When the Goddess Wakes

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “Let’s start at the top. Long before the days of the grandmothers, before Darassa had walked the circuit of her golden city, even before her birth, She-Who-Creates and He-Who-Alters danced in the great void. You could say that she made and he unmade, but it was more involved than that, because sometimes by unmaking he fashioned something new, and sometimes by making she destroyed what had previously been.

  “They had begun with things so tiny they cannot be glimpsed by the sharpest eyes, and for uncounted eons played theme and variation so long that wonders emerged. The stars were wrought and set shining through the heavens, and lands were set to drift beneath them.”

  “This is all true?” Elenai asked in wonder. “This is what really happened?”

  “It’s what Kantahl and Darassa were told, and what they recorded on their memory stones. She-Who-Makes and He-Who-Changes delighted in the inspiration they brought the other, and one day they came together and gave birth to something new, their first child.”

  “Darassa,” Elenai suggested.

  “No. This was Sova. It fashioned strange and wild things and places as it played, ephemeral regions with impossibly high mountains, deep rifts, titanic waterfalls, and far stranger creations that are sometimes glimpsed in the Shifting Lands. Sova was an accident, an impermanent construct, and when it died unexpectedly, both god and goddess mourned. They preserved its memory by keeping some of its favored locations, then decided to make more children, and design them more deliberately.”

  Elenai understood then who the extra statue in the queen’s paradise realm had represented.

  Kalandra continued, her voice backed by the sound of the storm outside. “Even long after the births of those new children, She-Who-Orders mourned her lost first child. Her children grew and their realms changed, and while this pleased He-Who-Disorders, she worried the new children, too, would die. She grew alarmed that their realms overflowed with flowering trees and bushes all very different from one another, all changing and dying. They quarreled; she accused him of deliberately twisting their co-creations to triumph and torture her. And one day she made a weapon, and killed him.”

  Elenai swallowed. It was no wonder the Goddess had no interest in listening to her. She was ruthless.

  “The rest I think you know. When the Goddess told her children they were to stop playing with the realms and build something far more coherent, they didn’t want to abandon their lands, much less the creatures they’d created. Some of them had even taken human lovers. They couldn’t appeal to their father, because he’d disappeared, and their mother would tell them nothing of where he’d gone. Shaping tool in hand, Darassa led them to confront their mother in what are now The Fragments. They argued, Syrah and Sartain were killed, and the others used the shaping tool to temporarily make She-Who-Orders nothing but order. This briefly made her rigid and statue-like. Before she could reconfigure herself they blew her apart with the chaos weapon.”

  “Hold on there,” Kyrkenall said. “What’s the shaping tool?”

  “It’s about the length of your bow, but straight. Cerai didn’t tell you about it? I see from your look she didn’t.” She shook her head in disgust. “I’m sure she still has it. I helped her figure out how to use it.”

  Elenai wondered what else the traitorous alten had kept from them.

  “What does it do?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “It helps build and restructure energies as you’d like, to lend physicality to what you imagine. Our gods used it to construct their realms, and they used it against their mother. Once they’d broken her, they scattered her energies through the realms and beyond.”

  “The hearthstones,” Kyrkenall said.

  “Yes. And the stones have been stabilizing the realms ever since, although our gods knew that was only a temporary measure. Our gods didn’t use the hearthstones for other purposes much, because they were afraid they’d accidentally bring the Goddess back. That’s partly why they kept all her pieces so far apart, so they couldn’t be drawn together.”

  “Cerai said the realms aren’t permanent. Is that true?”

  “It is,” Kalandra said. “When the queen started snapping up all the stones and putting them in one place, it accelerated a decline already well underway. They’re growing more and more unstable all the time.”

  “What happened to the Gods in the end?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “They faded, as She-Who-Creates worried they would. Eventually they perished like normal men and women.”

  The roar of the storm had risen and fallen intermittently over the course of their conversation. Over the last little while, though, it had ebbed and never climbed in return. Elenai looked over the sand mounded in the cave mouth to see that the storm had receded. No longer pitch black, the atmosphere was now overcast by charcoal-shaded clouds.

