When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  A storm cast up the soil in a stinging cloud that pelted his skin.

  “It came up out of nowhere,” Thelar said.

  Rylin pulled on his boots and grabbed his khalat. Beyond their little island the sky had grown alive with lightning. Thunder rolled. He couldn’t imagine how he had slept through any of it.

  He worked swiftly to hook his uniform coat closed. “Any sign of Lelanc or Drusa?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I hope they found somewhere to roost.”

  Thelar’s reply was interrupted by a loud cracking sound. Both men looked to their right, where an immense boulder on the edge of their fragment splintered and dropped into the void, followed by nearly ten feet of soil. A fault line followed in its wake, zig-zagging toward the center of their fragment, accompanied by alarming rumbles. Even a huge storm shouldn’t have been shaking a fragment apart. But then this looked to be no ordinary storm.

  “I hope we have somewhere safe to roost,” Rylin said. “We’d better grab our gear.”

  He snatched his sword belt, watching their surroundings as he buckled. A blast of blue lightning tore through the sky.

  Thelar hefted his saddlebag and pointed to the lone rise beyond the little freshwater lake. “That’s the most solid point.”

  A second and third crack in the firmament crept in from the edge, and then accelerated toward them. As the ground trembled, Rylin grabbed his saddlebag and the two raced toward the center of their sanctuary.

  The devastation moved faster. The crack sped on, diverted before them, and widened. Rylin jumped even as the gap lengthened. He conjured wind threads and pushed both of them up and over the gap. He stumbled. Thelar hit and rolled, losing grip of his saddlebag. Rylin dragged him to his feet as the exalt snatched his gear.

  They ran toward the little lake and the hill beyond as rocks and sand rose, turning slowly, as though they were being inspected by curious, invisible giants.

  The water floated into the air in a shimmering contiguous mass, and the storm winds delivered it directly into their path.

  Before he could counter, Rylin was in the midst of the water, and had to swim to move forward, kicking with booted feet. The saddlebag was torn from his hand, and there was no time to lament its passing, for he was fighting to survive. The water obscured his vision, and he couldn’t tell if he was actually moving forward, which was all the more frightening because he had little air in his lungs. His head pounded and spots shone before his eyes. His body was desperate to breathe, no matter that doing so would kill him.

  He kicked on. His vision spiraled.

  Then he dropped free from the water, sodden, landing hard in black mud. He took in a grateful breath. The wind picked up and the water fell away like a wave of rain against his legs. He pushed himself up and spotted Thelar lying two bodylengths behind, within a shallow pool of water. He dashed over to lift him, pounding the exalt’s back. Thelar coughed and struggled to get his hands under him.

  Rylin saw that only about five feet of solid ground remained to their rear. The water was flowing that direction and plunging over the side, right past Thelar’s saddlebag.

  Thelar spit up water. The ground behind them crumbled further.

  “Up!” Rylin cried.

  Thelar was slow to move. Rylin pushed at him and set him stumbling away, then dashed back, sliding in the mud. As he reached for the bag the ground rumbled once more and a huge crescent of land shuddered, dropping away, taking the saddlebag with it.

  That meant all the stones for capturing chaos spirits were gone. They’d each carried two. There was no time to worry about them. He sprinted away as the land shook, crumbling into the void behind him. Ahead, Thelar had tripped, and struggled now to push to his feet. Rylin wrenched him up and pulled him forward. After the first few steps Thelar got his balance back. An over-the-shoulder glance showed the destruction following them in a wave.

  They arrived finally at the base of the rise and forced their way up. Once on its height, no more than a dozen feet above their little domain, Rylin searched their surroundings. More a plateau than a hill, it was less than fifty feet across, and apart from it they had no more than ten ragged feet of soil in any direction, most of which was slope. The hungry void clawed at the edges.

  “I don’t think this is going to last much longer,” Rylin said. He looked down at his ring. Even with a command to activate, its glow was dim. “And the rings aren’t going to help us. You’ll have to use your shard.”

