A Painted Goddess

by Victor Gischler

  Eventually one of the Moogari offered a hand and helped her from the bath. Others surrounded her with soft towels and dried her. One of them put her red hair up in a bun so it wouldn’t hang down her back. She was escorted to a padded mat and through hand gestures was made to understand she was supposed to kneel.

  She went to her knees.

  Maurizan heard one of the Moogari chanting in his strange tongue, and she glanced to the side, saw him arranging needles and bottles on a small table, a thick leather-bound book open next to him.

  Everything that had been relaxing about the bath vanished now. She remembered more of her mother and grandmother’s stories. The discomfort. The pain. The hot pinpricks down their spines. It was the price one paid for the Prime.

  The Moogari formed a circle around her, hands clasped in front of them, heads bowed reverently, all save the one who came up behind her, still muttering his incantations. When the first needle plunged into her soft skin at the nape of her neck, it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

  At last it was finished.

  Maurizan’s knees were sore, every muscle aching. For a time, she thought it would go on forever, the fire beneath her skin as the Moogari sewed a trail of pain down her spine with the tattooing needle. They all stood back from her now, the one who’d worked the needle motioning for her to stand.

  She tried it and almost failed, legs shaking, her whole body trembling with the strain. Her mother had tried to warn her, but nothing could have prepared the gypsy for the sheer physical toll. And yet . . .

  When she stood, she sensed something.

  Something on the horizon of her consciousness. Something so close. If she could just . . . reach out . . . and . . .

  Maurizan tapped into the spirit.

  Power flooded through her, filling her, lifting her. Perfect awareness threatened to overwhelm her, and yet she could control it. Through sheer willpower, she was the perfect master of herself. Every smell, every sound, every sight. Her mind arranged it and made a perfect picture of the world around her.

  She heard light footfalls behind her, bare feet on the grit of the floor, and could tell from the weight distribution and the rhythm of the movement that it wasn’t one of the Moogari. She turned, knowing it was Kristos.

  Maurizan was aware of her own nudity, and somewhere distant feelings of embarrassment reared. These feelings weren’t useful, though, and she made them go away.

  “You’re tapped in now, aren’t you?” Kristos said. “You feel it.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ve given you the other ones too, I see,” he said. “The three stripes and the fish.”

  “Yes.”

  The Moogari had tattooed three stripes like gills on the left side of her throat and a small fanciful fish on each of her ankles. They were identical to the Fish Man’s tattoos.

  Kristos dropped the wrap from around his waist. “Come. Let’s try them out.”

  He turned and sprinted down the corridor. Maurizan followed, running effortlessly.

  She had previously considered herself an athletic person. She trained with the other gypsies with the daggers just like all of them did from the time they were old enough to hold the blades, ducking, dodging, spinning, striking. She’d thought herself quick and graceful.

  Now Maurizan could barely recognize that slow, clumsy woman she used to be. She sprinted after the Fish Man, running faster—running better—than she ever had. It wasn’t that she had tattoos that specifically made her stronger or faster like Rina had. It was a perfect understanding of herself, knowing exactly where to place her foot with each stride, how each muscle worked to propel her, the perfect posture, controlled breathing. Her body was a tool she’d not even half known how to use before.

  She smelled the salt water even before turning the corner. The hallway slanted down into a dark pool.

  Kristos, without breaking stride, ran until he reached the edge of the pool and then launched himself like a spear, diving into the water and disappearing below the surface with hardly any splash at all.

  Maurizan didn’t hesitate, diving in after him.

  She sped through the water with ease, naturally, as if she were born to. The fish tattoos tingled on her ankles. The gill tattoo pulsed with each breath. She effortlessly glided after Kristos toward a patch of light ahead of them. A second later, they emerged from the ruined sorcerer’s stronghold into open sea.

  They swam side by side, two feet below the surface of the water, the sun glittering on the waves above. Kristos smiled at her, and she felt herself smiling back. He pointed down and took off for the depths, indicating she should follow.

