Recent content by Priestess Marta Maisal

Daelin with a small motion cracked his neck. "So you want me to take it." And like a leopard that had stalked its prey through long grass and came now to the point of pouncing, so Daelin's muscles tensed. So his body made ready to lunge. So he committed to his assault. Yet there was one thing...

Daelin missed his mark, and with a thrust of his body backward, so did Emelia. Marta, then, attempted to intervene. A quick flight of her hand saw her fist, if obliquely, connect with his cheek. But now entangled by closeness, her arms and his arms grappling madly for advantage, Marta and...

"You can talk," said Daelin to Emelia. "Don't pretend like you can't." "I have but one question for you, Daelin." "And that is?" With stern reprimand, and yet also with a hint of sorrow for another life subsumed by Chaos, Marta said, "Why? When you could have committed in earnest to all you...

With the way clear, Thurbin's fate would be hastened along to its inevitable conclusion. Marta stepped forward, and she knelt down, and she endured the scorching glare of Thurbin's final regard as she delivered the killing stroke, and thus did the light of life—however spiteful it was—depart...

Marta's eyes fell to Thurbin after the knife was plunged into him. His mouth was wide with a breathless scream, as soundless as Emelia's words, and yet even as it was done anger still twisted his face. Exhausted and hoarse and weak from his agony and his shock, what small and vile words he was...

Marta looked upon Emelia's arms and inexorably her gaze softened. How could it not? For the scars wove together a story without words, an implication of dreadful weight. Emelia's life had been marred, and thus was it the nature of pain to beget more pain. How many nightmares had she suffered...

Hopeless were Marta's attempts to make sense of Emelia's gestures—save the last, of course. But what spoke more true than any motion of the hand were her eyes. Ugly. Cold. Filled with death. She had a pale light in her eyes worse than any of the men in the cellar, dead or yet living. Here it...

Marta reached the door of the cell, and here was met with a decision unlooked-for. She endeavored to go to Daelin, yes, and to question him, perhaps even achieve in him some measure of contrition before the demands of justice need be satisfied. When the contest between Marta, Emelia, and their...

And that was one removed from Arethil. Not as glorious a thing as enemy soldiers felled in battle, yet the Right Ordering could be upheld and rectified in ways both small and grand. Marta stood. Haste was on her mind. No sound issued from the stairway, and if there were other men in the...

Delusion consumed the old man, so Marta could plainly see. Delusion, or some grand form of arrogance, powerful enough to shut out the truth relayed by his eyes and ears. Fair enough. Let it be his undoing. There was indeed a delightful kind of poetry in that, something oft retold in myriad forms...

Those critical seconds before the Bodyguard's arrival played out each in their own way for Marta and Emelia both. But now the enthralled man had come. First he went to Marta's assailant, and both he and Marta were entangled in a struggle. With careful precision the Bodyguard stabbed him through...

In that first second, both the Kaliti men inside the cell were amused; Marta, baffled, for her impression of Emelia as a mute had just been shattered. Then came the swift sound of a sword being drawn. The Bodyguard, though his eyes—visible above the mask which covered his mouth and nose—hinted...

Men descended the stairs. First came Daelin—in whom Marta's disappointment had become immeasurable. The same two Kaliti muscle-men came as well. Then came an as yet unseen man, tall and lithe and wearing black, who gave off the air of a well-trained bodyguard. And last there came an old man...

The shaking of Emelia's head gave evidence to doubt on her part. Of what, Marta could not say with certainty. Though with the volcanic look Emelia gave to the door of their cell, doubt of their deliverance seemed very much not to be it. Praetor Irene, whom Marta knew not closely but well enough...

The tightness of struggling comprehension was plain on Marta's face. Alas, she was no experienced lip reader. Unskilled as she was in the practice, only the most obvious formations of the lips—like the "h" sound of who and the "p" in poisoned—could she discern. The fullness of Emelia's meaning...