‘They all come here,’ he said matter-of-factly. His bony white hand caressed her throat as he spoke, his voice rasping.
‘No matter how hard they fight, they all end up here. I can make you powerful. I can show you the power within, the power that I too share. To walk in the land of the living as well as the dead…’ he trailed off and she wondered at the sadness in his voice.
‘He wants you for his own. But he will never understand, no immortal can. How can you understand death, if you cannot die?’ he chuckled to himself.
‘No, he cannot have you. We shall reside here, in my domain, where we are strong. They cannot understand you like I do,’ he stroked her chin, his voice turning thick with desire.
‘You hunted me in the Shadowlands,’ she gasped, her voice ragged with fear.
‘You would rather be a Lost One?’ his grasp tightened and she winced. ‘You would rather walk the Shadowlands forever? No, it was you who asked to be saved, did you think I wouldn’t heed your pleas?’
She shook her head in confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I can show you,’ his voice was husky, his hand quivering as he stroked her neck and traced her collarbone. His ice-cold touch upon her chest made her heart shudder. She tried to endure it and accept it, but she could not and tried to struggle against him.
Keteth laughed indulgently. ‘Yes, fighting is fun, but really, am I so repulsive? Perhaps another form will please you. I’ve taken one whom you know well, I think you will be pleased,’ he laughed. The shrouded figure became a familiar dark-haired man.
‘Rance,’ she gasped. But though it was the man she had danced with at the Midsummer Celebrations, there something terribly wrong with him, there was a shadow in his eyes and he had no life force about him, no aura. Even Keteth had an aura.
‘What have you done to him,’ she shrank from him. Surely it was another of his tricks, for as she stared there stood two beings in one form, the man she had known and the beast.
‘Hah. Rance is dead, and his soul is with me now, like they all will be,’ Keteth voice spoke through Rance’s mouth.
She tore her eyes away, clenching her eyes shut to hide the tears. Rance was dead? But how? His soul trapped in Keteth’s prison along with the others, how could it be? Not Rance. I’m too late. Keteth would not have taken you were it not for me. She began to sob hopelessly.
Strong arms reached around her and lifted her to her feet. She slumped against him, too weak to stand, too exhausted to resist, and the sorrow drove deep into her heart. She tried to deny the growing warmth of his flesh as he held her close, for it began to seem that he lived still. No, Rance was dead, this was a trick. Keteth could take many forms, curse him.
Her mind was spinning, the smell of Rance was somehow intoxicating, and Keteth’s mind infected her thoughts. She tried to pull away, but her legs would not obey and he held her firmly. He kissed her neck, each kiss made her tingle with a confused desire that she neither wanted nor was able to control.
‘Stop,’ she gasped, but he didn’t and she couldn’t think clearly through the fog in her mind. His lips were hot and eager upon hers, and she felt as if she was drowning. Her mind was a prisoner in her confused body that responded to Rance with a desire that was not her own. It was wrong, corrupt, a lie, her body was betraying her.
Dimly she could hear a thousand wailing voices trapped in their prison, calling for her to free them. This is a trick, it is not Rance! She screamed inwardly, but with each kiss, her resolve was pushed further away, and she was drowning in his poisonous desire. She closed her eyes and saw Rance in rags upon his knees, weeping as he reached out his hands.
‘Help me,’ he screamed. ‘Remember who you are.’
‘Who am I?’ She asked him, but he was gone. She knew who she was once, but now she struggled to remember. She had forgotten, just as she had in the Shadowlands.
A memory forced through the fog—the sacred pool with the Guardians. They had given her the crown of raven feathers and first shown her Karshur. Other images came. A woman with her face, dressed in black armour fighting Maphraxies. She reached for older images. A raven in the orchard and the mound surrounded by great stones. The orchard turned black and everyone was dead. A green land ravaged with smouldering scars, and charred bodies everywhere.