  Maurizan sliced through the water like a harpoon, grinning madly. Excitement built in her, and she welcomed it.

  A second later, she and Kristos hovered within a school of fish, thousands of them each about the size of her hand, bright blue scales with golden stripes catching the sunlight from above. They swirled around her. She floated weightless, caught in the dream.

  Maurizan remembered her mother warning her about staying tapped into the spirit for too long. How she could use herself up if she were careless or greedy. But now that she had the Prime and held the spirit, she couldn’t see how she’d ever lived without it, how normal people stumbled through their drab gray lives. She drank in the spirit until she overflowed with it. Just a few minutes longer.

  Just a little bit more.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Brasley rolled over and opened his eyes. It was very much the same as having his eyes closed. He tried to blink the darkness away and failed.

  Then he remembered where he was.

  Ah, yes. The delightful pitch-dark place with the sealed door at the top of the shaft with the wrecked lift. He felt around in the darkness. He’d set the lantern close the night before, but he was still disoriented and his groping couldn’t find it at first. There’d been talk of leaving it on, but of course they couldn’t risk burning through the fuel so quickly. Even on the darkest winter night in the middle of a forest, there’d been a glimmer of starlight. The darkness in the enclosed heights of the Great Library was so complete Brasley would actually have been impressed if he hadn’t been so certain he was going to die here.

  In the occasional morbid moments he imagined his own death, it was usually something like a dagger tossed into his back by an angry husband as he climbed out of his wife’s bedroom window.

  Or falling into a nice long sleep after far too much wine and never waking up again.

  Not trapped in the Great Library of Tul-Agnon to rot slowly in the dark.

  He found the lantern and lit it. The others were already sitting up, clearly waiting for him to conclude his fumbling.

  “I presume everyone had a comfortable night on the cold stone floor?” The bedrolls Brasley had purchased when outfitting the expedition might as well have been drawn on the floor with chalk for all the comfort they provided.

  Brasley set the lantern in the center of the landing and fed Titan a handful of oats and then rationed the animal a bit of water. Then he went to the lift shaft and looked inside. It was still ruined, not that he’d expected anything different.

  “We might have enough rope to climb down to the next level,” he said.

  Talbun tsked behind him, and Brasley could sense her rolling her eyes. They’d already had this conversation the previous evening, and nobody had liked the climbing-down-the-shaft option. After yesterday’s spectacular smashing of the lift and the subsequent pounding the shaft took as the debris plummeted, ricocheting off the sides as it went, there was legitimate doubt about the shaft’s stability. Tying a rope to the wrong support beam might result in a long, lethal drop.

  Then there was the goat and the cart. Lowering them by rope would be problematic at best. At worst . . . well, Brasley pictured their mangled bodies in a bloody heap at the bottom of the shaft with the goat and cart on top of them.

  So climbing down the shaft was out, and that left the door.

/>   The sealed door.

  With who knew what sort of perilous instant death on the other side.

  He sighed. He didn’t want to be here. He missed Fregga.

  The shadows shifted, and Brasley turned to see Talbun holding the lantern up to the seal again, squinting at it with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.

  “Nothing’s going to change no matter how much we stall and think it over,” she said. “We go inside. Today. Now.”

  Brasley raised a finger. “Point of order. What about instead of now, later? And instead of open the door, have breakfast?”

  “Brasley!”

  “Okay, okay.” He turned to the guide. “Any last-minute advice before we open the dangerous door of mystery, Olgen?”

  Olgen started, surprised to be included in the conversation. “Me? I’m not even supposed to be here.”

  Brasley smiled. It was difficult, but he did it. “Nevertheless. If something on the other side of the door turns out to be the sort of thing that might kill us, I imagine that would include you regardless of the fact that, as you say, you’re not supposed to be here. Thus it would behoove you, as a matter of self-preservation, to relate to us any tidbits of information you might think relevant to the current situation.”

