Rites & Desires

by Amanda Cherry

  But somehow that whole thing had melted into an actual concern for his feelings. Even without magic, she was sure now that a hurt--even one as big as her coming out a magically gifted--would be forgiven in time. She was surprised to discover that the idea of causing him any hurt in the first place was troubling her far more than was any direct effect that hurt might have on her relationship.

  It was odd and it was out of character, but it was true.

  Fortunately, the concern would be moot in short order. Once she had the magic back in her to keep that hurt from ever happening, they’d both sleep easier. And if getting to that point was going to mean going a couple of weeks without sex, then that was a price she was surely willing to pay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ruby had spent the better part of several days doing nothing but preparing for the Ritual of the Scrolls. It was easy enough, it turned out, to be scarce around the office in the wake of having nearly been killed in a bombing. Normally she would have scoffed at being the object of someone’s patience and understanding, but under the circumstances, she’d decided to use it to her advantage.

  Jaccob had sent her the most adorable picture of himself in a captain’s hat as he’d prepared to leave port with Mike and Chuck for what they’d decided would be a two-week sojourn to Bermuda aboard his yacht. With the photo, he’d sent a link so she could check his GPS coordinates in case she got worried he’d been out of touch too long. That had been very dear and thoughtful of him, she supposed. She was sure he would never have guessed she’d be using it to make damn near certain he was almost to Bermuda (and therefore as unlikely as was humanly possible to turn up on her veranda) in order to begin a powerful ritual.

  Fifty-or-so stories up on her helipad was definitely going to be an adequate location. She’d had the Blights check and double check, and there was no mention anywhere of natural rock nor of earth nor of anything that pointed to the ritual having to take place in nature. It was only the height above sea level that seemed to be the determining factor, and Ruby was pretty sure the top of a skyscraper was the highest up this ritual would ever have been attempted. She had no idea whether greater height gave her greater chance of success, but what she did know was that with Stardust in Bermuda, being this high into the skyline meant she had little to no chance of interruption.

  She picked a night when the forecast said the sky would be cloudless, giving her a clear view of the waxing moon, as had been called out by the ancient text as being critical to the success of the rite. A clear night, the highest point in the city, and a tunic of deepest blue stitched with horsehair. In the beginning, she hadn’t been sure how she was going to go about getting that sewn without her magic. Even in Cobalt City, tailors had their limits. But then Doubt had mentioned that nowhere did the Scrolls say the garment had to be stitched exclusively with horsehair, just that the stitching was required, so the few stitches Ruby was able to add herself to the finished garment should be more than sufficient. She made sure to do the work on the tunic in the presence of the Eye; she was sure she’d have gotten some feeling from the object if she was doing something wrong.

  Such a feeling had never come.

  And so as the sun had set on the night in question, she had gone up to her helipad to begin the ritual. She would have her powers back, and soon. She was as excited as she was tense, and it took her a minute to center herself properly; magic like this was hard enough to keep in hand when you had your emotions fully in check. Losing control of herself, even a little, could prove an unmitigated disaster.

  With the Eye of Africa clasped tightly in her right hand, and the Blights stationed dutifully behind her, Ruby lifted her face to the sky and began to speak the words she’d spent so many weeks memorizing. Her breaths felt shallow, even as the very first words escaped her lips.

  As she spoke the words of the incantation, the helipad before her seemed to fade into nonexistence. She was somehow standing suspended in mid-air as before her appeared a seemingly endless tunnel of concentric vortexes.

  She was terrified.

  Ruby couldn’t remember another time in her life when she’d been frightened by magic. But fear was surely the emotion she was experiencing as she hung there in space, looking ahead to nothingness and knowing she had to take a step.

  Grasping the Eye as tightly as she was able, she began moving forward into the swirling emptiness that greeted her. She continued the incantation.