Who am I? The question forced itself upon her as Rance’s kisses became more urgent. Tears spilled down her face. What did it matter? What difference did it make now? It was too late.
A blazing indigo light struck her mind and the world fell away as did her body. Her consciousness looked out upon a universe filled with millions of stars, all twinkling in the darkness. She looked down and saw that she glowed as brightly as they did for she was one of them, a brilliant shining star.
A blue and green planet formed below her and she watched as the history of Maioria, from its first formation to the present, unfolded before her. Other planets drifted into view and she saw the history of each of them in a moment, felt the hopes and fears, the lives and deaths of billions of beings. She was all of them, she was everything, she was complete knowing, and her soul wept at the beauty of it.
An eternity passed in which all things came into being and passed away. Time no longer existed and she floated in the all of everything, totally content in her true essence.
A thought or memory entered her awareness and she focused her attention upon it. There was a man, skinny, tall and mousy-haired. He was sad for he was trying to save people from a sickness that had struck them. He brought them back to life, but the dead did not want it. The village turned against him and cast him out. He ran from them in terror and anger. She saw his loneliness, watched the bitterness and hatred consume him, his power grow beyond comparison until the man he had been was gone and a monster remained.
The dark moon shone before her, and in it the hooded figure of the Night Goddess formed. Zanufey was with her.
‘I have come for the lost children,’ Zanufey’s voice was gentle but low and resolute. It vibrated through her whole being. ‘Now is the time, after so long, to bring their souls home. For everything, there is a season, and our season has come.’
‘I will release them,’ Issa said, feeling love flow through and around her. ‘I will free the White Beast.’
Her mind contracted and the universe collapsed into a single focus. She lay on the cold stone floor beneath Rance locked in his embrace. The scratching on the wall outside was louder, urgent, raking into her mind.
I know who I am. I embrace the Night Goddess, she and I are One.
She felt pure ancient magic blossom within her, flooding from the depths of her being. It surged upwards and out through her body in rays of indigo energy. Blue magic flared into the walls of her prison. The cell shuddered, bulged outwards, then imploded. The walls cracked inwards with a thunderous noise. Rocks flew and splintered as they smashed into each other.
Through the debris flew the raven, Karshur shining in its talons. She realised it was he who had been scratching on the walls outside all this time, desperately trying to get to her. More power flooded into her as her prison shattered, filling her with lost strength, breaking Keteth’s hold upon her. The dark moon had finally reached her and Keteth’s spell was broken.
She spoke a word and Rance was thrown to the floor. His face contorted into a howl and his eyes turned black as the White Beast took form again. She reached for more of the Flow, amassing it around her in great swirls of blue light. In a grasp strengthened by magic she clamped her hand onto a tentacle and pulled Keteth screaming into her magical maelstrom. At her command, they moved upwards out of the shattering prison, and into the darkness of the ocean, the raven flying by her side.
Water engulfed her tunnel of spinning light, bubbles frothed and whirled around them. Upwards they moved, Keteth writhed and fought, but he could not break free of her grasp or her magical vortex. The water became lighter and less dense. They burst into the air and were bathed in the dark moon’s light.
&
nbsp; She gulped in the pure air and she slowed their upward movement until she stood lightly on the surface of the ocean. She felt Ely’s bracelet once more on her wrist and Asaph’s ring on her finger. She still gripped Keteth, and his great bulk rolled on top of the water as if the sea had become solid land. His tentacles thrashed down, trying to pull himself under, but he could not even break the surface. The sea would not let him back in.
The raven hovered above her, and the indigo light of the dark moon shone down. Keteth moaned and writhed as if in agony of its light, but she held him fast, the blue rays strengthening her even as they weakened him. There came hushed voices, and she realised they were coming from the dagger at her side. Karshur was whispering to her.
‘The time has come… kill the White Beast… set us free… give us our vengeance.’