  “Well.” Olgen cleared his throat. “I mean, it could be anything in there. No one from the university has ever been this far up into the Great Library, at least no one that’s lived to return and tell about it. The Great Library is the most ancient puzzle in the world.”

  “So to sum up,” Brasley said. “We should prepare ourselves for anything that’s ever been known or imagined, mundane or magical, animal, vegetable, or mineral in the last thousand years or so.”

  “Just so, milord.”

  Brasley drew his sword and looked at Talbun. “Proceed.”

  She passed her hand over the seal, mumbling arcane words. Pinpoints of cold blue light danced and jerked over the seal like insects looking for a way to burrow inside.

  Olgen stepped forward, wonder on his face. “You’re a spell caster? I didn’t know you—”

  Brasley put a gentle hand on his shoulder and eased him back. “Give her room, boy.”

  Olgen stepped back.

  There was a sharp pop, more felt than heard, and Talbun had to scramble away quickly as the chains clattered to the floor. The seal tumbled from the door in pieces, acrid smoke rising from it.

  “What happened?” Brasley said.

  “An opening spell,” Talbun said. “A powerful one. Sort of all purpose. Like I said before, the seal was meant to keep something in, not us out. Otherwise, I don’t think I could have broken it. The magic felt . . . old. And very strong.”

  There was a muffled whumf and a sucking sound as the doors swung outward, eddies of air swirling around them. The temperature seemed to drop suddenly, and Brasley shuddered at a sudden chill. When the doors stood wide, Talbun lifted the lantern and entered. Brasley swallowed hard, sword in hand, and followed, Olgen in tow.

  They halted a dozen paces inside the doorway, the black floor smooth as glass spreading out ahead of them. The chamber in which they found themselves was so large, the lantern light touched neither the walls nor the ceiling. The three of them stood on a small island of dim illumination in the vast darkness.

  Brasley’s palm was sweaty on his sword hilt. I wish whatever was going to jump out and eat my face would just get on with it. The suspense is killing me.

  A flicker of light overhead. Their heads snapped up. Another flicker. Faint. More flickers off to the sides. Slowly the lights brightened. Enormous glass globes hung from the vaulted ceilings. What seemed to be flakes swirled in a frenzied circle within each sphere like a tiny blizzard, the glow increasing with the agitation. The globes extended a hundred yards to the right and left and ahead of them, illuminating wide hallways of highly polished back stone.

  Carved into the walls down both sides of each hallway were rectangular indentions like large picture frames without the pictures, six feet high and three feet wide. The halls were dust free and perfect, no sign of the deterioration they’d seen elsewhere in the Great Library.

  Talbun stared up at the globes, mouth agape.

  “A spell?” Brasley asked.

  “Several spells, I would imagine,” Talbun said. “Something to energize the particles in the globes. A spell that detects when people walk in and then turns on the lights. Another to preserve everything for centuries. That’s just off the top of my head. But that’s not the most amazing part. I’m wondering why, in a place where rust and dust rule, these halls are completely unblemished.”

  Brasley looked around. In the full light of the globes, he could see that the halls of gleaming black stone indeed looked brand new. Nothing was dirty or had fallen into disrepair. It didn’t have the look of a place that had been abandoned for centuries, as if they arrived mere seconds after the cleaning staff had departed. Even the old, musty smell was absent here.

  “I don’t think the seal was just a seal on the door, on this place,” Talbun said. “I think it was a seal on time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have—had—a spell that created a time bubble,” she said. “This might be similar, although much more powerful obviously. I think time has been frozen here, preserving this place until somebody came along.”

  Brasley frowned. “But why would somebody preserve an empty—”

  The sliding sound of stone on stone stopped him short. All the rectangles lining the walls were doorways, and they were sliding to one side, revealing darkened passages behind them.

  A second later, scores of people scurried out of all the new doorways.

  People might not have been the right word.

