Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  Pain creased the god’s forehead, but Eda’s anger only grew.

  “Did you know she’s tried to free you countless times? Did you know she’s come here, sat with you, knelt with you, wept with you? That she couldn’t find a way to free you?”

  “I know,” said Tuer heavily. “Of course I know. I can see her light, always. It gives me strength. But there is only one way to free me, and I would never ask it of her, so I pretend I cannot see her. I pretend I do not know she is there, because if she knew—if she knew, she would sacrifice herself for me in an instant. There are many sorrows I can endure, many pains I could bear, but I could not bear that.”

  Eda hated the pity that twisted through her, almost as much as she hated him. “Why is your sorrow, your suffering, more important than anyone else’s? Why would you not allow her to free you, when it could unlock the doors and heal the cracks in the world and stop the spirits from leaking out? How can you be so SELFISH?”

  “What will you do, little one, when you have killed me?”

  Eda realized she’d drawn the godkiller by accident. It wavered before her, its light flashing white-hot. She gritted her teeth. “When you are dead, I will journey back the way I came. I will return to Enduena, and raise an army, and take back my Empire. I will pull your temple down stone by stone and burn whatever is left to ashes. Because the people do not need the gods. They only need themselves and their Empress. I will lead them into a golden age. I will conquer all the world, and it will bow to me.”

  “And that will make you happy?”

  The god’s quiet voice echoed oddly in the vast chamber. Eda stared at him, biting her lip so hard she tasted blood. “Why did you call me? WHY DID YOU CALL ME?”

  With infuriating calm, Tuer picked up the threads of his story. “Raiva made a plan. The gods chose the next Bearer of Souls as she grew in her mother’s womb. In centuries past, the Bearer was given a pendant imbued with Starlight, which she has always used to unlock the doors. But when the doors were sealed, the pendant no longer worked. Raiva planned to draw some of the Starlight from her own soul and put it into the Bearer—into Niren—on the day of her birth.”

  The truth was beginning to dawn on Eda with an awful, twisting horror. She thought of the memory she’d seen in the Circle of Time, of Raiva, touching her forehead the instant Eda entered the world. “Raiva didn’t put the Starlight inside of Niren. She put it in me instead.”

  “I could see the future, and I knew it must be you who came to me. I sent my Shadow to distract Raiva, to keep her here in the mountain until the day of Niren’s birth had already passed. She went to Evalla on the day of your birth, and she thought—”

  “She thought I was Niren.” Eda brushed her fingers across her forehead, and heat pulsed through her. “It was a mistake. All of this was a mistake. I’m not important and I never was. I’m here on the whim of a mad god, who spends centuries weeping over the sorrows of the world instead of getting up and fixing them himself.”

  “Child, I told you. I cannot get free. And it wasn’t a mistake. Not really.”

  “If Raiva had put the Starlight in Niren, the Circles would be unlocked. The Dead would be free. There would be no tear in the world, no spirits devouring all life. I would be Empress and I would be—”

  “Happy?” said Tuer. “But you would not be. Because Niren would not have been free. Unlocking the doors and healing the tear in the world requires something more than merely passing through the Circles, or my Shadow or Raiva would have done it long ago.”

  Dread ate away at her. She didn’t want to ask, but she did anyway. “What does it require?”

  “Freeing me,” he said heavily.

  “And how would one free you?”

  The god took a long, long breath. “By taking my place.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “YOU CREATED ME ONLY TO DESTROY ME,” said Eda.

  “Little one—”

  “You are the spider at the heart of the web, and you lured me here because—and only because—I am so insignificant that my life means nothing to you. It never did. Raiva was too precious. So was Niren. But I don’t matter. I don’t matter at all. I am just a tool. A key. To be used and abandoned and forgotten.”

  “Eda.”

  Her name in the god’s heavy voice broke her. The knife was hungry in her hand.

  “I did not call you here to torment you, but to give you a choice. And so that you may truly choose, I now release you from our deal.”

  “Our deal,” said Eda viciously. “What deal is it, exactly, that I made?”

  Tuer blinked at her. “Your life in service in exchange for being made Empress.”

  “I made myself Empress. You did nothing.”

  “Perhaps, if you choose to see it that way.”

  She looked at the mirrors, and understanding dawned. “My life in service. My life. This is what you meant.”

  “I have little use for temples.”

  She thought of Erris, moldering even now on his throne. She hadn’t specified that she wanted to be Empress for the rest of her life. She thought she’d been so careful. She thought she’d been so wise. “But it wasn’t even you I made a deal with, was it? It was Rudion. It was always Rudion. In the temple, in the ballroom, on the ship, on the mountain. It was never even you.”

  The god shut his eyes, pain creasing his forehead. “It was me. Always. Because I didn’t have to listen to my Shadow. I didn’t have to let him stroke my ego, make me feel more than mankind, above my duty to them. Everything he has done I am guilty of, from the beginning until now.”

  Tuer brushed his fingers along the surface of the mirror before him. “Little one, I would tell you a story. Listen, and understand.

  “When the world was young, a god and his Shadow watched as a man stole a seed from the Tree.

