Harry Potter and the Red Temple Ch.4 (HP/GoT)

Volantis, Harry discovered, was a city that was alive, the streets teeming with people, an almost frenetic degree of activity.

In truth, he’d never seen much like it before, the cities of Earth increasingly geared towards a modern age of offices and factories. Volantis was very much different.

The first few streets that radiated out from the temple were lined with buildings that bore clear symbology linking them to the religion of the fire god.

Braziers burned outside each door, and many of the buildings held shops selling fiery icons, bolts of crimson and orange cloth, complete robes, and even a man applying a tattoo to another beneath the canopy of his shop. Further out, there were stalls selling street food, strikingly familiar yet very different from any he’d seen before.

A small smile stole across Harry’s face as Kinvara rushed, in all her red-robed dignity, to keep up with him, discovering what it was like to be in the wake of Hurricane Potter.

As they descended the steps from the temple, he spotted her desperately calling for a guard of half-a-dozen men with their flame-bladed spears, orange robes, and finely adorned breastplates. The guard managed to catch up with them as he dodged what was unmistakably a sort of taxi cab drawn by some form of pygmy elephant.

It was one of these miniature elephant-drawn carriages that Harry inevitably found trouble after an hour spent exploring the streets below the temple.

Kinvara had persuaded him to relax a little. They took turns picking out random objects and features they encountered and naming them in their respective languages.

Water. Sky. Fire. Brick. Mud. Fountain. Man. Woman. Cart.

A hundred more as they walked through the streets, almost indistinguishable from a courting couple on the promenade, but for the crimson robes of his priestess and the reverence with which his very presence was treated.

One such was in a narrow plaza, a square surrounded by shops and stalls, where a street food seller came up, bowing deeply as he presented Kinvara with his offering.

It was a roughly made bowl of fired clay, clearly made to be cheap and disposable. It was filled with what seemed to be fried dough balls, well coated in a sweet syrup. At first, Harry’s priestess tried to give the offering in its entirety to him, using the connection between them to convey a sense of fealty.

Not wanting to make some sort of faux-pas when he was still very dependent on Kinvara as his interpreter, he accepted the gift, reaching into an enchanted pocket while picturing one of his pen knives.

The coat responded to the demand, and a moment later, Harry flicked open the knife and speared one of the sweets. Taking the first for himself, discovering it to not just be a dough ball but stuffed with dried fruits and honey, he then stuck a second with the knife and handed it to the priestess.

Who would object if he enjoyed the sight of Kinvara, her priestly dignity somewhat spoiled by the honey dripping down her chin? Certainly, he couldn’t resist leaning forward and, with one finger, tracing the line of her jaw and wiping the sweetness from his priestess’s skin.

Curious, he decided as he licked the droplets of nectar off his finger, was it an effect of her magic and the influence of her deity behind her body running so hot?

However, within a few minutes, the relative peace was disturbed as the plaza grew crowded, dozens of people thronging around them, their voices raised in a clamor, Āeksios Ōño, those words again.

A concept that Kinvara had trouble explaining through their mental connection, though it was clear that it had some association with her fiery deity. With an air of tremendous calm and dignity, the red priestess raised her hand, and in an instant, there was quiet.

Even without understanding more than a few words of that strange, lilting language she spoke, there was something more than a little hypnotic about Kinvara as she spoke.

First, she led the impromptu congregation in a series of prayers they chorused back to her. Then, she rose from her seat by the fountain, walking amongst the crowd. At every pass and every turn, even as she spoke in a tone that could only feel like fanaticism, her eyes landed on him again and again.

Harry’s pondering on the matter wouldn’t last long, as the crowd suddenly began to part amidst a great bellowing, a trumpet, and over it all, the cracking of a whip.

Surging to his feet, he barged through to find one of those elephant-drawn carriages. A tall, slim figure stood in the back, next to a seated guard, a long whip coiled in one hand, the bare back of his driver already bloodied.

It took a moment for Harry to realize that, despite the long, silver hair and fine features, this was a man. The man lashed out with the long whip again, this time not at his driver.

The whip scythed out, aimed at one of the crowd, a mother with a child at her breast, who had the misfortune to be crossing in front of the blond bastard’s carriage.

The woman fell with a scream onto the cobbles as the whip scored the back of her legs, a pivotal moment in history that would largely go forgotten with all that followed.

Without the slightest thought, Harry grabbed a thick timber balk propped up against the front of a shop and strode over with the length of wood at his hip.

A tremendous sound followed as he drove it through the spokes of one of the carriage’s wheels; the wheel's rotation brought it around until it lodged against the vehicle's body.

