Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “The princeling didn’t matter.” Tuer’s Shadow flexed his dark wings. “He never did. He was merely my way to you. And now you are on the path I brought you to, the path I made you for.”

  “I made myself. I come of my own accord.”

  “And yet.” He smiled, his teeth flashing in the darkness.

  “I’m coming to kill you,” she spat. “To drive a knife into your heart and make you pay for betraying me, for taking Niren and my Empire. For leaving me with nothing.”

  “I upheld my end of the bargain, little Empress. You did not uphold yours. The Circles are locked—how do you think you will find me?”

  She lunged at him, intending to push him off the hill into the valley below.

  But her hands passed through him, and a terrible chill seeped under her skin.

  He brushed one finger against her forehead, and her brow flared with heat. “You cannot kill a shadow,” he said.

  And then Eda blinked and she was standing at the ship’s rail again, the sea calm before her, sun streaming through wooly clouds to pool like water on the deck.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE DAY WAS COOL AND STREAKED WITH clouds when Halda came into sight on the horizon. The land was green and white and gray: green trees, white cliffs, gray mountains. As the ship crept closer, tiny brown specks came into view circling the cliffs: the famed Haldan eagles said to be descendants of the ones who spoke with the god Uerc long ago.

  The steamer took an age to reach Pehlain, the port city, and by the time it did, it was well into the afternoon, shadows slanting long across the dock. All at once the ship’s steward was shouting instructions down at the steerage passengers to collect their belongings—there wouldn’t be another chance to retrieve them.

  Eda didn’t have much to collect, just a worn satchel she’d adopted from Lady Rinar, but she got stuck at the back of the crowd, and was nearly the last steerage passenger to squeeze out onto the narrow deck.

  The first-class passengers were allowed to disembark first, and then finally the steerage passengers were ushered up the narrow metal stairs and out onto the dock, one by one.

  As the people ahead of her left the ship, Eda was finally awarded a view of Pehlain: cobbled streets wound up from the quay toward squat stone buildings, banners snapping brightly from nearly every rooftop in blue and red and gold. Snatches of music leaked out from one of the nearest buildings, which was situated a little up the hill from the dock and was three times as tall as the rest of them. Eda realized it must be an inn. She still had the Emperor’s ring, but she needed it for supplies for her journey—she couldn’t afford to spend anything on accommodations, as much as she longed for sheets on a bed.

  It was her turn to climb the stairs.

  Eda’s feet hit the dock, and the cobbled street after, her body swaying to offset the movement of the ship that was no longer there. Wind tangled in her hair, smelling of sea and salt and stone. She peered at the maze of streets winding up from the shoreline and, taking a deep breath, started walking.

  She stopped to ask a Haldan boy for directions, thankful she spoke his language well enough for him to understand her. The city of Pehlain seemed, at first, to be a mess of disorganization: wandering, haphazard streets, buildings piled precariously on top of one another, a myriad of treacherous-looking trails leading up into the mountains.

  But as Eda followed the boy’s directions, she found a chaotic kind of order to everything. The streets were labeled with freshly painted signs on every corner. Similar businesses seemed to be grouped together, the flower shops down one row and the fish markets down another. The cobbles lay smooth and worn beneath her feet, and the banners snapping from nearly every rooftop were splashes of bright color against the gray sky.

  She shivered as she walked, her thin trousers and filthy blouse unsuitable for the Haldan climate. She wondered how cold it must be up in the mountains, when it was already so frigid down here.

  She came to a storefront in a row of buildings halfway up a steep hill. Charms hung from the eave of the roof, carved wooden figures strung on lengths of bright blue and yellow yarn. Eda recognized the figures as depictions of the nine gods, all skillfully carved. If the boy’s directions were correct, this was a cartographer’s shop, and clothes and other supplies waited for her the next street down.

