Beyond the Shadowed Earth

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

“But you did this to yourself!” Raiva flung her arms at the mirrors. “You broke the world, then concocted a mad scheme with your Shadow to mend it because you were too proud and too stubborn and too selfish to admit that you were wrong!”

  Eda took a step backward, a bystander in a story that wasn’t hers.

  Raiva shook with rage, and Tuer seemed to shrink before her.

  “What is my life?” said the goddess. “What is it next to saving the one I love? Next to saving the world that I love? I would have given it to you a thousand times over.”

  “That is why I could never tell you,” said Tuer.

  “And why were you the one to make that choice? A choice that affects more than you—a choice that should have been mine? You cannot control everything and everyone you wish to. You are not the One who was before us. You are not all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful.”

  Tears dripped from Tuer’s face. “I was the first thing the One formed on Endahr. The strongest. The wisest. And I failed him.”

  “And so you punish yourself,” Raiva scoffed, “and all the world with you? That is not wisdom, my lord. That is foolishness.”

  A horrific boom shuddered through the hall, a crack opening jagged in the empty air above Tuer’s mirrors. Wind came rushing through it, bringing with it the stench of death. There came the sound of leathery wings, the clatter of bone swords, the mingled clacking of thousands upon thousands of broken teeth.

  Raiva looked at the crack with resignation. “Endahr tears itself apart. The spirits from the void will come even here, my lord, into your prison of Sorrow. Your Shadow will make sure of that. But I am no longer content to stand by, and do nothing.”

  She swept past Tuer, even as the god leapt to his feet. “My lady, no. Raiva—”

  But Raiva reached up into the air, grabbing both ends of the rip in the world. Words poured out of her, a great song that filled Eda with despair, and Starlight came rushing from her fingertips, weaving around the crack, pulling it together again.

  But the Starlight did not hold. No sooner had Raiva finished pulling one part of the crack together then it unraveled again, light hanging frayed around the edges. The stench of death grew stronger, the crack wider.

  “Raiva,” said Tuer, his face heavy with grief.

  She stopped her singing, turned to him. “My power wanes. I cannot heal the world this way. So I will take your place. Hang your chains on me, my lord Tuer. Do not deny me.”

  But the god shook his head. “Sorrow is powerful. It can extinguish love and life, death and time. It would put out your light. Destroy you.”

  “My lord, there is no time. Give me your chains.”

  “You do not understand. You have poured too much of your Starlight into the crack. There is not enough left. If I hung all the sorrow of the world on you now, it would turn you to dust in an instant. The doors would stay locked. The spirits would break free. The world would still die.”

  “And so it is down to me,” said Eda bitterly. “As it always has been.”

  The god and goddess both turned to her with surprise, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

  Eda felt herself collapsing inward, crushed by her insignificance, which somehow had made her so, so important. “My life, for the world’s. It’s not a choice. You haven’t given me one. You never have.”

  “And yet you are still here,” said Tuer.

  Raiva clasped the god’s hand in her own. She looked frail now, smaller than she had been.

  Eda paced in front of the mirrors, the crack in the world shuddering and groaning above her head. Images flickered through the glass: Niren, wandering the Circle of the Dead. Her parents, drowning in a river of shadows, clawing and fighting to reach the shore. The nine Billow Maidens with their flaming swords, guarding the dead of the sea. Morin and Tainir, clinging to each other as the earth cracked beneath their feet, as the sun fell from the sky and winged spirits devoured all the world. Rudion, tearing more cracks in the world with his bone sword, letting his brothers and sisters flood through.

  “I wanted more than this.” Eda gestured at the mirrors, at Tuer’s chains. “I deserved more than this.”

  Tuer watched her, his piercing eyes ancient and powerful and deep.

  She turned to the god, heavy with her own sorrow. For all her anger, there was only one choice she could make, the same choice she had already made when the One had sent her back. She had to try, to save Morin and Tainir, to save her parents and Niren and the world. “Give me your chains, Lord of the Mountain. I accept them for my own.”