  They were all clearly female but just as clearly not quite human. They were all the same height, about half a head shorter than Brasley. Skin as white and as clear as milk, hair a coppery red, glinting metallic beneath the glow of the globes. Their features were odd, eyes completely black, noses pressed just a little too flat, mouth a tad too wide. They weren’t all exactly identical, but the variations were so slight, they might as well have been.

  They wore black shirts of some shimmering material and matching pants hemmed at the ankles. No shoes.

  At the sight of the milk-skinned women swarming the halls, Brasley, Talbun, and Olgen drew together in a tight circle. Talbun drew the short dagger from her belt. Olgen hadn’t brought a proper weapon, but he held the pry bar in front of him ready to whack anything that got too close. Even the goat took up a defensive position.

  “What in blazes are they?” Brasley said.

  “You think I know?” Talbun snapped.

  “Olgen?”

  “Sorry, milord. Nothing about them in any of my university texts.”

  “They don’t seem hostile.” Talbun lowered her dagger. “They don’t actually seem to notice us at all.”

  They fell into lines, groups breaking off and going one way or another up and down the halls, bare feet slapping on the smooth floor.

  One of the women broke off from one of the groups and approached Brasley and the others. She had three white stripes circling her left sleeve, and he wondered if it were some indication of rank. She stopped four feet from Brasley, bowed deeply, and spit out a string of words in a language he’d never heard before.

  “Okay, what do I do now?” he asked.

  “Wait,” Talbun said. “It sounds familiar. Almost like Fyrian.”

  “We’re a long way from Fyria,” Brasley said.

  “It’s said that all sorcery began in Fyria,” Talbun said. “As a result, all spell casters study the language. But I speak fluent Fyrian, and I’m not really catching what she said. It just sounds so tantalizingly familiar.”

  “Begging your pardon, milady,” Olgen said. “But the language might be ancient Fyrian.”

  “I’ve just told you, I speak Fyrian,” the wizard said.

  “I mean ancient Fyrian, milady.”

  “
I know it’s an ancient language,” Talbun said sharply. “I speak it. Have you gone deaf?”

  Olgen blanched. “My apologies, but I mean a language that predates Fyrian, spoken by the first dwellers in Fyria who in later centuries would become the Fyrians we know today.”

  Talbun’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “I would never have known either, milady,” Olgen said, placating. “My studies of the ink magic led me to it. Old Tohler, the master of languages and dialects, showed me the precious few tomes the university has on the subject.” The guide’s voice took on an academic tone, as if he were delivering a lecture. “Evidently the first wizards to create magical tattoos needed words more elemental, closer to the properties the tattoo was attempting to duplicate, and it’s believed that ancient Fyrian is likely the first spoken language on the entire—”

  “Hey,” Brasley interrupted. “This is all very fascinating, but I think the young lady expects some sort of reply.”

  Talbun sighed. “Can you speak it?” she asked Olgen.

  Olgen’s eyebrows went up. “Speak it?”

  “Aloud,” Brasley said. “With your mouth.”

  “I’ve only ever read it,” Olgen admitted. “Maybe?”

  “Try,” Talbun said.

  Olgen cleared his throat. A pause. Then: “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell her we’d like some wine while we browse the menu,” Brasley suggested.

  “Can you be serious?” Talbun said.

  But it was too late. Olgen was already translating, stumbling through the syntax, groping for vocabulary.

  “What are you doing?” Talbun said. “Don’t take that idiot seriously.”

  Olgen shrank from her, abashed. Brasley frowned.

  The copper-haired woman with the stripes on her sleeve jabbered frantically, and three nearly identical women fell out of the line jogging past to scamper in three different directions. Additional jabbering from the one in the stripes, and a dozen more scurried in seemingly random lines away from her, bare feet like a summer rain shower on the smooth floor.

  “What did you tell her?” Talbun asked.

  “Only what Baron Hammish asked me to,” Olgen said. “I think. I told you, I’ve never spoken ancient Fyrian out loud.”