pass through her realm and back into the world of men. It had been Islena Doraux who had maneuvered Lorio into a position (supposedly unintentionally, though Lorio could no longer be sure) where she would have to surrender the child so that Islena could continue her inexorable quest toward bringing about Myrhia's demise.

She would meet her son seven years later, now a full grown, handsome man and Otaru Ree's consort. They would spend a single afternoon and evening in each others company, sharing stories of their lives before the goddess had squired the beautiful man-child back to her bleak demesne. Though she never spoke of Brannok...not even to Issidris, in whom she confided everything, Lorio clearly recalled every gesture, every expression and every word that had passed between the pair on that glorious day. Other than the woman who now walked beside her down this empty road, recollections of that day were Lorio's most precious possessions.

The third thing that Lorio had garnered from that dark time was perhaps the most unexpected and improbable; a crown and rule over the fledgling nation of Lamia. This flabbergasting turn of events had come to pass because Artumas, the legendary King of the mighty nation of Emercia, newly freed from Myrhia's yoke, had been steadfast in his determination to reward Lorio for her part in the great drama of the age. This remuneration had come in the form of the creation of an autonomous homeland for the Lamish people, with Lorio installed as their queen...a role for which she was patently ill-suited.

Lorio had abdicated her caricature throne and role after the perfect storm of violent upheaval that had consumed the Antiquated World just seven years after Islena's departure. After passing the crown to Nayoro, her capable regent and a much more worthy ruler, who might actually be capable of seeing the unruly Lamish to a state of coherent nationhood, Lorio had set off with her new friend, Issidris Il, on a rambling adventure that would eventually carry them to every corner of the known world.

During the course of those formative years, Lorio had been forged in the course of constant loss and tragedy that would have decimated a lesser person. Blinded by her savage sense of self-denigration, the immortal perceived only her inherent flaws and could not glean her immutable fortitude. Yet, galvanized by the lessons derived from these often cruel and remorseless junctures, Lorio had found genuine and lasting contentment in the company of the diamond hard, taciturn woman that fate had set in her path...perhaps its one benevolent dispensation.

Issidris Il's formative years differed from Lorio's primarily in the contrast between Lorio's meandering childhood and Issidris' rooted, but by no means grounded, upbringing. Raised on what might charitably be referred to as a farm some two days journey from the nearest settlement on the Island of Garring, one of the islands in the impoverished archipelago of Ciprite, Issidris had made the journey to the village on only two occasions in her first nine years.

She had been five years old when her mother had brought her to the village for the first time, ostensibly to barter for seed for the forthcoming spring planting. Though Issidris had been introverted even at an age when most children were innocently exuberant with the still new joy of being alive...when the world was still alight with wondrous possibilities untainted by the harsh realities that would dispel all false hope soon enough...she had been perceptive enough to know that her habitually nervous mother was more anxious than normal while the pair had made their journey.

The village consisted of twenty or so crudely constructed buildings, the largest of which was little more than a glorified shed divided into two roughly equal chambers, the first of which housed livestock awaiting transport to the abattoir. The second chamber still reeked of fear and animal excrement but served as a seed and grain depot.

Issidris had been surprised when her mother had guided the wagon past the depot, through the village and out along the dirt road that led to the distant port. Once they had cleared the settlement, her mother had favored young Issidris with a tired smile and then spurred the emaciated mare to the quickest pace that the rutted road would allow...radiating an aura of hope which the girl instinctively recognized...even if she could not fathom its source.

It was perhaps three bells later when the braying of fast approaching horses caused Issidris to twist in her seat.

She was shocked...and delighted at first...to see that her normally dour father had decided to join them on their great adventure. It had required only one glance at her mother's pallid, moon-eyed face and rigid posture to disabuse her of that ingenuous notion.

Her father was a large brute of a man whose bulk belied his natural agility. He had lithely dismounted his horse before it had even come to a halt. While Issidris had gazed on in transfixed horror, he had unceremoniously hauled her unresisting mother from the wagon and clubbed her across the face with a fist that struck the small woman like the fall of a mallet.

Issidris had begun to cry as she watched her mother sprawl in the dirt, moaning softly as if to give voice to her pain was somehow offensive.

"I should have known you'd try something like this, you ungrateful whore," he roared in the guttural rumble that Issidris had come to fear and despise, while looming over the fallen woman. "Some bitches just don't know when they got it good...but you'll learn, you will!"

He then proceeded to drag her mother by the hair of her head to the rear of the wagon where he had tossed her onto the bare boards as if she was as worthless as a sack of grain.

Her mother had bore this abjection stoically, while her father climbed into the driver seat. Without prior warning or explanation, he had promptly slapped Issidris across the face, bloodying her mouth and nose...as if she had somehow been complicit in her mother's failed escape attempt. This had been the first time that the embittered man had ever struck his daughter, who was stunned to immobility by this sudden display of mindless violence. It was then that young Issidris gleaned that one could fall victim to the world's inherent and random ugliness by mere proximity alone...that one could become a convenient outlet upon which to vent the pent up frustration that churned in the dark corners of the human soul like festering poison.

As would become her coping mechanism, young Issidris had retreated behind a wall of absolute stoicism and not a solitary word had passed between the trio during the excruciating two day journey back to the farm...which had, in truth, become a prison for the two females forced to live in the company of male monsters.

Once during the course of the trip, Issidris had dared to look back at her mother, whose homely face was bruised and swollen by the clubbing fist she'd absorbed. Her mother had regarded her daughter through listless brown eyes from which all vitality had been remorselessly leeched...eyes that spoke eloquently of the cruel and joyless existence that had become her lot in life. Astoundingly, she had conjured a smile; her teeth still bloody, and mouthed the words, "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

Once the three had arrived at the sprawl of ramshackle sheds that constituted the family farm, her father had dragged her resigned mother from the wagon and into one of the outbuildings, taking off his heavy leather belt as he went.

Years later, her mother's piteous wails were still vivid in Issidris' memory...though of the woman, herself, Il could recall almost nothing.

Less than a year after her futile escape attempt, Issidris' mother had succumbed to the flux. Upon reaching adulthood, Issidris had come to glean that her messy death was possibly the best dispensation the broken woman could have expected from the wretched life fate had bestowed upon her.

Issidris had come to discern that her mother had been attempting to extricate the pair from the miserable existence...an act of nearly incomprehensible courage that Issidris would never forget.

Once her mother had died, Issidris' lot in life had deteriorated quickly as she became the focus of her father and equally cruel and perverse brothers' attention.

The frequent beatings she could learn to bear as they would only serve to inure her against the tribulations she had come to believe that life would inevitably heap upon her. The rapes, however, proved to be the one horrific eventuality for which Issidris had been unprepared and to which she had not been condign. After the worst of these atrocities, a night on which her father and brothers, inebriated but still capable of this despicable act, had taken turns on young Issidris, she had fled the farm...and miraculously managed to escape the island of Garring.

After drifting all about the far flung archipelago, Issidris had eventually found her way to the island and city of Ciprite. There, now a ethically unencumbered, diamond hard teenage girl, she had quickly acquired and mastered all of the skills necessary to flourish in the most inimical of environments...where compassion was perceived as a weakness to be ruthlessly exploited.

Savagely dispassionate and possessed of an understandable aversion to men, Issidris had become the most feared denizen of the city's grim streets by the time she had entered her twenties.

Endowed with a dubious natural proclivity for criminal enterprise and the iron will to flog all opposition into absolute submission with a violence that was bewildering as it was effective, Issidris had become the dreaded queen of Ciprite's criminal subculture, quickly building an empire that had spread through the entire archipelago.

The fact that this once kind, introverted girl had been transformed into a cold, merciless engine of criminal purpose by the harrowed life she had suffered through as a young child mean nothing to the terrifying exploiter and opportunist that Issidris Il grew to become.

By the time that Issidris' increasingly brutal campaign of criminal empire building had garnered the attention of the Sisters of Esotaria, Il was certain that every last vestige of humanity had been bludgeoned to dust and scoured from her black soul. The rulers of Ciprite came to perceive the increasingly ambitious and audacious Il as a threat to their rule and took steps to crush this peasant upstart by turning to the Sisters to rid them of this vexing nuisance.

The Sisters of Esotaria had employed their unparalleled skills of sorcery and conventional warfare to dismantle Issidris' criminal empire with a swiftness and efficiency that beggared reason.

After storming Il's final forest encampment, from which she had conducted much of her illicit shadow trade in illegal arms, slavery and other unsavory commodities, the Sister's elite stealth rangers had left Issidris on her knees with her back to an escarpment and no where left to flee. Il had been certain that she was going to be summarily executed...as had the entirety of her subordinates...and she understood that this would have indeed been a fitting punctuation on the doleful and morally bankrupt life she had led. In truth, a part of Issidris would have welcomed this fate as a means of egress from what had become an utterly pointless existence.

Bloodied but unrepentant, Issidris had been intent upon meeting her end with her customary stoic dignity irrespective of what this coven of witches elected to do to her.

Then, swathed in a mantle of golden effulgence, a young child had strode purposefully into the clearing...the sisters parting before the approaching girl like wheat before a scythe. At first glance, the child appeared to be an eerily beautiful girl of no more than seven. It required only one glimpse into those limpid blue eyes that shone with an intelligence that could best be described as otherworldly...to discern that this initial impression was drastically misleading.

The girl had approached the kneeling Il...who in her present bloodied state resembled a rabid animal...without the slightest hint of trepidation or reluctance. No one made any move to restrain the child or admonish her against approaching the kneeling hoodlum. As improbable as it might first seem, the reverent and deferential demeanor of the sisters made it apparent that this girl led them with absolute and unquestioned authority.

Unexpectedly mesmerized by the incredible aura of power the girl exuded, Issidris had remained utterly still when the child had extended her slender arm and placed a small hand on her mud-caked brow. Nothing in her wretched catalogue of accrued life experiences had prepared her for the coruscating wave of puissance that had rolled through Issidris' body like an inexorable tide, laying bare the entirety of her sad and misspent life with a completeness that struck Il as the most thorough of violations.

To see her life unfurled before her in such a raw and unembellished manner, bereft of the distortion of bias or facile rationalization that allows the ethically unencumbered to justify their evil, caused the normally taciturn Il to howl like a mortally wounded animal. In its illuminating wake, the rigidly constrained and dispassionate Issidris had been left feeling as indelibly stained as it was possible for a human being to feel.

To her dismay and incredulity, rather than obliterate Issidris for her heinous behavior, the girl...Lissom, Ascentrix of the Sisters of Esotaria and earthly emissary of the Goddess, Gyzarayne...and merely smiled and offered a flummoxed Il a purpose and place with the Sisters.

She had also partially absolved Issidris of her past transgressions in the unequivocal tone of one who genuinely believes that such an improbable boon is fully within her authority to grant.

Only later did the implications of the phrase partially absolved become clear in Issidris' mind.

Gyzarayne was the female aspect of the universal deity, whose bailiwick it was to protect and better the lot of women in the mortal world...a daunting mandate in a heavy-handed, unapologetically chauvinistic civilization.

The Ascentrix was the personification of the Goddess' will in the tangible realm, imbued with a portion of Gyzarayne's power which she would use to see that will and purpose served. The Ascentrix was born into the world as a baby and given over to the care of the goddess' most trusted and sage servant...known as the Matrium, whose purpose it was to raise and counsel the Ascentrix on her long journey to the full manifestation of her power.

Though not strictly immortal in the sense that Lorio was, an Ascentrix grew in halting fits and starts...her path to physical womanhood dictated by the adroitness with which she negotiated the pivotal junctures along the path to serving Gyzarayne's will.

On the day that Lissom extracted a vow of fealty from the vanquished Issidris Il, the Ascentrix was over two centuries old, though she appeared to be a young child.

Issidris had never been a woman to squander a great deal of time in contemplation of the intangible intricacies of the cards that capricious fate elected to deal her, though once she became aware of the complexities of service to the Goddess and the commensurate perks and benefits of pledging fealty to the patron deity of women, she could not help but wonder why these benefits had not been extended to her.

When a woman accepted Gyzarayne's divinity and swore undeviating fealty to the deity...they were gifted with the Goddess' Grace. Every physical trace of the accrued woes and tribulations of their previous life was completely effaced from the canvas of their flesh, granting them an ethereal physical beauty that was immune to the ravages of time. Essentially, their physical canvas became a perfect reflection of Gyzarayne's own flawless beauty and the woman became a physical manifestation of the deity's serenity and grace. Limpid-eyed, posture perfect and free of bodily imperfection, the Sisters of Esotaria became the eerily beautiful women that the random chance of birth and cumulative hardship had denied them prior to giving themselves to the order.

In addition to being blessed with physical perfection to match their newfound inner serenity, each woman was instilled with a specific skill set that drew upon their natural aptitudes. If a woman had been possessed of a keen and intuitive mind she would be initiated into the Sisters as a battle mage and if the fates had favored her with strength, speed or agility, the novice would find herself joining the ranks of the stealth rangers...Gyzarayne's conventional soldiers in the struggle for the collective betterment of women.

Issidris Il had not been offered Gyzarayne's blessing...the annealing grace that would have bestowed both beauty and tranquility on a woman for whom the very concepts seemed preposterous. Nor had she been invited to join the ranks of either arm of the Goddess' Sisters.

Issidris had concluded that the gravity of her cumulative sins simply would not allow for the total absolution necessary to gain admittance into the order. She would go to her grave never knowing the actual reason for her exclusion, which was considerably more disturbing.

As had been the case with the other instances in which she had been slighted by the cruel dealings of fate, Issidris had accepted this apparent slight...this divine assessment of her unworthiness for salvation...with stoic indifference.

Over the next several years, Issidris had come to embrace her role as the Sisters' assassin, Gyzarayne's (or more succinctly, Lissom's) keen and lethal blade. Il made the transition from ruthless plunderer to equally remorseless instrument without disruption and if she resented the slight she'd been dealt, Issidris kept this particular emotion concealed behind her impenetrable façade of impassivity.

The Ascentrix radiated a daunting aloofness and inaccessibility that even the normally unflappable Issidris found intimidating, but in the compassionate Matrium, she discovered a quality to which her arduous life had never exposed her...kindness. Karosyn was the diametric opposite of the often glacial Lissom. Approachable, warm and eminently likable, the Matrium was generally regarded as the mother of the sisters and while the women respected and feared Lissom, they loved and confided in the unremittingly compassionate and sympathetic Karosyn. This maternal kindness she extended to Issidris, after whom she inquired and whose wounds she insisted upon healing on those rare occasions when Issidris would incur so much as a scratch during the course of discharging the Ascentrix's often lethal tasks.

While the majority of the sisters generally gave Issidris a wide and wary berth, either out of scarcely concealed disdain or disquiet, there was another sister who looked to establish and altogether different rapport with Issidris, who grew increasingly uncomfortable with the woman's attention.

If Brannok Dur was the one subject upon which Lorio could not reflect...First Battle Mage Lyndsyn was the one person whose memory Issidris struggled incessantly to exile from her conscious thoughts. The statuesque beauty with the long auburn hair and expressive blue eyes was the third most powerful woman in Gyzarayne's sisterhood, endowed with a terrifying array of arcane weaponry that could reduce an entire conventional army to smoldering ruins.

Yet, from the seemingly first instant she had set eyes on the diminutive, iron-edged Issidris, Lyndsyn had been enamored by an elusive quality that Il possessed...which everyone else apparently failed to perceive. She contrived endless excuses and pretexts for making her way into Issidris' presence...inviting the leery Il to tea and to take meals in the private tent that was a perk of her lofty station in the Sisterhood, where she would inquire after Il's life before her defeat in Ciprite with genuine interest. She would listen in spellbound fascination while the tacit Il attempted to answer her discomforting queries.

She would brush dust from Issidris' uniform or reach across and squeeze Il's callused hands, marveling how powerful they seemed next to her own, which were beautifully constructed and delicate. Lyndsyn took particular delight in pushing exotic new foods past Issidris' lips, a puzzling fixation for a woman who regarded food strictly as a source of sustenance.

Lyndsyn was shockingly aggressive in trying to protect Issidris from what she perceived as Lissom's unconscionable exploitation of her bondswoman. None in the order...not even the Matrium, whose role it was to counsel and guide the Ascentrix...ever exhibited the temerity to express displeasure with Gyzarayne's emissary that the spirited Lyndsyn displayed. When Lissom dispatched her lethal assassin to perform a furtive and lethal task in the Emercian Capital of Nalosan...without King Artumas' knowledge...that festering resentment boiled to the surface. The Ascentrix had demanded that her First Battle Mage disclose the source of her consternation and so Lyndsyn complied in frank and unequivocal terms...a disclosure that would, as black irony would have it, seal her doom.

(*)Confronting her First Battle Mage while a disconcerted Matrium looked on in obvious discomfort, Lissom had demanded, "Since long before coming to this land, I have sensed your displeasure with me, Lyndsyn...your scarcely concealed acrimony...and now I would know its cause. An Ascentrix must be of one harmonious mind with her First Battle Mage and I can no longer allow this festering discord to linger. So I would have you speak freely now and without fear of repercussions."

Lissom had reached out and tenderly caressed the aristocratic ridge of Lyndsyn's right cheek for a moment and then dropped her hand, patiently waiting for the younger woman to speak. The First Battle Mage stole a quick glance at Karosyn, who offered her a slight nod of encouragement. Lyndsyn drew a deep breath and turned to face her mistress. Surmounting her natural reluctance to disclose her feelings to a woman whose mind seemed both inaccessible and frighteningly alien, she blurted, "Why have you not granted Issidris the goddess' divine blessing? Why have you denied her the ritual of inner pulchritude that is routinely offered to any woman who accepts Gyzarayne?"

Lissom responded by pivoting in place and swiftly marching to the opposite side of her private chamber. As the Matrium watched the Ascentrix, she could discern ambivalence in the emissary that she could not recall ever having seen in the more than two centuries she had spent in the enigmatic creature's company. Lissom remained in this posture of contemplative silence for several moments, while an infuriated Lyndsyn glared at her slender back, limpid blue eyes ablaze with raw emotion. In a somber voice, Lissom finally replied evasively, "There are some questions, First Battle Mage, that are best left unanswered. I can tell you with absolute certainty that you will derive no comfort from the answer to this one."

"I will hear it still!" Lyndsyn exclaimed passionately, her words spitting forth on a torrent of raw anguish and torment that made a mockery of mere physical pain. "You have denied her the grace and employed her in ways that are reprehensible. What you directed her to do at that wretched ale house was odious....unconscionable. To force her to commit these atrocities is inhumane...inhuman!"

"Lyndsyn, Please!" Karosyn implored, striding across the room and coming to stand before the woman for whom she harbored a deep affection and regarded as a beloved daughter. "You presume too much...it is not your place to question the Ascentrix over the path she had chosen for Gyzarayne's children to follow!"

"Gyzarayne would never condone the monstrous act that was committed last night!" Lyndsyn raged, her large eyes ablaze with indignation. Directing her plea to the thoroughly bewildered Karosyn, she insisted, "We have lost our way, mother. She has forfeited the path of righteousness and honor in the name of need and expedience."

Karosyn's lovely face pinched in miserable incredulity and she started to chastise the First Battle Mage, but Lissom forestalled her with a single word that rang with the steel of absolute authority. "Enough!"

In three brisk strides she crossed the room and had imposed herself between the two women. When she spoke, the glacial tone in the Ascentrix's voice caused the room's temperature to plummet perceptibly. "You have accused me of inhumanity...of compelling Issidris to commit monstrous acts in the name of exigency? I am the embodiment of the Goddess on this earth...a veritable extension of her will! I am a dispassionate arbiter of justice, empowered to serve the greater good and rescue a tottering civilization from the precipice. If, in order to achieve this, it requires the obliteration of a handful of miscreants, then I will sanction it without hesitation or remorse...by any means at my disposal!"

Lyndsyn attempted to avert her eyes in the face of Lissom's daunting ferocity, but invisible fingers inexorably dragged her gaze back to that terrible blue-eyed regard. "I will use every means at my disposal to insure that Myrhia remains in her state of stasis. Issidris was ideally suited to the task...a keen and stealthy blade honed to a lethal edge. Unlike you, Issidris is acutely aware of her purpose...and her place in destiny's grand weave."

Despite her best effort to staunch them, hot tears of outrage and indignation sprang to the battle mage's eyes and began to course over the exotic ridges of her cheekbones. After several moments, Lissom continued...though the harsh edge had evaporated from her voice, giving way to a susurration that could be so beguiling. Her expression of glacial authority relented to one of placid grace that Lyndsyn now suspected was but a mask...a façade that concealed a soul the nature of which eluded any attempt at comprehension.

"You first asked why I did not grant Issidris Il Gyzarayne's Grace and I responded that this was a question for which the answer would bring you no comfort. I responded thus not with a mind to evasion, but to spare you the pain that this disclosure would bring, Lyndsyn. Still, in the face of your obvious torment, I now see that I have erred in this matter and only served to add to your misery. When the Goddess' grace is bestowed upon a woman, the essence of Gyzarayne permeates that woman's soul and seeks out the fundamental beauty and innocence that was woven into the fabric of every woman's being at the time of their birth. It then takes that weave and augments it to its fullest potential while effacing all of the things that have impeded its development...influences such as abuse, poverty and cumulative despair. The physical changes that a woman experiences during the ritual are a manifestation of that process...an externalization of that inner transformation."

Lissom paused then, a shadow slipping across her lovely face...an expression of perplexity so pronounced that even Lyndsyn could not doubt its sincerity. "When I first laid my hands upon Issidris...there was nothing. Not even the slightest trace of her birth day inner beauty and innocence remained. Her humanity had been scoured from her soul by the harsh and remorseless life she'd been forced to live. What remained was a rare creature of dispassionate, unadulterated darkness on whose soul Gyzarayne's Grace could find no purchase."

Lyndsyn turned her incredulous gaze to Karosyn, who nodded in affirmation and remarked, "I too have divined the void in Issidris Il. It is this unflinching core of darkness that had instinctively led other sisters to give her a wide berth. Lyndsyn, your compassion and grace burns brighter than most...perhaps it is this quality that has blinded you to the truth of this woman's nature."

Lyndsyn bowed her head as silent tears began to fall anew. Karosyn ventured closer and placed a hand on the First Battle Mage's right shoulder. Meanwhile, the Ascentrix continued to speak softly and candidly. "When she fell under my hand in Ciprite, the Goddess presented me with two choices in resolving Issidris' fate...destroy her as an irredeemable miscreant or turn her dark talents to the cause of light. I chose to bind her to the sisters, knowing full well that the Goddess' Grace would remain forever beyond her grasp. In retrospect, perhaps my decision was not as compassionate as I had first imagined."

Lyndsyn drew herself to her full height and inhaled sharply, while briskly drying her tears with the sleeve of her robe. Meeting Lissom's piercing regard unflinchingly, she remarked, "Though you may consider it impertinent, I fervently hope that in the matter of Issidris and her incorrigible nature, both the Goddess and her emissary are proven wrong."

Lissom offered the taller woman a warm smile. "As do I. I wish for there to be no lingering enmity between us in the dark days to come. I will require your unwavering loyalty to our cause. As a gesture of my benevolence and desire to set aside any grievances that exist between us, I will assign Issidris Il to your care and bestow upon her the rank of Hand to the First Battle Mage. From this day forth, she will be your charge and you may utilize her as your judgment and conscience decrees."

Lyndsyn's astonishment and delight was clearly reflected on her lovely face, but she retained enough sense of decorum to offer her Ascentrix a deep bow of gratitude. Lissom smiled and laid her right hand on Lyndsyn's smooth brow. "Let this matter be closed and forgotten. I would have the two of you accompany Queen Lorio to Dizar Kor. Lyndsyn, you will have Issidris join you along the road, well away from Nalosan." (*)

At this particular time, neither woman was aware that this particular decree had inexorably sealed compassionate Lyndsyn's fate, while propelling Issidris toward an encounter that would change her destiny. Lyndsyn would never apprise her friend of this conversation and so Issidris would remain forever ignorant of the specific catalyst that had propelled them into the tragic juncture that was about to follow...she only knew that the beautiful woman seemed unaccountably drawn to her.

At first, Issidris was certain that these overtures were motivated by a perverse desire to humiliate her. What other possible motivation for the First Battle Mage's behavior would make any sense? In the perverse context of Issidris' horrific upbringing and definitive interactions with the people who had populated her life, it was a sad fact that this explanation would have been preferable to the truth of what compelled the exquisite Lyndsyn to attempt to draw Il out of her self-imposed cloister of isolation.

When it became evident that Lyndsyn's affections for Issidris were genuinely given and inspired by something that might have been love, Il had been both dumbfounded and distressed. Nothing in the barren topography of her sterile emotional landscape had prepared her for the possibility that somehow someone...especially such an exquisite and affable beauty as Lyndsyn...could actually care for her. Hatred, ruthless violence and obdurate pragmatism, unfettered by ethical or moral considerations; these things Issidris Il understood all too well.

Yet, the idea that another human being could hold her in high regard...view her as something worthy of kindness and compassion...these were incredible notions that were well beyond Issidris' irreparably damaged sensibilities. The more that Issidris labored to distance herself from Lyndsyn's attention, the more determined the First Battle Mage became in her efforts to draw out the person she felt certain was trapped within the vitiated façade.

The fact that Lyndsyn's determination was inspired by a heartfelt desire not to allow Issidris to become an invisible appendage to the Sisters mandate and not out of some twisted sense of propriety did nothing to alleviate Il's discomfort.

Issidris' inability to internalize and process the purest of emotions would eventually rebound upon the kind Lyndsyn with catastrophic consequences...which would rapidly expand and continue to reverberate throughout the Sisterhood...even on the day that Lorio and Issidris were engaged in what would prove to be their final journey together some thirty years later.

2

Lorio and Issidris Il would first cross paths in the days just before the Eastern Continent was beset by a perfect storm of inimical fortune. Only seven years had elapsed since the fateful day that Islena Doraux had vanquished Myrhia on the ramparts of Castle Kammlogran...forever entrapping the inured enchantress in a prison of her own flesh, fully cognizant, but other wise helpless. Islena's triumph would bring an emphatic end to an odious cycle of recurring violence that had plagued the worlds of men since the very dawn of creation.

Issidris Il had accompanied the Sisters of Esotaria to Emercia...to which they had come seeking to secure custody of the vitiated enchantress. As ever-devious fate would have it, Myrhia had once laid waste to the Sisters, coming very close to annihilating Gyzarayne's daughters...in the centuries before she had come to the Antiquated Lands to wage her epic battle with Islena Doraux.

Lissom had led the Sisters to Emercia, cognizant of the fact that...even in the prison of her own flesh...Myrhia was still capable of manifesting her evil in the world beyond and escaping her exile...an emancipation that the inexorable Ascentrix was determined to prevent. Their arrival in the Emercian capital of Nalosan coincided with the appearance of a demonic entity named Xhendyn, whose purpose it was to facilitate Myrhia's escape.

The period after Islena's victory had been the most volatile of Lorio's life...a life that had been characterized by storms of upheaval that were as unprecedented as they were tragic.

Motivated by benevolence and wishing to raise Lorio up from the abyss into which she'd fallen after Islena Doraux had abandoned her, Artumas had striven diligently to bestow the fractured Lorio with a purpose so that she might find some significant meaning in the shambles of her life. To accomplish this noble, if misguided aim, Artumas had badgered and entreated the CornerStone Nations and the effected nations of the Eastern Continent into providing the territory and means necessary to create the sovereign state of Lamia and to install Lorio...the heroine of the great quest and the Emerald Enchantress war...as the fledgling nation's queen.

Lorio had accepted this absurd dispensation, fully cognizant of the glaring truth that she was laughably ill-equipped for the role. Over the next seven years, the decimated young woman had taken every opportunity to substantiate her own contention...engaging in a self-effacing campaign of debauchery that had reduced her...and by extension, her young nation...to the status of a distasteful jape in the eyes of the other nations of the Antiquated World. Though King Artumas had viewed her dissolute and erratic behavior with dismay, he had never lost the hope that Lorio would embrace her role and become the monarch that he had always envisioned she could be...and which her floundering people so desperately needed.

This was a hope that was destined to go unanswered, but if Lorio made only one prudent decision during the course of her ultimately disastrous reign, it was to appoint a woman named Nayoro as her regent. Nayoro was the diametric opposite of the queen she served. Meticulous, intelligent and squarely focused on the vision for Lamia's future, Nayoro served her queen faithfully...even if she was privately appalled and exasperated by Lorio's unfathomably salacious conduct.

Lorio was astute enough to allow Nayoro to function in her stead, while the regent was equally diligent in insuring that she kept her queen fully apprised of her efforts to mold the motley Lamish into a cohesive political and social entity...no easy task in itself.

Unfortunately, this also left Lorio with an abundance of idle time in which to slide down the slippery slope of dissolution...driven by a relentless ghost that would give her no peace.

It was during one of these episodes of random debauchery that Lorio was visited by a bone demon. This construct delivered a dire warning and an augury that had sent Lorio racing to Nalosan to share this terrible presentiment with King Artumas, though her frenetic cross country journey was also inspired by the belief that the bone demon's augury was an ambiguous herald to Islena Doraux's imminent return...a rather childish hope that would ultimately be dashed asunder against the harsh shores of reality that would soon confront the reluctant queen.

It was in Northern Emercia that Lorio would first encounter Issidris Il and in this vitiated, uncompromisingly tough and taciturn woman, Lorio would unexpectedly find the strength and fortitude to lift herself out of her malaise and banish the ghost that had shackled her heart and soul to the millstone of incessant sorrow.

The bone demon had shared an augury, given in the customarily obscure terms in which such devices are apt to be offered. Lorio's purpose in the latest dark drama that was poised to descend upon the Antiquated Lands like a pall was to ward the mortal bane from an obscure menace known simply as the ShadowCaster. It had been disclosed that both the bane and this ShadowCaster would be drawn from Islena Doraux's world and it was for this reason that Lorio assumed that the bane was her beloved Islena, who she feared was forever lost to her after the epic events at Kammlogran.

Upon reaching Nalosan, Lorio was swiftly disabused of this wistful hope and her involvement in the latest bleak calamity might well have ended there had fateful encounters with the Ascentrix and the demon harbinger, Xhendyn not changed her inclination to impart her aid.

Fate is ever inventive in its ambition to conjure dark elements to plague mortals and even as the shadow of a newly emerging Myrhia deepened to again menace the Antiquated Lands, two new elements of torment arose to further its tribulations...creating a perfect storm of misery against which the fortuitous meeting of these two beleaguered souls would play out.

In Metocan, a depraved tyrant would seize control over the most powerful of the CornerStone Nations. Sygeanor's obsession to avenge her father's death at the hands of the Lamish Queen would see her unleash an undead scourge upon hapless Lamia.

In a land across the ocean and previously unknown to the nations of the two continents, a demon in the guise of a god would corrupt the mind of a potentate, infecting him with a consuming hatred and mistrust of women in general...and the Sisters of Esotaria and their Goddess in particular. The desert nation of Majeer would first engage in a ruthless campaign of systematic misogyny and repression against its own women...and once that deplorable object had been achieved, the mad potentate would send his massive army across the ocean to eradicate the people of the Antiquated Lands.

It was against this emerging and seemingly insurmountable crisis that Lorio, Karosyn and Lyndsyn set out to locate the bane and return this shadow figure to Nalosan.

The fourth member of this formidable band joined the party along the road to Dizar Kor not long after the trio had departed the city.

Ever the dispassionate strategist, Lissom had deliberately kept Issidris Il's unnerving presence from her hosts...like a lethal dirk concealed in the folds of one's cloak, to be revealed only when required.

Upon very first glance, Lorio had been profoundly affected by the daunting Issidris. She had experienced an atavistic attraction to the compact dispenser of carnage, who radiated cold menace like shards of broken glass.

Lorio had experienced this particular acute sensation...this electric tingle of attraction only once before in the course of her life...on the day she'd first met Islena Doraux and the two had fought their bloody, savage contest that had left Lorio beaten and humbled on the grass of Kornas. It required only a single glance at the inscrutable Issidris...this terrifying amalgam of cutting edges and implacable purpose to know that she would have left both Islena and the still mortal Lorio as chilling corpses had they been foolish enough to challenge Issidris on that day.

Suffused by this current of animal attraction...part lust and part animal need to assert dominance over another capable predator...Lorio had been beset by the darker angels of her often erratic nature. Whether motivated by an indelible petulance or the inability to express emotions in a healthy and productive manner, Lorio felt compelled to denigrate and taunt the stoic Issidris. This ugly proclivity was further aggravated by Lorio's intense dislike for Lyndsyn...Il's self-proclaimed protector.

Along the road to Dizar Kor, the Capital of the neighboring nation of Fairmarch, Lorio and her companions had met a handsome Suran Rogue named Reyfort. The handsome Suran claimed that he had intentionally sought out Lorio, the legendary warrior-queen of Lamia, to offer his fealty and services. Attracted to his masculine beauty, which conjured images of the only man to whom she had ever been attracted, and compelled by the consternation it would inevitably rouse in her traveling companions, Lorio agreed to allow Reyfort to join the party, pointedly ignoring the vehement objections of Karosyn, who warned the Lamish Queen that she was acutely suspicious of the Suran's ostensible motives for attaching himself to the party.

Along the way, Lorio enlisted Issidris' help in delivering a particularly nasty test of Reyfort's sincerity. Il agreed to partake in this episode of ugly violence in exchange for Lorio's vow that she would cease her merciless taunting of Lyndsyn.

At Lorio's direction, Issidris waylaid and administered a brutal beating to the Suran rogue after which the Lamish Queen imparted a dire warning and offered the severally battered Suran a choice of paths he may follow from his moment of abjection.

Knowing that his servitude to Xhendyn would allow no latitude for desisting, a humiliated Reyfort swallowed his shame and continued to accompany the party.

When the Matrium, a woman governed by immutable standards of probity and decorum, learned of what had befallen Reyfort and the role that Issidris Il had played in his savaging, she was incensed and demanded to know what compelled Il to act has she had.

After chastising Lorio as a manipulative, morally bankrupt wretch, the Matrium led Issidris away to deliver a private rebuke to the retainer, leaving Lorio in the company of a barely coherent Reyfort...and an infuriated Lyndsyn.

Preoccupied by her own abhorrence toward Lorio's reprehensible behavior, Karosyn failed to glean the extent of the First Battle Mage's indignant fury over what she perceived as Lorio's unconscionable abuse of Issidris.

This rare momentary lapse would have dire consequences that would radically alter the lives of all four women.

Her composure shattered by rage, Lyndsyn unleashed the full weight of her sorcery upon Lorio and only Karosyn's swift and emphatic intervention prevented one or both of the women from being killed in the ensuing conflict.

In the fraught aftermath of that ugly episode, a furious Lyndsyn demanded that Lorio be held accountable for her mistreatment of Il.

Before Karosyn could intervene with the frantic battle mage, Issidris allowed her long repressed emotions to boil to the surface, lashing out with a half-desperate, half-livid tirade directed at a thoroughly flummoxed Lyndsyn.

(*)She raged at the quivering, wide-eyed beauty, "Stop this madness, Lyndsyn...please!"

