“The Ambarians can’t have allowed you to come all this way the first time without any means of defending yourself, unless they spared good men to protect able-bodied ones,” Jurnus said with a sneer. Where was this anger coming from? “If that’s the case, perhaps we stand a chance, after all.”
There were chuckles amidst the soldiers, though many didn’t smile or laugh, looking to Jurnus instead for a level of direction I was beginning to believe he didn’t deserve. One of the soldiers nearest to my brother passed him her spear.
“That’s enough, Jurnus,” I broke in, but he wasn’t looking at me. Gannet had assumed a posture I had seen on Antares any number of times, and I found myself taking several unwitting steps away from him, heart hammering. I felt Theba’s bloodlust burning eager trails up my body and something else, too, at the sight of my brother circling the man who rivaled all others in my esteem.
“You’ve learned something then,” Jurnus said, sweeping out with his own spear before he’d finished speaking. Gannet retreated, shuffling across the sand, but maintained his defensive stance. “What about this one, though?”
Jurnus’s next lunge was a feint, easily disarming Gannet who was slow to counter the attack. He smirked and I felt my heart straining against my ribs, a whistle of rage on my lips.
“Maybe you ought to accept that armed escort my father offered,” Jurnus crowed, bending to collect the second spear even though Gannet had made no move to recover it. They were close enough together now that he lowered his voice, but I still heard what he said next. “He doesn’t trust you alone with her any more than I do.”
Many things happened then, all at once.
Something in me boiled over, and where Jurnus stood the packed earth cracked and tilted, launching my brother a short distance away, scrambling and tumbling to the ground. Gannet, too, was knocked off his feet. Neither man had much time to recover, for into the square swarmed armored men and women, swords and teeth flashing. Jurnus rolled but not quickly enough to avoid a glancing swipe at his unprotected side. The Aleynian soldiers who had been idling, watching the encounter between my brother and Gannet, sprang to action, some pulling discarded helmets onto their heads while others didn’t pause before launching themselves at the enemy. Lista was among these, engaging two of the enemy without hesitation. A sharp yank on my arm drew me back to myself and the immediate danger.
My father and mother flanked me. Two of the enemy were running at us, and I could not tell if they were men or women for they wore bulky, ill-fitted armor and dark cloth wound over their mouths, noses, and brows. I could see only their eyes, and these were as charged, wild, and empty as only those of a zealot can be.
“Can’t you do something?” This from my mother, a shriek that I heard but barely over the clatter of weapons, the growls of battle. I tried to reach into myself, to summon the fire or something worse, but I felt cold, like a hearth after a long, neglected night. There was only terror at the nearness of the battle. I was only Eiren, afraid to be hurt, afraid to die.
Not just Eiren. Never just Eiren.
Time seemed to slow as I took in the weapon strikes, the parrying, the bodies twisted in defense and in falling, too. On instinct I bent and scooped a handful of sand, and when I stood, I blew it into the face of an advancing attacker. My lungs were hot as an oven, and the grains turned to glass as they flew forward, instantly blinding the one who’d dared come at me. It was Theba’s doing; she burst from me then, a snake coiled in a nest. I felt her just under my skin and thought I might shed it, so great was the press of her outrage. The next nearest Ambarian she flung away without even needing to use my hands, the others closest to me felt their weapons burn as hot as they had in the instant of their forging. But they could not drop them. The blaze crept from their screaming hands to their shoulders, their bellies filling with fire, their mouths belching smoke. Blackened figures crumpled before me, their bodies broken in a perverse semblance of worship. Theba’s leer was on my lips as though strings pulled them back, and I fought to control my expression, eyes taking in each figure, and those still standing, drawing near in shock.
Six at my feet. What I had not finished my family’s forces had.
“You did this,” Jurnus said, an uncanny blend of horror, relief, and outrage on his face.
I nodded, my chin dipping forward as though weighted. I wanted to look away from the corpses, wanted to drop to my knees before them, wanted to retch. I did none of these things.
“And the stone, before. You broke the stones under my feet.”
I nodded again. My face burned as Theba burrowed back within me, satisfied as a glutton after feasting. It wouldn’t last.
Behind Jurnus my sisters assembled, and I felt my mother and father at my back. I didn’t need to see any of them to know they warred with themselves as my brother did; I could hear their thoughts torn between marveling at my power and horror at seeing it employed.
I felt a hand on my heart, squeezing. They were grateful to me, but I’d finally inspired the fear I’d hoped to when I first told them that I was Theba. It hurt, to see the truth of what I was through their eyes.
Another mind intruded upon mine, but I shrank from him, too. Gannet could not comfort me now. I turned to look at him, standing behind my father, a spare, tidy figure in black. Not a warrior. Not a killer.
I tried to back away from them all and my hem caught against the charred curl of a limb, burned beyond recognition. I felt tears in my eyes, hot as oil.
“Dispose of these corpses,” my father called out, directing the soldiers who’d hung back, uncertain. “Figure out how they got in here, and send someone below to check on the others.”
“It was a scouting party,” Gannet said. “When they don’t return, the enemy will send another.”
