When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Elenai was glad she hadn’t seen that. She’d have enough mental scars from Meria’s death.

  M’vai choked back a sob and Thelar put a hand to her shoulder.

  Tesra continued. “Maybe she’ll restore them when she restores the realms. That’s what the queen said would happen to the people in Darassus.”

  “What lovely hearsay.” Kyrkenall spoke with barbed emphasis, and Cerai grinned. “I guess we should bear witness to more of the rantings of a deluded despot who caused the deaths of thousands? Thank you, no. I’ve heard enough religious crap to last me a lifetime.”

  But Tesra wouldn’t relent. “The Goddess might have hurt them because she thought she was being attacked. What if she was defending herself?”

  “Would you please shut up?” Kyrkenall asked.

  N’lahr raised both hands in a calming gesture before anyone else could speak. Elenai couldn’t help noticing that the left hand trembled. The commander stared at it without comment, then lowered his hands to the table. “This isn’t helpful.” He returned his attention to Cerai. “As to the Goddess. Our Gods killed her once. She was at full strength then. I don’t think she is now. Can we find the power to fight her?”

  Cerai eyed him for a moment, as if uncertain how she should respond. A pair of servants arrived with platters of wine decanters and goblets, and she watched in silence as they set everything down on the table before them. She shooed the servants away, then addressed her guests. “Please. Help yourselves. Food should be here shortly. N’lahr, you’ve beaten me to the thrust. I don’t know how I could have forgotten how quickly you pinpoint the weak spot.”

  Seeing the hesitance with which everyone considered the goblets, Cerai reached out and poured a drink for herself. She then set the decanter in front of the commander.

  While everyone sparingly served themselves, Cerai swirled the wine in her goblet and conspicuously consumed half its contents. She lowered it. “I’ve built my realm to not only withstand hearthstone magics, but to absorb them. I was expecting to deal with the energy of a realms-ending explosion, mind you, not a concentrated attack from a living deity, but my realm is far more resistant to the entity’s magics than any other.”

  Elenai sipped and discovered not wine, but chilled sunberry juice.

  “So you’re suggesting we make a stand here,” N’lahr guessed.

  “You are correct again. I need the help of skilled mages to bolster my defenses. And the keen eye of a tactician wouldn’t hurt, either.” She inclined her head to N’lahr. “With the right preparations, I think we can succeed in destroying this goddess when she gets here. Furthermore, I know where to find the device originally used to fracture her consciousness.”

  “A weapon was used?” Elenai asked. She had assumed that their Gods had used their inborn abilities to kill the Goddess. Only a few days before, Cerai had told them how the Gods of the realms had banded together to kill their own mother, the Creator Goddess, when she had decided to destroy the realms to fashion something more to her liking.

  N’lahr spoke a single word, sharply. “Explain.”

  “The people we used to call Gods crafted a weapon specifically designed to rip apart one of the most powerful beings that has ever existed.”

  “How do you know?” Rylin asked. Elenai thought it an excellent question.

  “I’ve had access to almost all the memory stones ultimately surrendered to Leonara, and one or two I reserved for my own use. It’s a shame I didn’t get the keystone before she did. But no matter.” Cerai paused to sip from her goblet.

  Why hadn’t she mentioned this when she and Kyrkenall were here the last time? Elenai had a hard time holding her tongue, as she guessed N’lahr would advise.

  “You said you knew where to find it,” Kyrkenall said.

  Cerai smiled at him. “The Gods hid it, of course, like the frightened children they were. You can’t really destroy a being of this magnitude, you see. The energy’s still there, just in a different form, and they were afraid she might come back together. So they wanted the weapon usable if they had to wield it again. Yet it was too dangerous to simply leave lying around.”

  Cerai all too obviously enjoyed drawing out the anticipation of her audience.

  Kyrkenall hadn’t the patience. “So where is it?”

  “Safe within ‘a place of order, hidden by chaos.’” Cerai finished as if her statement had rendered everything perfectly clear. She appeared to be quoting something and Elenai decided not to ask, anticipating it would just lead Cerai to toy with them longer.