Then, to the absolute amazement of all, Il planted her feet and shoved The First Battle Mage backwards. The Sister of Esotaria landed heavily on her rump, her head snapping back on the thin stalk of her delicate neck. She lay on the leave strewn ground, gaping up at Issidris in silent shock. Il loomed over the fallen woman, her dark eyes ablaze with raw emotion that resembled an ocean poised on the brink of eruption. "I am a tool and the Queen has used me accordingly...just as the Ascentrix has done before her. Open your eyes and see what truly stands before you! I am a weapon...nothing more. It is the full extent of what I am and it is what I am perfectly content to be. It is you who have abused me, Lyndsyn...you who would suffocate me beneath the weight of your accursed expectations. I am not your personal reclamation project, whom you would redeem out of some misguided sense of compassion...or a perverse affection that will remain eternally unrequited. Whatever unfulfilled need fuels your desire, I beg you to look elsewhere to satisfy its demands!"

As a stunned Lorio looked on in horror, immobilized by the taut drama she'd inadvertently engineered, Issidris continued her brutal deconstruction of Lyndsyn's well-meant concern. Il drew one of her hooked swords and dropped it on the mage's heaving chest. "If you cannot find the pity in your heart to desist, then I would ask the Matrium to release you so that you might strike my head from my shoulders. That would be a far less cruel fate than being bludgeoned by the hammer of your unwanted affection."

Eyes burning with raw pain and anguish, Lyndsyn's blood-stained face had held an oddly feral quality that could not fully disguise the damage Issidris' scathing rejection had evoked. In a quavering voice, the eviscerated woman pleaded, "Issidris...I...I care for you. My only desire is to protect you from those who would deliberately manipulate and abuse you. Please, I..."

Lyndsyn's voice deteriorated into a strangled groan of anguish. Issidris bent over the stricken mage and growled fiercely, "If you truly care for me...then you will leave me alone!"

With this remorseless blow delivered, Il had snapped up her sword and literally sprinted into the forest. As she had raced past Lorio, the Lamish Queen had been unsettled to see that the vitiated creature was silently weeping.

A doleful wail of heart-wrenching despair tore from Lyndsyn's contorted lips as she rolled onto her side and pressed her face into the grass. The Matrium and Lorio had gazed on in helpless despair as the devastated woman's body was wracked by her muffled sobs. (*)

In the aftermath of that lamentable debacle, Karosyn had dispatched the clearly demoralized Lyndsyn back to the last village through which the party had passed, there to wait while the party pressed on to Dizar Kor to retrieve the bane.

Before the group had departed, Lyndsyn, her normally limpid eyes dulled by despondency, had quietly inquired of the Matrium, "I'm finished as First Battle Mage, aren't I?"

The Matrium had regarded her friend, who she loved like a daughter, in an uncomfortable silence...knowing full well that Lissom would never countenance or forgive this conduct. Something in Karosyn's expression seemed to have confirmed the First Battle Mage's fears.

Without further remark, Lyndsyn had collected her meager belongings, and sparing one wistful glance for the spot where Issidris had vanished into the forest, had ridden away.

Infuriated, the Matrium had lambasted a sheepish Lorio with a rare and mordant tirade, which the Lamish Queen had accepted meekly knowing that it was entirely well-deserved. "Have you ever taken a moment to reflect upon the horrendous toll your episodes of vapid self-indulgence extract upon those unfortunate enough to be caught in your web? Do you feel even the slightest responsibility or remorse for the lives you've reduced to detritus here today? It is said that you are a hero of legend, but I see only a shallow vain creature whose sense of concern and obligation begins and ends only with her!"

After proceeding to Dizar Kor and extricating the bane from a precarious situation, the party began the return trip to the village, but before they reached their destination Lorio and Lyndsyn's ugly confrontation assumed a tragic new dimension.

More distraught and discomposed than Karosyn had ever known her to be in their more than two centuries together, the Ascentrix reached out to a mortified Matrium along their exclusive tether. Frantically, she disclosed her fear that Lyndsyn had taken her own life.

In that moment of mutual failure and shame...incisive guilt that would plague both for the remainder of their long lives...the special bond between Lissom and Karosyn, between an Ascentrix and her Matrium, would be ripped asunder. Karosyn, an inherently compassionate soul by nature, would flay herself with grief and immutable guilt for her perceived failure to discern how thoroughly Issidris' fraught rejection of Lyndsyn had decimated the First Battle Mage's surprisingly sensitive spirit.

Doubting her ability to guide and mentor the sisters in light of her dismal failure with a woman whose pain she could not divine, Karosyn would beg the Ascentrix to release her from her obligation. Reluctantly, Lissom had complied and for the first time in the Sisters of Esotaria's long history, an evolving Ascentrix would find herself without a Matrium to guide and counsel her along the path to her full ascension.

Karosyn would then go into a self-imposed exile, devoting her life to aiding the sick and needy to atone for her fatal misjudgment with her lost daughter.

In time, fate would smile upon the noble, unflaggingly virtuous Karosyn and reward her for her centuries of sacrifice and devotion to the wellbeing of others, but that is a story that is well beyond the scope of the tale at hand.

Hysterical and near mad with dread and sorrow, Karosyn had led the party on a wild night ride back to the village where Lyndsyn had been sent to await their return.

(*) The headlong charge through the sultry night was indeed a wild and frenetic blur. As the party had galloped into the village of Hamelen, shattering its peaceful silence in a cacophony of pounding hooves, Lorio realized that the party had been very fortunate to arrive without mishap.

As Karosyn guided her exhausted horse into the courtyard of the Laughing Widows Inn, the owner and his wife had both emerged carrying torches. Rurhic Zan was a short, portly man with mutton chop sideburns who seemed to wear an expression of perpetual dismay. Standing in the courtyard of his Inn in the dead of night, that dismay had given way to outright apoplexy.

Wringing his hands in agitation, he had warily approached the statuesque blond, whose luminous blue eyes blazed like living fire in the torchlight. That agitation had mounted geometrically when five other riders had thundered onto the dusty cobbles.

"Milady, I'm so sorry. The stable boy, he's a simple lad...he..." Rurhic had gotten no further, his tearful explanation abruptly terminated when Karosyn made a short, sharp gesture with her left hand. Zan was snatched from his feet and unceremoniously tossed into the darkness, where he landed with a muffled grunt and went still.

"Matrium, Please!" Issidris had pleaded wretchedly as she slid lithely from her horse and started after the other woman. The innkeeper's reed thin wife shrieked and scurried out of Karosyn's path as the distraught woman strode into the darkened inn.

Lorio had just reached the foot of the stairs that led up into the lodging area when a mournful shriek of negation tore through the darkness. She pounded up the narrow staircase, along the short upper hall and through the only open doorway in time to witness a wailing Karosyn collapse to her knees and begin to crawl across the threadbare carpet on her hands and knees.

The moonlight that poured through the open window was sufficient to cast Lyndsyn's suspended corpse in ghostly luminous silver.

A low guttural moan of despair reached Lorio's ears and it had been a moment before she gleaned that it was issuing from her own contorted lips. 'This is your doing; yet another indelible scar on your black soul, inflicted by your seemingly infinite capacity for mindless cruelty. How truly and irredeemably wretched you are.'

It had been the memory of Islena who had delivered this scathing castigation, her voice remorseless and glacial. Lorio could only stand immobilized and gape in horror as Karosyn's trembling hands gripped Lyndsyn's slender ankles and she pressed her lips to the chilling flesh of her lost daughter's delicate feet, beseeching the dead woman for absolution. "Please, by Gyzarayne's Grace, my beautiful daughter, forgive me...beautiful child."

Lorio became aware of someone standing livid at her shoulders and turned in time to see a moon-eyed Issidris' right hand flutter to the puckered slash of her mouth. A thin wounded sound escaped her lips and she suddenly faded back like a shadow, the fraught expression in those normally inscrutable eyes eloquently and succinctly declaring her intentions.

She spared one final glance at Karosyn, who continued to bestow tender kisses on Lyndsyn's bare feet while offering her heart-rending plea for the dead woman's absolution. Lorio required only that one brief glance to corroborate that Lissom's grim pronouncement had been correct...the ugly spectacle of Lyndsyn's death would also destroy this gentle woman who mourned her.

'This too you may add to your long list of indictments,' she thought miserably. Turning away from the Matrium's piteous moment of grief and self-denigration, Lorio set out in urgent pursuit of Issidris, determined that the emotional maelstrom she'd unleashed through her casual act of petulance would claim no further victims.

What then followed was an episode of unconstrained savagery that seemed to characterize so many of the pivotal moments in Lorio's often dismal life...yet shockingly, it would forge an unbreakable bond between the two iron-willed women.

Lorio moved with a deliberate stealth down the short hallway to find that the rear door of the Inn had been thrown open.

Issidris knelt at the center of the rear yard, swathed in silver moonlight and Lorio could see that she held a dirk poised just beneath her breastbone. The assassin was weeping silently and the hands that held the blade shook violently.

Stepping into the shadowy courtyard, Lorio growled, "You craven little bitch, you lack the courage to live with the consequences of brutally rejecting the only person who might ever have loved you in your miserable fucking life. Now you intend to follow her into death as if that would be sufficient atonement for crushing her soul under your boot."

"Stay Away!" Issidris moaned in a grief-stricken voice that was scarcely recognizable. "Have the decency to let me do what the sisters should have done when they first captured me."

"Therein lies the rub," Lorio retorted, "I have no decency...no shame. While you and that soft-hearted imbecile wallow in self-pity, it was me who goaded and provoked her mercilessly, pushing her into a corner from which there was only one way out. I have only contempt for your precious Lyndsyn...and for you because you are too blind to see that the one person responsible for her death is standing right in front of you...mocking your sorrow."

Issidris slowly shifted her gaze toward Lorio, her hard, angular face set in a portrait of seething incredulity...and dawning fury. With a liquid flexing of her thigh muscles, Il sprang to her feet.

Lorio smiled disdainfully. "Ah, you've found that meager reserve of courage and outrage, have you? Come then...tear my face off with your teeth. Hold me accountable for that vapid cow's death. You know that you want to...just as I've wanted to beat you to a quivering pulp since I first set eyes upon you in Emercia. Come then...let's see who bathes in whose blood."

Issidris advanced toward her statuesque tormentor, her short fingers clenching and unclenching into fists and her hard features contorted with indignant outrage...and then she suddenly stopped and shaking her head, turned away from the perplexed Lorio. "I know precisely what you're trying to do and I can't be manipulated anymore! Leave me to my misery."

Lorio started after her, but the diminutive warrior whirled about while drawing her dual swords in one fluid movement and the Lamish Queen found her neck caught in a lethal scissors of incisive steel. Il's expression was lost in the gloom of the rear courtyard, but her words were gruff with deadly promise. "You may be a queen and an immortal, but I sincerely doubt that either can survive without a head. Go back inside and tend to the Matrium. While you and I may deserve every misery that life heaps on us, she is a gentle soul who should never be made to suffer thus."

Lorio slowly raised her long arms in a gesture of capitulation. Issidris allowed the pressure on the queen's neck to easy and Lorio retreated a pace. Then Issidris started to sheath her weapons and turn away. Before she had made but a quarter turn, Lorio's right fist crashed into her cheekbone like the fall of a mace. The brutal impact of the blow drove Issidris to her knees, but before she could fall forward onto her face, Lorio snapped a knee into the side of Il's head.

The immortal caught the unconscious assassin in her left arm, while stripping her of her swords and flinging them into the darkness. She hauled Issidris to her feet and proceeded to tear her dirk from its belt and toss it after the other two weapons. She then bestowed a gentle kiss on Issidris' rapidly swelling face.

Peering about the darkened courtyard, her gaze happened upon a wooden stave barrel that had been set beside the rear door with a mind to collecting rainwater. She dragged Issidris over to the barrel, surprised by how hard, how substantial the smaller woman's body felt in her grasp. "You'll not kill yourself, Issidris," she whispered fiercely. "You may come to despise me with every spark of life in your being, but I will never permit your act of self-destruction."

With this, she plunged Il's head into the tepid water, holding her under until the diminutive woman began to thrash and flail wildly. Lorio roughly jerked the sputtering woman's head out of the water and then delivered three vicious blows to her abdomen and a knee between Issidris' slightly parted legs. Then she again drove Il's slack face beneath the water and leaned her body against the shorter woman to maximize her leverage. Il's frantic struggles were ferocious, but after a moment, her leanly muscled arms went slack and hung loosely at her sides.

Lorio snarled and pulled the dazed assassin's head out of the barrel before unceremoniously slamming her to the ground. Issidris' head bounced off the dirty stone with a disturbingly sharp smack and she lay staring up at the star-smattered firmament, gasping like a fish out of water.

The Lamish Queen stood over the fallen woman for several moments and then she reached down and hauled a barely coherent Issidris to her knees by the shoulders of her sleeveless tunic. Surprisingly, Lorio then sank to her knees and gripped the battered woman by both ears. "Issidris, you will swear an oath to me here and now that you will not try to harm yourself...or I will beat you bloody all the way back to Nalosan."

Issidris regarded Lorio through flat, slightly glazed eyes, but remained obdurately silent, suggesting that she might view the prospect as some perverse and well-deserved penance. Lorio laced her fingers around the back of Issidris' neck and drew her closer until their foreheads touched. "Please, Issidris...I'm begging you...don't harm yourself. Promise me that you won't!"

"What right do you have to demand this of me...to demand anything of me?" Il seethed indignantly, her voice fraught with a misery that dwarfed the physical pain that her tormentor had just inflicted.

"I have no right!" Lorio moaned and now her own tears of self-loathing burst forth. "Still, I would beg it of you anyway. I have stained my soul with blackness to a point where I no longer recognize what it might once have been. Neither it nor I can survive another scar, so I implore you...turn your blades and fury on me if your pain deems it necessary, but don't compound the crime I've committed against Lyndsyn and Karosyn by taking your own life!"

Issidris' eyes widened in response to this frantic entreaty. She grimaced and clutched Lorio's throat, her powerful fingers digging into the exposed flesh which Lorio offered willingly. The immortal inclined her head and encouraged, "Do it, Issidris...make me the receptacle for your every indignation...every act of casual cruelty you've ever suffered. If you feel the need to be scourged for Lyndsyn's death, then let my pain serve as a vicarious expiation of your guilt."

Issidris scowled and squeezed Lorio's throat if only to silence her confusing chatter. "I will not raise my hand to you...ever! You are a queen...everything that I once dreamed of being as a child...before my father and brothers' cocks and fists disabused me of such foolish nonsense. As you say, I have destroyed the only living person who genuinely cared about me...and I did it out of mindless fear of normal human emotion. Still, you ask me not to bring a merciful end to my torment. I would then ask you to give me a valid reason why I should not. Set me to a purpose that will sustain me through this storm that assails me. Do that...and I vow that my life will not end by my hand."

Sobbing like a child, Lorio sagged back on her haunches as Issidris released her and fell silent, regarding the Lamish Queen expectantly. As she peered into the black pit of Issidris Il's shriveled soul, Lorio caught a fleeting glimpse of a piteous creature who had been ripped asunder and fractured into razor sharp fragments by this world's seemingly infinite capacity for cruel invention. Those fragments had been hastily reassembled...the incongruent, biting edges ground together to create a being who could only receive and dispense pain. For Issidris, the capacity to experience the gentler facets of human emotion had long been scoured from her vitiated heart. In that moment of epiphany, Lorio...a woman whose own twisted soul had been subject to very much the same remorseless pressures...divined the one purpose that might save Issidris.

What's more, had not Artumas extended a proposal of purpose to Lorio when the immortal had wanted only to throw herself from the ramparts of Kammlogran and let the ocean wash her away in the wake of Islena's soul effacing abandonment?

Lorio dragged the heel of her hand across her eyes, leaving livid red marks in its wake. "You asked for a purpose...then I will give one to you. From this moment forth, you are mine and the Sister's hold on you is broken. You will stand as my constant protector...my ubiquitous shadow. You will devote the rest of your life to me."

"A slave then?" Issidris suggested, the light of hopeful expectation guttering in her dark eyes.

In the near total darkness, Lorio seized Issidris' hands and shook them vigorously. With grim ferocity, she rejected Il's dejected contention. "Not a slave, Issidris, but rather I would have you be my conscience!"

Issidris blinked and shook her head in bewildered confusion. Lorio again pulled Il closer and implored, "I want you to be the remorseless judge of my soul, who will hold me accountable for my every action, my every word of harsh denigration. When my residing ugliness rears its head, it will fall to you to flail it from my heart. Issidris, you understand this dark stain better than anyone...you recognize its hateful visage...its every nuance. I give you leave...without fetters or constraints...to scourge this perverse need to lash out like a petulant child...to bludgeon it from my heart. I'm being drawn toward the abyss, Issidris and you've witnessed the truth of this first hand with Reyfort and Lyndsyn and others too numerous to mention. Yet, you can save me, Issidris!"

"Why...why ever would you think such a thing?" Issidris demanded in a voice that was coarse with incredulity.

"Because you possess a hardened heart that will neither excuse nor ignore my cruelty and spite, while still retaining a sufficient echo of your lost humanity to help me change...even if it's with a heavy fist," Lorio insisted vehemently.

Issidris inhaled deeply and bowed her head, still unable to readily credit that this imperious, arrogant and yet blazingly glorious, larger than life persona would willingly subject herself to the scrutiny and judgment of an inconsequential wretch.

With unconcealed skepticism, she heard herself ask, "If I did agree to serve as the arbiter of your words and deeds, you would have me privately chastise you...physically?"

"Without reservation and as severely as you see fit," Lorio confirmed without the slightest hint of ambivalence. "I would certainly ask that you renege on your vow never to hit me."

A tense, nuanced silence descended upon the pair then; a gravitas that comes with the disquieting realization that one has come to a pivotal, defining moment in their life, where they discern that everything to follow will be forever affected by the path selected and the choice made here and now.

On impulse, Issidris raised her right hand to Lorio's beautiful face and with an index finger, caught a warm tear as it fell from the Queen's long lashes. As a transfixed Lorio gazed on in fascination, Il raised the finger to her lips and tasted Lorio's essence.

The salty sweetness exploded on her tongue, underscored by a hint of bitterness. Issidris' eyes grew comically wide in response to the unanticipated intensity of these sensations. In that single taste, Issidris Il confirmed the veracity of all that Lorio had laid before her. Reaching for the Lamish Queen's right hand, she pressed her lips to the warm flesh and then offered her oath of fealty. "I renounce my vow to the Sisters of Esotaria...and pledge my life and service to you, Lorio, Queen of Lamia."

Lorio laughed, her relief palpable, and pulled a startled Issidris into a tight embrace. She pressed her lips into Il's wet hair and murmured ardently, "Thank you, Issidris!"

Rising, she had hauled Il to her feet, drew her into another prolong, fervent hug and intoned, quietly, "Let us find those weapons of yours. I will be better served if my conscience has fangs."

The next morning, the pair had set out for Nalosan, along with a visibly broken Matrium, the body of the tragic Lyndsyn, Reyfort, the bane (indeed, a man from Islena's world and time) and the woman who had been traveling with him when first they had found him in Dizar Kor.

Each time that Lorio's gaze would fall upon the shroud-wrapped corpse in the back of the wagon, she was assailed by a keen stab of guilt and it was all she could do not to begin to wail and weep over her role in Lyndsyn's needless death. On these occasions, she would shift her wounded gaze to Issidris to find the assassin regarding her intently...the glint of what might well have been approval alight in those unfathomable dark eyes.

Before the party reached Nalosan, there would be one further emotionally-fraught incident that would permanently galvanize what would become an unbreakable bond that would eventually develop between the two extraordinary creatures about whom this tale is being written.

Like many momentous junctures that shape the course of sentient life, this one sprang from what appeared to be a rather banal moment...motivated by a need for diversion from the monotony of the road.

The party had stopped for the night, establishing their modest camp in a small clearing through the end of which meandered a narrow stream. Feeling suffocated by the cloying pall of dejection that hung over the party like a miasma, Issidris found herself craving a distraction to keep the specter of the shrouded Lyndsyn at bay.

Diversion for Issidris inevitably settled on some means of sword play or unarmed sparring. Rising from her spot next to the Lamish Queen, Il approached Reyfort. The handsome Suran's posture grew tense and wary as he became cognizant of her approach, his body still aching from the last occasion upon which they'd interacted.

She paused next to the Suran, looking down at him with that impassive expression that could inspire such disquiet. "Perhaps you would like to pass the time with a friendly sparring session...to help sharpen the skills."

There had been a note of disdain to that last remark that had caused Reyfort to grimace and the clearly reluctant Suran might well have declined had Lorio not offered a less than subtle taunt at that exact moment.

"Come now, Reyfort...surely you're not intimidated by a woman half your size? Or perhaps you're afraid you might actually hurt her...in which case I can assure you that our little Issidris is remarkably durable."

Reyfort greeted this derision with a prominent frown, his blue eyes shifting uneasily from one hateful woman to the other. Finally, discerning no graceful retreat, Reyfort accepted Il's invitation and rose to his feet. "As you say, good lady, honing one's sword skills is never without its benefits."

Issidris moved away from the fire and drew her wicked hook blades, while the Suran retrieved his own ornamental swords. The manner in which Reyfort drew the ceremonial Ihzrac weapons from their scabbards intimated a reverence for the swords.

Watching a clearly intimidated Reyfort prepare to face the daunting Issidris, Lorio's mind automatically juxtaposed this moment with another particularly painful recollection from her own odious past.

Emercian Captain Esuruban had been every bit as handsome as the Suran rogue...though unlike Reyfort, Esuruban had been kind and unflaggingly noble.

Lorio had wanted to spar with the Emercian soldier only as a prelude for enticing him into her bed, but the madness that had affected her at that dark juncture had quickly usurped control of her mind once the session had commenced. Lorio had belabored the captain mercilessly and had left him battered and bloody in the snow of the training yard in Othgol...humiliating the undeserving man in a most despicable way.

To her eternal shame, Esuruban had still tried to help her through those dark times...had come to love her without condition or restriction, despite her myriad of ugly, glaring faults.

Inevitably, despite the promise of genuine contentment that a life with Esuruban had held forth, Lorio had battered his heart as thoroughly as she'd pummeled his body on that stormy winter night.

As she watched Issidris prepare to toy with Reyfort, the immortal stoically bore the pain of having these old wounds...those self-inflicted and fitting scars...ripped open anew.

A visceral aura of excitement stole into the moment in anticipation of the display to come...though for Lorio, it held the feel of a portent.

Issidris remained utterly stationary as Reyfort slowly and warily converged upon her. Il's face was utterly inscrutable...her body poised, yet relaxed. She held her blades at her side and angled slightly away from her body. "Come at me as your attacker did in the alley in Dizar Kor and I will demonstrate the appropriate defense and counter to that style."

Her suggestion had been delivered in a flat even tone that was devoid of derision or condescension...only implacable confidence. Nonetheless, the remark incited something in Reyfort, and his wariness gave way to irritation. With a snarl and a subtle shift of stance, he leapt at his shorter opponent.

As the mesmerized spectators looked on, Issidris parried his overhand stroke and slapped the flat of her sword lightly across the Suran's exposed ribs. Dancing nimbly out of range, she cautioned, "Divorce yourself from your emotions...or you may quickly find your body divested of its head. Make your every move fluid and economical, pretty man. Lavish exhibitions are fine in the gaming yard, but they might soon find you dead in an actual fight for your life."

Reyfort glowered but acknowledged her cogent advice with a slight nod. Then, after drawing a calming breath, he again sprang to the attack, though it was evident that he was striving to follow Issidris' counsel. It was equally evident that the talented Suran was no match for Il's deadly artistry. Issidris deliberately elected to remain on the defensive, easily turning back Reyfort's flurries...no matter how varied or imaginative they proved to be. Whenever one of Reyfort's attacks would leave him over-extended or otherwise vulnerable, Issidris would deliver a light strike through the holes in his defense. Then she would step back and impart a snippet of wisdom which the Suran would absorb in sullen silence.

Lorio viewed the sparring session while lying on her right side, with her head propped on an elbow, watching what had clearly become a schooling session with obvious delight.

A short time later, the still recovering Reyfort began to display signs of real fatigue, absorbing more and more of Issidris' punitive strikes, when exhaustion began to rob him of his customary agility. Finally, after a particularly maladroit stumble, Reyfort lowered his swords and with more grace than Lorio would have expected, declared breathlessly, "It seems that you have much to teach me, good lady...perhaps we could resume my lessons on another night."

Issidris nodded, displaying not the slightest hint of weariness. Reyfort shuffled back to his spot near the fire and settled dejectedly to the ground, clearly nursing a badly abraded ego.

Unexpectedly, Lorio bound to her feet and bent down to extricate her steel-sleeved quarter staff from its holder on her pack. Twirling the weapon in a blur, she turned to Issidris with a radiant smile lighting her beautiful face. "Perhaps you would care to teach me the finer points of combat...or has this preliminary left your edge dulled."

Issidris inclined her head and spread her shockingly defined arms wide in a gesture of invitation.

That electric current of anticipation ratcheted up several notches then, informing all present that they were about to be treated to a genuinely extraordinary exhibition.

Approaching Issidris, Lorio offered a challenge, the implications and gravity of which went far beyond the context of a friendly taunt. "Now, show me what lessons your life has taught you...show me your pain!"

Issidris' eyes widened and the specter of what might have been acute pain or genuine anger rippled across her angular face. In a spinning dervish, Il bound to the offensive.

Lorio parried, avoided or deflected her rain of blows with a liquid grace and skill that seemed utterly inhuman.

She did give ground, but unlike the beleaguered Reyfort, she did so of her own volition, allowing the tenacious Issidris to drive her to the very edge of the clearing. Before she could be caught in the curtain of branches and thistle-rife underbrush, the Lamish Queen countered with a cyclone of blows that sent Issidris reeling backwards. Lorio's carefully precise blows struck Issidris on her thighs, shoulders and upper arms, but if they stung the diminutive warrior, Il gave no voice to her pain.

Issidris narrowly ducked a short, chopping blow that seemed to have been intended for her right temple. She twisted into a rolling tumble that carried her several paces away from her skilled opponent. They stood eyeing each other intently...Lorio sporting an amused grin, while the assassin regarded the Queen with an expression of bemused surprise adorning her plain face.

"Much to your chagrin, you're discovering that I'm more than just a beguiling beauty. Come now, Issidris, I know you can do better. This is hardly worth the effort if I'm not left with at least one bruise."

The pair resumed sparring, though now Issidris' attacks were more deliberate...more subtle and measured. The session continued for more than a bell...a lethal ballet of such grace and precision that all who witnessed it were enthralled by its violent beauty.

Even Karosyn broke her vigil over Lyndsyn's body to watch the two women engage in the poetry of violence...though the statuesque blonde's lovely face was drawn in lines of stern disapproval.

In a reversal of roles from her previous contest with Reyfort, now it was the seemingly indefatigable Issidris who began to tire. Despite this, she still doggedly tried to penetrate Lorio's seemingly impregnable guard. Stepping lithely to one side, Lorio spun in a tight circle and caught a flat-footed Il with a short, sweeping blow directly behind her knees.

Issidris next found that she was lying flat on her back, staring dazedly up at the firmament with the lethal tip of Lorio's quarterstaff pressed menacingly against her exposed breastbone. Lorio peered down the length of the weapon, her expression glacial and imperious.

For the briefest instant, Reyfort held his breath, thinking that Lorio actually intended to impale the vanquished viper.

"Submit!" Lorio demanded in a voice that was all throaty growl rife with dark promise.

Issidris allowed her arms to fall to the sides, releasing her grip on her hooked swords, which fell to the trampled grass. Slowly, she raised her head and in a tone that was every bit as implacable as the woman's who had vanquished her, rasped, "I will never submit to you...never!"

There had been a nuanced implication in that ferociously given vow that went far beyond the context of conceding defeat in a sparring contest. Lorio's great dark eyes had widened and she glowered balefully, while the tension mounted with each passing moment.

"Lorio!" Karosyn barked urgently and a rapt Reyfort noticed that a muted yellow corona had coalesced around the tall blond.

After sparing the Matrium a dismissive glance, Lorio returned her attention to Issidris and growled, "I was hoping you'd say that."

Then, with a blinding smile of pure exuberance, Lorio had cast her staff aside and pounced on the startled Il. The Lamish Queen had begun to rain light, open-handed slaps on Issidris and soon the pair was rolling around the clearing like children.

Surprisingly, the incredibly flexible Il managed to maneuver her way behind Lorio. She locked her muscular legs around Lorio's waist just beneath the short ribs and crossed her ankles for added leverage. At the same time, she snaked her left arm under Lorio's chin and pressed her face tightly against the side of the Queen's cheek, catching Lorio in a seemingly inescapable strangle hold.

"Well played, Issidris!" Lorio declared with genuine sincerity and obvious delight, despite being apparently ensnared in such a compromising position. Thinking that Lorio was mocking her, Issidris snarled and applied a constricting pressure that would have rendered a normal mortal unconscious in a span of seconds.

As an incredulous Reyfort and the other bore witness, Lorio rolled to her right and with Issidris still wrapped around her like a python, rose to her feet as if Il was weightless. She stood in this position for several moments, while Issidris struggled frantically to crush the taller woman in to submission.

Then, after offering Reyfort a wink, Lorio swiftly gripped Il's crossed ankles, bent deep at the knee and threw the pair into a tight somersault. Issidris landed flat on her back with Lorio's full weight atop her.

The titanic impact effectively punched the air from the assassin's lungs. Il's arms and legs went slack as she uttered a guttural grunt. Lorio swiftly reversed positions and pressed her right knee into Issidris' heaving sternum while pinning the beaten woman's arms above her head.

She gazed down on the beaten Issidris, those ineffably lovely dark eyes twinkling with mirth, and declared gleefully, "Since you obstinately refuse to submit, I'll simply declare myself the winner."

With this, she leaned forward and bestowed an affectionate kiss on Issidris' forehead. Springing lithely to her feet, Lorio hauled a glassy-eyed Issidris erect and drew her into an exuberant hug.

When Lorio turned to face the spectators, however, a subtle shift in expression rippled across her lovely face like the shadow of a fast racing cloud over the surface of a calm lake. Despite feeling the effects of the pummeling she'd just absorbed, Issidris caught a fleeting glimpse of that shadow and in that brief instant, Il was provided with an illuminating glimpse into the festering turmoil behind the Lamish Queen's exquisite façade.

Despite her mantle of reticence and stoicism, which tended to impart the impression that she might be a plodder, Issidris was an acutely perceptive woman, especially when it came to divining weakness and imperfection that she had once ruthlessly exploited to such great advantage. That acute perceptive faculty now informed her that Lorio was perhaps inadvertently, about to reveal the source of the inner turbulence that made her such an erratic and despicable creature in the eyes of those who failed to glean the obvious sorrow that spurred her to such outrageous behavior.

In a somber voice, around the edges of which echoed a wistful melancholy, Lorio recalled, "The first time we ever met, Islena Doraux used that particular trick to beat me. My people forced her to face me in a duel of staves...for which she had no aptitude. As a testimony to her extraordinary strength and talent, she managed to defeat me using this clever trick. I was a vain, impetuous and childish girl who would not accept defeat with grace and so I dishonored myself by attacking her from behind after she'd left me beaten on the grass. She defeated me a second time by employing that bold maneuver. Then she beat me to a quivering pulp and left me in a bloody, unconscious heap at her feet...but she did not kill me...as she had every right to do...as I would have had the situation been reversed."

Lorio fell silent and Issidris could see the imminent tears glistening in her eyes and hear the immutable pain in the cadence of her breathing. In a quavering voice, Lorio admitted, "I fell in love with Islena Doraux that day...for the hard justice she'd dispensed...and the mercy she'd shown."

Again, she hesitated and her blistering regard settled squarely upon the transfixed bane. In a nuanced voice, she observed, "Whatever travails this world is about to face, it must do so without the likes of Islena Doraux...and I fear for us all."

With this dismal assessment delivered, she released a clearly unsettled Issidris Il and strode briskly into the darkness of the surrounding forest. Profoundly touched by the Lamish Queen's unexpected display of vulnerability, Issidris hung her head and fetched a deep, tremulous breath. She remained this way for several moments, grappling with her ambivalence over the radical course of action that had just germinated in her mind...and its commensurate responsibility, should she decide to follow her instinct.

All at once, her head jerked up as though on the strings of a puppet master and Issidris loped off in pursuit of the enigmatic Lamish Queen. (*)

Issidris found Lorio standing in an adjacent small clearing, staring pensively out across the small stream that was slithering by like a shimmering ribbon of velvet beneath the silver moon.

Shedding all reservations over her intended course of action, the diminutive warrior converged upon Lorio in a purposeful march. The Lamish Queen flicked an irritated glance at the approaching Il and murmured in a distant, yet unmistakably truculent tone, "I'd prefer to be alone for a short space of time."

Ignoring this couched admonition, Issidris struck the taller woman with a short, chopping blow to the left cheekbone. The heavy impact was further augmented by the leather wrappings that Il had wound around her fists as she'd stalked through the evenly spaced trees. She followed with a savage uppercut that buried her left fist in Lorio's left breast, drawing a shrill gasp from the startled immortal, who collapsed to her knees next to the stone-faced Il.

Issidris wrapped Lorio's heavy cable braid around her left fist and jerked Lorio's head back. Leaning closer, Il growled, "You asked that I show you my pain...and I can tell you that I will never do that...but I will gladly share the lessons my pain has taught me...your majesty!"

Forming the index and middle fingers of her right hand into a spike, Issidris viciously drove her fingers into the pressure points of an unresisting Lorio's body...a barrage that evoked a sharp hiss with each strike. Finally, after jamming her remorseless fingers deep into Lorio's left armpit, Issidris delivered two rapier punches to the immortal's exposed kidneys. Those blows drove Lorio flat onto her face, where she lay utterly still...except for the occasional tremor where Il's precise strikes had found home in tender flesh.

Issidris stood over the fallen queen, experiencing an unprecedented twinge of remorse over her brutal handling of the beautiful young woman. Still, in the context of Il's rigid sensibilities, the only meaningful lessons life bestowed were always accompanied by liberal doses of pain.

Perturbed by this sudden bout of uncharacteristic ambivalence, Issidris snapped, "There is a marked difference between playing at games and fighting for your life in a back alley where the notion of mercy is a lost commodity. I've learned every dirty trick along the path through those alleys...these are the lessons that life has taught me...your majesty."

Tugging on Lorio's braid, she jerked the barely coherent woman to her hands and knees and forced her to crawl toward the stream, stopping to administer the occasional strike to a sensitive pressure point. Lorio absorbed these savage strikes stoically and when she was forced into the water up to her elbows, Issidris moved to straddle the Lamish immortal's back.

After a moment's hesitation, Il simply allowed herself to drop, driving Lorio's head and upper torso beneath the water. Gripping the sides of the immortal's head, she began to grind Lorio's face into the sand of the stream bed. Lorio flailed her arms in apparent panic, but Issidris' muscular thighs kept the queen firmly in place. After a time, Lorio's arms went slack after which Il promptly hauled her out of the water and disdainfully tossed her back up onto the bank.

She reached down and gripped the lapels of Lorio's sleeveless tunic, but swiftly found that Lorio's foot was driven into her abdomen as her forearms were caught in the immortal's vice-like grip. Before she could assimilate the shocking fact that Lorio was completely unaffected by her savage assault...that she had intentionally and inexplicably allowed Issidris to belabor her this way...Il found that she was being catapulted through the air, landing flat on her back and narrowly avoiding a jutting finger of bedrock that protruded from the grass. Il regained her feet in the blink of an eye only to find the tall Lamish immortal standing at the water's edge. Her clothes, face and hair were caked with sand and even in the gloom, her great dark eyes radiated an unsettling belligerence. Through clenched jawed, she demanded, "Why?"

