When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Reunions

  “Maybe she’s just going to pass right over us,” Elenai said.

  The Goddess drifted ever nearer. Kyrkenall made a counter speculation. “Maybe she’s going to take vengeance.”

  “You always were an optimist.”

  Kyrkenall chuckled. He gripped his sword hilt, released it, then placed his hand upon it again. “I’d like it to be said I died with my sword in hand, even if it does seem kind of pointless.” He drew Lothrun with a flourish. “Not that there’s likely to be anyone who’ll find us.”

  “The sword.” Elenai said with growing horror. “There’s hearthstone energy in Lothrun. And in your bow. They were all crafted with hearthstone magics.”

  “You think that’s what she’s after?” Kyrkenall’s brows climbed his forehead in dismay.

  The dark goddess loomed gigantically as she advanced, the white road growing beneath her.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Kyrkenall swore, then looked at his sword, a beautiful blade of blue-black steel tapering to a curve. He then advanced down the slope to lay it reverently on the rocks.

  The Goddess had advanced to within a few hundred feet. Elenai could see her eyes now, or where her eyes would have been visible if they were not perfect black orbs. Much, she thought, like Kyrkenall’s own. The deity’s expression remained utterly blank.

  Kyrkenall lifted his famed bow from the holster over his shoulder and even from behind Elenai felt the breath leave him as he lovingly brushed the intricately carved warriors battling on its surface.

  He looked almost as broken as a man abandoning his child to oncoming flames when he laid the great bow upon the stones beside the blade. He stood over them both as the Goddess drew closer and closer yet, now only fifty feet off, towering over them. Kyrkenall bowed his head.

  “Get back here,” Elenai cried, and he hurried to her side. They retreated to the cave mouth as the Goddess halted above the weapons.

  She raised two perfect palms at the same moment. Elenai searched her flawless face and grew entranced by her beauty again.

  “Don’t look at her eyes,” Kyrkenall advised, which snapped Elenai from her reverie.

  She didn’t have to be locked into the inner world to feel the energy drawn up from the weapons. She looked down at the masterfully crafted sword and bow, thinking to see them disintegrate, or return to their original shape—the carvings, perhaps, disappearing from Arzhun so that it was once more a simple horn.

  But the forms of the weapons remained the same. It was the magic residing in their cores that vanished.

  Still the woman’s hands were extended. Elenai gasped in fear as a rush of magical energies passed through her. From behind rose the shrill squealing of a horse in abject terror, and the stomp of hooves. Elenai and Kyrkenall threw themselves clear as Elenai’s horse bolted past, sliding down the slope, raising a cloud of dust and scattering rocks. It then banked sharply left and galloped out of sight.

  “Damn!” Kyrkenall had already rolled to his feet. “What was that about?”

  Elenai winced in pain and forced herself up. “Cerai used hearthstone magics to shape her. The Goddess drew it back.”

  “You think she has any more surprises?” Kyrkenall asked.

  The dark entity lowered her hands and drifted upward.

  “Wait,” Elenai cried, shouting to be heard above the rising storm.

  The deity actually halted, and those huge dark eyes fixed her without emotion.

  Elenai called up to her. “If you unmake the world, you will kill all the creatures your children labored to create! All their work will be undone, and you will have nothing left of them!”

  The answering voice was calm, sweet, and beautiful, though completely without feeling.

  “It is time to put away their dabblings, and start anew.”

  “You, who longed to be restored, must surely understand we, too, want to live! We want to see the things that we love live on after us.”

  “You want these things because you were made to want them,” the Goddess said. “My children wrought their creations poorly.” She floated upward, the cliff face changing to white as she passed in front of it.

  “Let us be!” Elenai cried. “Fashion something new! You need not destroy!”

  “I shall not leave flawed creations after me,” came the answer.

  “Please!” Elenai shouted. “We will honor and revere you! Whatever you want…”

  But the Goddess had drifted up and away and was lost to sight above the height of the hill.

