The Dread Goddess--Book of Icons--Volume Two

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  The mention of a task grounded me, though knowing now that my orders came from those I purported to fight was unsettling.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “If you have any hope of succeeding, if we have any hope,” she insisted, “there’s something we need. Something old. Something powerful.”

  The hooded woman circled behind me. They had our undivided attention now. Even as I leaned forward into the response, it didn’t come. Her lips moved and slid away from her face, eaten up in a blaze of light. Gannet held me, the pressure of arms arresting. We were tucked against the remains of a stone wall, taking advantage of what little shade it provided.

  “What did you see, Eiren? What are you seeing now?”

  I closed my eyes, desperate to hang on to any memory that I could. Already Ji’s world was losing color and distinction, the edges like sand dunes slipping into unrecognizable shapes. Ji aspired to put an end to the wicked reign of the gods, and I did, too.

  “She was sent to recover a weapon,” I said. “What we’re searching for, she sought, too. And I saw—I saw the gods. Their true faces.”

  I was delirious, squeezing my eyes shut against Gannet’s chest and pressing my face forward into the shadow of his cloak as though I could return to Ji’s world by will alone. But it was impossible to hold on to more than an impression and nothing to sketch in the sand this time. After a moment Gannet freed a hand to hold a water skin to my lips, and I took a few sips to oblige him.

  “Where was she sent, Eiren?”

  I shook my head, feeling the rough brush of his shirt against my cheeks, my nose.

  “I don’t know. There were two gods, no, three. They told her, they told her—”

  Quiet.

  Gannet’s hands tightened on my frame, and I looked up at him, following his gaze to the gutted ruin of a building some distance away, where the sun’s light was captured by a glass and reflected out again. Three quick blinks of light, a longer exposure, and then two more blinks. My heart sank.

  One of yours?

  I don’t think so.

  The message was being broadcast out toward the city’s edge and the Ambarian encampment. Had there been one among the scouting party who had escaped, or were there others secreted away in the city already? Was the Ambarian daring increased by the imminent arrival of the imposter’s army?

  Or had they arrived already?

  We were running out of time. We needed to hide, to run, something to guide us beyond instinct and vision.

  But we couldn’t go anywhere when, their thoughts racing ahead of their boots, the force that had been signaled began to advance into the city.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gannet sensed them, too, and we both pressed back against the wall, as though we might be able to merge with a scrap of shadow the ruined building provided. They’d be on us within a few minutes, and there wasn’t cover enough to be had in this quarter. They’d have to be cautious, too, anticipating my family’s forces, which meant they’d be drawn to the same corner that we occupied to disguise their entry into the city. I met Gannet’s eyes, my own wild, questioning.

  Can you do it again?

  I knew what he asked, and what it meant for him to ask. Theba’s hunger sprang in my belly, too quick, too eager. Every time I gave in to her I felt that I lost a part of myself. I had stopped counting the bodies, stopped actively regretting the carnage. We were at war. But there would be a cost, and I wouldn’t be the only one to pay it.

  It wasn’t a question of whether I could use my power, but whether I would.

  Even as I closed my eyes to stoke the fire within, I heard the skittering of arrows striking stone, the cries of alarm, the slump of at least one body collapsing in the sand. My thoughts scattered in the chaos of many minds all at once shrieking, searching, seeking defensible positions. One figure ducked through the doorway for cover, a woman of middle years boasting a festering wound on her neck and bare shoulder, a naked blade in her hands. I threw myself at her legs before she could move, beyond her surprise, and Gannet was quick behind me, striking her in the forearm and causing her to drop her weapon. Together we wrestled her to the ground, but she was crying for help, and I panicked. I could smell her sweat, her fear, the sourness in the wound. I felt her pain, saw in her the lover she’d already lost to this war and the maddening grief that had driven her to follow the imposter this far. Not since the opera had I laid hands physically upon someone I meant to kill. Then I had relished it, but when I reached for this woman’s throat, to stifle her scream forever, Theba’s glee turned my stomach. I scrambled away on my hands and knees, heaving. It was Gannet who recovered the woman’s blade and struck her, hard, against her head, silencing her. I didn’t know if she lived or not, but she’d stopped moving.