The power of the dagger forced its will upon her. Unable to deny it, she tilted her head back and howled its commands in the tongue of the Ancients, her voice a wild sound in the still night. Karshur gleamed in the moonlight as she held it high and within it, she felt the yearning of ages as it called for the heart of the White Beast.
‘I know who I am and I have always known,’ she cried in her own tongue. ‘I am a child of Zanufey. I cannot be beaten, Keteth, not on this night. I defeat you for my will is greater.’
‘Behold Karshur, Keteth. Hear the thousands within it clamouring for vengeance. Your time is over, be now forever free from your prison.’ The dagger burned in her grasp.
Keteth snarled and writhed, trying to release himself from her grasp by turning into many awful forms. The tentacle she held became the leg of a giant centipede. Its massive segmented body rose up into the air and arched backwards towards her. Its black mandibles yawned and snapped.
She dodged and struck back with Karshur, her attacking arm controlled partly by her own will and partly by the dagger’s own vengeance. Blade struck exoskeleton, slicing off a mandible and sending it flying. The centipede fell back screaming, spraying poisoned blood all over her. But the light of the dark moon fell upon the blood and it dissipated without harming her.
Keteth was not done, and the centipede’s leg she held became a scorpion’s claw as thick as her thigh. Its stinging tail lashed towards her. She ducked to the right. The stinger missed her body and tore instead through the rags of her robe. As she dodged the tail, its pincer snapped over her arm with a sickening crunch. A wave of nausea swept over her and her fractured arm went numb.
She slashed at the pincer and half fell away in a spray of more blood as it released her arm. Even with a fractured arm she still held firm. The magic of the blue moon dulled the pain and would not let her release him. With a focused will and a word to release the magic, she sent a blast of indigo fire to scorch the stinger as it tried to strike her again.
Keteth changed again and the scorpion’s claw became smooth and scaled. Instead, she held in her grip a giant cobra. A black tongue thicker than her arm flicked out as its hood flared. Black eyes locked onto hers and white coils curled around her. She slashed with Karshur to drive them back. She commanded the Flow, more indigo flames forced back his venomous head before it could strike.
The snake coiled back from the flames with a whimper that sounded so human it made her hesitate. A sudden overwhelming feeling of compassion rolled over her. The emotion took her completely by surprise being, as she was, in the midst of fighting for her life. Through the compassion, a wave of calm and clarity spread over her. The ensuing clarity gave her strength and speed beyond that which she thought she possessed.
Each blow and strike that came from Keteth, in his seemingly exhaustive number of forms, she countered with increasing ease. Karshur struck with a will of its own, and the magic of the dark moon flowed effortlessly through her.
Whatever Keteth became, she could not let go. She remembered the man he had been who had sought to do nothing but good, even though Keteth himself could no longer remember.
‘I remember the good you once were,’ she spoke softly, and yet her voice echoed around them. Keteth ceased his struggles.
‘Now is the time,’ Karshur whispered, and she knew it to be so.
She held Karshur high in the air and spoke. ‘Be released from your nightmare, Lost One.’
She let go of the dagger. It flew from her hand, moving of its own accord, straight into Keteth’s torso. There came an explosion of blinding white light as Karshur penetrated and disappeared into his flesh.
Keteth made no noise but shook, but his entire bulbous body shuddered violently. His eyes filled with terror as his flesh trembled and began to crack. His skin, his body began to peel away, layer after layer turning into dust that was blown away by the wind. Soon all the white blubber was gone, and a young slender man with mousy hair stood before her in the place of the beast.
Keteth stared at her in shock, but he did not scream or cry out. He was looking at something beyond her, eyes wide in awe. She glanced behind. The moon was gone and instead brilliant blue light radiated out from a robed and hooded figure walking towards them upon the still waters.
All the stars that should have been in the sky were contained within her cloak and they glimmered and sparkled as she walked. Slender hands reached up and pulled the hood back. Issa stared up and saw her own face reflected. Zanufey took Issa’s hand and stepped into her form as though she were a ghost. She and the Night Goddess became One.
