“We use them for flooring,” the merchant replied. “Surprisingly sturdy stuff. Keeps things dry.”
It was as Beru was climbing down from the wagon that she noticed Hector standing beside the cart, looking up at her.
“Oh,” she squeaked, and dropped to the ground beside him.
“You were always like that,” Hector said. “Even when we were young.”
“Like what?”
“Curious,” Hector said after a beat. “You wanted to know how everything worked. Didn’t matter if it was the fish tackle or mother’s woodworking, you were always getting into everything.”
Beru opened her mouth to reply and then stopped. It was the first time Hector had spoken of their past before his family had died. It was the first indication that he remembered the girl she’d been back then.
“I guess I just like to be useful,” Beru said.
“You were probably a bigger help to them than I ever was,” Hector said. He was almost smiling, but then the expression faded and Beru felt a heavy wave of sadness from him. Perhaps he was remembering that she was the reason he no longer had parents.
The sun suddenly felt too hot on her back. Her head felt light. She stumbled.
“Whoa!” Hector’s arms went around her, holding her up.
She let herself sag for a moment, face tucked into his shoulder, his heartbeat a steady drum against her chest. It was only when she realized what she was doing—being comforted by him—that she pulled away.
“Sorry,” she said, her head swimming.
He was still holding on to her arm. “How much longer . . . ?”
She understood the unasked question. How much longer until she faded again.
“I’m not sure,” she answered. “Enough.” She hoped.
By the time they stopped to rest that evening, Beru was dead on her feet. Hector had probably had a point about resting.
“You’ll get used to it,” said Orit, steering her into a tent.
Beru was so exhausted, it took her several moments to realize she was not the only person inside. Hector lay in an untidy sprawl across his bedroll, his face angled away from her.
“Sorry,” Beru said hastily. “I think they assumed we—” She cut herself off. It didn’t matter what the caravan had assumed. “I’ll just go.”
She started to roll up the bedroll.
“It’s fine,” Hector said after a moment. “You don’t have to go.”
Beru hesitated. “I think I probably should. You don’t want me here. I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.”
“It’s not that.” He sat up, the thin sheet falling to his waist, leaving his chest bare. He wiped his hand over his face, and Beru felt a twinge of something that curdled her stomach like guilt.
“Really. You should stay. I mean, unless you don’t want to.”
Beru looked off toward the corner of the tent. “You don’t need to be nice to me. Not after everything I’ve done.”
“Just sleep here,” he said, with finality. “It’s late.”
He was right. And Beru was too tired to go bother Orit and find another place to sleep. She unrolled her bedding at the very edge of the tent, as far from Hector as she could get, and curled up to sleep. Even with her eyes closed, she was too aware of Hector and every sound he made as he turned over in the dark. It was like she was twelve again, watching the steady rise and fall of Hector’s chest from across the room, Ephyra snoring softly next to her. She cringed, remembering her unbearable crush on him back then. The countless fantasies of marrying him and becoming a part of his family for real.
Now, miles and miles away from that home by the sea, she listened as Hector drifted to sleep, and slipped into her own uneasy slumber.
Faces swam before her. Marinos’s face, with that tiny scar above his right eyebrow. His eyes were closed, still. Beside him, she saw his parents. They were resting on their backs, on the floor of a home that was both familiar and not. A pale handprint appeared on Marinos’s shoulder, spreading like a bruise. The handprint appeared on his mother and father, too, and then they began to bleed. Blood dripped from their eyes, their ears, overflowing their mouths.
Help us. Help us.
Their eyes flashed open. Help us, Hector.
A low, choked-off moan woke her. Beru sat up, blood hammering through her veins. The echoes of the nightmare swam at the edges of her mind.
The tent was dark, Hector just an indistinct shape on the other side of it. But he was moving, thrashing back and forth like a bird caught in a trap.