  “Maybe you should have started with that last bit,” Kyrkenall suggested.

  Elenai wiped tears from her eyes, grit from her thumb abrading her cheek.

  Kyrkenall advanced to look at his weapons. He hefted his blade first and took a few swipes before sheathing it. Arzhun he held at arms length, inspecting it up and down.

  He was so absorbed by his study that for once Elenai was the one who saw something first.

  “Kyrkenall.”

  He looked up.

  The passage of the Goddess through the realm appeared to have punched a hole through its composition, like the hull of a boat punctured so water sprayed into its gunnels. Chaos flowed in her wake. The storm swirled with reds and greens and even a pulsating blue. Chartreuse lightning crackled among the clouds, and from time to time the ground shook.

  “Gods,” Elenai said softly. “She’s rent through the heart of the realm.” She stared at the splendid, terrible storm, then looked to Kyrkenall, still holding his lovely bow.

  “She stripped out every bit of magic,” he said, voice barely audible over the wind’s howl. He laughed shortly as he surveyed the clouds, exploding toward them. “What does it matter? We might be looking at the world’s end!”

  “Let’s get back inside,” she said.

  “You think the cave will protect us?”

  “It will shield us from the sand and the wind,” she said, then added, irritably, “unless you’re ready to give up?” She ducked inside.

  She heard Kyrkenall’s boot soles scrape over sand and stone behind her. Lyria had wisely retreated deeper into the cave, and was sniffing Kyrkenall’s saddlebags.

  The archer came up to his horse, still snuffling at the leather, and firmly swatted her flank.

  Lyria looked at him with a snort.

  “Grubbing for treats?” he asked.

  The horse moved out of the way.

  “She’s not a bit ashamed.” Kyrkenall undid the pack’s straps and felt around. Lyria looked away as it became obvious no horse-related items would be produced. The archer pulled out a velvet sack.

  Elenai looked down at her ring, and realized it was completely useless.

  “Kyrkenall?” she asked. “Does your ring work?”

  “No,” he said after a moment.

  “The Goddess drained them, too. She must have done it when she pulled magic from my horse.”

  The failure of the sacred emblem and tool of the corps hit like one more punch in a sparring match when it was already called.

  Dejected, she lowered herself onto the flat, slanted corner of a boulder and cradled her injured arm.

  Kyrkenall set the bag aside and, as the light dimmed further, unwrapped the three glass plates and locked their copper frames into the base of a cunningly crafted field lantern.

  Darkness blotted the sky, and roaring wind blew sand into the cave maw. Tiny pebbles and sharp grains mounded in the entrance.

  Kyrkenall lit the lantern.

  “If this is a normal storm, and not the end of the world, will it really be over by nightfall?” Elenai asked.

  “Probably. So it won’t interfere with our nighttime search. And if it’s over sooner, the temperature might be reduced, so we can look during the day.”

  “With no hearthstone, which means no way to get back.”

  “I thought you were angry when it sounded like I was giving up.”

  An immense roll of thunder crashed through the storm’s ro
ar. The cave floor shook so violently the flame in the lantern wavered and grit and pebbles rained down.

  Lyria snorted in concern. Even Kyrkenall looked alarmed, and scanned the ceiling, as if he expected it to fall in.

  The ground rumbled more gently, and Elenai waited breathlessly, wondering what she should do.

  “Be a damnable thing if this is how it ended, wouldn’t it?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “Smashed in a cave, you mean?”

  “Right. I always figured I’d go out fighting.” There was nothing playful in his tone as his head turned toward her. “There are no happy endings.”

  “There can be happy endings,” Elenai objected.

  His lips twitched into a sardonic smile. “Only if you stop the story in the right place. Say, the day when you won the ring, or maybe when we saved Darassus. But that wasn’t really the end. Life keeps going until it stops. The death part is never a happy ending, is it?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “If it’s a mercy.”