  They were fighting all around us now, in the street beyond the structure where Gannet hastened to drag my cowering form back into the corner, away from the battle. I didn’t look but could hear them, sense their thoughts driven to manic regret, fury, and disbelief as they died by arrow, spear, and poisoned dart. Theba raged at my weakness, but I could only shake in Gannet’s arms. In the same instant that I considered the necessity of killing, I was undone by Theba’s needless wanting to kill, knew that no matter how I justified it, she would twist the deed done by my hands and grow stronger for it. I felt that need bleeding over into me, the lines between us blurring. War was ugly and one became ugly to win—there was no other way, and there was no going back.

  Gannet was pulling me to my feet and I allowed it. There were no more cries, only the shuffling of the living.

  “Gannet?”

  The voice broke between the syllables of his name.

  “Morainn?”

  He let me go and we stood, our shadows stretching out to meet the figure who approached us.

  Her hair was pulled back from her face, but no circlet split her brow. Instead, a scar bubbled from her hairline over one of her eyes, a sweep of puckered skin that terminated above a shapely cheekbone. The eye in its marred socket did not drift, but neither did it focus. It was snow-gray and still, sightless.

  The cry of grief that crowded my throat escaped in a ragged moan, and I leaned against Gannet, unable to tear my eyes away from his sister.

  “Morainn, what are you doing here?” he said, but she held up a hand, in it the little reflecting glass the Ambarians had been using to signal each other.

  “Not here. It isn’t safe. We’re only a day ahead of the force that’s riding to join this one, and I won’t lose an hour of it.”

  Gannet nodded, struck as dumb as I was, as Morainn was joined by a number of others, perhaps twenty, all with lethal weapons in their hands and countenances to match. I didn’t recognize them, and neither did they recognize me. But they knew Gannet.

  “We found an entrance to the sewer system. It’s extensive. We should be able to move unseen underground,” one of them said to Morainn, a man whose scars and deferential tone made him seem older than he was.

  “Good. Let’s go,” she responded. She dared then to meet my eyes and I hers, one sightless, the other brighter, wilder, seeming to see more than the pair had done before. I thought fleetingly of Cassia’s blindness, the gift that it had given her at the loss of her sight, and wondered what Morainn had gained.

  I could sense that she hadn’t been sure until this moment how she would feel when she met me again, if she had forgiven me, if she could. Feelings flashed across her face like lightning strikes, anger, sorrow, resignation, the final thunderclap of unsteady relief. There was no darkness in me that could eclipse her light, no foul feeling that could overtake the good.

  We followed after Morainn and the small group at her command until we ducked into what had been an alley. I felt the closeness of this passage as it had been, high walls wet with humidity, washing water and waste underfoot. Now there was only heat, glare, and sand, but there was a shaft, partially obscured by a crumbled wall, that promised the cool darkness of the subterranean. Se
veral of Morainn’s people went first, followed by Morainn, while Gannet and I were urged ahead to let others take up the rear. I descended in a daze to torchlight and stale but breathable air below.

  Morainn waited only so long as it took for Gannet to gain his footing before she turned and hugged him, arms tightening fiercely around his shoulders.

  “You asked me what I was doing here. I could ask the same thing of you,” she began, still holding him fast but drawing back to look at him. She searched his face, and he hers. Observing their exchange of worry felt strangely intrusive. “When I woke, you were gone. Mother and father were dead, and Jhosch in chaos.”

  I noted and Gannet did, too, that she didn’t hesitate to speak her mind in front of those who accompanied her, to speak the truth of his parentage. We exchanged a look, and she was quick to explain.

