Once upon a time, Natra was the most powerful of the world’s deities, the goddess who created the great tapestry. The rest of the gods circled her like sycophants, either serving her or birthed by her. Zetu was her father and Avakketh her brother. Dervon, Saraphazia, and Tarithalius were her children. Oedandus had been her consort.
Most humans didn’t know the history of the gods, but Zilok did. Natra left long ago. None knew where. None knew why. And almost no one knew she had left behind a secret place called the Coreworld, where she kept a map of the destinies of all living things...as well as the tools of her creation. One of those tools was Natra’s Crown.
And this was the key to Zilok’s plan.
Through torture of one in possession of many secrets, Zilok had discovered the crown was what had enabled Natra to keep peace among the gods. She mediated them with it. She ruled them with it, and none dared strike back against her because...
The crown had the power to turn any god’s power back upon them.
The spell simmered in Zilok’s mind. He would tempt Medophae to rage, a brilliantly easy task. It was Medophae’s fallback emotion. Whenever the going got tough, Medophae relied on the trick Zilok had taught him, back when they had been allies and fought to destroy Dervon together. Let Oedandus loose, and he’ll make sure you win the day.
And then, when Oedandus burst forth in Medophae’s time of need, Zilok would turn that power back on him like a mirror turned back sunlight, using Natra’s Crown. He would push Oedandus out of Medophae, and, during that instant, he would use Oedandus’s own power to shove Medophae through the threads, all the way across the True Ocean, all the way to Dandere.
“Natra’s Crown, Orem,” Zilok said.
“Yes, my master.”
“That is how you kill a god.”
“Yes, my master.”
14
Mirolah
Medophae stepped over the cracked, flat stone. It was late afternoon. The sun was low in the sky, and long grasses rippled over the ruins of the city of Keleera like a green sea. It reminded Mirolah of Denema’s Valley, except not a single building had been left standing. The shells of stone structures jutted from the ground like cracked teeth. Denema’s Valley had teemed with life, as if it had a secret poised on its lips. This place had been forgotten by humans and nature alike.
But this was the place Medophae said they could find another portal. They had destroyed the portal from Calsinac to Denema’s Valley, and the one they’d taken to Buravar only went between Buravar and Calsinac. But Medophae thought there had once been a portal in Keleera that connected to Denema’s Valley. If they found it working, it would shorten their journey by days.
Medophae wended his way through the stones with Mirolah behind, and she looked over her shoulder, seeing a flash of the skin dog behind a broken wall. Ever since that night outside of Pindish, he had followed them. She sensed no malice from him, but his persistence worried her. Yesterday, they’d passed through the gates of the Bracer, an immense wall manned by soldiers from kingdoms and cities of the southern peninsula, and she had no idea how the skin dog had managed to get around it. The Bracer’s formidability was what had kept the Sunriders from invading the southern peninsula during this last decade.
No one entered or left the southern peninsula by land without getting past the Bracer. She guessed the skin dog must have swum in the Inland Ocean to circumvent it. That took phenomenal persistence and stamina. The waves that crashed against the Bracer along that rocky shoal were one of the natural barriers that kept invaders out.
As though reading her thoughts, the skin dog climbed up onto a pile of jumbled stones and sniffed the air. His tongue lolled out happily, and he looked at her. He barked and, spinning about, launched himself into the tall grass.
“You made a friend,” Medophae said, giving a glance to the retreating skin dog before bending over a fallen wall.
“I’m not sure he’s a friend,” she returned.
Medophae walked to the edge of the fallen wall and squatted at what must once have been the top. “I think this is it.” Before Mirolah could say anything, he wedged his fingers under the wall. Golden fire crackled about him, and his muscles corded tight. The wall began to rise, but when Medophae had it halfway up, it cracked in half.
Stone blocks tumbled down and dust billowed into the air. Mirolah danced backward, avoiding the crash. He emerged from the cloud, coughing.
