Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  Eda wanted to pull Niren into an embrace, to cling to her and weep with her and tell her they were really sisters. But Niren was like a stranger here, as cold and unreachable as a god.

  Eda bowed to her, very low, and then stepped past her, pacing down the bank and into the river.

  Instantly the shadows were on her, jagged teeth tearing into her legs, her arms, her sides. They tugged her down, down, pulling her under the shadowy current. She couldn’t breathe, or see, or hear. Terror and pain burrowed deep. In another moment the shadows would swallow her whole. In another moment, she would be lost forever.

  But her hand found the priestess’s knife, and she thrashed it about, slicing through the shadows. She fought her way to the surface again.

  Still the shadow creatures twisted and shrieked and tore at her flesh. Slimy clawed fingers closed around her throat. Poison crept into her veins.

  And then something compelled her to touch her forehead. Her body blazed with heat, with light. It poured out of every part of her.

  The shadows screamed in agony and fell away like so many husks.

  Blood poured down her arms and back and legs. The heat of the Starlight could not quench her all-consuming pain.

  But before her stood a doorway, carved in stone and pulsing with the same light that burned inside of her.

  She shook the dead shadows from her feet, and stepped through the second door.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “EDA? EDA, ARE YOU LISTENING? SOMETIMES I swear on Tuer himself I don’t know where your mind goes.”

  Eda turned from the window, where she’d been looking down at the sea. She’d lost herself for some moments in the mesmerizing waves, watching them break with white foam on the rocks. She must have slipped into some kind of daydream, but not the pleasant kind. The kind filled with darkness and shadows and fear. She didn’t want to think about it.

  So she smiled at her father and hopped down from the windowsill, climbing onto his lap and cuddling with him in his favorite chair. It had been a lovely day and tomorrow would be just as lovely. It was spring, and her father wouldn’t be leaving to give his report to the capital for some weeks yet. Her mother was happy in her garden, so Eda mostly had him all to herself.

  “Such a sad story, Father,” said Eda, tucking her head under his chin. She listened to his heartbeat.

  “Erris should not have made a deal with Tuer that he didn’t understand,” her father said gravely.

  “Still,” Eda murmured, “Tuer must have known what Erris meant. He didn’t have to be so cruel.”

  “No. I suppose he did not. But that is the way of the gods, my love. Their ways are different than ours.”

  “Their ways are cruel.”

  They shoved her screaming into the carriage. She fought and kicked. She sank her teeth into her newly appointed regent’s arm and bit him, hard. Rescarin swore and slapped her face, twisted her arm, told her he’d chop off every one of her fingers if she wouldn’t be still, if she wouldn’t let Baron Lohnin take her back to Eddenahr.

  She was still.

  The carriage rattled away and she didn’t cry. Her dead parents were to be buried tomorrow, and no one had thought that she should attend their funeral. No one remembered she was a child whose parents had died. She was simply an inconvenience. A nuisance.

  Lohnin dozed in the carriage on the seat across from hers. His spittle caught in his beard. She hated him almost as much as she hated Rescarin. She thought about what it might be like to kill Rescarin. To take a knife and drive it straight into his heart. His eyes would grow dim, like her parents’ had. He wouldn’t bother her anymore. She could go home.

  But she didn’t think she could kill him. There would be a lot of blood, and she didn’t like blood. And besides, killing was an offense against the gods, and the gods were the only ones who could help her now.

  She was careful of the words she spoke to Tuer when he came to her in her family’s temple, her knuckles aching and bloody where she’d pounded them against the stone altar. “My life in service,” she promised him, “to make me Empress in my lifetime.” She was proud of that last phrase. Erris hadn’t thought to make any such addendum, and look where that had gotten him.

  But she hadn’t thought Tuer would ask for anything more.

  She hadn’t thought he would ask for Niren, whom she loved best in all the world.

  In one heartbeat, she decided.

  In the next, she bargained away the life of her friend.

