Page 99 - Folio Only

oath, insisting it was a gate and a sanctuary: “And the reason for this is that
its innermost power and soul has become thrown out unto the outermost, and
the hidden soul is now revealed and shines through the pure body as a light
through a lantern.”

One night she lashed him into his bed with leather straps, but when he
awoke, she'd found he'd chewed through them, and was gone missing...along
with all of their clothes, including that which she had been wearing earlier.
When he returned with a glass alchemist's crucible in his hands, she bolted the
door and demanded he give it to her. He refused. She grabbed hold of the
crucible. He held onto it with the strength of three humans. But she had the
love of thirty humans for her father, and was determined to have him back.
She would not lose him to the N’ariq.

Long they pulled, each with their hands on the crucible. Now, the
crucible had a long long neck, and Babbo kept trying to get his lips around the
neck and tip it downwards, that he might sip some of the nectar of N’ariq.
Gemma held the bottom of the crucible; a round globe-shape, pulling and
pulling on it. She would not lose this battle. She would get her father back.

They held their battle stances for what might have been hours, pulling
and pulling. Babbo grew fierce with panic.

“Don't make me choose, now, Gemma, between my daughter and my
N’ariq. I'll slit your throat if I need to....” and other curses too horrible for
words, so painful were they for Gemma to hear. But she knew the endgame of
this battle. She was young still and he was old, and more importantly, she was
fighting with the strength of love, and he with mere apostolic fervor. There
would be only one victor, and it would be Gemma. So long as she kept the
N’ariq from passing his lips, he could not win. Eventually he collapsed,
heaving and sobbing, “Forgive me, forgive me,” though whether that was
addressed to her or his N’ariq she never knew.

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