“Are you all right?” he asked, clearing his throat.
She waved a hand in front of her face. “Did you find it?”
“I thought the wall would hold.” He was covered from head to foot in rock dust. “We’ll have to look when the dust settles.”
She wiped a spot from his cheek across his lips, then kissed him. He was hesitant, stiff at first, then finally kissed her.
That was odd.
He moved back over to the dusty wreckage and tossed square stones away one by one until he reached the floor level of a once-standing structure. He swiped at the flat floor stones, prying them up until he reached the packed earth underneath.
“You all right?” she asked, wondering about the strange kiss.
He looked back at her and smiled. “I just thought it would be there.” He pursed his lips and looked around. For the first time since Medophae had regained the power of Oedandus, she wished she could read his emotions. He’d been an open book since he had cast Bands’s gem into the Sara Sea, and it suddenly felt like that book had shut again. “I’ve only been to this portal once.” He eyed another mostly standing building and started toward it. “It belonged to the threadweaver Hephylyzt. He was awed by the portals Bands built, studied them. He finally made one of his own. He had a vision of making Keleera a hub of threadweaver travel, much like Calsinac was—”
He was interrupted by a bark.
Both he and Mirolah turned to see the skin dog standing on a small hillock at the edge of the city.
“Sniffing?” the skin dog barked again. “You are sniffing?” He stood with his thin head low. His shoulder muscles twitched.
She realized that, to a dog, “sniffing” was exactly what they were doing.
“Yes.” She wended her way through the debris. “We’re sniffing.” The skin dog was enormous. His shoulders were the same height as hers, his eyes at a level with hers. She remembered Medophae saying that skin dogs could be vicious. As she neared, he hunched down, elbows on the ground, his exaggerated chest touching while his thin middle was still a foot off the ground. His face was like a skull with a thin layer of sallow skin stretched over it, with spikes jutting up from the thin jaw. His lips pulled back, baring those crooked teeth even more, each as long as her pinky finger. A beast like this could move fast enough to chomp the head from her body before she could even shriek. She would have been terrified if it didn’t seem so eager to please her.
She kept the bright bridge glowing and her threadweaving ready to use.
But the dog did not leap from the mound to attack her. “Sniffing GodSpill?” he asked again. His lips twitched nervously.
“We’re looking for a portal, something built by a threadweaver long ago.”
“GodSpill?” he barked. Every time he did that, it looked like he was going to take a bite out of her.
“Yes.”
“Here,” he yipped. He lunged at her, and his great front paws tore at the ground. She jumped back, reaching into the dog’s threads, ready to—
He fell as though she’d gutted him. Whining, he rolled onto his back, showing his belly.
“No!” he whined. “No danger. Just helping. Helping sniff.” He scratched tentatively at the air. It looked ridiculous, this enormous creature flailing his skinny legs in the air.
She calmed her beating heart and gathered her wits. “You found something?”
“Yes!” The dog flipped to his feet startlingly fast. His short, bony tail wagged.
She looked over her shoulder. Medophae stood at a respectful distance. “The skin dog says the
re’s something underneath this mound,” she said.
“That’s probably it.” He came forward. “If anything in this city has lasted for centuries, it would be the portal.”
“Dig?” the dog barked, scratching hesitantly at the dirt, his slitted eyes looking at her warily. He bared his teeth again. The dog was so fearsome-looking that everything he did looked threatening, and she hadn’t spent much time around dogs. She’d seen Giller Black’s hunting hounds in Rith, but only from a distance. Still, she was beginning to suspect that bared teeth didn’t always mean a dog was going to bite. She held her hand toward him. His lips twitched, still pulled back, but he moved under her hand and pushed his flat head into her palm. His tail wagged.
“No,” Mirolah said. “Medophae and I will dig.”
The dog cocked his head. “Medophae?” he said, not recognizing the word.
She pointed. “The big man.”
