Theros

by Jenna Helland

“None of your business,” Nikka snapped. And she slammed the door of the caravan in Elspeth’s face.

  After the harpy attack, the caravan rolled on without stopping. The Great River Road widened, and Elspeth walked on the right side of the wagon, happy to have a better view of what was coming. The driver called back that they were just a mile away from the campsite, and Elspeth was relieved. It had been a long time since she’d walked this far. She felt a strange sensation in her mind, almost like an itch she couldn’t scratch. A mage was casting, but it was a weak spell, as if it originated from far away. Elspeth cast her own in response, both strengthening herself and metaphorically swatting away the intrusive magic, like someone swatting away an annoying insect.

  But she felt uneasy, as if someone was watching her. The velvet curtains moved, and she caught a glimpse of Nikka moving back from the window.

  The sun was setting when the caravan stopped in a sheltered valley between two high cliffs. Ginus directed the drivers to roll the wagons into a protective circle, and his men built a bonfire. Elspeth offered her help to Ginus, but he politely refused. When the fire was blazing, Nikka hopped out of the wagon. Her appearance had changed since they left Akros. When she entered the wagon under the protective eyes of her father, her black hair was loose on her shoulders, and she wore a long, hooded cloak. Now her hair was braided and held in loops by an expensive-looking gold clasp, and she’d discarded her cloak despite the chill in the evening air. Every man in the camp—which was everyone besides Elspeth—turned their eyes on the young woman. Nikka circled the line of wagons as if looking for someone. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she climbed back into the wagon and slammed the door.

  Elspeth shared soup with the others around the bonfire, keeping an eye on Master Takis’s wagon, but there was no sign of the girl. When the sun disappeared behind the ridge, she took a bowl to the wagon, but when she opened the door, it was empty. Nikka must have climbed out of the window on the far side of the wagon. Elspeth’s heart sank. The stroll around the campsite had been a show all along.

  “Have you seen the Lady Takis?” Elspeth asked as she searched the campsite. But everywhere the answer was the same. People shook their heads and refused to meet her eye. Elspeth wasn’t sure if they avoided her because they knew something or because she was a stranger. Elspeth had done her best to disguise her otherness. Her skin was deeply tanned and she maintained a small glamour to make her eyes appear darker. But people seemed to instinctively mistrust her, to know that she was different. She heard a man muttering about Setessans in her passing.

  Finally, after Elspeth had made the rounds through the camp several times, she went to see Ginus. By now it was dark, and Elspeth had heard enough stories about the murderous bandits and savage minotaurs roaming these rocky highlands to begin to fear for Nikka’s safety. Unlike the rest of the men, Ginus didn’t seem to have any problem with Elspeth. When she approached him and asked about Lady Takis, he simply stood up and walked with her to the edge of the camp. They took a small trail up the side of the ridge to the mouth of a small cave.

  “Youth,” he said derisively. Then he picked up a medium-sized stone and threw it into the entrance. They heard a yelp and then frantic whispering.

  “If he’s one of mine, he’ll be whipped,” Ginus assured her.

  But when Nikka and the boy emerged, it was the son of one of the merchants from Akros. He wasn’t much older than Nikka and looked like he wanted to die there on the spot. Ginus led him back to the camp while Nikka stared defiantly at Elspeth.

  “Do you even know him?” Elspeth asked.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Nikka asked.

  “You can do whatever you like when you get to Meletis,” Elspeth said. “But your father entrusted you to my care, and until then, you need to stay in the wagon.”

  “Or what?” Nikka asked.

  It was a very good question. Elspeth didn’t have many ways to coerce the girl into behaving. Elspeth decided to go with a threat. “Or I’ll leave you on your own and you can pray the minotaurs don’t get their hands on you,” Elspeth said. She wasn’t sure that it would have much impact, but the girl glanced around nervously.

  “All right,” Nikka said, moving closer to Elspeth. “You made your point. I’ll stay in the wagon.”

