Finna, you are a marvel.
I feel a shimmer of warmth and pleasure radiate through her, from head to toe. Feel it inside me, where she is one with my deepest places. Just a little trick.
Now and then as we go, I see a face beneath the water, or hair floating like a fan across the surface. A withered arm oscillates like a water serpent, beckoning unknown prey. I shudder.
You’re going to give them peace, reassures Finna. We can’t change what’s done, but you can put them to rest.
Nothing much has changed when we reach the far shore. If anything, the air is thicker, darker here along the border, making its last stand against me.
The temple’s rear half is cut partially into the hillside that extends above it. It looms over us, cut from the darkest nightmares of the Earth, hiding unknown terrors.
The only way out is through, Finna offers. You can no longer enter the city by any other means.
And there can’t possibly be anything horrible waiting inside Nechtan’s shrine, right?
The staircase is divided by what looks like a handrail. It’s wide as my sword from pommel to tip, and concave. I reach out and rest my fingers on it, even though I can’t feel through Finna’s protection.
Very early on Nechtan grew superstitious about coming too close to the water’s edge. He had the shunt made so his shrine could be venerated with offerings to the lake, or so he told his people. It was really for disposing of the bodies. He wouldn’t dare get close to sink them in.
It’s easily one of the more horrible things I’ve ever heard. Fuck that guy.
Finna hops us up the long, worn steps. My heart pounds with each one. What will it be this time? I trained so hard for the fights, and Freya’s realm proved how good a job I’d done. But the puzzles, conundrums, and outright impossibilities? I’m still running to catch up with the idea that my blade isn’t the most useful thing I brought here.
The shrine’s riveted, intricately hammered doors are covered in a blue-green patina. There are no handles, no puzzle or mechanism that I can see. I touch them but can’t feel.
Time to separate, I tell Finna.
She softens, less tensile, and pools slowly at my feet before reforming. I feel her recede, flow from my lungs, my throat. My damp skin prickles in the air. For a second my lungs quiver but won’t fill. A breath finally comes. I feel empty, bereft, like I’ve lost something impossibly valuable. I don’t quite fit in the world the way I used to.
I meet Finna’s eyes. She reaches out, her hand on mine. “I feel the same.”
I try a smile. “Maybe not as separated as before?”
She smiles back. “I hope not.”
Resting my palm on the cold, gritty copper, I push. The doors shudder, but not from pressure. Dust puffs from around the frame, and they swing inward, despite me barely putting force to them.
The splash a water is like a tidal wave, obscuring the low boom of metal striking stone.
“Oh no.” Finna is staring out over the swamp.
Every woman Nechtan ever wronged has emerged, and shuffles toward us, hungry. Is it me, drawing them? The door opening for the first time in millennia?
Doesn’t matter. No turning back. I look at Finna, who bites her lip and shrugs.
In we go.
-The Queens’ Graveyard-
Damp chill seeps beneath my leathers inside the shrine. The walls are carved in once-elaborate reliefs. Maybe still elaborate. It’s too dim to tell. An odor of the grave hangs on the air, sweet decay, rich soil and the timeless mineral of bone. Where it comes from is not hard to guess.
A brilliant shaft of light pours in through an opening at the dome’s zenith, clear sun that comes from somewhere beyond the Tiste’s putrefaction. It sparkles with stars of dust, illuminating the shrine’s only inhabitant.
A figure hangs in the center of the chamber. Or, is suspended. Its skin hangs like pudding in a pale leather sack, and it dangles, arms and legs limp and spidery, long-rotted ligaments pulled by gravity and time. I can’t see anything holding it in place, no chains or structure. Its bald, eggy head bows as though its neck is gripped by the jaws of some invisible creature. But there’s no movement. Its creased eyelids are shut, as far as I can tell grown to its skeletal cheeks.
“It’s true,” whispers Finna beside me. “Part of me thought–” She shakes her head.
I draw cold steel and close a step at a time. No breath fills its chest. It doesn’t stir. Finna tries to step past me for a closer look. I grab the soft curve of her shoulder and tug her back. “Hardly anything that looks dead, is.”
