“Even as the king was ready to commit the carpenter to a cell to await a more appropriate punishment, one among his guard took pity on the madman, who was now writhing in a fury on the floor. He crossed to him and struck him square in the belly with his spear. Everyone in the court shrieked, the king included, but the wound did not bleed. Instead, like the many legs of a sand crab scuttling, four arms and four legs issued forth from the carpenter’s belly, followed quickly by two stout bodies and two heads, eyes bright in faces that were whole, unharmed, and identical.
“Two carpenters stood now before the king, a god released from a mortal prison. Both bowed and smiled in perfect harmony.
“‘I am Alber,’ they said together. ‘Our gift was too great for one mind to manage, but two shall make it greater still without the sorry cost.’
“And now the king did finally speak, though his shock was most profound.
“‘That is a very good thing, for Slippers has been busy, too. I now require a home not only for him but also for his twelve children: Boots, Belt, Bangles, Breeches, and Buttonhole, Pockets, Gloves, Lace, and Sandal, Ribbons, Rosettes, and Shoe.’”
But the children didn’t laugh as my siblings had always done, because as I finished, their mother appeared in the doorway. Alber slept fitfully in a sling across her chest. She was not smiling, and Antares was quick to usher me out. The children were sluggish to lift themselves from the floor, to scatter from each other and part from me. Still I thought of Emine as I looked on her dark head, Emine who had crawled guilelessly to me in sleep. I thought of the infant Alber, who did not deserve to grow up without his mother’s love, even a mother like this one. I thought of the infants whose deaths had driven Theba to my homeland, to me. I could do nothing for any of them. My gifts were for undoing.
Like silk-spinning spiders, the children trailed their mother’s hem to the edge of the village. The infant Alber squalled when he woke in the sling, beating ineffectually at her breast. I believed the children would have followed her until the road disappeared into the wood, all animal tracks and beaten leaves, but Antares would not let them.
“Your mother will return in the spring. Go back to the village.” His tone was not unkind, but neither could his command be ignored. The children wavered. It was not a filial longing that I felt in them, but the helplessness of abandonment, of not knowing anything else, let alone anything better. I had no more stories, nor coin or food or comfort of the kind I had refused to take from my own family when I had departed Jarl, and it pained me.
So they turned back, and I turned away, not wanting to watch their sorry heads bobbing in retreat. Antares looked back over his shoulder, not at the children, but at me.
“If you wish to go south when this is done, I will lead you,” he said softly, falling in step with me. I sensed the mother’s interest in our conversation but her ignorance, too. She couldn’t hear us over the infant’s cries. “There’s a quicker way that a larger force cannot take, but the terrain is treacherous.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked. I couldn’t read him: his mind was slippery, the answer caught only by his lips and tongue.
“I was there when you left Aleyn. I should be there when you return.”
When, not if. Was Antares as sure as Adah was, about how I would make up my mind? If I didn’t go and the imposter’s army obliterated my home rather than simply subduing it, if they found this weapon and I was not there for them to use it—I would be safe. I could flee somewhere they could not find me. I could remain Eiren.
But I knew there was a cost. And both Adah and Antares knew I’d be unwilling to let anyone else pay it.
“Thank you,” I responded stiffly, neither agreeing to go, nor refusing his offer of help. It would do, for now.
We had not gone far when I began to sense something and wondered if one of the children had followed us. I felt excitement and swallowed feelings that at first I attributed to a child who aimed to sneak after us. Alber had ceased crying, rocked again to sleep by his mother’s walking. I wondered briefly what name she had given him, what name he’d never grow to know. We had fallen into a marching pattern, with the woman in the middle, between me and Antares, with Emine racing excitedly ahead. My skin prickled as though damp, the chilly wind picking up hairs and causing pimples on my arms. Not one but many minds, now, furtive. There were no leaves crunching underfoot to announce them, no whispers or hushed breaths, and even as I stopped and turned about slowly to discover them, they were upon us.
