Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 27

Their days were like this for a week and there was nothing for any of them except burning in their lungs, aches in their arms and a determined but weary round of Service every night.

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For Talla and her coven, the week went no better. She spent her days with V'shika, Illya and the other Virgins practising phalanx manoeuvres with the women of Form and every free moment until she had to go out to Serve reading in the Library.

Temples, she learned, did Fall - and the books always capitalized the word. The Librarian, a rather gentle Adept in her late thirties, took a liking to Talla for her devotion.

"Interested in Fallen Temples, are we?" she'd asked on the first day.

Talla, well prepared for curiosity regarding her own curiosity, had replied very earnestly, "It helps with the training in Form - to know why it is we're fighting."

If you're going to learn to fake anything, she had decided, the best thing to fake was sincerity.

From that first encounter, the Librarian had been exceedingly helpful in finding Talla all of the records, tales and legends available.

Language had changed over the centuries, despite the earnest attempts of the Temple to freeze it in place, and linguistic drift slowed her pace.

Worst of all, the translated information didn't always make sense. The records described clearly mythical stories, featuring dragons breathing fire at the command of wild men. The thrown spears of the women of Form, the stories said, tore such beasts from the skies and bolts of lightning launched forth from the High Officers of the Temple took care of what remained.

Talla wished she could be so naive as to believe such things.

Even if she wanted to believe in dragons, it never turned out such things had the capability of bringing down a Temple. The women defending it always beat the beasts back, though hundreds of them ended up turned to charcoal and ash.

'I don't have a dragon,' she thought, 'and I have no desire to burn my sisters regardless.'

The realistic accounts weren't particularly helpful either.

Of all the ways for Temples to Fall, an invading army of wild men came up as the most common. The men rarely succeeded against Temples older than fifty years. Once an area had been pacified longer than that, no army within marching distance that could do it damage.

But again, Talla commanded no barbarian armies, regardless of Zhair'lo's forays in that area.

The discovery of subtler means was her goal.

Goddesses had been assassinated. The histories mentioned this, distributed amongst the tales of lightning bolts and inexplicable building collapses. Women sometimes became angry with each other and, in contest for Ascension, Queens fought. Talla found this curious, for she had always heard that the decision was easily made: in stability Sweetness; in expansion Endowment. Why should they fight, when Goddesses served so little time anyway before the weight of the Perfections drove them to early weakening and death?

But they did fight, and the books contained no clear record of the issues at hand. Parchment, the Librarian would remind her when she asked, had not always been so cheap. There might be a disagreement over a new technology, or the disposition of a certain remote group of men, or possibly the way that the people who lived in the city were treated.

It excited Talla that the High Officers of the Temple cared enough to start a lethal battle amongst themselves over the privileges of the people around them. The Temple, it turned out, was not some monolithic entity bent on making her life miserable.

And if, after a Goddess died, the Queens fought for Ascension, there was always the chance that one of them could lose a Sorceress too. This was how some Temples Fell.

Again, though, Talla had no way to get Queens to kill each other. Still, if one were to count dragons, she had found three different ways to attack a Temple and she'd only been at it a week.

So she read more histories, stopping only for dinner and reading more until she had to go out to Serve.

The stories always went on to describe the chaos that followed the collapse of the Goddess's power: unbelievable nonsense about the men of the city turning wild and killing each other before turning on the women of the Temple. Talla didn't quite put such tales in with the myths of dragons, but she was too wise to believe that the boys she had sex with almost every night of the week would suddenly attack her.

In the end, each story had a happy ending, with the necessary Conduits coming in from remote cities to restore the Perfections and let a new Goddess Ascend to the Obsidian Throne.

'When I make this Temple Fall,' she thought, 'I'll make sure to destroy the throne. I never want to be ruled again.'

There was a dogged relentlessness about her. Amongst the repetitive tales, the quest she had set herself often seemed pointless, but she reassured herself that accumulating the knowledge of the library gave her the best path forward.

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For Maksa, the week was frenetic.

With the permission of her Sorceress, she prepared a list of requests to be sent to Beshenna.

