Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “Don’t worry,” said Tainir cheerily, “it’s never crashed, and I’ve operated it at least twice before.”

  Eda sprang out of her seat, but Tainir had already shut and latched the door and returned to the booth, where she yanked on another lever.

  The gondola rocked alarmingly and then began to move.

  Eda sucked in her breath, grabbing tight to the sides of the carriage, peering out into empty air. The lift didn’t move very fast, just steadily, and after a few minutes she relaxed. The fog swallowed her, and she had the strange sensation of being lost in a place between heaven and earth, belonging neither to gods nor to mankind, wholly and utterly alone.

  She didn’t like it at all.

  Now and then, a piece of mountain poked through the mist, and she saw rocks and trees and far, far below, the thin silver ribbon of a winding river. The air clung to her, damp and cold, traced with the sharp tang of winter.

  For an instant she thought she saw a crack in the sky, a winged shadow slipping through, crowned with fire. But when she blinked again, there was only the mist.

  All at once the gondola bumped up against another wooden platform, and the door was pulled open and she was pulled out. She looked into the bronze face and dark eyes of an Enduenan man who was not old, but no longer young. He wore rough-woven robes of deep green, and a white scarf wound tight about his head. There was a silver mark in his left ear; his right hand was tattooed with the image of the Tree.

  Eda knew instantly who he was. He had his mother’s eyes, the same regal way of carrying himself. “You’re Torane. Lady Rinar’s son.”

  He nodded, his face tight with grief. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” His unaccented Enduenan reminded her fiercely of home.

  Eda blinked and saw the old woman’s body, devoured by the waves. Something wrenched inside of her. “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled, quiet, solemn, and pressed his hands around hers. “Come, Eda of Enduena. We’ve been expecting you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  TORANE HEFTED THE MAJORITY OF EDA’S PACKS onto his shoulders, leaving her with only her satchel. He led her down a well-trodden dirt path that hugged the side of the mountain, a steep cliff plummeting away into the fog on her right, and before they’d gone a few yards, the mist cleared and the monastery came into view.

  Her heart stuttered. Tal-Arohnd was impossible and terrifying, a series of whitewashed stone structures built into the side of the mountain or—in some cases—built out of the mountain. They looked unnatural, as if the slightest wind or rain would make them tumble off into the valley far below. “They’ve been there for centuries,” said Torane over his shoulder, reading her thoughts, “and they’ll be there for centuries yet to come. The stories say that the gods wove Tal-Arohnd with Words of protection, so neither storm nor blade could ever harm it.”

  Eda didn’t doubt the truth of those stories; she almost imagined she could see the ancient Words, glimmering gold where they bound the monastery to the mountain. It made her uneasy, and with an effort, she pushed away the thoughts of gods and their earth-shattering power. “How did you know I was coming?”

  “She said you were.”

  “She?”

  “The Denlahn Princess.”

  Eda’s insides turned to sand. “Liahstorion.”

  “She was here with her brother, the vengeful prince. He claimed he served Tuer, but there was such darkness in him I cannot believe it. I think he must have pledged himself to an evil spirit instead.”

  Eda couldn’t stop the flashes of memory: Ileem and Liahstorion, standing in the rain as Eda first welcomed them to the palace. Liahstorion’s outburst during that first council session. Ileem sitting with Eda under a trellis of honeysuckle, the blossoms falling bright on his knee. Moonlight, gilding the rooftops with silver. Ileem’s warm mouth pressed against hers.

  Eda sagged against the cliffside. She’d wondered often during her long climb if Ileem had left any trace of himself at the monastery. Now she had her answer. He was caught like oil on her skin; she could not wash him off.

  Torane turned back. “The princess said she had a vision of you, coming here. Climbing Tuer’s Mountain. Healing the cracks in the world.”

  Eda gnawed the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood.

  “But come.” Torane put gentle hands on her arms. “You’ve had a long journey. Food will help set you to rights, and then I will give you what assistance I can.”

