“One of the creatures he sent to stop us,” Rhenna said. “How can she know the language of the Earthspeakers?”
“I was born with the knowledge,” Yseul said, “as I was born with the powers the Ailuri had forgotten…until Baalshillek gave them cause to remember.” She stroked her hands over her belly. “Unfortunate that they never had a chance to rediscover the lost half of their race.”
Rhenna silenced the hundred questions that drummed inside her head. “What do you want?”
“From you, nothing at all,” Yseul said. “For Cian the Alu may find some use, at least until he ceases to amuse them. As for the rest…” She gestured negligently toward her ebon-skinned sisters and spoke a command in the sacred tongue.
The Alu moved to obey. Cian changed, hind legs bunched beneath him. Rhenna wiped her damp palm on her thigh and tightened her grip on her knife.
“Enough!”
The shout rattled Rhenna’s bones and rumbled in the earth under her feet. Tamallat, Cabh’a and Nyx went still. The female Ailuri froze as one, lifting their heads, nostrils flared.
Tahvo walked boldly among them, her eyes suffused with luminous green. The little healer was gone, though the shell of her body remained unchanged. Behind her face was another being, shedding verdant light like the forest, a goddess who towered over lesser mortals like the great tree at the center of the valley.
The Alu shrank to the earth in obeisance. Tahvo circled the human prisoners, studying each of them in turn, and stopped before Cian.
“You are the one who dares to steal what is mine,” she said.
Cian changed again, met Tahvo’s alien gaze and bowed his head. “You are the goddess of the tree,” he said.
“I am Ge. What are you, male creature, that you take the shape of my beloved children?”
“I am Ailu,” Cian said steadily. “I have come from the North—”
Tahvo touched Cian’s forehead, and he swayed as if she had struck him. Rhenna moved to help and found her feet sealed to the ground by a thousand minute tendrils sprung from the soil.
Ge examined Rhenna through Tahvo’s eyes. “You have overcome all the obstacles I set in your path,” she said. “You are no ordinary mortals.”
“You succeeded in stopping some of us,” Rhenna said bitterly. “Are you a goddess of life, or death?”
Nyx lifted her head. “We serve the good—”
“Silence,” Tahvo-Ge hissed. “I have known this day would come…the day when the evil ones would seek what I took away.”
“Not…evil,” Cian croaked, as if Ge’s touch had damaged his voice.
Ge ignored him. Abruptly she turned to the Alu. “Bring the females to me, and hold the males until I decide their fate.”
Yseul crept forward, half crouched like a dog expecting to be kicked. “Great goddess,” she said, “these mortals bring much danger. It would be best to kill them now—”
Ge raised her hand, and the Alu sprang up to surround Yseul with growls and much shaking of weapons. Yseul retreated, an answering snarl on her pale, beautiful face. Her withdrawal was enough for the Alu. They pushed between Rhenna and Cian, driving him and Enitan to one side.
Cian locked his feet. “I can tell you all you wish to know,” he said to Ge. “I am the seeker of the Hammer. The others are only my servants. Let them go.”
Ge did not answer. She stood immobile, her green stare fixed on something far away, and Tahvo’s body slumped. Shoving Alu spears aside, Rhenna supported the healer and saw that her eyes were silver again.
“The withered leaf,” Tahvo whispered.
“What? Tahvo—”
“I am all right,” Tahvo said, a little breathless. She gripped Rhenna’s hand. “Ge is filled with great anger against all mortals, men above all, and we have not the strength to stop her if she chooses to kill.”
“Then what hope do we have?” Rhenna asked as the Alu prodded at her back with the butts of their spears. “If she rules all the spirits here—”
“Ge is not beyond reason. She shares our greatest enemy, for she is one of the Four who escaped, and she hates the Exalted of the Stone.”
She said no more, for the larger group of Alu had separated the women from Cian and Enitan, stripped Rhenna, Nyx and the Imaziren of their weapons, and were herding them into the forest.
“Cian!” Rhenna shouted.
“Don’t worry,” he called back as his captors bore him and Enitan away. “Save yourselves.”
“Do whatever you must, Cian. Swear to me….”