  “The false Theba compelled all but the most loyal into her service, made promises she won’t be able to keep, threatened further destruction. The heretics enforce her will, now. These men and women remained behind for me. For us. For Ambar. And that’s why I’m here,” she continued, breaking away from him now and turning her attention to me. “I’m willing to share everything we know about her forces with Aleyn. Before I left Jhosch, I spared an envoy to Cascar, promising them their sovereignty if they joined this fight. I pledge all of those loyal to me to your family, Eiren.”

  She paused to take a breath, her features transformed by more than the fire that had touched her. Conviction blazed there, born of a duty she’d chosen, rather than one she’d merely accepted.

  “I will not be my father’s daughter. If we are going to rebuild a kingdom, I will not put greed at its heart.”

  I nodded, determined not to cry at her courage, at the fact that she lived.

  “They’re in the palace. We can take you,” I said. She studied me a moment longer, then turned to the scarred young man from before.

  “Can you scout ahead? See if we can get nearer the city’s center before we have to go above ground again?”

  He set off, and when Morainn sat to drink and remove a few strips of something from a pouch to eat, the others took that as a signal that they, too, had earned a brief rest. Gannet and I crouched beside Morainn, and I thought of the last time we three had been together, how little resemblance there was between that moment and this.

  “You haven’t told me yet how you came to be here,” she said softly, meeting my eyes. I read her thoughts—she offered them to me without hesitation or reproach.

  I don’t know who leads the army.

  I don’t blame you for what happened to my parents.

  I don’t blame you for this.

  And now I did turn away, eyes burning.

  “We went through Zhaeha,” Gannet answered, eliciting a look of shock from his sister and from the guards seated near enough to her to hear. “I do not doubt that your aid and Cascar’s will be most welcome, but there is something in this city that has the power to end this war. Forever.”

  “And you’re not talking about Eiren,” Morainn interjected, a ghost of the smirk I remembered flirting with her lips.

  “No,” Gannet continued, ignoring her attempt at levity. “Some kind of weapon. I think it’s what we’ve always meant to find for Theba. Something to bring back the gods.”

  “Or something to kill them.” The words felt heavy in my mouth, weights I dropped into the conversation.

  “And you’re looking for it?” Morainn removed the gloves she’d been wearing, pale fingers working at a bandoleer of darts strapped to one wrist. She hadn’t gone armed before, but I wasn’t surprised to learn that she had some skill to call on when necessary.

  “Yes. And—and Shran’s golems.”

  Her look was incredulous at Gannet’s admission.

  “That’s just a story, Gannet.”

  “So were the kr’oumae,” he insisted. “And we saw them. We passed through their waters in the center of the world to arrive here.”

  Morainn gaped, hands falling away from her work. This response seemed to satisfy Gannet.

  “We’ve been looking for temples, and for Shran’s tomb. It seems unlikely to me that the location of his tomb was forgotten, but rather, hidden.”

  “It makes sense,” Morainn admitted, recovering her senses, “considering the turmoil that followed his death, the bloody years under his sons. How do you even know where to look?”

  Rather than answer his sister, Gannet looked to me. He sensed my discomfort, the guilt that filled me when I looked at Morainn.

  If she can forgive you, you can forgive yourself.

  I swallowed.

  “I have had visions of Re’Kether as it was, a rebellion against the gods. We’ve been following them, but they’re difficult for me to remember, and we haven’t had anything else to go on.”

  “I might be able to help with that.” Her grin now was every inch the one that I remembered as she slipped a pack from her back and began to rifle through its contents. “I have something for you. I couldn’t bear to leave it, when I found it in your chamber.” She held out a slim bundle to me. The fabric was stained with travel, but inside a tome lay undamaged, the worn marks upon the cover familiar and old. It was the book Gannet had given me, the one that he had entered the burning barge to recover, the one I had unwittingly abandoned in Jhosch. I hadn’t intended to leave, or to leave it behind.

  I took it from her hands, marveling at how right it felt to hold it again.

  “It revealed the way through the Rogue’s Ear,” she continued. “It may hold more secrets still.”