  “If it’s a mercy, then the moments leading to death aren’t happy, are they?” He shook his head. “All storytellers are liars. If this were a play, we’d survive, and you’d step up to be a noble queen, then marry the bravest, handsomest warrior in the kingdom. Probably Rylin. And Kalandra would be miraculously restored so we could ride off to explore the wilds together.”

  Elenai didn’t think her own happy ending would have much to do with marriage, a subject to which she’d never given much thought, but the mention of Kalandra reminded her just how central she was to Kyrkenall’s fondest wishes. For him, there could be no true happiness without her.

  Something out there in the dark struck the ground with earth-shattering force. The resulting rain of pebbles was smaller this time, but no more comforting.

  “It almost sounds like an angry god is out there with a hammer,” Kyrkenall said. He pulled a small glistening bag from one of his belt pouches, then withdrew something from it and held it up near the lantern. A gem of some kind, Elenai saw, then realized it was a fist-sized emerald.

  “That’s Kalandra’s emerald, isn’t it?”

  “Aye.”

  “I thought you left it in Darassus.”

  “I brought her with me. I figured if things didn’t work out, I’d go down with her.”

  Elenai swore.

  Kyrkenall shushed her. “‘What times are these, when youths abandon sense, and curse and mock the wisdom of the aged?’”

  “That’s why you’ve been so calm. You’ve had her with you the entire time!”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  Elenai paused, struck with a curious thought. “Why couldn’t I sense the emerald before this?”

  “Near as I can tell, the fabric has an enchantment that blocks sight of magic. I didn’t know that when I grabbed it from the queen’s chambers. But I noticed later on when I was looking at magical stuff with my ring, and didn’t see the emerald unless I took it out of my bag. Apparently even the Goddess couldn’t see past it.”

  “That fabric might have come in handy when the Goddess was seeking my hearthstone shard,” she said, then laughed as she saw Kyrkenall’s dejected look. “It’s all right. It wouldn’t have fit.” She shook her head, then laughed once more.

  “What?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “I was just thinking that maybe you’re right. If I’m swearing so much even Kyrkenall the Eyeless is chastising me I could stand to cut back.”

  “It’s hardly becoming of a queen,” Kyrkenall said with mock gravity.

  “Queen? Of what? The cave? Darassus may already be rubble. So might our cave, in a few more moments.”

  “Maybe it’s just a storm.”

  “Maybe.” She extended her right hand. “Why don’t you let me see that?”

  He was quiet a long moment. “Why?”

  “I’m going to take another look.”

  “I thought it was too dangerous to open.”

  “Probably.”

  “And you don’t have a hearthstone.”

  “If this is the world’s end, I don’t see any reason to hold this off any longer. Maybe I can make your ending a happier one, a final moment with the woman you love.”

  She opened herself to the inner world.

  Kyrkenall still didn’t relinquish the stone. “Playing with the wards on this flattened Thelar.”

  “I’ve a vague recollection,” Elenai said. The energies that shielded the stone looked just as intricate as she remembered. They wrapped the stone tightly, in remarkably consistent bands of gold and green light. Thelar had tried to use the power of a hearthstone shard to break those bands, but the protective spell had almost surely been placed by someone wielding a hearthstone as well. She’d need something more. “If this really is the end of the world, and she really is in there, don’t you want to say good-bye?”

  “So I lose both of you?” Kyrkenall asked after a moment.

  “If it’s the world’s end, you’re losing everything pretty soon already.”

  He laughed. “These days you’re a strange mix of romance and pragmatism.” But he passed the stone across at last.

  Elenai slowly rotated it in her good hand. So long as she simply studied it through the inner world she thought she was in no danger. But any attempt at linking her threads to those about the stone would blast her at least as thoroughly as Thelar had been.

  She glimpsed a spark of energy out of the corner of her eye and looked to the cave maw. Beyond the accumulating pile of sand myriad energy lines raced within the storm.