She draws a ragged breath. “Unbelievable... Nechtan.”
The thing starts, animated by its name. It flails arachnid limbs and hisses like wind escaping beneath a door. Its eyes are milky white and bulbous. Are they eyes? They roll in crazed circles, looking but not seeing.
On instinct, I grip my sword and swing.
It passes through, the only sign of its passage a ripple as the blade slices and emerges. Nechtan’s shade goes on hissing and lurching.
Finna and I draw back. Crouch against the wall.
The shade is still suspended, but it moves back and forth now, a leaf in a silent storm. But only as far as the light. It can’t seem to pass beyond the shaft. It can’t escape, but I can’t destroy it.
The astratempus presses insistently inside my chest piece.
Screeching grows closer. Time is short in every sense.
“Here,” I grab one of the doors. “Help me push. Let’s try to buy some time.”
We push, pull, strain in a panicked series of movements. First separate, then together on the same door. Nothing moves. The doors are fixed open.
A single glance outside is enough to turn my guts. There is no lake, anymore. It’s hidden beneath writhing sea, mara upon mara, an army of nightmares. And at their head is the figure I saw in my madness, the succubus banshee. She floats over the water, unfettered.
I back into the room, my blades singing from their sheathes. My mind races; The door will stop the flow to a trickle. It’s a natural bottleneck. Maybe if I…
Fuck. Who am I kidding? I could kill them until the astratempus ticks away the last heartbeat of my life and there would still be more of them.
And something tells me that Gilea won’t die as easily as they do. She’s not like Meridiana, and I can’t imagine they’re the same species.
“Should I coat you?” cries Finna, watching the succubus fly over the last stretch of ground.
“No. It will hide me, but I can’t fight her. Stay back.”
Finna nods and dissipates into a puddle on the floor. I run for shadows at the back of the round room, hoping the sunlight and Nechtan’s mad clawing will blind Gilea to me for a moment.
She blows in with the fury of a storm wind. I clutch my ears to damping the mind-piercing sounds she makes.
Gilea flies at Nechtan, who bangs off the shaft of sunlight like a panicked animal.
She swats at him with a dagger tipped, skeletal hand.
Her strike whispers through Nechtan, same as my blade. It doesn’t stop his panic, but Gilea spins like a dervish, screaming, and flows up to the dome that circles the opening.
Gilea shrieks, follow him, slashes over and over. Her claws pass through, the same as my sword, and she bellows of rage shake the dome, reverberating so loud I have to clamp my hands to my ears.
All the while, Nechtan thrashes, swirls in the beam.
The light. A prison, but also, protection? “Finna, the light!”
Gilea swirls, insubstantial. Her form pulls through itself and suddenly she’s reversed. She turns her attention on me. Her fingers elongate, and she stalks toward me, nails the length of swords scraping across the floor.
I don’t fight her. I run. “The light, Finna!” I hope she hears me, hope she understands. She coalesces ahead of me, and I point as I run past her. “Block it out!”
Finna says something as I pass, but I can’t hear it. The chamber is small, c
reating a tight track that keeps Gilea on me. Her cries drown out Finna’s words.
Duck. It’s instinct, and I fall into a roll as claws rip the air above me, where I was a moment ago. I come out of my tumble and spring ahead, bashing my head on a stone as I go.
My ears ring, and I shake. Can’t stop, move.
Finna’s scream is my warning. I dodge again, barely avoid blades that slice so powerfully they hum in the air as they pass. I feel the wind of their path, and run, Freya’s gift clearing my head.
I come up behind Finna on my next pass. “How?” she yells, twisting, lost.
“Block! Block the light.”
She flows hesitantly to the shaft of light where Nechtan bounces madly. Her movement feels like an eternity.
I can’t keep this up. As Gilea comes after me, I take a made chance and dive at her, between her legs. It’s so sudden, such a quick reversal, that she misses me, and the air is lit with sparks as her claws rake the ground. I come up behind her, cut with all my strength, a blow that should cut through her spine. My blade tears a hole in the smoke of her form; she slows but knits together.
