Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “My lady?” The attendant at the door was young—no older than Eda’s own seventeen years. She looked frightened, her eyes big and round.

  “The Emperor, my father, has passed,” Eda told her. “I will be announced as his heir in the ballroom in a quarter hour.”

  Somehow, the attendant’s eyes grew even rounder than before. “But my lady, Miss Dahl-Saida is announcing herself as heir.”

  The name rankled her, even though she’d made preparations. Eda straightened her spine. “I know. That is why I’m bringing the Imperial Guard. Send for soldiers from the barracks to stand vigil around my father. And it’s Your Imperial Highness, at least until I am crowned tomorrow.”

  The attendant drew in a sharp breath and bowed very low. “It is an honor to serve you, Your Imperial Highness.” She left to do Eda’s bidding.

  Eda smiled. She felt the power of the gods, filling her up.

  She swept from the room and went to claim the Empire Tuer had promised her.

  Chapter Eight

  THIS TIME, IT WAS ILEEM WHO APPEARED at Eda’s window, his form melting out of the shadows on the rooftops.

  She’d been sitting on the sill, knees pulled up to her chin, staring blankly out into the night and trying desperately to get a hold of herself. She hadn’t spoken a word to Ileem on the short ride back to the palace, had barely even glanced at him in her haste to return to her rooms. And he hadn’t pressed her.

  Now he was here, crouched expectantly outside of her window with only the jasmine-soaked night air between them. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then will you come out?” He raised a bottle of wine into her view.

  She blinked and saw the image of the Emperor’s ghost pressed behind her eyelids. She realized how much she didn’t want to be alone. “All right. But only because of the wine.”

  She clambered through the window and out onto the roof, letting Ileem choose their path. They climbed up a ways, onto the main dome of the library, and stretched out on the sun-warmed tiles. The moon was at its zenith, and it seemed all the world was flooded in silvery light. It would be beautiful if Eda could shake the image of the Emperor’s ghost from her head, if she could forget her mounting terror for Niren.

  Ileem took several healthy swigs of wine before passing the bottle to Eda. If it was anyone but Ileem, she would have said something scathing about Empresses not drinking from bottles, and certainly not directly after someone else. But it was Ileem, and she found she didn’t mind her lips touching the same thing his lips had touched. She took a long drink—the wine was strong, and burned in her throat on the way down. Excellent. She took another drink.

  “I’ve always had a thirst for vengeance,” said Ileem, stretching out his long legs and leaning back onto the roof. “Even after I swore myself to Rudion.”

  His dark skin gleamed in the moonlight. He looked otherworldly, gods-touched. Eda shuddered. How awful it must be to truly bear the gods’ mark.

  “I wanted to right all the wrongs of the world,” Ileem was saying. “Make my father well again, protect my sister, demand my brothers serve the gods with proper reverence. I was always getting into fights, letting myself be provoked. I liked to think I was carrying out the gods’ judgment, but it was really my own. Not even bearing Rudion’s mark could cool my temper—if anything, it fed the flames. When my father died, I couldn’t control myself anymore. I broke a man’s nose for mocking my devotion to Rudion. I broke another man’s leg when he questioned my choice of song in our darkwinter Feast of Stars, a song Rudion himself had given me to sing. And then … then I killed someone by accident.”

  Eda scraped her fingernails against the wine bottle. The Emperor’s death had not been by accident. It had been a calculated choice, a necessary step. She’d thought she was resigned to it: the gift from the gods that allowed her to seize what they owed her. She’d never felt guilty about it before. She never thought she’d needed to.

  But now she couldn’t stop seeing the Emperor’s haunted eyes.

  “It was supposed to be a boxing match,” Ileem was saying. “A harmless bit of fun. But he made me angry. He mocked me and my family and my god. He said I was a whipped cur, slinking back to the temple again and again to the god who kept me on a leash. I couldn’t stop beating him. I couldn’t stop, like it was someone else controlling my hands, someone else’s screaming that made my throat raw and my hands ache. By the time a guard pulled me off of him, it was too late. He was gone.”