The full implication of what had actually just transpired rolled through a dumbfounded Issidris' mind and she stammered, "You...let me do this to you...you're not even hurt?"

"I'm a hybrid Morticant...an abomination really. It will take a lot more than fists and feet to hurt me...or weapons and sorcery for that matter. Now, I've asked you a question...why did you attack me?"

Issidris met Lorio's livid belligerence with her customary unflappable calm. "You've asked me to be the arbiter of your conscience...to judge your words and actions and chastise you as I deem necessary."

Lorio shook her head in incredulity. "You believe that besting you in a sparring session warrants beating me like a dog?"

Issidris shook her head in exasperation as if the other woman was being insufferably obtuse. "When you spoke of this woman...this Islena Doraux...I beheld a glimpse of the demon that infests your soul. It is from this maudlin pining for this woman's idealized memory that all of your rancor and twisted ugliness springs. Her memory is like a pernicious poison that is running rampant in your mind. To fulfill this obligation that you have set before me...I must exorcise her demon. Tonight was our first step along this path."

Lorio inhaled sharply, her nostrils flaring and then averted her gaze, "It isn't that simple."

Dismayed by Lorio's sly intransigence, Issidris bound forward and planting her hands on the taller woman's chest, gave the Lamish Queen a titanic shove.

Lorio landed flat on her back with a loud splash and vanished, though an instant later, she surged out of the stream and converged upon Il with murderous intent. Issidris lithely retreated several paces and wagged an index finger in admonition. "It was you who asked that I be your conscience...that I do whatever was necessary to lead you back into the light. I have seen the shadow that lies across your brow all too often during the course of my life...a life that has been lived on the ragged fringes in the company of desperate men, who have allowed lingering resentment and bitterness to turn their hearts to black stone. This woman has perverted your soul, Lorio and you must free yourself from the addictive enchantment she's cast over you...or you will inevitably become the monster you dread."

"I can't!" Lorio wailed, her expression a fraught blend of defiance and misery.

"But you must and you will...because I will not serve a weak, equivocating craven. If you do not renounce this woman's abnormal hold over you...then I will walk away from this place and the pit can take you...and your odious ghost," Issidris retorted. She then pressed into the immortal and glowered up at the taller woman, growling her ultimatum. "Decide here and now!"

A moment of unfettered, pristine empathy passed between the two women and in Issidris' hard, uncompromising regard, the immortal, whose scarred heart had been bounced about like a ship on a perpetually turbulent ocean, glimpsed the startling prospect of genuine contentment and stability...given time and Issidris' unwavering patience.

Though she would have sworn that such an inevitability was impossible...that her yearning for the incomprehensible creature who had abused her love at every turn, only to abandon her, was irreducible...insurmountable...in this moment of perfect clarity, Islena's specter relinquished its suffocating grip on Lorio's heart. And though those memories would never be far from the immortal's conscious thoughts, they would never again exert the destructive influence over Lorio's heart that they had up until this improbable moment of deliverance.

Gravely, Lorio nodded and intoned solemnly, "Issidris Il, I believe you're going to be my salvation."

Unexpectedly, the diminutive assassin greeted this with a decidedly sour frown. Abruptly, she gripped Lorio's face in powerful fingers as if attempting to convey the sincerity of her words through contact. "Lyndsyn could never perceive the truth of who and more importantly, what I am. That refusal...or failure ultimately came at the price of her life. I will give you my loyalty and as I've demonstrated here, I will be diligent in fulfilling this task you've set before me. In time, I might even call you friend." Here, she shook Lorio's face for emphasis and added, "but if you require something more than friendship...life has leeched that capacity from my soul and I will abandon you and spare us both the undue heartache."

Lorio peered into those frighteningly intense dark eyes and realized that the forthright Il was being both truthful in her assertion that life had divested her of the capacity to experience higher emotions and sincere in her threat that she would leave should Lorio not acknowledge this truth.

Knowing that she had been tottering on the abyss these last years and struck by the certainty that this unlikely woman could redeem her, Lorio nodded with an uncharacteristic meekness. Issidris nodded briskly and releasing the Lamish Queen's face, stepped warily back. The immortal tilted her head and remarked, "It occurs to me that...over the course of my entire life...I've never actually had a friend...I think it will be a pleasant new experience."

Unexpectedly touched by this remark and leery of the emotions this complex creature seemed to evoke, Issidris instructed gruffly, "Loosen your braid and let's see if we can get the sand out of your hair and off your clothing. It's unseemly for a Queen to look like a filthy vagrant."

Lorio glanced down at her sopping clothes and wondered, "I'm not sure what to tell the others?"

"We'll tell them that you were drowning and that I jumped in the stream to rescue you," Issidris suggested with the hint of a playful grin tugging at the corners of her normally harsh mouth.

Lorio's eyes grew comically wide and she gasped, "Could it be that the viper actually has a sense of humor?"

"Tell anyone...and I will find a way to kill you," Issidris promised with a feigned scowl, causing Lorio to throw back her head and bellow delighted laughter.

"You realize that your story is only credible if you're soaked as well," Lorio observed and with this, she gracefully hip tossed Issidris into the stream before plunging in after her. Pulling Issidris to her feet, she added sternly, "I fully expect you to teach me all of those dirty tricks of yours."

Suddenly suffused by a sense of solemnity, Issidris promised, "I will...over time."

Lorio accepted this with an equal gravitas and then, giggling like an exuberant child, she pushed Issidris back into the water and the two engines of carnage splashed about while an infinite number of stars capered above them.

3

Beyond that interlude, the Antiquated Land was plunged into unimaginable chaos...a vortex of violent mayhem at the center of which stood the intrepid Lorio and Issidris. Though beset on every side by evil ambition, coming together in an unprecedented confluence...a consuming maelstrom the likes of which the bedraggled world had never before witnessed, not even during the darkest days of Islena Doraux's time in the world, both women would survive to emerge into the light. The storm would run its course, as even the most catastrophic of tempests inevitably must and the Antiquated Land would emerge...indelibly scarred and battered, but unbowed.

Lorio in particular would be instrumental in seeing two of the conflicts to their resolution and both women would stand resolutely at the eye of the third storm...a massive invasion by the previously unknown island nation of Majeer, located hundreds of leagues to the south of the Antiquated Land across the Sea of Prevailing Mystery. This massive invading army would lay waste to most of the eastern continent at the behest of their ruler and prophet, Ekaz Azeer, a religious zealot who had been corrupted by a demon posing as a god. This iniquitous lunatic had infected the men of Majeer with the extreme theology of misogyny and now his armies had come to the eastern continent, not to conquer the affluent land, but to cleanse it with fire and eradicate the pernicious weed sown by the Sisters of Esotaria and their patron Goddess, Gyzarayne.

In the end, the Sisters of Esotaria and the combined armies of the eastern continent, along with the improbable assistance of the female elite contingent of the invading army...had managed to turn back the demon's legion...but not before a sizable swathe of the continent had been reduced to a smoldering charnel pit.

Yet, it had been another aspect of this three-headed serpent of anarchy that had most profoundly and personally affected Lorio, forever altering the course of her life and setting her on a rambling path that would eventually deliver her to the fateful day in which she and Issidris walked along the deserted road on the island of Krieg.

Like many of the events that had shaped and influenced the flow of Lorio's astounding life, her mortal conflict with the half-Ulgak, Sygeanor, found its Genesis in Islena Doraux's meteoric blaze through the Antiquated Lands. When a reluctant Doraux had initially refused to give her aid to the CornerStone Nations that had stood in opposition to Myrhia's seemingly invincible engine of conquest, Kyros, a member of the Metocan elite Inner Circle, had conspired to abduct Islena. It had been his misguided intention to coerce Doraux into capitulating to her destiny and joining the coalition's cause.

Lorio, by this time a hybrid Morticant, sworn to Myrhia, had intervened, thwarting the abduction attempt and killing Kyros in the process.

Like many of the spontaneous acts of savage violence that had characterized the arc of Lorio's often troubled life, Kyros' murder would have many unforeseen consequences. Sygeanor, Kyros' illegitimate daughter, would find her way to Othgol, The Metocan Capital, with a mind to avenging her father...a compulsion that would grow to become a sanity-occluding obsession. This obsession might well have remained a harmless delusion were it not for the fact that Sygeanor was a living telekinetic weapon, whose power was nearly without precedent in the annals of the nation of magic-wielders long and illustrious history.

Sygeanor's menace was further exacerbated by a nature that was clever, devious and utterly devoid of any constraining traits such as compassion or humanity. Relentlessly driven by her insatiable hunger for revenge, Sygeanor would eventually usurp Inos' mantle of Grand Mage of Metocan.

While the world reeled under the weight of Myrhia's potential emancipation and the carnage of Majeer's invading army, Sygeanor declared Lorio and her fledgling nation of Lamia to be anathema. Accordingly, she set out to destroy both, unleashing a storm of forbidden dark sorcery the likes of which the Antiquated Lands had never experienced.

Employing the vilest of black magic to vivify a legion of wights...using blood collected from Lamish abductees, Sygeanor had loosed these ravenous hordes on the unsuspecting defenders of Lamia. Only the vehement intervention of the Sisters of Esotaria and the Queen of Purgatory, Otaru Ree, who had intervened not to rescue a beleaguered world but to save Brannok Dur, had prevented Sygeanor's madness from running its course and driving the Lamish people to extinction.

After Sygeanor had been cast into the Great Mother, the purportedly bottomless divide that separated the eastern and western continents, by an enraged Otaru Ree, thus extinguishing her threat, Lorio had spent an afternoon and evening in her beautiful son's company. From that short span of hours, Lorio had distilled a small collection of vivid memories of her son to sustain her for a lifetime, knowing full well that she would never set eyes upon Brannok Dur again.

When the dust of the three great conflicts had settled, the decimated people of the Antiquated Land had striven valiantly to take up the frayed and scorched threads of their lives.

Along with Issidris Il, who by this time had already become a constant fixture at the haunted Queen's side, Lorio had toured the northern half of her realm, which had sustained the lion's share of the hideous damage inflicted by Sygeanor's shambling abominations.

It was during a visit to the village of Thasron that Lorio, never one to harbor delusions, came to realize that she was ethically obligated to end this fatuous masquerade of monarchy, into which she'd been entreated by a well-meaning Artumas, and abdicate her crown in favor of her more capable regent, Nayoro.

With her two companions at her side, Lorio had stridden into the village, which was really nothing more than a modest collection of sheds. The Lamish propensity for perpetual movement was far too deeply engrained to be easily set aside and something about these hovels spoke of impatience...and impermanence...a desire of their occupants to gather their scant belongings and be gone.

And then they had come to greet her...these damaged people who were her subjects, her responsibility...and Lorio had gone utterly rigid, the blood draining from her pallid face in a horrified rush. She was beset by an overwhelming compulsion to turn on heel and flee those awful faces, with their starvation-hollowed cheeks and beseeching, haunted eyes.

Ever perceptive to the rousing of Lorio's roiling inner turbulence, Issidris had discerned just how profoundly Lorio had been affected by the grim spectacle congregating around her and had reached out and discreetly gripped the Lamish Queen's bare tricep. The simple gesture of reassurance had sufficed to quell Lorio's angst to manageable levels and face the approaching villagers.

Sygeanor had attempted to coerce Lorio into surrendering and accepting the mad woman's retribution by abducting villagers, whose blood she then used to fuel her machine of vengeance. Taken to the Metocan capital of Othgol, these victims were slowly drained of their blood, while being sustained by black sorcery to insure that they would provide an enduring source to feed Sygeanor's depraved machinations in securing her revenge. When Otaru Ree had cast the mad woman into the Great Mother, the survivors had been rescued from the bowels of what had become Othgol's great Gulag.

It was some of these survivors who now came to greet their Queen in the village of Thasron. Lorio gaped at the shambling skeletons with the shadowed brows and the permanent expressions of pained bewilderment. Lorio recalled that Nayoro had whispered something into her ear...some cogent words of encouragement no doubt, but even thirty years later, the immortal could not recall what her regent might have said.

They came toward the immobilized queen, gathering in a loose semi-circle and swaying like fragile saplings in a brisk spring breeze. In those imploring, hollow-eyed stares, Lorio gleaned that their joyous spirit, the delight of the eternal wanderer, had been utterly extirpated. They would now be rooted to this wretched place...permanently bound to their torment and degradation.

She saw something else as well...

In every listless eye that fell upon her like a physical touch, Lorio could feel a need for solace...a need for explanation.

She was their queen after all and the woman who had inspired the tyrant's wrath that had so thoroughly laid their lives to waste.

In that illuminating moment Lorio understood just how absurd and abhorrent this charade of her rule truly was. Only now, in the face of this nearly incomprehensible, abject misery, did Lorio finally grasp the gravity of being given dominion over the lives of others...the solemn obligation and expectations that came with responsibility. Up until this excruciating moment, Lorio had regarded her monarchy as a ridiculous jape...but one that was utterly harmless because everyone was party to its absurdity.

In every eye she now recognized the scathing repudiation of this facile lie. They were all waiting for her to conjure the magic words of solace...the eloquent and uplifting soliloquy that would frame their soul-obliterating ordeal in some bearable context so that they might escape its cold and remorseless shadow and allow them to pick up the ill-fitting fragments of their lives.

The weight of their collective need had been suffocating...for what message of inspiration and comfort could Lorio reasonably be expected to impart?

Her own life had been and endless succession of savage and disillusioning blows that had disabused her of every pretty and delicate fallacy regarding life's inherently beautiful miracle. In this context, there was only one genuine message she could share, but Lorio doubted that it would do much to ameliorate their despair; life was a heartless manipulator that derived endless pleasure from delivering random and ineffably cruel blows that left us dazed and dismayed. In its wake, what choice did we have but to stagger to our feet and stumble forward with shoulders hunched and jaws clenched in anticipation of the next inevitable strike?

As fervently as she believed this, Lorio was astute enough in matters of fragile human psyche to realize that this was not a pronouncement she could offer to her suffering subjects. With equal certainty, she knew that she could never distill the silver lining from the horror of their collective experience...to cast it as a foundation from which to draw strength and fortitude with which to rise above this grim moment and face future travails.

Instinctively familiar with her Queen's retinue of inadequacies, Nayoro had risen to the moment. She had rescued Lorio while eloquently delivering an inspirational speech that had cast suffering as a virtue and misery as the noble soil from which the most enduring and steadfast of civilizations had invariably sprung. It had required only one glimpse into the glistening eyes of the people of Thasron to discern that Nayoro's words had achieved their desired effect.

Of course, the undeviatingly loyal Nayoro had portrayed Lorio as the architect of Lamia's glowing future, but the crestfallen immortal had known that she could no longer propagate the ridiculous pretense and that the time had finally come to accept that lamentable fact.

Nayoro had pleaded, she had beseeched...imploring Lorio to remain as Queen, if only in a ceremonial capacity, but when it became obvious that the immortal was intractable in the matter, Nayoro had humbly accepted both Lorio's abdication and her designation as the despondent immortal's successor.

Nayoro had sent forth the requisite decrees to which the old and incoming Queens had affixed their seals. She then dispatched invitations to attend her coronation...which would be held in Brexiter, a modest enclave of twenty-five hundred people in central Lamia, some two months hence.

Nayoro was a woman whose fundamental humility matched her exceptional probity and competence. By contrast to the extravagance that normally surrounded such lavish affairs, Nayoro's coronation had been a Spartan, modest ceremony, but despite the dearth of pageantry, there had never been a woman to appear so aptly regal as she had bowed her head to accept her simple circlet crown.

The ceremony had been conducted in Brexiter's small town square on a glorious morning in fall and as tribute to the esteem with which Nayoro was regarded, her coronation had been attended by every ruler on both continents.

Deciding that her presence would only cast a pall of failure over the festivities, Lorio had declined to attend, deciding that Lamia would be better served if she simply faded from memory.

She had watched from the shadows of a narrow alley, Issidris by her side, as the procession of Kings and Queens had filed past to bestow their congratulations and blessings on the newly crowned Queen. The solemn Nayoro had accepted these blessings with a demure nod and a curtsy. Lorio noticed that a familiar face stood just behind her right shoulder. Though he was now more gray than blond and his once lean, angular face was softer, the immortal recognized Gillian, who watched Nayoro greet her fellow immortals with glowing pride. Some months later, Lorio would learn that her former quest companion had renounced his Jerhia citizenry and had become Nayoro's royal consort and advisor.

With a pang of melancholy, Lorio had watched them all, these legendary figures with whom she had once shared the stage in the greatest drama of the age. Maxim Tier Marshal Maroc had come to confer his blessings, which he had offered with Tier Marshal Arminda at his side.

The sight of the diminutive, short-haired Jerhia, with her perfect posture and earnest manner, had evoked a storm of emotions in Lorio that had very nearly brought the immortal to tears. During the dark time that the course of their lives had run together, the two had shared some of the most intense emotional junctures, both sorrowful and joyous, belligerent and comradely, as it was possible for two individuals to share. Somehow, they had lost touch after that day at Kammlogran and this sorry turn of neglect now struck Lorio as ineffably sad.

And then Artumas had ascended the dais, accompanied by his new Queen, Karosyn, whose regal serenity and pulchritude were the very personification of royalty. After he had extended his blessing to a clearly awestruck Nayoro, he had retreated to the rear of the dais, while the newly elevated Queen had made her inaugural address to her clearly elated people. Lorio had studied his face while he listened and though he wore an obligatory smile, the immortal felt certain that she could detect the slightest intimation of pain on his aging face...perhaps a doleful concession that Nayoro's coronation was a painful affirmation of his failure in aiding the woman he had once referred to as the daughter he wished was his.

Lorio inhaled and drew a tremulous breath to steady her roiling emotions. Issidris gently squeezed her firm shoulder...a rare tactile gesture of comfort. To disguise her close proximity to losing control, Lorio grumbled, "Let's make a start of it then. I want to be well away from here before the ceremony breaks up."

"Are you sure you don't want to say goodbye...to all of them?" Issidris had inquired softly.

She spared the dais one final glance, her gaze lingering on Artumas for a long moment. Along with Esuruban, he was the one man who had earned her respect and love. Distantly, she murmured, "It's probably best for everyone if I just stole away."

With this, the pair had set off down the alley and out along the narrow road that led into the surrounding forest.

The next occasion she would set eyes upon Artumas, he would be lying in state in the very castle where the pair had borne witness to Islena Doraux's great victory over Myrhia.

"So...where should we go?" Issidris had inquired.

Lorio had raised her face to the sky and had sniffed experimentally, her nose wrinkling at the faint hint of approaching winter...with its dismal rains and cold winds. On impulse, she blurted, "Perhaps we should go to this Majeer...it would be amusing to see Lissom's expression when I landed in her parlor. Also, I've tried to imagine this thing called a desert, but find that I can't. Maybe we should let the reality of so much heat and sand speak for itself."

"Then to Majeer it is," Issidris had agreed with an affable grin and the pair had set off on their great adventure.

4

Thus the two women set forth on a rambling adventure that would carry them to every corner of the known world of mortals. In time, they became the closest of friends for whom the prospect of separation was unthinkable.

On first appearance, the two women appeared to be dramatic opposites, both physically and spiritually. Yet their friendship was an enduring testimony to the old adage that looks can indeed be deceiving.

Both women had been galvanized in the flames of deprivation, abuse and betrayal. Each had suffered an endless succession of excruciating disappointments that had divested them of their faith in every higher human virtue. Love, trust and self-sacrifice; the common experiences of both women had decried these virtues as the worthless currency of romantic fools.

Yet, from the infertile soil of these wretched commonalities had germinated the most precious of blooms...an enduring friendship, untainted by ulterior purpose or self-serving need.

In time, both women came to the startling realization that they were flip sides of the same rare coin, spinning along their chosen path...bonded by empathic commonalities and indivisible by any of life's sly disruptions...except for gravity and time, both of which were inexorable.

5

Thirty two years had passed between the day that Lorio had eschewed her role as Lamia's Queen and the day that she and Issidris strolled along the otherwise deserted cart path on the island of Krieg.

The two women walked at an indolent pace and if one was to happen upon the pair and follow them for some distance, the first impression they might garner was that these were two women who were so comfortable in each others company that long periods of silence were not excruciating.

Issidris was a tacit woman by nature, while Lorio was quite loquacious...a seemingly irreconcilable difference in character that one might assume would inevitably vex one or both after a time. Yet Il genuinely enjoyed Lorio's talkative banter, while the Lamish immortal would listen raptly on the rare occasions that Il became...expansive. Like many things in their close, comfortable relationship the extraordinary women had developed, even their marked differences seemed to compliment each other perfectly.

Issidris was a woman of even temperament, whose moods seldom varied...though, in truth, her walls of inscrutability made divining her thoughts at any given moment a monumentally difficult task. It would have been a grave error in judgment to misconstrue Issidris' level disposition for placidity.

Lorio again sat at the opposite side of the disposition spectrum. Tempestuous and when provoked, volatile, Lorio often wore her emotions on her sleeve and her great dark and expressive eyes were the barometers of a personality that could oscillate wildly from beguilingly charming to frighteningly obstreperous and every emotion in between.

In the years between Islena Doraux's abandonment and her fateful meeting with Issidris on the road to Dizar Kor, Lorio's personality had become erratic to the point of instability...to the degree that those closest to her had begun to fear for her reason. Astoundingly, Issidris' stark presence had exerted a calming affect on the more explosive aspects of the immortal's nature...her vitiated consistency washing over Lorio like a soothing balm.

Lorio had conscripted Issidris to be the keeper of her soul and on those increasingly rare instances when the cruel demons of her nature reared their malignant heads, Il had been unfalteringly diligent in meting out a harsh reminder of her purpose. Lorio would accept these punishing chastisements meekly, even thanking Issidris for her devotion as Il folded those terrifying leather straps into her pouch for the next occasion that Lorio lapsed.

On the day that the two were engaged in what would prove to be their final walk together, it had been over nine years since Lorio's darkness had necessitated one of Issidris' object lessons. On that occasion, kneeling and gazing unblinkingly into Issidris' eyes, while the former assassin had pummeled her torso, Lorio had gleaned that the sadomasochistic exercises had become a source of extreme torment for Il, who nonetheless would never renege on her vow.

It had been this intimation of anguish, along with the painful realization that she was its source that had finally caused Lorio to ruthlessly and permanently subjugate the darker proclivities of her flawed nature.

It had signaled the first time in her life that Lorio had been compelled to change her nature because of the adverse affect it was having upon someone else. Lorio had confided this startling insight to Issidris, who had offered the immortal a crooked grin and quipped, "It seems that the brat is finally growing up."

Even the expression the women sported...an aspect of the daunting aura each exuded...was a marked distinction between the pair. Issidris Il glinted like the keen edge of a blade, rife with the promise of swift and lethal violence if so provoked.

By contrast, the menace that Lorio posed was often negated by her astounding beauty, so arresting in its intensity that it made it easy to ignore the signs that this might be a woman whose ire it would be imprudent to raise. The steel sleeved quarterstaff across her slender back or the leonine grace with which she moved...these things were often lost against the allure of her full hips, the lush promise of her full breasts or the dance of her long thighs.

These beguiling attributes...the spell they cast...often surmounted common sense and whenever a lust-addled male sought to take advantage of this entrancing beauty, they soon found out that the hybrid Morticant was actually the far more dangerous of the pair.

Issidris, however, with her emanating aura of cold menace could inspire primal dread...send a chill careening along a spine with a blunt glance. An amusing vignette came to Lorio's mind then...the recollection of an incident that had occurred just a few months after the pair had returned from their decade long odyssey across the depth and breadth of exotic Majeer.

The pair had made the return journey across the Sea of Prevailing Mystery, first stopping in Nalosan so that Lorio could bid a poignant and tearful farewell to the late Artumas. After spending time in the company of Queen Karosyn, the pair had decided to simply meander through the countries of the eastern continent. While traveling north through Fairmarch, Lorio had suddenly decided that it would be an interesting diversion to perambulate the entire shore of Lake Sonier, one of the continent's largest inland water bodies, located in the country of Anangrast. Issidris, now perfectly content to indulge Lorio's capricious notions, had agreed and the two had set off on what most people would have considered an arduous and ultimately pointless adventure. Yet, it was in these apparently aimless meanderings that the bond between the two grew constantly stronger...immeasurably deeper; The roads to be walked only to see what might be at their end, the fields to be crossed only for the powerful desire to discover what might lie beyond the open expanse and the hills to be climbed for the humbling experience of gazing o'er the sprawling vista that the peak might afford.

These were the primal thrills that both women came to crave like an addictive drug that kept them in perpetual motion...these two daughters of dust driven relentlessly before the wind of insatiable curiosity.

To their mutual delight, the pair came to the satisfying realization that these evocative experiences were enriched by the others presence.

Spring had come to Anator, and the streets of the nation's capital were abuzz with the special, giddy energy that the end of a long and bleak winter can evoke. Initially, it had been their intention to spend the night in the capital, gathering provisions and luxuriating in both a bed and an ale house before embarking on the long, rambling journey that would carry them far away from the comfort of both.

Lorio would later reflect on how swiftly the best considered plans can go awry. As usual, the two women shied away from the more crowded thoroughfares of the city. The reasons for this decision to eschew the high streets were two fold and taken at Lorio's insistence.

Two women traveling alone was a rare enough sight to garner a great deal of undesired attention. Two heavily armed women traveling alone attracted even greater attention from both brigands and authorities alike...and while Lorio welcomed the former, she strove to avoid the later at all costs.

The reasons for this aversion were as complex as the woman who harbored them, but could ultimately be distilled down to one simple motivation; Lorio desperately sought to avoid the notoriety that came with being a heroine of the quest and the legendary Emerald Enchantress wars. She certainly needed no reminder of her disastrous tenure as Queen of Lamia and the tide of bitter memories that accompanied this absurd title. For Lorio, these were long interred corpses and she had no desire to conjure them forth from their tombs like a necromancer.

She wanted only to remain anonymous...a nameless itinerant drifting like fallen leaves...seen and then soon after forgotten. Despite this fervent claim, Issidris had noticed how Lorio derived wry amusement from hearing tales of that incredible time while sitting in the shadowy corners of an ale house. Where fact was at a dearth, embellishment had a tendency to supply the missing detail...a propensity further enhanced by free-flowing alcohol.

Lorio would smile as she listened to these accounts that were as varied as the tellers, of that dark time. That smile would broaden when these fantasies turned to her role in this great drama.

Lorio had been seven feet tall and wielded a flaming sword that could cleave mortal men in two with one mighty blow. In the most outrageous of these fictions, Lorio had been a witch...sometime hideous to behold and others, beguilingly beautiful...who could fly and breathe fire like a dragon.

There had been one occasion, however, when one of these elaborate fictions, told with spell-binding conviction by an old man to a table of rapt listeners, had affected the immortal in an altogether different way. In this version, delivered in the rich, solemn baritone of a veteran thespian, Lorio had been a pure-hearted young woman who had fallen into an illicit love affair with the demi-goddess, Islena Doraux. She had trailed after Doraux like a love struck ingénue, but when Islena had turned the evil enchantress to stone, she had grown wings and flown to the heavens...never to be seen in the world of men again.

Heartbroken and unable to live with the shame and humiliation of Islena's callous abandonment, Lorio had succumbed to despair and thrown herself into the sea.

Hearing this cutting, skillfully crafted blend of fiction and heart rending truth had skewered Lorio with the precision of a rapier. Barely stifling a moan of anguish, the immortal had tottered to her feet and stumbled from the ale house, sprinting into the night shrouded forest once outside.

Issidris had waited for Lorio to return for four days, biding her time in the nameless Fairmarch village while waiting anxiously for her friend to return. When, at last, Lorio did return, she appeared haggard and dull-eyed in the aftermath of her struggle to return Islena's memory and its accompanying pain and anguish to its resting place. Issidris had silently drawn the despondent immortal into a lingering hug and the pair had quickly hurried from the village.

From that day forth, Lorio would beat a hasty retreat once ale house banter turned to the subject of that odious time.

Lorio's fervent wish was to have the world simply expunge her from its collective memory and to that end, she did all that she could to avoid recognition...though her remarkable beauty made that no easy feat.

Upon entering Anator, the pair had abruptly veered into a narrow side street in search of a small inn. After negotiating several twists and turns, they came to a circular cobbled common around the perimeter of which rang a number of bistros. At one of these bistros, a half dozen young men in powder blue tunics and white trousers with gold piping...the regalia of military army cadets, Lorio surmised...were leaning on a red wooden railing, engaged in animated chatter with a group of young girls...all of clear noble stock.

Since the exit to the common lay on the opposite side of the cobbles, the pair was left with little choice but to cross the common. Alarm klaxons began to bray in Lorio's mind and as she'd feared, the unexpected appearance of two armed, unescorted women drew the attention of the young cadets, all of whom wore ceremonial swords in ornate scabbards.

"I believe that we've just drawn some unwanted attention, Issidris," Lorio whispered to which Il merely nodded. The warning had been unnecessary of course. If there was anyone more peripherally aware of their surroundings than Issidris Il, Lorio had yet to meet them. There were times when Lorio believed that the deadly warrior could detect a spider crawling on a branch from a hundred paces away.

They were half way across the common when the flat of an ornamental blade lightly tapped Issidris' muscular right shoulder. Issidris came to an abrupt halt and eyed the length of steel that protruded over her shoulder. Lorio merely turned to face the sword's wielder, a handsome young man with black hair and pale blue eyes. She eyed him curiously, recognizing that glean of arrogant presumption...of baseless entitlement that seemed to come automatically to young nobility. His bearded face was split in a humorless grin that seemed to be the standard expression of those who believed that it was their inherent right to resort to random cruelty at their leisure.

Having worn this particular expression on occasions too numerous to recall, it was one with which Lorio was all too familiar. The young cadet cast Lorio an indolent glance, his eyes widening in the face of her stunning beauty and drawled, "It's unwise for little girls to play with their father's weapons."

This crude double entendre provoked a gale of disdainful laughter from the young man's cronies near the bistro. Lorio noticed how Issidris' jaw muscles had contracted into knots at the mention of the word father. To the grinning cadet she murmured, "I do believe you are going to regret that particular remark."

Under normal circumstances, it was Issidris who leapt to the fore in these situations. Eventually, Lorio had come to discern the rather surprising reason why. Issidris Il was an instrument of cold and yet controlled carnage, whereas Lorio was like a raging tempest...especially when anger glazed her vision in shades of murderous red.

Issidris would try to bring conflicts to a rapid conclusion before Lorio's natural lust for violence ran the body count to extremes.

Sensing Issidris' rare fury, Lorio wondered if, on this day, those roles would be reversed.

Oblivious to the mortal danger into which he'd so foolishly blundered, the young cadet's tone became preemptory and he demanded, "I'm speaking to you, woman...are you a mute or merely stupid?"

Issidris' swift reaction would have left a serpent gaping in envy. In a stunning blur, Il pivoted to her left like a dervish. Sliding out from beneath the blade, she spun on heel and snagged the startled young man's right wrist, while simultaneously drawing one of her hooked swords with her other hand. She then brought the weapon down in a savage arc, striking the cadet's forearm just above the wrist...with the rounded haft of the weapon.

The resounding snap of shattering bones echoed loudly over the common...punctuated by the boy's harrowing scream. Issidris released her grip on his wrist, but before he could follow his sword to the cobbles, she delivered a fist to his sternum that sent him careening back toward the others. He landed flat on his back, clutching his broken arm and gasping for breath.

Seeing their comrade's plight, the other cadets pushed away from the bistro railing, but Lorio moved quickly to impose herself between the five cadets and the two combatants. Drawing her wicked looking quarterstaff, she advised blithely, "I really think you're better served as spectators."

Fortunately for the five, fear prevailed over foolish ego and they settled back to watch the uncomfortable spectacle of their comrade's abjection.

Issidris began to circle the cowering, thoroughly deflated young man, regarding him with terrifying dark eyes that could have set the very cobbles ablaze.

"Speak the word father again!" Issidris growled.

"What...What?" the fallen cadet brayed in confusion and by way of response, Il unleashed a volley of blows, striking on the thighs, torso and shoulder of his good arm with the flat of her blade. He howled while the dull, ugly report of each blow rang out across the open space.

"I said that I want to hear the word father spew out of your foul mouth," Issidris repeated, her voice guttural with violent promise.

"Issidris...I believe he's learned his lesson," Lorio observed quietly. Il's truculent gaze snapped up to meet hers and the immortal could hear her growling deep in her chest like an enraged animal.

Her entire body shuddered and Issidris then returned her attention to the broken young man at her feet. "Get out of my sight!"

The cadet looked up at the looming nightmare and Il pointed toward the nearest alley with her sword. Staggering to his feet while clutching his broken arm against his now filthy tunic, the young man fled into the shadows...neglecting to collect his sword.

Issidris drifted over to the ornamental sword and gracefully snatched it up. She then carried it over to the cluster of pallid-faced cadets, who shrank back against the railing of the bistro, while their young female admirers gasped and quailed as if Issidris might be a rabid beast.

Issidris laid the sword on a wooden table and swept her emasculating gaze over the cadets. "Tell your crony that unless he draws his sword with the intention of using it, he should allow it to remain in his scabbard...lest he find his head separated from his shoulders. Better yet, advise him to stop playing at soldier, a vocation for which he clearly has no aptitude...and instead take up his father's business."

She then turned and strode into the alley on the opposite end of the common, leaving everyone, including Lorio, gaping after her.

After a moment, the beautiful immortal drifted over to the cadets. Fixing on the most handsome of the five, Lorio gently caressed the smooth flesh just beneath his chin with her right index finger.

"Thank whatever gods there are that your imbecile friend chose Issidris to provoke. Had he dropped his blade on my shoulder...there would be six mangled corpses staining the cobbles. These obtuse bitches would have to find another group of pretty geldings to swoon over."

To a one, they all averted their eyes and Lorio then loped after her deadly friend. She caught up to a briskly striding Il well down the alley and remarked, "Considering that the arrogant brat might be some rich, influential noble's son...who might not look kindly on someone abusing his precious offspring, however badly he might have deserved it...I think we might want to forego the inn and get back out on the road."

Issidris had flashed Lorio an indecipherable glance and nodded brusquely, after which the two had made a hasty withdrawal from Anator.

When their march had carried them several leagues north of the city and Issidris had not so much as spared a glance in Lorio's direction, the immortal correctly deduced that the normally even-tempered Il was perturbed...with her.

She had come to an abrupt halt at the edge of the road and demanded, "All right, Issidris...out with it...what's wrong?"

To Lorio's bemusement, the smaller woman had spun to face her and the immortal had discerned that, beneath her smoldering anger, there dwelt an acute pain...an emotion which the impassive Issidris seldom displayed. She tossed her pack to the side of the cobbled roadway and for the briefest instant, perhaps no longer than a heartbeat, the immortal felt certain that she was about to draw her sword and attack.

Instead, she had inhaled deeply and marched over to Lorio, excoriating the nonplused immortal with a scorching gaze, and demanded, "Do you regard me as a rabid animal like those pampered princesses did on the bistro?"

"Of...of course not," Lorio sputtered in the face of her friend's towering indignation. "Why would you ever believe such a thing?"

Issidris growled and thrust her chest into Lorio. "Did you actually believe I was going to hack the arrogant brat to bloody pieces on the cobbles?"

Lorio's slight hesitation seemed to serve as an affirmation of Il's suspicion. She grunted in disgust and spinning away, stormed over to the opposite side of the road, where she stood with her back to an increasingly unsettled immortal.