“Then we’ll be ready next time.” Jurnus wasn’t looking at me now, but at our father, his gaze fevered. “We’ll need to be ready for an offensive.”
“I won’t rush to attack.” My father’s voice had gravel in it, and I heard echoes of this argument in his mind, tackled from many angles by my dogged brother. “We risk leaving our people leaderless. We are safe enough here for now.”
“It is obvious that we’re not,” Jurnus muttered, eyes on the corpses that others had begun to drag away from the courtyard. “If we don’t press what advantages we have, we will lose them.”
He wasn’t just speaking of the knowledge of the terrain, of the capacity to surprise our enemy, but of me. My father sensed it, too, even without my gifts. They were all thinking of it, of what I could do and how I might be used. My mother was resigned. Esbat’s gaze, on the other hand, was critical, a scholar’s consideration of what must be done. What sacrifices should be made for the preservation of all.
I met Lista’s eyes then and she searched my face, her own marked with blood and sand. She didn’t recognize me. She wondered over what it was she had seen—the fire, and if Jurnus had merely tripped, if Gannet could be trusted…if I could.
“I already told you I can’t,” I said hoarsely, turning my back on her, on all of them, and exiting the courtyard. Let more of the enemy come. I would burn myself to a cinder torching their flesh from their bones, and then what? What place could there be for me in the world they built after?
Gannet caught up with me and kept pace, several lengths removed so that even the hems of our clothes were in no danger of brushing together. “I think you’ve forgotten everything I’ve taught you.”
“You never taught me how to control my temper.” Or hers. “In fact, you used to be particularly adept at igniting it.”
“It’s a gift,” he answered, tone severe for all his eyes glittered behind the mask. My laugh was like sand rasping in my throat. Soon it collapsed into a sigh, not of discontent, but of release. We had work to do. I relaxed, only just, and drew nearer to him when we stopped to allow a cluster of older children, their arms full of bandages and salves in squat jars, to hurry in the direction we had come from. The search be
fore us seemed all the more urgent on the heels of the attack.
We moved beyond the perimeter of activity, going more carefully even than the day before. Between following what I could remember of the vision and keeping an eye out for surprise attackers, our pace was crawling. I fought to keep the sight of both cities before me, Re’Kether as it was, and the wonder that it had been. Ji’s flight from the bathhouse was messy, an incomplete memory crowded with fright and fury. But I thought I recognized the cobbles here, or the sun-baked ruin that had once been cobbles. I crouched, the fleeting scrape of stone against my hand the same sensation Ji had experienced when scrabbling between the legs of rioters. Wind whipped sand against the stone faces of ancient buildings that stood still in this quarter, and I heard in the howling the animal rage of a long-dead rebellion. Was that the gutter she had crawled to, the worn stoop that had born the mark that promised her sanctuary?
Where there should have been the indifferent glare of the sun there was shadow, an inexplicable square of it between two columns that were all that remained of a once-modest structure. And in the shadow a gloved hand extended, reaching out to me, or to Ji. I shook my head, confusion like heat sickness muddying my thoughts. I gestured to Gannet to come near, my vision blurring as I felt the stones beneath my feet shift. The owner of the hand didn’t wait for me to take it, but snatched forward like a viper striking, seizing my wrist. I felt Ji’s heart and head eclipse my own, and I wanted it and didn’t want it. I turned to look at Gannet, his alarm plain even as he disappeared.
Desecrating a temple was a crime punishable by death. There was no appeal, not for anyone, and certainly not for me. It was rumored Adah was doling out punishments himself of late, rather than allowing his disciples to exercise their own cruel interpretations of justice. While the god could be counted upon to harbor neither human jealousy nor outrage, neither did he possess anything resembling empathy. I wasn’t sure whose justice I would prefer, if caught.
The streets were dark, what few lanterns usually maintained in this quarter stolen or smashed to conceal crimes of another kind. There was no moon. Still, I saw the figure that stepped into my path an instant before they did so, and my own limbs roused to defense even as the person raised their arms in surrender.
“I am not your enemy.”
I recognized the voice. It was the woman from the temple, the one that had refused to show her face to Mara and me even after we had delivered the message. As she had appeared then, there was nothing to identify her but her voice, featureless under a hood, shapeless in a large, shadowy garment. Still I knew her, and that was all I needed to duck into the open doorway to which she gestured.
Once inside, I stopped, unwilling to go further without answers. “How did you know that I would come this way? Are you having me followed? Have I been followed? What is this place?”
She didn’t answer at first, busying herself far too long with bolting the door before sweeping past me with an air of importance, angling down a hall. “You’re safe, for now. But you’re careless. I expect it won’t last.”
I snorted, quick on her heels despite her advantage in height, the length of her stride. The corridor was dimly lit and stank of disuse, and I began to feel the weight of stone and sand above as it sloped downward.
“Torching a prayer garden from within without being seen takes great care,” I boasted, my desire for information wrestling with my desire to save face. “I wasn’t seen, was I?”
She halted before a closed door, old and partly rotted, but brushed clean. The murmurs of those within ceased abruptly, as though they could sense, if not yet see, our approach. “If you’d been seen, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The door seemed to pulse, the age-softened wood alive to the tremors perceived in the living bodies that drew near. I watched, fascinated, as it opened a fraction, smooth as a breath, and closed again.