Zanufey smiled at Keteth with love and took his trembling hands in her own. She pulled him to her and embraced him. Her blue light glowed strong and pure and flowed right through his skin, cleansing the corruption, healing the madness, breaking the lie of separation as she made whole his tortured and fragmented spirit.
Keteth smiled up at her, the hatred and pain of centuries gone from his face. Fine lines formed on his brow and began to crisscross over his flesh. The lines grew and turned into light, becoming brighter and brighter until his whole body became as bright as a star. The white light of Keteth spoke to the consciousness that was Issa.
‘I pass on to you my gift, the ability to traverse the dimensions between the living and the dead.’
Joyful laughter burst from the light. There was a flash and the light was gone, along with the presence of Zanufey. Issa and the raven were alone upon the ocean with the dark moon shining before them once more.
A faint whisper echoed on the wind. ‘I am free.’
Nothing remained of Keteth’s existence except, in the place where he had been, there floated a beautiful turquoise orb that flared light from the palest aqua to the deepest azure. She smiled and reached down to pick up the Orb of Water.
‘I forgive you. I will remember who you were in the beginning, Keteth,’ she whispered as tears blurred her vision.
All around her there came the sound of joyous laughter. From the void deep within the ocean, the Ancients and all those imprisoned by Keteth, came to her in their thousands. They rose up through the dark water as bubbles of light, shining all the colours of the rainbow. They emerged from the water and swirled around her, dancing in joy.
She gasped when the lights came close, for within them were the faces of the people they had been: dwarves, elves, humans, karalanths, Ancients and even races she did not recognise. All of them smiled at her and sang in voices so beautiful and moving that tears fell down her cheeks.
‘Go in peace, go with love,’ she whispered, and at her word they sparked once and merged together. As one long ribbon of light, they moved through her body, through her soul, and onwards to the one light of the Source of All.
She felt every one of the lost souls as they passed through her, and each one she blessed, and each, in turn, thanked her. Tears of joy and sadness fell down her cheeks as the souls enslaved by Keteth for millennia were set free.
In the distance, she saw the cresting fins of the Wykiry coming towards her and she smiled, they too were free of Keteth. As was another, she realised. Thoughts of Asaph filled her mind. She longed to see him.
As
if in response to her wishes, the Orb of Water pulsed and indigo magic from the blue moon flashed.
Chapter 40
Raven Queen
MIST covered the sacred mound and clung to the blue stones. The dew upon the soft grass wetted her bare feet. Issa was still dressed in the rags of her priestess robe, and though her wounds had healed to nothing but scratches in the blue light of the moon, the rags were stained with dried blood.
‘Asaph,’ she whispered.
Is that why the orb and the blue moon had brought her here? If she entered the mound would she find Asaph? Now the White Beast was gone from the physical world, he could torment Asaph no longer. She longed to see him, to tell him of all the things that had happened.
She didn’t worry about returning, she always went back to wherever she had left once the sacred mound had shown her what she needed to know. The Wykiry would be there for her with the Orb of Water.
She stepped towards the sacred mound, thinking about everything that had happened. The Lost Ones were free, how many thousands she could not know. Their knowledge, their power, their very being, for a moment, had become hers. She had become all of them.
I won, Ma, we won. You can rest in peace now. Sadness welled up within her, if only Ma was with her now. I am a woman now, Ma. Your old Issa has not gone, only grown, and I must if I am to walk the path of the Night Goddess. I think you knew this all along.
In setting Keteth free he had given her his gift to walk between the dead and the living, and for that she respected him deeply. He had given her back to herself so that the love of the goddess could flow through her. In a way, she thought, he had set her free too.
She stared into the blackness of the sacred mound, marvelling at the wondrous simplicity and complexity of the universe. Indeed it seemed that nothing was chaos, nothing was chance. All things were carefully, lovingly, arranged, though it might not seem like that to a limited incarnate consciousness.
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 40