  She pulled the door open and stepped in. The shop was narrow but deep, lit by a half dozen blue globe lanterns fixed to the wall at regular intervals. Between the lanterns, the left wall was plastered with so many maps it made the whole building seem inches narrower than it ought to have been. The right wall was lined with wooden racks specially designed to hold hundreds more maps, rolled up and protected in cream-colored cylinders. The whole place smelled like dust and paint and ink. More wood and yarn charms dangled from the ceiling.

  Eda walked to the back of the shop, wooden floorboards creaking under her feet, to where a boy of eighteen or so sat on a stool with his bare feet propped up on a worn counter, reading a newspaper. He had the red-brown skin of most native Haldans and straight black hair cropped short behind his ears. He glanced at her over the top of his newspaper. “May I help you, Miss?”

  The young man spoke in fluent Enduenan, and Eda was relieved to hear her own language.

  “I need a map of Tuer’s Rise.”

  This clearly surprised him; he laid down the paper at once and took his feet off the counter. “Why in gods’ green Endahr would you want to go up Tuer’s Rise?”

  Eda sighed. “Because I’m looking for Tuer’s Mountain. Have yon got a map or not?”

  He scratched his chin. “We have maps for everything. My mother is the greatest cartographer in the world, you know. But even she hasn’t been all along Tuer’s Rise. That requires an expedition, weeks of planning, tons of equipment and supplies.”

  “I just want a map,” said Eda crossly.

  “Tuer’s Mountain is hidden from mortals. Most people who go up into the Rise don’t come back again.”

  “I’m not most people. Are you going to help me?”

  The boy shook his head, like he couldn’t believe Eda still wanted the map after all his generous warnings. “Just a second.”

  He hopped over the counter and trotted partway down the room, his fingers running across the map cylinders as he peered at the brass-plated labels beside each one. He selected a cylinder and uncapped it, pulling the map out and uncoiling it. Eda peered over his shoulder, annoyed at having to stand so close to him.

  The map was beautifully drawn and painted, paths winding up through the mountains, streams and valleys and caves all neatly labeled.

  She pointed to the top of the map, where everything disappeared into a haze of gray. “Why does it stop?”

  “I told you. Not even my mother has traveled the entirety of the Rise. The map stops there because that’s as far as she went. But I swear to you, Miss—don’t go up there alone. You’d die your first night.” He looked her up and down. “Especially in those clothes.”

  What she wouldn’t give for her dagger or a solid amount of guards at her back. “How much?”

  He rattled off a sum that shocked her. She shook her head. “This is all I have.”

  She laid the Emperor’s ring in his open palm, the metal shaped like a tiger chasing its tail, with rubies for eyes.

  The boy’s eyes grew round. “That’s pure gold. Where did you get it?”

  She scowled at him. “It’s mine. Do you treat all your customers like thieves?” She blinked and saw the Emperor lying against his pillow, his breath rattling in his chest as she slipped the ring from his finger.

  The boy folded the ring back into her hand. “Take it to the money changer’s the next street over. He won’t cheat you.” He gave her a searching glance. “Why do you want to find Tuer’s Mountain?”

  “Because Tuer wronged me, and I’m going to make him pay, locked Circles and evil spirits be damned.”

  His face blanched with shock. “How do you know the Circle
s are locked?”

  Her bewilderment waged war with her annoyance. “Tuer’s Shadow told me himself,” she blurted before she could think better of it. “I see visions and ghosts. The gods send me dreams.”

  The boy sucked in a sharp breath. He leapt over the counter and put his hands on Eda’s shoulders. “You can see them? You can see the Dead?”

  Something about this boy made her want to divulge her darkest secrets to him. She settled for the truth. “Some of them. Sometimes. Why—do you believe me?”

  He grabbed Eda’s hand and pulled her around the counter, through a narrow door and into a dim back room. Shelves stretched to the ceiling, stuffed to overflowing with piles and piles of maps. A table stood in the center of the room, or at least what Eda assumed was a table—it was stacked with maps as well.

  The boy waved Eda onto a stool and crouched near her on another, shoving a stack of the maps onto the floor. “It’s here somewhere. I’ll find it, just a tick.”

