Down in the camp, people were barely stirring. She couldn’t see Philos anywhere.
And I don’t know if I want to or not. If he stayed away, if he left me here with other people only, would I go back to knowing what I want, to knowing who I am?
But the thought struck her like the sunlight, bright and glaring, something she wanted to shut her eyes against.
How did I ever let this happen? Being captured, chained—that was nothing next to this…this helplessness. What have I done to myself?
Below, a female figure detached from the few people moving around the camp, began to make her way up the slope to the cliff face. As she drew closer, Maya could see what she looked like.
A girl, taller than Maya, with long ribbons of black hair falling over the breast and shoulders of the shift-dress she wore, something woven of an odd, pale fabric that gleamed dusty-silver in the sunlight. The sight of it sparked off the beginning of a memory, and Maya frowned, thinking through the fog of fatigue and confusion in her head.
The girl looked up, her gaze sweeping the cliff face, then started up the zigzag of steps that led to the shelf where Maya stood. She moved with a markedly graceful movement that made her seem taller than she was. A movement Maya had seen before, years back…
She’d been returning from a hunt and had crossed the temple courtyard while the novice priestesses were carrying out one of their rituals. She’d been euphoric in the aftermath of a successful kill, riding the flush of triumph that came from being the darling of the maenad pack. Years ago, it must have been, for it to still seem so new, so wonderful. But all the same, she’d seen the novice priestesses, the fire-maidens, and been momentarily awestruck at the idea of a gift even higher, even more valuable than her own. The fire gifts: the ability to call fire from the air, or to make it flash in your eyes, or to make your body able to withstand the heat of the ember-beds. And the greatest one of all, the one that made you not just a priestess, but—one day, if you survived the training, passed all the tests—a fire-priestess. The gift that made you able to shift your body into lava, molten stone, the very substance of the god…
The girl came onto the shelf.
Maya gasped. Without thinking, she dropped to her knees, bowing to press her forehead to the ground. That was where she’d seen the girl before. In the temple courtyard, in that silver-white dress, a dress made of coldsteel, the only substance lava wouldn’t melt, changing, blazing into a statuette of amber, topaz, gold, a living fire, manifestation of the god on earth. Aera, the first fire-priestess in ten years.
Maya’s forehead touched the stone, and as if the chill touch had driven memory, equally chill, through her, she went still. Aera, the fire-priestess—who’d died five years ago. Who’d accomplished all her training, entered the labyrinth to take her final test, then lost control of her gift and burned to death when they let the lava through.
She jerked her head up. The girl—Aera? But how can it be?—had checked on the edge of the shelf and was watching her, consternation in her face. “Please, don’t kneel—” she began to say, but then her eyes met Maya’s. The words faded into silence as they stared at one another.
“You died,” said Maya, and the words were the beginning of a snarl. She clenched her hands against the chains.
“No.” The girl swallowed, and Maya saw her face tighten, a line drawing itself down the centre of her brow. “I—”
“Then you left? You refused the test? You ran away?” She couldn’t say more than that. Her throat was closing, outrage and fury gathering in it so thick she could hardly breathe.
“Not like that. I don’t know what you were told—”
“That. That you died.” She forced the words out. “Five years ago, taking the test, you died. We mourned you for months. There’s an effigy of you. And instead you—you fled? You came here, with these, these—” All the worst terms she could think of for them she seemed to have already used, over and over during the last two days. “You’ve been with them? You, who could have been the fire-priestess?”
“Yes.” Aera’s voice rose, the voice of a trained priestess, carrying effortlessly over Maya’s shrill, furious tones. “And do you know why?”
“It doesn’t matter why. You were chosen by the god, trained for years, you were supposed to take the test. Even if you were afraid, that’s what you were for, that’s why he made you—”
It seemed to take no effort for Aera’s voice to rise over hers, flattening it as if it made no sound at all. “I wasn’t afraid. I took the test, and I passed it.”
