by Silas Post
23
“Abra,” I said, holding a skull in one hand and a dense palmwood cane in the other. “Can you fly?”
“Less with each passing second,” she said. “The skies are more sand than air. If we go, it must be now.”
I looked back at Jarah, her powerful hands cupping around her large eye to protect it. “Redelia chose well in you,” she said. “We all did.”
“Everyone!” I yelled. “Okkor was a great god, and he looked after this island with care and devotion. He is gone now, but a new goddess arrives. When Redelia’s holy light beams from the island’s height, this tempest ends. Safety and peace will return. Until then, hold hope in your heart and keep vigilant watch.”
I tensed my muscles hard to hold my arms with elbows out, turning them into stable hooks for Abra to loop her arms into. It took three tries at jumping and flapping her wings, but we finally rose above the village and toward the mountain that vanished behind a wall of airborne sand.
Below us, that same sand covered the leaves and bushes, rising in a thick carpet that slowly swallowed the island’s smaller features. Under Araine’s command, it would bury everything and everyone.
Our ascent was slow and labored, dense waves of sand occasionally defeating our visibility and forcing us to veer off track.
My legs whipped to the side as Abra’s wings caught a virulent wind at the wrong angle, blasting us off balance. She beat her wings harder, correcting our course only to get thrown aside again. We dipped on occasion, Abra struggling to find clear enough air to pump beneath her wings for flight.
Slowing as we entered the heart of the cyclonic winds, Abra spotted stable ground beneath and lowered us toward it. It was the flat expanse of rock that formed a “table” of sorts at the mountain’s peak — a small round plateau that was level and smooth but for a narrow crack that split its center.
My feet touched down first and Abra released me, then she landed on one knee and pressed her palms against the mountaintop’s surface. Her wings folded in, but not fully enough. The wind that battered us both forced her body to skid backward.
“I want to stay and fight,” she said.
“But you cannot,” I replied. “The science of wind would not allow it. Go, while your exit is still within your control.”
She nodded and opened her wings, blasting backward off the mountain’s flat surface and vanishing amid the storm.
I rushed to the mountain’s edge, scouring the downslope for any sign of my satyress. “Rikki!” I yelled. Rampant gusts thrust my voice back into my throat, stifling any volume I hoped to produce. “Rikki!” I tried again.
Visibility was low and my search was frantic. Each approach toward the ridge of the mountain’s rim showed a dizzying drop. The rock spire beneath me had precipitous walls, almost sheer in their verticality as far as I could see.
“Rikki!” I yelled in desperation.
“I’m here!” she finally yelled back. I rushed toward the sound of her voice and got down on one hand and knee, passing Okkor’s skull to the hand that clutched my staff.
“Just a little higher,” I said. “Take my hand.”
“I can’t,” she replied. “I’m sorry. I have done nothing this whole trip of any true value. I made demands and I avoided my share of our work. I can’t even do this, a task my kind are born with instincts for.
“Oh, I should have stopped at Merla’s house and spiked some tea for myself. Forget the tea, I should have drank her liquor shelf dry to stifle my cowardice down.”
“You are no coward,” I said. “You think with your heart. Let it guide you now. It knows how truly Redelia needs you. How I need you.”
She looked up with her deep, black eyes. They glistened with pleading and doubt.
“Take this instead,” I said, lowering the knobbed handle of Merla’s staff toward Rikki’s hands.
Now she stretched upward, her dark nails just grazing against the staff’s tip. “A little further,” I said, straining to close that gap.
“Ah!” she yelled, one hoof falling from its narrow ledge and forcing her whole body to jolt and slip further down that smooth slope. She caught herself by her fingertips, but she lost much of the height she had gained. It was too far for my staff to find her. She kicked out to search for a new foothold, but her hooves only dangled.