The biggest question to ask, "What data did Beshenna have?"

Not knowing what her sisters of another city held in their records, she was forced to take guesses and ask more questions. Every time she thought she had the right set of questions, however, she realized an important item she had missed, or a word choice that had been ambiguous.

Maksa had her numbers and her charts. She could take guesses as to how various lineages of women fared when it came to producing Heroes, Catatonics and Enraged but that was taking her measurements at one remove from their true sources.

She really wanted to know how women acted when a Temple fell, but the exact nature of the differences between their normal actions and their actions during a Fall had to be left to the discretion of the people who held the records.

'Find me every report on any odd behaviour of women during the Fall of Beshenna in 788,' she wrote for what had to be the ninth time. 'The most important records are those relating to criminal court proceedings and genealogies of any women who were found to have committed unusual crimes during the three weeks before the Temple was restored.'

Maksa would write on like this for some time, trying to cast as wide a net as possible in her search for the ways in which women might be affected by the strange inheritance that so deeply controlled the fortunes of men.

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By the time Maksa had finished composing her letter and had her Mistress carefully seal it for delivery to their co-conspirators in Beshenna, Zhair'lo and the other seven Recruits were beginning their second week of weapons training.

After the first seven exhausting days, they approached their practice field with a wary look in their eyes, for the wooden dummies had been replaced by their instructors, clad in thick leather armour.

"At the end of this week," Sergeant Yung promised them on the eight morning, "you'll be ready to run four patrols in a day. That would be enough, should you have the need, to reach the northeastern Barracks. For now we will curtail the patrols in favour of more intellectual exercises while we also improve your sword skills."

"Now we will find out how well you've been paying attention," the Sergeant explained. "These soldiers will now attempt to strike you, using the same attacking poses against which you have been practicing the past week."

"Boys first, girls in the second row. Let us begin."

Within a bell, it was clear to Zhair'lo that the instructors were not above using pain to teach their lessons. They weren't stupid, so they used wooden swords, but they could still deliver a painful blow to make it clear to each Recruit where his or her weaknesses laid.

Zhair'lo discovered his weaknesses were everywhere, but didn't let that trouble him. He knew they wanted to teach him to use a sword, and if they chose this method, it had to be the fastest way possible. If there were bruises, so be it. Wherever he went, whatever plan he and Talla hatched, it wouldn't hurt to own sword fighting excellence amongst his skills.

The more interesting lessons, however, were the ones they took when their overworked arms and battered bodies couldn't function on the field anymore. It surprised Zhair'lo to find that Fighter doctrine maintained that every person in the Barracks had to understand the tactics they used.

"A soldier who knows the entire strategy of the battle will fight better for the knowing," Sergeant Yung explained. "And confidence in the plan will put stone in her spine."

Fighters kept nothing from each other in this respect. Everyone went into every battle knowing the goal and the path to it. And each of them knew his or her part.

They examined maps, again and again, of real battlefields: both open places where barbarians had approached cities and closed in camps like the place where Berel and Merelda's tribe had lived.

Sergeant Yung would ask them how they would prepare for the battle. Where would the archers go? Where would the swordsmen stand? Where would reserves be hidden? They learned about the dangers of crossfire, the values inherent in high ground, surprise and drawing first blood.

When engaging larger, more powerful opponents, their instructors would describe other methods, and here Zhair'lo paid very close attention, for his intended opponent maintained a very large population indeed.

Weak spots, Sergeant Yung advised, had to be found.

A tribe might be tight on water, so a few dead animals could be dropped in a river upstream from where they drank. Another might be short on food, so repeated Hunts could starve them out. If worst came to worst, stray barbarians could be picked off until the tribe was too weak to pose a threat, but this meant killing a lot of people that could otherwise serve fruitfully in the city.

No, cutting off some vital supply was wiser, so as to drive the invaders to near starvation and offer them a hand up once catastrophe put them on their knees. More peaceful outcomes were produced that way.

At night, when Zhair'lo had finished with whomever came up in the cycle, he would converse with Talla.