Maya found herself shaking too hard to control, blood beating in her head, a mimicry of the rhythm of the ritual that brought the madness. “You lie! You all lie. You can’t have passed it—you’d not be here. You panicked, you failed, coward, weakling, unworthy of the god—”
Aera’s eyes flickered, the pupils seeming suddenly hollow, like tiny pits of flame. She stepped forward, closer than anyone else except Philos had dared to come. She thinks that because she’s a priestess I will not strike her? She thinks she’s safe, with her lies and her filthy broken vows? Then she put one hand over Maya’s mouth, shutting off the words. “Don’t be stupid. How could I have escaped the test and the priests not known? What are they doing, now they have no fire-priestess elect? Where are the bracelets that they said they took from the ashes of my body, that they keep safe for their next wearer?”
Maya jerked her head back, but Aera’s hand stayed clamped over her mouth. Bad enough that Philos should tie her up, but this girl, scarcely older than herself, this ungrateful bitch who could have had it all. She managed to open her mouth to bite, cursing her stupid blunt, human teeth. They’d not do the damage her maenad teeth could, but they could break skin, leave marks—
But they never had a chance. As soon as her jaw moved, heat blasted into her face, so fast, so narrowly focused that it was like a blow. Her eyes flew shut, she jerked back—and this time Aera let her.
For a moment she was aware of nothing but the shock and the pain, then she opened her eyes to see Aera watching her, her hand still up and the lines in her palm glowing like cracks of fire.
“You’re not burned. I haven’t damaged you. But don’t ever, ever try to bite me again.”
Her voice carried all the authority of the god, and Maya had to fight the impulse to bow her head. But how dare she? This renegade, this apostate who fled from the life she was supposed to lead—
Then what Aera had said finally sank in.
The bracelets. Like her own anklets, they would have been locked onto Aera’s wrists when she first came to the temple. Copper for her, for the other maenads, but not for Aera. The fire-priestess’s bracelets were coldsteel, bright silver. She remembered how, in that long-ago sunlight, they’d flashed bright enough to make the eyes water. Impossible to cut except with a diamond-edged blade—and impossible, too, for Aera to melt.
But she was not wearing them now.
“You managed to cut them…” Maya said, but it didn’t take Aera’s headshake to make her voice trail into uncertainty. She’d seen those bracelets, not years but just three days ago, as she’d come running from below the temple, into the glare of the sun and past the shadow of the standing stone. The bracelets were hung on the stone, too high to reach, a monument and a promise that one day someone else would be found worthy enough to wear them. They’d been taken, the priests said, from the remnants of lava that were all that was left of Aera’s body. Yet another fire-maiden who’d tried and failed to take on the mantle of the god, given her life as a holy sacrifice, passed into her next life scoured clean as nothing but lava could do.
Except she wasn’t. She was here, her wrists smooth and undamaged—and naked.
“They cut them,” said Aera. “The priests. When I refused to kill for them.”
“You said you passed—”
“I did pass. I survived the lava, I rode it from the labyrinth. I received my knife and robe. I became the fire-priestess. But I hadn’t—” For
the first time her voice faltered. “I hadn’t been able to kill the—the criminal they wanted me to. I’d set him free instead, and they found out. They could tell I’d only become the fire-priestess, not a murderer, not the assassin they wanted.” She swallowed—in the clear, bright morning light Maya saw her throat move, her lips set as if she braced herself to say the next words. And without meaning to, she found herself braced too, braced against something she didn’t want to hear, she didn’t want to know, something she wanted to stay in the dark shadows of the temple.
“They cut the bracelets off me,” said Aera. “They shut me in the eye of the labyrinth, told me they were leaving me to starve. And when I was so weak I could not change, then they were going to let the lava in.” She swallowed again. “When they said I was dead they were telling the truth as they knew it—as they’d intended it to be. But all the rest is a lie.”