Great. I’ll never kill her like this.
Finna moves into the sun. Her shape loses form, no longer humanoid. She thins and gurgles upward in a spill of purple fluid, like a fountain.
I dark backward, roll as Gilea spins. I bounce to my feet too soon. Her claws catch me in the back. Agony locks the muscles in my flank. The wound burns with more than physical injury.
Before I’ve tucked and raised my sword to defend, the icy fire fades along with a throbbing pulse in my meat. Freya. Losing track of the number of times she’s saved me.
Finna is a thin ribbon, but she’s at least four feet shy of the dome. Nechtan ignores her, still seething, but that’s not helpful. She doesn’t have enough substance left to stretch any higher. She needs a boost.
I charge into the sunbeam.
Gilea, on my heels, withers, darts back with a hiss. She swipes into the shaft, shrieking in pain the whole time. I bring my sword up to block, and her claws bounce from me. Her strike is almost powerless.
Perfect.
Nechtan grabs for me. His shriveled hand slips on my leather, but his grip is very corporeal. He’s not aware of Finna, but he knows I’m here. But he’s weak, without the fury and anger, or the claws, of Gilea, and I push him from me.
What little gloom filters in from the massive doors fades, dims to nothing. Mara fill the entrance.
Finna begins to reform.
“No! In my hand!” Gilea shrieks from outside the circle, but is more interested in Nechtan, again. She prowls the circle of light, watching him, stalking.
They’re distracted by each other. This is my only chance.
I slip my hands beneath Finna, let her pool in my palms and raise her. She bends inside the shaft of light. Her ribbon disappears through the dome’s opening. In seconds, she oozes across the shield-sized disk of light.
Darkness falls in the chamber. I press back, far back against the wall opposite the door.
It turns out to be unnecessary.
Gilea smiles, a rictus grin that I know I’ll dream of for the rest of my life. She knows that this is her revenge, made real. When she strikes at Nechtan, she hits. He moans like the thunder of hell, and collapses. He still has strength, gained when the light faded, and it ripples in the sinew of shrunken limbs. But he’s stunned.
Gilea doesn’t strike again. She stands, billowing form stretched, and then evaporates, into a black mist that flows toward the waiting mara. They open their mouths, impossibly wide, in perfect unison. They inhale Gilea in long ropes of black mist, sucking it between hideous rings of teeth.
Yeah. So much for sleep, ever again.
What is happening? Finna’s voice breaks the disbelief of my thoughts.
I can’t answer, not even in my head. I don’t have to. The ancient succubi’s spirit is little more than a cloud of fog now. Each mara feeding from Gilea begins to change. Just as I saw in my vision. Blonde hair and red, ebony skin and gold. The women restore, lithe bodies and beautiful, if haunting, faces. Their eyes, though; black and sheened with hate, malice, hunger.
A mara climbs onto Nechtan’s chest, petite and raven haired, almost beautiful. He half sits, nearly throwing her off. He should hurl her across the room; even in this state his frame is massive by comparison. He falls back and this time his back barely raises from the stone. She hasn’t changed size, but on his next attempt Nechtan can only grunt and writhe beneath the mara, who pins him with impossible weight.
Gilea is gone now, leaving a temple increasingly packed with disturbingly sensual, hideous creatures. A mara crouched at Nechtan’s feet bends, reclining back on her hands and raising her hips. Her knees are splayed, and I don’t want to look, and I can’t help it. This is so surreal; creatures I’ve heard of as wives’ tales doing the stuff of nightmares to a man who was a nightmare.
With veed fingers she parts herself. There are no folds, no pink flesh. Beyond the lips is a gaping black hole ringed with sharded teeth just like her mouth. She scrambles, insect-like over Nechtan’s body, forces herself onto him, and then she rides him as she shrieks her victory.
Nechtan flails beneath the weight of both mara, wheezing. When the one riding him cries out with what I assume is completion - it’s not satisfaction- she slithers off and dissipates, just like Gilea.
Nechtan visibly shrivels, but still squirms while the mara on his chest keeps her place and another mounts him.