  Ileem’s jaw tensed; he stared out over the rooftop, every line in him evincing his regret. “That’s when I decided I had to leave Denlahn for a time, make a pilgrimage to the monastery in Halda and atone for my sin. I also hoped to meet Rudion there, in the mountains, where they say his presence lingers strongest of all. I hoped to see more than just a shadow. I hoped to gain new purpose in my life. Liah came with me to keep me from getting into any more trouble. I don’t think she minded. I think she was bored at home. As the youngest of us all, she hadn’t a lot of opportunity for adventure. And she’s always been fond of me, for reasons I can’t fathom.”

  Eda took yet another drink. The wine tasted sweeter now than it had at first. She closed her eyes, losing herself in Ileem’s story.

  “My brother was pleased when we went away. I really don’t know that he meant to ever have us back in Denlahn again. The monastery, Tal-Arohnd, was different than I expected. Filled with power and peace. It broke my world apart and slowly pieced it back together again. I repented. I healed. I grew used to the thin mountain air and the cold and the remoteness. I grew used to the Haldans’ way of life and how religion touches every part of it.”

  “That’s what I want for Enduena,” said Eda. “That’s how it should be.”

  “The Haldans’ weeks are divided into nine days, one for each god, and the monks relegate their duties accordingly: on Huen’s Day, they dig hollows in the earth, sit in them, and pray; on Uerc’s Day, they sit with their animals and sing to them. On Raiva’s Day, they tend their gardens, and so on. It was such a contrast to the frenetic pace of court life, but I learned to love the rhythm of it. Liah would paint the views from the mountain and I saw how at peace she was—that made me content.”

  “What did the monks do for Tuer’s Day?” asked Eda quietly. “What did they think of the mark from your god?” She washed her questions down with more wine.

  “They were wary of the mark at first. Wary of me. But the third month I was there they at last let me take part in Tuer’s Day. They climb partway up their cliff, and sit with their backs against the mountain, looking west toward Tuer’s Rise. That’s where they say Tuer’s Mountain is hidden.”

  Eda nearly choked. “Tuer’s Mountain?”

  Ileem peered up at her. “The monks believe Tuer himself is there, somewhere. Trapped in his own mountain. They claim they can hear him sometimes, his weeping tangled up with the wind.”

  She tried to force herself to breathe evenly. The wine was making her head spin. She took another swig because she might as well, now.

  “I heard it, too. I always hear my god, which is how I know the monks were telling the truth, even though I also know Rudion isn’t trapped. He can’t be—I’ve seen him.”

  “We’ve both seen him.” Eda clenched the wine bottle tighter and lay back on the roof tiles beside Ileem, her head mere breaths away from his.

  His dark eyes pierced her, and something more than the wine seared through her veins.

  “I climbed up the cliff alone one morning at dawn. Liah had told me there was nothing like watching the sun rise over the peaks. She was right: the mountains turned to molten gold. That’s when Rudion came to me.”

  “When he gave you your vision.”

  “Yes. And when he’d finished admonishing me about my thirst for vengeance and the blood I’d spilled in his name, he looked straight through me and said ‘Find her. Free me.’ And then the sun was wholly above the peaks and Rudion was gone. That’s when I vowed to co
me here to forge peace. With you.” Ileem turned his left palm so Eda could see the crisscrossed map of scars that shimmered there, some old and white, from the time Rudion had marked him, some fresher, as if they had only recently healed. “I told Liah that Rudion had come to me. I told the monks, too. But they said it was impossible, that the god was lost to this Circle of the world long ago.”

  The words of the Emperor’s ghost shuddered through her: The Circles are closed. I cannot get through. Shadow Niren had said something about the Circles too, in the Place of Kings.

  “What did they mean by ‘the Circle’?”

  Ileem raised his eyebrows. “You’ve never heard of the Circles of the world?”

  Eda shrugged. “It’s an expression. Something we say when someone dies—that the One who was before everything gathers their soul to paradise, beyond the Circles of the world.”

  “It’s more than an expression in Denlahn. Halda, too.”

  “Tell me,” said Eda.