Not certain how best to react, Lorio remained silent, waiting for Issidris to elaborate on the cause of her anger. After a time, Issidris turned back to Lorio and her anger had segued into something that had disturbed Lorio even more...sorrow. "I've never given a sailor's fuck what anyone thinks of me...until now...until you. I want...no...I need you to see me for who and what I am...and I am not a fucking animal!"

"I don't think that at all!" Lorio protested.

"Yet you warned me on that common as if I was about to behave like one!" Issidris retorted.

Lorio blinked. "That boy seemed to have gotten...gotten under your skin."

"But he didn't!" Issidris erupted. "You have been with me long enough to distinguish between genuine anger and a purposeful mask. I wanted to teach him a hard lesson...to prevent him from behaving the same way with someone who was less inclined to forgive arrogant stupidity. Someone like you, for example. That you did not see that...it's as if you've driven a dirk between my ribs!"

Lorio's eyes grew comically wide at this admission of shocking vulnerability...her discomfort made worse by Issidris' next stunning disclosure. "I told you that I had killed the man who had tried to abduct the bane's woman when we first found him in Dizar Kor...but that was a lie."

Lorio inclined her head and arched a tapered eyebrow at this revelation. After a thoughtful pause, a somber Issidris went on. "After I had beaten him, I saw him lying in the filthy water of a puddle and realized that he was a creature very much like me...a tool that some ruthless exploiter had used. I suddenly wanted to see him out of that wretched life and so I shattered his sword hand beyond repair...and then I gave him a purse of gold coins and saw him on his way. There was more than enough money to see him to a different life. That is who I am Lorio...and that is who I want you to see when you look at me."

For a protracted moment, Lorio couldn't speak, so dumbfounded was she by Issidris' unexpected capacity for compassion...an admittedly harsh brand of compassion, but compassion nonetheless. She crossed over to Il and though she knew that Issidris had a strong aversion to uninvited physical contact, she drew the shorter woman into a tight embrace and though Il did not return the gesture, she suffered it without resistance. Lorio pressed her lips into Issidris' short hair and murmured, "I'm sorry, Issidris...please forgive me. I'm a hopelessly thick bitch at times."

Issidris inhaled sharply and Lorio pushed her to arms length. "Look, I'll make it up to you by cooking the meals for the entire trip around the lake...and rubbing your feet each night."

This drew a spate of sardonic laughter from Issidris, who quipped, "You'd likely poison me or break all of the bones in my feet."

Lorio gaped and then joined Il in her laughter. The pair had continued on their way, the tension between them dissipating like mist before the rising sun.

Though Lorio would strive to learn the insightful lesson that had been imparted that day, her proclivity for self-absorption would, at times, blind her to the truth of Issidris' surprisingly nuanced and subtle nature. That blindness would never be as evident as it would prove to be on this, their final journey.

After the incident in Anator, the pair had forged ahead to the shores of the lake, angling northwest through the thick forest. They came to the shores of the great body of water just as it skirted around the edge of a vast and inhospitable mountain range. Lake Sonier was so massive that it occupied nearly a full third of the northern nation's surface and provided a source of income and sustenance to nearly twenty percent of that nation's population.

During the course of the long and often arduous trek around the shores of the lake, Lorio and Issidris would experience two further significant moments in the forging of their epic friendship.

The first of these would occur when they reached the foothills of Anangrast's Korsarcan Mountains, the country's northern most range. Life in this rugged and remote region was challenging and difficult enough for the intrepid souls who called it home under normal circumstances. At the time that Lorio and Issidris were doggedly picking their way through the area's rocky shores a new and iniquitous hardship had cast its malign shadow over the region like a plague.

A fairly large and formidable group of ruthless marauders had decided to take up residence in the area. This group of remorseless plunderers was led by a depraved beast of a man named Vorn, who it was put about, was once a Redian Mercenary back in the days when Redia had called Myrhia its patron. It was said that his extreme brand of sadism had made him persona non grata even in that lawless enclave of savages.

At Vorn's behest, this group of barbarians made it a habit of laying random waste to the few settlements and fishing villages in the remote region...using ineffable violence to terrifying the local population into pliable docility. Local authorities had petitioned Anator for assistance, but as was often the case in the Antiquated Land, remote areas and their trifling woes hardly seemed to warrant the commitment in men and resources necessary to resolve their problems. This indifference allowed men like Vorn to operate with relative impunity all throughout the eastern continent.

Consequently, the region's increasingly dire plight went completely ignored. Vorn likely would have continued his campaign of vicious plunder indefinitely had it not been for the fortuitous passing of the two extraordinary women for whom the thought of this nasty brand of cruelty and repression had become unconscionable.

In a tiny hamlet, the name of which Lorio had never learned, a frail and distraught woman had approached the pair and in a tearful exhortation, had begged the pair to help retrieve her twelve year old daughter, whom Vorn's cronies had abducted the day before. Lorio was aware that the other villagers had furtively watched the exchange with bitter resentment, thinking that this obtuse, selfish woman would bring the marauders' wrath down upon them.

It had required only a single exchanged glance, with not a solitary word passed between the pair, for the women to spontaneously decide to suspend their great adventure. In time, their natural empathy...their familiarity with the subtle nuances of the other's nature, would allow them to communicate without the faculty of speech...as if one had become an extension of the other.

Both women were intimately familiar with monsters of Vorn's ilk. Lorio had once been conscripted into Myrhia's service...arguably the very quintessence of evil monsters. Issidris, before she had been captured by the Sisters of Esotaria, was well down the same path over which Vorn strode like a juggernaut...a ruthless exploiter unencumbered by any hint of ethical constraint.

Both women knew precisely what would be required in bringing a permanent end to his reign of terror...just as they were acutely aware of the soul-effacing perils inherent in abandoning their civility. To destroy Vorn, they would have to descend into that black place where no action was too abhorrent.

Such had their confidence in the other become that both took it as an article of faith that each would do whatever was required to haul the other back into the light...away from the addictive allure of boundless barbarity, once the black deed was done.

During the next three weeks, Lorio and Issidris had conducted a masterful campaign of guerilla warfare against Vorn's unimaginative dullards that had never seen its like in Anangrast...even in the bleak years of Myrhia's occupation.

Corpses, suspended in ghostly postures of admonition, many skinned and missing limbs, became a common place sight along travel routes over which his ruffian minions had so recently moved with absolute impunity.

Rather than move on to easier prey as such ultimately craven exploiters are apt to do, Vorn demonstrated that he was a monster cut from a far more nefarious cloth.

Striking at random, his men selected the most defenseless and vulnerable to be used for the purpose of public torture object lessons designed to turn their gruesome and protracted deaths into demoralizing spectacles.

Discerning that Vorn was an intransigent beast who would see his entire rag-tag army decimated before relinquishing his grip on what he perceived as his fiefdom, Lorio quickly lost patience with their hit and run tactics.

Issidris had never forgotten the terrible expression of inexorable purpose that Lorio had displayed as she elaborated on her intention. "This bastard believes that he is a ferocious monster. He's confused an infinite capacity for cruelty with real power." The smile that had adorned Lorio's beautiful face as she'd made her next utterance was perhaps the most fearsome thing that Issidris had ever seen. "Let me show this Vorn what a real monster is...let me show him what a Morticant hybrid is..."

It had taken less than a bell for the next captured minion to disclose the location of Vorn's lair. Il had leaned casually against the wall of an abandoned cutter's cabin, watching impassively while Lorio had transformed the sobbing, screaming man into a grotesque parody of a human being.

In the end, he had brayed the location, after which Lorio had dispatched the shambling horror by pressing her thumbs into his eyeballs. Once this vile deed was done, the immortal had turned her gore-spattered regard upon Issidris and inquired, "Now, Issidris...can there be any doubt which of us is actually the rabid animal?"

With this, the pair set off for Vorn's secluded camp and the concluding act in this dark drama of monstrosity. Neither could have anticipated the depraved turn this nightmare excursion into horror was about to take.

Vorn's camp was protected by crude, but nonetheless formidable timber walls, which Lorio and Issidris set ablaze in the dead of night, before raining fire arrows down on the thatch roofs of the structures within the compound. Predictably, Vorn had decided to sortie his forces, who found themselves confronted by a living engine of death. Lorio had rolled through the two score retainers like a living scythe. In the bloody carnage, Issidris gained a thorough appreciation of the true nature of this woman to whom she had tied her fate.

After dying at Myrhia's hands in the frozen wastes of the Blighted Lands, Lorio had been reanimated by the very same sorceress. Now, however, she had been revived as a Morticant hybrid...essentially an unprecedented golem with sentience and volition. As such, Lorio had been granted immortality...immunity to the ravages of aging and disease, hunger and infirmity. More germane to the matter at hand, she had become invulnerable to any and all conventional weaponry. In truth, only sorcery...the magnitude of which might be wielded by a deity...could deter the immortal.

'All of this power and yet she still chooses to live the life of an anonymous vagabond,' Issidris had marveled incredulously as she watched Lorio eviscerate a man twice her size and decapitate another in one fluid sweep of her razor-sleeved quarterstaff. That willingness to eschew all of the power and limitless trappings and glory such fantastical power could accrue...spoke volumes about how unique...how unconventional the enigmatic immortal truly was.

This astounding insight only served to elevate Lorio in Issidris' often grudging esteem...even if she could not entirely grasp the complex sensibilities that define it.

While Lorio dispensed death as if in the grip of a hypnotic trance, Issidris stalked behind her, casually decapitating both the wounded and the dead.

Such was the irreducible power of chauvinism and misogyny amongst Vorn's army of reprobates that...even in the face of Lorio's ineffable choreography of slaughter...they refused to flee before a woman.

That deeply engrained prejudice made the task of eradicating the marauders down to the very last one an infinitely simpler affair and finally they came face to face with the architect of the campaign of nightmares. Vorn stood on the top step of the compound's main building, watching his army face its extermination with apparent indifference. A crude iron battle axe was draped over his right shoulder and when Lorio approached the foot of the steps, her beautiful visage obscured by a thick mask of gore, the brute actually bellowed disdainful laughter.

Lorio had regarded the giant of a man quizzically, noting that his eyes were alive with animal cunning, but no genuine intelligence beyond a beast's aptitude for ugly violence. "You find the slaughter of your fellow miscreants amusing?"

"The world's overrun with fodder who be willing to attach themselves to a cause at the promise of coin," he rumbled, "and after I've gutted you two sows, I'll be off to recruit more."

Lorio moved to mount the first step and in reaction, Vorn brought his axe down in a whistling arc that would have cleaved a normal person from stem to stern. Lorio seemed to sidestep the blow without actually moving, while simultaneously thrusting the lethal tip of her quarterstaff into Vorn's exposed groin with enough force to completely impale the giant.

His subsequent scream of agony was a guttural rumbled that rolled through the surrounding forest like thunder. With a petulant twist, Lorio ripped the weapon free, watching dispassionately as Vorn tumbled onto his back like a felled tree.

Gasping wordlessly, he stared up into the starless firmament before the she-demon and her companion filled his vision like evil moons. Lorio squatted down next to the fallen plunderer and in a flat, almost perfunctory voice, informed the dying Vorn, "I'm afraid there are only two forward paths for you from this particular moment; my friend Issidris is going to swiftly remove your head from your shoulders...or she is going to be very deliberate in amputating your limbs, beginning with your toes. Believe me when I tell you that she is a most talented surgeon...and your end will be a prolonged and gruesome one. The choice is yours and it all comes down to your willingness to answer one simple question...what have you done with the women and girls you abducted from the villages?"

Vorn shifted his pain-muddied gaze to Issidris' impassive countenance and in those terrible dark eyes he glimpsed the irrefutable truth of the she-demon's contention. This terrifying creature would have no compunction about butchering him.

Wincing against the flare of agony, Vorn lifted his head and inclined his chin in the direction of a squat, windowless building near the rear gate of the compound.

Something whispered across the frayed fabric of Lorio's conscience then like a harbinger of something ineffably evil to come. Ignoring it, the immortal gave Issidris a tacit nod and rose to her feet, crossing the compound to the shed.

Admittance to the building was gained through a single large door that was secured by a crude, heavy timber that sat in two iron brackets. Steeped in eerie silence, the building seemed to exude a sinister aura and Lorio correctly sensed that she was about to throw open the door to an edifice of man's blackest proclivities.

Across the common, the flat report of steel on wood disclosed that Issidris had emphatically ended Vorn's sadistic reign of terror.

Lorio effortlessly lifted the heavy timber and threw it aside, surprised by the anxious cadence of her breathing. She then ripped open the massive door, grimacing in response to the plaintive scream of rusted hinges. The stench that assailed her flaring nostrils reminded the recoiling immortal of charnel pits and rapid desiccation...high and eldritch. It rolled over her in a complex miasma that provoked images of despair and horror in its every demoralizing garb: human waste, disease and madness.

When Lorio's preternatural vision adjusted to the shed's internal darkness, a thin gasp escaped her lips as her left hand fluttered to her gaping mouth.

All along the interior walls of the shed, women and girls were chained to stout beams that ran along the structure's length. They cowered in atavistic dread in the face of the single figure who stood in the doorway...a strong, unbent silhouette framed in pale light.

Lorio became peripherally aware of a presence at her shoulder and knew that Issidris had come to join her, but she could not drag her gaze away from the abject vessels of misery that trembled in the darkness.

Lorio, who was intimately familiar with the various guises of abject suffering, was still bludgeoned by the deplorable state of these women, victims of the ugliest mutation of misogyny.

Each was severely emaciated and horribly dirty from having been forced to wallow in their own filth. Each displayed the bruising and disfigurement of prolonged and systematic physical abuse. Lorio knew, with irrefutable certainty that these women and girls...despite their degrading state of uncleanliness...had also been subject to prolonged and violent sexual abuse.

Another malodorous stench rose above the others, one that confirmed Lorio's fear that the occupants of the shed had been fractured...decimated beyond and hope of repair; the dispiriting reek of absolute madness.

Issidris spoke then and in her gruff timber, Lorio could discern how acutely she'd been affected by the horrible tableau of unfathomable evil arrayed before her. Hers was the earnest confusion over the thought that human beings could inflict such unspeakable atrocity. "They kept them for amusement...this had nothing to do with profit. This was about having something upon which to vent their sick and ugly urges."

Finally, Lorio managed to avert her gaze from a piteously thin girl, who might well have been the daughter of the woman whose desperate entreaty had set the pair on the path to this excruciating moment...and the unthinkable choice that it would yield. Lorio understood, without equivocation, that they were confronted with a choice that would befoul both women beyond any hope of expiation.

"You know what future these women and girls can expect if we return them to the world," Lorio murmured in a voice that was scarcely recognizable as her own. Issidris, who had also suffered the cruel indifference and intolerance of this world, merely nodded.

Without exchanging a solitary further word, both accepted Lorio's harsh unspoken proposal...just as both harbored no illusion that what was to follow would condemn them to eternal damnation...irrespective of how well-meaning or glacially compassionate their intentions might be.

As Issidris drew forth her two bloodied hook swords, Lorio brandished her quarterstaff and the two women strode purposefully into the shed that had become a place of nightmares.

Neither woman was particularly surprised when few of the irreparably broken victims even bothered to raise their hands in a token gesture of warding off. In mere moments the victims joined their abusers on the journey to the afterworld.

Lorio and Issidris spent the remainder of the night and a good portion of the next day consigning the women and girls to the earth. Neither bothered to offer a prayer over the shallow graves as both had long before been disabused of the idea that there was anyone to hear their entreaties.

The miscreants, Lorio and Issidris dragged into a pile at the center of the compound and left as a feast for the carrion feeders.

Next morning, the villagers of the nameless hamlet where Lorio and Issidris had first been set to task awoke to find Vorn's head adorning a spike on the village common. A note had been affixed to the spike and then one of the few literate villagers had been summoned, he read the terse advice to the doleful villagers:

Your problem has been dealt with.

Your wives and daughters are lost...

Mourn them and move on!

The weeks after this abysmal episode were passed beneath the pall of a melancholy silence. Few words were exchanged between the two companions as both women turned the harsh light of introspection on their frayed souls...in search of the facile, ultimately hollow platitudes of absolution that would help them make an accommodation with the heinous actions that circumstances had forced upon them in that damnable shed.

They made camp at the edge of a great swamp which spread along the northwest shore of Lake Sonier like a blight. Neither had any way of knowing that this brooding expanse of wetland held the next formative juncture on their shared journey.

A light drizzle had begun to fall as the last of the ineffective light bled from the sky. Lorio sat on a moldering stump, staring morosely into the anemic campfire that struggled beneath the drizzle. Abruptly, she buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

Issidris watched the immortal weep, her brow furrowed in bemusement. She rose from where she'd been sitting and moving over to the distraught Lorio, surprised the immortal by folding the weeping woman into her arms. "Lorio, we did what the situation required and while the mercy we delivered was cold...we both know that it was mercy nonetheless. Cry your tears until you find a way to forgive yourself...and then you and I will never speak of this again."

She glanced up at Issidris, her lovely face ravaged by misery. "I doubt those women ever experienced a genuinely joyous day between them. Their whole fucking lives were just a constant grind of drudgery and servitude to some mindless fucking simpleton of a man...only to end up like that...chained in a shed like cursed animals!" She laid back her head and raged at the indifferent heavens, "I fucking hate men...they're all worthless swine. Look what they did to those poor, pathetic wretches, Issidris." Her fury degenerated into an anguished sob and she added, "Look what they did to us!"

Surprisingly, Issidris, whose only relationships with men had been pervasively abusive, observed circumspectly, "Most men perhaps...but not all. Artumas was certainly noble and your Captain Esuruban...you described him as a gentle and humble man."

This reminder seemed to sober Lorio's outrage. She roughly dragged the heel of her hand across her eyes. "Still, will we ever see a day when women are valued as more than chattel...when their happiness, pain and sorrow is not dependent upon a man's whim...his benevolence or cruelty?"

"Perhaps not in this lifetime...but the Sisters of Esotaria are changing perceptions...as is Queen Karosyn. They are endeavoring to teach all women how to be respected and strong. The day will come when you will see such a world Lorio...when you fashion such a world."

Lorio experienced an incisive stab of pain then...recognition of a dismal inevitability that her conscious mind had obstinately refused to entertain.

The day would inevitably come when she would be forced to confront this world...with its endless tribulations and adversities...without Issidris beside her. The enormity of this unavoidable loss was simply too devastating to contemplate and so Lorio savagely thrust it from her thoughts.

In the days to follow, however, this horrible prospect would rear its head and would not be so easily ignored.

The next morning the pair set off on the journey across the swamp. It took only a short while to realize how rigorous and enervating this trek would prove to be...at least for Issidris, who...while ostensibly indestructible...was still very much human. To aggravate matters, a cold and driving rain settled over the region, leading Lorio to understand that their great adventure was quickly becoming a debacle. By the end of the second day, both women were soaked and completely miserable from slogging through the often waist deep water.

By the conclusion of the first week, Lorio gleaned that her absent desire for adventure had unwittingly plunged them into peril.

'Not you, Lorio' she scourged herself. 'These flights of idiotic fancy have never adversely rebounded upon you. You are impervious after all and this is nothing more than an annoying inconvenience. As always, it is those around you who bear the brunt of your thoughtlessness.'

This derisive condemnation lashed her like a flail. She furtively studied a clearly laboring Issidris as the pair struggled to circumvent a treacherous bog in heavy mist. The woman's angular face was pinched and drawn and it was evident that Issidris was tottering on the brink of total exhaustion. To compound her woes, the pair was nearly out of provisions and while Lorio had no need of sustenance, Issidris was displaying signs of deprivation. The diamond hard Il would rather die than admit weakness and would never utter a plaintive word over the immortal having blundered into a disastrous situation for which she, Issidris, must now carry the burden.

'And this is how you repay her loyalty, of which you have always been patently undeserving...by leading her into this ridiculous misadventure to relieve your boredom.'

Finally the pair reached an elevated section of land that was essentially an island in the midst of a massive swamp. Lorio climbed into the copse of trees, grateful to be out of the cold water and back on relatively solid ground. Issidris stumbled after her mortal companion and when they reached the highest point of land, Il slumped to the comparatively dry ground, sitting with her back to the rough trunk of one of the towering trees that dominated the island. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and Lorio immediately noticed that her respiration held a raspy liquid trill that raised alarm bells in her anxious mind.

She knelt next to the clearly laboring Il and gently placed the palm of her right hand on Issidris' perspiration-soaked forehead. The skin beneath her cool palm was hot with fever. When Issidris opened her eyes, they were glazed and strangely distant.

"By the accursed gods...you're sick!" Lorio exclaimed.

"I'm fine," Issidris rasped, her voice a mere facsimile of its normal gruff tone.

"Bullshit...you're burning up with fever," Lorio retorted and reaching for the buttons of Issidris' sopping tunic, she pushed back the folds and pushed her right ear to an unresisting Il's chest and commanded, "Inhale!"

Issidris drew several breaths and the immortal could hear the tightly packed phlegm congesting her lungs...constricting her airways like a crushing serpent. Panic seized her then...huge and debilitating...and it was all she could do not to lay back her head and keen like a wounded animal. Knowing that Issidris' life was now in her hands (and by extension, her own...because Lorio could not envision a life without her friend at her side) helped quell that panic and restore her frayed equilibrium.

When it became apparent to Issidris that Lorio had gleaned how gravely ill she truly was, Il abandoned her charade of wellbeing. "Leave me, Lorio...we're almost out of food and I've nothing left to fight this thing. Whatever you might believe...this is not your fault. I came with you because I wanted to...just as I always have."

Rather than mollify the tempestuous immortal, this absolution left Lorio fuming. She gripped Issidris' slack face and roughly shook the startled woman. "Do you recall what I did to you that night behind the inn...the night we found Lyndsyn? If you ask me to leave you behind again...after I've made you well again, I'm going to beat you black and blue until it makes what I did to you that night seem like a randy cuddle. Now, you're going to be an obedient patient and cooperate. When you're strong enough to be moved, I'm going to carry you out of this place...and you're going to let me. No one will ever know that Issidris is human after all and there is no shame even if they did. Do you believe me, Issidris?"

Il nodded deferentially, garnering a humorless grin from the immortal, who grumbled, "Don't think that my doing this is some great egalitarian gesture. This is my chance to pay a long overdue debt to a person in whose debt I would rather not remain. Now, rest here while I begin."

Issidris again complied without protest, an indication of just how dire her situation was. Issidris Il...the surprisingly complex woman...was many things, but submissive was not one of them.

Lorio closed her eyes, attempting to compose her thoughts to devise a plan that would deliver Issidris from her plight. "Do you still have the apothecary remedies?"

Issidris nodded, a sheepish glint in her dull eyes.

"Why haven't you been using them?" Lorio demanded, her expression darkening.

"This...this took me quickly, Lorio," Issidris mumbled apologetically. "Until this morning, I thought I was fatigued from slogging through this accursed swamp and from lack of food."

This last admission, offered with obvious reluctance, caused Lorio to grimace with self-abhorrence.

'How many indictments against your existence can you bear?' she thought, but to Issidris, she admitted candidly, "I don't know what to do to help you, Issidris...so tell me what you need to get you better. Whatever is necessary...I'll do."

Issidris reached out and gripped Lorio's right wrist with a hand that was palsied with fever. "The first thing that has to be done is break this fever. I have willow bark in my pack and if you can make an infusion...a tea...that should serve. Then there are other unguents that are for the treatment of infection from wounds, but they can also be used in a poultice to draw this congestion from my lungs. If I guide you, perhaps you can mix the unguent in a hollowed-out piece of wood. After that, I would need to be kept dry and relatively warm once the fever breaks." With an implicit disquiet over her perceived weakness, Il added, "And I will need to eat...will need nutrition to combat my illness and restore my strength."

Again, Lorio buried her face in her hands and fought to maintain her wavering grip on her emotions. With dawning horror, Lorio realized that it had always been the pragmatic Issidris who had tended to their everyday needs such as lodging or food. It had been Issidris who had hunted and fished whenever the pair was traipsing through the wilds. She had always attended to the practical aspects of their lives while Lorio had blustered about as if such mundane matters were beneath her. Lorio had abdicated her throne, but had continued to treat Issidris in a manner befitting a servant.

As always, Issidris had suffered this unintended slight stoically and this sorry situation was her recompense for that forbearance.
Shaking her head, the immortal wondered if it was possible for one to feel more self-contempt than she did at this particular sorry nadir. Again, inexplicably, Issidris seemed willing to absolve her of this damnable self-preoccupation. "Don't worry, Lorio...I'll tell you what you need to do." Her expression became sober and she cautioned, "Still, you must prepare yourself for the possibility that you'll be leaving this swamp alone."

Lorio glowered and cursed, "The pit can take that fucking idea. All right...rest and I'll begin. I'll start a fire and brew your tea and then you'll instruct me in how to make this poultice. Meanwhile, I'll wash and dry our clothes and bedrolls. There is enough food left for the next three days and hopefully you can give me enough insight into the finer points of hunting to find more in the interim."

With this ambitious plan set forth, Lorio rose, but stood staring out into the mist-shrouded swamp through which they'd traipsed. "When this is over...once I get you back to civilization....I'm going to devote myself to being more of a real friend and not a self-absorbed bitch. I won't lie and tell you that it will be easy, Issidris...I think selfishness is something that is branded in my nature, but I can promise that I'm going to make an earnest effort."

Issidris had merely nodded and closed her eyes, falling into a fitful doze while Lorio set about trying to rescue Il from the voracious monster that was attempting to consume her from the inside out.

She applied herself to Issidris' recovery with the tenacity of one who realizes that her fate is inextricably linked with the person whose life is in jeopardy. She learned to grind willow bark and mix unguents and apply poultices. She was equally diligent in making certain that Issidris' clothes were dry and as clean as circumstances would allow.

Issidris slept through a good portion of the next ten days. Especially for the first of these days, Lorio would keep a constant vigil over the ailing woman. She was assailed by a shudder of primal dread each time Issidris' breath would hitch in her chest. In those moments of near paralytic terror, the immortal came to discern just how dependent she had become on the stoic creature's companionship. Issidris was the calming influence...the serene anchor that kept Lorio grounded to her humanity...to her often tenuous stability. Without that stabilizing influence, Lorio was all too cognizant of what she could well become.

'Still, daughter of dust, someday you will inevitably have to face this moment that you might be fortunate to avoid today,' the voice of fate reminded her with malicious glee as if her torment was a source of its amusement.

"But not now, you heartless bastard...not now!" Lorio countered through clenched jaws.

Grudgingly, Issidris' fever had broken and it had taken nearly two additional weeks for her lungs to clear. Despite the slow improvement, Lorio grasped that in her weakened condition, Issidris would not likely survive a relapse that venturing back into the swamp might precipitate. Judging that it might be a half-day's journey to the edge of the lake from their current position, Lorio divulged her plan to Issidris. Sensing the irrefutable truth of the immortal's contention that she was not fit to resume their journey, Il had agreed, though Lorio could see that her acquiescence had come at an exorbitant price to the proud woman.

Lorio went about assembling a raft, chopping down trees to comprise the raft bed of sufficient size to accommodate both women. Around these logs, Lorio hooked vines and stubborn alders that would serve as the constructs lashing. She had labored like the indefatigable engine of purpose she was beneath the veneer of delicate femininity. When the stout raft was complete, she effortlessly carried the raft to the edge of the swamp as if it was made of paper. After selecting two trees that would serve as poles to propel the raft along shore, Lorio had insisted on carrying Issidris and laying her on the raft bed.

To Issidris' eternal amazement, Lorio had jumped into the waist-deep water and had literally pushed the heavy raft through the rush-choked swamp until it reached the open water of the shore.

When they had cleared the swamp, Lorio had leapt onto the bed and the pair had stared in silence out across the majestic lake, which appeared beautiful beyond the capacity of words to convey after the cloying hell of the swamp.

In a voice edged with incredulity, Issidris had inquired, "Why?"

Misconstruing the focus of Il's query, Lorio had replied, "I think I've warned you what would happen if you persisted in asking me to leave you here."

Issidris shook her head vehemently and reached for Lorio's wrist. "Why do you go to such lengths to disguise your true self...to hide your incredible capabilities? You are capable of anything...of crushing people who would bring violence against you as if they were insects...and yet you toy with them...toy with me! You could stand on the grand stage with the most powerful and influential women in this wretched world...far above all but a few, if we're being candid...and yet you chose to live like a migratory animal...and I would know why?"

For a protracted moment, Lorio did not respond and Issidris feared that the immortal would simply elect to ignore her strident query...a sad turn of events that would have inflicted irreparable damage upon their relationship. To Il's relief, Lorio sighed and revealed the poignant reasons for her resistance to displaying anything beyond the smallest portion of her capabilities.

With a bitter grin, she began, "As you recall, I've had my moment on the world's stage and that experience was not all that gratifying. Islena and Myrhia took my life from me, Issidris...took my heritage and all the things that entailed. Now, all that I truly want from my life is to have it be what it was before those two dropped on my world like a hammer. Walking away from my throne and wandering with you...anonymous and unnoticed; these things are only possible if I keep the truth of who and what I am hidden. So, I do only what is necessary to achieve that and to keep you safe. It is my only prospect for happiness, Issidris."

Issidris, who had ruthlessly conditioned herself to be impervious to life's many sorrowful truths, could feel a lump of raw emotion congealing in her throat. That life had so thoroughly and continuously pummeled this complex creature to the extent that she would rather repress her unprecedented nature than revel in her gifts spoke eloquently about the horrible toll that living had extracted upon Lorio.

When she could trust herself to speak, Issidris implored, "Be that as it may, I would ask you to hide what you choose from the world...but not from me. I've committed my life to you and this path you've chosen to follow. All that I ask in return is that you let me know your mind...your heart."

Deeply touched by the normally stoic Il's plea, Lorio had nodded vigorously.

The pair spent another week drifting along the shore of Lake Sonier. When they would come upon an appropriate spot, Lorio would guide the raft to the shore, building a camp and hunting while insisting that an increasingly restless Issidris sit idly by and recuperate.

The massive lake was host to an incredibly diverse ecology and as such, it provided a vast treasure trove of fish and game to the country of Anangrast. Villages proliferated all along the shore (with the notable exception of the inimical swampland through which Lorio and Issidris had made their nearly fatal trek).

By the time the two women had poled their way to the first fishing village of Nieran, Issidris had pretty much recovered from her flux. Now acutely attuned to her friend's wellbeing, Lorio had made the unilateral decision not only to abandon her great adventure...but also to spend the winter in the small village. Issidris had irritably accused Lorio of being absurdly over-protective, but the immortal had proven intransigent in the matter. She had used a small portion of the coin purloined from Vorn's compound to procure lodging at the local inn for the pair and though the innkeeper had been leery of the custom of heavily armed strangers, the sight of so much coin had allayed his concerns.

The four months that Lorio and Issidris would pass in the remote village would prove to be the longest consecutive time they would ever spend in one location in the more than three decades they would pass in each others company.

During the course of that long winter, where rain and snow would seem to pursue each other in an incessant game of tag, the two women experienced the often mundane flavor of the sedentary life. Lorio in particular, whose entire life had been a chronicle of perpetual motion, seemed to chafe in being shackled to one spot for so long. During that seemingly eternal winter, Issidris had fanatically devoted herself to the task of regaining her physical conditioning with a zeal that was often frightening in its intensity. She ran through the forest paths that surrounded the village and spent hours each day training with the dummies she'd built and erected in an abandoned storage shed behind the inn.

And naturally the pair sparred together for hours on end...though now Issidris harbored no illusions about her ability to rival the immortal's skills.

When the first intimation of spring had crept furtively into the cool air, Issidris again resembled the diamond hard specimen she had been before illness had fallen upon her in that accursed swamp.

During the course of an intense sparring session in which the diminutive warrior had allowed her indomitable will to push her to the ragged edge of exhaustion, Lorio had gleaned a truth that had left her feeling ineffably sad.

Despite her boundless tenacity, Issidris had been permanently diminished by her ordeal...a tiny increment weaker and a half step slower, but in a world where violent and mortal combat and prowess ruled, these distinctions were enormous. Of course there was another explanation for Issidris' slightly fading skills, but it was one that was so abrasive that Lorio's conscious mind did all it could to ignore this unpalatable possibility.

"So...where do we go from here?" Issidris had asked with an uncharacteristic eagerness one late spring evening.

Lorio's mood turned solemn and introspective then. "You asked that I never hide myself from you. To truly show you who I am...I have to show you how and where I became what I am now. I would like to bring you to Kornas, where I first met Islena Doraux...and then Runesholm, where Myrhia stole my soul."

Issidris had greeted this with a thoughtful nod and Lorio had been privately dismayed to notice that the ferocious glint in those dark eyes had also guttered.

The next morning the two had resumed their rambling journey and time flowed on like the inexorable river it was.

6

Now Lorio, with the recollection of the formative time flashing through her mind for the first time in over a decade, was ushered back to that period and the nearly disastrous misadventure. She stole a furtive glance at Issidris, whose inscrutable face was surprisingly slick with perspiration despite the refreshing breeze that blew along the path from out of the east.

In the years since that seemingly interminable winter in Nieran, Lorio had learned to mimic Issidris' faculty for stoic inscrutability. Though she had nowhere near the smaller woman's aptitude for reticence, Lorio had learned to mask her emotions behind a surly scowl that discouraged all but the most obstinate or stupid. Today, Lorio managed to erect a false aura of contented serenity, but beneath this thin veneer, her roiling thoughts were agitated and unsettled...a troubling cacophony of discordant concerns that harassed her like a relentless pack of hounds.

The source of her burgeoning anxiety was the woman who walked beside her...this precious friend...this implacable engine who had grown increasingly distant and inaccessible in the past few months.

Issidris' thoughts had always been difficult to divine, but now they reminded Lorio of a ghost sealed in a tomb. Yet, despite her growing remoteness...her inexplicable and painful detachment, the immortal could divine the subtle signs that all was not well with her cherished companion.

'Not so subtle at all,' a long-forgotten voice contradicted with obvious vexation...a voice that might well have belonged to Islena Doraux or perhaps her quest sister, Arminda. She had heard neither in over two decades and could no longer say with any degree of certainty which of the two had decided to renege on their vow of silence and chastise her. 'If you're going to indulge in this particular exercise, which we both know is long overdue, then you have to open your eyes to the unadorned truth,' Lorio had grimaced when the voice had added, 'as unbearable as that truth might be.'

Despite her reluctance, Lorio, who had been victimized by self-delusion all too often...especially in those strife ridden years prior to meeting Issidris, decided to heed this advice. To that end, she turned her mind to the changes she had perceived in her traveling companion over these last several months.

To begin with, Issidris, who had once moved through the world with the leonine grace of a stalking panther, now appeared to labor as she trundled doggedly forward. Her gait was wooden and stiff...a graceless lurch that spoke of...infirmity.

'That is only the tip of this particular iceberg,' the voice persisted, something in its tone intimating that it might derive an immense amount of satisfaction from Lorio's anxiety. 'Do you have the fortitude to lay these last few months out beneath the harsh, illuminating light of honest examination and see the truth of what now walks beside you?'

Again came the ambiguous, but nonetheless unnerving admonition, 'Before it's too late.'

"Do you want to stop and rest for a few moments?" Lorio blurted, suddenly unsettled by Issidris unhealthy pallor and the vacant look in her now perpetually dull eyes. Issidris merely wagged her head and forged ahead as if she feared she might not be able to resume should she stop for any length of time.

With her nascent concern rapidly mounting, Lorio fell in beside her friend and turned her thoughts to the unpleasant consideration of when Issidris' ostensible decline had first registered on the periphery of Lorio's often narrow awareness.