“You are not welcome here,” said three voices in a melody at once pleasant and troubling. I looked back to find Araine’s sirens strutting toward me from across the mountain’s small plateau. Their bodies were perfectly shaped, unperturbed by the winds that battered the island around them. Araine had built them to be impervious to her own tempestuous nature, and now they walked toward me as if this blizzard of sand were a thing of my own imagining.
“Tell your mistress she will not claim this island in the name of suffering and death,” I said. “Tell her!”
“Tell me yourself,” came Araine’s voice. The shape of her face materialized above us, oversized and outlined in hovering rows of sand that shifted their alignment to give the appearance of expression, bending as her lips would when she spoke.
Here, so high from the ground and far from her temple, she lacked the power to stand beside me. Even conjuring herself in a lurching mass of crumbling sand was too demanding a task, but this — this ghastly outline of her face looming overhead — was presence enough.
“My acolytes will dedicate this island in my name,” she said, “and then I will stand here in renewed power and glory!”
I glanced back at Rikki. She had one hoof at an awkward angle now, but she found a small crevice to use for leverage. Her goat-like hooves were a boon that suited her to this climb like none other, but with the rock spire’s nearly featureless smooth surface, it seemed an impossible climb.
“Look out!” she yelled.
I spun back and lifted my staff in time to pierce the sandy arm of a siren that struck down at me. Her limb slipped from her body, splashing into a layer of dense dry sand. A new arm grew from its place, but the granules that had comprised her former limb sat as a dusting of inert silt, not blown aside like the other sand around us.
I held Okkor’s skull tight and lunged forward with my wooden weapon, knocking the non-woman back and then turning on her triplet sisters. They slashed and swiped at me, but each time I stabbed them or thumped my dense staff against their sand bodies, they collapsed and staggered, leaving a mound of sand that sat idle and started to cover the mountaintop in a permanent beach.
As sand built up on the mountain’s surface, some flowed from the edges and cascaded down its slope. I worried for Rikki and what that meant for her traction. Other particles of sand drifted toward the small crack in the mountain “table,” plummeting to the bottom of Okkor’s old temple and adding to the growing mound of sand that had buried his ancient throne.
“Rikki!” I yelled. “How do you fare?”
“I can’t do this, Victor,” she yelled. “My whole body surges with the terror of what falling could mean. Will you fetch me?”
“As best I’m able,” I said. I glanced down. She had slipped further now, with significant height left to drop if her fingers or hooves gave out on her. “There’s the matter of three attacking sand—”
One of the sirens kicked me in the shin and dropped me to my knees. Merla’s staff slipped from my grip as I chose to cling to Okkor’s skull instead, using my now-free hand to grab my attacker’s wrist before she could slap my face.
Another siren approached and pushed my shoulder. Another kicked at my thigh. I was surrounded, and sliding backward on my knees from their relentless assault until the tips of my boots found open air beneath them.
“Oh gods,” I muttered, suddenly engulfed in the sense of freefall. My knees slid away from their perch on the mountain and my body was no longer crouched at the tip of Okkor’s Isle. Now I was falling, my one free hand scraping against the mountain face for any hope of slowing my fall.
“Victor!” Rikki yelled.
In rapi
d succession, the thunderous sound of a veritable stampede struck my ears, I felt something strong and quick latch around my waist, and my accelerating descent came to a halt.
Rikki had leapt into motion, scaling the mountain and grabbing my waist in time to save my life.
“How?” I asked, breathless from the fall. “Your fears—”
“If there is one thing I fear more than the disability of broken bones, it is losing my love for all time,” she said.
I craned my neck to kiss her on the cheek. “You are a magnificent woman, Rikki Silena. Stronger and fiercer with every moment.”
She smiled broadly. “Do you have a hold?”
“I do now,” I said. “Thank you.”
Rikki guided me up the mountain’s wall, seeking ledges no human could find and offering me a hand to lift me to the next usable ledge. They were farther and fewer between than I could count on, but together we were able to scale the rocks despite the sheets of sand blown our way.
