"Then it would seem to be a fortunate thing that both of our desires have been satisfied this same day," the Voice said.
Kaeritha nodded and bent her head in the slightest of bows. She straightened, rested the heel of her right hand lightly on the hilt of one of her swords, and opened her mouth to speak again.
But before she could say a word, she felt a vast, powerful presence strike out at her. It slammed over her like a tidal wave, crushing as an earthquake, liquid and yet thicker and stronger than mortar or cement. It wrapped a crushing cocoon about her, reaching out to seize her and hold her motionless, and her eyes snapped wide.
"I don't know what you intended to say, Champion," that soprano voice said, and now it was colder than a Vonderland winter and sibilant menace seemed to hiss in its depths. "It doesn't matter, though." The Voice laughed, the sound like fragments of glass shattering on a stone floor, and shook her head. "The arrogance of you 'champions'! Each of you so confident he or she will be protected and guided and warded from harm! Until, of course, the time comes for someone like your master to discard you."
Kaeritha felt the power behind the Voice pressing upon her own vocal cords to silence her, and said nothing. She only gazed at the Voice, standing motionless in the clinging web of Dark power, and the Voice laughed again and stood.
"I suppose it's possible you truly have found a way to interfere with my plans here, little champion. If so, that will be more than a mere inconvenience. You see? I admit it. Yet it isn't something I haven't planned against and allowed for all along. The time had to come when someone would begin to suspect my Mistress was playing Her little games here in Quaysar. But, oh, Dame Kaeritha, the damage I've done to your precious war maids and their kingdom first! But perhaps you'd care to dispute that with me?"
She made a small gesture, and Kaeritha felt the pressure on her vocal cords vanish.
"You had something you'd care to say?" the Voice mocked her.
"They aren't my 'precious war maids,' " Kaeritha said after a moment, and even she was vaguely surprised by how calm and steady her voice sounded. "And you're scarcely the first to try to do them ill. Some of the damage you've inflicted will stick, no doubt. I admit that. But damage can be healed, and Tomanâk -" it seemed to her that the Voice flinched ever so slightly at that name "-is the God of Truth, as well as Justice and War. And the truth is always the bane of the Dark, is it not, O 'Voice'?"
"So you truly think these stone-skulled Sothōii will actually believe a word of it? Or that the war maids themselves will believe it?" The Voice laughed yet again. "I think not, little champion. My plans go too deep and my web is too broad for that. I've touched and . . . convinced too many people-like that pathetic little puppet Lanitha, who believes Lillinara Herself commanded her to help safeguard my minor alterations so the war maids get what should have been theirs to begin with. Or those angry little war maids, each so eager to 'avenge' herself for all those real and imagined wrongs. Or your darling Yalith and her Council, who don't even remember that their documents used to say anything else. As you yourself told their fool of an archivist, those who already hate and despise the war maids-those like Trisu-will never believe that they didn't forge the 'original documents' at Kalatha. And the war maids won't believe they're forgeries either. Not after all my careful spadework. And not without a champion of Tomanâk to attest to the legitimacy of Trisu's copies . . . and to explain how Kalatha's come to have been altered without the connivance of Yalith and her Town Council. And I'm very much afraid you won't be around to tell them."
"Perhaps not," Kaeritha said calmly. "There are, however, other champions of Tomanâk, and one of them will shortly know all I know and everything I've deduced. I think I could safely rely upon him to accomplish my task for me, if it were necessary."
The Voice's brown eyes narrowed and she frowned. But then she forced her expression to smooth once again, and shrugged.
"Perhaps you're correct, little champion," she said lightly. "Personally, I think the damage will linger. I've found such fertile ground on both sides-the lords who hate and loath everything the war maids stand for, and the war maids whose resentment of all the insults and injustices they and their sisters have endured over the years burns equally hot and bitter. Oh, yes, those will listen to me, not your precious fellow champion. They'll believe what suits their prejudices and hatreds, and I will send my handmaidens forth to spread the word among them. My handmaidens, little champion, not those of that stupid, gutless bitch this place was built for!"
She glared at Kaeritha, and the knight felt the exultant hatred pouring off of her like smoke and acid.
"And to fan the flames properly," the false Voice continued, her soprano suddenly soft and vicious . . . and hungry, "Trisu is about to take matters into his own hands."
Kaeritha said nothing, but the other woman saw the question in her eyes and laughed coldly.
"There are already those who believe he connived at-or possibly even personally ordered-the murder of two handmaidens of Lillinara. He didn't, of course. For all his bigotry, he's proven irritatingly resistant to suggestions which might have led him to that sort of direct action. But that isn't what the war maids think. And it won't be what they think when men in his colors attack Quaysar itself. When they ride in through the gates of the town and the temple under his banner, coming as envoys to the Voice, and then butcher every citizen of Quaysar and every servant of the temple they can catch."
Despite herself, Kaeritha couldn't keep the horror of the images the false Voice's words evoked out of her eyes, and the other woman's smile belonged on something from the depths of Krahana's darkest hell.
"There will be survivors, of course. There always are, aren't there? And I'll see to it that none of the survivors anyone knows about were ever part of my own little web. The most attentive examination by one of your own infallible champions of Tomanâk will only demonstrate that they're telling the truth about what they saw and who they saw doing it. And one of the things they'll see, little champion, will be myself and my personal guards and the most senior priestesses, barricading ourselves into the Chapel of the Crone to make our final stand. Trisu's men will attempt to break into it after us, of course. And I will call down the Lady's Wrath to utterly destroy the chapel's attackers . . . and everyone inside it. Of course, it may not be the Wrath of the precise Lady everyone will assume it was, but no matter. The blast and fires will neatly explain why there are no bodies. Or, at least, none of our bodies."
She shook her head in mock sorrow.
"No doubt some of Trisu's fellows will be horrified. Others will be charitable enough to believe he simply ran mad, but some of them will feel he was justified in burning out this nest of perversions, especially when the question of forged documents comes to the fore. And whatever Tellian and the Crown may do, little champion, the damage will be done. If Trisu is punished while protesting his innocence and flourishing his proof of forgery, then his fellow lords will blame his liege and the King for a miscarriage of justice. And if he isn't punished-if, for example, some interfering busybody champion of Tomanâk should examine him and find he's telling the truth and had nothing to do with the attack-then the war maids will be convinced it's all part of a cover-up and that he's escaped justice. And so will be many within the Church of Lillinara."