  How long had she walked that it appeared she’d made no progress? Days? The swirling void around her neither progressed nor transformed, remaining a terrible monotony of garish light and all-consuming blackness. Were it not for the ever-increasing temperature of the Eye of Africa squeezed tightly within her fist, she’d have wondered if the ritual was fully engaged. A glance at her hand saw the jewel beginning to glow. Ruby continued her trek forward through the nothingness.

  The air around her seemed hot and dry all of the sudden. What had been nothing but light and magic beneath her feet began to feel coarse and loose like sand. It was taking more and more effort to make every step. The exertion was taking her breath, making it harder and harder to speak the words of the rite as she struggled forward.

  The Eye was shining now, blinding light escaping from between Ruby’s clenched fingers. It was blistering hot against her palm, but she held fast. Dropping the instrument of magic would almost certainly disrupt the ritual; she’d keep hold of the Eye of Africa if it burned a hole clear through her palm.

  She’d been warned there would be trials. She was prepared to be tested. If holding onto a white-hot stone was one of them, she’d gladly bear it.

  The sand beneath her feet got deeper, coarser, and began to materialize into dunes stretching out as far as Ruby could see. She’d passed to some other place on the Coil, she was sure of it. But where and when she was, or what rules of magic applied here, remained terrifyingly unknown. Was it even permissible to use the magic of the Eye to aid her in the trials of the Ritual?

  Ruby had no idea.

  A lifetime of experience with magical rites and rituals told her it was better not to try. No matter the difficulty she faced here in this place along the Coil, conquering it on her own, without the use of borrowed magic, was the best guarantor of success. It would be trying; it might be the most difficult ordeal Ruby had ever undertaken, but she would get through it on her own mettle.

  It was her best chance.

  She was making progress now--visible, discernable progress. The dunes in the distance grew closer and closer until an imposing mountain of sand filled her view. The Eye was leading her now, drawing her forward as though it were magnetized. Her hand rose in obedience to the magic overwhelming her and spurring her onward.

  She began to climb.

  The sand beneath her slipped and slid as she struggled upward, the hill crumbling under her weight with every step. The whole dune seemed to be collapsing beneath her, and yet the massive height of the thing remained unaffected. The steep face of the dune made it impossible to climb with only her legs. She tucked the white-hot Eye of Africa into her bodice, recoiling a little at the pain where it seared the flesh on contact.

  With both hands, she continued to claw her way up the mountain of sand. The desert around her felt like an oven, the arid ether parching her lungs with every heaving breath as she battled her way toward the top. The sand was scorching hot--sharp granules infiltrating her velvet slippers and scoring the quick beneath her nails. Sweat dripped from every pore in her body, sizzling when it hit the gem tucked into her bodice, all of it evaporating almost immediately, too quickly to do any good in cooling her down.

  But the Eye itself began to grow cold. At first, Ruby hadn’t noticed. She’d been doing all she could to put the discomfort of the stone’s heat out of her mind; it had taken her some time to become aware of its cooling. By the time she clambered onto the uneven summit of the dune, the gem had gone from feeling like a branding iron to an ice cube tucked in her bodice.

  Ru
by paused to catch her breath, aware suddenly that the air around her had also cooled. It was easier to breathe up here, although catching her breath after a climb that tough would still take minutes. And the Eye was still drawing her forward.

  She hadn’t been thinking when she’d tucked the gem into her bosom. She’d only meant to tuck it into her underthings as quickly as possible, but reaching across with her right hand in a hurry had landed the Eye of Africa squarely atop her heart. She felt it now, its chilled energy radiating out from her body as her pounding heart began to settle atop the mound of sand. Its obtrusive brightness had modulated into an otherworldly glow, and it thrummed with magic in time with her frenzied pulse.

  A gust of wind blew her off balance. Oven-hot as the air below, it shifted the dune beneath her, knocking her to her knees. She lurched forward to catch herself as loose grains of hot sand pelted the exposed skin of her face and arms. The wind blew harder as Ruby struggled to get to her feet. The Eye was still compelling her forward, but the gusts were overpowering. Ruby inched forward on her hands and knees, her head pointed downward so as to keep the blowing sand out of her nose and mouth. It was difficult enough to breathe air this hot, the addition of the whirling particulate making it all but impossible.