Rikki was the first to climb up to the mountain’s top, and she pulled me that last step to join her. Araine’s acolytes had already started etching a circle, digging their fingers in the windswept sand that covered the mountain’s surface. Every place their unholy fingers touched, the sands quieted and parted, forming a ring that would not dispel under Araine’s unwavering assault.
Their attention turned toward us and halted their initial step in dedicating the island to their mistress.
“Now,” Rikki said, brushing the sand from her shoulders. “Which one of you sand-bitches kicked my man?”
“She did,” all three said in harmonic unison, with each pointing to a different siren. This sparked looks of shock and insult on all three of their faces.
“Fine then,” Rikki replied. “Prepare for a bleating.”
24
Rikki kicked at the sand beneath her feet and lowered her head to point her ridged, black horns at the nearest of three sand sirens. A grunt of air puffed out her nose and her tail whipped downward, then she was off, charging across the sandy surface of the mountain’s small plateaued peak.
I brushed the sand with one bare hand and found the palmwood staff. Time to finish what Araine’s acolytes had started. While Rikki danced with deadly sand women I finished tracing that circle in the sand.
Araine’s face loomed over me, summoning winds that shifted direction and pelted my front with so much sand I was forced to hold my breath. Rikki was an able defender, blocking the infernal’s acolytes, pulverizing their makeshift bodies, and then stomping their heads in when they started to spring upward from the sand underfoot.
Despite the curses and threats Araine hurled down at me, I dragged Merla’s staff into position and completed the circle.
“Rikki,” I said. “It’s time.”
She kicked both hind legs backward and obliterated a half-conjured sand siren, then ran to my side. She pulled Redelia’s gem from her bosom.
I unwrapped the silk ribbon that protected it and let the wind carry that strip of soft fabric away. Rikki continued to defend me while I brushed away enough sand for Redelia’s gem to nestle into a standing position there in the mountain’s middle.
“You could have served me instead,” Araine said, her mouth a constellation of sand ridges that moved as an outline, the sandstorm sky still visible behind her. My acolytes would have been yours for the taking. I could have made replicas of anyone you like. I’d make them do whatever you fancy.”
“That’s not life, Araine,” I yelled. “Life is about the choices we make, not the orders we can force others to obey. No replicated woman can offer life’s partnership, but you’ve forgotten that. Your ceaseless quest for power has stripped you of your right mind.”
She replied, but I tuned her out. The constant swirl of air and dust, the clawing of sand sirens, the taunting of the infernal controlling the skies — I had to block out these distractions and focus on the sanctity of my task.
“I dedicate this ground to the divine,” I said.
“Has your mistress shared her power with you, I wonder?” Araine said. “It would sweeten the vibrations of your soul in death. It would add flavor and punch to the pain you provide.”
Come now, I thought. Block her out.
“You have all this power,” Rikki yelled while she fought. “Why waste it on cruelty when you could create? Like Okkor did. If you want an island so badly, go out and make one. Attract the hearts of man and their faith will follow. Why lay claim to this place, simply to destroy it?”
“There’s a slow way,” Araine said, “and a smart way. While gods and lesser infernals piddle around their own pet projects they are vulnerable. He is changing the balance of a pantheon as we speak. Only the strong will rule by his side.”
I ignored her words, thankful that Rikki had distracted Araine so I might dwell on this dedication in relative peace. I cleared my mind and forced it to separate from my body. The irritation of windswept sands were a corporal pester, but I was a mind and soul now. A holy emissary initiating his ordained mission.
The circular indentation that ringed the intended temple began to glow. So did the hollowed eyes of Okkor’s skull.
Araine’s face contorted in the sky, the sand ridges that formed her expression faltering. “You cannot overpower me,” she said. “You— What pulses in your paltry grip? Energy, profound and intoxicating. Girls, claim the artifact skull from his hands!”