  And then he was rummaging through the shelves, parchment flying everywhere. The mess was enough to make Eda’s head spin. “What are you doing? Who are you?”

  “Clet Morin,” he said absently, still digging through the shelves. “This place is my uncle’s, but it’s true my mother is the greatest cartographer who ever lived. I manage the shop during the winter months while my uncle journeys south to collect all the latest maps from the southern part of Halda—and so he can escape the majority of the snow, I’d wager. The rest of the year he’s here, and I’m up in the village with my family. But last year we lost our father to fever and my mother swore up and down she saw his ghost everywhere. She said that he said he was trapped. Couldn’t move on. No Bearer of Souls to help him through the gates. That’s when she decided to go up Tuer’s Rise for the second time—she swore she wasn’t coming back until she found Tuer’s Mountain and saved my father. Here.” He snatched a map from the shelf and slapped it down on the table, weighting the edges with colorful glass globes. “This is the last map she made of Tuer’s Rise.”

  Eda glared at him. “What about the one you were going to sell me earlier, Clet Morin?”

  He had the good sense to look sheepish. “That’s one of the ones we always sell to tourists. Sorry about that. And it’s just Morin. Haldans give our surnames first when we introduce ourselves. Now look.” He jabbed his finger at the base of the map. “This is the path she took last time. She said with more preparation, she wouldn’t have to turn back. She was confident of success.”

  Eda shivered. “She really thinks she can find Tuer’s Mountain?”

  Morin nodded.

  “She’s sure of it. But I think—I think some part of her believes she can actually save my father, not just send his soul to rest, but bring him back to life.” Morin’s forehead creased, and he sagged back onto his stool. “I’m worried about her. My father was the love of her life, and I’m not at all sure she was in any state to go searching for a mountain no one’s supposed to be able to find.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “Since the middle of the summer. I’m hoping there will be news of her when I get home. I’m hoping she’ll be home, too.” Morin rubbed his eyes and took the glass globes from the corners of the map, allowing it to roll up. He found one of the map cases and stuffed the parchment into it, then handed it to Eda. “Please take it. No charge—I hope you’ll forgive me, for before. Your best bet for heading up Tuer’s Rise is to attach yourself to a caravan. They come through here every spring, a mixture of merchants and pilgrims going to Tal-Arohnd.”

  “The monastery,” said Eda. She blinked away the image of Lady Rinar’s body sliding into the sea.

  “From there, you should be able to cobble together an expedition and gear in the village just beyond. And after that—” Morin shrugged. “After that, gods keep you.”

  No, Eda thought, gods beware of me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  EDA STEPPED FROM THE CARTOGRAPHER’S INTO A freezing rain. She followed Morin’s directions to the money changer, who gave her a heavy pouch of coins for the Emperor’s ring. After that she purchased sturdy traveling clothes from a tailor’s shop, hired a mule, and bought a knife from a swordsmith just before he closed his doors for the evening.

  By the time she left the swordsmith it was fully night, the icy rain hardly touching her beneath her new poncho. Her coins had diminished by half, and she needed every one to buy more supplies once she got up to the village beyond the monastery, but her feet still led her to the inn. For a moment, she stared through the window, watching the lodgers eat together at a broad wooden table, a roaring fire at their backs.

  Regretfully, she slipped into the inn’s stable and shook the rain from her poncho. She curled up in the straw in an empty stall.

  She fell asleep, still feeling the motion of the waves underneath her. Dreams folded over her like water over a sunken ship.

  She dreamed of winged spirits leaking through the void. Of agony and terror and darkness.

  She dreamed she drove a knife into Tuer’s heart. His blood was silver. His tears were red.

  The world was healed, but it didn’t matter. Tuer’s Shadow seized her, and hurtled her into the void.

  Agony, terror, darkness. There was nothing more.

  There never would be.

  Mules were stupid creatures. Eda learned that in her first five minutes riding one. The man she’d hired hers from had also advised her to attach herself to a caravan, which was due any day. But she hadn’t wanted to wait.