Beru scrubbed a hand over her face and went to wake him. It was a risky endeavor. His Graced strength could crush her before he’d even woken.
She knelt over him. “Hector.” She shook him gently, and then again, a bit harder. “Hector.”
He sputtered awake, his chest heaving with the force of his breath.
“Are you all right?” Beru asked after a moment.
“I was dreaming,” Hector said. His sheets were bunched up in his hands. He was staring straight ahead, not at Beru, as if still caught in the claws of his nightmare.
“It’s all right,” Beru soothed, not sure what else to do. “You’re fine now.”
“I saw my family,” he said. “They were calling out to me.”
Beru’s own dream snapped its teeth in her mind.
“Oh,” she said faintly. His gaze shifted to her. She wasn’t sure if she should utter the words that were on the tip of her tongue. She couldn’t quite make out his expression in the dark. That made it easier. “I think . . . I saw your dream, too.”
He was staring at her. “What do you mean, you saw my dream?”
“The connection between us,” Beru said. “It’s stronger . . . or just, more, than we realized.”
Hector was silent for a long moment. Then he rolled over. “Stay out of my dreams.”
A bolt of irritation flashed through Beru as she retreated to her own bedroll. “I wasn’t trying to see them.”
There was no answer from the other side of the tent.
Beru had thought she was making progress with Hector, but the next morning she knew that the night’s events had eclipsed whatever good will he’d felt toward her. She let him avoid her most of the day, occupying herself with tossing bits of dried meat to Vira and trying to make herself useful.
In the evening, when they stopped to make camp, she found him sitting beside one of the wagons, idly stroking Vira’s fur as he looked out at a dark shape in the distance.
“It’s a shamal,” Beru said after a moment. “Sandstorm. It won’t hit us here, though. It’s headed south.”
He looked up at her, unsurprised by her sudden presence.
She sat down beside him, holding her hand out for Vira to rub her head against. “My father used to say that long before the Prophets, people used to think the shamal were omens.”
“What do you think this one means?” he asked.
“You’re on the right path?” she suggested. “That’s what I hope it means, anyway.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t make a move to leave, either. Beru scratched under Vira’s chin.
“It’s strange,” Hector said, looking down at the cat. “I thought she would instinctively know what we are.”
“Maybe she does,” Beru countered. “But she just doesn’t discriminate when it comes to chin scratches.”
Vira purred in agreement.
They shared a tent again that night, and this time it was Beru who dreamed. She knew it was her own dream, because in it she saw Hector’s lifeless body staring up at the acacia trees in the yard of her childhood home. A pale handprint wrapped around his throat, and Ephyra stood above him, her own hands dripping with blood.
She woke to Hector’s face, alive, above her, and by his expression she knew he had seen the dream, too.
Beru sat up, wanting to say something to him but not knowing what.
He spoke first. “You want absolution. You think I can give it to you.”
; She closed her eyes. “I want . . . I want to know my life hasn’t been for nothing. That I haven’t brought only suffering to the world.”
“And why do you think saving me is going to change that? I’m . . . I’m not exactly a good person.”
She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I abandoned my duty,” he said, looking down. “I abandoned my only friend. I . . . I threw away the only thing that had ever been given to me.”
“You mean the Order of the Last Light.”
Something seemed to close in his expression.
“They took me in,” he said at last. “When I had nothing. And they offered me a life. The friend I abandoned—he was like a brother to me. No one could replace what I lost, but . . . he was good. I wanted to be that, too. I think I would have tried, for him, until the day I died, if I hadn’t . . .”
“Found me,” Beru finished softly.
Hector’s fists tightened and Beru felt a wave of anger that dissipated—his anger, she realized belatedly. Twice, Hector had lost his family. Twice, Beru had been the cause of his suffering.
“What would happen if you went back?”
Hector shook his head. “When I left, I broke an oath. The punishment for that . . . well, I suppose I’ve already experienced it.”
