Chapter 10: The Glory

I stared down at Zarisha. Now that she had finished her story she seemed slowly to calm down. The desperation was repressed, and apart from that inhuman rage that shone trough, there was merely challenge in the expression she directed at me. Cynical, sarcastic challenge, her true persona still in command. 'Do your worst, show me that you are a true Questor, ' she seemed to say.

But what should I do? Someone had cast some kind of anger spell on her, or something like that. I didn't really understand much of it, apart from her obvious pain and suffering. I knew I should have paid more attention when I was taught about the mysteries! I felt useless, not for the first time. To buy me some time I clutched her claw-like hand in both of mine and bowed my head while closing my eyes. What was wrong with her? What? What?

Then, somehow, I could feel it. I could feel her, her being, sitting these two feet away from me, but also infinitely far away and intimately close. Her soul, wonderful and unique like all other souls, with all of its flaws and merits. A powerful soul, far more intelligent than my own, but also a soul that was eaten up from inside. As the wave of repulsion flooded over me I gasped from distaste. There it was, the Evil. A seed planted by a demon, a seed which had taken root and sprouted into a foul, pulsing rotting fruit of malice in the course of many days. There it was, and I now understood all about Zarisha's desperation. Her mind was being turned into that of a demon, by the Shield of Good!

What could I do to help her? What? Me, I did not know any spells or anything ... I knew nothing! Could I try ... reaching that festering parasite ... I gently extended my thoughts somehow. And then something happened. A light seemed to fill my mind. A multitude of blessed, luminous beings stood next to me. Sweet music filled my ears. In fact the actual feeling was far beyond and nothing like this at all, but this is the closest I can come to describing how it was.

"Zarisha," I said, the Glory filling me more completely than my own flesh and bone could ever hope to do.

"Yes, Master," came the reply, both far off and closer than touch.

"Rise, stand on your feet."

She rose. I did not see her doing it, but I could sense it.

"Zarisha, you asked for salvation. But salvation is not mine to give, but yours to seek. You must put love where there now is hate, joy where there now is anger, pleasure where there now is pain."

"Master, I will."

"Then seek your salvation, sweet Zarisha. But do not fear, my Shield will join yours. I will lead the way."

And I, or the glorious being I had become, draped a sheet of shimmering silver over the beating tumor of venom inside the woman's mind. It isolated it, but did not remove it. My words, I realized, had been all too true. She herself had fed the Seed of Evil with her hate, and she had to weed it out with love. It was not permitted me to uproot her mind.

Then, my work done, the Glory left me. Left me with only a lingering trace of being part of a greater, wondrous whole, like a single white little flower is a memory of the forest from which it came. For the first time I truly felt like a Questor. I looked around me at the dark room, blinking my eyes after being so long in that glorious light. There sat Quaila on a chair, looking at me with a smoldering look, a look I use to dream that women would give me. Her hair now brushed against her eyebrows and covered her ears.