Of the Divine

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Henna looked at Verte again, but it wasn’t his deathly visage that made her shiver. Dove was right.

  “I’ll scry,” Henna said. “Maybe I can see something about how to help Verte as well. You should probably rest.”

  Dove nodded tiredly. “I will. Please let me know if you learn anything.”

  Henna went to the temple to get her tools, then returned to Verte’s room to work by his side. It was only as she spread the fabric across an ottoman to create a makeshift altar that she noticed the fabric was white silk, very different from her usual altar cloths. It made sense to choose tools associated with cold power to investigate cold power, she supposed, but she hadn’t done it intentionally.

  “I’m scared,” she said, partly to herself, partly to Verte, and partly to the power she hoped would answer her call. She set out her rune stones as she spoke, arranging them in a circle. “I’m frightened of the way things are changing. The idea of putting a new ship into the water and possibly bringing the Osei back here terrifies me, but I also know what it’s like to live in a place where you stare at someone else’s food and your stomach grumbles and you start wondering whether you’re strong enough to fight them for it. Kavet could turn into such a place, if we don’t reestablish trade.”

  She recalled the darkest days with the Osei, the ones that had turned a child of the water into a land-dwelling sorceress and fortune-teller.

  “I don’t want to lose Kavet.” That was one of the few things she knew for certain. “After I escaped the Osei, I stopped on the first dry land that would take me. I never thought it would become home the way it has.”

  She knocked tears from her cheek with an angry hand.

  “So I need guidance,” she said. “I need to understand what has happened these last two months, to know what to do next. I need to know what the danger is and how we can face it. Speak to me. Please.”

  She realized she was doing more than using her second sight. She was raising power—cold power, which responded to invocation. Fine. She didn’t fight the instincts driving her as she felt the fragile bubble of cold magic develop in the room. Would it tell her what she needed to know?

  We can help you. Words on the wind, echoing with gratitude and longing. Henna looked around, wondering if she had heard them aloud or if they were part of some vision. Thank you for reaching for us. I thought I had lost you when the beast claimed you.

  Henna closed her eyes, and focused on the voice. This was more than instinct guiding her power. Someone was talking to her.

  “Who are you?” she asked tentatively.

  The image in her head was familiar: Crystal waves lapping against a sea of brilliant white sand. She had seen it before, whenever she spoke to Helio.

  Sadness from the being in her mind washed over her as she thought of her fellow sorcerer, and she knew this was the voice that had spoken through Helio to apologize.

  He was dear to us, as you all are, the voice sighed, heavy with grief. Veronese has spent the centuries guiding the Terre line, but I am the one who took the children of the Cobalt Hall and taught them to use divine power. They renamed their order in my honor, Napthol, and—

  NO!

  Henna gasped as another being screamed into her mind and vision. Perfectly clear waters darkened, swirling with red and black as the other power intruded.

  She is mine and you will NOT steal her!

  Cold wrapped Henna as the being of the white sands gripped her more tightly, stealing her breath like a winter wind. She called to me. I will not abandon—

  MINE! The beautiful white beach was being replaced with an image of a bog where gray tussocks decorated with swamp-fire in a dozen impossible colors rose above opaque water whose surface shone like an oil slick.

  Henna gasped. The Abyssal creature’s grip cut and burned, not just in vision but in reality.

  “Let go!” she tried to shout, but her voice was strangled.

  Mine, the Abyssal voice snarled again, a challenge not to Henna but to the softer, gentler voice.

  You will kill her if you do not release her, the Numini warned.

  Lost to the icy realm or dead—they’re the same to me, the Abyssi replied indolently.

  “They’re not the same to me!” Henna snapped back. This time she found her voice. She focused her power, or tried to focus the power. Her gifts of vision were separate from her sorcery, and these were creatures of magic, who didn’t truly exist on this realm to begin with. How to fight them?

  They existed fully enough to kill her. Somewhere in the physical world, she could feel fresh blood sliding down her skin. This, she understood, was how they had killed Helio.

  Nor are they the same to me, the Numini granted. Its calm, comforting presence suffused her, promising her wordlessly that all would be well. It would take care of her. Then it added, It is better to be dead than to become a monster’s tool.

  The Numini tightened its magical grip on her, trying to pull her away from the beast, and it was cold, oh so cold, freezing the breath in her lungs. The Abyssi responded to the struggle with glee and amoral abandon.

  With impossible effort, Henna wrenched her eyes open, freeing herself from competing visions. As soon as she did, she saw the blood pooling on the white silk.

  There was blood on her hands. On her arms. In her hair. How badly was she hurt?

  She tried to stand but fell as her back seized, spasms running down her spine and her thighs as damaged muscles shrieked in protest.

  In her own blood, she traced runes of protection and sanctuary that she had learned not in the Cobalt Hall but as a child on Tamari ships. Instead of the infernal or divine realms from which she now fully believed her sorcery came, she invoked Azayalee, god of the sea and the wind, to protect her.

  Slowly, she felt the battling powers recede. New lines of frost and fire stopped appearing on her skin. But was it too late already? How much damage had been done?