  “‘How dare he,’ the god’s Shadow whispered in his ear. ‘How dare he stand against the gods, against you? He does not deserve to live. He does not deserve to dwell any longer under the Tree.’

  “And the god listened to his Shadow, and struck the man down.

  “‘Make me a king,’ pleaded a boy called Erris. ‘Make me as high as my brother. Make me mean something to him.’

  “‘What will you give?’ asked the god’s Shadow.

  “‘My life. My time. My heart.’

  “‘Then you shall be king,’ said the Shadow.

  “The god did not like what his Shadow had done, but the Shadow slinked round him, easing his sorrow. ‘How dare a man resent the will of the gods? It is why his brother was made king, and he was not.’

  “And the god understood the truth in his Shadow’s words, but still sometimes he looked into the mirror that showed Erris on his throne, king of nothing, ruler of no one, all the years of his life robbed away, and more. The god mourned. But he could not undo the things that his Shadow had done in his name.

  “As the centuries spun away, the god forgot it was his Shadow who had done it at all. He imagined himself on the mountaintop, making a cruel bargain with Erris that Erris did not understand.

  “And so he came to blame himself wholly, and the Shadow stayed.

  “More and more, the god’s Shadow left him alone in the Circle of Sorrow to go out and do his bidding in the world. More and more the god sent him, more and more the god wished him back.

  “And when one day the god’s Shadow whispered in his ear that the world was dying, that the Circles were closing and the earth fracturing apart, the Shadow offered him a solution, a chance at freedom, at absolution for everything he’d done. He only needed to find someone, to find no one to take his place. Because the god was the only one who could heal the world.

  “Rudion knew that. He slipped into the Circle of Time and looked into the future. He saw Niren, the chosen Bearer of Souls. He saw Eda, who was unimportant but strong, and he knew he’d found the one to take the god’s place. The god agreed. For even though he had meant, in his heart of hearts, to pay an eternity for his crime of br
inging death into the world, he longed for freedom. He longed to be rid of his chains, to walk in the winds of Endahr and be joined at last, at last, to Raiva, who held his heart in her hands.

  “And so he told Rudion to bring the girl to him. After all, she was nobody. She didn’t matter.

  “And yet.

  “The god watched her grow up. Saw her joys and her sorrows. So many sorrows. And he pitied her, but he could not turn back from his path. Because without her, all the world would die.

  “It was just that one should suffer so that the world could live.

  “The god would make that choice, if he could. He longed to make that choice.

  “But instead he watched as her parents died. As she made a deal with his Shadow. As she grew up and seized the Empire his shadow self had promised her.

  “And he watched as his Shadow stole her friend into death, the one she had bargained away without meaning to.

  “He watched as the man she loved betrayed her for his Shadow.

  “He watched and he watched and he watched.

  “And at last.

  “At last, you came.”

  Eda blinked, coming wholly back to herself in the Circle of Sorrow, the spell woven by Tuer’s story suddenly broken. “Why did you tell me all that?”

  “So you would know everything.”

  “So I would pity you,” she spat.

  Tuer shook his head. “I mourn the pain you suffered on my account. I mourn the things my Shadow did to you. But he succeeded in doing what I asked of him. He brought you here. And now that you are here, now that you know the whole of the truth, you must choose. What will you do? Time grows short. Soon my Shadow and his fellow spirits will devour the world, and there will be no choice left for you to make. Choose.”

  Eda flicked her eyes to the mirrors, to the god who crouched before her. Her fury sharpened. She did pity Tuer, pitied him as much as she reviled him. Like she pitied and reviled herself.

  “Choose, little one. Before time is gone.”

  “I will not be bound by your chains,” said Eda. “I choose to live. But I will not leave the world to perish because of your mistakes.”

  Tuer shook his head. “You cannot make that choice.”

  The third way is to kill the god.

  Eda grimaced. “Watch me.”

  And she leapt at Tuer, driving the godkiller upward, toward his heart.

  Pain burst inside of her, and she gasped and fell to her knees.

  Somehow, the godkiller had missed its mark.

  Somehow, it had pierced her own heart instead of Tuer’s.

  Dimly, she was aware of blood pouring from her chest onto the ground. She couldn’t stop staring at the knife hilt, protruding from her own body.

  How strange to see her life spill out of her, so red and hot.

  And yet how cold she was.

  Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision. She couldn’t feel anything now, not even pain.

  I’ve given my life to Tuer after all, she thought.

  And then the world shifted sideways, and shadows swallowed her whole.

  She was standing in a low room in the hull of a ship. The vessel rocked gently beneath her feet, but the motion didn’t bother her. The scarred man sat at a little table writing in his book, his pen scratching rhythmically across the page. He looked up at her, and smiled sadly.

  “Oh, little one. I am sorry that you have come here. This is not the story I wanted for you.”

  She was clothed in a gown of white and gray, and when she lifted her hands before her eyes, she could see through them. “Am I dead?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He wrote a few more words in his book, then closed it and stood, pacing to a porthole in the side of the ship.

  Eda went to stand beside him. She peered through the porthole, up into a circle of starry sky. She remembered the feel of a knife in her hand, then pain, her life dripping red on the ground. “The godkiller. It didn’t work.”

