Catching Pathways

by Danielle Berggren

  That’s how he must look at it.

  Bodies. Nothing more.

  He expected a ceremony would need to be performed, but as one of the only firsthand witnesses to Queen Titania’s journey to the underworld, his mother Kabira assured him that he didn’t need it. Just the blood. Blood and death.

  He did not ask how many Titania slaughtered, or where she got them from, only asked if the amount available to him would be enough. His mother said it was anybody’s guess, but she thought so.

  He grasped the braid of one of Bairam’s younger wives, and she whimpered. His blade was sure as it found its path across her throat. He cut deep, and quick, so the blood poured and gushed like a faucet. A small part of him hoped they experienced little pain. The rest of him was split between not caring, and reveling in the fact that they might.

  His clothing dragged at his body, sodden with the sticky hot liquid, by the time he got to Alexis. Tear tracks ran down her face, but her eyes were dry when he came to stand before her. She spat on him, and cursed him, even as he reached for the long braid of her hair and pulled so her neck stretched back, her pulse jumping and twitching.

  He hesitated with the blade at her throat, his gaze steady as hers closed in expectation. Bairam pleaded from his right side, begging for her life, asking him to find some measure of pity in his heart. “Please, please, please,” he said in a steady stream. “Not my Alexis. Please, Rodan. Please.”

  “What did you say to her, when she realized what you had done?” Rodan asked, his voice pitched so only the two of them were in on the conversation, their position almost intimate in its closeness.

  Alexis’s eyes slit open, and she rasped, “I told her she did not deserve you. That her death would speed your path to the throne.”

  “Did it?”

  Her eyes flickered with uncertainty, and then regained their steely resolve. “You are not who we thought you were.” She licked her lips. “It does not matter anymore.”

  “No,” Rodan said, pressing the blade to her neck where the flesh parted like cut string, “it does not.”

  He gazed at her until her eyes grew dull and the ragged, wet sound of her breathing ceased. Bairam sobbed and strained against his magical bonds, his face ruddy and streaked with tears and snot. At some point he had thrown up, and the entire front of his white tunic was streaked with vomit.

  Rodan turned to him.

  “No,” Bairam croaked, jerking his head this way and that as he anticipated Rodan’s lunge. “I will not go quietly. I will not let you do this to me!”

  “Be still,” Rodan said in a bored tone, “or I will call for your youngest and your grandchildren as well, and you can watch their horror and hear their screams before you die.”

  The fight went out of the Sultan. He sagged, weeping, murmuring what sounded like a prayer under his breath. Rodan reached for him, pulled his head back, and waited until Bairam’s eyes opened after several long moments.

  “Listen to this, before you die,” Rodan said in a silken calm voice. “If I cannot bring my love back with the lives of your kin assembled here, I will try again, and again, until I succeed. I will kill everyone and every living thing in Visantium to rectify your mistake. This blood is on your hands.”

  If Bairam was going to say something, he never got the chance. Rodan dragged the dagger across his throat and silenced him forever.

  When the bleeding stopped, Rodan released his magical hold on the assembly. The bodies crumpled to the floor, and he caught Pike’s gaze. The man’s face was pale but grim, the knuckles on the hand holding the dagger white and mottled. Rodan stared at him for a moment and returned to Maeve’s side.

  She lay as he had left her, his magic lapping over her, keeping her fresh. He slid the dagger into his belt and grasped one of her hands, coating it with blood, and lifted it to his lips, grazing them across her thin fingers.

  Then he leaned down, and he kissed her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Rodan

  RODAN EXPECTED DARKNESS.

  Darkness did not greet him.

  He fell, with no end in sight. A swirling, riotous mass of colors buffeted him on all sides. In those colors there were shapes, faces, screams, and prayers. He sensed nothing else. No wind on his face, no brush of another’s hand. Only sight and sound.