The resulting force of wood versus carriage versus elephant tore the wheel to pieces, smashing a good third of the spokes and dislodging a similar amount of the rim.

It caused the whole carriage to topple over at a forty-five-degree angle.

Harry didn't pause to admire the results of his handiwork. He rushed over to the fallen woman and her child. She was still lying on the cobbles, her shoulders shaking and the back of her dress torn where she had been struck by the whip.

The child, a dark-haired babe no more than a year old, was wailing loudly, clasped to the woman’s chest. Even as he moved to help them up, the situation went from bad to worse, thanks to the blond whip-wielder’s guard.

The guard had leaped from the collapsing carriage, landing on the flagstones amidst a clatter of scale mail armor. He reached to his hip and drew his sheathed sword, the curved blade’s single edge glinting as he advanced toward Harry.

Before he could move more than three paces, Kinvara stepped between them. Her hand was raised, flames licking at her fingers as a fiery glow appeared in her eyes. The bodyguard still tried to push past her but reeled back with a cry of pain as her hand grasped his arm, the fabric beneath his bracer coming alight in moments.

Harry would have spared the guard had he given up, but he instead raised his blade in an overhand swing at Kinvara, an act that doomed him.

The guards she’d brought from the temple were too far away to be of help, but Harry was there. Phoenix-feather wand in hand and a strong sense of irony, he flicked his hand combined with a pulse of will.

A dozen feet of flame erupted from the tip. A whip. Like a serpent striking, the flaming whip slashed down. It narrowed into a fiery blade, cleanly severing the guard’s sword arm.

Harry brought the whip around, wrapping it around the guard’s waist. With a twist of his body, he flicked the whip forward, picking up the victim of his spell and hurling him out over the rooftops like a ragdoll.

Extinguishing the blazing whip, Harry sheathed his wand and leaned down, prising the sword from the dismembered limb. He’d encountered a few blades during his travels, and the weapon he’d picked up looked like an odd cross between a Chinese dao and one of the pointier sorts of medieval falchion.

Harry advanced on the half-wrecked carriage. The whip-wielding blond bastard was crawling out, a cut to his temple bleeding profusely.

He was still grasping that whip.

Harry’s eyes narrowed at the sight as he advanced, ignoring Kinvara’s increasingly urgent tone and even her tug on his sleeve. He shrugged her off and snatched up the whip.

It was a fine thing, braided gold and silver threads alternating, the handle ivory, and he would destroy it.

“Look!” Harry snarled, looping the scourge around one of the shattered spokes and, with a stroke of the sword, slicing it to pieces.

He kicked the pieces aside, turning to look at the crowd, who still lingered, clinging to the shadows of the buildings. Awe and fear mixed on a hundred faces, many bearing those odd tattoos.

Dohaeriros, Kinvara had told him. A word he hadn’t really paid attention to, assuming it referred to a caste or…

Fucking hell.

“Belmurtys.” Kinvara pointed to the blond, then to the shredded whip. “Qilōny.” To various people with tattoos on their faces. “Dohaeriros.” Finally, to a set of chains in the wrecked carriage. “Belma.”

Fucking hell.

“They’re slaves.” Harry felt sickened as he pushed across his connection with Kinvara, an image he had seen in his own world while in America.

Plantation. Slaves. Overseer. She nodded. Slaves.

He turned and spotted the blond bastard attempting to make his escape, albeit much slowed by an injured ankle that left him limping.

“Belma!” he ordered, and nobody moved until Kinvara herself retrieved the chains and glided over to him.

With the chains in one hand and the larger half of the whip in the other, Harry grabbed the slaver, wrapping the chains around his throat, and lashed his hands together with the whip.

He ignored the spitting, snarling blond’s ranting. Largely unable to understand it, he dragged the slaver over to the center of the square, to the fountain, and pushed him into it face first.

“Thus always to slavers,” Harry intoned.

Nobody moved to help the slaver.

***

The loud bang of the door recoiling off the wall startled Kinvara from her rushed report to her superiors. The sheer presence of Azor Ahai filled the room as he stormed in.

She’d managed to get a couple of temple handmaidens to distract her champion with rosewater cloths and sweet fruits just long enough to get away to the chamber where Benerro worked during the daylight hours.

However, she had no sooner managed to get out a rushed explanation of the events in the city when all present felt the incoming storm.

“How many slaves are there in Volantis?” Harry demanded across the table to Benerro, the High Priest, and his second, the menacing Moqorro. He then shot a look at Kinvara, who had—with all due grace and deference—guided him somewhat forcefully back to the temple immediately after the Blond Bastard Incident.

“Kinvara! Slaves… Dohaeriros,” Harry gestured as if counting each finger on his hands.