  Maybe she should have. Maybe in a line of mules, hers would behave himself instead of stopping to nibble at every blade of grass growing alongside the rocky trail, or planting his feet and refusing to move because a rabbit darted across the path three yards ahead. Before half an hour was gone, she was sweating and swearing with all her efforts to drive the horrid thing forward, and bewailed ever hiring him at all.

  But as the trail grew steeper, the mule seemed to decide to get down to business; he proved sure-footed over the loose rocks and climbed steadily, his huge fuzzy ears pointed forward. Eda was begrudgingly grateful for him after all.

  The map Morin had given her was marked with the most direct route up into the mountains proper, where the endless stretch of peaks known as Tuer’s Rise began. It hadn’t sounded so hard to her before, climbing a mountain and finding the god, but she hadn’t realized she would have to climb many mountains, and that each one would take a ridiculously long time. At least once she reached the monastery and the village beyond she could replenish her supplies and hire a guide, then let him consult the map a hundred times a day to make sure they were on the right path.

  She spent two miserable days on the first leg of her journey, huddling against the mule for warmth both nights because she didn’t know how to build a fire. The third morning she found herself on a trail so treacherously steep she was forced to get off the mule and lead him behind her. She felt as if she were clawing her way up into the sky, that the earth was doing its best to keep her from it.

  Several hours’ hard climb brought Eda and the mule to a wooden platform built into the side of the mountain that looked very much like a dock for a ship. Strong wooden poles on the end of the platform stretched up into the sky, their tops lost in fog, with thick cables stretching out from them. A young Haldan girl was sitting in a booth on the platform, her nose stuck in a book and the hood of her poncho pulled tight over her ears. She looked up as Eda approached.

  “They told me the caravan was due today,” she said, yawning, as she came out of the booth and tucked the book under her armpit. “But there’s only one of you.” She had two short braids tied off with green yarn, and a spattering of freckles all across her nose and cheeks. She was skinny and slight, her knees and elbows poking out. Something about the girl’s honey-brown eyes looked familiar.

  “I’m trying to get up to Tal-Arohnd,” said Eda.

  The girl jabbed her finger at the wooden poles and the cables. “Only way up
to the monastery is in the aerial lift. I hope you’re not afraid of heights. I’m Clet Tainir, by the way.”

  The surname sharpened the sense of familiarity, but Eda was foggy and exhausted from the long climb and couldn’t quite place it.

  “You can put the mule in there,” Tainir added, jerking her chin at the small pen tucked around the side of the mountain that Eda hadn’t noticed before. “I’ll help you with your packs.”

  With Tainir’s assistance, Eda had the mule unharnessed and all her belongings piled on the platform in the space of a few minutes. She was rather afraid to ask the question, but she did anyway. “What’s an aerial lift?”

  Tainir laughed. “You’ll see.” She ducked into the booth, and pulled the lever attached to one wall with a horrific screech.

  Something came rumbling down the cables out of the fog: a narrow, gondola-like carriage that swayed in the empty air and bumped up against the platform with a jarring thud. The walls of the carriage came up as high as Eda’s waist, with posts arching up over her head to the roof, which hung from the cables by a thick brass ring.

  “Gods’ bleeding heart,” Eda swore. “I’m not getting in that.”

  Tainir just laughed again. “You are if you want to go to the monastery! Barring wings, it’s the only way up.”

  Eda ground her jaw.

  “It’s not that bad,” Tainir promised. “I ride it all the time. The view is beautiful, and it always makes me think deep thoughts.”

  Eda peered up into the nothingness of the fog, her heart tugging her onward. Somewhere up there, Tuer was chained in the Circle of Sorrow. Waiting for her. “Take me up,” she said.

  Tainir opened a door in the side of the gondola and waved Eda in, piling her packs in a heap on the floor. It was larger inside than it looked; there was probably room for a half dozen people to ride at a time, which would be useful for the caravan. A narrow bench was built into the walls of the awful vehicle, and Eda sat down.