“That’s . . .” Beru didn’t know how to finish the thought. She felt furious and sad. “That’s not fair.”
“Not fair?” he asked, scornful.
Beru swallowed. What wasn’t fair was Ephyra murdering him to keep Beru alive. But that’s why she was trying to fix it. “Hector, I’m sorry. I never wanted—”
“What is done cannot be undone,” Hector said. “Not by you, not by the Daughters of Mercy—not by anyone. I am a revenant now. And that means that the prophecy could refer to either one of us. That which sleeps in the dust shall rise. I thought it meant you, but now . . . either way, I know what I have to do.”
“What are you talking about?” Beru said. “We’re going to Behezda, and we’re going to make this right.”
Hector shook his head. “I didn’t agree to come to Behezda so you could save me. I’m going there to end my life for good.”
18
EPHYRA
THE JOURNEY TO SUSA TOOK THEM DEEPER INTO THE DESERT. EPHYRA HAD never been this far into the Seti, and the absolute nothingness was as breathtaking as it was terrifying. The desert around her village, Medea, teemed with life—shrubs and grasses and lizards and even trees. This desert was nothing like that. It was sand, as far as the eye could see, and sloping dunes that had been built by the wind.
They slept through the hottest part of the day, shaded by their tents and the sails of their skiffs. Numir and Hadiza guided them by the stars and the early-morning sun, but Ephyra couldn’t help but feel like they were going in circles.
She spent most of her days thinking about Beru, and keeping an eye on Illya, who had quickly made himself useful aboard the skiff, helping to tack and jibe with the wind. Ephyra was deeply suspicious of his helpfulness, and irritable whenever he asked Hadiza to tell them stories about the desert, or commiserated with Numir about the heat, or got Parthenia jabbering on about her favorite languages, and how much their grammar reflected their cultural precepts.
It didn’t help that there was sand in every crevice of Ephyra’s body, trapped between the curls of her hair, crusted behind her ear, in between her toes. About two days in, she’d stopped bothering to scrub it off.
On the tenth day, Ephyra was dozing in the skiff as the sun rose over the golden dunes. The pitch-dark desert landscape brightened and Ephyra realized that for the first time, the land didn’t look exactly the same as it had the day before. The sand here had hardened into loose dirt, and they seemed to be in a valley between two slopes. Wide grooves fanned out through the valley, long and waving like estuaries.
“What is this?” Ephyra asked.
Hadiza glanced over at her. “This used to be a river. There was a whole system of villages and travel networks that connected this area to Tel Amot and Behezda.”
“What happened?” Ephyra asked, her eyes scanning the landscape, trying to imagine what it must have looked like when the river was flowing and lined with bustling villages.
“The Necromancer King happened,” Hadiza answered. “All this loss of life, of civilization”—she gestured at the desolate land surrounding them—“was the cost of his greed.”
Ephyra shivered, despite the heat.
Hadiza wasn’t finished. “This is what the Chalice can do. This is the power of the thing you seek. Knowing that, you still want to find it?”
Ephyra closed her eyes. Someone else had asked her that question before. Knowing what it costs, do you still want to save her? She had been sure of her answer then.
With the nothingness of the desert surrounding her, she was less sure.
They reached Susa the next day. Fractured domes and broken towers rose abruptly from the sand, shimmering in the midday sun like a mirage.
They tied their skiffs up at the city gates and entered on foot, Numir leading them carefully over the decayed road. Ephyra’s eyes scanned the buildings that rose up on either side of them. The architecture was like nothing she’d seen in the Six Prophetic Cities. The tops of the city walls and gates were jagged with uneven crenellations and decorated with three-dimensional figures—people and winged creatures that Ephyra had never seen before. The buildings were all crumbling and eroded. Some of them gleamed in the sun with the remains of some kind of copper plating.
“This place was built before the Prophets, wasn’t it?” Illya asked.