  “It could not pierce the chains of sorrow that bound the god of the mountain, but it thirsted for life, and so it took yours.”

  “Then it has all been for nothing. My life. My death. It’s fitting, that I end this way—I made myself. And I’ve unmade myself, too.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Do you truly think you shaped your own life?”

  “Tuer, then,” she said bitterly. “Tuer and his Shadow have been toying with me since the moment I was born. Perhaps it’s better this way, that my death has deprived him of the thing he’s been striving for so long.”

  “You blame Tuer, then, for everything that’s happened to you?”

  She looked at him, truly looked, and something stirred deep inside of her. “Who are you?”

  “Do you truly not know me, little Empress? I was there from the beginning, watching over you. Who do you think stayed the hand of the plague that took the lives of your parents? Who do you think protected you at the palace, allowed you to ascend to the throne and rule an Empire? Who do you think turned the gaze of the Denlahn soldiers, allowing you to escape the revenge of their prince? Who do you think unlocked the door to your holding cell, and watched over you on your voyage and your long journey? Who do you think called the spirits away on the mountain and brought you to Erris on his throne?”

  “Not Tuer,” she said.

  He smiled. “Not Tuer.”

  “You dwell outside the Circles,” said Eda. “You must, or you could not reach me here. You are not one of the dead, and you are not a Bearer of Souls.”

  He studied her, waiting for her to parcel it out.

  Her shadowy body began to shake. “You are the One above the gods. You have come to destroy me.”

  “No, dear one. I have come to offer you peace, rest. To bring you to my dwelling place beyond the Circles of Endahr, if that is what you wish.”

  The old anger flared. “Why did you not come to Tuer? Break him free of his chains? Heal the world and stop all of this from happening?”

  “I did come to Tuer, many times. He would not hear me. He would not accept my forgiveness. He wanted to suffer, and so he did, making his own plan of escape only when he saw he was poisoning the world.”

  “Me. I was his plan of escape.”

  “Yes.”

  “But now I am dead and there is no one to free him.” She looked up into her companion’s face, tracing the lines of his scars with her eyes, seeing the depth of his wisdom and his age and his power.

  “You do not have to worry about Tuer and his Shadow and their schemes any longer. Come with me, little Empress. Be at peace.”

  “What will happen to the world if I come with you? What will happen to the dead and the living? To Morin and Tainir? To Enduena?”

  There was an immeasurable grief in his eyes, the weight of it dragging on him. “The world will end, dear one. Endahr will be no more, and time itself will be unwritten.”

  “And you think I am selfish enough to trade my own comfort for the end of the world?” she demanded.

  He smiled. “Are you?”

  “I murdered the man I always hoped might be my father just so I could take his Empire. I destroyed the rightful Empress’s life because I hated her. And I bargained Niren away when I was still a child. Of course I’m selfish enough.”

  “Are you?” he repeated.

  The ship was beginning to waver around her, the pull of death very strong. “What will happen if I do not go with you?” she whispered.

  “Then I will send you back to the mountain. Back to Tuer, and another impossible choice. It may be that you can free him, and heal the breach between the Circles, saving the dead and the living, too. And it may be that you cannot, and Endahr will come to ruin anyway.”

  “And even if I do all that, it will still mean—”

  “It will still mean that you will be bound in Tuer’s place, bound to all the world’s sorrows.”

  “Forever.”

  “That is your choice, little one. What will you choose?”

&nb
sp; She looked at his book, which lay shut on the table. “What have you written for me?”

  “Would it alter your choice, if you knew what it would be?”

  Outside the ship the world seemed to shake. Stars fell from the sky and into the sea.

  “Send me back,” said Eda, tremulous, small. She bowed her head. “Send me back.”

  He brushed one finger across her brow, and the Starlight inside her pulsed warm at his touch. “Do not fear the sorrow, little Empress. It may yet save you. Farewell, until we meet again. Farewell.”

  Darkness closed round her, and something was ripped red-hot from her chest. She screamed in agony.

  But then metal clattered noisily on stone, and the pain was suddenly gone.

  She opened her eyes to see Tuer staring down at her, the godkiller lying on the ground between them, its blade rent in two.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  BUT THEY WERE NOT ALONE.

  A silent figure paced toward them from the outskirts of the hall. It was Raiva, her gown dirty and torn, her face streaked with tears. Eda wondered how long she had been watching them.

  “It should not fall to a mortal to mend a god’s mistakes,” said the goddess, and Eda recognized something inside of Raiva she hadn’t seen before—anger.

  Tuer bowed his head, and did not look Raiva in the eye.

  “All this time, my Lord of the Mountain, I could have saved you. All this time the doors could have been unlocked and Endahr allowed to flourish. All this time, you could have spoken with me, and yet for centuries you let me think you could not hear or see me, consumed with your own wretched sorrow. Look at me now, my lord Tuer. Meet my gaze and speak my name. Tell me why you left me so long to languish in misery.”

  Tuer lifted his eyes, and Eda saw his shame. “I could not lose yon,” he told the goddess. “You are all I hold dear upon Endahr, and I could not bear it if you were gone.”