But he had vanished, and there was not so much as a rustle of leaves to betray where they had taken him. Of Yseul there was no sign.
The Alu drove the women along an almost imperceptible path through the forest. Rhenna soon lost track of both time and distance, her arms supporting Tahvo and her thoughts on Cian. Nyx attempted once more to speak to the Alu, but they pushed her back among her companions with hardly more than a glance. Tamallat walked with the rigidity of one on the very edge of suicidal violence.
Dim daylight had tinted the nearly invisible sky by the time the travelers reached the outermost branches of the great tree. Lesser trees blocked all sight of its trunk, but Rhenna could reckon its size from the breadth of its leaves and twigs the thickness of a man’s leg. As they passed deeper into the great tree’s shadow, the ordinary trees disappeared, leaving masses of fantastic undergrowth made up of vines, flowering creepers and plants for which Rhenna had no name.
Halfway through the day, Tahvo had begun to stumble with exhaustion, and even Rhenna had difficulty keeping up the pace. Finally the Alu called a halt. At first Rhenna thought they had come to yet another wall, this one made of solid brown wood. But then she recognized that the wall was the trunk of the great tree, so massive that fifty women could have lived comfortably within it. The lowest branches were indistinct shapes high above Rhenna’s head, and the roots were as broad as the bow of a Hellenish ship.
The Alu made it clear that Rhenna and her companions were to kneel and wait. Tamallat resisted, and they knocked her down before Rhenna could intervene.
Cabh’a crawled to her fellow warrior’s side and held her hand. Nyx whispered what might have been a prayer. Rhenna stared at the tree trunk until her vision began to blur, and she thought she saw the tangle of vines and flowers about the tree’s roots begin to writhe and cluster into a single, strangely human form.
It was no illusion. Legs and arms, a distinctly feminine torso, delicate fingers made of vine tips, and a face…a face so perfectly constructed that each feature was a flawless copy of a mortal woman’s, perilously beautiful. Green hair rippled and flowed about her body in ceaseless motion.
“Ge,” the Alu said in unison, bowing low.
“Ge,” Tahvo repeated.
The goddess stared at Tahvo from pupilless green eyes. “I know you,” she said in Hellenish, her voice like the rubbing of leaves one against the other and yet deep as a tremor in the earth. She took a step away from the tree…not a true step, for she moved suspended above the soil and yet tied to both tree and earth by a train of vines that coiled behind her legs and hips like the sweep of a gown. Her gaze fixed on Nyx. “And you,” she said. “You bear the blood of the Alu.”
Nyx inclined her head. “My distant ancestress came out of the forest generations ago. I—”
Ge swept past Nyx and paused before Rhenna. “You are born of the gods.”
“I am Rhenna of the Free People,” Rhenna said stiffly.
“Rhenna.” Ge closed her eyes. “How is it that one who lives without males accompanies him who would steal what is mine?”
“Cian is not your enemy,” Rhenna said. “He seeks the Hammer only to save the world.”
Ge reared up in a snapping of vines, leaves scudding in her wake. “Save the world?” she mocked. “It is males who would destroy it.”
“Once I might have agreed with you, goddess,” Rhenna said. “Now I know it is not so.”
“Would you die here, mortal?”<
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“If we die today, others will come for your precious Hammer, and they won’t stop until they’ve slaughtered your Alu and burned your forest to ashes.”
The ground tilted under Rhenna’s feet. Two Alu sprang up and came at her, long-nailed fingers curled to claw and tear.
Ge lifted her hand. The Alu fell back.
“In my roots I have sensed a great sorrow,” Ge said. “My Alu have told me…”
“The Stone has been set free,” Rhenna finished for her. “You know the power of the Exalted. You were one of them.”
“No.” Ge’s face remained immobile, but her body flushed with verdant light. “I left those who cared nothing for the earth—”
“And stole the Hammer so it could never be used against you.”
The restless tendrils of Ge’s hair thrashed about her head. “I am a guardian of Earth. No mortal can destroy me.”
“But you fear Cian, who is also of the Earth. If you are not an ally of the Exalted and you recognize their evil, why do you stand in the way of the Watcher who could stop them?”