She would regale him with the histories she had been reading and he would invite her to guess at the Temple's weaknesses.

'What about the water?'

'What about it, Zhai?'

'Could we poison it like they do to barbarians? Do something to that aqueduct?'

'It's insanely well guarded, first of all,' Talla replied. 'And second, we'd be killing ourselves and our friends.'

Therein laid the problem with most of the ideas in Zhair'lo's head. Each possibility suggested by the tactics used against barbarians would bring suffering on the wrong target. That was why the Synergist store was so tempting. It attacked the power of the Temple with such accuracy it would be the envy of any Hunter who had ever notched an arrow.

Both Zhair'lo and Talla exuded supreme confidence toward the idea that the Temple had a weakness. There remained only the matter of finding and exploiting it.

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Maksa knew that it would take eight days for a message and its response to make its way around between Gern and Beshenna, and that such speed required either hell-bent runners from Form or riders on horseback in both directions.

She consequently expected nothing for at least two weeks and had been surprised to have been summoned to Principia Pussy to "discuss a message". Even if something important had come through, Maksa regarded her work in the catacombs as far too important to be interrupted, an evaluation with which her Mistress agreed. Why wouldn't the Sorceress of Pussy simply tell her about the message during the daily inspections she made of Maksa's work?

These and other mysteries would hopefully be revealed to her.

As she entered Sweetness Hall, she gave the guards a polite nod and ascended the stairs to the second floor. The women on the floor, busy as always, seemed to Maksa as a little more frenetic than usual. It still hadn't been established what had caused so many women to fall unconscious that night two weeks before. Working underground, as she often did, Maksa had briefly been concerned for her own safety, but the engineers from Strength had assured her the chance of a fume of any kind getting into her work area rated as infinitesimal.

Still, she felt the quiet tension on the fine marble floor, as those women in their skimpy orange outfits went about their work.

'One day,' Maksa cast jealous eyes on their clothing, 'I'll be dressed like you.'

She paused at the top of the stairs to glance down at the single yellow sash that covered her left breast. It would have to do for now.

There were more Enforcers from Form than usual guarding the entrance to her Mistress's Offices. Maksa walked past them and through the floor of Principia Pussy, where a slew of busy women studiously ignored her. She slipped through the doors of the rearmost office where the Sorceress of Pussy held court in the waning evening sunlight.

Along with the Sorceress, six Officers and two Adepts sat on spartan couches around a low wooden table. A roll of parchment, bearing the signs of having been opened and hastily rerolled, held the centre of the otherwise empty surface.

"Seal the doors, Maksa," Pussy's voice dripped with worry.

"What's wrong?" Maksa barred the door and approached the group.

Pussy held up a warning finger before reaching down to her waist to untie her simple work skirt. Following suit, the Officers undid their skirts, after which the Adepts slid out of their grass skirts and underwear. Maksa had the easiest effort of all, removing her bottom while still standing. Satisfied that all conspirators had demonstrated awareness of the gravity of the situation, the Sorceress went on.

"We have received a message from Beshenna," Pussy waved a timid finger at a long scroll of parchment in front of her. "She has some concerns."

Two of the Officers stretched out the roll of parchment. To Maksa's eyes, it appeared to be a manifest, listing various supplies and their current and expected availabilities over the next several months.

"A code?" she asked.

"Yes, a well practised one," one of the Officers put in. "The Sorceress of Pussy in Beshenna fears that our enterprise is on the brink of being discovered."

That explained the worried looks accumulating around the table.

"Form is catching on?" Maksa wondered.

It would make sense. If there was one group of people who would absolutely abhor the genetic games Pussy was playing, it would be the egalitarian rule makers in Form.

"The Queen of Endowment, believe it or not," the same Officer tapped an innocent looking number on the parchment. "The woman has become so suspicious she nearly caught our Goddess's baby being brought in. They accomplished a narrow escape, apparently."

"But the baby has been renamed?"

"Yes, but Pussy in Beshenna has had to be much more careful with the records," the Officer replied. "At Endowment's behest, Form has begun counting every bottle of breast milk in the nursery."