“I don’t believe you.” But the words came out as a whisper, ineffectual, a drift of smoke trying to hold back the tide. And in her own voice she heard the truth even more than she’d heard it in Aera’s words. I don’t believe you, she’d said, but what sounded in her voice was, Stop telling me what despite myself I cannot help believing.
Aera waited, not replying, watching her—too intently, too closely, making her feel as if the gaze were peeling her skin from her, leaving her so exposed the daylight seemed to strike her like knives.
“I don’t believe you.” This time it sounded not just like a plea, but like tears. That was worse, much worse, to be driven to even the hint of such weakness in front of this—this—
All the usual words were there—traitor, renegade—but she could no longer form them in her mind. If the priests had lied, if the priests had lied about something like this, the old words no longer had meaning. If the priests—her mind shied away from the thought but it was too late, she was already thinking it—if the priests are traitors, then maybe none of it is true. I wasn’t called, my gift’s not from the god.
But that was insane, like thinking if the sun were cold or the ocean dry or the god evil—
Evil? Or not there at all?
No. No. She clamped her hands to her head, trying to stop the thoughts, or hold herself together, or do something to halt the way the whole world was shivering and cracking into pieces that no longer fitted together.
My gift. Ten years of using it in the way the god wanted—in the way the priests told me the god wanted. If it’s not true, if none of it’s true…
Only the fire-priestess, Aera had said. Not the murderer, not the assassin they wanted. And if, with Aera’s power—all the awesome power of the fire-priestess—if Aera had passed the test, if she’d shown she could wield that power, why would they punish her, lie to everyone, try to kill her just because she wouldn’t kill?
Murderers. Assassins. The maenad tests, on half the girls in the city, taking place every month, sending them home sick and weak. No other gift was searched for so diligently. No other gift controlled so closely by the priests. That was what they wanted. Murderers. Murderers who didn’t know they were murderers, because the volcano’s blood took away their own thoughts and gave them only what the priests wanted them to have.
Ten years. Ten years.
“Eight hundred and seventy-three,” she said out loud. She had told herself she didn’t know the number, told herself she didn’t remember each and every one. She’d been lying. They’d all been lying.
Aera didn’t speak, but looked at her with steady eyes, dark as embers. Eyes that had never looked into the faces of her victims, never seen them flood with fear and pain and more fear and more pain. Aera had had no victims. She had never had to listen to the screams of people she was about to kill. Never torn an adolescent boy apart with her bare hands, never chased a waddling, pregnant woman over the edge of a mile-high cliff, never sunk her teeth into the throat of a man as he cried and pleaded with her for mercy. She had refused to become a killer. Maya could have refused too.
A part of her mind fought against the thoughts, clawed back at them. It was the god’s will. I’m clean of bloodguilt, it was only in the madness, it’s not the same as murder, it doesn’t count.
But for eight hundred and seventy-three people it had counted enough to make them dead.
It was me. I killed them.
She dragged her hands over her face, shutting out the descending horror, the darkness like the swirling, choking darkness of a sandstorm, hearing the wind shriek into her head.
Philos had said it, last night, and she wouldn’t listen. Bestowed by the priests, he’d said. Controlled by the priests. She’d said no, insisted her power came from the god, like the other gifts, proving they were good and holy because people couldn’t create them, only the god, only the god.
Except he’d been right. The ritual, the chimes, the scent of the volcano-blood rising into her lungs… It was all from the priests, not from the god at all.
She’d thought it was hers, seen it as a strength, as something that gave her value, raised her from the ordinary humans she’d seen as so weak, so worthless. And all the time it had been something done to her, something that took away her control, took away herself. She’d feared Philos’s gifts because she feared the control he could have over her, feared that he’d invade her, take her power away. And all the time, that was exactly what the priests had done. And worse.
They made me into nothing but a weapon. They made me kill.