Before coming to the far flung sprawl of islands that constituted the three main clusters of the ocean archipelagoes, Lorio and Issidris had found themselves in the small nation of Suran. The country was situated at the very south-eastern tip of the eastern continent and bordered Emercia to the north and the ocean on all other sides. Suran was renowned for its culture and arts...for its gifted thespians, musicians and playwrights.

It was also famous for its eerily beautiful men and women and its proliferation of erotic diversions that catered to every taste and proclivity in matters of the flesh and its many pursuits of pleasure.

As they had traveled through the cities, Lorio had been intrigued by these exotic temptations...and the beautiful men and women of Suran had been equally enamored by the living amalgam of exquisite beauty and unmistakable power and strength. They had been drawn to her and she had been deluged by the most enticing of inducements...pleasures that came with the slow and indolent intermingling of perfectly formed flesh and unimaginable skill which heated that flesh to the argent edge of thought-occluding lust.

Even as she willingly succumbed to this velvet dance of seduction, Lorio was conscious of how easy it would be to lose oneself in the shadowed labyrinth of beauty and artful carnal sorcery. Here, should she capitulate totally, Lorio could see herself receding slowly into warm waters where the craving for the touch, the shudder and the sharp gasp became an inescapable addiction.

While Lorio was enthralled with Suran's eclectic enchantments to the point of being spellbound, Issidris viewed its carnal carnivals of the flesh and its almost macabre prevailing ambiance as shamefully decadent and disgustingly repulsive.

Issidris was comfortable and familiar with every aspect...every nuance of violence, yet Suran, with its many erotic temptations and its sly promise of detached intimacy (an irreconcilable contradiction, to Il's mind), left the normally unflappable Il profoundly unsettled. The people, in particular, disquieted Issidris. They struck her as living objects d'art...perfection embodied. Yet, she saw them as brittle facades behind which there languished unfathomable creatures, whose purpose, concerns and desires were...indecipherable and quite possibly hostile.

Despite her background of savage violence and morally unencumbered criminal enterprise, Issidris possessed a peculiar rectitude when it came to commerce of the flesh. While Lorio was mesmerized by the nation's sultry aura, Issidris regarded Suran as a shallow, dissolute and ultimately supercilious place...which she quickly came to abhor.

Contrary to this suffocating aversion, Issidris suffered Suran's market of sensual promiscuity because she understood that it filled a primal need in her often wanton companion. Lorio was highly susceptible to its erotic enticements and Issidris discerned that in Suran, Lorio was free to indulge her long repressed urges without fear of judgment or more significantly...entanglement.

As had been the case through the course of their long years together, Issidris had sublimated her revulsion and cloying discomfort in deference to Lorio's happiness. Surprisingly, Il harbored no festering resentment over the innate unfairness of this governing truth in her relationship with the often self-possessed immortal. She was wise enough in the uncompromising ways of the world to know that in every arrangement, there were those who gave and those who took. Such was the immutable way of things and little could be gained by lamenting the fact. If the giver did so willingly and the taker did so sparingly, then there was latitude for genuine happiness. Such was the distorted truth as viewed from Issidris' jaded perspective.

For Issidris Il, one improbable but irrefutable truth had come to rule her life. From the very instant that Lorio had strode into the night-draped courtyard of the Laughing Widows Inn and prevented Issidris from enacting her self-immolation, Il had forfeited her soul to the immortal.

In the free-spirited, untamed Lorio's presence, Issidris Il had first found salvation...and eventually, genuine contentment...a commodity she would have sworn was eternally beyond her grasp. Though she lacked the faculties to express it, Issidris had come to love Lorio...the magnificent being who had seen something in her that had been worth saving that tragic night. Thus, Il repressed her own infrequent desires and longings and consistently deferred to Lorio's needs.

Now, however, two startling developments had disrupted Issidris' sense of patient tolerance for Lorio's antics...both unsettling events for which Il had been wholly unprepared.

The first of these was baffling to the Issidris' rigid and limited understanding of the rules of attraction. It was only natural that the beauty-obsessed Surans would be attracted to Lorio, whose smoldering pulchritude and aura of deadly capability cast an irresistible allure over the shallow creatures. She was, however, both disturbed and confounded to discover that these strutting peacocks seemed attracted to her as well...a plain, vitiated thing that appeared to be a lump of coal on a bed of diamonds.

Inexplicably, they gravitated to her, offering Issidris their sly enticements...attempting to traduce her with their lurid temptations, while remaining indecipherable and aloof.

Slowly, Issidris could feel herself being suffocated by the inexplicable need this unfathomable country seemed to exude...a perverse craving for a validation that she was both unwilling and unable to render.

There was another reason for Issidris' sudden and uncharacteristic restiveness...one far darker and more compelling. It was this second need that filled Il with both churning impatience and nagging exigency.

Somewhere in the meat of her viscera, a monster had awoken...one that would not be deterred by ferocity or vanquished by martial prowess. This newly roused beast, Issidris correctly deduced, would not be banished by wishful thinking and though it was in its infancy, instinct warned Il that it would grow to be a juggernaut, whose voracious appetite would devour her in the not too distant future.

It had started with an occasional discomfort, but had gradually evolved into a pain that had become her constant companion. Now, there were times when the pain, moderate but constant, would flare and radiate out from her guts and throughout her torso. On the mornings following these episodes, Issidris would awaken with a thin froth of blood on her lips and a substantial amount more in her spoor.

She had suffered this gnawing infirmity stoically and had been diligent in keeping it from her friend in the wistful hopes that this might be a passing ailment. When this mantle of delusion became unsustainable...that nothing could save her from the remorseless predator growing within...Issidris had turned her thoughts to how she might wish to see this final chapter of her often doleful tale written.

In the end, Issidris fell back on her protective, egalitarian inclination toward her companion, who she had come to love unremittingly. She had decided to prioritize her final days with a mind to sparing Lorio the burden of watching her vanish in slow and excruciating increments...believing that the immortal's nature was far more fragile than it appeared to be.

Yet the days stole by and Lorio remained oblivious to Issidris' growing impatience, even as details of the required course of action resolved themselves in Il's increasingly troubled mind.

That agitation exploded one night when she and Lorio had visited a Suran bathhouse. The immortal had left Issidris to her own devices while she'd wallowed in yet another session of carnal excess.

Lorio, glistening in the most fragrant blend of oils had lay supine upon a table while six delectable Surans had catered to her every whim. All seven were gloriously naked and the sultry air was redolent with the heady aromas of oil and simmering lust. One Suran woman washed Lorio's long hair, while another pair massaged oil into her firm breasts until the globes seemed to glow like luminous moons. A second pair, beautiful raven-haired twins with hauntingly limpid blue eyes, scribed intricate henna patterns on the back of Lorio's hands and around her extended arms.

The sixth Suran was a tall, beautifully constructed man with blond hair and pale blue eyes, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Esuruban, the Emercian Captain who had captivated her heart some three decades before. His skilled fingers played lightly over the contours of Lorio's tight hips. Her long legs were wrapped possessively around his slender waist...while he moved inside her with an indolent, perfect friction that was slowly ushering her to screaming eruption.

The six attended to Lorio with a carnal artistry that left the giddy immortal feeling inebriated and delirious with pleasure. She could feel herself floating dreamily along the ragged edges of release, when suddenly a distraught Suran girl rushed into the room and cried, "Milady, please...she's going to kill her!"

To Lorio's groaning frustration, the six attendants disengaged...including her male conductor...and withdrew, an expression of utter detachment slipping over their beautiful faces. In that coordinated gesture, a dismayed Lorio gleaned that Issidris had been correct; this was all a choreographed sensual charade in which the Suran participants had no emotional investment. Every sigh...every shudder was a contrived sham.

This stark insight made Lorio feel disgusting and obscene.

Not bothering to snatch up a robe, an oiled and naked Lorio brushed by the frantic girl and out into the main reception area. There she was confronted by a sight that left her gape-jawed and immobilized.

While patrons and attendants alike were pressed against the walls of the opulently appointed reception area, Issidris knelt atop a clearly terrified attendant. Her knee was jammed into the willowy blond woman's sternum, while her left hand clutched the exotic beauty's delicate throat. More disturbing still, the tip of Issidris' dirk was pushed into the woman's nostril...poised to murder or mutilate.

It required only one glance at Il, whose face was a high, hectic red to know that she had completely lost her grip on her normally rigid composure. Her body conveyed the distinct impression of imminent menace, poised to unleash violent mayhem on the trembling courtesan. Lorio gleaned that she was seeing an Issidris, for the first time in all their long years together, on the ragged edge of succumbing to mindless fury...an eventuality that could prove fatal to everyone within range of this explosion.

Sensing the delicacy of the situation and knowing that it was imperative that she defuse Issidris' rage before events took an irreversible and horrible turn, Lorio slid into the range of Il's vision. Trying to instill her voice with as much serenity as she could muster, Lorio adjured, "Issidris, please look at me...what's happened here?"

Issidris' head jerked up and for one harrowing moment, her rage was so consuming that she did not immediately recognize her friend. Lorio raised her hands in a gesture of placation and after sparing the weeping woman a brief glance, she begged, "Issidris, please take the knife away from her face. Whatever has happened here...you and I can fix it."

"Nothing can fix this disgusting sty!" Il roared, though her voice was perilously close to an anguished sob. She looked back down at the woman as her fingers relaxed and contracted on the haft of her dirk. "I warned her...again and again...to ply her filthy trade elsewhere, but she would not leave me alone. She actually sat on my lap as if I was a skulking pervert." Her tone became hysterical...venomous...and she rasped, "If I peel the flesh from her whore's face, perhaps her hearing will improve."

The willowy blond loosed an apoplectic sob which Issidris silenced by digging her powerful fingers into the soft flesh of the other woman's exposed throat. Lorio glided forward and lightly laid her fingertips atop the hand that wielded the dirk, "Please, Issidris...this is all my fault for exposing you to this. Stop now before this becomes far more difficult to walk away from."

Issidris drew a quavering breath and to Lorio's eternal relief the hand holding the dirk relaxed beneath her touch. Abruptly, Issidris withdrew the dirk from the courtesan's nostril and snapped it back into its sheath.

Lorio clasped the back of Issidris' neck, caressing it tenderly. "Wait for me outside, Issidris. After I've gotten dressed, we'll leave this city and this country and I promise that we'll never come back."

There was a disturbing glint of iron in Issidris' dark brown eyes as she accepted this with a curt nod. She then dismounted the sobbing woman, spun on heel and marched from the bathhouse with her eyes downcast.

All present seemed to breathe a concerted sigh of relief at this calamity averted...none more so than Lorio. She started to turn away, but the courtesan reached out and clutched her forearm in fawning gratitude. "Thank you, good lady. She...she was going to cut my face!"

Without any inkling of her prior intention, Lorio struck the willowy blond toy across the face. The open-handed blow was delivered with sufficient force to knock the woman from the table and into an unconscious sprawl on the marble floor.

"Obtuse bitch!" Lorio muttered and strode away to collect her clothes.

After mollifying the house mistress with a considerable sum of coins, Lorio found Issidris in a nearby alley. She came upon Il as the diminutive former assassin was leaning against a building with her eyes closed.

'There is something seriously awry here...even you have to see that,' a voice whispered in the churning swirl of her discordant thoughts, but she ruthlessly repressed its entreaty.

When Issidris became cognizant of her presence, she cast Lorio an apologetic glance and mumbled morosely, "I'm sorry...I've made an enormous ass of myself and brought shame on you in the process. She was insistent and I...I couldn't make her stop."

Lorio hurried over to the clearly distraught Il and gripping her shoulders firmly, returned, "No, I am the one who should be ashamed...twice over. I've debased myself...wallowed in decadence like a rutting whore. There is a part of me that nothing can repress and this place spoke to it...brought it to the fore in all its ugliness. I'm also ashamed because you were right; this place is a tawdry painted illusion and what lies beneath is just dissolute and pathetic. Sadly, Issidris...that could also be a fitting description of me."

When Il started to offer the obligatory objection, Lorio silenced her by placing a preemptory index finger on her thin lips. "It's all right, Issidris...I made an accommodation with that fact a long time ago. What I can't accept is the fact that I've hurt you in the process...because I knew full well how uncomfortable Suran makes you feel. I was too fixated on my own base needs to let it stop me from bringing you here. Can you forgive me?"

For an excruciatingly long moment, Issidris only continued to stare at her long time companion, but at last she offered Lorio a barely perceptible nod and whispered, "Yes."

Lorio beamed a smile of gratitude and relief and then posed the query that had privately troubled her for years. The delicacy of the subject was nearly suffocating, but the immortal knew instinctively that now was the moment to give it voice, "Issidris...does it hurt you when I lay with other people?"

Issidris' eyes widened and an indecipherable emotion rippled across her face...there and gone in an instant. Before Lorio could divine its essence, Il retreated behind her customary mask of impassivity. When it seemed that she would not or could not respond, Lorio pressed doggedly forward, risking a disclosure that, in light of what was looming over the horizon, was both ineffably touching and tragic. "Because, Issidris, if you gave me even the slightest indication that it was what you desired...I would lay with you and never another. That is one promise that I could give to you without fear of breaking it or betraying your trust."

That sincerely given utterance offered with such genuine, unalloyed emotion, fell upon Issidris Il with the impact of an avalanche. The thought that, on her behalf, this astounding creature...who was something so much more than the wizen, tiny thing she was attempting to comfort...had actually suffered such incomprehensible deprivation on her behalf was simply beyond Il's narrow sensibilities. Of all the devastating blows that life had dealt her, she realized that this had been the most ruinous...but one that would also serve to set the path she'd been considering, with such deplorable ambivalence, in stone.

"I can't begin to imagine how the world must seem through your eyes, Lorio," Issidris remarked, trying to maintain the fragile grip on her emotions. "I think that only creatures like Karosyn and the Ascentrix would have any hope of grasping what it must be like to dwell inside your skin. That you would actually spare a thought about how a lowly wretch like me would see anything beggars reason. Any value I have as a human being comes in being your friend. I have no right to expect anything more of you than a willingness to have me at your side. I love you as a sister and I love you as a friend...and I would happily lay down my life for you, but I simply lack the capacity to give you more. Knowing this, how could I ever resent your desire to see your natural desires and pleasures satisfied?"

This articulation of poignant and honest emotion was the most expansive that Issidris had ever been in the three decades they had spent in each others company. Its inherent aura of self-denigration...of elevating Lorio to a status far above her actual worth, while casting herself as something inconsequential...drove the immortal to weep openly.

Issidris roughly gripped Lorio's leanly muscled arms and shook her vigorously, brusquely grumbling, "Don't you dare cast this as sorrowful or something you should feel guilty over. I want you to do whatever you have to do to be happy and waste no thought on how I might perceive your actions."

"I don't deserve you, Issidris," Lorio managed, "and I certainly don't deserve your tolerance and devotion."

"But you have it nonetheless," Issidris countered. On impulse, she decided to capitalize on Lorio's momentary vulnerability by putting forth a request that had been taking shape in her mind since the monster had first announced its merciless presence. "Lorio, I want to show you the islands where I was born...and where I grew to become the woman I was when I first met you on the road to Dizar Kor. You've shown me the formative places that helped shape you...now, after all of this time, I would like to do the same."

"Of...of course," Lorio agreed automatically, pawing absently at her glistening eyes...though at the periphery of her awareness there whispered a chilling admonition that something was amiss with this proposed sentimental excursion. Lorio, who had no patience with the vagaries of prescience, told the voice to go to the pit.

Her brow furrowed and she inquired, "Doesn't it take weeks to sail to these islands? The Sea of Prevailing Mystery was bad enough, but I've been told that the Sea of Permanent Departure is like a rabid beast by contrast."

"The heroine of the great quest...daunted by the prospect of a long boat ride?" Issidris chided with a rare grin. Her demeanor grew solemn and she explained, "You're right, venturing across the Sea of Permanent Departure...which is aptly named...is a risky endeavor at the best of times. That is why I want us to travel to Nalosan where I will petition Queen Karosyn to secure us passage on one of the Sisters of Esotaria's ships, which routinely make the journey out of that port."

"And you believe that she can...and would secure us passage?" Lorio queried, her tone clearly skeptical. "I know she suffers us whenever we drop on her doorstep, but a part of me wonders if she can't help but harbor a lingering animosity over Lyndsyn. Frankly, I know that I would if our roles were reversed."

"Karosyn is a woman of unassailable virtue and I believe that she has no capacity for festering resentment or grudges," Issidris declared with implacable certainty. "If I petition her, I am confident that she will facilitate our passage. We would be on the islands by late summer and on one of the Sisters' vessels...you need not fear having to swim."

Lorio feigned a perturbed smile, but then drew her friend into a long hug. "Very well, let us make a start of it now...today. The reek beneath this place's perfume is starting to turn my stomach."

The journey to Nalosan seemed ordained by whatever deities there were, so perfect was the summer weather. Issidris and Lorio spent nights in small Inns or in clearings along roadsides. Issidris became far more expansive than she had ever been and the two spent hours reminiscing while gazing up at the star-smattered firmament. In her delight with Issidris' new-found loquaciousness, the immortal never once thought to question its source.

During the weeks spent along the roads of Emercia, it seemed as if a mantle of serenity had enveloped Issidris. Their journey was further blessed by the dearth of unwelcome obstructions that had often marked their travels over the years. In the Emercia ruled by the gentle Karosyn, it appeared that many of the baser instincts and proclivities had been purged from the nation's character. Brigands and highwaymen had become a rarity along the Nation's roads.

The weather, like Issidris' mellow disposition, took an ominous turn by the time the pair reached Nalosan.

As they ascended the steep and arduous ramp into Castle Kammlogran, Issidris' expression had become its customary closed and inscrutable self. A sudden chill had assailed Lorio as she watched Issidris struggle up the steep ramp. That chill had been magnified diametrically when Issidris had suddenly blurted, "When we're granted an audience with the Queen...I would like to speak to Karosyn alone. There are things I've left unsaid for more than thirty years...apologies that I've left unspoken for far too long. Before I ask her for this boon, I would like to offer them and ask for forgiveness for all of the heartache I've caused...please Lorio."

There was a quavering, desperate edge to this entreaty that evoked a shudder in the immortal, who viewed this sudden need to offer contrition with a troubling sense of...finality. Discerning the exigency of Issidris' need, Lorio agreed despite her burgeoning reservations. Yet, that finality cast a pall over not only the desire to seek the absolution of the woman who had once shown her kindness, but also Issidris' desire to return to the islands of her birth.

When the pair was ushered into Queen Karosyn's private audience chamber, the Emercian ruler rose and descended the dais to greet her two guests. Karosyn's pristine timeless beauty could steal the breath from one's chest, but it required only one glance into those limpid blue eyes to absorb the full measure of this incredible woman's unprecedented nature. Karosyn was the living quintessence of every higher virtue that was within the sentient character to achieve. Compassion, humility and probity...these were the cornerstones of the Emercian Queen's character and they were reflected clearly in the exemplary nation Emercia had evolved to become.

Artumas had been a great king by the standards of the Antiquated Lands. During his reign as king, he had espoused progressive innovations based on the radical and often disdained concept that every living being had inherent value...from the mightiest king to the most humble peasant. Where Artumas and his ingrained limitations had ended, gentle Karosyn began and with her guiding hand, that principle had become reality in Emercia.

The fact that Artumas had found Karosyn...almost as a remuneration for the tribulation fraught life the noble man had endured...filled Lorio with private delight.

On this day, Karosyn was attired in a pale green silk gown trimmed with a modest amount of pearls. Though humble by the standards of royalty, it was far more extravagant than the rough spun robe she had worn during her centuries as Matrium of the Sisters of Esotaria.

The woman radiated vitality from the glow of her golden skin to the sheen of her honey blond hair...a regal vessel of feminine perfection and serenity.

As she approached the pair, Issidris surprised Lorio by dropping to one knee and bowing her head in respectful deference. Nonplused by this unexpected display from a woman who was generally contemptuous of those with a presumption of rule, Lorio moved to mimic Il.

Karosyn firmly forestalled Lorio's gesture with a dismissive wave. "Artumas once told me that you had earned the right never to have to bow or show deference before any king or queen and I will honor that declaration. After all that he had told me of your journey and the sacrifices made during its course, I happen to concur."

As was often the case when faced with effusive praise, of which she felt she was entirely undeserving, Lorio reacted with irreverence. "You know, your majesty," she quipped while allowing her disapproving gaze to crawl over Karosyn statuesque, nubile body, "for a woman blessed with such a lavish treasure trove of feminine charms, you do go to such great lengths to conceal the fact."

Karosyn shook her head and rolled her great blue eyes, though the ghost of a grin played at the corners of her generous mouth. "Lorio...still as incorrigible as ever."

She then moved to stand directly before the still moving Issidris. When she spoke, there was a discernable shift in the Queen's tone...a peremptory edge that both startled and irked Lorio, "Rise Issidris Il."

Issidris complied at once and met the Queen's incisive gaze unblinkingly. Karosyn gently gripped Issidris' both shoulders and peered into her face. Lorio could feel a cold current of pure, yet indecipherable empathy pass between the pair as Karosyn continued to search Issidris' face for what seemed to be an age. At last, the Emercian Queen nodded, "As always, you are both welcome in Kammlogran. Is there some specific purpose that has brought you to Nalosan? If you've come to offer your services as retainers...I would be especially delighted."

On each occasion the pair came before the Queen, she had always attempted to entice them into joining her great egalitarian cause. The pair had always graciously declined, which Karosyn had accepted magnanimously. The exercise had become a ritual of sorts between the three. By mutual, unspoken understanding, they never spoke of Lissom.

It was Issidris who replied, "I would speak with you privately, your highness. I have a boon to request and a private matter to discuss."

Karosyn's gaze slid briefly to Lorio and the Queen then granted Issidris' request. "Wander the castle at your leisure, Lorio. I will have someone summon you once our business is concluded."

Knowing she'd been dismissed, Lorio spared a concerned glance for Issidris and reluctantly withdrew. She meandered through sprawling Kammlogran and was surprised by how cursory security seemed in a royal seat of power. With no prior intention of doing so, Lorio made her way up and out onto the castle ramparts which were strangely deserted for this time of the day.

The echoes of the past accosted her then, like the susurration of a soughing breeze. It had been here on the ramparts of this sprawling edifice to Emercian wealth and power that Lorio had once plunged to the abject nadir of her existence. She found herself being drawn to the exact spot near the crenellated battlements, overlooking the now tranquil Bay of Imerlac, where a triumphant Islena Doraux had cast her off like unwanted detritus and had returned to her own world. That the resonating echoes of that exceedingly grim juncture bore little resemblance to its bleak and tragic reality was lost upon the immortal. Her lacerated heart had reconfigured the events of that terrible day to conform to the needs of her fractured sensibilities.

Now, thanks to the placating influence of her years spent in Issidris' company, Lorio could stand in this place and not be thoroughly decimated by the recollections it evoked.

Now, all that remained was a lingering melancholy over all that had been lost...or carelessly squandered...over the course of her astounding life.

'Loss...it is one of life's enduring constants. When we lose sight of that immutable truth, it reminds us, often in painfully explicit terms,' the ghost of Islena Doraux whispered in a doleful voice that spoke of unbearable loss. Shuddering at the sound of that heart-rending voice, brought into sharp and painful focus by proximity to where it had last been heard, Lorio hurried to the opposite end of the multi-tiered ramparts.

The immortal leaned on the crenellated battlements and allowed her gaze to sweep the city of Nalosan where some of the great dramas of the age had been played out. Her regard settled on a massive bronze statue that served as a commemorative tribute to the Sisters of Esotaria who had lost their lives while battling Xhendyn's fire demon. Nearly two thousand of Nalosan's citizens had lost their lives that dark day. That toll would have climbed far higher had it not been for Karosyn and this lost cadre of Sisters. They had waged a desperate battle against the massive fire construct, stalling its ravenous advance through the city until the Ascentrix had arrived to snuff it out.

That grim battle had left a field of black glass in its wake...a vitiated, shimmering field that stretched across the eastern third of the city like a livid scar. The then King Artumas had commissioned the commemorative statue and had ordered that a wall be erected around the expanse of polished black glass to serve as a permanent reminder of that tragic day.

For Lorio, this morbid memorial called to mind the nearly suffocating reminder that this carnage had been a mere diversion...a blood-soaked diversion that had allowed Xhendyn to strike at her unencumbered.

At the center of this field of black glass stood a solitary structure...a humble mausoleum where the legendary king had been laid to rest. Confined behind towering walls and perpetually locked gates, there was something about Artumas' resting place that struck Lorio as sad and unbearably lonely. When an indignant Lorio had once confronted the Queen over this depressing choice of a final resting site, Karosyn had insisted that it had been Artumas' vehement wish to be interred there. This sorry fact, to Lorio's mind, spoke of self-condemnation and perceived failure on the part of the iconic king.

Lorio's mood became pensive then and she fetched a weary sigh, closing her eyes to shut out her view of the forlorn tomb. Feeling suddenly vulnerable to the subtle siren song of reminiscence...Lorio opened her thoughts to the sepia-hued images of the past. They unfurled before her mind's eye like a procession of restive specters drifting past a reviewing stand.

Peering back along the mist-shrouded venues of her epic life, ushered by impassive specters through moments of soaring euphoria and soul-flagellating despair, Lorio came to the incredible realization that every twist and turn in her life had invariably...inexorably led her to the strong, stoic figure to whom her fate had become inextricably linked. For the past three decades, Issidris had stood as her beacon...had served as an unfaltering guide who had kept Lorio firmly focused on the path to spiritual serenity. Now, however, the immortal was accosted by a terrible premonition that something ominous was hovering over her anchor...like a predatory pall. For all of her vaunted power, Lorio feared that she would be unable to stay its hand.

The sound of footfalls on the stone ramparts roused the immortal from her reverie and Lorio was bemused to discover that the afternoon had segued into evening.

A liveried page informed her that the Queen would receive her in the private audience chamber where she had left the pair earlier in the afternoon.

As Lorio made her way through the well lit halls of Kammlogran, her burgeoning anxiety harried her like a pack of hounds. The two women rose to greet her as she strode briskly into the chamber without awaiting the squire's leave to enter. The two women's expressions were a study in contrast, which did little to allay Lorio's disquiet.

It was especially unsettling to see Issidris looking openly ebullient, though beneath this rare display of overt delight, Lorio thought she could glean a fey aspect to Issidris' happiness. That delight seemed especially incongruent with Karosyn's neutral expression which appeared forced for the immortal's benefit.

In a flagrant breach of royal protocol, it was Issidris who spoke first. "The Queen has arranged for our passage on one of the Sister's ships. It departs from the quay at first light tomorrow and we should be in Dortizirian within a fortnight."

Lorio greeted this gushingly offered disclosure with a noncommittal nod, a reaction that earned a perplexed frown from Issidris. "Is this not suitable...too soon for your liking?"

"No, all is well, Issidris. The prospect of a sea journey has never roused much delight in my heart," Lorio mumbled, groping for a plausible explanation for her reluctance. Under normal circumstances, Issidris possessed an astounding faculty to detect prevarication that was both uncanny and frightening and Lorio's hastily offered explanation had been a glaringly shallow fabrication.

'Ah, but these are hardly normal circumstances. If you insist on turning a blind eye to that fact, I predict you will be forced to gorge on a bitter feast in the not too distant future.' It had been Myrhia, one of the two architects of her life's most enduring sorrow, who had imparted this black pearl of wisdom. That her mind would conjure this particular malefic specter to deliver it spoke volumes about Lorio's present state of mind.

Issidris ventured closer and gently squeezed Lorio's firm right shoulder...a tactile gesture that was unprecedented when the pair was in the company of others. "The Sisters' vessels are immune to the ocean's wrath, Lorio and you'll hardly notice you've left dry land."

The immortal greeted this with a thin smile and the three exchanged pleasantries for a short span of time, through which Karosyn seemed atypically quiet and reserved. After a pregnant pause in the conversation, Lorio remarked, "Well, we've imposed on your time long enough. If you permit, we'll take our leave, your highness."

The stiff formality of Lorio's tone caused Karosyn to arch an eyebrow and though her parting utterance had seemed intended for both, her incisive gaze was set squarely upon Lorio. "You are both daughters of Emercia in my eyes and are welcome here whenever it pleases you to grace us with your company." With disconcerting solemnity, she concluded, "I fully expect that you will never lose sight of that fact...and you will come to me whenever you have need of solace or sanctuary."

She then spun abruptly on heel and marched stiffly away, though not before Lorio glimpsed a tear break from the corner of her right eye. She shifted a nonplused glance to Issidris, who merely shrugged and reaching for the immortal's right hand, led Lorio from the audience chamber.

As they hurried down the ramp toward Nalosan's central plaza, Lorio inquired as evenly as she could muster, "What did you talk about with Karosyn? She seemed rather doleful."

Issidris flashed the immortal a guarded glance and remarked, "Not at all. We cleared the air of many of the things that had been left unsaid for too long. I believe we have come to a place where we understand each other."

There was an air of slick evasion to this reply for which Lorio would have sworn that the forthright Issidris had no aptitude.

From high above on the ramparts of mighty Kammlogran, a weeping Karosyn watched as the pair, for whom she had developed such tremendous affection, were swallowed up in the early evening bustle. She knew that she would never see one of the extraordinary women again...and worried what might soon become of the other.

7

As Issidris had forecast, the journey to Dortizirian was smooth and without incident. When the pair had disembarked in the large harbor, Lorio had stood motionless on the quay, gaping up at the city which rose up along the stepped cliffs that ringed the harbor in ascending circles. Sleek towers and massive fortress-like structures competed for the eye's attention, their astounding grandeur a testimony to the affluence of this particular island nation.

Lorio glanced at Issidris in incredulous wonder and inquired, "What is the source of this ostentatious wealth...it's almost obscene?"

Issidris, who cared very little for material trapping beyond her basic needs, had merely pursed her thin lips and returned, "This is the benefit of having a goddess take up residence in your back yard, I suppose."

Issidris had then collected her pack and dismissing the matter of Dortizirian's excesses from her mind, had led Lorio out of the city. They had stopped briefly on the crest of a hill, where Issidris had pointed out a collection of neatly arrayed, but modest buildings that stood just beyond the northern quarter of the city. "That is the home of the Sisters of Esotaria. It is here that the devotees and initiates come to be indoctrinated in Gyzarayne's faith...such as it is. Karosyn told me that Lissom has returned here only once in forty years...a fact that has rankled her followers here. Visiting emissaries from the local government have told the Queen that the city has taken on the feel of an artifact...something forgotten and irrelevant."

"She told you this before we left Nalosan?" Lorio inquired, trying to maintain a neutral tone, while wondering why Issidris would have waited until now to share this intriguing bit of information.

"She did," Issidris allowed distantly.

"Did she seem concerned by this disclosure? The Sisters seem to have taken root in Emercia."

Issidris' expression became strangely evasive then...a posture that the immortal could not recall ever having seen her forthright friend previously adopt. When she did deign to reply, it was with unaccountable reluctance. "Karosyn feels that Lissom has become distracted during her years in Majeer...that she has strayed out from under Gyzarayne's light there."

Lorio blinked and in a rare display of exasperation with her companion, stopped and exclaimed, "And you thought to only tell me this now...when we've come half way across the bloody ocean?"

Issidris met Lorio's vexation with equal irritation. "Yes...because it isn't our problem!"

The two women stood glaring contentiously at each other while a tide of humanity flowed around them, stealing furtive glances at the daunting pair as they passed.

Finally, Lorio relented and slapped Issidris on the right shoulder. "You're right, it isn't. I've talked about receding from the collective eye of the world...and since the eye of the world seems to be focused on Majeer, that is hardly the place to achieve anonymity."

Issidris relief was palpable when Lorio declared blithely, "Okay, so you wished to show me your world, so where do we go from here?"

Il had then arranged passage for the pair on a cargo ship bound for the Ciprite Archipelago. The days spent in transit for this next leg of the journey had been as wretched for Lorio as the passage from Nalosan had been pleasant.

Ocean passage through the far flung islands was gamble at the best of times and during the late fall and winter, a journey across the water became an endeavor akin to suicidal folly.

As the cargo ship had crested rolling waves that reminded an ashen-faced Lorio of a great writhing beast of fury and willful malice, Issidris seemed to derive a perverse delight in regaling her with harrowing tales about the Sea of Permanent Departure beyond the Kirgan Islands.

"It is said that the ocean beyond Brinden Outlook, the eastern most island in the chain, is a sentient demon that hungers for human flesh." In a grave voice reserved for the telling of campfire tales to children, Issidris had concluded, "No ship has ever sailed east past the Outlook and returned. Even the bravest of mariners speak of the ocean beyond the Outlook in tones of whispered dread."

A distant, wistful expression had stolen over Issidris' face as she spun this dark and fanciful tale. The devout pragmatist had shocked Lorio by expressing a capricious wish that seemed totally incongruent with the woman the immortal believed she knew so well. "Someday, I want to sail out from Brinden Outlook and discover for myself exactly what lies on the other side of the ocean. I have no basis for believing this...certainly not what I've witnessed over the course of my own life...but I'm certain I'll find something...glorious."

Lorio recalled how an electric chill had coursed along the length of her spine as Issidris had given voice to this wistful vision. Only later would Lorio realize that Issidris had been attempting to convey something more immediate and of far greater consequence...that she had, in essence, been articulating her final wishes for what might follow this last adventure.

Upon reaching the Ciprite Archipelago, Lorio was struck by the glaring disparity between the magnificent city of Dortizirian and this forlorn smattering of bleak islands that spread across this inimical ocean like a blight. The ocean was a harsh and often merciless mistress and the people who called these windswept, joyless islands home were living reflections of the ocean upon which they lived.

Austere and bereft of any hint of compassion, the Ciprite islanders struggled through an existence of indigence and drudgery. Lorio could not envision how anything vital, exuberant or simply inebriated on the joy of existence could survive here, much less flourish.

Those who did not scrape a meager living from the dour sea often scrabbled through the nearly sterile soil, which yielded bitter and listless crops that only fed the sense of resentment and resignation of those who tended them. As they traipsed along the rutted roads and ragged cliffs of this morose, dismal place, Lorio could easily grasp how it would forge a vitiated creature like Issidris. To be raised on these remorseless rocks, what other possible outcome could one reasonably expect? Only rank weeds could survive here, cloaked in thorns of bitter malice and invested with a loathing of anything delicate and beautiful.

Though her own upbringing, with its constant flight and its many sorrowful junctures...had not been an easy one, Lorio understood that it had been a journey of delight and wonder in comparison to the childhood Issidris had suffered through in this barren hell.

One dreary morning Lorio discovered just how woefully inadequate this dreary description of Issidris' unspeakably horrible childhood would truly prove to be. They were walking slowly along a narrow dirt path beneath a gray, drizzling sky from which the dying embers of summer had all but guttered.

Issidris had come to a halt and was staring out over a sickly and fallow field at the edge of which ran the crumbling remains of a stone fence. A narrow roadway, now nearly completely overgrown, petered out into the field. Barely discernible through a tangle of weeds and yellow saw grass, Lorio could make out the gray, moldering remains of what might once have been a house.

Feeling something cold and doleful tugging at her emotions, Lorio ventured closer to the stationary Issidris, whose expression was now perpetually pinched, and murmured, "What is this place? Was this your...home?"

Her query fizzled out, silenced by a fast breaking wave of pity. Issidris nodded slightly, never taking her gaze from the corpse of the building where she had endured her years of torment and abjection.