  Numbly, Eda started walking again. They drew nearer to the cliffs, and she saw that the buildings were arranged in levels, with narrow paths ascending and descending the mountain that connected them. The widest level—the very heart of Tal-Arohnd—was situated on a shelf of land jutting out from the cliff. It had space for rambling gardens and chicken pens, along with the great hall, which was the only structure not touching the mountain.

  The temple was on this level as well, carved out of the cliffside. Eda looked quickly past it. Down a stretch of path beyond the temple lay a sprawling mountain village, which must be the one Morin had told her about. A scattering of people were walking up the path, some pulling goods on carts, some holding bundles of cloth and clay jars. One young man had a pair of goats trotting along behind him.

  “They’re bringing supplies up from the village for the feast,” Torane explained, “and to welcome the caravan.”

  “What feast?”

  Torane glanced back at her. “The Feast of Tuer. Do you not observe it in Enduena?”

  Unease squirmed through her. “The old Emperor abolished the feasts. I—the Empress was trying to reinstate them.”

  Torane raised an eyebrow, not missing her slip. “And it didn’t work?”

  “The gods did not will it,” she said bitterly.

  And then they were passing through a wide empty field that stood before the great hall and on into the hall itself.

  The interior was a single huge, rectangular room, vast carved pillars stretching up to the peaked wooden roof. On the long sides of the room, tall windows set with intricate stained glass let in the afternoon light, patches of stained violet, cerulean, and gold pooling on the floor. The whole place was a flurry of activity, more monks in the same rough-woven green robes and white headscarfs as Torane, carrying in heavy wooden tables or stocking the enormous fireplace at the back of the hall with logs. Others brought in garlands of flowers, which they strewed about the floor, while still others fit fat beeswax candles into intricately carved stone lamp stands. One monk didn’t leave his station at the back of the room, where he knelt in prayer before a square altar that was stained with blood and wine from centuries of offerings.

  Almost before Eda could make sense of the whirling scene, the villagers began to flood in, bringing jugs of goat’s milk and wheels of cheese, colorful woven blankets, wine. A young monk in a green robe who was not wearing a white headscarf instructed the villagers where to lay their goods.

  One of the villagers she recognized with a shock as Morin, who came in with the pair of goats. He looked very different than he had at the cartographer’s shop, bundled in a heavy woolen poncho dyed bright blue and red, his dark hair tousled from the wind. She didn’t understand how he could have possibly gotten here before her, but it was definitely him. She started toward him, but the young monk had apparently instructed him to take the goats somewhere outside, because he turned and left the hall again. Before she could follow, twelve Itan women swept in one after the other, the mist clinging to their long black hair like tiny glimmering diamonds.

  “Priestesses from Ita,” said Torane. “They must have come with the caravan. Will you excuse me a moment?”

  He stepped away and Eda found herself suddenly surrounded by the priestesses. They bowed to her. The youngest priestess—a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen—brushed her fingers across Eda’s forehead. “You are gods-touched,” she whispered in broken Enduenan.

  Heat pulsed from Eda’s brow and she jerked away, skin crawling.

&nb
sp; The girl looked at her intently. “Our goddess Ahdairon called my priestess-sisters and I here to meet you—the girl who will heal the world. It is an honor, my lady.”

  “I’m not going to heal the world.”

  But the priestesses didn’t seem to hear. They circled around her, tugging at her sleeves. “Come, come,” said the youngest one. “We’ll help you dress. We’ll make you ready for the festivities. For the qirta.”

  Eda tried to shake them off but they held her tight in their midst, and would not let her go.

  “Qirta, qirta,” they whispered all together.

  “I’m not going to the feast. Get off of me. Get off.”

  And then Torane was at her elbow again, and the priestesses drew back, their white skirts dragging on the stone floor. They watched her with their dark eyes, silent and solemn.

  “Come,” said Torane, “I’ll show you to a room for the night. You can rest before dinner and return here for the festivities, if you wish.”