“The slow way is steadied by truth and rigor,” Rikki said. “It is the only way to find a power that endures.” Her horns blasted through the chest of a siren and left her as a lifeless mound of sand at her feet. The creature was slow to re-emerge after that, Araine’s power already diminished within Redelia’s holy circle.
“I invoke the well of life,” I said, “to sustain the divine and connect her with the source of all creation.”
The sand beneath Redelia’s crystal stirred and indented. Her gem lifted from the ground and levitated there, steady despite the surrounding winds. In the small space beneath her, a silvery liquid bubbled up.
“She is vulnerable,” Araine said. “You were a fool to expose her to me.”
The infernal summoned hands to match her monstrous face. They hovered above us, oversized and hollow, formed only in outline by sands that condensed into ridges. Her palms moved toward the mountain’s center, toward the precarious perch of Redelia’s delicate soul.
“I beseech this hallowed earth to shelter and nourish Redelia’s light,” I said.
The ground shook beneath us as the glowing ring rippled like a river of light against a wind much gentler than the one that whipped against us. It repelled Araine before she was even close, blasting away her conjured hands as quickly as they had formed.
Redelia’s gem turned from black and clouded to crystal clear.
My mind was set now. The world receded from my eyes and my ears, funneling my attention on the ritual I had begun. Rikki’s voice was a distant echo. She struggled with the sirens and succumbed to their grip. Two of those vile acolytes held her down against the sand-swept rock.
I knew this. And yet, it was like another world. Another life. I was too entranced by my holy task to break free of its power.
I slammed my staff into the mountain’s peak, the vibrations of that impact pulling me further into divine stupor. I said the first of three. “I dedicate this ground to Redelia.”
Thin tendrils of light coalesced into branching spikes that would form a webbed shell around this holy place, but they were unable to withstand the barrage of Araine’s assault. Each small extension of Redelia’s new temple wall was met with a blast of sand that snapped it from its base and obliterated its light.
The third siren approached with no one to stop her. Araine’s face twisted into a crumbling smile. I should have worried or moved. I should have hurried to complete the dedication. Yet, the ritual had its own rhythm and I was locked in step with it.
Again, I punctuated my ceremony with a hard thrust of the palmwood
staff against the sand-covered rock, sending a sharp vibration up my arm that further numbed my sense of the world around me. “I dedicate this ground to Redelia,” I said again, the second of three.
A pair of scratchy hands landed on the skull that was tucked under my arm. I made no effort to resist, to clutch that prize tighter and ward off the sand siren’s theft. The skull left my possession, but the nascent puddle of silver energy that gathered atop our plateau grew in size and depth. Its surface reflected light that emanated from within, sourced from the wellspring of life itself.
The lowest point of Redelia’s crystal hovered inches above the small depression at the circle’s center. The gem had grown, as did she, until she stood at full height once more.
The sand siren lifted Okkor’s skull toward Araine. The infernal’s face came closer, pursing her lips as if to suck the power into her own mouth. I knew the disaster that would follow if Araine drew that energy for herself, yet I could take no step to prevent it. My ritual was not complete.
Redelia stepped through the front panel of her gem and set her bare feet into ankle-deep sand. Her body was flickering and translucent, a twinkling shape that might blink out of existence if her hold on this island could not take root.
I began the third of three. “I dedicate this ground to Redelia, the goddess of captured light!”
I knocked the base of my staff against the rock shelf underfoot and the large gem that had once housed her soul exploded in a ball of light. A second later, she stood at the center of a temple newly formed and claimed. She was tall and strong, her dark gray skin supple and soft. Shock white hair blew around her in the wild storm, but her eyes did not squint or strain. They remained calm and closed as she bent her knees and dipped her hand into the silvery well beneath her, gathering a fresh sip of life-sustaining energy.
“I was here first,” Araine said, a hoarse voice assaulting us from above. “My claim has priority over yours!”
