by James Stone
The Girl and the Goddess
Book One of
A Lamentation of Fates
By
James D. Stone
The Girl and the Goddess
Copyright © 2018 by James D. Stone
All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be produced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organisations is entirely coincidental.
First edition published 2018 by James D. Stone
Cover artwork by Edoardo Taloni
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The Known East
~Part One~
One
Praying was easy. Hearing the answer was always harder. And each time the girl prayed, she would feel a warm hand brush across her scalp, though when she looked up, there would never be anyone there but the snow. And that was seeming like the only response she’d ever get.
A myriad of thorny trees stood tall around her and blotted out the clouds above, all while fresh snow fell to the grass and snapped beneath her feet. But the tree she knelt before was different from the others. It had been a place of worship as its trunk split in half, stretching up to the sky like a mother’s legs as she gave birth. But the girl had always just thought it looked pretty.
‘Let’s go back,’ her friend Jayce had once said under that same tree, a lifetime ago when there was something still of a willowy blonde left in her. ‘I don’t like it here. It’s damn cold.’
It had been summer then and in truth, it had been damn cold. But the girl hadn’t wanted to hear that.
‘Leave then,’ she had said, wishing her away.
It turned out that had been the only wish of hers to come true. She’d only kept Jayce around because she’d laughed at her jokes, but her father had run away to the Free-Peoples, taking his daughter with him.
‘You’ll catch a chill!’
‘Don’t be such a bitch,’ she had called back with something of glee (bitch had been a new word at the time, and she’d liked the way it tasted when she said it) and stomped briskly about the muddy grass.
‘I’m not—’ Jayce stuttered in that shiny red dress of hers. ‘You don’t know the meaning of afraid! You’ve never even seen a cold siren,’ she huffed.
‘And you have?’ she’d spat back, dropped to her knees and prayed that pretty face of hers would disappear.
In hindsight, that wish had come true too.
And it was under that same tree she prayed still. She’d never prayed for good things then, but they were all she prayed for now. She thought to her little brother, Rache, and found herself praying for him too. ‘Gods give me the cure,’ she said as she had every day before, but each time she returned to the palace, her brother was still a cripple.
She felt her mind wandering to her father, to Kharon Vorr, and prayed for him as well, but in a different sort of way, she supposed. He was the chancellor of her home, the city of Orianne, and very much a cock, so she prayed he’d have the decency to fall ill.
She even prayed for her bastard brother, Albany Moore.
She’d only been five years old when he was born, but she could still remember his mother—she’d seemed so warm and kind, not at all like the woman who came to besmirch her family. Perhaps that was why she and her false brother had never got along; she loved Rache to the end of the earths, but ever since she’d become a woman-grown, she’d always thought Albany was vulgar. Perhaps the gods could’ve had a hand at fixing that too.
She picked herself up and looked out to the starless skies, wondering if anyone would answer.
Oh; she’d forgotten—there was one more to make.
She considered praying that she wouldn’t have to be sent off to fight in whatever Kharon’s next war would be, but she found herself quickly changing her mind. He’d often said the nameless gods favoured the warriors and frowned upon the cowards, and she was tempted to believe him. Best not, she decided, even if they weren't real.
Besides, like with Rache, she’d prayed a thousand times before, and the world was yet to do her a favour. When she’d been a child, she’d attended communion every second week, and there she had prayed and prayed and prayed, and when that hadn’t worked, she had spent every second she had alone praying too. Not anymore, she told herself, but not a moment later, she clasped her hands together again.
‘Take me south,’ was the last thing she said before she forced herself to stand. It’s a pathetic dream, she told herself, the only ones in the north who still have any ships are the Tyla, and gods know they can’t care less for the south.
Albany’s mother had been a southerner, though—and everyone in the north wanted to fuck a woman from the south, her uncle had said. And when they had arrived in that galleon all those years ago, her uncle had been proved right.
The girl collected herself and cavorted through the frost, the mountain air prickling her chin.
She studied the roses as she passed them, fragile things like untreated wounds—the bloody symbol of her city. She followed the trees as they crept up the hills until they met the brass spires and great glass towers which spanned the skies above. It wouldn’t be long before she reached the pond where nobody could find her, lost in an orchard left to rot.
Magmaya Vorr smiled the same way a caged bird took flight.
It was here when the hail grew tired, and the geese wandered, she could at last just breathe in the thin air while the jagged moss and twisted roots eclipsed her from the clockwork city above. And when she was finished, she’d return home before a soul realised she’d gone amiss.
It was in the forest she would get the closest to hearing the maidens sing their sweet, sweet music she’d so longed to hear and watch the multi-coloured lights overhead which she had so longed to watch. But she had lost herself here.
Now each time she visited, the waters in the pond appeared to shrink while her reflection grew larger. And in it, the pale moonlight stripped her eyes that insisted on ageing faster than she did; after all, her youth had come with all the delicacy of the old, chipped paintings that stared down from Kharon’s boardroom.