This will haunt my dreams, and my waking hours, for a long time.
“Finna,” I whisper. “I don’t think...you can come down.” No beam of sunlight is going to stop or save any creature in the shrine, not now. I hold out my hands. She trickles into my palm, pools and oozes over, taking shape. Her eyes never leave the gruesome scene. “It feels like retribution, but it’s not really justice,” she whispers.
Another mara slides from Nechtan and vanishes. “But they’re at peace. That’s what they deserve. And this...He was a monster. This is what he deserves.”
At my words there’s a buckling sound, a clang of ancient gearworks. A seam of light appears at our backs, revealing a hidden door.
I can’t push it open fast enough, only pausing to let Finna go first.
This door shuts, thank the gods. We heave it shut, sealing off the gut-churning grunts and shrieks inside. But not the memory of it, not for me.
-The Great City-
When stone meets stone, the shrine ripples like a mirage, and vanishes.
We stand on the cliff. Finna slips her damp hand into mine and squeezes. Sun falls across the surface of an azure lake, burning off the grey mist and erasing the tangle of choking plants.
Green grass erupts along the shore line, and the mists have cleared. The sun is brilliant, and it’s impossible to believe that I can see to, and beyond, the place I entered this trial. Wildflowers bloom like rainbows and tumble over pond stones to vine the surface of the water. There’s sound, real sound, in the once-terrifying stillness. Songbirds call to one another from the now-lush treetops.
I have to close my eyes for a second and let my brain reconcile it all before I’m overwhelmed. The scent of roses magnifies, bringing me back.
Finna looks up at me, nodding, and the impressions of her eyes seem a little more damp than the rest of her. “This is how it should be. How it once was.”
“Do you want to stay? Can you?” The lake is so pristine that I don’t want to leave. It feels pretty shite to save her realm and then drag her away.
“No. I don’t think it will ever be...I’ll never forget. But I’ve also never been to the Garden!” Her whole form vibrates. “I’m entirely ready for a new adventure.
We climb a short slope from where the shrine stood to the city’s edge. Finna stops and gasps.
I’ve never seen the Great City of Finna’s realm, but I understand her reaction. It’s easy to mark where the buildings once stood, the walls and the public
forums. They left impressions in the ground, lines between foundation and cobblestones where grass now rules above the remnants of once-great structures of men. It makes me think of Loria, and how perilously it sits on the edge of a similar fate.
Only one building stands among a brown weave of eroded streets. ‘Stands’ is a generous term; its two-story columned face and crumbling sidewalls are all that remain, tied together by the brambles of a rose grown over who knows how many hundreds of years. Its waxy green leaves create natural shades over the windows, clinging to broken stones and pediments.
Finna picks one frilled lavender-colored blossom and presses it into her flesh where her heart would be. She laughs. “I don’t know where he went, but I feel the man in white left me a gift – whether he meant to or not.”
Purple roses, purple dye. “I think Cocidius has his hands in more things than we realize.”
Finna hmm’s, rippling beyond the crumbling doorway. She stops. “It’s like he never left.”
There are signs of life, though how long it’s been since anyone inhabited this place, I can’t say. A silk-canopied bed is partially made up, the rich gold, white, and plum glossy and unfaded. But a wooden table in another corner has rotted and collapsed, tumbling an earthenware jug and a few bowls which have broken to shards.
I check the astratempus. It takes a few moments of staring to realize the hand isn’t moving. Maybe once I’ve beaten the challenge? There’s relief in this knowledge, but also the pressure of knowing another realm waits before the day’s end.
Finna takes a step forward, hands clasped to her chest. I realize that this is the first time I’ve really looked at her, seen her in anything but dark murk and shade. The purple rose hue of her gel shimmers in the sunlight, and her perfect form is so exotic. I wonder if this is the natural shape she’s chosen for herself, one she reverts to when she’s not deliberately existing as something else. If so, I approve. She is exquisite, still nude, and the lack of definition somehow make her more alluring and innocent, at the same time.
Temple of Cocidius Page 11