“Did not his kind fail in their task and abandon the Stone?”
“Cian would give his life to atone for that failure, great òrìshà,” Nyx said. “He is the last of his race.”
“Not the last.” Ge pointed toward the crouching Alu. “My females told me long ago how they were denied the right to guard the Stone. Now they speak of the males’ alliance with the evil in the North—”
“Then they lie,” Rhenna said. “The Exalted and their priests have murdered all Cian’s brothers. Only he is left to fulfill the prophecies and carry the Hammer against them.”
Ge hissed, and the leaves of the great tree rattled overhead. “Prophecies,” she said. She gazed at Tahvo. “I see with the eyes of your memory. You believe these writings are truth.”
Tahvo stood slowly. “I do, Mother of Earth.”
“The devas set us on this path,” Rhenna said. “The Exalted and their servants have already spread their poison across the North. Only the four Weapons can prevent them from swallowing the world.”
“Four Weapons,” Ge said. “And four mortals to bear them. Mortals with the blood of gods.” Her eyes narrowed. “You also claim this right, Rhenna of the Free People. What do you seek?”
“All that concerns me now is the Hammer.”
“And if I give it to you, you will surrender the Alu male to me?”
“Never. I am not here to steal his destiny.”
Ge was silent. The tree grew still. “Keela.”
One of the Alu rose and went to her goddess, yellow eyes burning on Rhenna’s. Ge touched the shapechanger’s black hair and asked a question in the Alu tongue, her voice almost tender.
“She asks if Keela has ever known the love of a male,” Tahvo whispered.
Keela answered with a shudder of disgust, and Tahvo translated. “We have not suffered such depravity for a thousand years.”
“Then look upon this female,” Ge said, indicating Rhenna, “and witness how what mortals call love weakens even the strongest.”
“She cares for the traitor.”
“She would give her life for him.” Ge’s petal lips curved in mimicry of a smile. “If I let Cian take the Hammer, she would stay here to die.”
“Then she does not deserve to live.”
Tahvo inhaled sharply and faced the goddess. “You know what it is to love, Mother of Earth,” she said in Hellenish. “You joined the Exalted out of hatred for the greed and cruelty of men, but it was for love of the world and all its creatures that you turned against them.”
“Not all,” Ge said. “Once mortals came to my sanctuaries with offerings and vows of love, but it was only fear and avarice that moved their souls. They wished to rule, not serve. When they had no more need of me…” She stopped, flailing vines like whips. “I want nothing from mankind. I would witness their extinction without sorrow.”
“But not only men will suffer,” Rhenna said. “The sacred groves of my people are rotting from within. I have seen beasts burned alive on the Stone God’s altars. Even the smallest wild creatures cannot survive where the priests hold dominion. What grows from the Stone is forever corrupted.”
“My Alu will protect me—”
“They can’t protect you from what is coming,” Rhenna said harshly. “You lie to yourself, goddess. You no longer care about the world because you have been away from it too long. You’re afraid, and you disguise your fear with hatred. You fear that if the Exalted find you, you’ll discover just how weak and useless you have become.”
A terrible, rending crack shook the trunk of the great tree as if it had been struck by lightning. Ge’s body sprouted vicious thorns, and her mouth opened in a soundless roar. Her hands grew a dozen sinuous fingers. She caught Rhenna about the neck and chest, sealing the air from her throat.
The ground beneath Ge’s feet exploded in a spray of dirt and pebbles. Cian emerged from the ground, hair slicked to his head and shoulders, his face taut with agony. Angry welts and open sores blistered his bare skin. He grabbed Ge about her hips and flung her aside, severing vines with the force of his effort. Rhenna tumbled free and rolled to the base of the tree’s roots, gasping for air. The Alu snatched up their spears; Cabh’a and Tamallat moved to confront them with only their bare hands as weapons.
Tahvo pushed in front of her friends and laid her hands on Ge’s slick green skin. She felt herself slide into the goddess’s being, joined with the spirit in rage and confusion. Only a sliver of her soul remained apart. It was enough.