  She celebrated her sixteenth birthday in the evening alone in her small palace room. No one knew, or no one cared, and her passage to womanhood went wholly unnoticed. She slipped from her balcony and climbed up onto the roof. She lay back onto the tiles, feeling the latent heat of them burn her shoulders through her thin silk top. She stared up at the sky.

  She had waited for the gods. Waited and waited for them to uphold their end of the bargain. But her years in the palace had slid unremarkably by. She was no closer to being Empress than she was when she first made her vow.

  She had decided to stop waiting. The crown prince had died that morning in a hunting accident, and with the Empress almost a decade gone herself and the Emperor unlikely at this point to remarry, there would be no more heirs. It was rumored that Eda herself was the Emperor’s illegitimate daughter, and though she had found no proof of that, she could use it to her advantage.

  Perhaps the gods had been waiting on her all this time. They’d given her the pieces she needed. She just had to act.

  She drew a small vial from the pocket concealed against her breast, and studied it in the moonlight. It was odd, to hold a man’s death in her hands.

  The room was hot. Stifling. The Emperor lay dead beside her, his body already stiffening. She looked at him without regret and stood from her chair, calling for her attendants to make her resplendent. A sense of rightness burned in her; this is what was owed to her, this is what the gods had promised. She went to take what was hers.

  She was climbing a cliff, driving spikes into the rock. Sweat dripped down her back even though the air was frigid. There was music on the air, brimming bright with gold. There were wings beneath her, wide and warm.

  She was wandering through the dark and the shadows had teeth. They sank into her, gnawing her ankles down to bone. But a light in her burned and burned. It drew her onward.

  She stood on a high mountain, the sun blazing hot above her, the wind slicing through her thin frame. She was hollowed out by age and time. Her body was frail, brittle. She could feel the life in her ebbing away, bit by bit. But she had wanted to see this view one last time: the sun from the mountains. Tears streamed down her face but she didn’t mind them. They dampened her cheeks and made her think of her life, everything she had done and undone. Every wrong she had righted.

  “The gods can take me, now,” she whispered. “I am ready to travel the Circles once more. I am ready to go home.”

  And she shut her eyes and let herself fall from the cliff, fall and fall, as Uerc had done long ago.

  The air rushed past her. It was time, and she welcomed it.

  She fell and fell. Her heart rushed into her ears. Darkness folded over her, and she was screaming.

  She lay in the dark.

  The shadows had teeth.

  They were eating her.

  She couldn’t get free.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “EDA, ARE YOU LISTENING? SOMETIMES I SWEAR on Tuer himself I don’t know where your mind goes.”

  Eda turned from the window, where she’d been looking down at the sea. She’d lost herself for some moments in the mesmerizing waves, watching them break with white foam on the rocks. She must have slipped into some kind of daydream, but not the pleasant kind. The kind filled with darkness and shadows and fear. She didn’t want to think about it.

  And yet—and yet she must think about it.

  She hopped down from the windowsill and passed her father’s chair, wandering out into the rest of the hou
se, that sense of darkness pressing down and down.

  She stepped through the door into a world of swirling shadow. There was no sun, no wind. The sky was dark and writhing. The grass was brittle underneath her feet.

  She turned back to the house but it crumbled away at her touch, falling to dust.

  She stood alone in a whirling void, the darkness clawing at her hair, her clothes. She bowed her head and fought her way forward. She knew she could not stand still—she would be ripped apart.

  She walked for an eternity, and another after that, and she thought she saw ahead of her a glimmer of shadow, but not the kind she feared. It was luminous somehow, and she knew she was meant to follow it.

  She did, quickening her pace, desperate not to lose the shadow into the nothingness of the void. It turned back, once. She saw sad eyes in a kind face, and she remembered stepping through the door into the Circle of Time, jumping from memory to memory. She remembered her journey. She remembered herself.

  “Wait!” she cried, as the shadow turned away from her again and winked out like a candle flame. “Please wait!”