  And still she was all but gasping. Ruby Killingsworth had never been one to go in for physical fitness, and here on this dune she was paying for that decision in spades. Crawling across the shifting dune, her heart still pounding from the trek up the dune to the summit, she closed her eyes and tried her best just to follow where the Eye wanted to lead. She had to remember what she was doing here. She had to remember what was at stake. Her magic was on the line, and she’d be damned if she would be deterred at this point by a sandstorm and an ethereal desert.

  She kept her eyes shut and redoubled her focus. The air was so thick with grit it wouldn't have been safe to open them; visibility was surely nil, besides. And yet she was as sure of where she was going as she had been when she’d first seen the dunes rising in the distance. Ruby continued forward, crawling through the shifting sands as the wind continued to buffet her from ahead.

  She knew the summit of the dune wasn’t wide. But she also knew the normal laws of the physical universe didn’t necessarily apply in other parts of the Coil. As long as the Eye spurred her onward, she would continue forth. Forward and forward, she scrambled along on her hands and knees, straining to make progress against the heavy headwind.

  She’d known it must be coming, but still it took Ruby by surprise when her hand reached out for the next spot of dune and landed downhill from where she’d expected. She shifted then, sure the headwind would work in her favor, trying to keep from falling down the far side of the dune.

  Her effort was for naught. The wind shifted to swirl all around her as she felt herself begin to fall. Downward she went, tumbling end over end. For a full minute she fell--farther, she’d have guessed, than she’d climbed to begin with. Some time during her descent, the air had cleared. And it had cooled, the wind now blowing a mild temperature without its painful cargo aboard. Ruby was almost able to catch her breath. Her heart continued to pound in her chest, echoed by the glow and the resonance of the Eye of Africa where it sat in her bodice.

  The fall ended abruptly. A landing from such a height should have been painful. It should have hurt rather a lot, but it didn’t. Although the sudden deceleration was jarring, there was no real physical discomfort.

  In fact, her landing was nothing short of a relief. The wind had stopped, having deposited her in a cool, dim room where she found it was safe to open her eyes.

  The swirling sand had gone from her environment, but not so from her person. Streams of the coarse stuff emptied from the folds of her tunic as she got to her feet. Ruby ran her hands over her face, shaking loose the layer of caked sweat and sand that had formed on her forehead and temples. She continued to catch her breath as she took stock of this place where she’d landed.

  It was a room, a chamber that would have been a circle had it not been for the corners. There was neither a visible door nor a window--no way for Ruby to discern how she’d gotten in nor how she would leave when the time came. The walls were carved in intricate shapes with every surface covered in brightly colored tiles laid in complex geometric patterns that made Ruby’s already-throbbing head swim. Her eyes strained at first to adjust to the dimness of the place, but soon enough she was acclimated. The smell of balsam grazed her nostrils when she inhaled deeply, a pleasant sensation after the shallow, panting breaths she’d been forced to settle for on the dunes.

  Ruby shivered as she stood in the center of the cavernous chamber. It was cold in here, and her skin was still slick with the last vestiges of sweat from the heat of the dunes. She reached into her tunic and withdrew the Eye of Africa from where she’d had it nestled. The last thing she wanted was an ice-cold thing against her skin in this already chilly room.

  That had been the thing, apparently.

  As she brought forth the jewel, its glow intensified, brightening in such a way that it seemed to bulge in her hand. For a moment, she actually feared it might shatter there on her palm. The glint from the gem became sun-bright, causing Ruby to squeeze her eyes shut in defense. When she opened them, she found she was not alone.