  “Why don’t we get past the riddles, and get down to business, Cerai,” Kyrkenall suggested.

  “I doubt it’s just randomly lying around in the Shifting Lands,” Cerai said. “A lot of the fragments didn’t even exist when the Gods fought. I think the people we thought were Gods would have wanted to hide the weapon some place more permanent, a place they already knew. I think it’s hidden in one of the five realms they themselves created.”

  “That’s lot of territory,” Kyrkenall said.

  “Yes. I was flummoxed for a long while.”

  For the first time in days, Elenai experienced a faint light-headedness and a spiraling of her vision. And then multiple futures stretched before her: she and Kyrkenall gliding over a field of brown dunes on the back of ko’aye, she and Kyrkenall easing across desert flats upon a huge land treader, she and Kyrkenall leading flagging horses through a canyon. None of these, though, were right, and the threads pulled onward and past a blur of other possibilities and permutations until she experienced one of herself beside Kyrkenall, upon his faithful Lyria, riding past high mounded sand dunes, then standing upon a rocky upthrust of ground. A ruddy mountain with a cracked peak rose in the distance, above the surrounding desert. Closer at hand a floppy-eared kobalin jumped joyously up and down while shaking a longish object.

  Before she could scrutinize what he held, she was sitting once more at the table; the moment passed as though it had been a dream. She blinked and steadied herself by gripping the edge. She’d never been to that place, but she had studied the geography of the five realms and knew what region she had glimpsed.

  Cerai was talking: “… a safe, orderly place, with a hiding screen of chaos. Do you see? And then I got a look at all the maps the Gods left on the keystone. Do you know what’s not in the keystone?”

  “The wastelands of Kanesh,” Elenai said.

  It pleased her to see the utter bafflement upon Cerai’s face. Those finely sculpted eyebrows twitched as the renegade alten strove to master a display of curiosity. “What an astute guess,” she said. “How did you come to make it?”

  Elenai wished she knew the answer. A few weeks ago she had thought these glimpses of future were due to her attunement with Rialla’s old hearthstone. More recently she had begun to think Rialla herself had been sending her nudges toward the best path, via that same hearthstone. But the stone was shattered and drained and Rialla vanished, likely dead for good now. “I’m an intuitive guesser,” Elenai said, and was further pleased by Cerai’s frown.

  “Well, you’re right,” Cerai said. “The wastelands aren’t part of the map on the keystone. I think they were added to the realm afterward, as a place to hide the weapon.”

  “That doesn’t narrow a search area by much,” Thelar said. “The wastelands themselves are immense. And difficult to travel. Do you have an idea in what section it might be hidden?”

  Almost, Elenai volunteered that she knew, but she felt she had drawn too much attention to herself already.

  “I think a mage familiar with hearthstones might be able to sense the weapon, though the search will have its challenges. The weapon’s going to feel almost like the absence of a hearthstone. If you know what to look for, it could stand out. It also will require a good bit of luck to find it quickly.” Her gaze shifted to Kyrkenall. “You have a marked ability for achieving the impossible. I thought I might send you and a dozen of my best men. They’re all sensitive to magic. You can
take one of your mages with you, if you like, but I’ll need the bulk of them to further fortify the magics here.”

  “I volunteer,” Elenai said, not to Cerai, but N’lahr.

  He saw her steadfast look and surely knew that there was more to it. He nodded once.

  “You want to search hundreds of miles of wasteland with only a dozen men and a single mage?” Rylin asked, sounding insulted by the obvious absurdity.

  “You clearly understand why I haven’t attempted the search before,” Cerai said. “But then, I didn’t have Kyrkenall.”

  It occurred to Elenai that Cerai might have expended energy on a portal solely to scoop up her favorite alten so he could go fetch for her. But hadn’t Rialla said something about using the portal to siphon energy, as well?

  N’lahr closed his hand, no longer shaking, around the stem of the goblet. He looked across the table to Elenai. “Do you think Drusa and Lelanc will want to accompany you?”