Kinvara exchanged glances with the other priests before walking to a cabinet at the side of the room. She took out a selection of drinking vessels and laid them out: five clay cups and a single silver goblet.

“Dohaerirossa. Slaves,” she explained, gesturing to the cups. “Pāstys.” then the goblet.

“Pāstys?” Harry frowned. “Not Belmurtys, not Master?”

“Not Belmurtys.” Kinvara agreed, “Pāstys...”

Harry pushed a sense of understanding down the mental connection with his priestess. Citizen, freeborn or freed. Five slaves to every citizen.

A dawning sense of horror and utter fury lingered at the back of his mind as he contemplated the scale of what he was sitting amidst.

“One, two, three, four, five?” Harry counted each clay cup.

“Mēre, lanta, hāre, izula, tōma.”

“Belmurtys?” he asked.

“Belmurtyssy.” The priestess corrected him. She pushed away the clay cups and picked up the silver goblet, placing it in front of him. “Belmurtys. One.” Then, she extended her hands, fists closed, and opened them a finger at a time, counting them. “Mēre, lanta, hāre, izula, tōma. Bȳre, sīkuda, jēnqa, vōre, ampa. Ampa pāstyssy.”

Five slaves for every citizen. Ten citizens for every master. Fifty slaves for every master.

Fuck, Harry knew why he was here now. He would burn the place to the ground, then build anew out of the ashes.

Kinvara, Benerro and Moqorro all stared as the silver goblet started shaking, even as the table beneath it was completely still. Then, slowly accelerating, the metal crumbled and tore until it was reduced to a ball of formless metal scraps. The abused door once again bounced off the wall, this time in the opposite direction, tearing the hinges from their mounting points.

“Kinvara!” Harry barked.

The Red Priestess went to follow, hesitating at the door—hanging drunkenly at an angle—until Benerro gestured for her to go.

With the metaphysical firestorm gone, the High Priest sucked in a deep breath before letting it out slowly.

“Moqorro. Make it known to the temple that we are Servants of the Lord of Light,” Benerro intoned. “Azor Ahai does not seem to like the concept of slavery.” The lion-like priest dipped his head as Benerro continued. “I wonder about him. You have seen the scar that marks his forehead? The lightning bolt. He is fire amidst a tempest. You can feel it, too.”

“I can,” Moqorro agreed. “I wonder… He hates slavery with a true passion, as only a few I have known do. Those who have been bought, scourged, and branded...”

“Our sister, Kinvara, is not one who exaggerates. She bore witness to him wielding a whip made of flame and then the master’s chains against him,” Benerro mused. “There is a strong sense of justice about those actions. Vengeful justice.”

“I will interrogate the Hands who escorted them about the city,” Moqorro decided. “Kinvara… she has known him for a day, and already she answers his call as a dog its master.”

“She gives him her loyalty to the Lord of Light as is right to R’hllor’s chosen.” Benerro chided mildly. “In the meantime—”

Feet echoed down the hallway outside the chamber. An acolyte appeared at the broken door, casting a wide-eyed glance at it before dipping into a bow to the High Priest.

“First Servant,” he awaited Benerro's gesture to rise, which the High Priest gave after a few moments. “One of the Old Blood asks for an audience.”

“Who?” Moqorro interspersed himself between the acolyte and Benerro as the heavy tread of boots and the clinking of armor followed down the passageway.

“Me.”

The new arrival was a tall, dark-haired, violet-eyed figure clad in a coat of scale mail—each of the thousand scales hammered to look like dragon’s scales and heat-burnished to a purple gleam. However, it was the full tiger skin he wore, draped almost like a toga around him, that drew eyes.

“Merion Maegyr,” Moqorro stood across the doorway, his iron dragon’s head staff planted squarely in front of him as he stared down at the Volantene lord.

“Black Moqorro,” Maegyr replied evenly.

“Let him in.” Benerro’s thin voice sounded from behind Moqorro.

Maegyr didn’t spare the hulking Red Priest a glance as he swept by, coming to stand before the High Priest. He inclined his head a fraction of a degree as his heels came together, and his hands crossed his chest to form the dragon.

“To what do I owe the honor of the presence of Triarch Malaquo’s grandson?”

“Trouble in the city, Benerro. I think you know,” Maegyr replied. “When one of the Old Blood is found dead, drowned with chains about his neck, his guard slain and his driver fled…”

“A tragedy.”

“Please. He was a bug, and someone swatted him like one,” Maegyr scoffed, waving his hand in dismissal. “However, you will understand that there are… concerns. When two Red Priests were reportedly present, there are those who have looked for an opportunity to enforce a change in leadership in the temple. Bypassing the hold you have on the Tiger Cloaks…”

“Your father has ever watched our walls with envy,” Moqorro growled. “I would warn him to look to the flames for his future.”