  Kyrkenall walked to the entrance to look outside.

  Elenai was still sorting through all the information Kalandra had just presented. “The Goddess—She-Who-Creates-and-Orders—was out here searching for stones. Would she be seeking the weapon as well?”

  “I suppose it’s possible.” Kalandra sounded doubtful. “But she’s probably trying to gather all her energies. She can’t function at full strength until she has all of the stones, all of herself, back.”

  “Then she would first have gone to Cerai’s fortress,” Elenai said. “Cerai has the largest supply of hearthstones.”

  “That would make sense.”

  “The storm’s over,” Kyrkenall called to them. He lay on the chest-high pile of sand deposited in the entrance, peering out through the slim opening left them. “The desert’s still there, and the road the Goddess laid down. But there are strange things scattered over the landscape, the way there are when there’s been a storm in the shifts.”

  Had she a hearthstone, Elenai could have fashioned a wind to blow the sand out. But she had none, and using her own energies would completely drain her.

  She looked back at Lyria, standing with head bowed. She and Kyrkenall could probably fit through the entrance, but to get the horse clear they’d have to dig.

  Kyrkenall produced a small spade from his own saddlebag and set to work. Fortunately for him, the slope was fairly pronounced.

  Once he’d finally conquered the pile of sand, they stood in the cave mouth and took in the view.

  “It’s oddly beautiful, isn’t it?” Kalandra asked.

  Great change had been wrought upon Kanesh. An immense inverted pyramid of rock, hundreds of feet high, stood a half mile out, its middle bisected perfectly with a line of red marble. Closer in, a forest of red basalt columns stood in neat rows, and only a few hundred yards away a strange crimson lake bubbled, sending great clouds of steam into the air.

  Stranger even than that was what appeared a jagged tear in the sky itself, through which twinkling stars shown, occasionally obscured by a shifting red and orange kaleidoscopic pattern. A cold wind blew, and Elenai might have imagined it, but she felt as though it was sweeping down from that hole in the sky.

  She felt like cursing, and decided against it. Queens, she thought, should curse if they wish, but a leader and role model should better learn to moderate her responses. Besides, her father had once told her she should save swear words for only the most important occasions. She resolved to practice that advice.

  She turned to look at the woman beside her. Kyrkenall’s lost love existed under her own lighting conditions, and blowing wind didn’t disturb her hair, or her frayed khalat. She produced no noise as she appeared to step across the rock, nor was there the sound of a sleeve brushing against her side as she moved, or a breath, or a cough. Kalandra’s body did cast a shadow, though it was oddly gray.

  Kyrkenall moved aside for Lyria, who poked her head out and regarded the horizon with disinterest. Finally the horse stepped free and started down. To the sound of her hoofbeats on stone, Kyrkenall swept a hand at the bizarre landscape. “If the Goddess creates order, why does chaos follow in her wake?”

  “
A fine question,” Kalandra said. “Maybe chaos rushes in to attack the order she puts in place, like water rushing through a dam break.” She seemed to note for the first time the fist-sized emerald Kyrkenall held in one hand.

  He looked down at it himself. “I think my instinct was to hand it to you, but … you can’t carry it, can you?”

  “I can’t do much of anything, Kyrkenall.”

  “You can walk at my side,” he said. “The world and I both will be better for that.”

  Elenai’s heart fluttered to hear those words. “Why don’t I give you two a moment alone. I’ll go sort our gear.” She returned to the cave without waiting for a reply.

  It didn’t seem likely her horse had survived, so she transferred the heavier items into one pack, then took the field lantern apart. While she was hampered by her injury, for the sake of the two lovers she still worked more slowly than necessary.

  When she emerged at last, she placed the first pack out alone to alert them she was nearly done.

  When she returned, the two were still talking earnestly. Kyrkenall kept reaching toward Kalandra, as if to grasp her shoulder, or take her hand, then remembering he couldn’t touch her. It was painful to see.