Maksa considered this for a moment. She knew from experience that the Temple kept very careful records where births and deaths were concerned. In that case, there would have to be evidence whenever a baby that shouldn't exist suddenly had to live somewhere and have parents and all the rest. She'd assumed the conspiring genealogists of Pussy would have developed a foolproof system by now.

"What of my request?"

"Your request?" Pussy replied. "It would have crossed paths with this message somewhere in the wilderness"

"I hope it won't cause problems," Maksa grimaced.

"No," Pussy shook her head in assurance. "It is not permitted for anyone but the recipient of a message to break a Sorceress's wax seal."

Maksa tilted her head, noting the green seal on this message and wondering at the need for encryption, but said nothing.

"All we can do from here is increase our vigilance," the Sorceress straightened as she spoke. "In time, Pussy of Beshenna will furnish us with details of what aroused suspicion in her city. We will be careful to make sure we do not draw attention to our efforts in the same way."

"There's nothing in there about what tipped off Endowment?" Maksa asked.

Pussy shook her head.

"I don't suppose we can let off on our attempts to build stronger Goddesses either, can we?"

The Officers, as one, looked at Maksa first, then at their Mistress.

"No," Pussy said firmly. "We can not afford that."

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In the building heat of late morning, four boys and four girls stood in a practice field, lined up as they always did. Though their arms and legs had leaned out, their hearts strengthened, and their bodies readied for a fight, none of these changes compared to the gritty hardness in their eyes.

"Recruits," Sergeant Yung sang out. "Two weeks of weapons training have now passed. What started with wooden dummies has ended with basic training against moving opponents. I do not want you to think that you are as capable as veteran Fighters, but you would probably survive a battle if we had to send you in to one."

Did eight chests rise at the compliment?

"Probably," the Sergeant emphasized. "Don't get too proud."

Zhair'lo held in a smile. This was the way Fighters joked with their own.

"Today you have a last few patrols to run," he began walking along their lines. "Out and back in both directions. When you get back this evening, we'll have a little party for you."

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Twenty kilometres amounted to a nontrivial amount of running, especially now that 'running' included an expectation of carrying real swords on their backs. The female Recruits carried the shorter swords they'd spent the latter week training with, but they also carried bows.

Zhair'lo got the worst deal of all, as his burden included both a full size sword and a bow with a quiver of arrows. There were tricks he alone had been taught for drawing one or the other. The most important warning involved never trying to draw his sword while it was sheathed on his back. The sheath only rode there while he ran. Once battle neared, it had to be shifted to his waist, which would make it easy to draw and also make his bow available.

When they came to a stop at one of the way stations, he would watch the Ranger Hera make the procedure look damned easy. Seeing her smooth movements, Zhair'lo realized how much practice and drill she must have put it into simple things like moving a sword off her back and retying it at her belt.

By the time they completed their fourth and last patrol of the day, the evening sun cast long shadows perpendicular to the wall of the Barracks they now approached.

By the end of the fourth run, Zhair'lo's legs approached rubber status. Two weeks of weapons training had certainly toughened him, but they'd never run four patrols in a single day before. Real Fighters, however, did this all the time. He glanced at Sergeant Yung, who had been with them all day. Whereas Zhair'lo was drenched in sweat, the Sergeant wasn't even breathing hard.

They slowed down when they came within hailing distance of the Barracks' south facing gate.

Sergeant Yung bellowed out the code phrases in a voice that couldn't possibly come from a person who had just finished a five kilometre encumbered run.

Relief flooded Zhair'lo as the gates opened.

"Hit the armoury and the showers quickly, all of you, and then get to the mess for some water," the Sergeant's shouted. "No time to waste. Move! Move!"

Spurred on by the urgency in his voice, the Recruits bolted forward, followed immediately by two squads of Veterans. The showers, consequently, were packed full of naked bodies. One moon ago, that many naked women would have had Zhair'lo dying for Service, but no matter how strong their legs or how massive their breasts, there wasn't enough energy left in his body to manage an erection in the first place, never mind the chill he got when Zia hit the lever to douse them both with a cold spray of water.