The Twin Mountains

“You’re a freak!”

“What is that thing!?”

“I think I’m gonna vomit!”

Arid Amulet awoke with cold sweat soiling her fur from the neck up, sobbing like a newborn foal at memories half remembered. With great effort, she attempted to rise, but her commands fell on deaf and broken nerves, and only her neck, chest, and bandaged front hooves responded.

“She’s awake, my lord,” said a dry voice from beside the bed. Amulet opened her eyes to the frowning, concentrated face of a grizzly old unicorn stallion with a pointed gray beard bordering on white that matched his thickly-threaded robe.

Someone grunted to the left of the bed.

A muted-red unicorn stallion towered above, gazing down at Amulet with a hard frown and narrow yellow eyes. His sharply-pointed chin sported a short, stubbly ashen beard, and the thick blocks of hair on his brow matched suit. Amulet could see giant tufts of fur spilling out of the heavy cloak he wore, and perhaps, if she had seen the back of it or possessed the lucidity to comprehend, she may have discerned the lord’s allegiance from the colors.

“Who are you?” the stallion commanded unblinkingly.

“I… the Sun… Mount Celestia…” Amulet could taste the words in her mouth, but they tasted like copper and salt.

The lord was unfazed. “As I suspected, then. The Sun was foolish to send you here, mare. Clearly you aren’t trained as well as they must have thought.”

“... trained?”

“It must be her teleportation spell, my lord.” The gray priest gently pressed his hoof to her forehead. “She’s probably delirious, and considering the power the spell put off when she arrived, I’m surprised she’s alive at all. I’m afraid if you want any reliable information, you’ll have to wait until she’s more lucid.”

If it were possible, the lord’s frown would’ve deepened at the priest’s assessment. “It could be a ploy.”

“In addition to the most powerful teleporter I’ve ever seen, she would have to be the world’s best actress, as well.”

“Even so.” The lord nodded in affirmation of his own judgement. “Attend to her in a cell from now on. If she’s so powerful, I won’t risk her in a half-guarded bed like some noble ransom. See to it that I’m summoned when next she wakes.”

“As you command.” The priest watched contemplatively as the lord slowly and deliberately stood, turned and walked out of the room.

Before Amulet could muster the mental fortitude to ask after him, her eyelids began to droop, and the priest returned his attention to her. Grasping a small wooden cup with a red aura of magic, he half-poured the bitter contents into Amulet’s mouth, and she instinctively swallowed.

A fly buzzed through the barred window in her wooden cell door and flew about the room. First, it landed on the torchless iron sconce that was the only furnishing of the left wall. After it was satisfied there, it departed and lazily drifted upwards to the ceiling, disappearing into the shadows where the light from outside the cell failed to reach. It returned to existence just above Brother Smoke Cast’s head, only to land promptly on top of his bald head.

He didn’t notice. Arid Amulet did. She was acutely aware of every individual flap of the insects wings, its unnerving red eyes made knowing momentary contact with her own half-open ones, and the way it rubbed its front legs together atop Brother Smoke’s head made it seem to Amulet that it knew more about the goings on of the Equestrian Valley than any other one creature.

Brother Smoke brushed the bug idly away and scowled at Arid Amulet. “Have you even been listening to me, young mare?”

“Yes, brother,” she said. “Broken spinal cord, just above the shoulders. In all of your experience, you’ve never seen anyone walk after an injury like this.”

“You don’t seem too concerned about your new life as a cripple.”

Amulet didn’t say anything in answer, and continued not saying anything for several uncomfortable moments. The fly had come back and, presumably in hopes of avoiding Brother Smoke’s wrath, found a new perch at the tip of Amulet’s pale purple horn. Brother Smoke scowled at the distraction and gripped the distraction in his aura, hovering it just in front of his gaze. For a moment, a tiny flicker of black smoke rose from the aura. When the gray priest relaxed his magic, nothing but grains of dark ash fell to the ground.

For a time, the two unicorns sat in silence, or rather, Brother Smoke sat next to the sparse dungeon bed, and Arid Amulet lay upon it with expressionless eyes peering into the darkness above them both. Someone, somewhere nearby outside the cell, slammed a door, and a gust of air blew inside. The pitiful flames of the torch across the hall struggled for a moment before disappearing and bathing the cell in more darkness, leaving nothing but the faint ambient light from outside to illuminate the gray priest and the cripple.

Brother Smoke sighed and stood up to his hooves, shrugging his shoulders at the hood of his robes to better cover his head. Wordlessly, he strolled out of the cell to the snuffed torch, leaving the cell door ajar. He evidently had no concern for any attempts at escape that Amulet might concoct, and given her state of being, he was probably correct. For a moment, his face contorted into a caricature, and a short burst of flames blew lazily upon the blackened tinder atop the torch. After examining the renewed flame and determining that he was satisfied with the illumination, he strode slowly back to the cell door but didn’t enter.

“In my youth, I was considered a very powerful mage, myself, you know,” he said as he glanced up at something that wasn’t there. He shook his head, resumed eye contact with Amulet, and resumed, “My best friend was adept at teleportation and telekinesis. He could lift the heaviest things, sure, but teleportation was his passion. Once, at a tournament, I saw him teleport from the top of a pole some fifty feet high to another one… oh, it must have been half the grounds away, easily dozens of feet away. He landed right on top, without so much as a wobble, as if he’d been there the whole time. All the mares there swooned like he was a prince. Well, the unicorn mares anyway. I doubt that most of the earth ponies or pegasi even realized how impressive his feats really were.” He thought for a moment. “Of course, I was at those tournaments, as well, but… for different events.”