  “Thank you, Morainn,” I murmured, running a finger down the spine before opening it. The pages made no more sense to me now than they had the first time Gannet had opened it with me, but perhaps now that we had a purpose, a reason, we could learn something.

  Gannet looked over my shoulder, eyes hooded as he watched my hands move over the book.

  “I found the book in Rhale’s library many years ago. He has many treasures of the old world, though he does not part readily with them. He told me to take it, that the book would be mine, for a time, and then it would be yours.”

  Sweat beaded suddenly on my spine despite the chill.

  “He knew about me?”

  “Not exactly,” Gannet replied, looking away, thoughts distant and guarded. “He didn’t tell me who was meant to have it, only that I would know, when the time came. And I did.”

  I’d thought Rhale’s claim to Charrum’s ancestry laughable then, but now I wondered. Surely someone who had that man’s greed in his blood would possess great mysteries, many of them intangible. There was more value in knowledge, in secrets, than in objects. Charrum would have learned that, in time.

  The scarred young man returned, speaking in low tones to Morainn. It seemed there was a way forward, for a distance. We stood, readying ourselves, and I stowed the book in my own bag. We were still near the shaft that led to the surface, and I could see there were lavish carvings even here. I stepped forward, brushing sand from a curling vine, leaves still baring a trace of green.

  “I am always finding things are not as they seem,” I said quietly, working my way down the carving until under my hand, small insects sprang into relief, their lines so fluid I flinched, stumbling back suddenly into Gannet before I realized they were not real. His hands went to my shoulders instinctively, steadying me, lingering after.

  “Some things are, Eiren.”

  His voice was low, breath threaded through my loose hair, he was so close. Morainn’s guards were already moving down the passage with her sequestered at their center. Gannet’s hands traced hesitantly across the plane of my shoulders before falling away. I felt them still, as though web-thin threads connected his skin and mine. The heat that stirred in my heart had no relation to Theba’s ember-potent fury, but it felt just as dangerous.

  “I could’ve helped, up there. But I didn’t. I’m afraid if I call upon Theba’s strength again, I won’t be able to stop her,” I s
aid suddenly, turning to face him before he could advance after his sister. Morainn had slowed, peering back over her shoulder to locate us.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Gannet said after a long moment, brushing my hair back over one shoulder with a touch so fleeting I nearly leaned into it. “I think it’s you who can’t be stopped.”

  My breath caught, but even as we stood there, peering into each other, teetering on the edge of something unsaid, Morainn raised her voice.

  “I am very close to losing a hard-won hour.” There was a warning in her tone, and laughter, too. Gannet and I turned, hurrying toward the promise of both.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It doesn’t look like any map I’ve ever seen.” Esbat leaned over the book, laid bare like a body at a funeral viewing on a long, low slab of stone. Cooled cups of tea circled the busy pages, long forgotten as we thirsted for insight instead. Morainn crouched next to my sister, an incongruous sight, my fair and dark sisters of spirit and flesh. My mother was opposite, characteristically silent save for the occasional murmur of agreement. Gannet hung back, perhaps preferring the shade of the interior wall and the sanctuary of his own thoughts. We had returned to the palace less than two hours before, Morainn’s proclamations as powerful for my assembled family as they had been for me. She had risked her life coming here, and offered them what Gannet and I could not: a true ally in herself, and in the Cascari, if they agreed to her terms. She and father had already crafted a missive to smuggle out of the city and to Cascar at the earliest opportunity. Jurnus, upon learning that the imposter’s forces were less than a day away, set out immediately to bolster our defenses.

  “It wasn’t meant to be read by us,” Morainn interjected, tone diplomatic despite her exhaustion and her frustration that this was a puzzle she couldn’t solve. She curled the page into the spine the way the wind once had while I read on horseback, revealing to me the path made between pages. Neither she nor Gannet had recognized the shape created by this curious way of reading. He explained that it had been through a code of archaic characters that he had discerned the location of the Rogue’s Ear, and both were skeptical of the path I pointed out being indicative of the location of the tomb.