The ice startled her as it glistened and rumbled, small bubbles creeping to its surface and fish, too, dead from a mid-winter spawning. From the pond, a valley cut between the trees, beyond the Silver Mountainside and into the night her people called the enemy. She was inclined to believe them—there were places farther north no one had ever dared to travel, save for barbarian tribes and electric-worshipping sorcerers who had all but disappeared.
Magmaya had only crossed out of the city’s grounds twice; once as a child riddled with intrigue and summer dare, and the next as stern, cold retaliation for being scolded for that first time. To Kharon’s dismay, she still dreamt of stealing a small boat and rowing herself across the Cold Seas and then perhaps even farther south to meet all the ‘fuckable’ ladies in their Silver Cities and then to whoever lay even farther south of them. She needn’t worry about not getting home either—they said if you travelled far enough south, you’d end up back where you started.
Besides, she didn’t want p
ennies, power or promiscuity—how hard was it for people to leave her alone? The nameless gods probably thought the same, she reminded herself, but people were always bothering them.
Magmaya skimmed the surface of the water again, following the incisions and imperfections where the barbs weaved through small cracks, gasping for a taste of the winter sun. She skirted around the edge of the frost and knelt beside them, her throat aching from the cold—she would’ve killed for some warm wine, but Kharon had taken all of that for himself.
She found herself reaching forward and snatching up a thorn. The spines tried to bite at her, latching themselves into her skin, but it was too fragile just to drop. It was the stem of a rose, but where the head should’ve been, grizzly entrails hung lank between her fingers, before a cusp of winter breeze tossed the limp thing away.
It joined the dead among a garden of roses, sewn into the snow and defying the winter.
No, they aren’t roses, she quickly realised.
Just a trail of petals remained, barely a day old as they still glowed like red summer wine. They rested on the freckles of frost, so precisely and intricately placed—nature could’ve never been so delicate.
As Magmaya followed them, her heart began to sink. She reached a small clearing where nothing grew, yet the petals sprouted like severed veins. There was even a mound in the clearing’s centre where they clustered, creeping out like encroaching tendrils.
But she wasn’t alone. There was a man with her. Some silvery man, laying cold in the frost. He was armoured with a floral tunic and a mess of golden hair, but his mouth had been forced open, rivers of frozen blood spilling down his cheeks and filling the reservoirs of his dimples. Where his eyes should have been, black crevices gaped, and bloodied rose petals blossomed.
The world around her grew loud, and snow began to pound the ground with a vengeance. She reached about to find a weapon that wasn’t there, gasping and stammering and shouting, but the cold of the night was suffocating.
What’s this I’m feeling? It hurt like new fire. It clouded her head like thick smoke.
And all around her, there was Jayce, screaming at her still, ‘Let’s go back,’ she said, again and again. ‘You don’t know the meaning of afraid,’ she’d told her. Now she damn well did.
The air seemed to disappear beneath her as she ran, the white branches above thirsting for her skin. The mountainside shivered while the humming city above her rose and fell, and Magmaya called and called and called before a brass bannister appeared up ahead, marking the edge of the forest.
And then there was a grey warmth against her chest as she forced herself forward. Yet the warmth’s grip proved sturdy, even as she kicked and screamed and spat.
Magmaya’s eyes stung, and her throat was dry; she must have looked like an unkempt crow.
Siedous Harluss was a fair and kind-looking man, though, not yet sixty, and yet, a certain cold persisted within him; he was one of Kharon’s advisors, a retired swordsman and the closest thing Magmaya had ever had to a friend. But he knew better than to hold her against him.
‘Magmaya?’ His voice was a bulwark against the snow. ‘What are you doing…?’
‘Siedous!’ Magmaya’s voice was rough and brittle. It hurt to speak. ‘Albany—he’s…! …Kharon’s bastard is dead.’
~ ~ ~
Brazen spires and onyx arches stood tall about the palace like the gods had placed them to perch on their tips and watch the world burn. The chandeliers above swayed under the pounding hail, while scowls of long-dead angels danced in the shimmering marble floors around him.
The same angels the southerners warned us about, the old knight remembered. Though we carved them into our ceilings before even they came.
There was tranquillity in admiring the artefacts about the hall that made Siedous wonder what exactly his purpose was. One moment he had been inspecting a defiled corpse, and the next, he appeared to have ascended through the gates into the heavens.
Some heaven, though, he thought as he looked at the grey skull on the podium; its fangs stood in rows like columns of soldiers, and its eye sockets buckled and warped under its jaw like a devilish thing. He wondered if such a beast had ever thought it would be a museum piece. Perhaps one day he would be too.
‘Beautiful? Don’t you agree?’