  “Is there no other way?” said Raiva.

  Tuer’s face was stricken. “There is no other way.”

  He knelt before Eda, putting his huge hands on her shoulders. “I am sorry, little one. When I caused Raiva to put her light in you, when I sent my Shadow to draw you here, I did not know I would come to care for you, as I watched you grow, as I endured all the sorrows you endured. If there was any other way, I would choose to sit here for all eternity in your place. But there is not, not anymore. I am sorry. When it is done—when you are bound and the world is free, perhaps we can find a way to save you. And perhaps we cannot, but know that we will honor you, always.”

  Eda ground her jaw. “Bind me, then. Before I change my mind.”

  “Take my hand, daughter of dust. Close your eyes.”

  She did as she was told, folding her slender hand into his much larger one. She felt his pulse underneath his wrist and thought it odd that a god should have a pulse. She shut her eyes.

  “I am sorry,” Tuer repeated.

  That was all the warning she had before a dark, raging pain seared through her, from her fingers down to her toes, and all the way up her spine to the roots of her hair. She screamed, thrashing, trying to break free, but Tuer didn’t let her go.

  The pain continued to fill her up. Heat and cold, knives and stone, a thousand stinging scorpions—her body writhed on the ground, unable to contain the full weight of her agony. Because Tuer was giving her his chains, his sorrow. She felt his grief, his rage, his helplessness, every last ounce of every dark emotion he had experienced for the centuries he’d been here, bound in the dark.

  She couldn’t bear it. She screamed at him to stop but still he held on, still his sorrow poured through her.

  She was broken. She was remade. She was broken again. She would splinter apart, and there would be nothing left.

  And then suddenly, the pain stopped. She opened her eyes. Tuer and Raiva stood towering above her in the full weight of their immortal power, and they were both so bright she could barely look at them.

  “I am sorry,” said Tuer yet again.

  Raiva brushed cool fingers across Eda’s forehead. For an instant Eda stared at her, shocked to see wrinkles pressed into the goddess’s face, age weighing on her as it would on any mortal.

  And then Tuer and Raiva turned and were gone, leaving her alone in the darkness.

  The mirrors flashed and whispered before her. The jagged crack in the world writhed and groaned above her head.

  It was only then, as she unconsciously tried to stand, that she felt the chains, heavy, cold, unbreakable. The chains that bound her forever to the Circle of Sorrow.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  THE CRACK IN THE WORLD GROANED AND shook above her. In every one of Tuer’s mirrors a similar crack split the sky, and winged spirits poured through. The screams of a million souls filled her own, broke her and broke her again. But the chains bound her where she knelt, and the only thing she could do was lift her head.

  Above her, a single shadow flew through the crack: Rudion, crowned with fire. Flames licked along his brow, but did not consume him. His eyes hungered for her. “Little Empress,” he hissed. “How do you think to save the world, when you cannot even save yourself? The god has tricked you yet again. He is free, and you are not, and you will perish, here, in the depths of sorrow.”

  “It was you who tricked me.” Her throat was raw from screaming; every word w
as pain. “It was always you. You tricked me, just as you tricked Ileem, just as you tricked Tuer. How did you do it? How did you make him think you served him, when really you plotted to keep him in chains as you worked to free your own kind?”

  Rudion laughed and paced near her, his wings folded against his shoulders. In the dim light from the mirrors, he seemed almost to shine. “The proud are always the easiest to fool, because they think themselves so very wise. Especially a god.”

  Dimly, Eda was aware of one half of the godkiller lying just past her knee. “And yet for all your scheming, you have lost,” she said. “Tuer is free, and he goes even now to unlock the doors. When he has done so, the cracks in the world will heal, and you and your kind will be sealed forever into the void.”

  Rudion put his bone sword to her throat. Cold burned her. Cut her. Blood trickled down her neck, sliming her chains with red.