“What are you on about, you old sot?” Arid Amulet snapped. Brother Smoke’s brow furrowed, and his body tensed, but he quickly relaxed.

“Yes, yes, of course, my lady. My point is, that stallion was the most skilled and experienced teleporter I’ve ever met in my long life, and he must have been half again as old as you are when he was at his best, but you’re something entirely different. When I was rushed into Lord Storm Lance’s chambers two nights ago, there was snow melting on your robes and climbing equipment in your bags. It hasn’t snowed in months, and there’s only one thing for miles around worth climbing, and that’s the mountain.” A figure appeared behind Brother Smoke, silhouetted by the torch.

“Brother Smoke,” the voice of the lord, Storm Lance, spoke, “I think you needn’t not explain anything to the prisoner.” Brother Smoke frowned, but the lord continued, turning towards Amulet inside the cell. “We all know what’s going on here, and we don’t need to honey our words. Well, spy… or assassin, explain yourself. Why is the Sun interested in this city? Myself? Do your superiors have some kind of encampment on the mountain?”

“My lord! The mare is injured, even if she is a spy--”

“Of course she’s a spy, you old fool! Do you think the Sun would teleport a priestess in the middle of the night with a jug of wine and a swaying tail, or do you think she’d come with an eldritch dagger for my throat?”

“I’m not a spy!” Amulet finally shouted, interrupted the bickering. “And I’m not a priestess, either!” Storm Lance’s shoulders slumped, but his icy glare didn’t waver. Brother Smoke turned to the lord.

“Let her speak her peace, my lord. Then we can decide if she’s innocent… or a cutthroat.”

Amulet cleared her throat and made to cover her mouth with a hoof, but she choked as she was returned to reality. “I do come from the Sun, but I’m not a priestess. They took me in as a child to cure me of some… some evil thing.”

“How charitable of them.” Storm Lance remarked sardonically.

Brother Smoke raised an eyebrow. “They took you in? What happened to your parents?”

Amulet clenched her eyes shut and rolled her head back against the flat pillow. “They were there… they took me to the Sun, to get me cured.”

“And after?” Brother Smoke asked. “They just left you there?”

“No!” Amulet turned back to face the stallions. “They had to leave! They had to leave for… something.”

“You poor, blind, little girl.” There was no genuine pity in Storm Lance’s voice. “I think we have a pretty good idea of where your parents went. Damned fools.”

Brother Smoke’s frown deepened. “My lord, surely your hate isn’t so blind that you wouldn’t do the same if your children were at stake?”

“No! Do you think I’m so selfish as further their goals for my own family’s sake? There are more important things at risk here than my life or even my children’s.” He stopped and turned to Arid Amulet. “So, at what point did they start your training? When you were a child? Just after they took your parents?” There was a pause, and Storm Lance’s muttered to himself, “Bastards.”

“What? No, the Sun didn’t train me for anything! They just helped me. They treated my, uh, condition, and all they asked in return was some work. I gathered tithes, ran errands, that kind of thing. I certainly wasn’t an assassin!”

“That remains to be determined,” Storm Lance said.

Amulet sighed. “Anyway, the Sun was never able to cure me completely. I still cough sometimes -- it comes and goes -- and my forehead hurts a lot, all the time.” She tried, once again, to rub her hoof against the scar on her head, only to remember herself too late. Brother Smoke mumbled something and squinted to get a better look at her. “I grew up with ponies talking about Celestia and the mountain around me all the time, so I figured… if I could get up there, then maybe… Celestia could help…” She was suddenly aware that she was still capable of feeling wet warmth in her eyes.

The wrinkles at the corners of Brother Smoke’s eyes creased, and he blinked several times. “You pitiful… delusional…” He sighed.

“Yes, yes, the story is downright heartwarming,” Storm Lance said. “Did you make it up just now, or compose it ahead of time as a precaution?”

“Dammit,” Brother Smoke scowled at the lord, “For the love I bore your father, would you give this--”

“Don’t speak to me about love for my father!” Storm Lance bellowed. “You didn’t see him butchered on an altar like some sacrificial lamb… no less by someone in those robes!” He gestured at Amulet. She started to stammer in protest, but he cut her off. “Silence, prisoner! Besides… we don’t know what she’s seen or what she knows. We can’t risk her reporting back to the archbishop. It could ruin everything we’ve worked for. I’d be executed, my lands and titles would be seized… and my father would have died for nothing.” He turned, his heavy red cloak swaying behind him, and, once Brother Smoke cleared the way, slammed the cell door shut with a dark yellow aura of magic.

“There are other options, my lord,” Brother Smoke pleaded from somewhere outside. “I know a unicorn in Goodcreek who can cast a powerful amnesiac, and we could send the girl--”

“No, Brother,” Storm Lance interrupted authoritatively. “My mind has been made on this matter: she will be executed tomorrow at dawn.”

Another door slammed shut, and the only sounds remaining were the flickering of the torch and Amulet’s heavy breathing.