  Eda followed him back outside, gulping deep breaths of the sharp mountain air, her nerves shattered to pieces. They walked along a path that cut through the gardens and chicken yards, then climbed a rickety stair up the cliff to one of the little white buildings that clung there so impossibly.

  “I hope you will attend the feast and honor us,” said Torane, then turned to leave her.

  “What does qirta mean?”

  For a moment, he looked back. His brows drew together. “It’s an ancient Itan word. It means ‘sacrifice.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  EDA DIDN’T GO INTO THE LITTLE HUT. She let her feet follow the path back up toward the main hall, and without really meaning to, took the turn that led to the temple. Somewhere beyond the mountains the sun was setting, and darkness settled thick and fast over Tal-Arohnd.

  Eda put her hands on the carved stone doorposts. She could feel the power that teemed in the very bones of this place. It scared her, but it also called to her.

  She stepped in.

  It was more like a cave than any temple she had ever been in before, due to its having been dug out of the mountain. The ceiling reached far above her head, bleeding into darkness, and pillars sectioned the temple into private alcoves, some containing weathered altars, others shelves crammed with ancient books and scrolls. Lamps burned white in every alcove, so she felt like she was peering into a field of stars.

  She paced past the alcoves, her footsteps echoing over the stone. There was no one else here, the monks and any petitioners evidently all in the main hall for the feast.

  A few of the alcoves were painted with beautiful, detailed murals, and she studied them as she went past. One showed a similar image to the one in the illuminated manuscript Niren had given her: a petitioner kneeling before Tuer, who was enthroned on a mountain and crowned with stars. But there was one difference. A shining spirit stood beside Tuer’s throne, glimmering wings folded against his shoulders. On his brow was a crown of fire. Words sparked unbidden in her mind: You cannot kill a shadow.

  Another mural showed a host of winged spirits rebelling against the gods. Another, the gods binding them and sending them into the void. Only that one spirit remained behind, steadfast at Tuer’s side.

  She stopped before one of the altars, thinking of the last time she’d made her daily oblation and streaked her forehead with ashes and oil: the morning of her wedding, months ago. There was a jar of ashes on a shelf beside the altar, a vial of oil. She could have knelt and prayed. She could have asked the gods to bless her journey.

  But she turned away. She didn’t need the gods. She didn’t want them.

  Still, something tugged her on through the temple, led her to an alcove where a book lay open on a reading stand, its pages cracked and yellowed. The words leapt out at her, making her breath catch hard in her throat, flinging her back to that day, long ago, when her father had told her about Erris, and the foolish deal he had made with Tuer.

  Here was another story. One he had not told her.

  There came a time when Cainnar, who was the first and mightiest king of Halda, found that he was lonely. He had everything his soul had ever desired, and more besides, but he remembered his old life with his mother and brother in the woods, and he missed them fiercely. His mother was dead and gone beyond the Circles of the world, but his brother Erris was a servant in the palace. Cainnar determined to make Erris a prince and raise him to a place of honor.

  But when Cainnar called for Erris, Erris did not come. Cainnar’s servants searched the palace high and low, but they could not find the king’s brother, and no one knew where he had gone.

  At last, a serving woman called Lumen came and bowed before the king. She was no longer young, but the light of the Stars shone in her eyes, and she was yet beautiful. She had loved Erris, and wished to wed him, but his jealousy had blinded him to her affection. “My lord king,” said Lumen to Cainnar, “Erris went up the mountain to seek Tuer, to petition the god to make him king in your stead. But that was ten years ago. He never came back.”

  Cainnar was stricken, because he knew this was his fault. “I will go up the mountain myself and bring my brother home. And when I do, I will crown him king also, and he shall rule beside me.”

  Lumen didn’t believe him—who among the race of mankind had ever truly wished to share their power? But she packed supplies for the king’s journey and loaded them onto a sure-footed mule. She was sure-footed herself and went along with him, she too longing to know Erris’s fate.

  They climbed for days that seemed to never end and huddled at night around a fire that did little to banish the bitter cold.