She’d backed away without realising it. She crashed into the rock wall behind her. It was hard enough to hurt, but it was something solid, something not sentient, something safe at her back, and she let her legs fold, sliding down it until she was huddled at its base, knees up to her forehead, eyes screwed shut, arms wrapped round herself in a barrier against the shriek of the sandstorm, the ugly truth of what her life had been made into.
“Maya.”
She didn’t want to look up. But it was no good. She was here, and nothing was changing, and she must face it.
She forced herself to look up. Philos stood at the far end of the shelf. She focused on his chest rather than meeting his eyes, needing the space and the absence of contact to be part of her barrier too, vaguely aware that Aera stood at the top of the steps and that the winged stone-shifter, huge wings beating a downdraft, had just landed next to her. If only I could fly. Soar farther and farther, straight into the sun to let it burn me up and up… Or if I had her power, I’d let it take me, burn me through and through leaving nothing behind. Even the thought was a sin—the god alone controls life and death—but that didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Philos went slowly towards Maya, giving her time to move away. Over on the steps behind him, Aera sat down, and he heard Coram folding his wings. They said nothing, nor did they move from their careful distance, but watched Philos as he lowered himself to sit on the shelf a little way from Maya.
He wasn’t sure what to say—the gods knew he’d made a mess of talking to her before—but all the same, it must be he who tried.
He didn’t look at her, speaking out over the valley, aware of her next to him, holding herself as tightly as a coiled spring. “Maya. We all know what it’s like to be controlled.”
He felt her glance at him, then as quickly away again. “Like this?” Her voice was nothing but a thread of sound, frayed so thin it was nearly inaudible.
“No. Not like this. None of us were controlled as much as you have been. But still, Aera served the temple for five years. She was prepared to kill in the god’s name. Coram, when they found him out and came to arrest him, he thought he deserved it and let them do it, and did not change his mind till it was too late and he was in chains. Lilia, down there in the camp, she got pregnant by a water-shifter, and aborted her baby when the priests told her to, believing it would be a demon. Leos—”
He felt her glance at him, then as quickly away again. “And you?”
“Have you not heard enough about me?”
“No.” She shifted next to h
im, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees, putting her head down on them so her voice came out not just thin but muffled. “You, do you know what it’s like to be controlled?”
He looked back out over the valley. “I ran when I was sixteen,” he said. “Because they’d found out and they were coming to kill me. They sent the soldiers after me first, then the maenads, but I had a better start that time and they didn’t get close. I got away across the desert.
“All the time, while I ran for my life, I knew I’d got the first of these gifts when I was not much more than an infant, I knew I’d done nothing to deserve any of them and they were not my fault. But even with that, half of me—sometimes more than half of me—thought I deserved it, wanted to go back, give myself up. The soldiers lost me before I was out of the city, and the maenads before I’d gone past the tableland. But the guilt came with me all the way.”
He flicked a look at her. “I nearly went back twenty times a day. And whenever I used my gifts I expected the god to strike me. I—” He began the sentence and could not finish. The memory rose to choke him. The journey across the desert, entirely alone for the first time in his life. The outlaw band—real criminals, outlawed for murder and rape, not just for the wrong type of gifts—who had captured him and from whom he’d only escaped by using his gift at a strength he’d not known he possessed. And all the time, the belief he could not stamp down or dismiss, that kept rising through him to fog his brain and cloud his thoughts, that said this is no worse than what you deserve, this is the god’s punishment, this is nothing but justice.
“It is all of us,” came Coram’s voice. Philos glanced at him. “It’s why we have only now begun to build our army. None of us were used as you have been used, or controlled as you have been, but we all had our chains to break.”
Next to Coram, Aera’s hand crept out to tuck itself into his, and something like jealousy—or longing—caught in Philos’s throat.
He looked at Maya, where she sat curled against the wall, arms still tight about her knees. He swallowed, wanting this to be over, suddenly exhausted. And angry. If she’d just believed him when he’d tried to tell her all this before, if she’d listened to what he was trying to say—
Blood of the Volcano: Sequal to Heart of the Volcano Page 13