  She shook her head. “No. We’ll have to ride. The question is how we’ll get there. I assume you mean to send us through a portal, Cerai?” Strange, she thought, to call her so casually by her first name when they weren’t friends. She no longer thought of the woman as an alten, though, and she’d be damned before she referred to her as “goddess.”

  Cerai took no umbrage and answered easily. “That was my thought.”

  “How will we get back?” Elenai asked.

  “Contact me with a hearthstone. I’ll have to loan you one of mine. And you’ll need supplies.”

  N’lahr answered for them. “Yes.”

  Kyrkenall looked first to Elenai, then to N’lahr, opening his mouth as if to ask a question. Then he wisely shut it.

  “I just don’t understand,” M’vai blurted out. As the entire table shifted their attention to her, she pushed back her hair, not as someone aware of a poor state of grooming, but as though she pressed in upon her head to keep something terrible at bay. “The plan worked. We got to the queen before she started opening the hearthstones. When we killed her there were only forty or fifty of them still open. A bunch of them weren’t even connected, and the body of the Goddess was shattered into pieces. It shouldn’t have worked!”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Tesra agreed. “The queen was certain we needed almost every piece of her in the proper order for the Goddess to return.”

  “Well,” Cerai said, and cleared her throat. She waited until that had drawn all of the attention to her end of the table. “It wouldn’t have mattered if Leonara had put them together as a likeness or arranged them like a giant hat. Once she had enough in one place and started opening them, the end result was going to be the same; they’d start feeding on each other. You might have been able to stop the process if you’d closed them faster, but it was probably a foregone conclusion.”

  “You knew that?” Tesra asked. “Why didn’t you say something to us about it? We wasted years!”

  “That was rather the point,” Cerai said. “Leonara just wasn’t very bright, and I needed to buy some time.”

  Kyrkenall snorted, then let out a hearty laugh. “You suggested arranging them in a statue to her, didn’t you?”

  “I may have,” Cerai admitted with a sly smile, and Kyrkenall laughed once more, not looking remotely awkward despite the fact no one else but Cerai appeared the least bit amused. Rylin and N’lahr sat stone-faced. The three exalts stared at Cerai in a mix of disgust and astonishment.

  “Perhaps you should further explain what you’ve learned of hearthstone magics to our spell casters so they can assist your defensive improvements,” N’lahr said. “I need to get these two ready for their journey.” He indicated Kyrkenall and Elenai.

  Cerai hesitated, then seemed to decide she was getting what she wished. “I’ll have the servants ready travel supplies, and horses.”

  While she reached behind her to pull a black bell cord, N’lahr looked across the table. “Tesra, I hope you’re with us in this. If not, you will not be harmed, but you’ll have to surrender until this conflict is at an end.”

  The dark-haired woman licked her lips and lowered her head.

  “She’ll come around,” Cerai said as she faced forward once more. “It’s a difficult adjustment, but she can see where her future lies. Can’t you, Tesra?” Cerai favored her with a smile that didn’t touch her eyes.

  The exalt nodded without looking up and Elenai felt a twinge of pity for her.

  “Kyrkenall, why don’t you three do your scheming in my reception hall?” Cerai asked. “The one with the fish. I’ll get the rest of what you need together and meet you in the stables. I’m sure you’ll want to be off as soon as possible.”

  N’lahr gave her a polite head bow as he climbed to his feet. Against her own inclination, Elenai did the same. Only Kyrkenall traded salutes. To Thelar’s troubled glance Elenai gave a tight smile she hoped was reassuring, and then she was following the commander and Kyrkenall from the room.

  N’lahr strode right past the reception hall and exited the building. He paused in the sunlight and looked out across the courtyard with its scattered shade trees. The slope-roofed stable was built against the wall opposite them. The commander stood in contemplation of it and then walked across a flagstone path that led to a large well and a small, single-story thatched-roof building beside it.

  Kyrkenall spoke quietly as they left the fortress. “You had another vision?” he asked Elenai.

  “I did.”

  “And you didn’t want to meet in her reception hall because you thought her people might be listening?” Kyrkenall asked of N’lahr.

  “And because I want to keep her off step.” N’lahr stopped at the side of the well and looked up at the battlements, where Cerai’s nearly identical and nearly shirtless men patrolled.