“Medophae. Big man. Much GodSpill.”
“Come down,” she said, leaving the mound. The skin dog followed obediently and stood by her side, alternately looked up at her and back at the mound.
She raised her arms, closed her eyes, and sent her attention into the threads. She touched all of the many colors of the grass, the dirt, the jumbled pile of stones beneath, then lower and lower until she found open air, a corridor.
There you are....
There was no connection between the surface and the underground corridor, so she would have to make one. She closed her eyes and opened the bright bridge of her threadweaver sight. Pulling and changing the colors of thousands of threads of dirt, stone, and air, she created a pathway.
She opened her eyes to the transformed hillock. It now conformed to the vision she’d had in her mind. Two thick walls of solid stone flanked a ten-foot-square opening into the ground. Atop each wall were three wide pots filled with dirt and the flowing brown grasses. Tall stone steps descended sharply into the darkness between the walls.
She double-checked everything that she had bent to her will. The grasses grew happily in their pots. The stone felt strong and immovable in its new form.
“Wow,” Medophae murmured, coming up alongside her. “Did you uncover that stairway or make it?”
“Made it.”
He gave her an appreciative glance.
The skin dog approached, watching Medophae with what seemed like a hostile stare, but Mirolah wasn’t sure. The dog had done nothing hostile yet; he just looked hostile. Still, there wasn’t any subservience to the skin dog as he approached Medophae, not like there had been with Mirolah. He stood tall, body stiff, and he was nearly eye-level with Medophae. Medophae glanced at him, then ignored him, looking down the wide stairway.
“Big man,” The dog said to Mirolah. “Medophae.”
“He’s a friend,” Mirolah stressed.
“Pack?”
“Yes, he’s part of our pack.”
Slowly, the skin dog lowered his butt until he was sitting, and he seemed to relax. After a moment, his tail thumped on the ground.
“I’ll bring the horses closer. There are torches in the saddlebags.”
When Medophae returned with a torch, Mirolah turned to the dog. “If I leave you here to guard the horses, will you?” she asked.
The skin dog turned those narrow black eyes to look at the horses. “Protect?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Protect,” he said, then laid down, his tiny waist creating an arch over the ground between his powerful haunches and his deep chest. He put his head between his paws, eyes on the horses.
“Nicely done,” Medophae said.
“He seems eager to please me.”
Medophae smirked and shook his head, but he didn’t say anything.
They lit the torch and descended into the darkness. The corridor was constructed of polished granite, each block covered in designs inlaid with gold. Mirolah didn’t recognize any of the symbols. Every now and then, the smaller stones would give way to one that was ten feet wide and as large as the corridor was tall. Great scenes were painted upon these larger stones. Perhaps the entire thing was a story?
Mirolah stopped at one, brushing away some of the ancient dust. The colors were still vivid. It portrayed a long-bearded man before a crowd of robed figures. The long-bearded man appeared to be explaining something. His hands curved around one another as though holding a sphere or some circular object. A table stood between him and the spectators, and upon it sat an open tome. She wiped away more dust. Crimson-smeared clouds heralded the sunset behind the speaking man.
Medophae didn’t notice she’d stopped, and the torchlight bobbed away down the corridor, throwing long shadows. Making a note to return to this place and explore it further once they had found Orem and Stavark, she left the picture and followed him.
The corridor soon became a labyrinth of tunnels. At first, Medophae seemed not to know where he was going. They went down one passage only to double back and take another. At one point, he stopped and looked at one of the large picture stones. Tossing the torch from one hand to the other, he reached out and cleared off the dust. With an optimistic grunt, he turned and continued ahead more quickly.
After two more turns, they came to a locked iron door.
Holding the torch high, he looked back at her. “This is it.”
With her threadweaver’s senses, Mirolah reached through the door and felt on the other side. Yes, there was something there. The threads were lively and brightly colored.