  After a final word, both faced her.

  “Looks like you have us ready,” Kyrkenall said. “Kalandra’s going to retreat into the emerald for now to conserve energy.”

  “Just let me know when you need me,” Kalandra said. “Being inside there is the closest I can feel to sleep. Although it’s more like meditation.” She bowed her head to Elenai with great dignity, then looked to Kyrkenall. “I’ll talk to you both later.”

  She winked out of existence, and the land around them was somehow twice as empty.

  Kyrkenall let out a single low oath and looked down at the emerald in one hand. He then turned his attention to the overcast sky. “Looks like mid-afternoon. One nice thing about that storm—it’s not going to be hot today. That gives us more time to search. We can take turns riding Lyria.”

  Elenai nodded agreement. Without her horse, travel was going to be a lot more challenging.

  “So,” Kyrkenall said with affected breeziness, “what do you think of her?”

  Not so long ago, Elenai had been jealous of the absent Kalandra, for N’lahr and Kyrkenall had held her in such high regard it seemed she herself couldn’t possibly measure up. And sometimes, when she’d been tempted by Kyrkenall’s innate charisma, she’d been jealous of his strong attachment to someone who wasn’t there.

  “She’s not like I thought she’d be,” Elenai admitted.

  “No?”

  “No.” She had expected someone insufferably competent. “She’s clear-sighted, and grounded.” And sad, Elenai thought, but she didn’t say that, because Kalandra had ample reason for sorrow.

  Elenai contemplated the desert stretching on beyond the lake and pillars. She was already tired, and they had far to go. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “You really think we still have a chance?”

  “To locate a small weapon hidden in a vast desert that we don’t know how to work? I’m feeling as optimistic as you are. But I’m Altenerai. And so are you.”

  “Right. We’ll meet our numbered day while smiling, and all that.”

  “Let me know when to smile.”

  “Oh, I will.” His sense of humor seemed muted. Elenai understood that the potential of Kalandra had been more sustaining than a Kalandra who might not be real, or restorable, and her heart ached for them both. United at last, but separate still, perhaps forever.

  Kyrkenall lifted the heavier saddlebag onto Lyria, then shouldered the other. Elenai insisted on letting the archer ride first, because she’d had more sleep. They then headed out past the bubbling crimson lake, on a course that would take them beyond the basalt pillars toward the dunes. Only a half mile later, as Elenai looked back, she saw a trio of broad, squat figures climbing to the top of a hill formed of sheer gleaming bronze, rising beside the hills they themselves had just departed. It hadn’t been there before the storm.

  A tall, horned figure reached its flat summit and the other two climbed to join him. Her spirits brightened at the sight of them, and she reminded herself not to assume anything as she called Kyrkenall’s name. As she pointed, her friend turned Lyria in her tracks. The horned figure pointed at them and the climbers conferred.

  “First Naor, now kobalin,” Elenai said.

  “Aye.” The archer had lifted his bow. Normally he did so without consideration. This time, though, he tested the weapon’s pull, as though he’d never shot from it. Of course. Without its magical energies, he worried Arzhun would not be as resilient. He met her eyes. “Maybe it’s your vision about to come true, but I think we should be careful.”

  The kobalin at the top turned his back to them and appeared to be waving his hands to someone out of sight.

  “Excellent,” Elenai said. “There are more of them.”

  Kyrkenall had knocked a gray fletched arrow, though he didn’t lift the black bow into shooting position.

  The signaler and the other two descended quickly and came on at a jog. He carried a double-bladed axe. The other two bore sheathed swords. All were scaled in reds and oranges.

  “Do any of them look like the one from your vision?”

  “No. He was smaller.”

  “These look like kobalin lords. They’re probably after a challenge.”

  “That’s not good,” she said.

  “It might be. Once I win the challenge, they’ll probably hear me out, and then we might have some help looking.”

  Elenai measured the kobalin, then considered Kyrkenall’s cool aplomb. He was considerably smaller than all three. And both his great bow and his sword had been drained of energy. “Let’s try talking to them first.”