Ge cast her off, but for a few precious moments Tahvo still saw with the goddess’s eyes. Ge’s voice rang out in a single word. Keela and the Alu closed in a circle about their enemies, and Ge turned on Cian.
“You have been in my Earth,” she accused.
Cian straightened swollen limbs. “Your Earth did not welcome me.”
“What has become of my Alu who watched you?”
“They live.”
“Enitan?” Nyx asked.
“He escaped.”
Ge’s agile, leaflike tongue darted between her lips. She glanced at Rhenna. “You came to save this female. You would die for her.”
“Is my death your price for the Hammer?”
“No, Cian!” Rhenna cried.
“The Hammer is useless without the Watcher,” Nyx said, standing beside Rhenna. “If you must have more lives, take mine.”
“And mine,” Tamallat said.
“You slew our brothers,” Cabh’a said, “but we do not fear you.”
“Mortals have better reason to fear death than any deva,” Cian said. “But even a deva can come to the end of existence. As you have.”
Tahvo knew the truth of his words. During her joining with Ge, she had felt a wrongness within the goddess but had not recognized its source. Understanding blossomed like one of the goddess’s deadly flowers.
Ge also began to understand. She turned inward, and Tahvo felt her moving within the great tree that was her true body, searching for the root of her sickness. It lay at the center of her massive trunk, lodged deep like an arrowhead festering where no noaiddit could mend it.
“The Hammer,” Cian said, “was made to fight the Exalted, and you were one of them. While you slept, its influence was held in check. But now it is killing you, goddess, as surely as your hatred.”
Ge looked at Tahvo, her fear undetectable in the blank green eyes. “You are a healer,” she said. “Heal me.”
Tahvo walked toward the tree. The Alu melted out of her path. She pressed her palms to the seamed bark.
“Do nothing,” Tamallat said. “Let this evil one die.”
“Not without the Hammer,” Rhenna said coldly.
Tahvo blocked their voices from her mind and reached through the layers of wood to the narrow channels that carried the great tree’s life. The fluid pulsed sluggishly, thick with the taint of the Weapon Ge had kept so long concealed. The decay had spread from roots to highe
st branches. Soon her leaves would begin to fall, brittle twigs snapping with the lightest breeze. Then the smaller branches would crack, weeping from every wound, and the earth beneath her canopy would shrivel and rot.
Ge was dying.
Tahvo let her hands fall. The tree groaned. Tahvo’s sight dimmed as the last threads of her bond with Ge dissolved. She had shared her companions’ anger when Immeghar, Mezwar and Abidemi had died, but now she felt only pity and sorrow for the pointless ending of so ancient a spirit.
“I am sorry,” she said. “The poison has gone too far.”
“She deceives you. They all deceive you, Mother.”
Yseul’s footsteps crossed the clearing and came to a stop. Rhenna grabbed Tahvo’s arm and pulled her to safety while Yseul continued to speak, shrill with accusation.
“It is not the Hammer that would destroy you!” she cried. “It is this male who violated your sacred Earth. Even now he works his evil magic.”
“The evil is hers,” Tahvo said. “Yseul is a servant of the Exalted. She would deliver the Hammer to her masters.”
“Liar!”
“You are an adept of deception. You used your body to trap Cian in the city of the Stone.”
Yseul’s voice thinned to a whine. “He forced himself upon me! Goddess…”
“You know I speak truth, Mother of Earth,” Tahvo said, silently begging Cian’s forgiveness. “She and the priest who made her wanted Cian’s seed to create a new race of Ailuri bound to serve the Stone.”
“Blasphemy,” Ge said. Her vines lashed the air near Tahvo’s face.
“No!” Yseul suddenly shifted to the ancient Ailu tongue, and Tahvo struggled to understand the unfamiliar words.
“Hear me, my sisters!” Yseul cried. “This male serves the will of the Exalted and their priests. Strike now, before he steals the life from your beloved. Strike!”
For an instant nothing stirred, and then Tahvo heard the rush of bare feet and the repeated, deadly hiss of iron piercing flesh.
“Cian!” Rhenna cried. A body fell. Tahvo smelled the acrid scent of blood. Cian’s blood. She stumbled as she tried to find him, working her way through a chaos of thrashing limbs.
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