  His mother was not privy to what happened when Titania disappeared. Only that she returned, some minutes later, with her husband beside her. The High Queen never spoke of what happened in the underworld, not even to her closest ladies’ maids.

  He was in uncharted territory, but he accomplished the first step.

  He was here.

  He was falling.

  He was on his way to her.

  Time lost all meaning after what seemed like hours. His head ached from the constant bombardment of highly saturated stimuli. He closed his eyes and the colors still shifted behind his eyelids. The whispers and cries and screams still echoed in his ears.

  He concentrated on Maeve. Remembered the smell of her skin and her hair sliding over his chest. He recalled how soft her lips were when they kissed and the echo of her laughter and the curve of her smile.

  He thought about the stretch of centuries behind him, and how crushing the solitude had been. How had he thought those fleeting love affairs were enough? Now that he experienced life with Maeve, nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing would come close to it.

  He opened his eyes, and the colors began to fade. The noise died down. The fall slowed—though he failed to pinpoint how he knew, since no pressure of air buffeted his body.

  His feet touched gleaming white stone. Like marble, except no veins of softer colors ran through it to mar the perfect whiteness. He lifted his head and noted the stone went on indefinitely, as far as his vision stretched. He stood in a grand hall with tall ceilings and light that seemed to come off every surface. Almost blinding.

  Rodan glanced down at his sodden clothes and took a step. He left a faint footprint and some drips of red behind him. He took another step and began to cast his gaze about the room. No sounds. No other colors, just white. White and empty.

  His footsteps echoed as he increased his pace, looking around with greater need at the soaring pillars. They stretched unadorned and plain. Nothing broke up his sight. No smudges or indicators of where to go next, only the same corridor stretching on ad infinitum.

  Rodan stopped, breathing hard, and checked back from where he had come. Footprints of blood faded, until the fading caught up to him, and he stood again in an unmarred room, with no indication of his passing or the passing of anyone else.

  “Hello?” Rodan called, and his voice echoed in the great chamber. He started walking again, slower this time, and kept crying out.

  This went on for several frustrating minutes until he stopped again. He might be walking in circles, or maybe this hall really did go on forever.

  His stomach clenched, and he stared down at his blood-soaked hands. What if I did all that for nothing? What if I wander these halls forever?

  He wanted to lay his eyes on her. Just a glimpse. That, alone, would be enough.

  That empty place inside of him ached for her, the part that had swelled, for a moment, as the bond took hold. Now it rang as a hollow nothingness, an ache in his bones, which would never fade, and he could not ignore.

  “Maeve,” he whispered. “Please, Maeve, where are you?”

  A great rumbling reached his ears, and he turned. The hall behind him began to dim in segments, and the white stone cracked and crumbled in a wave rushing toward him. A part of him wanted to run at the sight of it, but he held fast, clenching his fists as the shadows and the trembling overtook him.

  The shaking became enough that he fell to one knee, cutting himself against shards of broken stonework. He clenched his teeth and cast his eyes back up and saw—something indescribable.

  It was every dream of a tree that had ever been. Twisting branches reached so high that they disappeared into clouds,
and the roots were as big around as buildings. Twining and plunging into the earth, they created bridges and tunnels. Animals and people moved among the root system. Faded, almost translucent, they glided in silence along the base of the massive tree.

  Rodan stood and then walked toward it, something in him telling him this was the way. Birds swooped and dived above his head, their cries flat and abrupt.

  All the people and animals near him parted like curtains, none of them turning their heads to look. He searched the faces for familiarity, but none were Maeve. He pressed on.

  It took him nearly half an hour to make his way to the base of the tree. Between two roots, a narrow passageway led straight into the trunk. He hesitated only a moment before moving forward, letting the shadows swallow him whole.

  He ran a hand along the earthen walls, keeping himself steady, until his eyes adjusted to a dim light shining ahead of him. It glowed a brighter blue-green as he approached, and then he strode out of the cavern and stood on a long, twisted root that spanned across a mighty drop.