In a fey, haunted voice, Issidris disclosed, "I know how absurd this will sound, but even though its been nearly fifty years since I ran away from this evil place, I thought it would still be here...unchanged...preserved by the power of nightmares." Her gaze slowly traversed the desolate field. "I suppose it is only fitting that it came to this...a sterile patch of...of nothing with nearly every trace of life gone."

Lorio laid her hands on Issidris' shoulders and prompted the cathartic purging she believed Issidris required, "Tell me everything that happened here."

And so Issidris did, as they stood at the edge of this place of fading horror, she recounted the chronology of atrocity. She spoke in the dispassionate, uninflected voice of one who is vicariously relating events...perhaps several times removed. When she had concluded this litany of nightmares, Lorio...who felt numb and hollow with revulsion and anger, could only ask, "Did you ever see them again...your father or brothers?"

For an extended moment, Il did not reply, but finally she disclosed, "No, never and I'm glad. Had the woman I became ever returned here, she would have killed them all in ways too slow and monstrous to imagine. In the end, that only would have made matters worse. I'm glad we came here because I now know that this place...the wicked things that happened here...have lost the power they held over me."

She inclined her head and favored Lorio with a heart-rending, yet lovely smile. The immortal ignored Issidris' aversion to contact and drawing Il into a tight embrace, tenderly kissed Issidris' forehead, cheeks and eyelids. She murmured hollow words of commiseration, more for her own benefit than Issidris'. As she lavished kisses on her greatest friend beneath a cold, indolent drizzle, it occurred to Lorio that Issidris Il was stronger than she could ever be if she lived for another thousand lifetimes.

8

The city of Ciprite was a sprawl of grime-encrusted, squat and nondescript buildings...devoid of any hint of art, ornamentation or individuality. The narrow alleys were dark, forbidding serpent passages, where every manner of shadow commerce was conducted. Lorio understood that Ciprite was a city that made a mockery of higher virtues. Here, deceit and betrayal were considered laudable traits, while pity or regard for anything beyond the immediacy of ones appetites were contemptible signs of weakness.

Ciprite was a perfect crucible in which creatures such as Issidris Il would be forged and galvanized. "I was thirteen when I first made my way here. I was frightened and hungry, but even then I realized that, in order to survive, I would have to become everything that this wretched place embodied. More than anything else, I was motivated by the need to become someone who would never rely on anyone again. It was on these streets that I learned how to fight, learned those dirty tricks you seemed to admire. I was fast and struck without hesitation or regret. It was here that the last of my humanity was ground to dust and I became the most feared person on these islands."

She paused briefly and took another sip of the thin, bitter ale that was preferred by the locals...and which reminded Lorio of corrupt and rot.

"After my father and brothers would do the disgusting things to me they did, I would lie on my hard pallet and weep quietly. I would wonder how they could possibly do such things to a little girl. Here, on the streets of Ciprite...I found the answer to that question."

Days later, Lorio stood next to Issidris in a small clearing at the foot of an escarpment. The diminutive woman appeared particularly drawn and her light brown skin seemed especially pallid. When she spoke, the words that tumbled from her lips were wan and slightly slurred as if the act of speaking had become an exorbitantly expensive chore. "It was on this exact spot where I made the transition from ruthless animal to a mindless extension of Lissom's will. They all expected her to kill me that morning and when she did not, I recall being surprised and disappointed. Kneeling in the dirt, bloody and helpless like a cornered animal, I believed...wrongly, as it would turn out...that I had fallen as low as one could fall." She then offered Lorio a smile clouded by hints of melancholy. "Time can change perspective...change convictions that we thought were set in stone. Now I know that, had it not been for that exact moment, I never would have found my way to that road to Dizar Kor...never would have known genuine happiness that I've found in your company."

Finally marshaling the courage to give voice to the query that had inspired such dread in her heart, Lorio blurted gravely, "Issidris...are you sick?"

The implacable woman's eyes widened and she uttered a papery chuckle. "Of course not. Coming back to this place...it's just taken a toll on me." Her expression brightened then...the recently muted light flaring in her eyes. "Lorio...let's go to Brinden Outreach. I've never been there...but I want to stand on the edge of the world and just stare out at the horizon...as I'd dreamed of doing as a little girl."

Something in this casually offered request inspired a burst of unalloyed terror in the immortal's heart...one that was well near paralyzing. Beneath the exuberance, Lorio would detect a note of anguish. "We can, absolutely," she heard herself reply in a sanguine tone that bore little resemblance to her true mood. On impulse, she added, "And where should we go after that?"

"Anywhere you want to go," Issidris had returned and there had been an emphasis on the word you that did little to allay the immortal's concern.

9

Upon later reflection, Lorio would be both astounded and dismayed to discover how many of the key junctures in her turbulent life had been fueled by baseless spite. It was often this misdirected, inexplicable petulance that had prodded her to mindless acts of cruelty and vapid ugliness that would haunt her for eternity.

It would be Issidris Il who would bear the burden of this last episode of obstinate spite.

They came to the second to last way station on their astounding, rambling thirty year journey just before reaching the port of Khine, where they had come with the intention of securing passage to the Kirgan Islands at the eastern edge of which was located Brinden Outlook.

In the intervening days since leaving the clearing where Issidris had been humbled and conscripted by the Sisters of Esotaria, Issidris had grown especially remote. It had been customary (a sacred ritual from which the pair had only ever deviated during Issidris' infirmity in Anangrast) for the two to commence each morning with a rigorous sparring session. For Lorio, in particular, these daily sparring sessions had been a source of private delight.

The morning after the clearing, Issidris had been cocooned in her blankets...an oddity in itself...when Lorio had prodded her gently with the blunt end of her quarterstaff. "The sun is over the trees, laggard."

Issidris had grumbled, pointedly not turning her face to Lorio lest the immortal see that her lips were slick with blood.

"Not today, Lorio. I...I did not sleep well," Issidris mumbled and after offering this rather feeble excuse, she had risen and hurried into the forest in the direction of a nearby stream. Lorio had stared after Issidris' receding back in bemusement. Il had not returned for nearly an hour and when she had finally stumbled into the clearing, she appeared haggard.

"Are you well?" Lorio had inquired worriedly.

"As I've said, just tired. Let's make a start of it," Issidris had replied gruffly and without further comment, she had collected her weapons and pack and had started toward the road.

They had not resumed their daily sparring sessions and Issidris had retreated behind frustratingly thick walls of reticence...speaking only when they stopped to take meals and even then...only sparingly.

Lorio had noticed that Issidris would consume virtually no solid food during these stops...subsisting on broth and water. It was increasingly obvious that something had gone seriously awry with her friend, but Issidris obstinately refused to entertain any discussion of her condition or behavior...other than to insist that she was anxious to reach Brinden Outlook before winter set in over the Kirgan Islands.

Now, Lorio's deepening concern garnered a new and potentially destructive wrinkle...irritation. Issidris' staunch refusal to be forthcoming with the cause of her sudden erratic behavior rankled Lorio who construed the refusal as a betrayal of the trust and openness that had always existed between the two companions.

By the time the pair had reached the outskirts of Khine, that irritation had festered and had assumed a malicious aspect...inciting the darker proclivities of the immortal's nature.

Along the side of the road stood a low, flat and rectangular alehouse with the perplexing name...A Lighter Purse. Boisterous laughter rolled out from the open windows along with the cumulative stench of generations of stale ale.

Lorio came to a sudden halt and eyed the structure curiously. In an oddly truculent tone, she opined, "Strange name for a drinking den."

Issidris came to a stumbling halt next to Lorio, cognizant of the thunderheads that had settled across the immortal's smooth brow...poised to break like a tempest. Suddenly anxious to be away from this island and its hoard of disturbing memories, Il attempted to prompt Lorio to resume their journey. "It's called that because this is a place where those who would gleefully relieve you of your coins would congregate. It is a repository of miscreants and no reputable person would ever venture inside."

Lorio fixed Issidris with a surly, contentious grin. She could see clearly that her friend was desperate to avoid the ale house, but the darker angels of her nature usurped control of her mind then and with a feigned levity, she declared, "Then it's a good thing that you and I aren't reputable. I would like to see what the local variety of miscreant looks like."

With this, she turned away and marched briskly across the road and vanished into the ale house's dreary interior. Issidris stood on the edge of the road for a long moment, staring down at her hands which shook perceptibly. She was well acquainted with disreputable burrows like The Lighter Purse. More significantly, she was intimately familiar with Lorio's volatile nature and knew all too well what was likely to transpire once its denizens set eyes upon the enticing beauty.

A voice, sly and manipulative, spoke to her then, proposing a particularly deplorable course of action. 'Would this not be an ideal time to simply walk away...spare yourself the storm that is looming just over the horizon. If you were just to fade into the gloom and do what you know has to be done, wouldn't it be preferable...easier...for both of you?"

Issidris squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists. Even if she was so callous and craven as to flee from the unpleasant obligation confronting her...she had little doubt that Lorio would tear the world down to find her.

Fetching a quavering sigh, Issidris followed Lorio into The Lighter Purse, wherein awaited the second to last juncture on their epic journey.

It required but a single step inside the door to validate Issidris' prediction. The darkened interior still could not conceal the unpleasant truth; the Lighter Purse was just a repository for the unethical, violent dregs of what passed for civilization on Ciprite. More distressing still, for all of their swagger and practiced menace, these dregs would be far too obtuse to realize that a great dragon, adorned in beguiling scales, had just come into their midst.

Above the stench of unwashed flesh and the conspicuous absence of even a cursory interest in cleanliness, there arose a pervasive smell that Issidris recognized all too well...avarice.

Here, where ethical constraints were nonexistent, the strength to take bestowed upon the taker the right to do so. Issidris could clearly envision what would transpire when some fool amongst this riff-raff attempted to take the jewel who was now casually leaning on the scarred wooden bar. With her leanly muscled forearm propped on the bar and her shapely posterior jutting provocatively forth so enticingly, Lorio imparted the impression that she was deliberately courting trouble.

Issidris moved over to join her and Lorio greeted her with a mischievous wink and chided, "See Issidris, this place really isn't half as daunting as you would have me believe."

Making no attempt to conceal her displeasure and dismay, Issidris clutched Lorio's forearm and beseeched, "Please, let's leave this sty before this lot decides to prevent us from doing so."

The keen edge of strident desperation in Issidris' plea caused Lorio to arch an interrogative eyebrow. In this face of this startling agitation from a woman who was the very quintessence of unflappability, Lorio's petulance evaporated and she nodded.

Before she could push away from the bar, a hulking presence appeared at her shoulder, announced by a rush of rancid breath.

Issidris actually groaned aloud when the bearded hulk clamped his meaty right hand on the firm curve of Lorio's protruding ass. In a rumbling, slurred voice, he blurted, "You be a comely wench then, don't ya'? Why not leave yer old mother with old Freegan behind the bar and come and join the lads. You do have the look of a woman in need of the company of real men and we won't be too rough on ya...I promise."

Issidris shifted her gaze from the hulking brute to the barkeep, who was eyeing her with a rotten-toothed grin that caused her burning stomach to execute a slow, quavering barrel roll.

Lorio fixed the brute with a look of bored disdain. "How many times have I heard that creative litany?" She shifted her gaze to the motley collection that were slumped around a long, filthy trestle table and saw that there were at least a dozen men. They were regarding her with the hungry leering gaze of a starving man who has stumbled upon a deer roasting on a spit. With a humorless chuckle, she declared, "And I thought this was going to be another boring day on the road."

Her gaze shifted to the huge hand that remained clamped to her posterior and she inquired, "I assume you wield your weapon with your right hand?"

"I do," the beast confirmed with a stomach roiling grin.

"If you don't take your hand off my ass, you'll have to learn to fight...and wipe your arse with your left hand," Lorio snarled, her tone all acid and poised menace.

The brute bellowed sardonic laughter and was quickly joined by his cronies. "This is a feisty one, lads and she do have a big stick." To Lorio, he warned, "That mouth of yours tells me that you do be in need of an attitude adjustment."

"Indeed?" Lorio returned. "Well, many have tried and to a one...they ended up with a new, humble outlook on things, but rather than blather about it...let me show you?"

Lorio spun about and seized the hulk's head, lacing her fingers through the matted hair at the nape of his neck. Before he could react, Lorio jerked his head forward and down, while driving both of her knees into his exposed face. The resounding crack of shattering bone and cartilage stunned the entire alehouse into silence.

Lorio released her grip on his head and leaning back against the bar for leverage, unleashed a titanic thrust kick with both heels that sent the bleeding hulk reeling across the room. He pitched over a chair and landed flat on his back, where he laid clutching his ruined nose and trying to staunch the alarming flow of blood through his fingers.

Issidris groaned again, knowing that this situation was in perilously close proximity to getting lethally out of control. She detected movement just an instant before the barkeep attempted to grab her from behind. One perfectly placed elbow sent him tumbling into twitching unconsciousness between the bar and rear wall.

At the center of the room, Lorio stalked toward the incredulous collection of thugs, while fluidly drawing her quarterstaff. "All right, geldings, that preliminary has me positively randy...so get your cocks out and let's see who fucks with whom."

There was a momentary pause and then the natural chauvinistic tendency asserted itself and the twelve swarmed out of their seats like wasps. Lorio met their charge with an exuberant battle cry and a whirling dervish of steel and wood. Pandemonium took the moment.

Lorio felled her attackers with an eloquent choreography that was a thing of beauty to behold. Soon, groaning and unconscious men littered the filthy floor of the Lighter Purse.

Lorio dealt a stinging, playful blow to a knife-wielding thug who staggered back and nearly dropped his knife in the bargain. Seeing that the fight had drained from his pig-stupid eyes, Lorio flicked a brief glance over to see how Issidris was faring.

The shocking sight that confronted the immortal would have two lingering affects that would radically impact upon Lorio's turbulent nature.

A rail thin man, barely out of his teenage years, was belaboring Issidris with a flurry of ungainly sword strikes. Yet, despite his embarrassing lack of proficiency with a sword, the flailing youth had Issidris virtually pinned against the bar. Even with her two hooked swords, the master sword wielder was having obvious difficulty parrying her opponent's absurdly inefficient offensive strikes.

Even more astounding was the expression that contorted Issidris' face...one which Lorio had never beheld in all of their years together; naked apprehension.

Issidris, whose ferocity and prowess with a sword was nearly without equal and whom Lorio had personally witness lay a dozen wights to waste, was close to being overwhelmed by this snot-nosed brat, who possessed virtually no skill with his weapon.

This disconcerting thought had no sooner erupted in Lorio's incredulous mind than a clumsy cut broke through Issidris' rapidly faltering guard and scored her deeply across the left bicep...drawing forth a cascading sheet of shockingly vivid red blood.

The sight of blood...Issidris' blood...the blood of the woman who had become Lorio's very foundation...permanently banished the demon of malicious petulance from her soul.

In that moment of stark, ugly epiphany, Lorio knew that she was just as culpable in Issidris' moment of painful abjection as the reprobate who now assailed her.

Issidris incurred the wound stoically, but dropped the hooked sword she held in her left hand. Her opponent greeted this dramatic development with a cackle of reedy laughter and renewed his assault in a wild, swarming frenzy. Without hesitation, Lorio pivoted in place and threw her quarterstaff like a spear. It sailed across the open space and with uncanny precision, struck the young brigand in the hollow of his left temple with a nauseating crack of wood on bone.

His eyes rolled up in his sockets and he collapsed in a twitching heap at Issidris' feet. Issidris slumped against the bar and when her moon-eyed gaze found Lorio, her dark eyes shone with intense gratitude which quickly gave way to immense shame and self-loathing.

While Lorio was distracted by this unexpected intervention, the brigand she'd been toying with foolishly attempted to capitalize on her lapse in concentration. He bellowed a spate of triumphant laughter and surged forward, embedding his dirk in Lorio's momentarily exposed abdomen...burying the blade right up to the cross guard.

To his consternation and dawning horror, her gaze slid from the protruding haft to his bewildered face. There wasn't the slightest hint of pain in those great dark eyes...only terrible fury.

"Now that was a mistake you may not live to regret," she remarked softly. Suddenly, the dirk was ejected from her abdomen, which reverted back to its flawless condition, and fell to the dirty boards with a clatter. She then bound forward and gripping her stricken opponent by the shoulders, the immortal spun in place and flung him across the room as if he was no more substantial than a clay plate. He sailed through the stale air and collided head first with one of the room's heavy support beams.

Lorio's terrifying prediction was confirmed with the resounding snap of a breaking neck, the aftermath of which plunged the room into absolute silence.

She stood in the center of the room and allowed her murderous gaze to sweep every face...and in every eye, she was delighted to see the emasculating presence of paralyzing trepidation. "Up until the moment that bastard buried his dirk in my guts, this had been a friendly alehouse brawl. His craven action changed that and the next slug who takes a hostile step in my direction...or hers...will be joining their unfortunate friend in the afterlife. She and I will be leaving here and should anyone decide to follow us...they die. Still, I invite you to come forward...should you doubt my sincerity."

When all present remained rooted in place, Lorio collected her staff and gently guided a pallid Issidris out of the alehouse and back onto the road to Khine, after pressing a relatively clean cloth to her profusely bleeding arm.

Outside, Issidris staggered wildly and without soliciting permission, Lorio scooped the smaller woman into her arms and began to march briskly toward Khine.

When they were well out of sight of the alehouse, Lorio moved off the traveled portion of the road and then into the forest. When she came to a small brook, she sat an unresisting Issidris against a jutting boulder and gingerly removed the cloth from Il's wounded arm. Wincing, she observed, "We have to find a healer."

"No healer!" Issidris rasped vehemently, displaying her customary toughness in matters of her own wellbeing. "There is thread in my pack. You can stitch the wound and apply unguent. After what happened back there, we have to find passage out of Khine as soon as we are able."

"What exactly did happen back there, Issidris? That kid was hopeless with a sword...and yet he managed to do this to you and I want to know how. I asked you before...and accepted your answer then. Now, I'll ask you again...are you ill, Issidris?"

Issidris averted her eyes and mumbled defensively, "I told you that we shouldn't stop there...literally begged you to just keep going."

Lorio's face contorted...congealing into an expression of self-abhorrence of which she knew herself to be entirely deserving. "Everything you just said is true, Issidris...it is my fault entirely. Still, that doesn't change the fact that the most dangerous swordsman in the world suddenly couldn't hold her own against a man who could barely hold a sword." Lorio's eyes shifted to Issidris' wounded arm and tears welled up in her great dark eyes. "Look at what he's done to you, Issidris."

Il waved Lorio's concern off, her expression becoming closed and inscrutable. "It's fine...a superficial wound."

"But will you be fine, Issidris?" Lorio persisted, refusing to relent in the face of her friend's mounting irritation. "I'm not taking another step until you tell me what's wrong."

Issidris glowered, but then fetched an elaborate sigh. "I'm tired, Lorio...nothing more. We've been on the road for so long and I'm...weary. Let us go to Brinden Outlook. I can rest and spend some time just staring out over the ocean. Then everything will be fine...I promise. For now, help me stitch and dress this wound."

Lorio searched her companion's face for a long time, deep concern warring with a desperate need for denial...which adjured her to let the matter rest.

Delusion is a powerful force that can occlude even the most glaringly apparent truth. Under its thrall, one can distort perception until reality conforms to our subconscious needs and most fervently held desires.

Lorio, for whom Issidris' stabilizing presence had become an indispensable constant, simply could not assimilate the notion that she would someday inevitably find herself alone.

Such was the strength of Lorio's delusion and its inherent need that she accepted Issidris' shallow pretext for her condition...gladly and with private relief.

"All right, We'll go to Brinden Outlook and spend as much time there as strikes your fancy," Lorio conceded. Issidris merely smiled and closed her eyes while Lorio dressed her wound...and then their epic saga moved into its final dramatic and heart-scouring act.

10

At a casual glance, it might not have been possible to discern the discordant clatter of Lorio's roiling thoughts as she sauntered along the cart path. Yet behind those inexpressibly lovely eyes, now carefully hooded to conceal her anxiety from her companion, Lorio was beleaguered by a storm that pulled her along a dozen dark tangents...each more dire than the last.

As her increasingly frantic mind traversed the arc of their shared life, lighting briefly on the pivotal junctures that had defined...had vulcanized their unique relationship, Lorio groped her way to a conclusion that, while decidedly banal (and woefully incorrect) nonetheless left her dumbfounded.

Issidris...her indefatigable engine of inexorable purpose...was tired. After long years of traipsing after her from one corner of the far flung world to the next, Issidris had simply grown weary and had lost the itinerant's desire to be perpetually moved about like dust before the wind. With this startling snippet of insight there came a sense of relief so profound that it was all Lorio could do to stop from bellowing euphoric laughter like a moon-addled lunatic.

Issidris had dutifully followed Lorio on her rambling journey until she had exhausted both the will and desire to continue. Now, as a reciprocal gesture for that unwavering devotion, it was time for Lorio to answer in kind.

Though the very thought of living a sedentary lifestyle was contrary...abrasive even... to the immortal's intrinsic nature, she decided that it was a sacrifice she would make for her cherished friend.

Embracing the idea with the same fervor that always drove Lorio to spontaneous and often ill-considered acts...the immortal began to construct an elaborate vision of how their sedentary life might be lived.

In a stroboscopic blur...tiny vignettes of an astounding, intimate life that was never to be, Lorio's enthusiastic subconscious provided the vivid detail of this joyous future. First, she tried to conjure a location where they would settle down...perhaps in Nalosan in the service of Queen Karosyn. Maybe they would find a small, idyllic village where the patient Issidris could open a weapons school for young men who saw glory in the prospect of a military career. She wondered what purpose she might serve in this whimsical scenario...how she might fill the idle hours...and decided that it wouldn't matter as long as that perpetually pinched expression was banished from her friend's face.

Feeling relieved and revitalized, Lorio deftly avoided consideration of the underlying causes of Issidris' exhaustion. She turned to share her blossoming vision with her companion...

...only to discover that Issidris was no longer beside her.

Her brow furrowed in confusion and she turned back to find that the visible stretch of path behind her was deserted. Feeling something deathly cold sink its icy claws into her viscera, Lorio hurried back along the path, wondering how she could have been so wholly preoccupied with her wistful fancies not to have noticed that Issidris had...slipped away.

Back around the next curve, Lorio came to a stumbling halt and that icy chill congealed into a knot of atavistic terror.

Beneath the exceptionally beautiful fall sky, Issidris was on her hands and knees in the center of the cart path. Lorio's acute visual acuity registered the eviscerating details of Issidris' dire situation.

Though her head was hung like a beaten dog, Lorio could clearly make out thick ropes of bloody saliva that hung from Issidris' contorted mouth. The blood was a rich and shockingly red claret in the diffuse golden sunlight.

Issidris' entire body shook convulsively and even from this distance, the immortal could clearly hear Il's labored panting.

Issidris!" she screamed, her frantic cry part negation and part dawning horror. Then, throwing off her pack and quarterstaff, Lorio was sprinting toward the fallen Issidris, a strident plea tumbling from her lips as she ran.

She slid down beside Issidris, pulling her into a cradling embrace and turning her into her lap in one fluid movement.

Issidris' entire lower face...lips, chin and cheeks...glistened with blood, while her eyes were vacant and for a brief, terrible moment, Lorio feared that she was dead.

"No, please, Issidris...no!" she cried, voice raw with anguish and in her state of panic, she shook the incoherent woman with more vigor than was strictly wise.

A racking cough shook Issidris' entire body and a fresh glut of blood burst from her gasping lips, spattering Lorio's left arm. Her gaze settled on Lorio then and though her eyes were ablaze with pain and torment...there was an unsettling flicker of something that might well have been acceptance in their glazed depths.

Despite the obvious enormity of her pain, Issidris mustered a weak smile. "Don't fret Lorio...everything will be as it should. If I could have some water..."

Lorio nodded, a manic gleam shining in her frightened eyes. She seized on the improbable idea that this was just an aberration...that all would be well if she could just keep her head and take decisive action.

Easing Issidris into a sitting position, Lorio pulled her water skin free and loosening the stopper, carefully tipped the neck to Il's slack lips. Though most of the water dribbled down Il's chin, she managed to swallow a small quantity, which nonetheless managed to induce another coughing fit, followed by another retching burst of blood that spattered Lorio's extended leg and the surrounding grass.

When this last outburst had subsided, Lorio was perilously close to succumbing to apoplectic panic. To avert that disastrous turn of events, she growled, "I'm going to clean you up and then I'm taking you back to Dortizirian. The Sisters are going to heal you, so that you are fit to travel back to Karosyn...even if I have to tear the whole fucking city down around their ears to make them do it!"

Issidris reached up and laid fingers that trembled violently along the angle of Lorio's livid cheek. She even managed to conjure a fey smile, the expression made ghastly by bloody teeth. "It's too late Lorio. I'd be dead before we reached Dortizirian and long before we could ever make our way back to Karosyn. Please, Lorio...take me to Brinden Outlook. Let's share that childhood dream of mine...while there's still time."

Lorio pushed Issidris' hand away with a brusque slap. Wagging her head frantically, as if vehemence held the power to dispel terrible truths, Lorio insisted, "No...no, I'm taking you to Karosyn. She is the world's greatest healer. Whatever this is...she will find a way to save you!"

Issidris clutched Lorio's wrist and cut through the immortal's fraught denial with a blunt declaration of remorseless truth, delivered without emotion. "I'm dying, Lorio and nothing can save me from that...except for the gods and they are disinclined to intervene on behalf of a small, wretched creature the likes of me."

Lorio began to weep, her entreaty assuming a pleading, helpless edge that tottered on the crumbling edges of despair. "No, Issidris...there has to be a way...tell me what to do, please."

In a soft, pain-distorted voice that was calm for the immensity of her suffering, Issidris returned, "Take me to Brinden Outlook, Lorio and stay with me until...until..."

Issidris faltered then and exhaled sharply, blood bubbling in a froth around her twisted mouth.

Lorio lost her tenuous grip on control then and succumbed to her misery. Burying her face in her hands, she began to wail unabashedly. In the depth of her anguish, a terrible notion germinated in the mind that served to temper her suffering with indignation. Dropping her hands to her thighs, she demanded in a voice made guttural with suspicion, "Did you know...when we saw the Queen in Nalosan...did you know you were this sick?"

"Yes," Issidris allowed flatly making no effort to disguise or diminished what she knew Lorio would construe as a betrayal.

Grasping Issidris' shoulders, Lorio shook the dying woman roughly and shrieked, "And you never asked her to heal you?" The immortal's expression curdled into something hard and dangerous. "Did you tell her? Did she refuse to heal you? If she did, Queen or not, I'll tear her fucking head off and bathe in her blood!"

Issidris placed a placating hand on Lorio's thigh. "I told her. She begged me to let her heal me, but I refused and I made her swear that she would not share the fact with you."

Lorio's eyes grew as wide as twin moons and across their luminous surface there rippled every incarnation of soul-decimating misery that the human heart could manifest. She laid back her head and keened like a wild animal that has witnessed its children being consumed before its eyes.

She then leapt to her feet and stalked away, leaving Issidris lying in her own blood, suffering in her normal stoic isolation as the excruciating moment played itself out in a slow torturous crawl. After a time, Lorio stomped back and towered over the prone Issidris, glaring down on her companion with the wounded expression of a woman who is seeing the foundations of her world crumble beneath her feet. In a tiny, hurt voice, she demanded, "How could you do this to me?"

Issidris reached out with palsied fingers and managed to snag the hem of Lorio's trousers. With tremendous effort, she insisted vehemently, "I did this for you, Lorio!"

Lorio's dejection became angry incredulity and she clutched her hands to her head as if struggling to contain her outrage, spitting, "Don't you dare say that...don't you fucking dare try to portray this as if it was for my benefit!"

"Even if Karosyn had been able to save me...this exact day would not have been long in coming," Issidris persisted, blood foaming from her mouth in a pink froth as she tugged weakly on Lorio's trousers, trying to make her see the veracity of her contention that this sad juncture had been inevitable.

"That's preposterous...why would you ever think such a thing?" Lorio shrieked hysterically as tears coursed freely over her prominent cheekbones.

"Because I'm old, Lorio...my life has run its course," Issidris gasped, the unimaginable weight of the ages echoing through her words like fading breath.

Lorio started to offer an assiduous repudiation of this idea that her long time companion had reached the end of her natural life, but in that precise instant, the distorting lens of delusion disintegrated, revealing Issidris as she truly was in that poignant, tragic moment.

Before her, lying on the ground in a posture of utter helplessness, was a woman who Lorio could scarcely recognize. Issidris had been a construct of rigid muscles like coiled springs beneath taut flesh that called to mind the stretched head of a drum. This woman...this wizen stranger...was uniformly soft, her muscles stringy and atrophied beneath slack flesh. Her face was a heavily-lined road map of the ages, deep furrows through sagging flesh that seemed to have witnessed eternity. Her eyes sockets were deep, black-rimmed hollows. They had once blazed with a ferocity that could have intimidated a deity, yet now they had become dull and watery, listless and devoid of vitality...exuberance.

Seeing this frail parody of her beloved friend, Lorio wanted to rail, 'Who are you and what have you done with my Issidris?'

Instead, she collapsed to her knees and pressed her forehead into the dirt, while wrapping her long arms around her head and rocking her grief-racked body on her haunches. The low, anguished moan that escaped her lips held an oddly inhuman quality. How was it possible for one human being to be so odious, so reprehensible, that their sensibilities could narrow their perception to such a degree that they would become utterly oblivious to everything around them...even the things they claimed to love? How could she have been so inebriated with her own egocentric self-possession that the one true friend she'd accrued over the course of her sorry life could age before her very eyes and she would remain bewilderingly oblivious to the fact.

Shaking with self-effacing revulsion, Lorio crawled over to Issidris and laid her head on Il's thin shoulder, which had once felt like sculpted granite to the touch. "I've stolen your life...pulled you along in my shadow as if you didn't matter at all!"

Issidris laid her hand on the nape of Lorio's trembling neck, alarmed by the violence of her companion's self-disdain. Firmly, she contradicted, "You did not steal my life, Lorio...quite the contrary. You gave it the only meaning it ever had. These years spent with you...the incredible places we've been and the astounding things we've seen...the adventures we've shared...these things made me happier than I ever would have imagined I could be."

Lorio lifted her head then, regarding the dying Issidris through a kaleidoscope of bitter tears. Issidris' expression became doleful and imploring as if she needed her friend to grasp the salient point she was about to make. "Perhaps Karosyn might have delayed the inevitable...but as much as I've reveled in our time together...I'm tired now and I only want this to end before I become something I despise. More than anything else, I never wanted to become a frail, helpless thing in your eyes...a burden that you suffered out of obligation." A mournful sob escaped Issidris' bloody lips and she added, "I can't be strong for you anymore, Lorio!"

"Then you could have been weak and let me take care of you," Lorio wailed as the cumulative weight of her every accrued despair crashed down upon her.

Issidris shook her head with as much adamancy as she could muster. "I have come to love you more than I ever thought I was capable of loving anything. I would gladly give my life for you without hesitation or regret...but Lorio, I can't do that. Now please, for all that we've shared together...take me to Brinden Outlook and let us see this to an end together just as we've confronted everything else for all these years."

Lorio, enveloped in a cocoon of pristine torment, could only stare silently at Issidris' face over which shimmered a full spectrum of complex emotions which neither woman possessed the faculties to properly articulate. In Il's dark and guttering eyes, Lorio finally divined the staggering immensity of her weariness. She gleaned the savagery of Issidris' pain and she sensed that Issidris was more troubled by how her suffering and imminent death would affect Lorio than the fact that her life was drawing to an end.

Lastly, she gleaned something from which she derived the fortitude to repress her own guilt and focus on Issidris. There, like a beautiful flower still vital in the heart of the cataclysm, Lorio saw the truth of Issidris' claim that their years together had been a prevailing source of happiness and fulfillment for which Il was sincerely grateful.

She roughly dragged the heel of her hands across her red eyes and drew a deep, quavering breath...knowing that she must now hold her own pain in abeyance for the sake of her dying friend. She bent forward and drew Issidris into her arms and brushing her lips across Il's right ear, whispered, "I love you. I never said it before because I thought you didn't want to hear it, but now I want...no need you to know."

Issidris touched Lorio's face and whispered thickly, "You know I feel the same."

That simple disclosure prodded Lorio perilously close to utter breakdown so she busied herself with preparing the now helpless Issidris for the final leg of their journey. She tenderly washed the blood from Il's face and arms. Removing Issidris' gore-spattered tunic, she rummaged through the other woman's pack, lacerated by how scant few items constituted the sum total of Issidris' worldly possessions, and helped her into her only other tunic.

When the last of these preparations had been made, Issidris averted her eyes to her trembling hands and when she spoke, her shame was huge...palpable. "I...I can't walk."

Lorio felt a huge, constricting pain in her chest and managed, "Don't worry, Issidris...I'll carry you...as far as we have to go."

Issidris nodded meekly, though the immortal could see how expensive this plea...this admission of helpless infirmity had been for the fiercely proud and independent Il.

After gathering up their packs and clipping her quarterstaff to its holder across her back, Lorio gently lifted Issidris, who suddenly seemed as insubstantial as a bundle of dried kindling into her arms.

"We're almost at the port I think...close your eyes and rest," Lorio offered. Issidris offered the immortal a wan smile and even allowed her slack cheek to settle against Lorio's right shoulder.

Weeping silently, Lorio set off toward the east with the tang of salt prominent in the air.

11

An old man knelt on the deck of a fishing dory, concentrating on the task of carefully scraping a thick resin into the gaps between the boards of the ship's well worn deck. His slow, deliberate movements spoke of reverence for the task and a profound love for the vessel upon which he labored.

The dory had been bequeathed to the old man nearly forty years before and since then, he had tended the vessel as if it was his grand passion in life. A solitary man by nature and a life long bachelor as a consequence, it turned out that this perception was true. If this fact struck the old man as regrettable it was not reflected on his face which resembled faded leather from years of exposure to the elements.

Engrossed in serving his mistress, the old man did not notice the shadow that had fallen across his deck. He was startled when a plump purse of coins landed on the deck just ahead of where he labored.

His head jerked up and he was about to unleash a torrent of vitriol, but the sight before his red-rimmed eyes quickly quelled his irritation.

A tall woman, whose beauty was of a magnitude that could steal a man's breath, stood on the quay and was regarding him with a disconcertingly frank gaze of appraisal. There was a terrible aspect of urgency (and its companion, impatience) about the woman that was...unnerving. She reminded the old man of the ocean when it stood poised on the brink of unleashing its fury.

His gaze shifted to the burden she held so effortlessly in her arms. His eyes widened when he realized that it was a person she was holding with the casual ease of one carrying a sack of wheat. The figure's face was turned into the crook of the woman's neck and seemed devoid of life. Tugging at his unruly beard, the old man inquired, "Do that one be dead?"

A thunderhead loomed on the woman's brow and she returned gruffly, "No!"

"Sick then?"

The woman shifted her gaze to her burden and as her expression softened, she offered the unmoving figure a radiant, yet sorrowful smile, "Yes...but not the kind of sickness that's catching."

She returned her regard to the old man and in a voice that was as hard and blunt as a war hammer, disclosed her purpose. "In that bag is enough gold to allow you to sail that ship to anywhere in the world you wish to go...and live like a king once you arrived there. I want you to bring my friend and me to Brinden Outlook. Then I want you to wait at the dock while I bring my friend to the other side of the island. Once we have...concluded our business, you will bring me back here. When my feet are back on dry land, you will receive another purse of coins and I will go on my way."