  Thelar coughed and nodded, but he looked so peaked Rylin chose to use the device instead, activating it from within Thelar’s belt pouch.

  Just as he cycled the stone open it blazed so brightly it was visible even through the leather. Thelar yelped and shut the thing down, shouting about the Goddess looking at them.

  Water trailed from the flattened mass of Thelar’s dark hair and down his cheek. He was soaked through and looked utterly miserable. “I thought you liked water,” Rylin said.

  “I don’t like drowning.”

  It was a feeble-enough joke, but Rylin laughed.

  “What are we going to do now?” Thelar asked. “We’ve nothing left to trap the spirits with.”

  “Or even to fuel a fire.” From the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of light. Turning his head to find it, he witnessed a landscape glimmer into and then out of existence. For a moment he thought he had dreamed that red mountain, but it reappeared, then melted away like candle wax.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Rylin said, and as he finished, a second landscape blinked once, twice, then resolved into a purple body of water lying beside a land of red dunes.

  “Now you have,” Thelar commented dryly.

  Rylin watched as the land vanished once more. “Any ideas why this is happening?”

  “I’d hazard that there’s something fundamentally awry with the foundation of reality,” Thelar said.

  “That’s comforting.”

  “I’m glad one of us is comforted, because I’m certainly not.”

  A hilly gray landscape blinked into existence. Red spiked plants sprouted sparsely across its surface. On their right, Rylin saw sprays of diamonds lying on higher hills. Their own plateau appeared to be resting, somewhat off center, upon a low mound.

  Rylin was peering over the side when Thelar called to him.

  “Rylin. Look up.”

  Just as it seemed the Shifting Lands had settled into a comprehensible pattern, the sky had split open to reveal a void alive with slowly spiraling golden stars.

  Two winged figures flew out from the gap, their feathered heads stretched out ahead of them. Lelanc and Drusa.

  While their appearance was reassuring, Rylin spotted shifting lines of white force in pursuit. Something about them suggested grasping eagerness.

  “They found the chaos spirits,” Rylin said. “And we’ve nothing to trap them with.”

  24

  Among Friends

  Kyrkenall spoke the name of the woman before them with quiet awe. “Kalandra. I don’t … I…” And then he was walking toward her across the floor of the cave.

  Elenai recognized the missing alten from an encounter with her image in the shifts weeks ago, though Kalandra had clearly suffered since that other version of her had been sorcerously stored, transformed from athletically slim to truly gaunt. Her eyes had sunken and grown fever-sharp, her cheekbones pronounced. Her dark, shoulder-length hair hung in untidy ringlets.

  Kalandra smiled as Kyrkenall stepped toward her, but then, in the moment she raised her own hands to receive his embrace, her expression fell.

  A moment later, Kyrkenall’s hands swept through Kalandra, and he stumbled through her. She proved no more substantial than smoke. Kalandra’s image reached out in an attempt to steady him, then looked down at her hands, thin lips curling in anger.

  Kyrkenall whirled, looking to Elenai. “What’s happening?” he demanded. “I thought it worked!”

  For a brief moment Elenai had b
een proud she’d achieved the impossible. Now she wished that she’d failed. Before her friend lay another painful confrontation with only a memory of his love, something that mimicked her appearance but could provide little more companionship than a well-painted portrait.

  Unlike the previous memory image, this one did not stand static, awaiting conversation. Kalandra studied Elenai before reaching out for Kyrkenall. She emitted a sad sigh as her hand passed through his sleeve. The first memory of Kalandra they’d interacted with hadn’t demonstrated half as much initiative.

  “You’re not real, are you,” Kyrkenall said sadly. It was not a question.

  But Kalandra answered it. “I’ve given that a lot of thought, and I don’t know.” Her voice was oddly flat, as if some of its tonality were absent. “Where are we? And who is this?” She indicated Elenai with a lift of her chin.

  “We’re in a cave, in Kanesh,” Kyrkenall answered. “At the end of the world. And this is Elenai Half Sword, who would have been queen of the five realms.”