  The walkway, too narrow for him, remained the only way forward. He went to his hands and knees and began to crawl, noting with amazement the images that shifted and slid beneath him with each movement. Worlds flew by. Aerial views of savannas and deserts, of mountains and cities—some alight with fire, some glowing with the electric lamps of Maeve’s world, and some illuminated from within the very stone of the buildings. As he crawled, the scenes shifted one by one, flicking by at a dizzying rate.

  He lifted his head away from the sight and concentrated on making it across. He did not dare guess what he would find on the other side. He only understood this to be a fantastical place, full of mysteries, and that he must press on.

  At the end of the root he stood, not bothering to brush himself off. Something about the dirt clinging to the blood seemed right, as though he were meant to take something from this place.

  He stood on a ledge opposite to the one he came in on, and this one held three different pathways branching off it. He turned in a slow half-circle, studying each entrance by turn. There was nothing from the first two, but at the third there came a pulse. A flutter in that empty space inside of him.

  Rodan chose the third pathway.

  The path sloped downward, into the earth. Roots like fine hair hung down over his head, brushing against his scalp as he walked, and snagging at him with fragile fingers. A tremble coursed down his spine as the pathway forked, and he chose the right, following the same instinct as before.

  As he descended, a warmth stole through his chest. A comforting brush of something which should be have been but remained missing. He picked up his pace, chasing the sensation and hoping, with leaping heart, that it led to her.

  Images of Maeve raced through his head. On horseback, her eyes squinted against the light of the twin suns. The expression she made when she bit into an excellent peach slice. The way her hand and arm slid down his body as she slept, connecting with every part of him. Seeing her kneel beside him to accept not one crown but three, the way her eyes lit up with a fierce determination that meant she did not take the honor lightly. That she wanted to prove to herself and the world she was worthy.

  He stumbled but caught the pathway as it began to open up, rising above him and to each side, until he found himself in a massive chamber.

  Rodan stopped at the entrance, taking in the stone columns that disappeared into a ceiling thick with stalactites. Everywhere he looked, hand-hewn and shaped stone competed with naturally occurring cave formations. The floor was uneven, with jagged cut off stalagmites and pools of water interspersed with rough-cut flagstones. Past the open expanse of floor rose a set of stairs leading to a platform, on which sat a grand throne of ebony which cut its way into the natural stone wall.

  On the throne sat a hooded man, tall and thin, wearing robes of black shifting in the dim light. Rodan’s eyes did not penetrate the shadows of his hood, could not make out his face. And at his feet was—

  “Maeve,” Rodan croaked, taking a step forward.

  “Stop,” a voice commanded, so loud and mighty it shook the stones of the cavern. The man on the throne put a hand out, flicking his wrist at the passageway through which Rodan stumbled. Earth and stone rumbled, and as Rodan glanced behind him the passage closed until nothing but bare earth remained.

  The figure of Maeve, curled up at the feet of the thin man, did not lift her head or turn at the sound. She leaned her forehead against the arm of the throne, her arms tucked around knees pulled up against her chest. Her hair lay loose and flowing down her back, and she wore a white gown reminiscent of the one she had in the dream walking.

  Rodan took another step forward, and the cavern rumbled once more, this time without a word to trigger it. He went still, his gaze drawn to Maeve despite the more pressing issue of whoever sat above her.

  “What are you doing here, Fae?” the man asked, his voice loud and carrying but no longer shaking the foundations of the room.

  Rodan swallowed hard and nodded toward the small figure curled at the foot of the throne. “I came for her.”

  Laughter rung out, and Rodan almost imagined other voices took up the chorus, giggling and chattering around him in the shadowed recesses of the throne room.

  “You cannot have her. She has passed into my Realm and into my hands. Go back to where you came from.” That same hand flicked out, and a new passageway opened up to Rodan’s left, golden light spilling out of it onto the dark stone floor.