The man stole a quick glance at the eastern horizon where Brinden Outlook was a vague outline against the blue sky. The sky was clear and the winds were favorable, but even if a tempest had been blowing, the old man doubted he could have denied her wish...such was the exigency of her need. "When would you have us leave?"

"Now," the woman declared tacitly.

The old man nodded and gestured the pair aboard. While he prepared to sail, Lorio carried Issidris to the bow and gently laid her on the deck, propping Il's head up using her pack. Issidris' glazed eyes rolled toward Lorio, but they were unfocused and the woman herself was barely coherent.

Tottering on the edge of tears, Lorio clutched her slack hand and whispered, "Hold on...we're almost there, Issidris."

12

The dory sliced smoothly through the relatively calm water that shimmered in a thousand subtle hues beneath pleasant fall sunshine.

The old man stood at the tiller, his eyes fixed on the distant outline of Brinden Outlook. In that expression of perfect concentration, Lorio could clearly discern the old man's unremitting love for the harsh mistress to whom he had devoted his life and bound his fate.

It had been a bell since they had pulled away from the quay on the island of Krieg. In that time, Issidris had fallen into a fitful torpor and her body had occasionally been accosted by a spasm that spoke of acute internal torment. Lorio sat leaning against the rail with Issidris' head in her lap...studying her face unblinkingly, trying to commit every detail of its blunt topography to memory. To aid in the effort, she allowed the tips of her fingers to map the nuances of the dying woman's face...her lips, her nose, the flat sprawl of her cheekbones.

She deliberately forced herself not to languish on dismal thoughts of what awaited them on Brinden Outlook...or more harrowing still, what awaited her beyond the terrible denouement at the end of this journey.

Issidris suddenly coughed and sat up in a lurch, gazing about in disoriented anxiety. Lorio gently drew her closer and slowly the rigidity drained from Il's posture and she favored Lorio with an apologetic grin.

"The pain...is it bad?" Lorio inquired, though Issidris' haggard face spoke eloquently of its intensity.

"Better than it was on the trail," Issidris offered, which while true...only served to disguise the stark fact that her body had gone numb below the neck.

"We're halfway to the Outlook," Lorio informed Issidris, who greeted this with a distracted nod. She tilted her head and closed her eyes, luxuriating in the warm ocean breeze as it caressed her face.

"It's beautiful," she murmured distantly. "How many nights have you and I passed just staring idly up at the sky. Remember, Majeer, Lorio...those nights along the way roads...laying up against the dunes and staring up at the night sky. We would marvel over how many stars there were and wonder what they might be. Sometime I wonder if those memories were merely vivid and lovely dreams."

Lorio inhaled, wondering just who this person who'd just expressed such a wistful sentiment might be. 'Who can say, perhaps this is Issidris as she might have been had life not actually bludgeoned the whimsy from her soul.'

"You never speak of Majeer, Issidris," Lorio remarked, feeling a long-repressed query stir inside her.

Issidris studied Lorio's face, her dull eyes narrowing slightly. Discerning the immortal's disquiet, she prompted, "If there is a question you would ask, old friend...now is the time to give it voice."

Taking Il's hand, which felt like a construct of ice beneath her touch, Lorio asked gravely, "In all of our years together, was there ever a time when you wanted to go your own way...to have a different kind of life...perhaps in the company of someone else?"

The immortal's expression of self-doubt and sudden vulnerability nearly brought Issidris to tears...something that even the prospect of her imminent demise lacked the power to achieve. Vehemently and without hesitation, she replied, "Never...not once!"

"Not even in Majeer?" Lorio persisted quietly.

"No...not even in Majeer," Issidris insisted with all the emphasis she could muster.

"Why did we never go back to Majeer?" Lorio asked softly, gently stroking Issidris' upturned cheek.

The dying woman stared up into Lorio's misery contorted face for a moment and then returned flatly, "Because I didn't want you to...to kill her and I feared that you would, given time."

"Shan-En Naroon," Lorio rasped as if enunciating something loathsome to the tongue.

"Yes, I feared that if you killed her your soul would be indelibly stained. Your jealousy was completely unfounded, but you were...younger and I feared that your volatile nature would goad you into a damning act."

Lorio pursed her lips ruefully, feeling suddenly angry and despising herself for feeling that way. "The way she doted on you was...disgusting and I knew she was always scheming to pry you away from me. More to the point, you can hardly deny that you were intrigued by her."

"She...she was a strong and courageous woman, Lorio...very much like you and yes, I admired her," Issidris confessed in a dry, papery voice.

Lorio nodded sourly as if this admission vindicated something she'd always believed. "I knew just by those marathon sparring sessions the two of you would have. Dueling in the blistering sun for hours...I could see that you were using it as a substitute for something else...something neither you nor she seemed willing to express." Lorio averted her gaze to her hands. "I won't deny that it hurt me, Issidris."

"Lorio," Issidris whispered mournfully, but could bring herself to say no more because she simply lacked the faculties required to articulate the unfamiliar emotions that governed the moment.

Lorio returned her gaze to her dying friend, a plaintive glint in those great dark eyes. "I know you, Issidris...your astounding capabilities as a fighter...your every move. I am intimately familiar with your style with weapons...every fluid step and the liquid grace with which you fight. Naroon was gifted with a blade, I'll give her that, but you were infinitely superior and could have left her dazed and bloody in the dirt every time you sparred. Instead, you fought as if she was your equal and even allowed her to best you as often as not." Lorio's expression darkened, transforming her into that obstinate, vicious persona that was so terrifying to behold. "It was infuriating and as I watched you from the shadows, I remember struggling with the compulsion to descend to the sand and beat her to a twitching heap. Now...after all of these years, I want to know why you would debase yourself by allowing a lesser woman to think she'd gotten the better of you."

"I did it because I believed that Shan needed to be seen as strong and capable in the eyes of her people...in the eyes of Lissom. I thought that she was attempting to accomplish something of value...something brave and meaningful and I didn't want to hinder that by making her seem weak in the eyes of either. I did not want to return to Majeer because I feared you might kill Shan...and then Lissom would have obliterated you." She raised her head as a grimace of pain twisted her features and implored, "You are an extraordinary being, but Lorio...Lissom would crush you with the casual ease of someone crushing an insect. I have never made a demand on our friendship, but now I'm asking you to vow...on your honor and whatever love you might have for me...should Lissom ever grow to become the dark shadow Karosyn fears she might become, you will not stand against her. Swear to me!"

This animated articulation of Issidris' worst fear induced a coughing fit that shook her entire body as if she was being shaken by an invisible, belligerent giant. When it eventually subsided, her lips and chin were slick with bloody drool. An alarmed Lorio promised solemnly, "Issidris, I swear that I'll stay as far away from Lissom as this world allows. Besides which, I have no real interest in going back to Majeer...it required an entire decade to get all of the sand out of my crevices."

Issidris' eyes widened in scandalized shock and then she burst into laughter...that degenerated into another spate of violent coughing. When that ran its course, Il was perceptibly weaker, her eyes glazed and distant, perhaps peering into...somewhere else. Voice quavering like an anxious bird, she intoned, "Lorio...I want nothing to be left unresolved between us...no festering seeds that might, in time, grow to change how you might think of me. Please, after all of these years...ask me the question that has plagued you since Majeer."

Lorio was reluctant to broach the subject...to risk coloring their final hours together in anger should Issidris disclose what the immortal feared she might. Seeing the desperate need in Issidris' eyes...eyes from which the light was slowly ebbing...Lorio set aside her reluctance and gave voice to the irritant that had grown in her heart like a black pearl. "What passed between you and Shan-En Naroon on our last night in El Sharom...when she summoned you to her private chambers?"

Issidris' eyes searched Lorio's face as if attempting to evaluate the surprisingly fragile immortal's capacity to absorb the truth of what she was about to divulge. Then, marshaling the last of her rapidly waning energy, Issidris set about telling the final tale that would pass between the pair.

13

(*)The very air above the city shimmered and rippled in the mind-numbing heat...which had lost none of its efficacy despite the fact the sun had all but dipped beneath the horizon. During the day, this heat would create odd distortions in size and distance, weaving a constant stream of ever-shifting illusions.

It was said that she-demons danced and capered in the haze, tempting with liquid seductions that could lead even the most grounded of minds into mad acts of suicidal folly should they stare too long. Beyond the city, the vast, ever-shifting expanse of sun-bleached sand seemed to augment the traducing power of the harlot's haze as it was often called by the veteran travelers who braved the way roads. Travelers too numerous to account had succumbed to the siren song and wondered off the routes in pursuit of some ineffably beautiful hallucination...only to find slow, blistering death in the featureless sand sea.

Issidris Il, who had spent a decade traipsing over the way tracts all throughout Majeer, could readily attest to the mysterious enchantments the illusions of empty desert expanses could cast upon the mind.

During their years there, Lorio and Issidris had witnessed this perplexing and disturbing phenomenon often enough while hunting stubborn remnants of the demon-god's zealots throughout Majeer.

On this night, a full silver moon loomed over the city of El Sharom, peering down like an eternally vigilant sentinel. This sense of perpetual scrutiny seemed somehow appropriate. Majeer's capital had become an unsettled place since the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen and the Sisters of Esotaria had arrived to dismantle the diabolical theology of the false god, Thaz Ekai. This tension, paranoia and uncertainty made the city an unpleasant place to dwell.

Issidris stood near the doorway to the balcony, staring out at the deserted streets and luxuriating in the caress of the blessedly cool breeze that issued out of the west. She and Lorio had been granted lodgings in a building that stood just across the vast central plaza from Enom-Zhar, the edifice that served as the official seat of power in Majeer. The matter of precisely who held power in Majeer...Shan-En Naroon, the Matron of the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen or Lissom, the Ascentrix of the Sisters of Esotaria...remained shrouded in ambiguity. This deliberate uncertainty did little to allay the discordant tension and disquiet that had gripped the city for more than a decade.

In truth, Issidris cared little for the country's nebulous politics...the sly jockeying and ulterior agendas that defined the game of power currently being played in the Majeeri capital. Her only concern was the emotional state of the woman with whom she shared these lodgings. Lorio stood with her right forearm leaning on a thin, fluted column, staring fixedly into the flames of a small fire that burned behind a thick pane of glass in a stone hearth. She stared into the capering flames as if mesmerized...as if listening intently to the fiery constructs seductive whisper.

Since Lissom had informed Lorio of Artumas' death, the immortal had become morose and unusually reticent. Yet, on the night before they were scheduled to commence the long journey to Nalosan, Issidris had come to glean that there was another reason that her companion had become uncommunicative and sullen...one that had nothing to do with sorrow over the loss of a dear friend. When Lorio did look upon her at all, Issidris could detect a flicker of doubt...and worse still, fear...capering in those beautiful dark eyes. To see the supremely confident Lorio belittled by uncertainty twisted Issidris' heart. That sadness was tempered by the understanding that it was inspired by unfounded jealousy that Issidris simply could not fathom.

Making an effort to break the cloying tension that congealed the very air of their lodgings, Issidris inquired, "Will Lissom be joining us in the morning?"

Lorio shifted her gaze to the place where Issidris stood silhouetted against the tumble of moonlight through the open balcony door and allowed, "She will. We will make the journey to the southern port city of Jakar. There, one of the Sisters' ships will carry us back to Nalosan. That will save us from having to travel across the entire continent through this accursed desert. I've had enough of fucking sand and the vipers who inhabit it."

Issidris frowned, all too cognizant of whom that disparaging reference had been intended to describe. Il, who had privately come to enjoy Majeer, was suddenly grateful that they were leaving on the morrow. This acrimony...this monster of green-eyed jealousy that Lorio had fixed squarely and without justification on Shan-En Naroon held the potential for calamity. One impulsive act of belligerence could see all that had been accomplished over the course of this last decade quickly laid to bloody waste.

'But is it truly unjustified?' a tiny voice whispered from a part of her rigidly constrained mind that Issidris believed had been sealed like a tomb years before. Lorio had shattered the walls of that tomb and now Shan-En Naroon, this hard, implacable creature, had shone a light into its interior, revealing a host of stunted emotions that terrified Issidris.

In Lorio, Issidris saw a cherished friend to whom she'd devoted her life. In Shan-En Naroon, the improbable hieroglyph, Issidris saw something else...the nascent stirrings of an emotion and urge of which she would have thought herself incapable.

Somehow, the normally self-absorbed Lorio had divined Issidris' inner conflict and it was threatening to incite the darker aspects of the immortal's nature.

Feeling a stab of guilt and sorrow for Lorio, who despite her cultivated façade of toughness and blithe indifference was surprisingly sensitive to abandonment, Issidris offered a reassuring lie. "You'll hear no argument from me. I'm anxious to get back to a place with trees and grass...even the occasional rain. Besides which...you did promise to show me every nook and cranny of that world of yours."

The expression of pure relief on Lorio's lovely face struck an oddly ambivalent chord in Issidris' heart. Il's was a heart that was wholly unaccustomed to feeling the diametric pull of two powerful attractions...attractions that would make no allowance for the other.

Lorio's relief curdled to a sour frown when a soft rapping came at their chamber door. The two women exchanged glances and a moment of unalloyed empathy passed between the pair. Both instinctively knew that they had arrived at a critical juncture on their journey.

Issidris broke the intense gaze and crossed over to the arched door, while Lorio turned back to her contemplation of the fire.

The cinnamon vest and trousers of the tall, thin youth, who stood in the doorway, announced that he was an official messenger. Upon assuming power in El Sharom, the Ascentrix and Matron had decided that each of the city's prominent patriarchs would send one of their sons to serve the Sisters and Rha-Sheem-Nakreen in menial capacities. Ostensibly, this had been intended to serve as a sign of fealty from the patriarchs to their new rulers. Issidris, who was privy to Naroon's complex perspective, knew that this conscription had been intended to humiliate the patriarchs...men who had so cruelly abused women beneath the banner of Thaz Ekai's mad, misogynistic theology.

"The Matron summons you to her private chamber, Issidris Il," the youth announced, clearly uncomfortable in the presence of this terrifying foreigner who spent so much time in the revered Matron's presence.

Issidris' brow furrowed, sirens blazing into life in her mind...though a part of her had anticipated this summons. She could feel Lorio's intense scrutiny between her shoulder blades. "The hour is late...can the matter not wait until tomorrow?"

The messenger's eyes flew open in shock at the temerity...the flagrant disrespect this foreigner displayed by not complying with the Matron's wish without question. "The Matron had made it exceedingly clear that your presence is required now...that I am to escort you to her private chambers."

"Go Issidris...you know full well what will happen to the boy if you don't," Lorio declared wanly from over her shoulder, which caused the youth's almond-shaped eyes to widen even further. It had been rumored that these sons of the patriarchs disappeared when they did not swiftly and efficiently comply with their mistress' instructions.

"Very well...I won't be long," Issidris allowed to the messenger's visible relief.

Without turning to face her departing companion, Lorio remarked, "Issidris, I'll be leaving in the morning...and I won't be coming back to this place."

In the implicit ultimatum delivered in a brusque, detached voice that Lorio had never previously used when speaking to her friend, Issidris gleaned the extent of the immortal's angst.

Wanting to assuage her needless worry...to banish the specter of abandonment, Issidris insisted, "Lorio...I'll be back...don't fret!"

When Lorio offered no comment, Issidris frowned in bemusement and followed the messenger down the narrow stairs and out into the sultry night.

As they crossed the deserted circular plaza toward the hulking Enom-Zhar, Issidris detected the watching Rha-Sheem-Nakreen and Stealth Rangers recessed in the shadows around the perimeter of the sprawling plaza...ever vigilant and deadly.

Even recessed in shadow, these terrifying women...many living engines of hatred toward the gender that had once so heinously abused them...exuded an aura of menace. Issidris wondered if Majeer had merely exchanged one brand of tyranny for another.

She tilted her gaze toward the heavens and inhaled to quell her mounting agitation. When Issidris had told Lorio that she was also anxious to quit the desert nation, she had uttered a deliberate falsehood. In the decade they had wandered its sandy expanses, Issidris had come to privately love Majeer...a love she kept carefully sequestered from Lorio, who most likely would have misconstrued its cause.

Beneath the cloying tension that gripped the country as it labored to heal...to decide upon its new identity, Issidris had come to think of Majeer as an exciting land of magic and mystery. Where the lands across the Sea of Prevailing Mystery were often dismal places of unrelenting drudgery, Majeer with its ever shifting sands and vast circling sky was atavistic...primal in a way that Issidris could not easily qualify. Still, it excited a zest for the simple fact of living that she would have thought had long since been expunged from her soul.

Years later, Il would come to realize that she had wrongly attributed this unprecedented zeal for living to Majeer and not the astounding woman with whom she had walked its sands.

Entering Enom-Zhar was like walking into a sprawling repository for restless ghosts that had been denied eternal peace and were now entrapped between its brooding walls. Issidris could almost hear the faint echo of their piteous cries welling up from the bowels of this odious place.

When Lissom and Shan-En Naroon had led their armies into El Sharom, it had been the Ascentrix who had decided that this evil place would serve as a seat of power from which the rebuilding of the broken nation would be conducted.

On the edges of the city...at the four points of the compass, four smaller replicas of massive Enom-Zhar had been erected, temples of the four Canons of Thaz Ekai's depraved faith. When the two armies had entered the city, the patriarchs...anxious to curry favor with this new Goddess...had turned the Canons over to the Ascentrix.

After consulting with the Matron of the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen, Lissom had deliberated on their fate.

Shan had once recounted the harrowing tale of how the four had been staked to the floor of their respective temples. Then, Lissom had employed her unparalleled sorcery to implode the temples upon the masters. The rubble of these structures had been left untouched as an enduring reminder of the despicable purpose they'd once served.

The cavernous interior had been divided into two sections...one to house the Ascentrix and her growing Sisters of Esotaria and the other to house the Matron and the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen. Issidris was led through the now silent halls of the latter section, ascending winding alabaster staircases inlaid with strips of gold the color of butter. This opulence was inconsistent with the order of warriors who seemed to pride themselves on strength through discipline and deprivation. At last, they reached the uppermost floor where Shan-En Naroon's private lodgings were located.

At the head of the stairs, the messenger came to an abrupt halt and gestured to a set of double arched doors at the opposite end of the hallway. "I am permitted to go no further, but the Matron is expecting you."

Issidris greeted this with a perplexed frown, but the young messenger offered no further elaboration. Instead, he executed a deep, deferential bow and hurried down the stairs at a trot. Bemused by her burgeoning anxiety, Issidris turned and marched to the door, wondering if Lorio was back in their shared lodgings, brooding over her absence.

The thought of the raven-haired immortal served to steady Issidris' nerves and she rapped briskly on Shan's ornate door.

A moment later, the door opened as if of its own accord and from the velvety darkness, a husky voice prompted, "Come Issidris...we have much to discuss."

Issidris' first step into Shan's private chamber only served to heighten her disquiet. The room was lit by soft candlelight and the pleasantly warm air was redolent with the heady, aromatic blend of dozens of spices that tantalized the senses. Throughout the large expanse of polished marble, delicate ornamental tables held glass goblets of spice-infused oils. These globes sat in three-legged pewter stands beneath which burned dancing blue flames without an apparent source of fuel.

The entire west side of Shan's surprisingly lavish chamber was comprised of a series of retractable wooden panels. These panels were now fully retracted allowing the night breeze to swirl unencumbered through the roomy chamber.

At the center of the chamber, a large bed, enveloped in translucent silk netting, was covered in a spill of petals from the desert blooms found in this part of Majeer.

Issidris was immediately cognizant of the air of poised seduction in the room and cast a nervous glance at the arched door that had just closed behind her.

Her first sight of Shan-En Naroon only served to ratchet her discomfort to excruciating levels.

Normally the beautiful Matron was attired in the regalia of her station; a fitted red leather tunic, loose leggings, flat sandals and leather greaves. Her thick raven mane was usually pulled into a tight braid that lent her face an imperious and intimidating aspect. This impression was further enhanced by the stylized, elaborate pattern of scars that spread over her lower face in an elaborate progression of flourishes that might have been considered a work of art on any other canvas. These scars had been inflicted with a curving, triangular blade and then cauterized with a special unguent that swiftly healed the wounds and prevented infection. These scars were then treated with dyes...usually red or black...that had been used to signify the bearers rank in the old Rha-Sheem. The history behind this ritualized disfigurement was an odious reflection of the man who had contrived it, Ekaz Azeer, the exalted prophet of the false deity, Thaz Ekai.

Taken as a whole, these elements lent the Matron of the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen an aloof, authoritarian aura that suited the formidable Naroon perfectly.

The Shan-En Naroon that now stood before the astounded Issidris was the living personification of feminine splendor. Attired in the vestments of seduction, Shan was a vision conjured from the pages of a darkly erotic fantasy. Her long black hair cascaded over her square shoulders and was interspersed with strands of pristine white pearls. Her supple skin seemed to glow in the candlelight. The carmine red vest she wore seemed incondign to the task of containing Shan's full breasts, just as her translucent leggings did little to conceal the tapering perfection of her long thighs.

With a smile of private delight playing at the corners of her generous mouth, Shan watched Issidris with large, deep green eyes that reminded Il of peridots. Those limpid green eyes now shimmered with delight at Issidris' clearly disconcerted reaction to Shan's startlingly beguiling appearance. There was still another emotion capering in Shan's lovely eyes...a complex amalgam that Issidris did not immediately recognize, but which caused her pulse to stutter.

With a perceptible quiver in her voice, Il shifted her gaze from the living enchantment to the flower-strewn bed and inquired, "Why have you summoned me here, Shan...to your private chambers?"

Rather than respond, Shan crossed over to Issidris and linked her long left arm with Il's right and led the shorter woman over to a divan. Issidris was acutely aware of the firm weight of Shan's left breast against her arm and felt herself hovering ever closer to open panic. Issidris was relieved when Shan released her and pushed her down onto the plush cushion before standing over Il with her fists on her flaring hips. She considered Issidris with an unsettlingly frank gaze of appraisal, which Issidris met unblinkingly.

The one-time assassin broke the tense silence by reiterating, "Why have you summoned me here...and why specifically to your private chambers?"

In the decade that Lorio and Issidris had been in Majeer, this was the first occasion that she had been invited to Shan's personal sanctuary.

Shan tilted her head, fixing Issidris with a contentious grin. "I have never invited you here because I know you have an aversion to familiarity...intimacy. Now, I've decided that I don't particularly care...that I have issues of consequence to discuss with you that require familiarity," She flicked her gaze to the bed, "require familiarity and I don't care if they make you uncomfortable."

Issidris frowned indignantly while Shan's demeanor became suddenly grave. "I have a question to put to you and then a proposal. I want you to reflect upon them both with the gravity they deserve because the answers, Issidris...may change your life...our life. Are you willing to do this for me, Issidris Il?"

A part of Issidris...the part that wanted desperately to reject this unsettling overture and flee back to the comfortable camaraderie she shared with Lorio, implored her to decline.

Still, a tiny spark of an awakening desire...intrigued and amenable and shockingly receptive to the prospect of something previously unimaginable...induced her to grumble, "Ask your question...and yes, Shan, I will hear your proposal."

"What dark sorcery binds you to that supercilious creature; compels you to devote yourself to her like a loyal dog...whose devotion she obviously takes for granted?"

Issidris' eyes narrowed and she leaned slightly forward, her posture conjuring images of a coiled spring. "Have a mind about how you speak of Lorio in my presence, Shan. She may be impetuous and erratic, but she has paid for the right to that behavior in the currency of pain and betrayal...and I will not have you disparage her."

Shan shook her head and pursed her full lips, clearly displeased by Il's menacing response. "So you are content to exist as a fixture in her shadow and be dragged aimlessly about the world without any meaningful purpose?"

"I am," Issidris returned simply.

Shan moved closer and the scent of jasmine and sandalwood filled Issidris' nostrils, eroding both her resolve and her focus at a time when it seemed critically important that she retain both. Vehemently, Shan declared, "I can offer you so much more, Issidris...a purpose that will see the vast potential you hold finally be given expression. Let your impetuous friend leave in the morning and remain here with me. I would have you serve as my advisor...my protector." A knowing smile lit her face and she added, "My weapons master and my teacher. With your firm hand and guidance, perhaps the day might come when I would actually best you on the sands and not have you permit me to cling to my honor."

"You knew...knew that I...let you win?" Issidris blurted, thoroughly nonplused by the notion.

Shan's smile assumed a sardonic twist. "Do you think me so woefully naïve that I would not see that you were simply toying with me...or that you were taking the occasional knee to salvage my pride?"

Issidris' cheeks colored and she averted her eyes, mumbling, "It was not simply about your pride, Shan. I know you're not that fragile."

"Yes...you understood that if you had consistently trounced me on the sand, the furtive watchers would have seen me as weak...unworthy to lead the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen...and by extension, Majeer. That is a shrewd bit of perception for which I am eternally in your debt, Issidris. It also demonstrates that you possess an astute, instinctive grasp of the politics of power and that would serve me well in the ambitious campaign of change that I intend to undertake in Majeer."

"Do you genuinely believe that the Ascentrix would ever permit me to serve you in that capacity?" Issidris asked quietly, not bothering to disguise her skepticism.

Shan displayed vexation for the first time at this intimation that Lissom held the reins of power in El Sharom. "Lissom and the Sisters of Esotaria are on Majeeri soil at my invitation. Should she lose sight of that fact, she will find that her welcome here has been exhausted."

Issidris greeted this stunningly ingenuous assertion with a sorrowful shake of her head. "If you believe that you can control, manipulate or otherwise influence Lissom, then you are in for a steady feast of disillusionment. Lissom is an inexorable force of nature, who will bend to the will of no one...save for her goddess."

The two women regarded each other in fraught silence...Shan-En Naroon glaring balefully at Il and Issidris meeting that withering gaze impassively. Finally, Shan sighed and resumed her exhortation. "Then my ignorance of Lissom's nature is all the more reason that you should remain here with me and serve in those capacities I've mentioned."

"Then you would have me serve you ...give up a life of unfettered freedom for one of servitude?"

"No! You would not serve me, but you would stand with me as an equal in all things!" Shan insisted, her eyes flashing passionately. "I would have you as an absolute partner in all things...including in my bed!"

Issidris grimaced and disclosed bluntly, "Then there is no point in further discussion because that is one thing I can never give you."

Shan then proceeded to shock Issidris by gracefully straddling the seated Il's legs and settling onto her thighs. The long fingers of her left hand encircled Issidris' neck, eliciting a violent shudder from Il, who had gone utterly rigid. Shan laid her right hand on Issidris' livid cheek and began to caress her face. "You say that you have no desire to share my bed, Issidris Il and I say that you are a liar...or under the thrall of a black delusion. I can sense your powerful aversion to intimacy...almost divine its hideous shape, but I know I can surmount it."

"You can't!" Issidris exclaimed in a rasping voice like iron being grated over stone, acutely conscious of the weight of Shan's nubile body which seemed to be pressing down upon her like a mountain, crushing the very air from her lungs.

"I can!" Shan countered with equal tenacity, failing to perceive the tumult gathering within the woman beneath her. "When we spar on the sands, I can see and feel your desire for me burning in your eyes. Whatever heinous thing has been done to you has left these contests of will as your only means of expressing that desire. When I'm lying in the sand at your feet, I can feel your compulsion to ravage me radiating like heat from the Majeeri sun. If you let me...I can guide you and in time, you will give and take in our bed with abandon. I can be yours, Issidris...if you'll only relinquish your fears."

With this, she pulled Issidris' face forward into the deep valley of her breasts and began to caress Il's neck while tenderly kissing the top of her head.

The overwhelming power of Shan-En Naroon's femininity obliterated the dark cloister in which Issidris had imprisoned her horrific childhood memories. Emancipated by Shan's misguided seduction attempt, they came swarming into Issidris' conscious thoughts like enraged wasps...rising up like hot bile that occluded all rational thought and reason.

The feel of supple, pliable flesh and the fragrant scents of jasmine and sandalwood were displaced by the suffocating stench of rancid breath and rotting teeth...of stale sweat and long unwashed flesh. Her fractured mind was accosted by a barrage of truncated images...fragments of hellish nightmare given new life by this unwanted overture. Drunken faces, red with ugly lust, leered down upon her and callused hands groped and squeezed her like iron pincers. She thrashed ineffectively beneath immovable weight and suffocating heat as slurred, drunken voices gave vulgar encouragement to her abjection. She could feel an excruciating fullness between her legs and then a repulsive liquid heat that made her want to explode with shame and revulsion. She could see three distorted male faces grinning down at her, inebriated by their depravity...by the taking of something that should have been forbidden by any notion of fundamental human decency.

Once again Issidris became their receptacle for bitter hopelessness and grim resignation...the cumulative despair of the father and brothers that had made her the target of and slave to their intrinsic ugliness.

With a hysterical shriek of mindless fury, Issidris gripped Shan's hips and literally tossed her across the room. Shan landed flat on her back, the back of her head rebounding off the marble floor with a disturbing crack. Naroon remained in that position for a protracted moment, staring vacantly up at the vaulted ceiling, until a wild-eyed, red-faced Issidris came to loom over her.

"Touch me again and I'll tear your fucking head off!" Issidris raged, spittle flying from her lips. She then hung her head and closed her eyes, standing with her body quaking and her chest heaving, while the demons went slowly and grudgingly back into the darkness.

Still dazed, Shan pushed herself onto her elbows and in a quavering voice, rife with pain and embarrassment, offered, "I'm...I'm sorry, Issidris. Whatever evil you've endured...monsters you've survived...this love I feel for you is not..." Her words failed her then and she lapsed into a miserable silence before pleading, "Forgive me...please, Issidris!"

"I have to go," Issidris croaked and stumbled around Shan, giving the fallen woman a wide berth.

Before Issidris had reached the door, Shan wailed, "What do I have to do to earn your respect...your devotion? Should I march across the plaza and challenge your impetuous friend to a duel on the sands? If it is what is required to earn your respect, I will go this very moment."

Shan staggered to her feet, swaying precariously from the impact of Issidris' emphatic rejection. Il turned slowly and studied Shan in obvious consternation. In a flat, unequivocal tone, Issidris observed, "Lorio would kill you...and Lissom would then obliterate her and then me because I would try for her throat with no hope of success. Before losing both of you in that pointless orgy of empty violence, I would rather throw myself from your balcony."

"Then tell me what I must do to be deserving of your respect, Issidris?" Shan demanded, though her truculence failed to disguise her earnest bewilderment. "Have I not suffered sufficiently? Has my ordeal...my sorrow not been adequate to be worthy of your regard?" She ran her trembling fingers over her face and moaned, "Are my scars any less indelible...any less humiliating than yours and thus undeserving of pity or compassion?"

Issidris tilted her head and stalked back to Shan, a hard, speculative expression set on her harsh face. "Lissom has removed that vile brand from the face of every living woman upon whom it was inflicted...every one except you. So now...you will tell me, Shan-En Naroon, why you have chosen to continue to suffer that hideous disfigurement as if it is a perverse badge of honor?"

Shan recoiled, her fingers involuntarily straying to the complex intaglio that had been scribed into her once sublimely beautiful face. In those astoundingly green eyes, Issidris glimpsed the festering ghosts of past horrors, clamoring for the moment when they would at last be given audience.

Marshaling the fortitude to lay her soul bare before this terrifying, yet inexplicably exhilarating creature, Shan began, "In my years as the Matron of Thaz Ekai's Rha-Sheem...which translates into legion of the redeemed in your tongue...I personally conducted the ritual of abjection. This ritual involved the symbolic disfigurement of women who had survived the inquisition...and thus had been judged worthy to serve in Ekaz Azeer's army of holy warrior women."

"Azeer was the man you slaughtered during the final battle of the invasion," Issidris interjected, recalling the climactic moment of the bloody battle near the city of Praten on the shores of the Sea of Traneer.

Led by the Rha-Sheem, the Majeeri invaders seemed poised to obliterate the vastly outnumbered defenders...a coalition of Emercian and Jerhia conventional forces and the Sisters of Esotaria. Suddenly, Lissom had taken the bloody field, descending into the enemy's midst like an avenging angel. She had employed her potent sorcery to literally disintegrate Azeer's argent robe...the vestment of his power and invulnerability.

If Issidris lived a hundred lifetimes, she would never efface the horrific images of what next transpired from her memory.

Naked and vulnerable, Azeer had stared about the body-littered battlefield in horrified incredulity. Lissom had hovered in the air, which was thick with the reek of blood, feces and death, and had gestured for Shan-En Naroon to do as she pleased.

The Matron had challenged the prophet to single combat...a challenge which he had been left with little choice but to accept. The vastly superior warrior had proceeded to systematically dissect her former master in a barbaric display that had left all but the Rha-Sheem pallid and sickened.

With all of the tendons in his arms and legs severed, Azeer had cowered on the blood-soaked, trampled grass, babbling an incoherent plea for mercy. Mercy was a commodity that had long since been scoured from Shan-En Naroon's shriveled soul.

She had dispatched Thaz Ekai's exalted prophet by slowly slitting his throat. Then she had cut the heart from his body and pulverized it in her mailed fist over his corpse. She had completed this ritual of desecration by emasculating the body. Issidris recalled how Shan had seemed completely calm and composed as she went about this awful business.

She had then knelt before Lissom and surrendered the Rha-Sheem to the Goddess' emissary. It was in that symbolic gesture the Rha-Sheem were reborn as the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen; the legion of the redeemed and avenged.

In a life characterized by ugly violence, Issidris had never witness such a gruesome spectacle of hate-fueled savagery.

Shan merely nodded in response to Issidris' query. "Yes. During my years as his conscripted puppet, I performed the ritual of abjection on 62,395 women. Each time I pressed that vile blade into a terrified woman's face, I vowed that I would see the monster who had conceived this vile atrocity dead. I also swore that...even if a divine miracle could efface this blight from every face, I would continue to bear it for my complicity in this unspeakable crime against women whose only sin was having been cursed with beauty."

The enormity of this monstrous act of defilement...of depraved mutilation...beggared Issidris' faculties to assimilate. In a weak, quavering voice, she wondered, "What could motivate someone to do something...to embark on a campaign so deplorable? I...I've seen misogyny in every form and been its victim since I was a small child. Still, how much hatred could one man harbor in his soul that he could be capable of this?"

Face grim and inscrutable, Shan replied, "To understand that, you must first gain a sense...a pale notion of the shadow that fell over Majeer during that dark time and over my life as well because the two tales are inextricably intertwined." After a thoughtful pause, she remarked tentatively, "I could share this tale with you, Issidris Il...and then ask that you reconsider my offer."

After a long moment, Issidris nodded her acquiescence. Shan cast a mournful gaze to the night beyond her balcony, a pensive expression set on her lovely face. "Then come Issidris, let us sit. The night is young, but this tale is long and perhaps by its end, you will see that my pain...my struggle...matches your own."

14

Before one can hope to fathom the scope of the horror and atrocity that befell Majeer under Thaz Ekai's perverse thrall...they must seek out the genesis of his depraved theology.

(*)It was in the desert of Southern Majeer, where remorseless heat, scouring wind and shifting sand seemed to mock the very concept of sustainable life, where Ekaz Azeer would find his twisted religion's great antagonist. The prophet had stridden bravely into a maze of canyons where howling winds raised abrasive sheets of sand that could excoriate exposed flesh from bone.