  But the shadow had brought her where she was meant to be: a wide green valley, mountains stretching above her to graze the brilliant sky.

  Before her was a patch of grassy earth mounded with stones, a throne in the midst of them, a man sitting on it.

  It was then that she remembered everything.

  The man’s hair and beard were white as wool, pooling about his shoulders and all down his lap onto the grass. His clothes were the barest bits of rags, but there was a crown on his head. His startlingly blue eyes stared into nothing.

  Her gaze dropped to his knees. A knife rested there in a tooled leather scabbard, the edges seeming to glow with a faint light. The handle was made of a twisted white wood, roughly hewn.

  Lumen’s knife. The godkiller.

  Eda knelt beside the throne, hesitant fingers curling around the scabbard. The man on the throne didn’t stir. He hardly breathed. He didn’t seem to know or care that Eda was there, claiming the knife forged to kill a god. Perhaps he’d never known Lumen had laid it there in the first place.

  Her pity twisted sharp. “Oh Erris. You poor fool. I’m going to stop Tuer, and heal the world and free us both from the deals we never should have made. Thank you, for keeping this safe for me all these years.” And then she bowed very low, as to the king he’d wanted so badly to be, and stepped back.

  She was once more alone in a whirling void.

  Shadows spun about her feet, leapt at her, sank their teeth into her arms.

  She shook them off and broke into a run, drawing Erris’s knife from its scabbard, holding it out in front of her. It buzzed and grew warm, bright, the godkiller’s light piercing through the void, illuminating her way.

  Hands reached out for her in the darkness, snatching at her sleeves and her heels. She shook them off again and again, but one hand grabbed her jaw, forcibly turned her head.

  And Eda found herself staring into her own eyes.

  She screamed and scrabbled backward, but the other her followed, grabbing her arm. “You have not seen it all,” the other her hissed. “You have not seen all the seconds of your life, every drop of memory, every breath, every tear, each creating one of us. And now you are here with us forever, and we will lead you through your memories for all of Time. Come, come!”

  From the shadows of the void stepped thousands of figures that were all Eda, every one wearing a white gown trimmed with silver, every one reaching out for her.

  “Get away!” Eda cried, raising the godkiller.

  But her other selves didn’t fear the knife. They surrounded her, swept her up like a shell in the tide, and hurtled her forward.

  “Come see, come see!” they shrieked all together, laughing as they ran.

  Eda struggled and screamed, but she couldn’t get free.

  Her other selves brought her through the void to a dark field thick with shimmering pools, and as they came close, Eda saw that the pools brimmed not with water, but memory. Her memory.

  Gleefully, her thousand selves plunged her into one.

  She was being born, her mother screaming, the goddess Raiva watching the birth. The goddess brushed her fingers across Eda’s forehead as the midwife laid her into her mother’s arms. And Eda cried and cried, because heat seared through her, her whole body burning.

  She was thrust up and out of the pool, gasping for breath, and her thousand selves plunged her into another.

  Her father was telling her stories as the wind blew up from the sea. “Eda, are you listening?”

  A desperate gulp of air, another pool.

  She poisoned the Emperor.

  Another.

  She sent Talia away.

  Another.

  She ordered the guards to cut off Rescarin’s fingers.

  Another.

  She was falling and falling from a high cliff, a witness to her own death.

  Her thousand selves never stopped, never slowed, hurtling her out of one pool and into the next until she couldn’t comprehend what she saw or what she felt or even who she was. Pain seared her. She was being pulled apart, bit by bit, unraveling one thread at a time. Soon, there would be nothing left.

  But her thousand selves kept going, an unstoppable tide. Time crushed her. She couldn’t break free.

  Another pool closed over her head. She couldn’t bear another memory. She shut her eyes. No more, no more, she thought. She gave herself over to oblivion.

  A light shone suddenly before her, piercing and bright, and a hand that was not her own closed around her wrist.

