ALLIANAH
nubian warrior goddess

Allianah leant over Zed’s shoulder as he sat at Tsi’s desk, flicking through the documents to try and find one in English. The vast majority were written in Mandarin. Neither Zed nor Allianah could understand a single character of the most used Chinese language on Earth, let alone read even one word.

“I hate going through his things like this,” she muttered in a rare display of sentimentality. “It’s like he is dead.”

A little shiver passed up Zed’s spine. “I know. Remember clearing out Aura’s office on Earth?”

Allianah said nothing. She remembered.

He flicked through a few more, pausing hopefully whenever he found something in English. Allianah would lean forward eagerly, but then stood back again whenever his shoulders dropped and he carried on flicking through. After another ten minutes of critical scanning, Zed’s face finally lit up.

“This is it!” He perused the document excitedly. “It says here his name’s Danny, and he lives in the castle. I knew Tsi would have written it in English - being possessed always leaves a little mark immediately afterwards.”

The warrioress nodded and straightened. “I will go.”

“He’s only young,” Zed warned her. “Try not to scare him.”

Allianah was already out of the door. She swept along the corridor and broke into a jog as she came down the steps which opened up into the open courtyard, beyond which the hastily-constructed stable block had been built. Since the deities were now without magic but still had to work closely with the castle, a horseback message system had been devised. Three horses had been purchased and two stable-hands hired, who also doubled as messengers when the occasion called. Some of the deities, Allianah included, had also bought their own steeds to travel around Shaman on. Since she normally lived in the commune and travelled into the pantheon near daily, her pedigree Arabian, Asfur, was still saddled and ready to go.

She took the reins from the stable-hand who had seen her coming and brought him out to her and went to swing into the saddle, but paused just in time. She wouldn’t make the swing in this silly outfit; it would get in the way. Since the loss of divinity and, consequently, her wardrobe, Allianah had had to make do with everyday outfits bought at the market. She preferred dresses for work-free days, but none of the dresses offered at the market looked very much like the loose, airy desert robes she usually wore. The one she wore today was long, covering her feet entirely, and dual-coloured. The bodice (non-corsetted) and outer layer of the skirt were burgandy red, and the sleeves and under-layer of the skirt, which formed a triangle at the front, were white. The skirt didn’t have any silly petticoats so it fell fairly smoothly to the ground, and it was wide enough that she could ride in it without adopting a side-saddle position. Even so, it would get in the way if she tried to launch herself into the saddle as she usually did when she was wearing her armour. Allianah hitched up her skirts, placed a booted foot firmly into the stirrup and mounted carefully, her long, dark hair falling forward over her shoulders. It was down, since she wasn’t working. Between her hair and her dress, she looked fairly normal.

The journey to the castle was light and carefree, since there were no more cracks in the sky or monsters to worry about. Once she’d arrived, Allianah passed Asfur over to one of the castle stable-hands and strode purposefully up to the castle entrance, where she interrogated the guards. One of them recalled seeing Danny heading out into the gardens with his familiar, so Allianah took directions and followed them. What she saw when she reached the main lawn made her confidence falter.

There were children everywhere, of every age. Tsi hadn’t described Danny at all in his record - not even how old he was - so all Allianah knew was that he was ‘young’, as Zed had put it, and presumably male. There were children with books under trees, reading; children splashing about in the shallows of the lake; children running about on the lawn, throwing or kicking balls to one another; older children sat together in the grass, gossipping. Allianah’s eyes narrowed sharply as she surveyed the group, her hands finding their way to her hips. Some of the nearer ones paused what they were doing to look at her.

“Which one of you is Danny?” She wasted no time in calling out in a clear, carrying voice, which caused the rest of the children to stop and stare. Her stern tone and haughty appearance made it sound as if she was here to discipline him.