Medophae put his shoulder against the steel door. “Well, stand back and I’ll—”
She touched his arm. “Let me. I promise less dust.”
He bowed and stepped away from the door. “As you wish.”
She reached into the threads of the iron latch and changed their color. Their cohesion loosened, and they became the iron ore they had once been. All the mechanisms of the lock sifted out of the keyhole like sand. She pushed at it. It didn’t move. She pushed harder. It screeched loudly, moving only an inch before stopping.
“Rusty hinges,” Medophae said, stepping up. “My turn?”
He shoved the door open, and the screech reverberated off the walls. They went inside.
The portal arched to a point on the left-hand wall. It looked similar, but not identical, to the portals in Calsinac. The arch was made of simple stones with the same symbols. The center of the portal shimmered like moonlit lake water. The room was empty except for the portal and some centuries-old torches on the walls. Medophae lit them one by one.
“It’s working. Let’s get our gear and come back,” he said.
They wended their way through the maze and retrieved the horses. True to his word, the skin dog had not hurt them. He remained exactly where he had laid down before they entered the corridor.
“Found GodSpill?” he barked.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you for your help.”
“This one is glad,” the dog barked, watching them as they led the horses down the steps.
In a few minutes, she and Medophae again stood before the portal. He tapped the sequence on the stones that would take them to Denema’s Valley.
“Ready?” He looked at her.
“Let’s go get them back.”
“Orem may not be there,” he warned. “Or Stavark. They may not even be alive. We have to be prepared for that.”
“But they might.”
He nodded and led his horse through the portal. It swallowed them, and they vanished. She followed, calming her mount with sweet words and a pat on the neck. But just as she crossed the threshold, the horse whinnied in fear, tossing her head. Mirolah pulled on the reins, trying to control the horse, but it yanked her through the portal—
—just as the enormous skin dog slipped through next to them.
15
Mershayn
Mershayn stood at attention beside Collus’s throne. Collus drummed his fingers quietly on the stone arm inlaid with gold. The last of the common folk, obviously dissatisfied—a
nd possibly confused—took one hesitant look over his shoulder at Collus, then left the audience chamber. Two of the royal guard closed the tall doors behind him.
The audience chamber was beautiful. Tall, square columns of the dark gray Teni’sian stone held up the vaulted ceiling. A royal purple carpet led from the throne down the middle of the room to the great double doors. The chamber was circular, and twelve long, thin windows let light in from all angles. Brightly colored banners hung from poles between each window, showing the coat of arms for each of the twelve noble houses from each of the twelve parts of the kingdom. The banner of sovereignty draped down from the center of the vaulted ceiling, as though binding the twelve other banners together. It created a colorful, powerful atmosphere. The colors would have been festive if they were not in such an imposing chamber.
Twenty-four seats flanked the king, twelve on each side of the purple carpet. Each seat provided a space for the noble lords and their ladies. After that came the minor nobles, other powerful men and women within the major nobles’ service, the military men, and lastly the courtiers. Today was a busy day. They had all been busy since Collus had first arrived. All of the primary seats were filled save five. Lord Kari’dar of Seacrest had no wife or consort, so the seat next to him was empty. Kari’dar had brought his son for a time, to familiarize him with the proceedings of the court, but he left three days ago. Lord Baerst was also absent. It was whispered that his stomach flu had worsened. His wife, the Lady Ti’shiria, sat in his place. She was a shrewd woman and always had something useful to say when she spoke, which was rarely. She spoke even less since her husband had fallen ill. Her face was drawn, and she looked tired.
The seats for Lord Grimbresht and Lady Mae’lith were also empty, of course, since the accident. Lady Mae’lith was still in mourning for her husband who drowned last week on the Inland Ocean.
The doublets of the lords and the dresses of the ladies were worth seeing. More colorful than the banners of their homelands, the nobles were arrayed in the finest cloth that gold could buy. It was as much a fashion parade as a room of politics.
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