Benerro raised a hand to quiet his second.

“I can assure you that reports of the presence of two of our number are untrue.” He met the Volantene’s gaze steadily. “However, I wonder why you came here, Merion Maegyr. Nothing you have said has been a threat. Which leaves a warning, does it not?” Maegyr was still as a statue for a few moments, then he nodded shortly. “You are not a fool, nor one who looks to the statues of his ancestors for the path forward, Merion Maegyr. You will have heard what is being whispered amongst my brothers and sisters?”

“Yes… I have heard many fanatics whisper of a thousand prophecies and the chosen of a hundred gods. But this—”

“There is but one true god, Maegyr,” Moqorro rumbled. “Lightbringer is drawn, the sword and the flame given form and flesh. I would look to your sins because I do not think that black walls will guard them for you.”

“Tell him that I do not carry the whip and that all who are sold into my service I set on a path to earning freedom and citizenship.” Maegyr leaned forward, looming over the table and the High Priest.

“I am not Azor Ahai. I do not wield Lightbringer, Merion Maegyr.” Benerro remained still, without a hint of being intimidated by the Volantene Lord. “Offer your sins to him in judgment.”

***

Harry had plenty of experience tamping down on his temper from as far back as he could remember, and he soon managed to bring his anger down to a low, simmering fury.

He slowed, allowing Kinvara to catch up, her hurried footsteps following him as he strode through the temple. Was it odd that after less than a day, he’d come to welcome the magic-warm-embers presence at his side? Maybe, but he’d spent too long fighting alone, and the companionship was not just necessary but a distinct comfort.

Yet, how to ask her of her opinion on slavery? It might be a social norm here, but so it had been on Earth, and had not remained any the less evil for it.

Taking a full circuit of the inner temple to cool his temper and restrain the tempest of magic that was raging within him, Harry was startled when they arrived back at the entrance hall to find a young teenaged girl with dark hair, olive skin, and dark, round eyes.

She was guarded by fourteen soldiers, all clad in identical scale mail, bearing spears in clawed gauntlets, their faces marked with tiger-stripe tattoos.

“Who?” He asked Kinvara.

“Girl… hen Maegyrio Lentrot,” she replied, conveying an image of a wax seal, a black dragon with its wings spread, a sword grasped in its claws, backed on a field of tiger’s stripes. “Father-father…” an image of an elderly man bearing what was clearly insignia of office.

“King?” Harry asked, picturing a throne and crown.

“Dārys, no. Jentys.” Kinvara shook her head. “Saejentys. Malaquo Maegyr one. Paenymion two. Vhassar three.”

Some sort of Triumvir, and the girl was the granddaughter of one of the ruling trio.

“Are the Maegyr slave masters? Belmurtys?” he asked.

“Father-father Malaquo, yes. Father Merion… yesno. Daughter—” Kinvara began but was interrupted by the girl pushing through the cordon of her guards.

Her attitude was defiant as she erupted in a torrent of language that Harry couldn’t even begin to understand. She argued with his priestess for several minutes before Kinvara turned back to him.

“Daughter, Talisa Maegyr, not slave master…” Kinvara pushed an image down their connection of a man wearing an iron collar helping a drowning boy out of the river, a boy clad in silks marked with the Maegyr emblem. “Slave pull brother, Rhoyne River. Slave touch master, slave…” an image of the iron-collared man crucified. “Talisa Maegyr not name slave.”

“Huh.” Through their bond, Harry parsed through Kinvara’s extremely basic English and the constant flow of images and feelings. He found himself looking at the defiant teenager with new eyes.

Reaching into his coat, he commanded the enchantments to give him a single bronze knut. Holding it in his hand, he drew the Elder Wand, stripped back the Goblin-made spells on the coin, and then reshaped its surface.

On one side, a collar with four chains radiating from it. On the other, the collar broken, the chains shattered, and flames around the coin's edge. 

Harry added his own spells to the coin, then offered it to the girl. She examined it with curious eyes before slipping it into the sleeve of her robe with a nod.

Their brief interaction ended with the arrival of a figure who could only be the girl’s father, given how quickly the tiger-striped soldiers snapped to attention.

Tall and broad under his ornate armor and with a natural aura of command, the Maegyr was someone Harry took note of. He’d need to work out why Kinvara had said the girl’s father was ‘yesno’ a slave master.

In the meantime, Harry decided he needed to know the city's layout, especially since he planned to end the day with a nighttime outing.

“I need a map.”