  She struggled to breathe, knowing she had to move, or at least find enough breath to scream. If she didn’t get to a healer soon, she would bleed to death here.

  No. Henna had survived the Osei. She would not die now. Inch by inch, she managed to drag herself to the door, and there she paused again, gasping for air. The doorknob seemed to be miles away, too high for her to reach. Her reserves were gone. She couldn’t go any farther.

  She crumpled.

  “Help her!” The plea came from the lesser judge, Napthol. The Abyssi had successfully pushed him away from the mortal child it had claimed, but a beast of the infernal realm had no power to heal. She would still die, and then she would belong to the Abyss after death.

  Doné looked down at the mortal realm with disdain. “Why should I help a creature as riddled by the Abyss as a dog with mange?”

  “Because you did not help before. Because your child is strong and healthy, while mine—”

  “You waste your time arguing with Doné,” Veronese interrupted. “She will never bend to help a mortal she feels is already lost to the infernal realm. But I will. I have put off doing this. I hate hurting him so. But I swore a vow, and it must be done.”

  Verte knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t wake up.

  He was falling, and all of existence was void blackness as he passed through it, forever and ever. It could have been terrifying, but he knew he was dreaming, and dreams couldn’t hurt him. He just fell.

  Then he was kneeling. In another lifetime, the concept of kneeling anywhere to anyone would have kindled his indignation. But he wasn’t himself now. He was an actor in a role, living a scene written by another.

  His knees did not hurt. Nothing hurt. He had never known pain. He had never been cold, and he had never been hungry.

  Too many voices arguing, arbiters and judges shouting, their voices raw enough that the high justice of the Numini needed to step in.

  “Step aside.”

  “You are young, and you are rash.”

  “Don’t you understand what I am trying to do?”
/>   “I understand what you have done.”

  “Which of us was it that allowed Modigliani to sink his teeth into that realm?”

  “Modigliani is only satisfying an appetite that was already there.”

  “How dare you raise your voice in this place?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Verte looked back. Had something been forgotten?

  “You have to get up now.”

  Oh, no. He was happy being asleep. Sleep was good. It was easy. Waking would end all that. Falling wasn’t so bad, because he knew that in dreams, nothing could hurt him. Awake, he could be hurt.

  “I don’t want to get up. You promised—”

  “Others made other promises. Vows are in conflict.”

  “Can’t I stay a little longer?”

  It wrapped a silver wing around him. “Not much longer, I’m afraid.”

  Verte was walking on white sand. It was cool beneath his feet, especially where waves lapped his toes, but he was not cold. The ocean was clear, not just like the turquoise tropical seas of Silmat and Tamar, but like diamond. He could make out fish, like amethyst and emerald gemstones, darting between streaks of light.

  He couldn’t remember what he was doing here. He had been told to wait, hadn’t he?

  He walked up the beach to where the dunes were covered in bellflowers, among which the tiny nectar-drinking birds flew. That field gave way to silver trees with tear-shaped fruits that shimmered in the light, more red than any apple or exotic bird had ever been.

  Finally he came to a wall of beaten gold. He put a hand on it. His fingers left no oil on the surface as he walked, trailing them along the smooth metal until he reached a gate.

  The path was set with gold and green amber cobbles, and blocked by a massive gate of wrought copper and gold, shut fast.

  “You know I can’t let you in,” said the being just beyond. “Why do you keep coming here?”

  Why? He couldn’t remember that, either. “I’m leaving soon,” he said. “I want to come inside once before I go.”

  She shook her head.

  “Let me in, please.”

  “You haven’t earned it.”

  “Let me in!”

  “No!”

  He struck a hand to the gate. They had given him back his name when they had told him he had to leave, and he used it now. “I am Terre Verte, and I demand you open this gate!”

  The gate started to quiver, making a sound like thousands of bells.

  “Three times I conjure you, invoke you, command you. Open. This. Gate.”

  The gate dissolved into a fine mist.

  The mist shattered in a rain of fire, which flung him backward.

  Falling—

  Falling, and now he wasn’t dreaming, and when he hit the ground it was going to hurt.

  What makes an infant cry is not the shock of the cold, or the pain of birth, but the impact of the spirit colliding with flesh at the moment of first breath.

  That first intake of air scalded Verte. He turned over, coughing and screaming. His skin felt covered in burning pitch, but his core was ice.

  I’m sorry, someone whispered. You still have work to do.

  No. I don’t want to—

  Hush. You’ll be all right. The pain will . . . pass.

  He knew why it hesitated. It didn’t understand pain.

  As the tremors subsided, he reached for the memories. He thought he remembered an ocean—

  Someone whimpered. The sound was soft, but it was the first sound Verte had heard in the mortal world and so it resonated through him.

  It took an unreasonable effort to untangle his limbs. By the time he had, he was panting and exhausted. Why had he bothered? Oh, yes. That sound. Now he just had to remember how to put his legs to the floor, how to balance his body above them, so awkward, so uncomfortable. At last he stopped in front of the door and reached for the knob.