  “I’m going to try something.” Elenai stood and moved toward the entrance, passing Lyria on the way. After a few steps, she was walking on a slope of sand, and soon her boots sank into it. She shielded her eyes as grit blasted her face, then set the emerald at the top of the pile. Through narrowed eyelids she watched the energy threads coursing in the storm. She found it hard to breathe in the choking air.

  Though her magical endurance had grown over the weeks since her first exposure to hearthstones, it was far from endless, and it began to ebb. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could continue to watch.

  And then a bright purple slash of energy blossomed outside the cave maw. She seized its edges with her threads and directed it toward the emerald, now half buried by accumulating debris.

  Even brief contact with the emerald’s threads sent pain lancing through her body, as though she’d been pierced with needles over every inch of her skin. She staggered back. Her knees failed and she was grateful Kyrkenall caught and steadied her.

  “How badly are you hurt?”

  It took her a moment to answer. She saw only red, as if her eyes were awash with blood. But the pain eased, its memory a dull throb that retreated to her injured elbow, and she saw the warring energies of stone and storm. A snake of red lightning hung through the shifting curtain of sand, its end point drifting across the surface of the emerald, which glowed from deep within. The stone threw off sparks that looped out to attack the red lightning, which flickered but did not relent.

  “How bad are you?” Kyrkenall repeated worriedly.

  “Better now.”

  They moved apart when he confirmed she was steady, and then both watched the display of light. “That’s pretty clever,” Kyrkenall said.

  “I thought the energy might wear out the protective spell,” Elenai replied.

  “And here I thought you were out of ideas.”

  The lightning disappeared. At the same moment the stone’s glow failed. The gloom seemed deeper.

  “What do you think?” Kyrkenall asked. He reached back for the lantern, shining behind them.

  Before she could answer, a figure flashed into existence directly in front of the sand mound.

  Kyrkenall shone the light at the figure, even as a chill touched the back of Elenai’s neck.

  She had seen Kalandra before, but this was no ghostly image. Before them stood a harried, dark-haired woman of medium height, her oval face bronzed by the sun. Her kha
lat was soiled and worn, and one high collar was badly frayed. Her dry voice had a peculiar, echoing quality, as though she spoke from within a deep well. “Kyrkenall?”

  20

  A Final Consultation

  Tesra found N’lahr at a second-floor window, looking down onto the courtyard where two lines of squires traded practice thrusts as a curly-haired sixth ranker paced among them offering advice and encouragement.

  She knew they couldn’t hope to counter anything a goddess could throw, and guessed other reasons for their preparation. The sixth ranker probably needed to keep them busy. And he might also have meant to demonstrate to any onlookers his force was capable.

  Tesra had no doubts. A handful of Cerai’s troops watched from the side with great interest, and so did a pair of Naor she suspected had been assigned to monitor them.

  The rest of the Naor worked on catapults outside the fortress. The aspirants, along with M’vai, had departed with Cerai, who carried the shaping staff.

  Tesra had witnessed her repair of the battlement, and even had the chance to use the amazing artifact. Cerai had claimed the tool purified things, but that wasn’t quite accurate. With the staff, and a hearthstone, you had only to direct the energy into what you envisioned and it came to pass, and thus the ruined battlement had swiftly been rebuilt, so smoothly that the repair could not be distinguished from the original.

  Tesra had initially ridden off with them to strengthen the borders, but M’vai had grown more and more anxious about N’lahr and an exasperated Cerai had finally sent Tesra back to check on him, almost cruelly suggesting M’vai attend to the renovations in her place.

  After Tesra had greeted him, N’lahr simply said: “I’m feeling about the same. How do I look?”

  Some five hours had passed since Cerai had performed a second examination of him, and Tesra saw that his extra white matrices were intertwined more thoroughly with the gold threads of his life force.

  “Bad?” he asked.

  Her concern must have shown on her face. “They’re getting worse.”

  “I see.” N’lahr looked out at the Naor. “How long do you think I have, Tesra?”

  “I’m no healer.”