They wore hoods of rough cloth or rags over their mouths and noses, poor and useless disguises. There were so many, more than a dozen, and they came at us from all sides. Two of them seized Emine, her shrieks quickly muffled. I stumbled back into the arms of another pair, their thoughts a giddy barrage. They meant to take us alive—or tried to. Alber began to cry again, and though I heard no shout from Antares, there was the sound of a spear shaft striking against flesh, a groan as the point met some mark.
I struggled, but I was held fast by many pairs of arms. Months ago, I would have considered such force excessive, but now, as I felt the hot blood of Theba pump from my heart to hands and feet that itched to scratch, burn, and kick, I knew it was necessary.
Another groan was heard, this time accompanied by the juicy thrust of a blade into a belly. My ears closed against all sounds but that of Antares’s knees as they dropped to the path. The fists that held my arms felt like so many vices upon my heart, and my last breath expelled a sob against the gloved palm that snaked over my mouth and nose. My hands were pinned, ropes biting into my flesh. The infant’s cries subsided and in their place, I heard the mother’s voice.
“You can have the babe and these three when I have the coin you promised me.”
My body was overrun then. I tore at my attackers, my bindings, myself. I felt my nails shred leather, pierce the soft flesh beneath, heard the screams and only just kept from digging organ-deep. They ran. They should’ve run faster.
One had fallen in the struggle, another lay bleeding at my feet. His eyes locked with mine and he only whimpered, not even attempting to escape. He had no hope of it, not once I’d laid eyes on Emine’s broken form, on Antares sprawled, not moving, beside her. His eyes were open in shock, weapon still in his hand.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. The sobbing fool in the dirt could not hurt me, but the memory of their crumpled bodies could, blazing behind my eyelids. I could have chased the others, should have, perhaps, especially if they were taking the child away. But I found myself rooted to the spot, crippled by the thought that he would be in greater danger with me than he was with the heretics, for that was what they were. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the ugly touch of fire upon the man’s neck, the skin waxy and seeming to run down below his collar. He had been in the opera house. He had survived when so many had died.
“If you’re here,” he wheezed, voice reedy with a hollowness that precipitated death. His question burst madly from a shattering mind: “Who is the v-v-viper at the head of the Ambarian army?”
I took two steps forward, more fearful of the stillness I felt, the coldness in my belly, than I had been of the heat that had consumed me only a moment before. I bent and delicately brushed a lock of Emine’s hair from her face. She didn’t stir. I choked down my grief and my rage.
“That is a question you and I both would like an answer to.”
Theba and I spoke together, a buzzing on my lips as though someone had placed a thread there and was attempting to whistle through it. I seized the heretic with the strength of my will and Theba’s, too, sustained his life, prolonged his pain so that he might give us both what we wanted.
“What do you know about the imposter?” The words were mine and so was my tongue, but the drive to speak was Theba’s. So too was her fury pounding against the walls of my heart, threatening to burst the organ and my body, both. “You say she leads an army. How many follow her?”
The man looked as though his lungs had been d
eflated and filled again with sand instead of the air that would sustain him. His voice had more than a little gravel in it when next he spoke.
“Very little,” he wheezed, tongue scraping against dry lips. “She does not have the support of the whole kingdom but a great part of it. There are other icons who march with her, but it is impossible to know if they are being coerced.”
“What of the princess? What has happened to Morainn?”
“Many say that she is dead. Others say that she is wounded and disfigured and will not leave the palace for shame. All I know is that she hasn’t been seen.”
His words created a cold well in the pit of me that I felt myself falling into. I had not only regret but shame, too, for I had done this and could never be forgiven for it.
Especially not by Gannet.
Like a toy that no longer had the power to entertain me, I released the hold I had upon the man. He heaved a great breath, and it was clear to us both that it was likely to be his last. I heard a distant shout, the crashing of many booted feet, and sensed the fools that were returning to claim their dead. I could not add to their number, would not. I ran. Away from his slain fellows, I flew. Away from Emine. Away from Antares.