  At last they reached the doorway to Tuer’s Mountain, but a spirit with a burning sword and flaming hair barred their way. “Tuer is not here,” she said, “nor Erris either. The god is in Sorrow and the man is in Time, and you cannot reach either one.”

  “But I am king,” said Cainnar. “Anything I demand is given to me.”

  “Not this,” said the spirit.

  “Can you tell us, at least, what has happened to Erris?” said Lumen.

  “I cannot tell you.” The spirit held up a shard of black glass, which glistered in the light of the setting sun. “But I am permitted to show you.”

  And the king and the serving woman looked into the glass and saw Erris sitting on a crumbling throne as time spun around him and he grew old but did not stir and did not die, a crown moldering on his head.

  “He asked Tuer to make him king,” said the spirit. “And there he sits for all eternity, the ruler of emptiness.”

  “Is there no way to free him?” Cainnar cried.

  The spirit shook her head. “He made a deal with the god, and so is bound by it.”

  The king and the serving woman turned away from the mountain, weighed with anger and sorrow.

  “There is a way to free him,” said Lumen. “If we kill Tuer, that will sunder any bond he has with man—it will allow Erris to come home to us.”

  And because Cainnar was proud, and did not like to be denied things—even by a god—he agreed.

  So together, Lumen and Cainnar forged a weapon to kill the god. From their temple, they took hallowed objects: a jar of Starlight, a sliver of the Immortal Tree. They forged the blade of iron, imbued it with the Starlight, and crafted the handle from the Tree shard. For nine years and a day, Lumen wove the knife with the Words of the gods, Words of death and power, power and death.

  And then one day, finally, the knife was ready.

  Once more Lumen and Cainnar climbed the mountain. Cainnar was growing old, and could not walk as well as he used to. He stumbled on the path, and before Lumen could catch him, he fell over the edge, struck his head on a rock, and died.

  It was an ill omen, the death of a king, but Lumen gripped the knife tighter and continued on her way. She would free Erris, and be reunited with him at last.

  She went into the mountain and trod the long, long path, through the Circles of Death and Time, and came at last into
Sorrow.

  There she found Tuer, kneeling in darkness, chained and weeping. The knife felt very heavy in her hand. Now she saw him, she knew she could not kill him. She pitied him too much for that.

  So she bowed her head and went back the way she’d come, straying once more into the Circle of Time. There she found Erris on his throne, a crown on his head, his eyes staring into nothing. She laid the knife in his hand, to use or not as he saw fit, and she sat down beside him, determined to dwell with him for the rest of eternity, or until Tuer had pity on him, as she had had pity on Tuer, and set him free at last from his vow.

  But there was no vow laid on her.

  And so Time stole her away bit by bit until there was nothing left of her but dust and the knife she’d made in anger and sheathed in mercy, resting unused on Erris’s knee.

  Eda lifted her eyes from the book, head wheeling. She couldn’t breathe. The knife she needed to kill Tuer not only existed, but it was waiting for her on the very path she had already determined to take, provided no one else had found it since Lumen’s time.

  A cold wind blew through the temple, rustling through the pages of the book, touching her neck with icy fingers.

  Perhaps this was the sacrifice the priestesses meant. The sacrifice of a god, to heal the cracks in the world.

  Eda would do it. Find the knife. Drive it into Tuer’s heart. And then, then—

  Then she would return to Enduena and take her Empire back, because a woman with the power to kill a god could do anything at all.

  “Little Empress.”

  She wheeled to find the twelve Itan priestesses standing in the midst of the temple, their black hair bleeding into the shadows, their white gowns rippling about their feet. The youngest priestess stepped toward Eda, another white gown draped over her arms. “For you. To wear to the feast.”

  Dread curled down Eda’s spine. “I’m not going to the feast, and I’m certainly not wearing that.”

  “It is an honor to be offered the garment of a wind priestess. It is a great offense against the gods themselves to deny such a gift.”