  “Anything we say is likely just a preamble to a challenge.”

  “Maybe I should challenge one,” she suggested.

  “We need you,” Kyrkenall said.

  “We need you, too,” she retorted.

  He smirked. “I don’t think I can find the weapon we’re searching for. Besides, I’ve fought a lot more kobalin than you have. Actually, have you ever fought kobalin?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “There you go, then.”

  Much as she disliked it, his reasoning was sound. “Maybe you should consult with Kalandra. Do you know how?”

  “She said it’s like activating one of our rings.” He looked at the saddlebag on Lyria’s flank and a moment later Kalandra appeared.

  She quickly took in her surroundings. “So some kobalin are on their way to meet us. I thought you might just be missing me.”

  “I always miss you,” Kyrkenall said without the slightest trace of humor.

  The kobalin slowed a bowshot out and then walked confidently forward. Like Ortok, they were broad and powerful. The horned one bearing the axe was a head taller than the others, his orange scales less delineated. He alone wore ringmail. Rough kilts clothed the loins of all three, and the other two each carried a shield.

  They halted only a short distance out, the armored axe-bearer at the point of their triangle. The red-scaled one on his right had a pronounced snout he lifted to sniff them. The third was more lizard-like, though possessed of wide, thick-lashed brown eyes.

  Kyrkenall hopped gracefully down from Lyria.

  “You have magics,” the leader said, his voice a surprisingly mild alto. “But where is the power of your rings? Are you true Altenerai?”

  Kyrkenall spread his arms. “It might be that I’m Kyrkenall the Eyeless.” He raised the black bow. “Slayer of Nemrose. And it could be that this is Kalandra Storm Strider, breaker of shield walls and that this is Elenai Half-Sword, slayer of traitors and generals. But maybe we’ve just killed a few Altenerai and are wandering around in their uniforms.”

  The orange-snouted one and the lizard-like kobalin exchanged puzzled looks. The leader frowned in thought. “No,” he decided, “I think you
are Altenerai. I had heard Storm Strider was a magic worker, but not that she was formed of magic. Of Elenai Half-Sword I have not heard. Is she sister to Elenai Oddsbreaker?”

  Elenai perked up at this question. There was only one source from which they were likely to have learned her name.

  “One person can have two names,” Kyrkenall pointed out. “I’m sometimes called Kyrkenall of the Black Bow.”

  “That sounds more like a title, but I take your meaning. I am Urchok Bone Spitter. The Naor know my name and fear me.” He clouted his chest. Probably his armor was of Naor make.

  “There are stories we could tell, Urchok,” Kalandra said. “It’s good to share them with other warriors.”

  Urchok grunted affirmation.

  “But this isn’t a time for stories,” Kalandra continued. “We’re not on a battle quest. We’re on a hunt. If you join us, we will share its glory.”

  The kobalin behind Urchok straightened, and the one with the snout snuffled again.

  “That is a fine offer,” Urchok said.

  A stream of figures descended from either side of the bronze hill behind them. At first Elenai thought they numbered in the dozens, then their count swelled higher and higher.

  “But our duties are given us by the great Ortok, Skull Render,” Urchok continued. “He has spoken much of you, and I think he would wish to meet with you before we do anything else.”

  25

  The Secret in the Sand

  Elenai made no effort to fight the fierce smile spreading across her face. Ortok lived. That, at least, was good news.

  As the kobalin army descended the hillside, Lyria watched them skeptically with her wide brown eyes. A few groups took up sentry positions farther east and west.

  None drew closer than ten paces, but as their numbers swelled into the low hundreds this meant the armed host ringed them in a way Elenai had seen popular actors surrounded by admirers, absent fangs and weapons. Bearing mismatched gear, the kobalin stared and talked among themselves. Elenai overheard discussions of Kyrkenall’s height, and Kalandra’s shimmering magical dweomer, and a few mentions of how slight all the Altenerai seemed; there were also admiring comments upon the blue of their khalats.