  There was blood on the frame, a crimson streak, still wet, near the bottom. Was it his? He looked back and saw blood on the floor, the wall, the door.

  There was someone on the ground. It was her blood he had seen.

  Above her hunched the beast.

  “Modigliani,” Verte said aloud.

  The Abyssi looked up and tilted its head with curiosity. Nine tails waving behind it, eyes glowing blue, it watched him intently. “You’re in the wrong world,” it said.

  “So are you,” Verte replied. He thought he remembered an argument of some sort. He couldn’t recall, except that it had been about this Abyssi. Verte looked at the woman. “Did you do this?”

  “No,” the demon replied. “I just found her.” He put a clawed hand in the pooled blood and announced, “It’s still hot.”

  The door pushed open, making them both fall back, startled. It was another woman. She spoke, but Verte couldn’t make out the words. She came to his side, but barely even looked at him before she went to the fallen woman.

  The demon moved past the two women and one of its tails brushed Verte. It hissed and pulled away with a whimper, the fur on that tail frost-singed.

  “You shouldn’t be on this plane,” it announced. “Go away.”

  Deliberately, it set its hands to Verte’s shoulders. The air around them sizzled like lightning, but the demon didn’t draw back. Instead, it shoved.

  Falling again.

  Verte could hear voices, but couldn’t seem to reply.

  “He was up. I came in because I heard him screaming, and he was up and—”

  “You didn’t even—”

  “I was focused on Henna,” the first voice snapped. “I love the Terre as much as any citizen of this country, but Henna is like my sister. So yes, I looked away from the prince to save her life.”

  Henna. Verte knew that name. It didn’t belong to either of the voices, though. He turned it over in his mind, trying to make connections. Henna.

  “His color looks better,” the second voice said, the words like an apology. “If he came out of it once, that’s a good sign that he will come out of it again.”

  You must wake, a voice said. All the way this time, fully into the mortal realm. Trying to hold onto a different plane will drive you mad, and it will drive mad the Abyssi who stalk around you seeking flesh. I can protect you from them, but you must . . .

  Wake . . .

  Up.

  Chapter 35

  Dahlia

  Dahlia hesitated with the nib of her pen a hair’s breadth above the creamy paper. The ecru cotton stationery taunted her, awaiting her response.

  The Osei had proposed several tentative arrangements they would consider acceptable, many of which Dahlia had rejected out of hand—such as demands for yearly tribute, paid in slaves—and all of which were predicated on the assumption that all members of the royal house were dead.

  Queen Negasi of the First Royal House,

  By way of Queen Nimma of the Third Noble House,

  By way of Prince Aelric of the Third Noble House,

  By way of Kegan, servant of the Third Noble House,

  It was, she thought, a ridiculous way to address a letter, but Kegan had been most exact in the proper wording.

  Your servant has relayed your most recent message to us.

  The Osei referred to Kegan as “chattel” instead of a servant, but Dahlia’s flesh crawled whenever she saw that word. Her altering the word in her own speech and writing did nothing to change Kegan’s position, but needing to consciously make the decision each time to defy the Osei on this small matter meant she couldn’t become complacent about it, either.

  Each country dealt with the Osei in their own way. Kavet didn’t have the power to fight them outright, but if Dahlia had any say in the matter, they wouldn’t become mindless pawns, either. She had refused any proposal from the Osei that forced Kavet to provide slaves, and in a fit of pique had gone so far as to counter-demand that the Osei give Kavet the right to an itemized listing of all human slaves claimed in forfeit for outstanding d
ebts, and the related right to free any of its citizens claimed as slaves by paying the liability against them.

  Apparently her audacity had impressed Queen Nimma. The Osei’s message in response was brief: If as you say the foolish Terre Queen and princes who assaulted us are already dead, and you are now the reigning Queen of this land, we are willing to consider this point.

  What was she supposed to say in response?

  Dahlia was not queen.

  And Terre Verte was not dead.

  Once the Osei learned a member of the royal house still lived, they would surely go back to their original demands for retribution. Would it be enough for them that Queen Sarcelle, who had used magic against their high queen, was dead? Perhaps Dahlia could convince them that—

  Perhaps Verte can convince them. Not you. If he is alive, it is no longer your responsibility.

  Except that the Osei would not negotiate with an unattached prince, even if they were willing to overlook his attempt to bespell them.

  Dahlia pushed the barely started note aside, admitting to herself it was useless to reply until they knew more about Terre Verte’s condition.

  Instead, she asked Gobe to bring in her other messages, and flipped through them quickly. Now that the seals had been broken, the palace was apparently open to anyone who wanted to go inside; the power that had stifled flames and frozen the air had dissipated. Sepia had taken a crew of servants inside to check for storm damage and report what repairs needed to be made.

  “She had your belongings from the palace moved to your room at the Turquoise,” Gobe added, when he saw her studying the notes from Sepia about the palace.

  Dahlia looked up, surprised. “Please give her my thanks when you see her.”

  Funny, the things a person can forget. Dahlia had grown so used to wearing others’ clothing that she had almost forgotten about her own. Her own hairbrush. Her own shoes.