  At first Elspeth thought the abrupt change was a ruse, but the girl seemed genuinely scared. She went inside the caravan without protest and unrolled her sleeping mat. Elspeth left the doors open and sat at the back, her feet dangling over the side, and watched the valley transform under the shifting light from Nyx. The heavenly images of gods and celestial creatures captivated her. She couldn’t believe that such a spectacle played out night after night. No wonder the people of Theros had such a firm faith—they saw their gods in action every time the sun hid behind the horizon.

  “Do you know the story of Callaphe?” Nikka asked, crawling out of her bedroll and sitting beside Elspeth. Elspeth shook her head. Nikka seemed friendly, like she was eager to talk. It was all extremes with this girl.

  “They don’t tell god-stories in Setessa?” Nikka asked.

  Elspeth didn’t know much about Setessa except that it was a polis located somewhere in the vast Nessian Forest. She wasn’t sure why everyone thought she was from there.

  “I’m not from Setessa,” she said. “Who is Callaphe?”

  Nikka pointed at a section of the sky where a lithe figure seemed to swim through the stars.

  “Callaphe was the greatest mariner who ever lived,” Nikka told her. “She sailed a ship she called the Monsoon, and was the first mortal to decipher the secret patterns of the winds. Thassa grew jealous that a mortal should navigate her realm so easily, so she challenged Callaphe to a race along the waterfall at the edge of the world.”

  “There’s a waterfall at the edge of the world?” Elspeth asked without thinking.

  Nikka whipped her head around and stared at Elspeth in surprise. “You don’t know that? Where are you from?”

  “I was raised by leonins,” Elspeth said. She’d meant it as a jest, but she’d never been very good at humor, and Nikka took her seriously.

  “Oh, is it true they eat babies?” Nikka asked.

  “Uh, I never saw that,” Elspeth said. She had no idea what leonins on this plane ate. Hopefully, it wasn’t human babies. “Go on about the mariner.”

  “If Callaphe won the race, then she could have the run of the ocean and Thassa wouldn’t bother her. But if she lost, she could never set to sea again. The race began, and Callaphe was actually winning. Thassa sent sirens to slash her sails, but still she hung on to the edge of the world and kept sailing. So Thassa sent a wind to blow her over the waterfall. No ship can sail over the side and not be destroyed. But Callaphe was too clever for the God of the Sea. The mariner went sailing over the waterfall. But instead of being dashed into oblivion, she sailed into Nyx itself.”

  Nikka pointed to a cluster of stars high above them. “Look, you can see her ship,” she told Elspeth. “Oh, and Nylea is worried.”

  “How do you know?” Elspeth asked.

  “That’s her lynx, and you can tell by how it moves. It’s looking for something. Something bad is about to happen.”

  “Can you tell what?” Elspeth asked.

  “Beta says that Polukranos has broken his chains,” Nikka explained. “He says the hydra will smash Meletis and I will be crushed to death if I let you take me there.”

  “Is Beta your friend?” Elspeth asked.

  “He loves me,” Nikka retorted, the edge back in her voice.

  “All right,” Elspeth said. She wasn’t going to argue with Nikka about the nature of love. “Who is Polukranos?”

  “Well, Polukranos is the greatest hydra ever to roam the mortal realm,” she said. “Purphoros’s Sword cut him from Nyx, and he became mortal on the way down.”

  “Well, if he’s mortal and he can be killed, then there’s nothing to worry about,” Elspeth said.

 
; Nikka scrunched her face doubtfully. “You don’t know much about hydras, do you? You have to chop their heads off all at once, and Polukranos has fifty of them. Beta said it took three gods just to bind him to the earth.”

  “Maybe Beta was misinformed,” Elspeth said as the starry lynx dashed out of view.

  “He does love me,” Nikka said.

  “I hope we’re talking about the boy and not the hydra,” Elspeth said, and Nikka laughed.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Nikka asked.

  “No,” Elspeth said.

  “Why? You’re young and beautiful. Although I guess growing up in a leonin camp …”

  “It’s getting late,” Elspeth said. “Maybe you should go to sleep?”

  “Yeah, I’m really tired,” she said.