Siedous looked to the voice in surprise, almost having forgotten Nurcia was standing beside him. She looked at him plainly; she had the face of a woman who lived by a rule of discontent. Her hair ran long over her blue-grey dress, lined with draping furs which curled like dead hands around her neck. It was a rare sight to see her in the palace; she’d spent much of her recent time scouring the haunted Deadfields for some old relic buried beneath the ice. Whatever she found out there was a mystery, though; she was hesitant to tell anyone.
‘It’s lovely,’ he stuttered, scratching at his beard. ‘Yes, Kharon will be pleased. He made the right decision to have you decorate the halls.’
‘I’m most delighted.’ Nurcia smiled. She looked around, her elegance surpassing the saints above. ‘I do think it will help the chancellor recover from this week’s happenings, no?’
It had been a monstrous week in truth, only made worse by the investigation into Albany’s death. Seven men had been put on trial, and all seven of them had been forced to confess. But Kharon didn’t believe a single one, which only meant more board meetings for Siedous.
Not only that—the city had been crowded by shamans summoned from the Free-Peoples. They’d claimed they would get to the truth and through their rituals, give rest to Albany’s soul, but with each bloodied prayer, and with each silver turned to gold, Orianne just suffered more.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘He was a false-child, but Kharon loved him like a true son. I should’ve been there to find him.’
‘It was a tragedy.’ She nodded. ‘That forest has bewitched us—I say we burn it to the ground before any other conspiracies can start there. We must honour Albany’s death—he was our vessel to the south.’
‘If only I’d been there an hour earlier,’ he replied. ‘Or two hours, dammit! That southern woman—she—I would board the first ship to Kythera if I could—if ours could sail so far. I would drag her back here, so maybe I could make some sense of this all, I—’
‘My lord, I feel as though you’re speaking out of place.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He nodded. ‘It’s a lovely skull, but I can’t bear to think of dead things anymore—Albany—I—Now, if you would excuse me.’
He tried to shuffle away, though he couldn’t help but think of Magmaya. What if it had been her? What if she’d been there at the wrong time? He could hardly live with himself as it was.
‘Siedous!’ Nurcia called louder than she should’ve, averting the eyes of quiet preachers around the hall. ‘Before you leave, I pray you speak to me.’
‘About what?’ he grumbled.
‘About whatever you’re hiding from me.’
Siedous sighed. Then he said, ‘Come this way.’ His shoulders drooped.
The pair began stalking the empty halls riddled with candlelight. A harrowing silence seemed to wisp through the air, and despite his thick furs, Siedous felt the breeze. When he was certain no one else was in sight, he turned to her and explained, ‘This is bigger than you might think.’ His voice was brittle. ‘I’ve heard Kharon say he knows who killed Albany.’
‘My lord…’ Nurcia placed her hand on her breast. ‘Who…?’
‘The Mansel.’ Siedous heaved a sigh. ‘That’s what the chancellor told me, anyway. But he was drunk and threatened me not to speak of it—I do hope I have your confidence?’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘But how would he know?’
‘He said he found a letter containing the Vorr family tree with his children’s faces scratched off by Mansel runes. And, of course, the next morning Albany was found dead by Magmaya, eyes stolen and filled with rose petals. I think if anything, that con
firms it.’
‘I—!’ Nurcia looked around for some kind of comfort which didn’t present itself. ‘Did you see the letter?’
‘He said in a fit of rage he threw it in the fire.’ Siedous sighed.
Nurcia nodded. ‘And you’ve told no one else?’
‘Only you.’ Siedous bit his tongue. ‘If anyone finds out, Kharon will have our heads swinging bloody from the ramparts.’
‘I know.’ Nurcia frowned.
‘There’s more,’ he continued on. ‘The chancellor is planning a military display outside one of Mansel’s strongholds.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Nurcia said. ‘Is war not what they want?’
‘The chancellor plans to send a convoy of two-hundred men,’ Siedous said. ‘His broth—Lord Shalleous, is going to lead them, he says—along with—’ His heart ached. ‘Along with Magmaya.’
‘Two-hundred?’ Nurcia’s nose twitched. ‘Mansel strongholds are fortresses of iron barbs. Vargul Tul is at their feet! Perhaps the old masters could’ve faced them down, but Magmaya? She’s scarcely a girl who played swords with you. She’s never fought.’
‘If this escalates, we will lose the heirs to Orianne,’ he said. ‘We risk even the city itself. The Mansel are savages, they won’t stop for a minute to consider backing down. It was your home they took, you know better than any—’
‘I know, I know,’ she cut in. ‘Are you sure he’s sending Magmaya?’
‘Yes,’ he said, flustered. ‘She’s only a few years past womanhood! She has scarcely left the city before, dammit.’
‘We must have faith in our chancellor, still.’ Nurcia swallowed. ‘Perhaps through all of this, he wants to strengthen our city.’
‘I fear he has no intention of strengthening the city—he wants to break it,’ Siedous groaned. ‘If what he says is true about the Mansel, then something must be done. But not like this. Not with Magmaya. If they see it as an invasion, she’ll die.’