Hadiza looked surprised. “Yes. This city is ancient—one of the oldest we know of.”
Despite the heat of the sun, Ephyra felt a chill slide down her spine. The silence and desolation of this place reminded her of somewhere else—Medea, the village she and Beru had come from. The village that Ephyra had destroyed. She could almost see the bodies splayed across the cracked ground.
“The temple should be at the center of the city,” Hadiza said.
“Stay alert,” Shara said sharply. “We don’t know who—or what—else could be here.”
Unease crept over Ephyra as they made their way into the heart of the city. She felt eyes on her, like they were being followed, watched. But when she turned to look, there was nothing there.
The temple rose into view, looking exactly as it had in the mirror. A triangular base tapered up to a peak. Wide stairs ran down one side of it. As they got closer, she could see the sculpture at the top.
They stopped at the temple’s colossal stone door, intricately carved with winged serpents and lion-headed birds, along with geometric symbols.
Parthenia made a face. “What if there’s . . . dead people in there?”
“What if there’s living people in there?” Numir added. “The kind that want to kill us?”
“I’ll go in first,” Shara said. They shuffled toward the entrance. Shara ran her hands over the right edge of the door, while Hadiza did the same on the other side.
“Maybe we can bust through it?” Numir suggested.
“This is probably four to six feet of solid stone,” Hadiza said, shaking her head.
Parthenia rolled her eyes at Numir. “That would be your suggestion.”
“What’s your suggestion then?”
Ephyra turned to face the door as they continued to bicker. There was a border of raised stone along the bottom, in some sort of pattern. Ephyra knelt to get a better look. The pattern wasn’t consistent, although there was clearly repeating lines of some kind. Almost like . . . letters.
“Wait,” Ephyra said. She glanced up and saw that no one was paying attention to her except Illya.
“Parthenia,” she said, louder. “I think there’s writing on the door down here. But not in any language I know.”
Parthenia stopped her argument midsentence and trotted toward Ephyra.
Parthenia squinted at the writing. “It looks quite a
lot like Nehemian . . . but I’m guessing since we’re at a temple it’s High Nehemian, which would have only been used by priests for religious ceremonies.”
“So you can’t read it?” Ephyra asked impatiently.
Parthenia gave her a saccharine look. “I can read it. It’ll just take me a second.”
She drew a slate out of her bag and a little piece of chalk along with a book. She kept glancing from the book to the writing on the door, and then scribbling something down on the slate.
The sun scorched above as Parthenia worked at her translation. Sweat slid down the side of Ephyra’s face.
“All right,” Parthenia said at last, looking down at her slate. “It says to get inside, we need to give a sacrifice.”
“Like a human sacrifice?” Shara asked, alarmed.
Ephyra glanced at Illya. Maybe he would be useful after all.
“It could be,” Hadiza replied. “They used to sacrifice people to the old god.”
A heavy silence fell over the group.
Then Parthenia spoke again. “Oh, wait,” she said with a little laugh. “I mistranslated this. It doesn’t say sacrifice—it says secret.”
“Like a secret password?” Shara asked.
Parthenia shook her head. “No, a secret of yours. The words sacrifice and secret are related in Nehemian—offering up a secret is a kind of sacrifice.” She stepped up to the door and cleared her throat. “My real eye color isn’t blue. I just convinced an alchemist at the Great Library to change them for me.”
Numir barked out a laugh. The door didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” Shara asked. “Did you get the translation wrong? Maybe it is ‘sacrifice.’”
Parthenia pursed her lips and shook her head. “There are about twelve different words for secret in High Nehemian, all associated with different body parts. There’s fumaya, which roughly translates to a ‘mouth-secret,’ and zamaya which is ‘bone-secret.’ They used coraya here, which I think translates to ‘heart-secret’?”
“What’s the difference?” Shara asked impatiently. “Secrets are secrets.”
As the Shadow Rises: Book Two of The Age of Darkness Page 15