Antares. Every syllable of his name was cold as a blade driven into some soft part of my being. In Aleyn, noble men and women were interred in great crypts with their ancestors, all of them on their bellies so that they might take the shortest course through the world and to the rest that lay in soil, stone, and sand. I could neither bury Antares nor offer him tribute. I had hardly known him well enough to know what sorts of gifts he would like to be remembered with, not spears or leathers, I realized, for these were only the ornaments of his duty. He had been more.
I expected at any moment to find myself at the village again, to relive the taking of Alber like a detail in a story. I would tell it like some lesson meant to be learned, some inescapable fate that must be suffered over and again until it can be accepted. But I’d had enough of fate, and made several turns irrationally away from what I felt, blindly, was the direction we had come.
But could I return to Adah? Did I want to, even without this dark news? Antares had said he would lead me south, that there was a path I might take that would give me an edge over the imposter’s army. I could warn my family, or run with them. Without his help, the only way that I knew was the Rogue’s Ear, or risk facing the entire Ambarian force. Could one icon, even the icon of Theba, stand against so many?
It began to snow, flakes as bright as stars in the falling night. I recalled the tale that Adah had told of the First People naming the stars at the cost of their own lives and felt dragged down to the very belly of the world with grief. It would feel good to sleep on the earth, to sleep within it, quiet and buried in a wood where I could not harm anyone else. Theba would not lie with me, of course; she would go on and perhaps find a more willing partner for her hatred.
To win against Theba, I would have to live forever.
Even as I plodded forward, directionless, I felt my dark sight failing from exhaustion, or perhaps my eyes were simply closing of their own accord. Head and feet both began to throb, and I stopped, leaning against the rough bark of a tree for support. I felt no flicker of life within it, and the wood felt as rough as gravel against my check. The sensation was familiar, and I remembered another wild, trying day: the day that I had been tested in Jhosch, when the Paivi in my mind had bade me climb the stone stair to the altar above. My cheeks had dragged blood across those steps, and there was blood on me now, too. It wasn’t mine.
I recalled, too, what Adah had said, that all icons find their way to Zhaeha when they are tried. I slumped to the tree’s base and was within the cavern with the pool, the place during my test where I had seen the shade of my mother. Had I really been there, within the mountain?
And if I could be transported to the mountain, could the mountain transport me?
I settled into the winter-hard soil, the night dark with my thoughts. We had traveled a strange road through the Rogue’s Ear. Why shouldn’t there be other secret ways in the deep places of the world? I might not be able to find the path that Antares had spoken of, or manage it alone, but I felt as called to Zhaeha now as I had the day I’d fled Jhosch. Maybe I only wanted it to be true, but with each star that winked into brilliance above me, I felt more sure that I had been there before. I hadn’t just raced madly beneath the peak, but I had ventured within.
Looking out into the darkness, I felt my eyes focus again, the sharp edges of branches dragging across the darkness. Without firelight, the shadows didn’t dance but simply lay upon each other, folds upon folds of midnight cloth. I didn’t rise, not then. But I knew that in the morning when I would climb or find some high ground, I would direct myself toward the crooked peak before forging a path.
I would return to Zhaeha. I would find a way home.
Chapter Six
I had to climb a tree. My first. I’d chosen a stout one, as many were spindle-thin, and still felt the lifeless, papery bark shred underneath my fingers as I sought careful purchase. But I finally reached a vantage that stretched on in all directions. Through the early morning’s wreath of snowy fog, I saw the ominous peak of Zhaeha against the brightening sky. There was an answering tug in my gut that I couldn’t have imagined. I could’ve guessed the direction of the mountain and done so correctly.
