Page 14 of Grimdark Magazine Issue 48

“A wound of the flesh parts you from your arrogance. From the self-deception that you are separate from your pain. That you can or should avoid it.” She paused again, her eyes warm and searching. “It parts you from your own abilities. Teaches you humility. Teaches you of your dependence on others.”

I tried to shush her. “We can speak of these things later. You’re hurt—”

“But these are partings that follow from wounds of the flesh. They’re cruciations of skin and bone.” Her words sounded as though she spoke of childhood lessons. “Talenfoier,” she said with sudden seriousness, “teaches partings of other kinds. Partings that remove the illusion of unqualified loyalty and trust. These cruciations scar the heart. They work at the soul’s tender needs. To harden you. Make you ready for battle. For life.”

That imminent-hurt feeling thickened in the air again.

Seelia nodded, as if feeling it herself. “Your branding tomorrow will not be one, but two,” she said. “One for your second cruciation ... and another for me.”

I stared down at her, reeling with understanding.

“I’m so sorry, Vendanj.” One of her tears stole down over the pitch now hardening on her cheek. “I was placed in your room to play on your mercies. To earn your trust and friendship, and then convince you to expend your Sheason arts on my behalf ... leaving none for yourself.” She paused again, looking up at me with deep regret. “I was to keep you weak, so you would die.” I understood her look of shame when she said, “I am your third cruciation.”

My heart was hammering from the revelation of her betrayal. And I did feel parted. Parted from trust and loyalty. Parted from a friend. Our days and evenings together hadn’t been the idling of hours. She’d filled that time with meaning, companionship. Dear absent gods, she’d given me the tools and will to suffer through the brands. This secret we’d shared ... it was intimate. Lifesaving.

I was sick at heart, weaker in spirit than I’d been since my first day of cruciation. And it had nothing to do with the pain in my body. I had lost faith in people. And I didn’t give a damn just then about retrieving the ThousandFold steel.

Then, looking at her pitch-covered cheeks, I remembered the expression on her face just before she’d begun teaching me Valutara. It had shown a weighing of consequences for betraying some trust. Looking at her now, my thinking cleared. “Teaching me the footings of Valutara ... that wasn’t part of your plan, was it? Otherwise you wouldn’t have been punished.”

“My punishment was light,” she replied dismissively.

I began to smile, tempering it only so she wouldn’t feel mocked. “Your betrayal is incomplete, though, isn’t it? Incomplete because you gave me tools to cope with the pain, so I was able to avoid death.”

“My punishment was light,” she repeated.

It was hard to imagine she was being honest. She would be disfigured when the pain of these burns was long behind her. Her face was ruined. The skin a man would see when she removed her shirt would be a layer of raised tissue that would catch the light with a dull gleam. There would be long shame, and loneliness.

Her duplicity had been meant to break my spirit if I was able to withstand the simpler cruciations of the body. In that moment I had caught another glimpse at the deeper part of Talenfoier. A truer part. A part closer to the refinement it was meant to cause.

But something had changed during our evening walks. We had become friends. And my friend had just been painted down with hot pitch for helping me.

I didn’t wait or ask her permission. I settled my mind and aligned my own inner strength. I focused my thoughts on healthy tissue, and gave my rendering the full energy of my body. I caused the pitch to peel away and drop like a shell from her renewed skin. I took private pleasure in that image.

After healing her physically, I imparted to her my thanks. And so that she would understand some of why I did all this, I shared with her a few memories. I wished to place in her heart some context for the person I was. So, I shared losses. The deepest kind. And I shared nights of small-hour conversation, the kind friends have when the world sleeps and they speak of their most intimate thoughts. Thoughts they don’t admit in the light of day, when they would seem too fanciful to be taken seriously.

As I performed my rendering, I watched the look on her face pass from gratitude to horror to concern. Her concern, I knew, came because I would have nothing left to brace myself against the Talenfoier brands.

When I was through, I slumped over her, spent. Entirely spent. I would have to rest before even standing.

“Are you all right?” There was strain in her voice, as if she was holding back what she really wanted to say.

I nodded. It was all the reassurance she needed to let go her concern.

“You shouldn’t have.”

I shook my head, smiling weakly. “Of course I should.”

“No, you shouldn’t.” This time, I caught the quiet anger and disappointment in her disapproval.

Her reaction surprised me, which confirmed how little I actually understood Talenfoier. But I still felt like she was being rather ungrateful. “I just—”

“You robbed me of bearing marks I’d earned,” she said. “What do you imagine those who tarred me will say when they see my unblemished face?”

My anger coiled, giving me back a bit of vigor. I sat up. “So what have we been doing all these days, on all these evening walks? You say you wanted me to help. But that help isn’t good enough for you? Sounds like a warm case of hypocrisy to me.”

I’d expected a bitter retort to that. Maybe a hard set of knuckles across the bridge of my nose. And frankly, I’d have preferred either to the deeper disappointment I saw creep into Seelia’s face. It’s an awful thing for a man to see from a woman he cares about.

When she spoke, her voice came softly, as a teacher with endless patience. “I understood the possible consequences of my choice to show you the footings of Valutara.” She gave a sad smile. “I would not have been ashamed to be seen with the scars of that choice.”