  Rodan did not move.

  The creature on the throne reached out and ran fingers through Maeve’s hair. Where he touched, the tawny locks turned snow-white, falling back to streak her hair. She did not stir or acknowledge the touch in any way.

  Rodan licked his lips, tasting blood and earth. “She is my bond mate. My only love. I will not leave without her.”

  “Then you will not leave,” the man said, a smile in his voice. “Approach, so I may see my new subject.”

  Rodan stepped forward, careful of the uneven floor, and stopped when he stood before the steps leading up to the throne. Even from this close, there was no penetrating the shadows of the man’s hooded face. He did, however, look upon Maeve with greater clarity. She did not appear transparent like the creatures from above, who milled around the roots of the tree, but at the same time she did not appear altogether present, as though something was missing. Her eyes were open and staring, but unseeing. “What have you done to her?”

  “She is dead,” the man said. “She is adjusting.”

  “Maeve,” Rodan whispered, tearing his gaze away from the man on the throne and concentrating on her once more. “I’m here, Maeve. I came for you.”

  She blinked, and her head shifted a little, rolling against the stone so more of her face turned his way. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

  “Maeve, please,” Rodan pleaded.

  “She does not hear you the way I do,” the man said. “For her, she is still in the white room. Still finding her way here.”

  Rodan’s eyes locked on the shadowed face again. “Who are you? What are you?”

  The man laughed, then lifted both of his hands into a sweeping motion. “I am called death, by some. I have many names. Anubis. Ankou. Hades. Mictlantecuhtli. Choose one.”

  Rodan sucked in a breath, then bowed at the waist, keeping his eyes lifted to the god of death. “Ankou,” he said. “The name is familiar to me.”

  “Then you may address me as such.” He sniffed, and leaned forward. “Whose blood is upon you, Rodan?”

  Chills crept down his back as he was addressed. He supposed the god of death would have his name. He would have everyone’s name. “That of Bairam Basu and his family, my lord Ankou. Their deaths helped draw me into your Realm.”

  “How many of them did you kill?”

  Rodan’s eyes flickered to Maeve. He swore she blinked again and turned her head further. He swallowed hard. “Forty-three.” He did not realize he had the number unti
l he said it aloud. Forty-three souls dispatched to climb his way here. He would not leave without her.

  Ankou made a satisfied sound and leaned back in his throne. “And where did you learn such skills?”

  “From my mother, who witnessed Queen Titania do the same for her husband, King Oberon.” Rodan rose back up to his full height. He was a king in his own right, even if his throne had been taken from him. He would address the King of the Underworld with his head held high.

  Ankou chuckled. “I remember it well. She is a persuasive creature, your High Queen. Tell me,” he leaned forward again, fingertips touching to form a peak, “what would you give to have your bond mate back at your side in the living world?”

  “Anything,” Rodan said without hesitation. “Name your price.”

  The god laughed. “You know nothing. I could ask that you take her place.”

  “I would. Gladly.”

  “But you would not be together. What a waste that would be.”

  Rodan swallowed and glanced back at Maeve. He ached to touch her, for her eyes to pierce his. She was a shadow of herself now, present yet apart from him. “Why do you want her? There is no one else in your hall. I brought forty-three souls with me today. Surely one of them, or all of them, would suffice to replace her?”

  A click like the sound of flint hitting a stone, and torchlight flared across the rooms. Rodan turned and beheld transparent shapes flitting around the hall. Not as thick as above, they wandered without purpose or direction. “These souls? They are weak. Anemic.” Ankou raised his hands to his hood and drew it down, exposing his face to the light. “You do not know what she is, do you? How precious she is? How rare?”

  Rodan stared up at the god. He did not appear frightening or ugly. His face was grim, severe, yet thick laugh lines deepened around his mouth. He was thin, yes, almost gaunt, but his yellow eyes shone vibrant. He smiled as Rodan stared, exposing straight white teeth.