He had entered these scoured stone alleyways with a single leather water skin and a small satchel of bread in search of the mythical argent robe...an artifact of power purported to belong to Thaz Ekai himself. Ekaz wandered through the stark, often indistinguishable landscape, assailed by the relentless glare of the killing sun and beset by the bone-deep chill that accompanied nightfall. In that entire time Azeer encountered no other living thing...not even the ubiquitous biting and stinging insects that normally plagued desert travelers.

Predictably, the prophet became hopelessly lost in the sprawling wastelands...ravaged by searing heat and deprivation, Azeer began to lose his hold on reality. He was no longer able to recognize the demarcation between the tangible hell in which he'd become lost and the abstract, yet viscerally terrifying hallucinations that shimmered in the heat-painted haze on every horizon.

In this state of harried disorientation, Ekaz Azeer would be thrice tempted; first by a blond-haired beauty offering water, second by a fire-haired vision of feminine perfection offering food and finally, by a raven-haired creature whose beauty defied reason. She had offered the delirious Azeer deliverance and rejuvenation in the luxuriant and pliable splendor of her supple flesh.

Fortified by his inviolable faith in Thaz Ekai, Ekaz had thrice refused.

A short time later, Azeer had literally stumbled upon the argent robe and was transformed from the wayward son of a tyrant to the prophet of his one true god.

The puissance of Thaz Ekai suffused his prophet's ravaged flesh, bestowing upon him both physical perfection and preternatural clarity of purpose. It was then that Ekaz was struck by a profound epiphany that would define his iniquitous theology.

Evil was not a nebulous current that assumed a multitude of subtle forms. True evil flowed from one source, corrupting everything it encountered with its vile touch.

If man was the tangible rendering of Thaz Ekai, did it not stand to reason that the great despoiler would have a physical manifestation as well?

Women, Azeer now divined, were the one true source of wickedness and soul-effacing corruption in the world. The more beautiful the woman, the more potent their corrupting influence. Did his encounter with the three temptresses not serve as irrefutable proof of this great and terrible singular truth?

It was in this stupefying and fatuous progression of logic that Thaz Ekai's prophet and legion of deranged zealots had found the focus and purpose for propagating their odious faith. They would devote their fanatical energy to the exigent task of extirpating the rank weed of female corruption from the world...with a mind to restoring man to his original state of spiritual purity.(*)

"And the other men of Majeer, they didn't see this for the absurd, evil nonsense it was?" Issidris asked, dumbfounded and indignant at the notion that an entire male population could be traduced by something so blatantly evil.

"Sadly, they did not...for a variety of reasons that are complex, but still stand as an indictment of the gender as a whole," Shan explained, her expression doleful. "When I tell my story, I think you'll garner a clearer sense of how the prevailing climate in Majeer was conducive to the evil brand of insanity that came to infect this land. I think that it's also important to know that the plight of women in Majeer was further aggravated by the fact that its women were predisposed to the great physical beauty that the religious misogynists came to abhor."

"And this ritual of abjection...this scarring and stylized mutilation...was intended to erase that beauty," Issidris observed somberly, wondering how ugly desecration could ever be confused with religious ceremony by anyone capable of even the most rudimentary reason.

"Yes!" Shan replied, impressed as always by the taciturn woman's ability to quickly grasp salient truths. "It was believed that once a woman was subjected to horror of the inquisitions, she could be redeemed through indoctrination into the Rha-Sheem. Yet to demonstrate their worthiness to receive this great honor, the women were first required to efface the source of their corrupting power."

Again, Issidris shook her head in revulsion, unable to process the notion that someone could be so ceaselessly arrogant as to conscript the very women they'd abused into the service and propagation of their odious, lunatic theology. She expressed this disbelief to Shan, who merely nodded and with a doleful sigh, remarked, "The faculty for this extreme misogyny has always dwelt within the psyche of the Majeeri male...waiting for the right catalyst to induce it to the fore."

Issidris wagged her head and scowled, wondering if this was an inherent truth that extended to all men.

"I discovered this rather demoralizing fact at a young age, Issidris, while still living with my parents near the northern village of Faz-Shul along the remote northern coast of Majeer. My father was an affluent man, on a minor scale, and I grew up in a home that was blessed with comfort and prosperity. I truly believed that both he and my mother, Kasande, loved me unremittingly. Even then, at the age of fourteen, I was cognizant of the fact that I was...a beautiful girl poised on the edge of womanhood. You see, on her fourteenth name day, a girl becomes a woman in the eyes of Majeeri society...ready for the marriage bed. Still, in my naiveté, I truly believed that my father loved me every bit as much as he loved my brothers."

"I remember standing in the grand hall of our estate on the day I turned fourteen, glowing with pride while my father had offered a toast in my honor to the guests who had come to celebrate the occasion. He had heralded me as the diamond of Majeer, whose unparalleled beauty was a blessing from the divine Thaz Ekai himself. He proclaimed that mine was a beauty without equal beneath the divine's blessed sky."

Green eyes focused squarely upon grating memories that Issidris could still see burned vividly in her mind, Shan continued, "After my father had concluded his effusive toast, the guests had stood as one to offer their tribute, raising a lusty cry of appreciation that had left me shivering. It was then that I was struck by the first of the terrible epiphanies that would soon come to dominate my wretched life. I could feel the collective weight of every eye upon me...everyone, even my own father, was gazing at me with unmistakable variations of the same emotion...avarice."

It was then that I realized that for all of my enormous beauty...or more correctly, because of it...Shan-En Naroon was nothing more than an object. I was something to be coveted or jealously possessed. Who I was, the soul which resided inside this body that everyone lusted after...these were of no more consequence than the nature of a breeding stallion...less perhaps. I discerned that mine was a future where I would never be valued for the sharpness of my intellect or the appeal of my wit. My worth would be measured solely in the merit of my beauty...much in the way that one might appraise the value of a decorative vase, a finely crafted table or an exquisite rug.

Shan fell silent then; her pensive gaze informing Issidris that Naroon was pondering the terrible injustice of being objectified. Trying to restrain her sardonic reaction to this grave injustice, Il remarked, "I'm afraid it's difficult for me to empathize, Shan. I have never been regarded as beautiful by anyone...inside or out."

Shan's eyes widened and she shook her head, stammering, "No...no, Issidris. I am not saying that this warrants your pity." She then laid her fingertips on Il's wrist and quickly withdrew them. "To me, your inner strength, your ferocity and self-assurance are more beautiful than I can possibly convey. I just wanted you to understand that women were regarded as attractive chattel long before Thaz Ekai ever cast his insidious spell over Ekaz Azeer and the men of Majeer.

Issidris shrugged and pursed her lips as if the governing realities that held court in the lives of the average woman were of very little personal concern to her. "The things you've described...the lot of women in general, while lamentable and unjust, is the way of the world...and as I can personally attest, not just in Majeer, but everywhere."

Shan greeted this cursory acceptance with a dissatisfied frown. "Because this is and perhaps always has been the way of the world does not automatically mean that women should blithely accept that it must remain as such...that we should submissively bow to the status quo."

"Perhaps Shan, but most women are docile, meek flowers and it has been my personal experience that you cannot turn sheep into wolves," Issidris countered in a manner that suggested that she only marginally cared one way or the other.

"I would contest that Lissom would strongly disagree. The Sisters of Esotaria and the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen are auspicious proof that women can change their fates...seize control of their destinies if they can conjure the will to do so." When Issidris showed no intention of pursuing the issue, Shan resumed the sad chronicle of her own journey. "In retrospect, I understand how simplistically ingenuous my perception of the world was then. I genuinely believed that my life would unfurl in accordance to a plan of my own devising. Who I would marry, where I would live and the way in which I would live my life; these things I felt certain would be dictated by the carefully considered desires of my heart." Here Shan shook her head in self-disdain and spat, "What a blithe fool I turned out to be. Starting with the epiphany on my name day, every delusion, every misperception I'd foolishly entertained toppled over like standing stones in a game of tiles."

Shan reached for her goblet and took a long draft of Naseen before continuing, "Less than three months after my fourteenth name day, my father informed me that I was betrothed to Izak Musan, governor of Northern Majeer and one of the wealthiest men beneath Thaz Ekai's infinite sky. Musan was also thirty-five years my senior, but the influence such a marriage would have upon my family status was invaluable to my father and above my mother's distraught objection he did not hesitate to capitalize upon his precious diamond."

"And life with this Izak Musan was...difficult?" Issidris asked, knowing that this supposedly doting father had bartered his beautiful daughter for influence.

Shan's expressive green eyes assumed a wistful gleam then and she recalled, "I remember staring out over the ocean throughout the long carriage trip to Musan's estate and wondering what might lie across its mysterious waters and what it might be like to be a gull...free to sail the skies on the thermal currents, unconstrained by the perplexing demands that accompany being a beautiful object."

"When I arrived at Musan's estate, I was reduced to utter speechlessness by its grandeur...by the almost unfathomable opulence in which this man lived. I had once thought of my father's estate as lavish, but when juxtaposed against Izak Musan's sprawling cliff top estate, the home of my birth seemed positively dowdy."

"Once my carriage came to a halt in the estate's expansive courtyard, I was greeted by a tall woman, veiled in a royal blue tendra. Without introduction or preamble, she gently but firmly gripped my wrist and whisked me through the huge arched doors. I was led on a dizzying race through the interior and can clearly recall how my senses were thoroughly dazzled by the splendor of the mansion...opulence on a magnitude that struck me as obscene."

"The whirlwind ended when we reached a plant and frond choked atrium, dominated by a massive fountain. The fountain was adorned by a bronze sea nymph that gushed streams of scented water from her nipples and womanhood. I gasped in wonder at this flagrantly carnal rendering, but my escort bid me to be seated on an ornate wooden bench to await Musan's arrival. She moved to withdraw, but paused at the entrance and inclined her chin in my direction. "You truly are a beautiful creature." After a momentary pause, she added, "and a fitting replacement."

"Then she was gone, leaving me perplexed and unsettled by her parting remark."

"Moments later, Izak Musan strode into the atrium, his leather sandals slapping loudly on the tiled floor. He was a corpulent man on the verge of fifty, who appeared soft and fragile from his gout-twisted toes to the swaying jowls of his multiple chins. His head was large and his face bulbous, crowned by a ring of white, wispy hair. Beneath the cloying perfume he wore, I caught the slight undercurrent of sour sweat."

"Was your father aware of Musan by more than reputation?" Issidris inquired somberly, suddenly thinking that Shan's father was every bit as despicable as her own.

"He was," Shan allowed without further elaboration. With a visible shudder of revulsion, she recalled, "My first thought upon seeing him was that I was betrothed to this swine...that he would have me in his bed!"

"Then I looked into his eyes and though my first thought had been to flee...to run even if it meant my death, I saw in those terrible eyes a singular truth that made me stay. In those viper's eyes I gleaned that this was a man who would have no tolerance for perceived slight or insult. It was the thought of my mother suffering this fat jackal's wrath that stayed my flight."

"I can still feel the repulsive weight of his gaze as he ordered me to disrobe. He proceeded to inspect my naked body as if I was a prized animal, prodding and squeezing...but I refused to show fear or intimidation in the face of this humiliating ordeal. Finally, he stepped back and like the potentate he believed himself to be, declared, "Your father is an obsequious, preening goat, but even he did not do full justice to the enormity of your beauty. You may put your clothes on."

"He proceeded to disclose the terms of our relationship. He fully expected my respect, loyalty and obedience...making it exceedingly clear that my failure to comply would be met with harsh and immediate consequences. Somehow, the defiant spark which burned in my heart prompted me to ask if I could expect the same from my future husband."

Issidris grimaced, knowing full well the response this display of impertinence was likely to provoke. Shan offered Il a humorless grin. "Musan was deceptively quick for an obese swine. The blow snapped my head back, but I stubbornly refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me fall. Instead I glared at him like a duelist and he laughed. He then told me that if I met his expectations, I would live like a pampered queen, but if I defied or disappointed him, I would come to envy the most abject beggar."

"He went on to tell me that the woman who had ushered me into the atrium would be my servant...and that my desire would be her duty. When I asked if she was a slave, Musan informed me that she was his first wife...who would now groom me to take her place."

Issidris shook her head, continually amazed that her opinion of men never seemed to reach a nadir. With a doleful sigh, Shan observed, "So you see, Issidris, I was wrong when I said that I was comparable to an ornate vase because the truth was even less complimentary. That vase would only grow in value, whereas my beauty would fade and in time, I would be supplanted. When this deplorable swine had consumed the last of my vitality, I would be set aside like a used up slattern...given over to serve another wretched creature whose youthful charms were more enticing."

Here, Shan fixed Issidris with an incisive gaze that concisely conveyed the full spectrum of disillusionment she'd suffered over the course of her lifetime. "At that exact moment, I could envision a fate no more cruel or dreadful. As fate and the inexorable march of time would have it, Thaz Ekai's beguiled prophet would disabuse me of this childish notion."

"Over the years that followed, I would arrive at yet another misguided conclusion; if I could conceive of a way to make myself indispensable to Musan, perhaps I could avoid the grim fate that befell his first wife, now my servant. To that end, I made a concerted effort of learning everything about every facet, every incremental detail of his vast business holdings. This seemed to amuse Musan as if one of his prized horses had suddenly developed an interest in politics and he indulged me by taking the time to explain the rudiments of his business ventures. Making sure that I considered every factor carefully, I contrived of an idea that might see one of those interests grow modestly. When I initially put this suggestion forth with all of the deference and humility I could muster, Musan had been displeased and cautioned me against the perils of meddling in things that were beyond my station and capacity to grasp."

Shan conjured a bitter grin against this cursory dismissal. "Some days later, he approached me and casually allowed that my suggestion had not been without merit...and any further notions I had would not be entirely unwelcome."

"As you describe him, that must not have been an easy concession for him to make," Issidris observed.

"No, but over time, he did come to regard me in a new light, which made my life less...onerous. He would occasionally solicit my advice and when I demonstrated a surprisingly natural aptitude for business, he even invested me with minor responsibilities in overseeing the estate staff and business."

Her instinctive grasp of the sad way of things in the world prompted Issidris to remark, "but this period of grace didn't last."

"No...when Thaz Ekai's madness began, it permeated everything. Under its insane thrall there were no dispensations for rank...no immunity or exemptions for social station. When Azeer's inquisitors arrived at Musan's estate, I was turned over without even the most perfunctory protest. My last sight of Izak Musan was through the bars of the wooden box I'd been loaded into. Perhaps it is my foolish caprice making me believe it was so, but I am certain that I'd discerned a flicker of regret in his watery eyes as the wagon carrying my cage pulled out of his courtyard. Like my mother and father, I never did discover what became of Izak Musan. Though it could never be said that I cared for him...I did come to despise him far less than I ever thought I might."

"From there, I was taken to this very place and in the bowels of Enom-Zhar, I was subjected to endless questioning, disrupted only by every torture and abjection imaginable. I was violated, beaten and even urinated upon...left without food and water in my own filth like an animal. Yet, somehow, I found the ferocious determination never to be broken. I could accept hideous death at the hands of these monsters, but I would never give them the satisfaction at seeing me grovel or plead."

"Time loses all meaning in that kind of hell and it seemed to me like my ordeal lasted for an eternity. I remember stirring from a torpor to find a man standing before the bars of my cell, regarding me intently with the most beautiful, expressive eyes I'd ever seen. He was dressed in an argent robe that seemed to shimmer with its own effulgence. In my wretched state, I thought he might be a vision come to deliver me from my plight. In a perverse way, I suppose that was precisely what he was."

"This was Ekaz Azeer," Issidris remarked with a knowing nod.

Shan wagged her head as her green eyes dulled with a dolorous shadow. "He had come to offer me redemption if I accepted the position of Matron of this fledgling Rha-Sheem. He told me that I could be elevated to a position of glory in the blessed service of Thaz Ekai...if I would confess my wicked sins and make an act of contrition."

"The symbolic disfigurement," Issidris breathed sourly.

"Yes...and I accepted because I came to glean...that as was the case with Izak Musan, if I could ingratiate myself in this monster's service, I could maneuver myself into a position of advantage. Unlike Musan, who I had only wished to manipulate...Ekaz Azeer I wanted to murder. I agreed to be his lethal marionette and finally, I saw that iniquitous bastard dead by my hand. In the process, however, I indelibly stained my soul beyond any hope of reclamation."

Shan fell silent then, the luster suddenly waning in those exquisite green eyes as if recounting this harrowing tale had left her exhausted. After a moment, Issidris gave voice to a question the answer to which had eluded her since first coming to Majeer a decade earlier. "What is it you hope to achieve here, Shan...after all of the heartache and trenchant hatreds...what is the vision you hold for this seemingly irreparably fractured place?"

That light in Shan's eyes flared anew in response to this unexpected query and the strength of Shan-En Naroon's irrepressible conviction shone forth like the noon day sun. "I want to set Majeer on the path to healing, Issidris...to some form of reconciliation between the victims of Thaz Ekai's vicious misogyny and those who sat idly by while it was perpetrated. I never want what happened in Majeer to be forgotten, but I want the enmity it inspired to be banished from all who have emerged on the other side of this nightmare. I want men and women to see the inherent value in each other. I understand that this is a daunting undertaking that may take several lifetimes to achieve, but I fervently believe that, with your unfaltering strength...your support and guidance...that I can set Majeer on this healing path."

Shan gripped Issidris' wrists and in her imploring tone, Il could hear the desperation inspired by fear. "Please, Issidris, stay and help me bring Majeer back into the light...and don't leave me alone with the terrifying, unfathomable creature with whom I must share power."

15

"Yet, the next morning...you left with me," Lorio concluded, assailed by a dozen different conflicting emotions this gripping tale had roused in her tumultuous heart.

Issidris raised her head with great effort and though her voice was quavering and weak, her sadness and vexation resounded clearly in her chiding declaration. "I did...and not once, in all the years that followed...not even when I believed I was going to die in that swamp in Anangrast...did I ever regret my choice. Every meaningful moment of joy I've felt in my life was because of your presence. How could you possibly not know that, Lorio? Nothing...or no one could ever pry me away from you...except for what's to come now."

A low, strangled moan escaped Lorio's lips just as the old man called, "Land!"

The sides of the dory brushed gently against the jutting wooden dock...announcing that Lorio and Issidris' thirty year long journey had all but reached its end.

16

Feeling as if her powerful legs had been transmogrified by sorrow into unresponsive blocks of lead, Lorio gently laid Issidris in the shade of an oak tree. She stole a gaze along the narrow cart path that wound away through the forest to the east.

Reluctant to set out along a trail that would find its end in a sorrowful moment of parting that she feared might set her ablaze with grief, Lorio drifted back to the old man. Trying to disguise her acute pain with surliness, she growled, "I expect you to wait for as long as it takes. I expect you know what will happen if I come back and find you've gone."

"I'll be here...it's what I've agreed upon," the old man grumbled, indignant at the suggestion that he was devoid of honor. Lorio nodded and started to turn away, but the old man's tone became pensive and thoughtful as he inquired softly, "Your friend...is she at peace with her end?"

Lorio turned back, preparing to be angry with the old man's presumption, but seeing the light of genuine concern gleaming in his eyes, said instead, "Yes...I think she is."

The old man nodded and after reiterating his vow that he would remain as long as was required, he returned to his beloved dory.

Gathering her wavering strength, Lorio gently collected her friend and set out before her resolve wavered.

Issidris had fallen into a fitful doze and as Lorio hurried along the path as quickly as she dared, Il's frail body was assailed by a series of increasingly violent tremors. Shadows collected along the leaf-strewn path as day slowly guttered to dusk and by the time that Lorio reached the shore of Brinden Outlook, the last of the day's light was bleeding from the sky.

A brisk breeze sprang up from the Sea of Permanent Departure as a luminous full moon rose to cast the sandy strand in various hues of silver. Lorio tenderly laid the dying woman on the sand and set about building a fire...a skill which Il had taught her during the course of their long years on the road together.

When the fire was ablaze, Lorio turned her attention back to Issidris to find that her friend was watching her with the ghost of a smile on her haggard face. Though clouded with pain too huge to contemplate, Issidris' eyes were lucid. "Thank you, Lorio...for bringing me here. I believe that after all the years we've spent together...this is the place we were finally meant to be."

Lorio, who feared that should she begin to cry, she would never be able to stop, merely nodded miserably. She went to sit next to her friend and gingerly pulled Issidris' head into her lap. With tremendous effort that lanced Lorio's breaking heart, Issidris raised her head and drew something from around her neck, hampered by hands that shook badly.

Proffering it to Lorio, she explained haltingly, "This is my only keepsake...the only thing of...of sentimental value I've ever owned. My mother somehow managed to make it for me when...I was five...somehow made the hole in the stone and polished it and put it on a...piece of leather. She made me promise that...that I would wear it as...a reminder of how much...she loved me. I didn't understand then, but...I do now. I want you to have it...to make the same promise."

Lorio accepted the humble black stone and examined it through the fractured lens of her tears. The stone...now lusterless from years of handling...was very much like the woman who wore it, humble but quietly enduring. "I promise, Issidris, before whatever gods there are...I'll never take this off."

Issidris managed a wan smile. "When this is done...give me to the ocean so I...I can see what lies on the other side." She reached up and touched Lorio's face with trembling fingers. "From the very first moment we took the first step away from that village in Lamia thirty years ago...this moment was inevitable, Lorio. No matter what roads we would have followed, they would have inevitably led us to this exact place. You were gifted with immortality, while I am just a simple mortal woman, who had the good fortune to cross your path and be in your company for a time...and so it was always bound to come to this," Issidris observed, laboring to give voice to the salient truth that had always governed their relationship.

"Immortality isn't a gift...it's a dog-spawned curse," Lorio wailed, tottering on the edge of emotional collapse.

Issidris clutched Lorio's forearm weakly in a grip that had once been like a vice. With as much vehemence as her rapidly deteriorating condition could permit, she insisted, "Yours is a future of limitless possibilities. You can choose to watch the world evolve from the shadows...or thrust yourself into the great junctures of the age and help shape the world as you see fit."

Lorio shook her head, prompting hot tears to cascade over her prominent cheekbones and fall on Issidris' upturned face like warm rain, and moaned, "But what am I supposed to do without you?"

"Anything! Everything! You're immortal and every road...every possibility lies open to you. Still, to find the road to your future...perhaps you should travel back along the roads through your past." She then laid her hand on Lorio's left breast and squeezed gently, the last intimate gesture they would ever share. "If you hold me in your heart and memory...then I'll be immortal as well."

Despite the vast pain this remark induced, Lorio conjured a radiant smile and swore, "Then you'll live forever, Issidris!"

Issidris returned the smile but then the light abruptly guttered in those once fearsome eyes. Distantly, she murmured, "The sun will rise soon...hold me until it does...let it be the last thing we ever see together..."

Weeping like a child, Lorio drew the only true friend she'd ever had closer.

17

Sometime during that long night, Issidris Il passed into memory. Lorio felt her shudder and go still, leaving her alone and desolate. She kissed the top of Issidris' head, rocking her and weeping until the sun broke over the horizon in a blaze of breathtaking pink and gold.

Leaving her friend on the sandy strand, Lorio set about building the raft that would carry Issidris on her journey into mystery. When the task was completed, she laid Issidris' body on the raft and bound her hands and feet to the deck with the leather straps that Issidris had always carried in her pack. Placing the two hooked swords next to Il's thighs, Lorio then pushed the heavy raft into the water. She placed a long, lingering kiss on Issidris' forehead and whispered hoarsely, "Goodbye old friend. When you come to the other side, I want you to find a way of telling me what you find there."

She then wound a simple piece of muslin around Issidris' head to protect her face. Lorio then propelled the heavy raft out into the water, where the ocean took hold of it and began to carry her cherished companion away from her...across the Sea of Permanent Departure.

Lorio then retreated, where she watched the raft until it vanished over the distant horizon.

Fetching a sorrowful sigh, she moved off the beach, but at the head of the path, Lorio drew Issidris' small black stone from where it was nestled between her breasts. She rolled it between her right thumb and index finger before returning it to the spot where it would remain for the eternity that stretched before her.

Smiling, Lorio...daughter of dust before the wind...set forth along the road to her unending future.

Epilogue

The hand of fate is often a cruel and remorseless instrument, scribing depraved twists, fraught with cataclysmic upheaval and black tragedy as if to mock the tenacity of the human spirit. On rare occasions, however, the hand of fate can compose an infinitely tender verse, delivered in the guise of a doleful eulogy.

So it was with the final tale of Lorio and Issidris Il.

Like many living creatures with finely honed instincts, Issidris Il's body had whispered that her time in the world was reaching an end not long before she and her precious friend had made their way to the islands of her birth. She could feel this inevitable truth in the gradual winding down of every fiber in her being. Her strength, her speed and stunningly acute reflexes; these things had begun to fade, slowly at first and with increasing rapidity as the pair had arrived on the Ciprite Archipelago.

Issidris, for whom death had been a familiar face for the vast majority of her life, did not view her approaching end with trepidation. In truth, she had experienced an unexpected bounty of contentment in the company of the woman from whom she had become inseparable. Now, however, Issidris Il had grown weary and longed for the peace that only the eternal sleep could grant.

The prospect of her imminent end carried only one fear for Issidris and that was the notion that infirmity would cause Lorio to see her differently...as a diminished and sorry facsimile of the implacable woman to whom she'd been drawn all those years before.

In Issidris Il's complex and rigid sensibilities, to have Lorio see her thus reduced was far worse than dying. It had been her intention to spare Lorio that grim obligation by showing her the formative places of her homeland and telling the immortal the tales of how those places had forged the woman she had become when first fate had brought them together. Then she had intended to bring Lorio to Brinden Outlook...where she would tell her in emphatic terms that the time had come for them to part ways. In Issidris' genuinely well-intended desire to spare Lorio the torment of witnessing her slow decay, it never occurred to Issidris that this exile would have decimated Lorio's spirit beyond any hope of repair.

Instead, fate had intervened in an act of cold mercy that had actually spared the unsuspecting Lorio from the most insufferable of torments.

After having seen her dear friend off on her final journey, Lorio had heeded Issidris' parting advice and had followed the roads of her past in search of paths into her tomorrow. Those paths would indeed carry her through the greatest junctures of the Antiquated World's slowly unfurling future. At times, she would witness these junctures from the periphery of events, while at others, she would be the fulcrum upon which these definitive moments would hinge.

During the course of those centuries and millenniums after their fateful parting, Lorio would find friendship and love to sustain her through the ages...but she remained true to her vow never to forget Issidris Il, her greatest friend and, in truth, her greatest love.

Whenever Lorio would find herself standing in awe and wonder in the face of a glorious natural vista in some remote corner of the world, draped in a mantle of perfect solitude...or perhaps in witness of a grand moment in the flow of human endeavor...she would draw Issidris' parting keepsake from the deep valley between her breasts.

She would roll the small black stone...now perfectly smooth from centuries of constant handling...between her thumb and index finger and suddenly it seemed that Issidris would manifest beside her. Enveloped in a corona of golden light, with the ghost of a smile playing over her otherwise inscrutable face, she would share the moment with Lorio just as they had when Issidris had been alive...in contented silence.

Whatever road she elected to travel, irrespective of the imposing obstacles that fate would impose in her path, Lorio...this extraordinary daughter of dust before the wind...would face them bolstered by a serenity and immutable sense of inner peace. These were Issidris Il's enduring gifts to her beloved friend.

And what of Issidris Il...did she unravel the mystery of what might lie beyond the Sea of Permanent Departure? That is a question...the answer to which is best left to the imagination.

George Straatman

14-04-2017 to 27-06-2017

Key Places and People in Lorio and Issidris' Tale

(In order of appearance)

Kirgan Islands: An archipelago of islands at the eastern edge of the Sea of Permanent departure.

Krieg: An island in the Kirgan Archipelago.

Brinden Outlook: An island in the Kirgan Archipelago. The last known point of land in the Sea of Permanent Departure. Beyond Brinden Outlook, the ocean has never been successfully explored.

The Sea of Permanent Departure: An ocean that lies to the east of the Antiquated Lands Eastern continent.

Issidris Il: Lorio's traveling companion. A former gang leader and assassin, who becomes Lorio's closest friend and guide. A native of the Island of Ciprite.

Lorio: Lamish immortal, hybrid Morticant, mother of Brannok Dur, heroine of the Emerald Enchantress War, former Queen of Lamia, eternal wanderer and closest friend of Issidris Il.

Islena Doraux: Daughter of the Tempest and one of three Ascendant Souls of eternal conflict.

Myrhia: Mother of Iniquity, Queen of Emercia, one of the three Ascendant Souls of eternal conflict, referred to by historians as the Emerald Enchantress.

Brannok Dur: Son of Lorio, taken from his mother at birth by the Goddess Otaru Ree as price of passage through Purgatory during the great quest of the Emerald Enchantress War. Consort to Otaru Ree.

Perdwick: A deserted city on the Eastern Continent of the Antiquated Lands.

Otaru Ree: A goddess who rules over Purgatory in the Land of Shades. Also known as the Grey Goddess.

Artumas: Champion of Light, King of Emercia and one of three Ascendant Souls of eternal conflict. Lorio's staunch friend and sponsor.

Nayoro: Lorio's regent during her reign as Queen of Lamia, she becomes Queen when Lorio abdicates her throne.

Garring: An island in the Ciprite Archipelago. The Birth place of Issidris Il.

Ciprite: an Archipelago in the Sea Of Permanent Departure. Ciprite is also the name of the primary island in the chain and the Capital City of the impoverished empire.

Sisters of Esotaria: A religious order comprised exclusively of women devoted to the worship of the Goddess Gyzarayne. Upon initiation into the Sisters, women are assigned to the Stealth Rangers or the Battle Mages, depending on their physical prowess or intellect.

Lissom: The latest Ascentrix of the Sisters of Esotaria.

Ascentrix: The Goddess Gyzarayne's emissary in the tangible word, who is imbued with a measure of her power. Leader of the Sisters of Esotaria.

Gyzarayne: The female aspect of the universal deity whose dominion is over the affairs and betterment of women in the mortal world.

Goddess' Grace: When women are initiated into the Sisters of Esotaria, they receive the Goddess' Grace, returning them to the state of physical and spiritual perfection in which they were first born into the world.

Karosyn: Matrium of the Sisters of Esotaria. Later, the wife of King Artumas and Queen of Emercia.

Matrium: Selected for her wisdom, the Matrium is the Mother of the Sisters of Esotaria, whose function it is to raise the Ascentrix from birth and then serve as her advisor until she has ascended to her full power.

Lyndsyn: First Battle Mage of the Sisters of Esotaria who attempts to befriend Issidris Il.

First Battle Mage: Effectively a general in the Sisters of Esotaria who leads the Battle Mage element of Gyzarayne's order.

Emercia: The most powerful nation on the Eastern Continent of the Antiquated Lands, ruled by Artumas and then Karosyn during the course of this tale.

Nalosan: Capital City of Emercia.

Dizar Kor: Capital City of the nation of Fairmarch, the northern neighbor to Emercia.

Xhendyn: A demonic entity that seeks to release Myrhia from her state of vitiation.

CornerStone Nations: A group of three countries, consisting of Natzurdan, Jerhia and Metocan, which comprise the western continent of the Antiquated Lands.

Lamia: A fledgling nation that was created along the western edge of the eastern continent of the Antiquated Land. Initially, Lamia was ruled by Lorio and then by Nayoro after Lorio abdicated her throne.

The ShadowCaster: a mortal man from Islena Doraux's world, who is brought into the Antiquated World by Xhendyn to help free Myrhia from her state of vitiation.

Kammlogran: An ancient castle in Nalosan that serves as the seat of power for the kings and queens of Emercia.

Kornas: A country on the eastern continent where Lorio would first encounter Islena Doraux.

Reyfort: A Suran rogue who is conscripted by Xhendyn to seduce Lorio.

Hamelin: A village in Fairmarch.

The Laughing Widows Inn: An Inn in Hamelin where Lyndsyn commits suicide after being rejected by Issidris Il.

Rurhic Zan: Proprietor of the Laughing Widows Inn.

Morticant: An indestructible golem created from clay and animated by Myrhia's sorcery.

Hybrid Morticant: A combination of a human immortal and a golem. Lorio is the only living Hybrid Morticant in known existence, raised to this state by Myrhia's sorcery during the Emerald Enchantress War.

Sygeanor: Half-Ulgak, powerful telepath. Sygeanor is the illegitimate daughter of Kyros. She harbors an immutable hatred toward Lorio, who killed her father.

Kyros: A member of the Inner Circle, rulers of Metocan, who is killed by Lorio while attempting to abduct Islena Doraux.

Thasron: A village in Northern Lamia.

Othgol: The Capital City of Metocan.

Brexiter: Capital City of Lamia.

Gillian: Jerhia master swordsman, quest member. Later, Royal Consort to Queen Nayoro of Lamia.

Maxim Tier Marshal Maroc: Leader of the military counsel of Jerhia.

Tier Marshal Arminda: Jerhia Soldier and eventually, Tier Marshal, quest member.

The Sea of Prevailing Mystery: A vast ocean to the south of the Antiquated Lands.

Lake Sonier: A massive lake located in the Nation of Anangrast.

Anangrast: A nation on the eastern continent of the Antiquated Lands.

Anator: The Capital City of Anangrast.

Korsarcan Mountains: A rugged and remote mountain range in the northern wilds of Anangrast.

Vorn: A former Redian mercenary and leader of a band of brigands that terrorizes the northern region of Anangrast.

Redia: A country located at the northeastern edge of the eastern continent of the Antiquated Lands. Redia is notorious for producing mercenaries and outlaws.

Captain Esuruban: Captain of Artumas' personal guard and former friend and lover of Lorio. Esuruban is the only man who Lorio ever truly loved.

Nieran: A village in Western Anangrast along the shores of Lake Sonier.

Suran: A small nation to the south of Emercia, renown for its artists and exceptionally beautiful people.

Dortizirian: An affluent Island State in the Sea of Permanent Departure. Home to the Sisters of Esotaria.

Khine: A port town on the Island of Krieg.

The Lighter Purse: A disreputable ale house on the outskirts of Khine.

Shan-En Naroon: A citizen of Majeer. The Matron of the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen (formerly, the Rha-Sheem).

Majeer: A single nation, continent-sized island located leagues south of the Antiquated Lands, across the Sea of Prevailing Mystery.

El-Sharom: The Capital City of Majeer.

Rha-Sheem-Nakreen: An order of warrior women who were once known as the Rha-Sheem, which means Legion of the Redeemed in the Majeeri tongue. Later, the Rha-Sheem would evolve to become the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen or Legion of the Redeemed and Avenged.

Thaz-Ekai: A demon that assumed the mantle of a false god and corrupted the spirit of the men of Majeer, leading to create a theology of misogyny that saw the women of the country degraded and thoroughly subjugated.

Jakar: A port city located on the southern coast of Majeer.

Enom-Zhar: A temple in El-Sharom that first serves as the seat of power for Thaz-Ekai's theocracy and then the seat of power for the Rha-Sheem-Nakreen and Sisters of Esotaria.

Ekaz-Azeer: A prince of Majeer who is traduced by Thaz-Ekai and inculcated with the belief that all women are inherently wicked. He becomes the prophet of Ekai's mad theology.

Ritual of Abjection: A ritual in which women confess their wickedness and are then subjected to a stylized facial disfigurement after which they become members of Thaz-Ekai's Rha-Sheem.

Faz-Shul: A village located along the northern coast of Majeer. Birth place of Shan-En Naroon.

Kasande Naroon: Mother of Shan-En Naroon.

Izak Musan: Governor of Northern Majeer. Husband of Shan-En Naroon through an arranged marriage.