  Elspeth watched Nyx until she was sure the girl was sleeping. At the edges of the sky, it did look like the waterfall that Nikka had told her about. Stars cascaded down and flowed out in unseen currents along the horizon. To the east, the figure of a hooded man bent low as he searched the world. A long cord like a whip lashed at him from nowhere. But it didn’t harm him; instead he grabbed it and wrapped the end around his hand. On the other side of the sky, a celestial lion and cub frolicked together. Elspeth felt content as she watched the shifting colors and stellar light. Despite the earthly dangers, this world seemed safer, brighter. What could corrupt the heavens? At the edge of sleep, Elspeth realized she was praying to Heliod. She used to pray to the angels of Bant each night, and now she found herself thanking Heliod for another day without pain and grief. There’d been obstacles, but nothing that she couldn’t overcome. The prayer felt automatic, like breathing. She curled up tighter and imagined Nyx to be like a shield around the plane and the gods the guardians of all—including herself.

  The hydra had awakened, and Nylea hadn’t sensed it. It had taken Daxos—a mortal—to warn her that Polukranos was crashing through her own forest. Something was desperately wrong with the world when mortals could see what gods could not. Taking the form of a massive, star-clad wolf, Nylea loped along the trail of destruction left by the hydra. His mighty footfalls had crushed trees with every step. His hissing fury sent shock waves of energy emanating through the lush undergrowth, which turned the vegetation to pulp. If left unchecked, the hydra could flatten the entire Nessian Forest.

  Nylea loved her forest, every leaf and padded foot in her domain, but she had been restless. Ever since the giant elder trees of the forest had been saplings, she felt the pull of the unknown, the desire to explore, to hunt things that deserved to die. There were hidden spaces and dark corners of this world that her brothers and sisters denied existed. There were monsters whose shadows dwarfed mountains, and there were interminable pits of darkness where Heliod’s sun had never touched. It was there Nylea liked to go and test her skills against the ferocious night-clad beasts.

  But she had stayed away too long and neglected her home. And now the hydra had risen, and it was headed toward the coast. With his instinctive hatred of humans and their artifice, Meletis would be pulverized under his wrath. And the pantheon itself was in turmoil with Heliod and Purphoros yet again preparing to fight a battle that couldn’t be won. Kruphix had warned that all the gods would be drawn back into Nyx if they carried their feud too far.

  Nylea sensed a strange new wound on the face of her forest. She arrived at a blackened circle singed into the earth itself. This damage was not caused by the hydra, but it was in a place where the hydra had passed. Nylea became like a vole to scurry upon the earth and decipher the clumps of dirt and bloodstained sand. She took the shape of a falcon and soared above the glade, noting each step and drag of a hoof or foot. A group of satyrs and humans had held a revel around a bonfire, but why so far from the Skola Valley, Nylea didn’t know.

  At first, when it was wine and joyous laughter, the celebrants had gathered around the fire and danced. But later, when it had become bloody and violent, the prints staggered in all directions. The bonfire had exploded in a great burst of energy. There were blackened footprints of revelers caught in its blast zone, but there were no bodies. In the vicinity of the fire pit, the bare earth had become like black sand. There were no green leaves on the nearby trees. Instead the bare branches had transformed into jagged obsidian. Some unnatural casting was at work here. Nylea again took the shape of a wolf and continued following the path of the hydra’s destructive journey to Meletis.

  When Nylea reached the top of the ridge, she could see Polukranos at the far end of the valley, and she felt pity for the magnificent creature. He was acting in the only way he knew how. She had tried to keep him safe in Nyx, but Purphoros and his wretched sword had ruined his peaceful place among the stars. And now something had disturbed his rest again through no fault of his own. The suffering of animals incensed Nylea and made her feel murderous. She would find the culprit and make him see the pain suffered by the creatures she loved. But the hydra was nearing the Guardians of Meletis, the massive statues that guarded the roads leading into the polis. If he reached them, he would be beyond the boundaries of the Nessian Forest.

  Nylea discarded her corporeity and infused her essence into the roots that twined under the forest floor. Through the roots, she reached across the expanse between herself and the hydra. She tried to gather a sense of Polukranos, to touch the pathways of his mind and call him home to the forest where he might be safe. But her domain had become so small, she couldn’t find him—she couldn’t sense a creature that towered above the mortals’ monuments to the gods. Something had cut him off from her. Something had cut him off from the forest itself.