  He dragged one clawed finger down her cheek. “Little Empress, little fool. Queen of Sorrow and ruler of shadows. How small you are. How very, very small. I wanted you here. I meant for you to take his place. You are the last piece holding the world together. When I kill you, the Circles will fracture apart, and not even the god can repair them. Soon, all my people will be free: an army as vast as the stars. Mankind will fall, and the gods themselves will bow at my feet. How much agony will you feel, I wonder, as your body is torn apart? Perhaps not more than you feel right now. Perhaps your death will be a mercy.” Rudion laughed again and raised the sword, swinging it toward her.

  Eda shrieked as her hand closed around the half of the godkiller, and she thrust it hard into Rudion’s chest.

  The bone sword clattered to the ground. Rudion screamed and jerked back. Darkness poured from his wound like smoke, more and more until it consumed him, and his fiery crown clattered to the floor. For an instant he stared at her, shock written into every line of his frame. His wings lay dark against the stone, some wind she did not feel stirring through black feathers.

  “I told you,” she hissed through her agony. “I told you I would kill you.”

  And then his body fell all to ash, and the wind blew him away.

  Eda shuddered, the chains weighing on her, pain splintering every inch of her. She wiped the blood from her neck and looked again into Tuer’s mirrors.

  She saw Tuer and Raiva pacing together through the dark of the mountain. As they walked, Raiva aged with every step, until at last she turned to dust, a shimmer of Starlight in the darkness. Grief weighed heavy on the oldest god, but he did not stop to mourn. He could not—his task was unfinished. He reached the door to the Circle of Time, and with the touch of his hand and a Word of ancient power, he unlocked it.

  On he went through Time and unlocked the door to the Circle of the Dead. Then, at last, the door to the Circle of the Living. There the other gods were waiting for him: Mahl, Ahdairon, and Hahld. Together, they stepped from Tuer’s Mountain.

  Tuer’s power weighed on him like a heavy mantle. He burned with it. And as he stood on his Mountain, the other gods with him, he called the spirits.

  They came in a rush of dark wings, pulled by the strength of his power. There were thousands of them. They all knelt before him, trembling. Tuer spoke a Word, and a crack split the sky above him. Darkness wheeled beyond.

  The spirits screamed. Begged.

  But Tuer lifted his hand and they were silent, cowering before him. “We bound you once, for the crimes you committed against Endahr,” said the oldest god. “Now we bind you once more, and this time, there will be no escape.” Tuer looked at the other gods and nodded.

  Together, the four of them began to sing, an ancient song they had learned at the beginning of the world, woven together with Words of power. They sang and sang, and the mountain shook and the spirits shrieked as they were flung against their will into the void. The song went on and on, until every last spirit was swallowed up. In their wake they left a field of bones, the only remnants of those they’d slaughtered in their brief moment of freedom.

  Wind rushed over the peak, and Ahdairon, Mahl, and Hahld turned to their lord Tuer, and bowed to him. “How will we seal them?” asked Ahdairon. “How will we make certain this will never happen again?”

  “With the blood of a god,” said Tuer. For a moment, he seemed to look through the surface of the mirror, straight into Eda’s eyes. “I am sorry, little one. Forgive me.”

  And he drew from his breast the other half of the godkiller, and plunged it into his heart.

  “NO!” Eda screamed.

  But the god fell from the mountain.

  The crack in the sky vanished.

  “Tuer!” Eda cried at the mirror. “TUER!”

  But he didn’t answer, and she didn’t expect him to.

  Tuer was dead.

  She sagged back on her heels. Darkness clamored at the edges of her vision. There was nothing left. No Tuer, no Raiva. No one to save her.

  There was only sorrow, and that’s all there ever would be.

  Eda looked into the mirrors, looked and looked, for she found she had no will to turn away. Mothers wept and fathers died. Women cursed, men raged. A serving girl curled in a corner of a grand house, aching with loneliness. A child sobbed, a bruise in the shape of a handprint on his face. A daughter found her father ripped apart by beasts in a forest.

  All was ache and torment. All was sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.

  The grief continued in an endless parade before her eyes. She wept until she was emptied of tears, and then she wept even more.