  Before her stood a woman, or maybe she was a goddess. She was a good two heads taller than Ruby, and larger in every dimension. She was lithe and well-muscled with skin as dark as jet; she was quite honestly the most beautiful woman Ruby had ever seen. She was dressed in a garment of simple white, adorned in a veritable armor of lapis and opals cascading from a solid gold collar. She wore a gold headdress bejeweled in cut stones matching her sparkling tabard.

  The woman’s eyes were bright, glowing almost incandescently with the same intensity of the jewel in Ruby’s hand. There was only one person this could possibly be. In a gesture of uncharacteristic humility, Ruby bowed her head and lowered herself to genuflect before her host. "Makeda," she said, her parched voice barely a whisper as she held the jewel up for the inspection of its original master.

  Ruby dared lift her face. Makeda was considering her, standing back with a grim yet thoughtful look on her face. She brought her hands up to her chest, and made a gesture that looked to Ruby like wringing or rending. In a moment, she understood it. The Eye of Africa rose on its own from her flat palms and moved through the air toward its former owner.

  Halfway to what Ruby guessed to be the totem’s destination, it stopped. Makeda flared her fingers, and Ruby watched in awestruck horror as the Eye of Africa disintegrated in front of her.

  She felt beaten, betrayed, wounded. She was ready to travel wherever in the Coil was necessary to exact revenge against Loki for sending her on a torturous fool’s errand. The ritual wasn’t even over yet, and the Eye had been lost!

  The ritual wasn’t over yet.

  Makeda gestured for Ruby to stand, not with a movement that Ruby altogether recognized, but somehow she understood. Whatever magic the Eye of Africa had imbued her with before tonight was with her still. It was that magic, she felt in her very bones, allowing her to communicate. And if the magic of the Eye persisted, then the Eye itself persisted. This was the thing that was supposed to be happening. This was all part of the rite.

  "Without moving while living," Makeda’s deep, resonant voice sounded then. "It moves when its head is cut off."

  Ruby took in a deep breath. The smell of fir trees had become almost overpowering as she searched her brain for the answer to this riddle.

  She’d known the riddles were coming. She’d read them and studied them and had the Blights do tireless research as to their content, possible translations, and proper answers. She would be tried during this rite, and these riddles were part of the trial.

  "A tree," she replied. A breeze wafted through the chamber, sounding a hollow whistle as it passed over the carved columns flanking the chamber’s corners.

  Makeda nodded. Letting her hands back down to her sides,
she spoke the next riddle. "Produced from the ground, man produces it," she began, "while its food is the fruit of the ground."

  Damn these things were confusing! But if they were merely questions, they wouldn’t be riddles. Ruby searched her brain for the answer. "A wick," she said, to which Makeda gave a nod. Ruby’s nerves began to lessen; the violent spike of adrenaline from the moment she feared for the Eye’s destruction was passing out of her system. She could do this. She knew she could.

  There were nineteen riddles in all. Each was conveyed, she was sure, more by magic than any common language; still, Ruby was convinced there were some things lost in translation. Or perhaps it was merely the distance of time and not the difficulties of grammar and syntax that made the words so confounding to Ruby’s ears. Still she replied. For each riddle, there was a prepared answer, and once she’d managed to focus herself, purge the adrenaline from her system, and engage her logical brain, she’d managed.

  Years of training herself to recall facts and figures had made the memorization of the riddles and their responses easy enough to manage at her desk. But the challenge of answering cryptic queries from an imposing goddess in a room with no exit was nothing a person could adequately prepare for in the mortal region of the Coil. Eventually, she found her rhythm, answering Makeda’s questions with certainty and calm.

  When the riddles were through, Makeda inclined her head. Ruby did the same in return, and when she moved again to gaze back at her hostess, realized she was once again alone.

  The ground trembled beneath her. At first it was a gentle rumble, but in the space of seconds, the tiles beneath her feet were shifting as fast as the sand had on the dune that had led her here. Ruby had been in an earthquake once, as a child on a family vacation to California. She remembered it well, how terrified she’d been then. This movement of the ground beneath her feet was wholly unlike that one had been.