  Nylea left the roots and came back into herself. This time, she took her favored form as a dryad. There was grief in her heart for her damaged forest and for the plight of the majestic hydra. She could not contain this problem to her forest. As much as it grieved her to admit it, she needed Heliod’s help.

  The Shrine of the Gods was a nexus point between Nyx and the mortal world, but only the Nyxborn could use it to move between the two realms. The gods needed no portal and could shift freely between the realms as they liked. The mortals called this temple Nykthos, but the name was much older than any living human. When they used the name, the mortals didn’t know they referred to a divine artisan. Nykthos was the first Nyxborn, created by Kruphix, who was tasked with building the altars to the gods. Nylea remembered him vaguely, like a child remembers a long-dead grandfather.

  Built on a vast plain high in the mountains, the temple itself was a huge semicircle on a field of marble. There was an unobstructed view of the horizons in all directions. While mortals believed the site to be a natural feature of the world, it was Nykthos who fashioned the landscape with his bare hands in honor of the gods. Statues of gods, champions, and oracles littered the shrine. There was even one of Nylea. She didn’t like images of herself crafted in stone, but she’d had nothing to say in the construction of this marvel. Each god had a marble altar in a distinct alcove, and once the gods had gone to war over whose alcove was the largest. Nylea moved silently past Thassa’s altar, which was a fountain that flowed with starry water. A statue of the triton hero Thrasios looked down into a pool that reflected the brilliance of Nyx.

  The statues and alcoves were crumbling in places, touched by the ravages of time. Even Heliod’s were damaged. Nylea took the form of a mortal woman and paused before the massive urn set on the altar. A pillar of light originated within the urn and towered into the sky. The mortals said it touched Nyx itself. What mortals didn’t know was that Nykthos was a mirror image to another temple in the foyer to Nyx itself where it marked the entrance to the realm of the gods. There was another urn in Nyx, and the pillar of light connected the two, although there were no straight lines when traveling between realms or even to the ends of the world.

  “Heliod,” Nylea called through the aether, “you are needed.”

  She wanted Heliod to come and walk with her on the land, but he did not. He spoke with her but did n
ot grace her with his presence. She wondered what was so important that he could not spare her his precious time.

  “You are truly my most beautiful sister,” he said. He said it even though he knew that flattery meant nothing to the God of the Hunt, who ignored his compliment.

  “I have stood many times near where the hydra slumbered, feeling his heartbeat through the blades of grass,” she told her brother. “I can sense the caterpillars in their cocoons, the shiver of the fawn in the shadows, the thud of the rabbit’s feet on earth. How is it that I can’t commune with one of my own children?”

  “My vision is narrowing as well,” Heliod said. “Purphoros not only threatens the god realm, he has figured out a way to limit our sight. He narrows each of our domains.”

  “What weapon can accomplish this?” Nylea asked. “Another sword?”

  “The riddle is not yet solved,” Heliod told her.

  “Daxos spoke of voids in his god-sight,” Nylea said. “This troubles our mortals as well as ourselves.”

  “No god may touch another’s vessel,” Heliod said. “If Purphoros has afflicted Daxos, then he has scorned the laws of existence!”

  “Remember Kruphix’s warning,” Nylea said. “If your feud threatens mortal existence, then he will enforce a Silence and remove us all to Nyx.”

  “Purphoros must be punished!” Heliod said.

  “Before you blame Purphoros,” Nylea said. “Have you searched for another cause? I have seen something strange in the Nessian Forest. A satyr staged a fiery ritual. He drives the hydra toward Meletis.”

  “The satyrs are under your protection,” Heliod said.

  “Skola Valley is under my protection,” Nylea said. “Not a singular satyr who taunts my creatures.”

  “Send your spies through your own timbers, little one,” Heliod said. “The Nessian is as restless as Thassa’s pond.”

  “What has awakened the hydra?” Nylea asked. “When last I was near his chamber, he slept soundly.”