  She fought against the chains, raged against them. But they only pulled tighter, only bound her closer to the mirrors.

  Time lost all meaning. She had been bound in the Circle of Sorrow for an hour, or perhaps a millennium. She did not hunger, did not thirst, did not sleep. All she did was feel. And all she felt was pain.

  She lost herself to it. She became sorrow, she was sorrow. That was all she ever would be.

  Her life and her self slipped away. She forgot Niren and her parents and the Empire. She forgot Morin and Tainir and her long journey to find Tuer’s Mountain. She forgot anything had ever existed besides pain. She felt every tear shed in all of Endahr. Every hurt. Every grief.

  There was nothing else.

  Sometimes, the ground seemed to shake beneath her feet. Once, she thought she saw a host of shadows pass through the hall beyond the mirrors, led by a woman who shone like a Star.

  She couldn’t properly hear or see them. They didn’t even make sense to her, because within them pulsed something other than sorrow, and that was impossible.

  It was sorrow that bound the world together.

  Another time, she thought she saw a man on a throne of mounded stones lift his head. He blinked and sighed and looked around him, confusion creasing his brow. He stood from his throne, and strode away from it, turning, as he did so, to dust.

  There came a time when perhaps her mind wandered away from her body and she dreamt, if dream it was, of a wide green land. Of shadows shining bright under a brilliant sky. Of rest, release, joy.

  But she didn’t know what joy was. She had never felt it. It didn’t exist.

  She thought she saw an old wrinkled man, his lips bloated from poison, step onto the shores of the green land and grow whole and young again. He ran through the grass like a newborn lamb, wobbly and rejoicing.

  She saw a man and woman who had perhaps once been precious to her. They sat together on the shore, the woman laying her head on the man’s shoulder.

  Nine shining figures and a host of shadows came to the green shore. All of them radiated something that she didn’t understand. Something that was the opposite of sorrow.

  And then she was drawn back into her body and she knew herself, knew that she sat chained in the god Tuer’s place, and that he was dead, and she would never be free.

  She wept, for her sorrow, and for the world’s. She would never stop weeping.

  All the grief of all the world poured through her, eating her, but never c
onsuming her.

  Darkness. Pain. Weeping. Sorrow.

  My life in service, in exchange for being made Empress.

  My life in service.

  My life.

  My life.

  A voice, strong as a storm: “It is too much for her. The sorrow has swallowed the Starlight.” A sudden vision of the wind god Mahl, his white hair crowned with lightning.

  Another voice, gentle as the rain through the trees, the wind goddess, Ahdairon, all rippling feathers and yellow hair: “Not all of it. There is a little left. It is enough, I think, to save her.”

  Save her.

  Save her.

  She was falling from a cliff, feathers in her hair. The world was a blur of gray and green, stone and trees.

  A ship rocked beneath her. Nausea climbed up her throat. Rock, rock, rock.

  A scarred man, writing in a book, ink flowing thick and dark from his pen.

  Do not fear the sorrow, little Empress. It may yet save you.

  A girl, sitting all night between her parents’ bodies, so stiff on their tables of stone, so cold and blank and empty.

  A man, pulling her away from her home, stuffing her into a room in the palace, a room far too big for her and far too empty.

  Loneliness, eating away at her.

  Slipping into the stable, saddling a horse, riding and riding and riding until her house appeared, stark against the horizon.

  A temple in a hill, beating her fist against the stone, blood dripping down her knuckles.

  The god.

  Her deal.

  My life in service.

  My life.

  My life.

  Waiting and waiting. The loneliness threatening, always, to swallow her whole.

  But she didn’t let it. Planning, waiting. Bribes and promises. Searing jealousy.

  Lonely, lonely.

  A vial of poison, cold against her breast.

  Dark drops poured between papery lips.

  His last rattling breath.

  A crown, heavy on her brow.

  The people kneeling before her.

  Still so lonely.

  Niren—there and yet not there. A shadow. A fear.