  “Hail, Alten,” Kalandra said. “Or should I say Your Majesty?”

  “Hail,” Elenai replied softly, too impressed with the sophistication of the spell simulating Kalandra to deny that she was queen.

  The image of the long-lost alten faced Kyrkenall once more. “What’s this about the end of the world? And does this mean you’ve killed Leonara?”

  “She’s dead, but we didn’t kill her. It’s not even important,” Kyrkenall answered.

  “Leonara opened the hearthstones and the Goddess was called forth,” Elenai said. Kalandra’s brows lifted in surprise. “The Goddess passed through here to take a shard I was using, and left this storm in her wake. We’re not sure if it will ever stop.” Elenai wanted to make sure Kyrkenall understood what they were experiencing, though she hesitated to be rude to even an image of Kalandra. So she chose her words with care. “You’re a much more sophisticated spell than the first one we met.”

  Kalandra turned her attention to Kyrkenall. “So Leonara’s goddess is loose.”

  “It appears so,” Kyrkenall said woodenly.

  “What year is it?”

  “You’ve been missing seven years. Do you know where you really are? I mean, where you are, not this … thing?” The archer indicated her with a wave of his hand.

  The image laughed without humor. “Kyrkenall, this is as much of me as you’re ever going to get. I am here—or at least everything that’s left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I transferred myself into this stone.” She pointed to the emerald. “Or I made a truly sophisticated copy. I’m not sure which.”

  “Why would you put yourself into a stone?” Kyrkenall asked in disbelief.

  “Because I was dying,” Kalandra answered, a bite in her words. “Out in the wastes. Denaven overpowered me and made off with my hearthstones. I had no way to keep going.”

  “Wait,” Kyrkenall said. “Denaven?”

  “Him and some of his circle. I managed to drive them off, but I’d been badly hurt.”

  “That means he knew. All this time. Elenai killed that hastig,” Kyrkenall finished with a snarl.

  “Good,” Kalandra said, with matching venom.

  Elenai studied her in growing wonder

  “What happened to your body?” Kyrkenall demanded.

  Kalandra shook her head slowly even as the wind whipped sand through her image. “It’s long since dust. Now come. Tell me what’s going on. I’ve heard nothing but Leonara’s rantings for a very long while.”

  Elenai suggested they move into the cave depths, and scooped up Kalandra’s stone before they retreated.

  Lyria snuffled and pricked up her ears at Kalandra’s image.

  Through stages, interrupted by Kalandra’s questions, Kyrkenall explained everything that had happened since her disappearance, for they soon learned that while the queen had occasionally spoken with her, Kalandra had little knowledge of events beyond Leonara’s office, where her stone had been kept. And so she listened to the story of N’lahr’s staged death, the treaty with Mazakan, Asrahn’s murder, N’lahr’s recovery, and the Naor invasions. Elenai then spoke of Cerai’s scheming, and the attack against the queen and the retreat to Cerai’s stronghold. Kyrkenall finished at last with information about the weapon they sought. His scrutiny of their weird guest had grown more and more pronounced, as he himself appeared more and more certain that she really was what she said.

  “What are you planning to do next?” Kalandra asked. “If the storm plays out, are you going to keep searching for the weapon?”

  “I don’t know what else we can do,” Elenai replied. “I think it was in my vision, but … Do you think the weapon even exists?”

  “Most likely. As to where it’s hidden, you may be on to something.”

  Kyrkenall cleared his throat. “Cerai can alter bodies. Maybe even make them. She might be able to help you out.”

  “You’re sweet, Kyrkenall, but I wouldn’t trust her to make a sandwich, much less a body. And I have virtually no idea how to inhabit one I wasn’t born with.”

  “Will you at least sit?” he asked.

  “I discovered some time ago that there’s really no point in trying to rest. I’m not really here. So I can’t feel any better than when I started this whole…” She looked like she was going to say something else, but ended with, “misadventure.”

  Kyrkenall spoke with grave sincerity. “I looked for you. Almost from the moment you vanished, I looked for you. I love you. I should have told you that. And that record you left, that talked to us—she told me you had always loved me, too.”

