“Oh my Goddess!” the other priestess murmured.
“What? What’s wrong?” Elli breathed, turning to look at Beedra’s stunned face, which was barely visible in the faint glow coming in from the crack.
“That…that’s not medicine!” Beedra whispered. “Those are Altherian Dreaming Drops!”
“What?” Elli shook her head in incomprehension. “What do you mean? What are Altherian Dreaming Drops?”
“A type of anxiety medicine—my mother used to take them,” Beedra breathed. “But if you take too much, they drain your energy. And large doses can be fatal!”
As she spoke, the Ascending Priestess Superior was filling the dropper of the bright green bottle with a dark purple liquid.
“Just take your medicine like a good girl,” she was saying to the old Priestess Superior. “I’m going to give you an extra big dose today and then I promise you’ll never have to take it ever again, all right?”
“Never again?” the old Priestess Superior quavered hopefully.
“Never again. In fact, you’ll never have to do anything ever again after this dose.” There was a cruel smile on the Ascending Priestess Superior’s thin lips. “I think it’s time your suffering was over and you went to meet the Goddess, don’t you?”
“I…I don’t know.” The old woman’s eyes were clouded with pain and uncertainty. “I suppose that would be nice.”
“Then open your mouth, dear, and take your medicine,” the Ascending Priestess Superior urged.
Obediently, the old woman opened her mouth.
“She can’t take that much!” Beedra whispered to Elli, her eyes wide with horror. “It will surely kill her! My mother only took a drop a day and even that turned out to be too much for her in the end!”
“We have to stop her!” Elli whispered back but Beedra shook her head, her eyes wide with fear.
“We mustn’t cross the Ascending Priestess! You don’t know her, Ellilah—she’s deadly.”
“I don’t care about that,” Elli argued. “We can’t just let her kill the old Priestess Superior!”
She couldn’t stay silent in the closet anymore. With a wild cry, she burst out and knocked the dropper of “medicine” out of the Ascending Priestess Superior’s hand.
“What in the Seven Hells?” The Ascending Priestess’s eyes flashed with anger as she turned to Elli. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Keeping you from poisoning the Priestess Superior!” Elli glared at her. “Did she ever have a wasting sickness at all, or have you been giving her those Dreaming Drops for months to make her ill?”
“What?” The Ascending Priestess Superior rose from the bed in one fluid motion to tower over Elli. “How dare you accuse me? And what are you doing back here, anyway, Novice? You’re meant to be at the Priory of Extreme Atonement!”
“I decided to go to the Palace of the Tenebrians to get a piece of the Healing Lattice to cure the old Priestess Superior instead,” Elli snapped. “But now I wonder how she got sick in the first place!”
The Ascending Priestess Superior arched one thin eyebrow at her.
“So you think I have been poisoning her for the past six solar months in order to take over her position?”
The glare she was giving Elli was so foreboding that Elli was tempted to tuck her head and apologize to the woman who was in authority over her. But one glance at the wasted form of the old Priestess Superior in the bed let her know she couldn’t do that.
“That’s certainly what it looks like,” she said, lifting her chin.
“Well, as a matter of fact…you’re absolutely right.” To Elli’s surprise, the Ascending Priestess Superior nodded her head. “I’ve been giving my predecessor there, Dreaming Drops in her tea from the minute I came aboard the Mother Ship. Once she was confined to her bed, I was able to give them to her straight from the bottle as ‘medicine’. The Dreaming Drops made her look like she’s got a wasting disease so nobody will be the wiser when she finally dies and I take over.”
“You…you admit you’ve been poisoning her?” Elli asked, feeling stunned.
“Of course I admit it—why shouldn’t I?” The Ascending Priestess sneered. “After all, it’s not like you’re ever going to get a chance to tell anyone.”
As she spoke, she drew a blaster from her robe pocket and pointed it straight at Elli’s chest.
“You’re never going to tell anyone anything ever again, Novice,” she spat, her finger tightening on the trigger.
Fifty-Five
Elli stared at the muzzle of the blaster, feeling numb.
“You…you won’t shoot me,” she said, her voice shaking. “You wouldn’t dare! How would you explain what happened to me?”
“Why should I have to?” the Ascending Priestess Superior asked coolly. “After all, you’re not supposed to be aboard the Mother Ship at all. As far as anyone knows, you’re back at the Priory of Extreme Atonement. I’ll just dispose of your body and tell everyone I decided you ought to stay there for the good of your soul.”
“You can’t…can’t fool everyone, you know,” Elli protested.