  “There are four Circles. The first is the Circle of the Living.” Ileem gestured to the rooftop that spread out before them, the sky, the stars. “It’s the world itself, where we walk and breathe and are. The second is the Circle of the Dead, where souls wait to be gathered to paradise. The third is the Circle of Time, and the fourth and final the Circle of Sorrow.”

  “How can the Circle of Sorrow be outside of Time?”

  Ileem caught her eye. “Because sorrow can be greater than anything. Even time.”

  Unbidden, Eda saw her parents, dead and cold as marble, wrapped in white sheets. She understood.

  Ileem lapsed into silence and Eda focused on her surroundings: the press of the roof tiles into her shoulder blades and her spine, the kiss of the night air, the steady sound of Ileem’s breathing. But it couldn’t keep her panic at bay, couldn’t keep the words of the Emperor’s ghost and the ancient priest from the sacred pool from repeating themselves endlessly in her mind:

  Seek the god.

  Fulfill your vow.

  Ileem turned toward her, his sleeves scraping against the tiles and sending a shower of tiny pebbles skittering. “All that to say, Your Imperial Majesty—whatever happened at the temple site this evening, whatever it is you saw—you can tell me. I’ll believe you. Or if you don’t want to tell me, I’ll understand. But I’m sure it’s nothing to be afraid of. And if it has to do with your vow, I understand that, too. It is not an easy thing, to be fixed in the eye of a god.”

  Eda blinked at him, lost in his gaze, in the sound of his voice. He intoxicated her, even more than his ridiculously strong wine. She wanted to forget everything else. She wanted to drown in him.

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” he said softly, brushing her cheek with one finger. “You seem very far away.”

  She just needed to breathe. “Then perhaps you should come closer.”

  And then he was kissing her, his mouth wet and warm on hers. He tasted like the wine they’d been drinking. He tasted like the star-streaked sky. Every inch of her was aware of every inch of him, and she pulled him closer, until his heart beat beside her own, a matched set, pulse for pulse. Her foot knocked against the wine bottle and it went clattering across the roof tiles and smashed noisily somewhere far below.

  Eda flung her head back, breaking the kiss. Someone would have heard that. Her fingers were still tangled in Ileem’s shirt.

  “Your Imperial Majesty?”

  She touched his lips. “‘Eda’ will do just fine.”

  He smiled. “Eda.”

  She heard that musical cadence in his voice again, and she wanted suddenly, desperately, for him to sing for her. “I have to return to my chambers. Someone will come looking.”

  “What if that someone were me?”

  Heat poured through her at his implication. “You are not Emperor yet, Your Highness.”

  Another smile, a little slyer than the first. “I suppose I am not.”

  They climbed down the way they’d come, Eda swaying and stumbling and more than a little drunk. For now, Ileem and the wine had driven thoughts of shadows and ghosts from her head.

  She’d only just slipped in through her window and brushed the dust from her knees when an attendant rushed in, dark eyes wide with fear.

  “What is it?” Eda asked her.

  “It’s the Marquess, Your Imperial Majesty. She’s collapsed, and the physician cannot revive her.”

  She beat against the stone with her fists until the skin split, and blood burst bright. She screamed into the dim interior of the half-tumbled-down temple, screamed at the altar and the image of a god whose features had been worn away by wind and time. Her blood dripped down into the dust, and the sun slipped through cracks in the stone, making sweat pool at the nape of her neck.

  “Show yourself to me!” she screamed, her small voice cracking. “I call upon the most mighty god of all! I call your name: Tuer! Show yourself to me!”

  But there was no answer.

  She collapsed on the ground in front of the altar, sobbing. It was all for nothing: her escape from the palace, her long journey home on horseback, the climb up to the old family temple. There was nothing here. She was alone, and she always would be.

  “Child of the dust,” said a voice behind her.

  She yelped and turned.

  A figure stood there, clothed in shadow so dark she could barely make it out. There was a pair of shining eyes somewhere in its depths, and shadow rippled and moved around it like water.

  “What god are you?” she whispered.

  “I am Tuer’s Shadow—the only piece that is left of him in this Circle of the world.” His voice sounded like rain on stone, like wind swirling through dust. “This was my temple, long, long ago. What is your request?”