  “I do.” Kalandra’s expression softened. “I’m sorry, Kyrkenall. But what good is the love of a fading ghost?”

  “You seem pretty real to me,” he said.

  “Do I? Or do you just want me to be real? You were always too good, my charming champion, at seeing what you wanted. It’s ironic, really, given how fine your eyesight is.”

  “No,” Kyrkenall insisted, “It’s you. I feel it.”

  “What’s the greater tragedy, I wonder?” Kalandra asked. “To be a disembodied genuine, or a deluded counterfeit? A question for the poets, I suppose. We don’t have time for it. If any of us survive—assuming I actually count as being alive—we can worry about defining my existence later.”

  “How did you put yourself in here?” Elenai lifted the emerald.

  “If I’d been thinking clearly I wouldn’t have. It was a terrible idea. I’m hardly inclined to share the process.”

  Elenai hadn’t planned on emulating her example, and was embarrassed Kalandra had misunderstood her curiosity. “How long can you last in this form?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. But I’ll know when it grows low.”

  “Do you have any way to recharge the stone’s energy?”

  “A hearthstone would be able to do it. Leonara did once herself, after toying with me.” Kalandra’s lips curled in a dry smile. “Really, if the Goddess is loose, you’re worrying about the wrong things.”

  Elenai was not dissuaded, for there were other matters she remained curious about. “Why was there such a strong ward placed on your stone?”

  Kalandra confirmed her suspicion with the answer. “That was so I couldn’t get out on my own accord. Once I was in the palace, I discovered I could wander farther and farther from the stone itself. The queen didn’t much care for that.”

  “So what was Leonara doing with you?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “I am a gifted conversationalist,” Kalandra said with the hint of a smile. “But she wanted only my information.”

  “And you didn’t share any,” Kyrkenall said.

  “On the contrary, I shared almost everything. But she and Synahla wouldn’t listen. All they wanted were bits that supported their preconceived beliefs. They thought they had a lock on reality. If Leonara believed the sky was orange, even pointing to the window to show her it was blue wouldn’t convince her. I got tired of try
ing.”

  Kyrkenall swore. “How did the queen get ahold of you? Denaven again?”

  “Naturally. He didn’t come back until he was sure I couldn’t hurt him anymore. He put the original ward on the stone, but I broke that one.” She smiled with satisfaction.

  “Who knew the queen had you?” Elenai asked. She hoped she would not say Thelar, or M’vai and Meria.

  “The queen. Synahla. Denaven. Cerai.”

  “Cerai?” Kyrkenall’s voice was thick with anger.

  “I used to exchange information with her, when we were both exploring what the hearthstones really were. Cerai found out about the entire origin of our realms from me. Once I was captured I thought she was pretending to ally with the queen and would find a way to set me free.”

  “She’s on no side but her own,” Elenai said.

  “That became obvious.”

  “It might be that the hearthstones warped her,” Kyrkenall said. “Made her worse than she had to be.”

  “Or maybe it gave her an excuse to embrace her worst characteristics,” Kalandra said. “You were always soft on her.”

  “I keep telling him he can’t trust her,” Elenai said.

  “A queen who speaks the truth,” Kalandra said. “That used to be more commonplace.”

  “I’m not really queen. Not yet. Maybe not ever.” Elenai looked out at the storm. Speculatively she touched her sore arm. It didn’t feel any better. “It looks like we have plenty of time before we leave.”

  “Or maybe just a little before the world ends,” Kyrkenall said.

  “There’s the optimist I know.” Kalandra’s smile lit briefly in response to one from Kyrkenall. It died a moment later.

  Elenai looked from one to the other. “I should go up front and give you some time alone.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Kalandra said. “But right now it’s probably more important to fill in the gaps so you’re prepared for the next act. It sounds like there are a lot of things you don’t know.”

  Kyrkenall granted her permission to speak with a grand arm flourish. “Speak on. We’re yours until the storm clears or the cave falls in, whichever comes first.”