“Go in. I’ll wait here for you.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I’m not wanted. Now go in before I decide to give you up to Adah’s hounds.”
I shuddered, thinking of those most fiercely devoted to Adah, the unwashed ones who wore the hides of animals scraped only partly clean of sinew and fat. The creatures that lived in the wild had a natural order and no need for crime and were sacred to the just god. His followers became near feral themselves in their pursuit of his favor.
“You don’t have to threaten me,” I hissed, placing a hand upon the splintered wood when next it opened, the pressure of my touch parting the door from frame like a pair of withered lips. There was a slight pressure on my back—she’d pushed me!—and the door closed behind me as soon as I was within.
It was darker here even than it had been in the corridor, and my eyes took a moment to adjust. The resistance, it seemed, was not in favor of illumination, nor of ample spaces, as the chamber we occupied was hardly large than a wardrobe. Three figures clustered together opposite me, and I recognized them immediately, cursing as I stumbled back against the door. It couldn’t be opened from the inside.
“She’s betrayed us, but I won’t,” I insisted, eyes blazing even as I trembled with fear. Mara had been so sure we could trust her, the woman from the temple, but she’d given me up to them, not even remaining behind to see how they chose to punish me.
Tirce, with his great hands muddied and his jaw set like a sharpening stone.
Dsimah, her rounded belly promising fertility, fecundity to barren fields and women both, if we offered the brightest and most beautiful youths to service in her temple.
And Najat, the Dreamer, whose eyes were preternaturally wide and without pupils, glowing with the golds and blues of sweet things realized in the blink of a sleeping eye and in another instant, the blood-dark stuff of nightmares.
It was Najat who spoke first, and her voice arrested me, bade my knees to buckle and my belly to clench. I only just managed to keep from collapsing to the floor in an abject posture of devotion. “She did not lie to you when she claimed she was not your enemy. She led you here because neither are we.”
I snorted. I would be daring even in the face of death.
“A madman who does not receive what his dreams promise takes it from the three young virgins in his master’s house,” I said, voice steady though my heart hammered a ritual staccato against my breastbone. I looked away from Najat, glaring at Dsimah. “And just today I saw a woman outside your temple, her belly heavy with not one child but two, begging you to take one if only the other would grow healthy and strong. She had a knife. She meant to do it herself if her prayers were not answered.”
I looked at Tirce.
“And you, I saw you, in the bathhouse. You and the crown prince.”
No mortal face could rival the frown of a god whose province was earth and stone.
“We do what we must to maintain appearances. Would you look more favorably on me if I told you of that man, Ameth’s, ill deeds? He is no friend to you or your kind. It was never meant to be like this,” Tirce intoned, shaking his head. His remorse seemed genuine, but gods did not feel. They bade others do it for them.
“It has always been like this.”
The woman from the temple had entered behind me, but I did not turn to look at her, not wanting to put my back to the three who stood before me. My retort was lost, words stifled in my throat as neatly as Tirce might have crumbled a handful of stones to dust.
“I don’t care what it was or was meant to be, only what it is,” I insisted. I couldn’t trust them. I wouldn’t. Would there be time enough to reach one of my weapons? Would it even matter?
“But how do you kill a god?” Alarm sprang in my belly when Najat spoke, answering a thought even I hadn’t dared utter aloud. Her expression was immutable. The depths of a cloudless night were in her eyes, moon glow, the edge of a dawning sky that promises an end to dreaming.
To hear her say it shocked me, but the others showed no surprise. What wasn’t said did far more to convince me of their
truthfulness than what was. This truth was at the heart of what we did, what we hoped to do. The gods walked among us, warm flesh, heavy hands, heavier deeds. In our prayers we could not ask them to leave us be, and so we must put an end to praying. We must give them up.
And I didn’t imagine they’d respond to much but lethal force.
“I don’t know,” I said, at last. I had no weapons now but honesty. I had seen too much. Men who swallowed stones to give themselves the strength of the god who stood before me, his mouth touched with a sorrow I couldn’t understand. Wild-eyed dreamers whose herbal abuses induced sleep, or prolonged wakefulness so as to control Najat’s visitations. Lives lived out only in part because of devotion, or fear, or both.
“We have little time for you to learn.” This from the woman who stood behind me. If I’d know her name, I’d have used it as a curse.
“What is it you do for the rebellion, exactly?” I rounded on her now, temper blazing, searching the blank darkness of the hood for eyes and finding none. “How is it you don’t have to risk your life?”
“I take a great many risks you would never understand.”
“Try me,” I growled, but even as it seemed she intended to speak, her shoulders rising and her chest, too, with an angry puff of breath, Dsimah interceded.
“Enough. You both have secrets.”
I started at her words, sure that at least part of the diffusion of feeling in my breast was divine in nature. What did she think she knew about me?
And what didn’t I know about the woman who’d led me here?
Dsimah’s gaze leveled on us both. “It is best for now, for all of us, that you keep them. There is something you must do together.”
The Dread Goddess--Book of Icons--Volume Two Page 17