  N’lahr tried the door on the little outbuilding. It opened to him, and Elenai looked past to find an orderly hut with table and chairs. The walls were built of removable panels to convert the structure into a shaded outdoor eating area. It smelled faintly of newly stained wood and candle wax.

  N’lahr motioned them in after him, then closed the door. Sunlight strayed only feebly between the wood slats.

  Elenai didn’t feel like sitting. Kyrkenall lowered himself onto the edge of the table and faced his friend.

  “How are you feeling?” Elenai asked.

  “Not entirely well,” N’lahr admitted. “But I’m right enough for the moment, and my condition’s not something you can do anything about.”

  “You want to be more specific?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “I’m feeling some hearthstone effects.”

  “I should look at you,” Elenai said. “You took the full brunt of the queen’s attack.”

  “Yes. And I’m sure I’d be dead twice over if Varama hadn’t linked the rings, even with Irion in my hands.”

  “It may have accelerated your condition,” Elenai said. “I should really—”

  He cut her off with a chopping motion of his hand. “Save your strength. Thelar or Rylin will help. Now tell me what you saw, and quickly.”

  Understanding N’lahr’s haste, she recounted her vision.

  “I’m not entirely sure how I feel about having you rely on what I saw,” she said afterward, “but it seems like the other visions have led me true, regardless of where they came from.”

  “You haven’t steered us wrong yet,” Kyrkenall said.

  “I know,” Elenai agreed. “I just wish I knew where these glimpses of the future were coming from. It can’t be Rialla though, right? If she were still alive, she’d make herself known like she did before, wouldn’t she?”

  “If she were alive she’d simply be resetting the game board,” N’lahr said. “We have to assume she’s gone. I trusted her too far.”

  “You don’t think you can trust her?” Kyrkenall sounded shocked.

  “I took her at her word, like she was a seasoned scout. Like she was a seasoned alten. But she wasn’t. She was still the same person we knew all thos
e years ago.” He paused, as if to decide how to explain. “When Rialla was faced with a problem, she planted herself solidly and hammered at it. She was never flexible under stress. You heard her. She told Varama she’d waged the battle with the queen four times. We have no memory of her doing that. Do you know what that must mean?”

  Elenai had found little time to consider any of Rialla’s recent statements.

  Kyrkenall summarized: “She’s erasing potential futures so they never happened. Like wiping down a chalkboard.”

  “Exactly,” N’lahr said. “The clues were there, before Varama even explained it. But it didn’t occur to me to rethink the situation until Rialla spoke to us at the portal. I worried about the wrong things.”

  Kyrkenall was gently mocking. “You mean like planning the tactics that would have won the battle against anything but a god?”

  “I missed something crucial, but there’s a chance you two can make it right. If Rialla is still alive in her time and she returns to speak with you, you have to convince her to speak to us years earlier. She could have popped in as a spirit that night she lay dying, and warned Kyrkenall about everything.”

  “You don’t know she can do that,” Elenai said.

  “I don’t know that she can’t,” N’lahr said with uncharacteristic venom, and Elenai saw it was self-directed. “I didn’t ask. Varama said Rialla had just over six hours. If she spent all of it trying to stop Kyrkenall from falling off a dragon, then running the battle with the queen over and over, I doubt she took a lot of time to reflect upon other possibilities. But we must. I should have seen it.”

  He was being too hard on himself. “You did the best you could, with the information you had,” she said. “You can’t—”

  He talked over her. “I don’t want your absolution. I want you to learn.” He paused and locked eyes with her, ascertaining he truly had her attention. In all the days she’d known him, no matter the challenges of the situation, he’d never been so forceful. “A leader always has to think, deeply, before acting. I didn’t do that. I focused on my specialties. My preferences. A good leader can’t afford to be so limited. You can’t necessarily choose the ground where you’ll fight, but you can understand the ground that you have to use.” N’lahr paused to put the right words together. “If all of your advisors keep handing you rope, you might forget you can build a ladder. Or invent a better way to climb. You have to keep thinking.”