  She squared her shoulders and stared straight into Tuer’s eyes. “I want to be Empress of Enduena.”

  The Shadow laughed. “But you’re so small.”

  Eda felt the fierceness take her, same as it had when her parents died, same as it had when she’d snuck from her palace rooms, stolen a horse from the stables, and ridden all the way here. “I will be Empress.”

  “Very well,” said Tuer’s Shadow. “What do you offer the gods in return?”

  She thought of the story her father used to tell. Tuer always kept his word, but not always in the way his petitioners wished. She must be careful. “Make me Empress in my lifetime, and I will serve the gods. My life in service, in exchange for ruling the Empire.”

  “Stand up,” said Tuer’s Shadow. “Let me look at you.”

  Eda stood, dust and blood clinging to the knees of her linen trousers.

  The shadow-god circled round her, and she felt a strong, cold wind breathing through her hair, across her skin.

  “It is not enough,” said the god. “I need to be sure of you. I will honor any promise I make, but there is no surety that you will honor yours. I require something more.”

  She felt a tightness in her chest, disappointment crushing her. “I have nothing else to offer.”

  “There must be something,” said Tuer. “There always is. Something precious to you.”

  Laughter rang suddenly outside the temple, and Eda peered through a crack in the stones to see her friend Niren playing with her two younger sisters at the base of the hill. Eda realized what the god wanted: Niren, with her laughing dark eyes and serious face, her mischief and good sense.

  The dark cold of Tuer’s Shadow blazed beside her, and Eda turned to look at him. “I won’t forsake my promise. I will serve the gods all my life.”

  Tuer’s eyes bored into hers. “And yet I still require an earnest.”

  One last glance through the crack in the stone, as Niren and her sisters passed out of sight. Eda knew what her answer would be. She screwed her eyes shut, saw her parents, lying dead in their bedrooms: her mother’s dark hair splayed across the pillow; her father’s ashen face and vacant eyes. The Barons dragging her from the house, shoving her into a carriage that hurtled her away from her chil
dhood home. The regent, Rescarin, taking her father’s place as Count of Evalla, forever to command her fate.

  She opened her eyes again. Tuer’s Shadow stood before her, dark and cold and strong, and Eda was suddenly afraid. “The Empire for my life in service,” she whispered. She dug her nails into her palms. “With Niren’s life as earnest. But it won’t come to that.”

  She felt rather than saw Tuer’s smile. His Shadow seemed to grow darker, gathering more substance. He stretched out one dark hand and touched Eda’s forehead. Light burned through her, searing white-hot, and she gasped and sank to her knees. Stars wheeled before her eyes. She saw a god weeping in a dark room, bound with chains. She felt iron close around her heart, sealing her promise. Her forehead pulsed with faint heat.

  “Take care, child of the dust,” said Tuer. “The gods will have their payment.”

  A sudden wind tore through the temple—it smelled of honey and roses and fire.

  When Eda opened her eyes, Tuer’s Shadow was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  EDA SWEPT INTO NIREN’S SUITE, TERROR MAKING her head spin. The palace physician was waiting for her, a middle-aged woman with silvering hair and a healer’s sigil pinned to her emerald-green sash. She hovered in front of the doorway to Niren’s bedroom, blocking her from view.

  The illuminated manuscript Niren had been copying still lay on Niren’s drawing table, open to the page of Tuer’s petitioner, hands outstretched to the god of the mountain. The illustration seemed to bob and dance in the lantern light.

  Eda stood still, bracing herself for the worst.

  “The Marquess is dying, Your Imperial Majesty,” said the physician. “I’m afraid she hasn’t much time left.”

  “Surely you can do something for her.” Eda stared at Niren’s manuscript, that cold, tight knot of fear in her chest making it hard to breathe.

  “The Marquess isn’t responding to any treatment. I’m doing everything I can for her, but—I fear it won’t be long.”

  Eda stared at the doorway to the bedroom, wondering how awful Niren must look if the physician felt the need to forestall her in this way. “How long?” The words choked her.