  She was pulled suddenly, violently upward, and flung upon a grassy bank, where she lay sobbing for breath. She shook and shook, and then she lay still. The gods had mercy after all. They had let her die.

  “You are not dead, daughter of dust.”

  Eda lifted her head to see the goddess Raiva standing between two of the awful memory pools, wind stirring through her hair and gown. “I am sorry,” said the goddess. “I did not mean to let you wander here for so long.” And she reached out and pulled Eda to her feet.

  Eda stared at Raiva, still trembling, and wiped the tears from her face. Somehow, she still held tight to the godkiller. She hadn’t lost it in the wretched pools. “You saved me.” Eda’s voice was as shaky as the rest of her.

  “Yes, child.” The goddess smiled, wan and sad. “Come. It is a foolish thing to say in this Circle, perhaps, but time grows short. And there is yet more that you must see.”

  Raiva turned and paced between the memory pools and Eda followed, careful to step just where the goddess stepped and nowhere else. She could still feel the grasping fingers of her other selves and was not even tempted to look into any of the pools.

  The goddess led her to a shadowy tree that stood in the center of the field, and Eda gasped, overwhelmed by its beauty and its sorrow.

  “You know it,” said Raiva.

  “The Immortal Tree. Planted by the One at the beginning.”

  “It is a memory only, as all things are, in time. But it is all that is left of the Tree now, in any Circle of the world, and so I think it beautiful. Come. Touch the Tree. See what it will show you.”

  Eda looked from the goddess to the Tree and back again. She raised her hand, laid it gently on the trunk.

  A vision enveloped her with the strength of the memory pools, pulling her under, drowning her.

  There was a great darkness, the three Stars flaring to life, Endahr formed in the midst of them. Then the world came into being, the Tree, young and strong and shining. Tuer stood on his mountain, joy and pride searing through him. She felt his strength, felt his awe at the life he was given, the world he was made to command.

  The other gods and goddesses came forth. They lived and thrived beneath the Tree. Tuer’s heart was fixed on Raiva; he longed to dwell with her among her trees and be a part of her song forever.

  The spirits sprang to life, thousands upon thousands of t
hem, each formed with a drop of Starlight, no two quite the same. There were some with wings and some with scales and some with both. There were dark spirits and bright spirits and shadow spirits. Every one was beautiful. One bowed at Tuer’s feet and pledged himself into the god’s eternal service.

  And then mankind awoke beneath the shadow of the Tree. They grew and flourished. But they became discontent, longing to see more of the world. A boy called Tahn stole a seed from the Tree, meaning to carry it west and build a life apart from the gods.

  Tuer seared with rage at the boy’s rebellion. He struck Than down, grinding him back into the dust, his blood seeping into the earth.

  Men and gods warred against one another. Death crept into the world.

  And Tuer mourned. His sorrow was piercing and dark. It ate at him.

  Ages of the world spun away. The god went into his mountain, creating the Circles as he went. She felt his pain and his agony. Felt the silence in the Circle of Sorrow, felt his overwhelming despair as he sent his Shadow away from him, out into the world to do his bidding.

  The vision ripped away from her like a knife from a wound and Eda wrenched back from the memory of the Tree, gasping. Her face was damp with tears she didn’t remember shedding.

  Raiva met her eyes, face drawn with sorrow. The goddess brushed her fingers over the trunk of the shadowy Tree, and a doorway appeared, illuminated in silver. “This is the way to the one you seek, the last door. Do what I cannot. Free him. Heal the breach. Unlock the Circles. And if you cannot do that either—” The goddess’s eyes snagged on the godkiller. “Then do what you must.”

  Eda stared at the door, the knife trembling in her hand. “Why would you show me all that? How can I face Sorrow, when it’s even bigger than Time?”

  “That you might understand him a little better,” said Raiva gently. “And because it needn’t be. Now go. Time grows very short.”

  For a moment, Eda didn’t move, helplessness and panic tangled up inside of her. Tuer was only a door away.