I had rations enough in my pack for a few days, but Antares had carried the bulk of our supply. I’d run before thinking of searching him—and was too scared now to consider going back. I had seen enough corpses during the war to know that even those you knew in life would be remembered by their lifeless faces. I had no desire to eclipse the man he had been with a mask of death. Perhaps the widow makers would find him when they came for Emine and bury them both. Or would they leave him to stiffen in the winter sun, to waste to blue skin and white bones on the forest floor? I swallowed the hiccup of a sob at the thought and started walking.
For three days, I feared encountering another living creature, but I was unsettled, too, by their absence. I felt I didn’t belong in this wood and didn’t want to think too hard about what did. I stopped each night before it got too dark to find wood for a fire, choosing a small clearing on the third night that seemed as good of a place as any. I wouldn’t have known a good spot from a poor one: we had survived in exile, but my survival skills were based on what I had been able to observe rather than on direct instruction.
The fire, when I finally got it going, was far from merry, but it was warm and kept the darkness at bay. The night beyond was impenetrable, the haunting quiet broken only by the crackling of dry wood. The flame called out to me, a kindred spirit in destruction. Fire could burn and maim and did so mercilessly. But it was also a comforting source of heat and light. How many travelers were preserved by its glow? How many homes were made refuge? It might not have been in Theba’s nature to recognize its full range of power, but it was in mine.
It should matter, that I cared.
When I finally slept, my dreams were fitful. The broken forms of Antares and Emine fell over and over again before me, my mind providing all of the grim details my bound eyes had not seen. Emine was in turn each of my sisters, then she was Morainn and finally Imke, and it was my hand that dealt the final, brutal blow. I licked the blade and felt my tongue fork. I tasted blood and tears when I woke, crying out against a gray dawn.
A dark figure was silhouetted before me, looming and featureless in the early light. I scrambled back, tangled in my bedroll, and flame leaped from my wrists, drawn from the embers of the meager fire. The blaze was momentarily blinding, but the voice that followed eliminated the need to see.
“Take care with that, Han’dra Eiren. Everything is kindling here.”
The lips quirked beneath the smooth plane of the half mask, a twitch of shadow on his pale face.
“Gannet?” I would not ask if it was really him, if he was really here. I could not bear the answer if this was a
trick of the wood, a weirdness that preyed upon the weak.
Neither did his response need words. He crossed to me, taking the hands that were still warm from the quenched flame and lifted me to my feet. He met my eyes, and I sensed his caution, his desire, his fear. His touch was true, his mind open to mine, each of us troubled with recent horrors, seeking the comfort of the other.
I am here.
I am sorry.
I breathed the scents of his traveling clothes and he the tangled sweep of my hair, lips parted in an exhalation we shared as they met, sweet, urgent, mad. My hands skimmed his chest, fingers pinning in the folds of fabric at his shoulders and deeper, feeling the muscle there, the hint of bone. Gannet’s hands on my hips pressed me flush against him even as his mouth left mine, trailing down my neck and lower still, his fevered lips branding the slight swell of my breast above the collar of my stained traveling dress.
This was not the opera. Neither was it a dream. There would be no interruptions.
But Theba had twisted in me, shown me that I could not have this without acknowledging that she would have it, too. In the way she had manipulated my dreams, in the way she had perverted my perceptions of Antares. I knew that I couldn’t trust her, and now I wasn’t sure that I could trust myself. I clasped between us the hands that sought lower on Gannet’s lean frame. Was it Theba who hoped to conquer him, or me?
Which did I fear more?
I pulled away, only just, planting my forehead in the hollow between his shoulder and throat, arresting his own fevered journey down my body.
“How did you find me?”
Mine were not the sweet words of a hopeful lover but a repentant enemy.
“Adah,” he said, breath slowing. “He told me you had gone south with Antares and that he did not expect you to return.”
“And you followed us?”
“You, actually. I started going south, but then I sensed you, the way it was before we met. I could hear you, your thoughts.” His expression, already sober, darkened even more. “With Antares gone, you’re going to the mountain.”
The Dread Goddess--Book of Icons--Volume Two Page 6
